Heroic Endurance and Stun

[Stormraven]

I have a problem.

 

I'm working on a Fantasy World, and know that my widest audience is going to be Herophiles.

 

Trouble is, I don't care for the way Hero handles End & Stun for the level of play I want.

 

I want heroic characters, for whom a battle is an Event. I want them to worry about multiple battles in a single day.

 

I want my mages to have to worry about how much energy they've spent - to know that they aren't going to be able to cast a dozen spells in a day.

 

I don't want PCs spending End like it's water, only to get it all back in a minute of rest.

 

Now the second I can do by means of an End reserve, though I'd prefer to avoid that.

 

But with Hero's Recovery system, the first and third are issues. A tank fighter - who could, easily, avoid Body damage entirely, need only rest for a minute, and all his Stun is back, and he's fresh as a daisy. Even if he pushes his Strength a couple of times, he'll be fine in that same minute.

 

I want my Players to know that their characters cannot engage in dozens of combats in a single day without rest. I want them to know that massive expenditures of Endurance will tire their characters out.

 

I thought about using the LTE rules for both End and Stun, but I'm not sure about that.

 

Thoughts, oh great minds of Hero?

[eternal_sage]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

LTE would be a decent idea, so would the idea of abolishing the post 12 recovery. possibly both. maybe only for END though, as STUN in that manner will see character's knocked out quickly, imo. you would also probably have to lower the END cost for several things, just to allow more than a single combat in a day without insane amount of END purchased.

 

my two coppers.

 

p.s. for mages, just give them a limited number of charges per day or some such.

[Stormraven]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Since I don't expect to run them into unavoidable combats on a regular basis, I'm not so much worried about them getting knocked out - I want them to fear that, so they won't just charge into avoidable combats.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

LTE, obviously.

 

WRT STUN, what's the problem? A person who's taken a few minor bumps ought to be OK (STUN-wise at least) after a short amount of rest.

 

If you want characters to worry about battles, and particularly multiple battles in a day, let them take BODY. One way to do this is to halve all defenses (or at least Resistant defenses). Heavy plate armor provides 4 DEF, rather than 8, etc.

 

If players are taking a few BODY each combat, they'll avoid them a lot more.

[Coyotecloudchas]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I agree with using the Long Term END rules, and upping combat damage for more realism to the combats (I've seen GMs double or even triple the damage done by weapons). In campaigns where common thugs walk around with 4d6K weapons, no one takes fights lightly (e.g. CyberHero).

 

As a side note, even my standard combat encounters usually run at least an hour each given the large range of actions possible by fantasy heroes, so I've never have a problem with the characters thinking any fight is an epic event. However, if you don't make use of figures, terrain, and hex maps and if your characters tend to do the same thing in combat over and over again, I could see how combat could get trivial to the characters.

[Stormraven]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I don't want to up the Body, because I don't want combat to be extra lethal, and because the characters aren't going to have lots and lots of heavy armour.

 

I think the thing is, I don't see Bruises and aches as Body damage. I see Body damage as something that has seriously insulted the character's body. Cuts, broken bones, etc.

 

I see bruises as heavy Stun, which is one reason I don't want Stun healing back quite so quickly.

[Outsider]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Have every 'X' stun a character takes reduce their stun total by 1, until it is healed back at the same rate LTE is. Determine what 'X' is by how long you want the effects of being knocked around to last. You might have the last 'X' Stun a character has be unaffected by this (ie, you can't bruise someone into a coma)

[input.jack]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Also, remember that every time you take a Body, you lose a Stun too, that you cant regain till that Body is healed.

 

Ive played in MANY Hero Fantasy campaigns, and with LTE and awareness of the Stun and Body connection, as well as Impairing and Disabling rules, even fighter-types worry about multiple encounters.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I think the thing is, I don't see Bruises and aches as Body damage. I see Body damage as something that has seriously insulted the character's body. Cuts, broken bones, etc.

 

I see bruises as heavy Stun, which is one reason I don't want Stun healing back quite so quickly.

Change your definitions:

 

Minor bruises and bumps = STUN

Major bruises, sprains, minor cuts = wounds of say 1-2 BODY

Broken bones, major cuts, etc. = wounds of 3+ BODY

 

Problem solved.

 

Another thing you can do to allow characters to take BODY without combat being to lethal is to allow a form of Combat Luck - one which allows the first BODY through, so thye won't die from a sword chop, but they'll take 1 BODY each time.

[Stormraven]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Even a minor bruise doesn't heal in 1 minute, though. So that change still doesn't quite do it.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Even a minor bruise doesn't heal in 1 minute' date=' though. So that change still doesn't quite do it.[/quote']

It doesn't have to. It just has to not leave you with reduced STUN. The visible mark (a bruise, a scar, etc.) is just SFX.

[Stormraven]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Doesn't work for me. Well, I had hoped that the Hero board folks could help out, but it looks like Hero just isn't going to work for this game.

[nexus]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Also, remember that every time you take a Body, you lose a Stun too, that you cant regain till that Body is healed.

 

I must have forgotten about that rule, can you give me a page reference?

 

Bruising, minor cuts and that sort of things are sfx, IMO. I've found that when most gamers say they want a combat system that is more "realistic" they mean more deadly. Humans can take allot before dying even with extremely lethal weapons with things like blows to the head and vital organs being more immediately fatal. Hero does that fairly well with hit locations. Just because you have a bruise doesn't mean your still down stun. I have to two healing cuts on my hands right now, they still hurt a bit but in Hero terms I am not down Stun or Body.

 

Characters avoiding fights is a rp thing and yes, its hard to simulate without making combat inordinately deadly because otherwise, the players don't have any consquences. One of the big reasons most people avoid violence when they can is because not only is there their possbility if injury but its HURTS even when you win (Unless your a Stephen Segal character and never get hit) and most people don't like pain. Most RPG characters don't have that concern since their players feel nothing while the character (in less cinematice genres) probably wants to minimalize their chances of getting sharp things inserted into them and smacked with fists and heavy blunt objects as much possible.

 

If you want that kind of feell, you can lower defenses, which you sort of had with metal armor being rare. Characters will be more prone to take body and that lasts for weeks of game time.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I've found that when most gamers say they want a combat system that is more "realistic" they mean more deadly. Humans can take allot before dying even with extremely lethal weapons with things like blows to the head and vital organs being more immediately fatal.

 

I agree with this entirely. I'm always amazed at the sheer number of "more realistic" critical hits tables that allow for the possibility of severed limbs, but not broken limbs or badly bruised limbs. Your arm is either perfectly usable or lying on the ground - there's no in between. How is that "realistic"?

[Stormraven]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Which is one reason I wasn't saying - and won't say - that I want combat to be more 'realistic'. If I wanted more 'realistic' combat, I'd lower defenses, or add in all the optional rules, and let Body damage accumulate.

 

What I want is the after effects of combat - exhaustion and pain - to remain for more than one frelling minute. I want heroic, not cinematic, not superheroic characters.

[The Monster]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Here's a thought: what would it be like if you greatly slowed REC? Eliminate the post-12 recovery, and simply say that REC only kicks in once per minute, or hour, or whatever.

 

Perhaps something like, you get one Recovery for each step on the time chart: one after a single phase of rest, the next after a turn, the next after a minute, and so forth. To give the players a break, have the clock reset each time they take damage. That allows some expression of the adrenaline rush of actual battle, but stretches out the recovery time after things calm down, so you could easily be feeling the blows the next morning.

 

I though I'd run this up the flagpole and see if anyone tugs a forelock...

[Frenchman]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Here's a thought: what would it be like if you greatly slowed REC?

 

Basically stole my idea before I thought of it.

 

Get rid of automatic recoveries entirely, and only give recoveries for time that the characters spend deliberately resting - how about 1 REC for every hour rested? Since most characters have around a 1:5 ratio of REC:END/STUN this will let them recover all of their Stun and END with a nights rest, even if they do have to take a 2-hour watch.

You eliminate in-combat recoveries, or let characters take a smaller one with a CON or Body roll - maybe they can take a combat recovery (only in combat of course) which has all the standard penalties, but they only recover 1/2 REC worth of Stun OR Endurance, and they have to make a roll of some kind (based on CON, or - if you're really evil - 9+ END/10 or Stun/10)

 

This would keep your characters bruised tired, avoids the hassle of the LTE record-keeping that come up, and add some pretty brutal penalties for skipping out on sleep. One last suggestion I'd make is to not make the characters pay END for movement outside of combat (except maybe for spells) and instead draw up a basic table of how much END is burned for walking, hurrying, working, etc in a given time period (like per hour). Say, 1 end per km per hour traveled, 2-3 END per hour of light work, 5-10 per hour of hard labor, and so on.

 

I actually like this idea. May try it.

[nexus]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Which is one reason I wasn't saying - and won't say - that I want combat to be more 'realistic'. If I wanted more 'realistic' combat, I'd lower defenses, or add in all the optional rules, and let Body damage accumulate.

 

What I want is the after effects of combat - exhaustion and pain - to remain for more than one frelling minute. I want heroic, not cinematic, not superheroic characters.

 

Then you don't want "heroic" characters as Hero defines them. You want "gritty" characters. Stun is that effect which it temporary and not impairing unless you lose allot of it suddenly (Stunning) or over time (being Ko'ed). Body damage is lasting, lingering physical damage. Just because a character is at full Stun (or even Body) does not mean they are not in pain or perfeectly unmarked but their reservers even its sheer willpower recover quickly, that is what makes characters heroic in this system. Take John Mclane as an example, he takes a tremendous beating. guts bruised, cut up, etc, a great deal in the course of the movies but he goes on. In Hero terms, by the end, he's taken some minor body and a great deal of Stun over time.

 

You seem to have tne impression that once Stun is back to max, the character bruises, cuts, scarpes etc all vanish and they look fresh as a daisy or when End back, their not even breathing hard and their sweat dries. Not the case, it CAN be but that sort of thing is cosmetic. Stun and Endurance are abstraction. Dealing with cosmetic damage is a role playing issue, not a mechanical, IMO. A character thatr's been badly roughed in an alley and drags himself back to his room is probably going to want to rest even if mechanically, he could perform if an emergency came up. That's heroic, crawling off to lick your wounds and heal up for awhile because your can't go on is gritty, IMO. Both are valid, both can be enjoyable depending on what you want but Hero is designed with former in mind. All those scenes were the protagoniist step, breathless for a minute or two of screen time, catch a few breaths and push on though their still winded, cut and bruised or moments in novels when the heros drag himself to his feet, despite his aching battered body in Hero terms they have their Stun back but the cosmetic effects linger.

 

Its the fact chararacter in Hero can get their reserves back quickly that makes them heroic. Cinematic chaeracters get things like Combat Luck and Damage Reduction so they take obscene amounts of punishment or just "don't get hit", Superheroic charare more of the same or just outright armor, forcefeilds or whatever. Its how the game plays which isn't right for everyone but its not a bigger mental leap that axcepting in that other fantasy game that all your abilities leap up once you kill enough stuff, just a matter of taste.

 

There are ways to get what you want but I don't think its going end up with heroic (if by heroic you mean daring but still human not as in moral and generally good) characters. Its going to have characters that are not going to fight unless they absolutely have too, the odds are vastly in their favor and even then a minro bit of bad luck is going to cripple them and send them into a death spiral. Well any combat is because Stun and End loss is inevitable. It does make combat more deadly because once your ko'ed you can be killed with a single blow of apprppriate sfx in Hero and character with no recoveries are going to start keeling from exhausation in a very short time, less than a minute in most cases and a couple of good blows over two turns might leave you 0 or less stun You'll get very quick, very brutal fights and relatively "cowardly" (or extremely cautious might be a better term) but there are ways to implement that in the system (a lot of good ideas here) or maybe another system might serve better. I think GURPS does "gritty" better than Hero, at least with less tinkering.

 

Edit: I'm actually a player in this proposed game to explain the invesetment.

[The Monster]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I can certainly understand the OP's issue, however - it does seem rather anticlimactic to have a tense, dramatic fight, with the PCs squeaking a close victory, then only a few game moments later, they're fresh as daisies for all practical purposes. It's kind of the same problem with hit point systems - as long as I got one HP, I'm good to go, never mind that I used to have 98. Relying on "roleplaying" to create those moments where the heroes have stop for breath, or wake up feeling very stiff and sore from the exertion and battering of the previous day, is unreliable at best. It's true that it's a difference between "heroic" and "gritty;" and it's true that a lot of it is cosmetic. Even in films like "Raider of the Lost Ark," which had a couple of scenes which showed Indy really suffering from his adventures, he was back in the next scene, pretty much as spry and active as ever (just with a few more cuts and bruises painted on his face).

It is a staple of heroic fiction, however, that the thing which distinguishes the hero is not necessarily so much greater skill than anyone else, but the determination and ability to keep going when others would give up. With systems such as Hero, there's a big risk of losing that tension if people can just pop back up after a few REC phases.

 

Some games do have mechanics for degrading ability as damage is taken: Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, Deadlands (the original) are ones I'm familiar with. The new Star Wars Saga Edition has a mechanic I find fascinating: they do use the good ole hit point system, but they've added a Condition Track, which is related to, but separate from, hp damage. Basically, when you take a big hit (more hp than your con, basically), you go down one level on the track: the first time, you're now at -1 to do anything (even defend!), then -2, then -5, then -10, then you're done. The fun thing is they've added a bunch of tricks to manipulate this condition track directly: force tricks, class abilities, and the like. So you could have a situation where you may have no hp and still be fine, or you may have a bunch of hp left, but be dragging around at major penalties. I haven't played it yet, but I find the concept fascinating. Not that I want to recommend that game necessarily for this campaign (it's still level-based d20, after all!), but as an example of how other games do things.

 

I'm not sure if this is an easy thing to do in Hero. I'm still mulling over my time-chart-REC idea above, which actually intrigues me; it could cause all sorts of consternation and tension.

[nexus]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I've generally found "death spiral" system either encourage less "heroic" play (appropriate for many genres) or if there is a a way around it, all the PC end up with them anyway because it does suck in a game where you are supposed to be "heroes" to have mechanical support that you are doing some stupid.

 

Or the situations your characters run into have to get signficantly easier since you're acting penalties that get, inevitably worse. Character in Hero are assumed to be Heroic by default (they even start off with slightly higher ability scores than "normal" folks) they have higher stun, body, etc scores to represent that drive and determination. Its part of the abstraction and it cuts out the middle man of picking abilities to be more effective when your injured. Personally, I like that for games of heroism mainly because of really bad experiences with death spirals and other ways to enforce drama and tension that just ends up making things anticlimactic because the heroes are either too beat up to anything in the big boss battle or the boss is significantly weaker than the earlier opposistion so they can take him in their reduced state.

 

I'm not trying to preach one true wayism and I'm perfectly willing to play ina a gritty fantasy game (played Warhammer Fantasy RPG for while and had allot of fun) but I think saying Hero System characters aren't "heroic" but superhuman is doing the system a disservice, particularly since I've run many Hero games where the characters were pretty realistic. I perhaps have been fortunate to run iinto player that do play fatigue, pain and after effects in rp, lately a few over play it

 

I am sympathetic to the op's position to some extent There are some extreme cases that can come about when it comes to Endurance use.

[eternal_sage]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

both ShadowRun (4th at least) and new World of Darkness have good ways of dealing with this (and apparently d20 StarWars does now as well), which is to induce penalties to actions if certain amounts of damage is taken.

 

for example, for every 10 STUN damage taken, the character gets an across the board -1 penalty to every action taken, which does not go away until they have rested for an appropriate amount of time. the STUN can recover, no problem, but the penalties will endure for the rest of the day, or maybe even week, depending on how quickly you want them to recover.

 

this doesn't really effect the heroism factor, as they still get REC, it just simulates the distractions of pain from the abuse they have taken in their adventures, because they can't REC away those penalties. in fact, i like this enough that this is my new house rule for non-super games. woot.

[nexus]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

both ShadowRun (4th at least) and new World of Darkness have good ways of dealing with this (and apparently d20 StarWars does now as well), which is to induce penalties to actions if certain amounts of damage is taken.

 

All the Storyteller games have wound penalty mechanics its part of Storytellers origin as a horror rpg, combat is supposed to be quick*, brutal and scary.

 

for example, for every 10 STUN damage taken, the character gets an across the board -1 penalty to every action taken, which does not go away until they have rested for an appropriate amount of time. the STUN can recover, no problem, but the penalties will endure for the rest of the day, or maybe even week, depending on how quickly you want them to recover.

 

this doesn't really effect the heroism factor, as they still get REC, it just simulates the distractions of pain from the abuse they have taken in their adventures, because they can't REC away those penalties. in fact, i like this enough that this is my new house rule for non-super games. woot.

 

I'd would suggest upping the damage/penatly threshold or reducing the duration or the characters will quickly become almost unable to do anything after a few fights. Maybe make its 10 all at once, not cumulative. Basically this has a the characters taking body wide impairing wounds very frequently. Also, how would various forms of Healing affect this?

 

I belive the Ultimate Skill has some rules for penalties while injured but the reference body, not stun.

 

*relatively, I've seen storyteller fights drag on for ages in real time.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Something that I've often considered but not implemented in any way at all is a system of Hurts. I thought that any blow that causes significant STUN should cause a Hurt to the character.

 

Hit locations are almost compulsory for such a system. So taking a blow that causes 1xBODY in STUN would get you a minor Hurt - something like -1" running - possibly represented as a gash or twisted knee. 2xBODY in STUN would be a Hurt - something more dramatic such as a side effect to PD that causes you to take 1D6 STUN when the same location is hit (bruising that causes pain when touched for example). 3+ xBODY in STUN would be a major Hurt - very long term hurts such as a suppression of REC, negative overall levels etc.

 

It would take a bit of thought to set up, but as you began racking up lots of Hurts, even if they were only minor, you would begin to think twice about entering unnecessary combats.

 

You would also have to think about how long Hurts took to heal...

 

Doc

[nexus]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

Some options to turn up the "gritty" level of Hero could make a good series of digital Hero articles.

[Stormraven]

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun

 

I do have to say that my first thought was to reduce Recoveries, to once per five minutes. My current player core gave that a resounding 'meh'.

 

That won't stop me if I determine it's the only way to do it, but the reaction was enough that - if I can find a better way, or even a better system for what I want, I'll look there before coming back to my first idea.