Getting Rid of Body

[dsatow]

So, I was thinking (danger music queues into existence)...

 

When I first learned to play Champions, I thought that the Body and Constitution characteristics were redundant.  Why have both?  I haven't given it much thought since then, but I was thinking, why not make Constitution do the work of Body too?  The idea is if you take Body damage, the damage goes to Con.  A negative Con value means you are dead (just like Body).  

 

Some possible benefits:

1. As you take more and more Body damage, your Con lowers, showing an effect for the damage you have taken and making it easier for you to be stunned. 
2. In heroic level play, the loss of Con could also affect other secondary stats, like Rec, End, and Stun.  For those people who really want to brutalize wounded players.
3. Calculating stun for figured statistics (if you use figured statistics), would be simpler.  It would just be Str + Con.

[Pattern Ghost]

21 minutes ago, dsatow said:

As you take more and more Body damage, your Con lowers, showing an effect for the damage you have taken and making it easier for you to be stunned.

 

I think most people would consider a death spiral mechanic more of a drawback than a benefit, but YMMV. It could be good for really gritty games, I suppose.

[unclevlad]

It is definitely a gritty mechanic.  Shadowrun and, IIRC, L5R had something similar...wounds applied penalties to target numbers...ALL of them in Shadowrun.  (I remember those rules better.)  Offense and defense.  -1 on a d6 is nasty;  -2 is devastating, when you have to roll high.  In fact, I think in later editions they changed it from a target number penalty to a dice pool size penalty;  the roll penalties made combats *extremely* hard to balance, I thought.

 

One side effect is that people would probably buy more Con, particularly in 5E where you'll get all those figured stats.  You'd also get a shift in defenses.  Damage Negation and Damage Reduction are even less valuable...first things first, stop taking BODY.  

[IndianaJoe3]

I can see it as a setting mechanic, but not as a general rule. If you're trying to emulate a video game, their hit point systems function more like STUN than BODY (including the rapid recovery and lack of permadeath). 

[LoneWolf]

The thing you are forgetting is that there are a lot of things that don’t have a CON score.   Barriers, entangles, vehicles, walls, and pretty much every other object lacks a CON score.  How do you handle those?  If you just give them a CON score equal to their body that makes them vulnerable things like CON drains and other things, they should not be vulnerable to.  A brick wall should not take damage from a disease or poison. Having only some things have BODY is going to be confusing especially for new players.   This does nothing to simplify the game and in fact adds a pointless layer of complication.

[Grailknight]

21 minutes ago, LoneWolf said:

The thing you are forgetting is that there are a lot of things that don’t have a CON score.   Barriers, entangles, vehicles, walls, and pretty much every other object lacks a CON score.  How do you handle those?  If you just give them a CON score equal to their body that makes them vulnerable things like CON drains and other things, they should not be vulnerable to.  A brick wall should not take damage from a disease or poison. Having only some things have BODY is going to be confusing especially for new players.   This does nothing to simplify the game and in fact adds a pointless layer of complication.

 

Fortunately those thing that have a CON also have a BODY score. The better solution (if you're playing some form of 6th) is to get rid of CON. All the things you used CON for( other than Stunning) can easily go to a BODY roll. Now you only have to redefine the number of STUN past Defenses that causes Stunning. You could set it at 2x BODY and even make it 2x current BODY to simulate you death spiral.

[unclevlad]

2 hours ago, Grailknight said:

 

Fortunately those thing that have a CON also have a BODY score. The better solution (if you're playing some form of 6th) is to get rid of CON. All the things you used CON for( other than Stunning) can easily go to a BODY roll. Now you only have to redefine the number of STUN past Defenses that causes Stunning. You could set it at 2x BODY and even make it 2x current BODY to simulate you death spiral.

 

If BODY is taking over every aspect of CON, then its cost may need reconsideration.  Bringing this up points out:  any of the notions here dramatically affect Growth.  

 

You'd definitely have to figure out the stunning, tho.  2x BODY makes it VERY hard to stun someone, even if BODY's cost goes to 2.  (Because your "stun threshold" starting value goes from 10 to 20.)  And as above, even with the spiral that it's 2x current...you simply make as sure as you can that you don't take BODY.  Under RAW, people don't take that much BODY because its only use is avoiding death...in a game system where lethality is expected to be low.  If you drop CON, passing over its functions to BODY, it gains a major function (avoiding getting stunned) and some uncommon secondary aspects.  In fantasy, if resisting a poison is based on CON...that may be more prominent. 

[Grailknight]

Yeah, but changing BODY is a lot simpler than all the changes that would have to be made because of it's elimination. CON on the other hand is 95% for Stunning and a scattering of resistance rolls that can be easily moved to BODY. 

 

The 2x is just a starting point for figuring a final solution for Stunning. It could just as easily be 1x if the cost of BODY is raised to 2 or 1.5x if the cost remains at 1. It would all depend on hoe frequently you want Stunning to occur .

[unclevlad]

Realistically, whether one says they're eliminating CON or BODY, the point's the same...they're being merged.  

 

So from the labeling perspective, it comes down to, what's more understandable?  I don't care about the point that objects have BODY but not CON, that's trivial for me to adapt.  BUT, what is CON, what does it mean, if you're rolling BODY into it?  It's harder to explain.  Ruggedness, toughness?  Isn't that PD?  Whereas BODY is trivial.  It's how much you have to bash into pieces before the whole thing falls apart.   

 

So, yeah, from that perspective, dropping CON feels like it'd be easier to teach.

[LoneWolf]

Both CON and BODY serve a purpose and in reality, they are completely different.   Merging them into a single stat does not add clarity or simplify the game.  What it does is abstract the character more.  If we are doing this for CON and BODY why not merge EGO and PRE, after that we can move to merging END and STUN.  Next thing you know we are down to 6 stats and are playing something resembling the d20 system instead of Hero System.   The granularity of the Hero System is one of its best features.  It is the reason you can write up pretty close to exactly the character you want.  

[unclevlad]

BODY can at least loosely be connected to a physical aspect, but CON is a complete abstraction.

 

I think the major reason they were separated is to keep the notions of "resilient" and "hard to kill" separate.  That said, I suspect it was done more for figured characteristics than anything else...and that's gone.  So I can see OP's point;  they *are* redundant now, and no, they aren't all that different.  The problem is that a great deal of stuff is tied to having "hard to stun" and "hard to kill" separate, so......the ripple effects are nasty.

 

As for the others...EGO and PRE have seriously different uses, as do END and STUN, so this argument is specious, IMO.  

[dsatow]

As unclevlad noted, its less about getting rid of one and merging it so don't think it will affect things much.

 

So lets look at each characteristic's bit of weirdness. 

 

Constitution represents health.  Somehow, living a healthy lifestyle and doing exercise to bring up your stamina makes you more fire resistant.  Personally, I never understood that part.  If I jog 30 miles a day and eat healthy and balanced, get good nights sleep and do other cardio, I should be able to not burn when exposed to heat?  Also if you are thrashed with in an inch of your life, you can still have the constitution of a horse.  Normally when a person is hurt, you try to keep wounds clean and let them recover.  But why?  In Hero, you, a severely wounded character, have the same health stat as a person with full health.

 

Body represents life force.  But in terms of activity, when you are at 100% of your body and when you are at your last Body before dying, you can do the same things.  You can run a marathon, climb a mountain, and still take a mountain of STUN (Body loss due to damage doesn't affect maximum Stun).

 

Next, lets look at characters in fiction.  Granted, there are some pieces of fiction where the main character is beaten, stabbed, bones broken, and he (its usually a he) fights like there is no tomorrow.  He seems not affected at all. (ex: Superman, a lot of classic westerns and heroes from the 40s/50s genres).  But you also have characters now where they get messed up and it shows in future fights.  You can look at Kyle Reese in Terminator, or a lot of comic book heroes since the Iron age of comics.  As they get beaten down, it gets harder for them to do things.

 

Finally, lets look at genre.  In superhero games, how often do you take Body from the average attack?  Most games I see, people have at least half resistant and ~2 points of defense per damage class average.  In heroic level games, you take more Body but even then, its mostly due to killing attacks from weapons.  If you use hit locations and disabling effects, the disabling hits are usually worse than what I am describing.  All I am describing is a lowered max Recovery, Stun, and End.  I'm not describing losing 1d6 of another characteristic like STR, INT, or EGO.  It just makes you easier to stun because, well, your body is thrashed.  Best of all, you can recover it normally, unlike disabling effects which may be permanent.

 

I see the idea as optional depending on the style of campaign you are running.  I see it also as a lighter version compared to disabling rules and something which can be employed in a superhero game.

 

 

[LoneWolf]

The impairing and disabling rules already cover what happens when a character is wounded.  They give specific penalties based on the location of the wound which makes a lot more sense than simply being harder to stun.  While these rules may not be appropriate for all campaigns, they work very well for someone who is looking to run a gritty campaign where combat is dangerous. 

 

This also prevents certain concepts.   Not all characters with high body are super healthy.  How do you build the character who has a tremendous will to live, but who’s body is frail?

[unclevlad]

5 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

This also prevents certain concepts.   Not all characters with high body are super healthy.  How do you build the character who has a tremendous will to live, but who’s body is frail?

 

Low BODY, low CON, higher EGO.

 

The argument you're making here, to me, isn't about frailness, it's a different notion of toughness.  High CON conceptually relates to things like resistance to drugs or poison, rarely gets sick/recovers faster from illness, maybe heals a little faster, generally recovers faster.  An example can be the awesome (and insane) climbers in cycling.  They're TINY...Nairo Quintana is one of the best in the world, and he's 5'6" and 130 pounds.  Pretty clearly suggests a low-ish BODY score.  But IMO no other type of athlete comes close to the resilience and rebound needed to be a Grand Tour rider.  They are BRUTAL.  

 

So, OK, maybe Quintana has CON?  Well...maybe, but a lot of things have been taken away.  REC is its own characteristic.  Faster healing can be slow Regen.  Life Support handles *some* of the poison/illness issue...it's admittedly clunky.

 

When figured characteristics are used, keeping CON and BODY separate has a much stronger case, because now raw CON is factoring into several of these things.  RAW doesn't support CON as a defense against poisons or drugs...it's a logical extension, but it's a house rule.  (And that's frequently one use for Power Def.)

 

You mention the impairing/disabling rules...well, perhaps...when they're in use.  I'd hate them with a passion.  They're optional.  The only time they call for a CON roll is at GM's discretion...and it's for permanent impairment.  Generally...NOT something I'd want to do, and I'd absolutely want to know about in advance.  If it's that kind of game, character building is simply *different* even compared to a more realistic "yes, sometimes the villains ARE out to kill you" campaign.  And, we're talking optional handling within an optional rule in the first place.  

[Hugh Neilson]

Once we merge BOD and CON, being bulky and able to soak up a lot of damage without dying becomes resistance to being Stunned, and that small biker is easier to stun when he should be harder to stun.

 

Of course,the easy solution would be "limited BOD".  But how is merging CON and BOD, then allowing limtations if it only does what BOD currently does or only does what CON currently does an improvement?  An alternative question might be whether we should split some characteristics, especially INT (carving INT skills and Perception into separate stats), DEX (moving DEX skills and rolls into a stat separate from Initiative) and PRE (splitting interaction skills from the shock & awe of PRE attacks).  Make it complete and split EGO into "force of will" EGO rolls and defense from both mental and PRE attacks.

 

Perhaps the fact that those stats now work with a combination of "combined characteristics", "limited characteristics" and "powers/skills providing one aspect of characteristics" suggests merging CON and BOD as well.

 

hmmm...starting to sound like d20 characteristics, which have also evolved to characteristics that do different things, and sub-abilities to augment only one of those things.

[Pattern Ghost]

On 9/2/2022 at 6:11 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

Once we merge BOD and CON, being bulky

 

Being bulky is only one possible special effect for a high Body or CON. IMO, Characteristics should be treated the same way as Powers with regards to SFX.

 

To the larger point of combining traits just causing bookkeeping for the exceptions, I  wholeheartedly agree. BESM/Tri-Stat was especially bad about this, if you cared about getting granular with your character building, since the stats were so broad.

[unclevlad]

9 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Being bulky is only one possible special effect for a high Body or CON. IMO, Characteristics should be treated the same way as Powers with regards to SFX.

 

 

For sure.  STR is very common;  Spidey's listed as lifting 10 tons;  that's in the 40-45 range.  He's not bulky.  Captain America almost always LOOKS bulkier and more muscular...his info on Marvel puts him at 6'2 and 240, whereas Peter Parker is 5'10 and 170.  But he's many times stronger.

 

DEX, I think, tends to run to build...but there's exceptions like Beast.

 

For BODY, even in the rules, look at the BODY of walls.  Metal is much higher.  In the real world, there are a number of assorted physical properties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenacity_(mineralogy)

 

The simplest example can be brittleness.  Stone is generally relatively brittle;  metals rarely are.  So a translation here:  I might buy extra BODY when I define my body is made of a material that's definitely not brittle.  Granted:  it's not the only way to do it.  Keeping the BODY down and going with Damage Reduction can also fit.

 

And going another way:  a glass giant has bulk, but the BODY might be pretty darn awful.   Because sharp enough blows will be shattering good-sized chunks, and the whole thing falls apart relatively easily.

[megaplayboy]

I always thought extra BODy for a human didn't always reflect being more physically robust, it could also be a reflection of "too stubborn to die" or "strong will to live".  

[drunkonduty]

I've gotten rid of CON in my house rules. I'm just using BOD wherever it says CON. I'm only a few sessions into my campaign but no problems so far.

[Duke Bushido]

Apply BODY damage to CON and STUN Damage to END.

 

Then we go explore the Spinward Marches.

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I've gotten rid of CON in my house rules. I'm just using BOD wherever it says CON

 

Well that is one of the dangers of removing figured characteristics, each stat means less.  CON is, however, one of the more significant and game-useful stats in the rules, especially in heroic games.  It allows a character to have a very strong constitution and resistant body without being tougher to kill.  So you can have a shrew that is super hard to poison but easy to smush.  CON rolls for a host of different things like resisting diseases or not being affected by a paralysis all make sense, and of course CON prevents you from being "stunned" (a term I wish the game had changed with 6th edition).  Just deleting it makes for a poorer game, in my opinion.

 

And of course eliminating Body removes one of the core differences between Hero and most games still made to this day: you can be either knocked out or killed in Hero.  You can be hardy and difficult to slaughter, at different levels distinct from each other.  A glass jaw can mean a high body and low Stun.  Tough to represent that without both stats.

[redsash]

One of the issues I have with the CON/BODY/STUN thing is that you have two conditions equating to temporary unconsciousness, governed by different stats and different mechanisms. So one can be Stunned or knocked unconscious, and recover from either with a bit of time, but only the second state is mitigated by one's Recovery stat, and even then only in certain narrow circumstances. (Try explaining that to your would-be D&D converts.)

 

Looking at the (long) vehicle damage thread I commented on yesterday: many folk have problems with vehicles getting dinged up as they take BODY (and lose, for example, a little speed) and then suddenly exploding as they reach 0 BODY. No differentiation between taking 1 BODY and losing half the vehicle's maximum BODY in one blow. Compare to the optional disabling rules for characters.

 

It seems to me that modifying the disabling rules could help both systems. If you take more than a third or half your STUN in one blow, for example, that could be the threshold for "Stunning" and perhaps could be resisted by an EGO roll (representing willpower withstanding the pain of a bruising blow, with penalties to the roll based on the amount of damage [hey that gives us a mechanism for bruises, too]). In fact EGO makes more sense than CON for withstanding damage effects in most circumstances: a strong-willed character will often keep fighting until they are dead, thoroughly unconscious, or well past exhaustion. BODY tracks actual damage, STUN tracks pain, END tracks exhaustion. Resistances resist poison. What's CON for again?

 

Similarly with vehicles, where one or two body damage would not necessarily effect the vehicle's performance, but a "disabling" blow of a third or half Max BODY would cripple a system. Maybe a driver or passenger with the Mechanics skill could make a roll to resist? ("Sounds like that last hit compromised the baffle-gab flywheel. Gear down! Gear down before it fails entirely!")

 

This would certainly scale better from unarmored motorcycles to large tough vehicles -- one (and by "one" I mean a berserk Hulk analog; see post in that other thread) can break a tank practically in half without compromising it's combat ability at all, then destroy the main gun on a second tank with 2 Body damage.