Bleeding

[CorpCommander]

I asked myself, "how come in Hero, when you get cut by a knife or stabbed and are not killed you are in no further danger assuming you don't receive additional wounds?"

 

In real life if you get cut or shot or stabbed or pummeled really hard such that there is internal damage more often than not you are going to bleed to death either externally or internally.

 

So I revisited 5ER pgs. 417-18. There you can find a decent rule for bleeding that has rational limits on it.

 

The question is, should I include this in my Heroic campaign? I think I will and here is why. In a super-heroic game the emphasis seems to be on saving others and success is measured in terms of the greatest good you can achieve. In a heroic game, the risk of losing your own life changes the equation quite a bit and there is a lot more motivation derived for personal reasons, I think. In a heroic setting the characters take measured gambles to achieve their goals (braving the dart trap to get the golden idol, engaging the henchmen guarding the secret door, dodging the machine gun fire to breakout of the encampment with the mysterious suitcase..) The rule makes wounding a bit more dangerous to the players and thus ups the risk factor. Players have to be much more careful (and sneaky and ruthless) when they make decisions. In a straight-up super-heroic game its all about frontal-assault, get in, stomp on the bad guys, stomp on their minions and then get out. Heroic action is more about recognizing you are vulnerable and taking that into effect as you plan how you are going to get in, grabbing what you want (or whatever action is warranted) and then getting out. Alive. While fun, you aren't required to stomp on or exterminate 100% of the bad guys to achieve your goals.

 

This will date me but I was thinking about a short campaign based on the 1970's film "Kelly's Heroes" (fitting title, eh!) in which a WWII motley crew of disaffected soldiers go AWOL in search of a gold shipment behind German lines. As one puts it, "its the perfect crime!" What holds them together is the fact that the task is impossible to accomplish solo. Ultimately their rational is personal enrichment; a rather non-heroic goal! They have to balance personal greed with the greater good of the group. At what point are you heroic and at what point do you concede to your own instinct for self-preservation?

 

Clearly that decision is based mainly upon the answer to "how likely am I to die?" Since the bleeding rule is official, and Hero System is the ultimate gamer's toolkit, I think its sufficient to say that very few other gaming systems out there are as flexible as Hero in this regard.

 

What other optional rules do you favor that ad spice to Heroic level games?

[Sir Ofeelya]

Re: Bleeding

 

In my games, when a person goes to negative BOD they are bleeding to death. They take an additional 1 BOD every Post-12. When they reach negative starting BOD they die. A First Aid or Doctoring roll will stop further loss of BOD.

 

I figure that any wounds that do BOD but don't go below Zero BOD are scratches, bad abrasions and such like.

[CorpCommander]

Re: Bleeding

 

Tried it in a larger combat and decided I actually didn't like the extra die rolling. I've decided to amend the hit location chart and double the damage multipliers for realistic damage. The problem is we had a lot of bleeders and a lot of people who continued to fight on after taking 4-5 shots. I am not sure if that is realistic or not. Given that the rifles used were pretty standard WWII guns I think the damage was not high enough... thus the change. Thanks for making the comments though!

[Sean Waters]

Re: Bleeding

 

I'm not that keen on the bleeding rules.

 

Hero does not differentiate between different sorts of killing attack. A knife and an iron pole can both cause BODY irrespective of normal defence but they do not have hte same effect in fact. In fact, this very genericness of approach is my main bone of contention.

 

 

How about making attacks 'bleeders' as a +1/4 advantage and making bleeding more meaningful: at present the bigger the injury, the more likely the bleeding will stop. Weird.

 

Say for every 3 points you take in BODY from an attack you get one die of bleeding, rolled as normal dice EXCEPT a 1 means THAT DIE stops bleeding, and a 6 means you ADD another die next roll.

 

So you take 6 BODY from a 'bleeder' attack: every phase you roll 2d6 and take the result in STUN and 2 BODY unless either die comes up a 1 (take one stun and reduce the number of dice to 1) or a 6 (take 6 stun and 1 BODY and increase the number of dice to 3).

 

BODY totals under 0 automatically reduce BODY by 1 in addition to bleeding effects.

 

If you are 'resting' i.e. doing nothing but holding yourself together, bleeding dice reduce on a 1 or 2, and on a successful paramedic roll you coulnt the level of success +1 = successes and apply that to the dice as follows:

 

(assume a roll made by 2 on a 3d6 bleed which rolls 2,4 and 6, patient 'resting') - as the patient is resting the 2 is reduced to a 1 (1 stun but no body, one die stops bleeding, taking one success)) and the 4 is reduced by the remaining 2 successes to 2 (2 stun, 1 BODY, reduce bleeding by 1 die). The 6, of course causes 6 stun, 1 BODY and increases the bleeding by 1 die. Final result: 9 stun, 2 BODY and 2 dice to roll next phase.

 

A paramedic you succeeds can continue to work on a parient. A paramedic who fails must miss a phase.

 

Healing will reduce one die of bleeding per BODY healed, or might include a seperate adder to deal with bleeding.

 

Anyway, it's a thought

[CorpCommander]

Re: Bleeding

 

Actually, compared to other systems, I like the diversity in the ways you can get wounded in Hero. I am not sure that doubling the body damage is actually accurate but I am going to try it. I did not like the extra die rolling for bleeders since typically there are in the games I am running 20+ combatants. I've simplified many of them but still it means a lot of trouble.

 

Also in the game I am running, resistant armor just doesn't exist so its all about tactics and moving to cover and shooting from there. The type of game where it really means something to step out into the line of fire if you are attached to your character.

 

I considered making the NPCs a bit more "nurfed" but it just didn't seem right. So, it will be very important for characters to use their skills to get all the advantages they can.

[Talon]

Re: Bleeding

 

I don't like the Bleeding rule in the book because it doesn't make sense (the more damage you take, the greater your chance to stop Bleeding).

 

From a more general perspective, having substantial "post attack" damage rules means that characters have a high chance of dying outside of combat in a fairly non-heroic fashion...you might want to make sure your players are OK with that.

 

That said, if I were going to use Bleeding rules I would probably do something along these lines:

 

1) Make it much harder to stop the BODY loss that happens when you are at negative BODY; this means big penalties to Paramedics, requiring proper equipment, etc.

 

2) Change the Impairing/Disabling rules so that bleeding is one possibility. You could get fancy with charts and CON rolls and the like, I would probably just say "CON Roll every post-12 or lose one BODY".

 

3) Sit back and wait for the player complaints.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Bleeding

 

Actually, compared to other systems, I like the diversity in the ways you can get wounded in Hero. I am not sure that doubling the body damage is actually accurate but I am going to try it. I did not like the extra die rolling for bleeders since typically there are in the games I am running 20+ combatants. I've simplified many of them but still it means a lot of trouble.

 

Also in the game I am running, resistant armor just doesn't exist so its all about tactics and moving to cover and shooting from there. The type of game where it really means something to step out into the line of fire if you are attached to your character.

 

I considered making the NPCs a bit more "nurfed" but it just didn't seem right. So, it will be very important for characters to use their skills to get all the advantages they can.

I find that the Damage levels set for guns in DC can work just fine for very gritty realistic and threatening combat, but you really do have to use as many of the optional combat rules as you can keep track of. I'm a bit biased tho...I'm one of the "been playing since '82" crowd, and so a lot of the system is almost second nature at this point. In my opinion, upping Body damage isn't any more or less realistic, but it is quick. Rather than doubling right out the gate, I'd probably reconfigure the Hit Location BodyX line to add an extra +1/2 multiplier across the board if I wanted a really high body damage game. Generally tho, I just stick with using the Imparing & Disabling Rules, the Wounding rules (Ego rolls to take offensive action in the next action after a wound) and the rather nasty optional Critical Hit rules (Max damage on any hit that scores 1/2 or less the needed to hit roll).

Those combos have made firearms combat plenty lethal for me.

I'm wondering: what kind of setting you're using with no resistant defences at all?

My final observation... You're dealing with a lot of combatants at once. Don't be afraid of using some "mook" rules for less important NPC's and enemies.

You dont ave to carry it to the extremes sometimes suggested, but it wil realy seed up the game and let you focus your attention on the important characters. Save the complicated bleeding rules for PC's.

 

2) Change the Impairing/Disabling rules so that bleeding is one possibility. You could get fancy with charts and CON rolls and the like, I would probably just say "CON Roll every post-12 or lose one BODY".

 

This is similar to what I was gonna suggest for NPCs. I'd just say that any Imparing or Disabling wound results in 1 body per turn (post 12) bleeding. Impairing wounds stop bleeding with a con roll, -1 per 2 body taken. Disabling wounds don't stop bleedding without some kind of intervention. That way, its easy enough to track total body damage on "friendlies": just note when they were wounded and do the math when a Character reaches them to administer aid.

[CorpCommander]

Re: Bleeding

 

The games are one offs set in the Great Back of Beyond circa 1920 - 1937. They are attempts at getting stodgy old fellows like myself out of the rut of just playing historical miniatures games and adding some flavor to it all. That being said, they are being eased into it all by basically being shown the combat system and having games run with a lot of miniatures! We did a fun game with the Japanese encountering an insurgent aid station in Manchuria with a resulting firefight. Each player had 4 NPCs and 1 main character. It was fun.

 

As for body armor, there is none. Unless you count helmets which were good for protection against near hits at best and made a fine sink for washing up in.

 

For soldier stats we used the basic soldier in the villians section of Pulp Hero which worked fine. The problem was that it was unlikely that anyone got killed by one shot. The usual thing that happened was they bleed to death, while fighting! So since the players are running the privates I basically can't nerf them. They won't buy it and suspension of disbelief is critical here. The game has to work fairly.

 

Since the character creation is not critical at this junction its ok for the leaders to get killed off - they will just pick someone else to lead.

 

The key here is that people still fighting after multiple wounds is not going to fly. I might use the standard effect rule for the guns which will simplify things a bit. A Japanese rifle will do 6 points of damage. Normally this would only be 12 to the head. If I double it, it will be 24 which is death. If there is a 2 def helmet (some roll to activate) involved then it goes 6-2 x 4 = 16. Assuming no other injuries, this person can be saved with a decent paramedic roll, assuming not everyone is on the line blazing away!

 

I think that will work. The idea is to maintain a lot of flavor (the strong point of RPGs) without making the combat too cumbersom with an infinity of die rolls to be made each turn.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Bleeding

 

Ok, gotcha. You need a wargamerified set of simple but realistic combat effect rules. I still think that doubling the damage multipliers isn't the optimal solution, but you're in a better position to judge the effect you want. You're on the right track with the thoughts you've had about using Standard Effect, but I personally dislke making damage THAT predictable (and low). Realistically speaking, wound trauma isn't what kills most gunshot vics, its bleeding and shock. The main factor, of course is wound placement, and the differences there are a matter of fractions of an inch in many cases. I used to know a guy who literally cut his own throat with a chansaw kickback (He was trimming the eaves on a log house he was building), and survived with no long term effects (other than a really groovy scar).... because while he opened his throat, he didn't breach the arterial wall. So randomized damage is, IMO, a good thing. Thats why I ike the Crit rules... it accomplishes just what you want without changing the system. Its not a huge deal, but it could make a difference towards making new converts... your buddies are Wargamers. I used to be a wargamer. If I knew that the game I was playing based on my buddies prompting had to be houseruled to heck to make it realistic, I'd have been unlikly to get interested in persuing the game much further.

where was I... oh, yeah...crits. Your Jap rifles (7mm?) are throwing 2d6 RKA, if I'm following right. A 30-06 usualy tosses 2d6+1 damage. Both would have a +1 Stun Mod. Right now the damage range you suggested using the SE rule is pretty light. The doubling fixes that, but makes everything VERY predictable. No one ever gets winged. If you get hit in the head, you die, unless the helmet gets in the way (and 2 Def is a bit low even for wwI era tinpots...I'd call them Def4, 11- activation, or just have them protect location 5, which eimates the extra die roll) The crit rules, OTOH, accomplish essentialy the same goal while still reducing die rolling, and REALY encourage scrounging for OCV bonuses. If your to hit roll is, say, a 12- and you roll a 3-6, you inflict max rollable damage. On a head hit with an M1 Garand you just inflicted 13 body. Doubled for a head hit. Splat. Even through a helmet, unless a medic gets there in a few seconds and makes a really good Paramedic roll.

Not to mention the oodles of stun.

Wounding rules might be a good idea... they help with the "you don't just ignore getting hit" factor you want, and its not disimilar to a Morale roll, something any wargamer is comfortable with.

My suggested simplified bleeding rules above would probably work fine given the context of what you want. Any wound of less than Impairing value could be considered to be a "non risk" bleeder i.e. not bleeding bad enough to be a threat to life & limb. Its pretty simple accounting too, which it sounds ike you need. I like Impairing & Disabling effects, but they do require bookeeping. I'd probably only worry about Disabling penalties...make the effect of Impairing the "dangerous bleeding" in the place of the usual rules.

 

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Good luck!

[schir1964]

Re: Bleeding

 

...How about making attacks 'bleeders' as a +1/4 advantage and making bleeding more meaningful:...

Sean, could you write these rules up in a more formal fashion?

Perhaps a chart?

 

- Christopher Mullins