Raising the lethality of the game

[SirWilliam]

Being a fan of a more lethal game system, I'm thinking of changing the weapons charts for my upcoming campaign.

 

Basically my desire is that if an average joe gets hit with a broadsword he stands a better than average chance to get killed. This would mean that I need at least the potential to do (approximately) 10 body with a broadsword being used by joe swordsman.

 

To acomplish this I'm considering raising the DC of all weapons by one. I toyed with bumping them two DC's but I think that would be excessive.

 

Comments? Feedback? Has anyone ever done this?

[Legendsmiths]

The question is, raising the level of lethality from the avg man or from the avg hero. Your average hero will have enough STR to bump up the damage of the sword by 1 DC.

 

If you use critical hits, then any roll less than half the number needed to hit does max damage.

 

You could also increase the Body X for hit locations. This might be a better route than bumping the DC of weapons.

 

You may also need to look at the level of threat you are posing to the players. The "avg man" is a 25pt character with stats of 8 down the line. A DC 5 sword attack (broadsword + STR) will, on average, cause an imparing wound, and can cause a disabling wound quite easily. Either of those attacks will probably do enough STUN to take him out, at which point he will bleed to death. Fairly realistic. Not as realistic as some games, but certainly enough to make a point.

 

I play with crits, impairing, disabling wounds, and bleeding. This is enough realism for me and yet still keeps the game cinematic.

[Hugh Neilson]

Raising the lethality in any game can make for unhappy players who have to spend more time designing new characters than playing. This is exacerbated in Hero by the complexity of the character creation process. Most games sacrifice some realism in the "lethality" department to enhance playability.

 

You also need to consider the impact on play balance. If weapons get an extra DC, that's 2 more DC if I have the STR (or levels) to maximize it. A lot of players already see STR as a pretty big bargain. This adjustment makes warriors more powerful - do wizards get an advantage to offset it?

 

Finally, IMO, people worry too much about "realism". How realistic are men who cast spells and weild magic swords while battling fire-breathing dragons?

[Bartman]

Originally posted by mudpyr8

I play with crits, impairing, disabling wounds, and bleeding. This is enough realism for me and yet still keeps the game cinematic.

 

I have also found this works wonders. And it is fairly realistic. The vast majority of combat deaths prior to modern warfare were not instantaneous. Instead the guy would get a 3-5 body wound and he would bleed to death.

 

If you are not getting enough body damage I would reduce Def rather than add DCs. Historicaly most armors were light and only provided partial coverage. Even states like the Romans generally only protected about 60% of the soldier. And they were one of the very few who provided universal steel armors. Far more common would be leather or quilted armors, perhaps augmented with a steel cap and/or breastplate. In game terms this is 8- coverage for the steel and 11- coverage for the leather/quilt. A normal in such armor will take an impairing wound at least half the time from a 1d6+1 KA. He will be bleeding. And unless he drops out of combat immediately to try to tend to the wound he will bleed to death in a couple of minutes. And because of hit locations body modifiers this is likely to happen even on armored sections.

 

That is lethal enough for me.

[Hugh Neilson]

Originally posted by Bartman

I have also found this works wonders. And it is fairly realistic. The vast majority of combat deaths prior to modern warfare were not instantaneous. Instead the guy would get a 3-5 body wound and he would bleed to death.

 

More likely, the wound would not kill him, but it would get infected and he would die a slow, lingering death instead. Not a fun and heroic option I would want to add to the game, but there you go.

 

Originally posted by Bartman

If you are not getting enough body damage I would reduce Def rather than add DCs. Historicaly most armors were light and only provided partial coverage. Even states like the Romans generally only protected about 60% of the soldier. And they were one of the very few who provided universal steel armors. Far more common would be leather or quilted armors, perhaps augmented with a steel cap and/or breastplate. In game terms this is 8- coverage for the steel and 11- coverage for the leather/quilt. A normal in such armor will take an impairing wound at least half the time from a 1d6+1 KA. He will be bleeding. And unless he drops out of combat immediately to try to tend to the wound he will bleed to death in a couple of minutes. And because of hit locations body modifiers this is likely to happen even on armored sections.

 

It's very common to assume armor covers all hit locations equally in the game, but that's not accurate. Sure, plate armor could provide substantial protection to the chest, but it needed joints so the wearer could move, and you can't completely cover the face. There were vulnerable points which most games tend not to consider.

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Hugh Neilson

More likely, the wound would not kill him, but it would get infected and he would die a slow, lingering death instead. Not a fun and heroic option I would want to add to the game, but there you go.

 

Of course the most likely scenario is that the guy gets out of combat uninjured. But he gets dysentary three weeks later and dies in camp. In pre-modern warfare most military deaths were completely non-combat related. But in game terms an untreated 4 body wound will leave a character dead from 'bleeding' fairly quickly.

 

My point is that if you want average Joe to have a better than even chance to die if he gets hit by a broadsword, per the OP's request, you don't need to change anything. A broadsword is lethal to average Joe as it stands now.

[RDU Neil]

I look at it this way...

 

A solid hit with a medium to long blade from a trained human male to the unarmored chest of another trained human male.

 

What would be the average effect of such a blow? (Not yet in game terms.)

 

Total impalement? Not on average.

 

A bruise or minor cut? Not on average.

 

A sinew tearing, slash or a rib puncturing thrust? Ok... sounds right.

 

Average trained fighter would respond to such a blow how?

 

Immediate death? No way.

 

"Is that the best you've got!" No, that's Conan.

 

Cry out and fall to knees (Con stunned and bleeding) Likely. (Also, likely dead with coup de grace a second later.)

 

Cry out but battle back on Adreneline and fear (Bleeding but not Con stunned) also likely.

 

Ok... so how much body and stun, on average should a sword do to get that "nasty, potentially disabling, but not always" type effect.

 

Start at 2d6K... average 7 body and to the chest with hit location 21 Stun. That is, on average, severely wounding, incapacitating, but not killing your average unarmed fighter. That is easily a 1d6+1 K with STR added... seems very realistic, and potentially lethal, as well.

 

The CON stunning often kills... by incapacitating the character for a follow up blow... and that is more realistic... and lethal enough for me.

 

Basically, think about the average damage done... and compare that with your average defense... average unarmored NPC... and average unarmored PC... and adjust your attacks around the AVERAGE damage done, not the max. That will give you a better control of the lethality, notching it up or down, that it sounds like you want.

[Markdoc]

As pointed out the idea that a broadsword blow to the chest will kill frequently is NOT realistic.

 

And I'm not talking as a gamer here, but as doctor who has actually seen the inside of a fair number of chests.

 

Likewise if you look at historical sites where we have access to the dead, like Visby, the vast number of dead in the battle pit had multiple wounds. Even the head wounds were often not the only wound. Finally, modern hospital records show that single stab wounds to the chest are rarely fatal even over a 1 hour period after injury (about 2% fatality rate, and although I agree that this would be much higher in a medieval setting we are still talking about death over the next week or so, not one blow and drop)

 

So much for realism. As a GM, if you want more lethality for game reasons, OK, raising the DC one class will do it. I know, we've tried

 

I wouldn't recommend it though. Not only does it make weapons unrealistically lethal, but it also leads to a lot of dead PCs and thus, unhappy players.

 

cheers, Mark

[GamePhil]

First of all, he never said, "realistic", he said "lethal". There is no evidence to support that this is for a realistic game. It is true that many people wanting lethality believe it is for realism, but that isn't necessarily the case here.

 

I would suggest reducing average Body scores rather than increasing damage dice. It has always struck me as the simpler solution: you don't need to re-figure the costs or STR minimums of the weapons, if it becomes necessary to know these things, and you can more easily use stock characters because they take the normal damage levels into account.

 

Now, if you want it to be lethal to PC's, I'd strongly suggest that, unless they enjoy creating new characters a lot (this happens), you either simplify character creation or allow them to come back with the same character write up just tweaked a bit. Hero is too complex to be killing PC's or making them unplayable, unless your players really like that kind of thing.

[Blue Jogger]

We have the house rule that people that have no name takes x2 BODY. This takes out the background characters and gives the villians a high death toll without making the heroes weaker.

 

It prevents the, "I'm not dead, yet".