House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

[Willpower]

OK, I just thought of a house rule I could add to my games. I keep reading comics today, and people seem to do a lot of body damage at times. (In the latest Crisis in DC, when the original Superboy got into a fight with the Titans, he was mopping the floor with them, but worse than that he was literally killing them, when he didn't want to because he had too much power for them. I know some people would say, oh that could be done with a killing attack. Well, DUH I know this, but SERIOUSLY, this was Superboy, aside from his heat vision, I do not think he would have a killing attack on his sheet. Not only that, if he did, he certainly wouldn't have to use it.

 

I only bring this up to illustrate a basic point most people know about Champions. Unless you are using a killing attack, and typically even then, you aren't generally going to be doing body damage to other supers. Unless, you have a huge attack, and they have really low defenses. However, examples of what body damage would look like you see in comics all the time. And rightly so. Characters, should be able to die from a really good pounding, even when there are no killing attacks used. But that generally won't happen in hero, where the typical Super has at least 18 to 20 PD/ED, and the typical damage is generally not much more than 12d6. A REALLY good 12d6 roll may do some body damage to a person with 18 defenses, but in my opinion it shouldn't be limited in that fashion.

 

I know, I know, this was done on purpose, when Hero was designed, because heroes, and villains don't die very often in the comics and this was meant to reflect this. The comics have changed drastically though, but Hero remains the same. The short stint with the Fuzion rules changed that with the 5 Stun equaled 1 body thing, but that worked better because body was equal to stun so it washed out fairly well. You can't do 5 stun equals 1 body in Hero, because heroes in Hero have so much less Body than stun. Plus I think it may be too much of a random number. Why 5? Why not 6, or 10. Just because it was easy? Probably.

 

Well, I had an idea that may allow you to put body back into the game, even when doing normal damage, even against tough foes, which works, provides an actual number that works with the individual characters being damaged, and isn't so overwhelming that it will kill people all the time. I was thinking, as a house rule, it might work well to have people take a point of body when they take as much stun from one attack as their Constitution. That way, if someone is hit with an attack that does 100 Stun, but no body, they take at least some body for the massive damage.

 

We could also set it up, that it doesn't ADD body damage, only provides a minimum body damage done, that way if someone did take 100 stun, and 10 body from the attack, they wouldn't take extra body on top of that.

 

We could also push it further and add additional body damage minimums for damage beyond that. I have two trains of thought with that. The first is that for every amount equal to their Constitution taken you add 1 body. I am not sure if that is good enough though, as you won't generally take too many multiples of your Constitution in one attack generally. Though that might be why it works. The other train of thought is to go back to the 5 stun equals 1 body thing, so every 5 stun over your Constitution does 1 body damage minimum. That might be too much though, so we might want to go to 10 to 1, or just stick with Con damage in stun as a multiple. What does everyone think?

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

OK' date=' I just thought of a house rule I could add to my games. I keep reading comics today, and people seem to do a lot of body damage at times. (In the latest Crisis in DC, when the original Superboy got into a fight with the Titans, he was mopping the floor with them, but worse than that he was literally killing them, when he didn't want to because he had too much power for them. I know some people would say, oh that could be done with a killing attack. Well, DUH I know this, but SERIOUSLY, this was Superboy, aside from his heat vision, I do not think he would have a killing attack on his sheet. Not only that, if he did, he certainly wouldn't have to use it. [/quote']

 

Well, Superboy-Prime (as he was dubbed) had gone quite crazy ... I'm reasonably certain he had a killing attack. Then again, I'd give Superman a 'rending' Handtohand Killing Attack ... he just never uses it for anything other than tearing open walls or beheading robots. That and I think, with that Earth's version of Superboy, he probably had a STR around 150.

 

I only bring this up to illustrate a basic point most people know about Champions. Unless you are using a killing attack, and typically even then, you aren't generally going to be doing body damage to other supers. Unless, you have a huge attack, and they have really low defenses. However, examples of what body damage would look like you see in comics all the time. And rightly so. Characters, should be able to die from a really good pounding, even when there are no killing attacks used. But that generally won't happen in hero, where the typical Super has at least 18 to 20 PD/ED, and the typical damage is generally not much more than 12d6. A REALLY good 12d6 roll may do some body damage to a person with 18 defenses, but in my opinion it shouldn't be limited in that fashion.

 

I know, I know, this was done on purpose, when Hero was designed, because heroes, and villains don't die very often in the comics and this was meant to reflect this. The comics have changed drastically though, but Hero remains the same. The short stint with the Fuzion rules changed that with the 5 Stun equaled 1 body thing, but that worked better because body was equal to stun so it washed out fairly well. You can't do 5 stun equals 1 body in Hero, because heroes in Hero have so much less Body than stun. Plus I think it may be too much of a random number. Why 5? Why not 6, or 10. Just because it was easy? Probably.

 

Well, I had an idea that may allow you to put body back into the game, even when doing normal damage, even against tough foes, which works, provides an actual number that works with the individual characters being damaged, and isn't so overwhelming that it will kill people all the time. I was thinking, as a house rule, it might work well to have people take a point of body when they take as much stun from one attack as their Constitution. That way, if someone is hit with an attack that does 100 Stun, but no body, they take at least some body for the massive damage.

 

We could also set it up, that it doesn't ADD body damage, only provides a minimum body damage done, that way if someone did take 100 stun, and 10 body from the attack, they wouldn't take extra body on top of that.

 

We could also push it further and add additional body damage minimums for damage beyond that. I have two trains of thought with that. The first is that for every amount equal to their Constitution taken you add 1 body. I am not sure if that is good enough though, as you won't generally take too many multiples of your Constitution in one attack generally. Though that might be why it works. The other train of thought is to go back to the 5 stun equals 1 body thing, so every 5 stun over your Constitution does 1 body damage minimum. That might be too much though, so we might want to go to 10 to 1, or just stick with Con damage in stun as a multiple. What does everyone think?

 

It depends on the kind of game you want to run, really. I prefer to keep body damage rare, and don't like the present comic book trope of 'every issue has a crippling injury or dismemberment'. I'm quite happy to keep Body damage rare.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

Well' date=' Superboy-Prime (as he was dubbed) had gone quite crazy ... I'm reasonably certain he had a killing attack. Then again, I'd give Superman a 'rending' Handtohand Killing Attack ... he just never uses it for anything other than tearing open walls or beheading robots. That and I think, with that Earth's version of Superboy, he probably had a STR around 150.[/quote']

 

Hmm... I actually think a direct convertion would be even stronger than that. The only two I remember off the top of my head from the old DC Heroes game was pre and post crisis Superman. Post Crisis, his strength equals 125. PreCrisis strength would have been 250. The old DC Heroes game had the same basic strength chart champions had only each point doubled the weight instead of each 5 points, which made it easy to convert things, Pre had a 50 and Post had a 25. Though judging by the fight the two had in this current Crisis I would say both had a very similar strength.

 

It depends on the kind of game you want to run, really. I prefer to keep body damage rare, and don't like the present comic book trope of 'every issue has a crippling injury or dismemberment'. I'm quite happy to keep Body damage rare.

 

That is very true. However, I am fine with a body damage being rare thing. Even given these rules would be somewhat rare, how often do people get stunned. Probably once or twice a session at most in a typical session. That is only 1 or 2 body, which is hardly a crippling injury. Personally I just think that in a straight up fight, with two people without killing attacks their should be at least SOME danger of taking serious injury. But it is very true that this type of thing is very much based on what you want for your own game.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I think it's perfectly reasonable to set a minimum BODY damage rule if that's the kind of game you and your group want to run, and your method seems as reasonable as any other. The only hesitation I might have over basing the threshold number on a character's CON is that CON is already used for Stunning someone, which is a significant negative effect in itself. Adding another severe penalty to it may lead your players to start a CON arms race.

 

Another possibility would be to use a Characteristic Roll. Whenever the character takes X amount of STUN after defenses, he has to roll against the appropriate Characteristic (CON or whatever you choose to use) or suffer one BODY in damage. In this case you could go back to the Fuzion example of adjusting for every 5 points in STUN damage, but use that as a penalty to the roll, i.e. -1 for every 5 points. The advantage to this is that characters with larger attacks would be more likely to dish out lethal damage, but characters with higher Characteristics, as more powerful heroes and villains tend to have, would be less likely to fail their rolls.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

If you look at how often characters in the comics bleed/get injured, it seems reasonable to believe they take BOD from a lot of attacks. To emulate this in Hero, you need to limit a significant portion of their defenses to be Not Vs BOD Damage. When you need 25 - 30 defenses to last a few hits against a 12d6 attack, and not be stunned frequently, having all those defenses act against BOD virtually guarantees taking no BOD under normal circumstances.

[Comic]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

For myself, the character, by concept, is free to treat damaging attacks in excess of 50 AP as lethal, regardless of whether they're doing Body on the character sheet of the target or not.

 

So if he's giving a battering to someone particularly tough, with regeneration, and he's winning the fight, Superboy is likely fine with the knowledge that he's unlikely to do lasting harm.

 

Same fight, different target, someone who doesn't have the incredibly tough concept, doesn't regenerate, and can look dramatic while being pounded into a limp (but full Body) heap, Superboy's perfectly justified feeling like he's too murderous. In particular if he's one-punching them into GM's discretion range.

 

My characters don't live in a world where their sheets are tattooed to their chests. To each other, they're people.

[CourtFool]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

How about a cap on defenses? Or, normal attacks do DC times X BODY where X between 1.5 and 2?

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

How about a cap on defenses? Or' date=' normal attacks do DC times X BODY where X between 1.5 and 2?[/quote']

 

Capping defenses would be too much if you capped them low enough for normal damage to have a chance of doing body, unless you did as someone else suggested and have people cap just a portion as not protecting body. Though, then the game would probably get too deadly, as killing attacks do more body than normal attacks do. Not by much, but still...

 

Normal atacks doing time X BODY might work, with only one problem. Normal attacks would then do more damage than killing attacks.

 

For instance, 12DC attack does on average: Normal 12 body, Killing 15 body.

 

If normal is times 1.5 then Normal goes to an average of 18 body. One thing I tried in the past that was similar to this was to change how body was counted. A roll of 1 became 1 body, 2-5 became 2 body, and a roll of 6 became 3 body. The other main problem with increasing the body done besides that normal damage then does more damage than killing attacks is that knockback is increased as well. Killing attacks take this extra into account by adding a dice, so that might be fixed the same way if you increased the body of a normal attack as well.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

Capping defenses would be too much if you capped them low enough for normal damage to have a chance of doing body, unless you did as someone else suggested and have people cap just a portion as not protecting body. Though, then the game would probably get too deadly, as killing attacks do more body than normal attacks do. Not by much, but still...

 

Normal atacks doing time X BODY might work, with only one problem. Normal attacks would then do more damage than killing attacks.

 

For instance, 12DC attack does on average: Normal 12 body, Killing 15 body.

 

Killing averages 14 BOD, actually.

 

If normal is times 1.5 then Normal goes to an average of 18 body. One thing I tried in the past that was similar to this was to change how body was counted. A roll of 1 became 1 body' date=' 2-5 became 2 body, and a roll of 6 became 3 body.[/quote']

 

That's an average of 2 BOD per DC, which isn't a lot different from doubling BOD done.

 

The other main problem with increasing the body done besides that normal damage then does more damage than killing attacks is that knockback is increased as well. Killing attacks take this extra into account by adding a dice' date=' so that might be fixed the same way if you increased the body of a normal attack as well.[/quote']

 

Increase BOD done and objects become much easier to demolish. Entangles and Force Walls must be restructured or they become useless, and aurtomatons need similar revisiting. The ripple effect is substantial.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I think Willpower has a good point about BDY damage, esp. for gritty superhero and non-superhero genres. It has always bothered me slightly that a really tough normal (8 PD) would be effectively immune to BDY damage from a normal guy with a baseball bat (I am assuming here the bat is +4d6 HTH but has a STR min that keeps the total dice at 4d6 and that a head shot can't exceed the maximum damage for the weapon).

 

I have tried a house rule when a 6 is rolled on a normal attack, the extra BDY it does is considered Killing. That worked okay, esp. for heroic level campaigns, although in a supers game the biggest effect was that the heroes (most of whom had some resistant defenses) were more wary about smacking thugs and other normals for fear of killing them accidentally.

 

I like the idea of the CON roll though, because it allow people to take damage from NND attacks that mechanically can't kill someone but in the real world might actually do so (like a taser gun). May not be appropriate for all games, but it could add a nice flavor to some.

 

________________________________________________________

Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go. - Oscar Wilde

[OddHat]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

A house rule I've seen occasionally:

 

For every 10 STUN that gets through defenses, 1 BODY gets through defenses.

 

Makes for a much bloodier game, and encourages PCs to buy high BODY scores, regeneration, etc.

 

Don't use it myself, but then I do include bleeding and bruising as SFX of taking Stun.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I've just had a brief flicker of an idea about taking away the distinction between Normal Attacks and Killing Attacks as separate Powers. You buy your Power, and under most circumstances it works as an Energy Blast. You can, if you want, use your DCs as Killing damage, but you are making a conscious effort to kill someone, and are generally attempting to use it lethally (attempting to target someone's head, or a brick "rending" by shredding something). Maybe you get freebie killing attacks against inanimate objects. Maybe Killing Attack is a maneuver with a -2 OCV penalty.

 

This also means that, for instance, guns and knives do Normal damage most of the time, but if you have someone Covered with one, it automatically does Killing when it goes off.

 

As this was a bare flicker of an idea, it isn't fleshed out; this has all been thinking out loud.

 

Edit: This might also mean that you don't buy Resistant Defenses separately, but, say, 1/3 of your normal Defenses is automatically Resistant. If you want to buy body armor, you'd instead buy extra PD and ED (perhaps with a Limitation, Only To Increase Resistant Defenses). This also means that under most circumstances, bricks can bounce bullets, but a cop pointing a gun at him means something.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I've just had a brief flicker of an idea about taking away the distinction between Normal Attacks and Killing Attacks as separate Powers. You buy your Power, and under most circumstances it works as an Energy Blast. You can, if you want, use your DCs as Killing damage, but you are making a conscious effort to kill someone, and are generally attempting to use it lethally (attempting to target someone's head, or a brick "rending" by shredding something). Maybe you get freebie killing attacks against inanimate objects. Maybe Killing Attack is a maneuver with a -2 OCV penalty.

 

This also means that, for instance, guns and knives do Normal damage most of the time, but if you have someone Covered with one, it automatically does Killing when it goes off.

 

The DC Heros game had this concept. All attacks were non-lethal unless specifically announced to be lethal by the character. This shift to lethal combat was obvious to all observers. The designers' rationale?

 

While it may seem strange for guns to do non-lethal damage, a quick playtest watching Batman get reduced to the Batstain by three thugs with handguns indicated the need for this approach.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

If you're going to reinvent the wheel, make it round, I always say.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

Killing averages 14 BOD, actually.

 

 

 

That's an average of 2 BOD per DC, which isn't a lot different from doubling BOD done.

 

 

 

Increase BOD done and objects become much easier to demolish. Entangles and Force Walls must be restructured or they become useless, and aurtomatons need similar revisiting. The ripple effect is substantial.

 

Yes to all... My mistake on the math, and I didn't think about other effects besides KB, that just seemed most obvious to me. This is actually the main reasons I didn't want it to be extra damage, but a Body Damage Minimum. Of course I haven't said it, but it should carry over, that this should apply to all attacks that do body, and not just to normal attacks. We can call Trauma damage, which is just a fancy way of saying body damage minimum, so if the person already takes body damage from the attack, it doesn't do extra damage, just insures that at least this amount gets through.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I think it's perfectly reasonable to set a minimum BODY damage rule if that's the kind of game you and your group want to run, and your method seems as reasonable as any other. The only hesitation I might have over basing the threshold number on a character's CON is that CON is already used for Stunning someone, which is a significant negative effect in itself. Adding another severe penalty to it may lead your players to start a CON arms race.

 

Another possibility would be to use a Characteristic Roll. Whenever the character takes X amount of STUN after defenses, he has to roll against the appropriate Characteristic (CON or whatever you choose to use) or suffer one BODY in damage. In this case you could go back to the Fuzion example of adjusting for every 5 points in STUN damage, but use that as a penalty to the roll, i.e. -1 for every 5 points. The advantage to this is that characters with larger attacks would be more likely to dish out lethal damage, but characters with higher Characteristics, as more powerful heroes and villains tend to have, would be less likely to fail their rolls.

 

I like this idea, but have a couple problems with it. First off, it would definitely slow down combat, which is already slow enough. Second, if you choose Con, which is most appropriate typically (Though I could see Ego for mental attacks that do body damage), than you still have that Con Race. (I am not actually sure if it would start a Con Race. Being stunned is already a hazard everyone tries to avoid, and I think they would still want to avoid that more than this, as with how it is built, it shouldn't add TOO much body damage.) The only other problem I have with it, is it doesn't add a scalable affect to the amount of Body damage taken. I have seen people get hit for 150 points of stun and no body damage. I think based on how much stun damage they take, the amount of body taken should go up too. For instance if someone with a 30 Con took a 50 stun attack, under my system they would take 1 Body, which is the same they could take with your system if they failed a 5- roll (9 + 30/5 = 15- minus 50/5=10 for a total of 5-). However in my system if that same person is hit for 150 points of damage, they then take 5 points of Body minimum, but in yours they still take only 1 if they fail a roll of 3-. (Minimum roll, since 150/5 would be -30 to a Con roll of 15-.)

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I like the idea of the CON roll though' date=' because it allow people to take damage from NND attacks that mechanically can't kill someone but in the real world might actually do so (like a taser gun). May not be appropriate for all games, but it could add a nice flavor to some.[/quote']

 

I thought about that too. I know if you use too much tranquilizer in a tranquilizer dart you can kill someone too. Things don't just knock people out in the real world. A case could definitely be made for allowing NND's to even do body with the Con roll, or if they take more Stun from them than their Con. I am not going to be doing that in my game, because I don't really think that level of realism is needed in my game, but It is a definite thing that could be added to such a house rule.

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

Personally, I am almost completely unconcerned with whether or not pc's take body damage from ridiculous attacks. What does bother me is when there is obvious rules hacking and player knowledge that it is in fact very difficult to kill normal people, even with killing attacks.

 

Most normal people in my game have a 0 point Disad: 2X Body from any Body damage they take in excess of 2x their Defense. So a 2 PD guy takes 2 Body from a 4 Body normal attack, but 6 body from a 5 Body normal attack. And of course, Killing attacks Kill people.

 

This also solves the problem of how to give a big bad villain a big enough attack to disintegrate a normal without blowing the campaign active limits through the roof.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

Personally, I am almost completely unconcerned with whether or not pc's take body damage from ridiculous attacks. What does bother me is when there is obvious rules hacking and player knowledge that it is in fact very difficult to kill normal people, even with killing attacks.

 

Most normal people in my game have a 0 point Disad: 2X Body from any Body damage they take in excess of 2x their Defense. So a 2 PD guy takes 2 Body from a 4 Body normal attack, but 6 body from a 5 Body normal attack. And of course, Killing attacks Kill people.

 

This also solves the problem of how to give a big bad villain a big enough attack to disintegrate a normal without blowing the campaign active limits through the roof.

 

I do this with a 25 pt Phys Lim for normals, "Mere Mortal" which amounts to 2x damage from, oh, everything.

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I do this with a 25 pt Phys Lim for normals' date=' "Mere Mortal" which amounts to 2x damage from, oh, everything. [/quote']

 

The 'Mere Mortals' in your game have +25 points for existing? They must be badasses.

[casualplayer]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

The way I have addressed this is with the Critical Hit rule, specifically the one that has you do maximum damage if you roll less than half of what you need to hit. This had several effects on my games:

 

1) High accuracy people like martial artists felt quite comfortable with only having a measely 8d6 attack, when that 8d6 attack would routinely do 16 BODY, 48 STUN due to their exceptional OCVs.

 

2) Powerhouses could really shread not-plot-crucial inanimate items with horrible DCVs. A 60 STR brick could do 24 BODY to "the broad side of a barn," or an armored truck or personnel carrier as the case may be.

 

3) Metahumans got to both feel extremely mighty and like bulls in a china shop. That 60 STR brick could kill or hospitalize a "normal" with just his casual STR if he rolled well to hit and ended up doing 12 BODY, 36 STUN with a Critical. Often attacks were thrown at less than full strength til the opponent's defenses were gauged, and restraint reigned.

 

4) Dice were nice but skill was king. Everyone quickly learned that 2 levels in OCV meant increasing the crit range by 1.

 

5) Damage shifted from the mediocre enlivened by the occasional celebrated lucky shot to the more stable high-end damage with infrequent glancing blows. You didn't need to have a slot in a MP to knock out a Normal, just a pulled punch of ~8 DCs.

 

6) Much more Blocking and Dodging than most games that I've seen. Without knowing if that incoming attack is Critical, not getting hit became supremely important. It also made the players much more protective of bystanders and their teammates, with lots of dramatic Dive for Cover into the attack and Fly-By Grabs.

 

It does mandate some design considerations in characters, generally a higher STUN def and CON while damage dealing either decreases or gets used more judiciously. Published characters usually need a little tweaking or extremely accurate powerhouses can overwhelm. Turbo-bricks, martial artists and marksmen can be problems.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

I've just had a brief flicker of an idea about taking away the distinction between Normal Attacks and Killing Attacks as separate Powers. You buy your Power, and under most circumstances it works as an Energy Blast. You can, if you want, use your DCs as Killing damage, but you are making a conscious effort to kill someone, and are generally attempting to use it lethally (attempting to target someone's head, or a brick "rending" by shredding something). Maybe you get freebie killing attacks against inanimate objects. Maybe Killing Attack is a maneuver with a -2 OCV penalty.

 

This also means that, for instance, guns and knives do Normal damage most of the time, but if you have someone Covered with one, it automatically does Killing when it goes off.

 

As this was a bare flicker of an idea, it isn't fleshed out; this has all been thinking out loud.

 

Edit: This might also mean that you don't buy Resistant Defenses separately, but, say, 1/3 of your normal Defenses is automatically Resistant. If you want to buy body armor, you'd instead buy extra PD and ED (perhaps with a Limitation, Only To Increase Resistant Defenses). This also means that under most circumstances, bricks can bounce bullets, but a cop pointing a gun at him means something.

 

Actually that is really good for an idea. Maybe if I was just starting out my campaign I might use something like this. It does need a bit of fleshing out, but this was sort of the way I came up my house rule. It is more suitable to add to an existing game, as it doesn't change as much, but this might be better if worked out fully, and implemented at the start of a campaign. This is actually very much like how the old DC Heroes game worked BTW. I like the implementation of the -2 penalty for switching to killing damage BTW. It also makes it to where you wouldn't use killing most of the time, but you can when you really want to. It also makes covering someone better, or someone strong grabbing you something to be feared as then they can switch to killing the phase after they grab you.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

The DC Heros game had this concept. All attacks were non-lethal unless specifically announced to be lethal by the character. This shift to lethal combat was obvious to all observers. The designers' rationale?

 

While it may seem strange for guns to do non-lethal damage, a quick playtest watching Batman get reduced to the Batstain by three thugs with handguns indicated the need for this approach.

 

Actually, guns in DC Heroes automatically did killing damage, though you could buy it differently, but a lot of weapons and such had that distinction built in. Several types of attacks, like there Claws power automatically did killing damage.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

2) Powerhouses could really shread not-plot-crucial inanimate items with horrible DCVs. A 60 STR brick could do 24 BODY to "the broad side of a barn," or an armored truck or personnel carrier as the case may be.

 

This is also good. But to note the Brick that you are talking about getting a critical on another brick for maximum damage, will still not generally do even a point of body damage, since that brick will generally have more than 24 defenses. And that is with maximum damage. He may do body to a martial artist though.

[Willpower]

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game

 

Well, we had our first session using my new Trauma Damage system as a house rule, and it seemed to work fine. The only person that was even effected by it was Viperia who, are you ready for this, was one shotted (nearly) by a middleweight female brick NPC. She did a noncombat movethrough on her at 80 of velocity for -16 OCV, and rolled a 3. She only has 50 Strength, but concentrated on really good defenses. She did 121 point of damage to Viperia, and knocked her back 7". She didn't take much in the way of damage, because her own defenses were so high. (She has weak power, weak combat abilities, but awesome defenses.) Anyway, even with that Viperia would have taken 1 Body, but because of my trauma damage system she took 2 instead. So it is not NEARLY as bloody as a lot of people thought it would be.

 

When I start my next campaign I think will include as house rules, not only my Trauma damage system, but I will probably also incude a version of the rules Chris Goodwin came up with for eliminating the distinction between normal and killing attacks. Probably, I will use the -2 to turn your attack into a killing attack, and everyone would automatically have, 1/2 their normal defenses as resistant defenses.