Pain

[Doc Democracy]

I am going to sound like Sean here.

 

I was driving from Cornwall to London at the weekend and the thought that was keeping me awake was what pain actually is in the system.

 

I was trying to think what pain actually is. From my limited experience, pain is a distraction - it prevents me from concentrating on stuff but that is in non-stress situations. When trying to do something that requires concentration (writing a paper, for example) chronic pain makes me less efficient. Pain is also limits physical actions - when playing football a sharp pain in my ankle will prevent me from running and limit my manoueverability. Extreme pain may result in someone doing nothing but curl in a ball.

 

So, how do we model this in HERO. Straight STUN damage does not seem to do any of these things.

 

I thought that I would concentrate on the last of these as it seemed easier. Extreme pain - not all pain makes you immobile but it may make you more likely to go that way. I was thinking that STUN suppress would be a good model - if the pain is extreme enough it will overcome your STUN and leave you in a ball on the floor. If it is not, then it makes you more susceptible to being knocked unconcious. Not a brilliant fit but IMO better than STUN damage.

 

That's as far as I got. A couple of hours with no ability to flick through books limits me....anyone want to add to my HERO definition of pain?

 

 

Doc

[ghost-angel]

Re: Pain

 

I suggest you start with the Wounding effects (5ER p414).

 

While the book has Wounding only prevent Offensive Actions with a failed EGO Roll (with Modifiers for amount of Body Lost); it can easily be expanded to actions that require concentration, exertion or other effects beyond "lie still and say ouch a lot"

 

Pain has funny effects on people, I tended a woman this weekend at the park that had fallen and broken her wrist - to picture the wound take your right hand and picture it offset a little over half an inch to the right of your arm - the pain was so bad that she lost feeling in both her hands at one point and I'm pretty sure we narrowly prevented her from going into shock through a combination of continually asking her questions and allowing her to wriggle around a bit (I had the job of holding her arm with the broken limb in place enough to prevent further damage. Fifteen minutes in one position gets uncomfortable so that's another kind of pain too...)

 

On a scale of 1 to 10 for Pain, she ranked it 11. Maybe 1 Body done to her wrist and in her own words "I've done child brith twice, I can do this. . . . no I can't."

 

Then there's my brother, who smashed his head into a desk and took four stitches to the corner of his eye. Pain level? in his own words "pain? no, but I couldn't see through the blood."

 

There is no really effective way to consistently measure pain in any system. Like too many things in reality there's too many weird and random factors to take into account.

 

As I said at the start, I would go with the Wounding Rules in place and expand as dramatically needed.

 

After all it's no fun to play the guy who lies on the ground crying for twenty minutes because of a broken wrist.

[schir1964]

Re: Pain

 

Okay Doc... here's my take.

 

Based on your analysis, it sounds like a Combat Option that imposes a Stat Roll to the Character's actions based on what is being attempted. A Pain Penalty is obviously in effect which why a Stat Roll is required at all. The particular Characteristic that needs to be rolled against is determined by the action the character is attempting to perform.

 

Writing a Term Paper during a Migraine (vs INT or EGO)

Running/Walking with a sprained ankle or broken bone in the legs (vs DEX or EGO)

Lifting weight with a muscle cramp (vs STR or EGO)

Any action during the bends (vs EGO)

 

Does this help?

 

- Christopher Mullins

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Pain

 

I was trying to get an idea of how we might approach building pain based attacks. Most attacks are done with NND normal attacks.

 

Wounding, like suffocation is a mechanic that is used in the system but is not available directly to be used in power building. It might be useful for such things to be a component part of the toolkit rather than an effect accessed through the application of damage.

 

Chris - what mechanic are you using to apply the penalties? Transform??

 

Doc

[secretID]

Re: Pain

 

I was trying to get an idea of how we might approach building pain based attacks. Most attacks are done with NND normal attacks.

Chris' idea looks like negative skill levels to me.

 

I don't have the slightest expertise in pain and injury management or infliction, but...

 

I think if you go in this direction, you might as well almost drop the idea of stun, as it's kind of silly if you're getting that realistic, IMO. IRL, it seems to me that pain and disability are much more salient than stunning.

 

Stunning and unconsciousness certainly happen, but I think they're less commonly the big issue. Other than in boxing (wearing big padded gloves) and with drugs, if you've been knocked out or the equivalent of CON stunned, there's probably something else more important wrong with you - broken limbs, head wound, etc.

 

If someone hits you in the head with a bat, you'll be stunned in many ways, but what's more likely to take you out of the fight is that you're bleeding all over, possibly brain damaged, etc. If they hit you with the bat in your arm, back, torso, etc., they'll eventually knock you out that way, but you'll probably have bigger problems of broken limbs and ruptured organs long before you're knocked out the fight by the equivalent of STUN damage. In those cases and many others, it looks to me like it's really the pain and the disability that stop someone from fighting more than the stunning.

 

Very basically, the idea of being repeatedly knocked out is pretty silly - there's only so many concussions you can take.

 

I haven't seen much ultimate fighting, but it seems to me that tapping out is much more common than knockouts - I assume that's because you can grapple and because you can strike with things that aren't heavily padded. I'd say that's closer to a real fight, and it looks to me like pain is a much bigger issue than stunning.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Pain

 

I might introduce Long Term Stun Loss and Long Term End Loss associated with Damage.

 

I took a pretty solid beating on Sunday from running around and getting knocked down and slipping on the grass.

 

My body is pretty sore, but I'm not injured. At leat I have no Body Loss, but I am definitely not in peak performance - my elbow and thigh still hurt from a solid knock to the ground. I would say in a pinch I could perform but I walk a bit stiff.

 

Take enough Stun Damage and you are at reduced Endurance; you tire out more easily due to a general knocking around. The source of the damage (i.e. how you model it) is a bit irrelevent to the idea of damage itself.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Pain

 

I once created a villain whose punches were so hard that he bruised the people he hit - those bruises made the victim more likely to be hurt subsequently. I modelled that with a small PD drain (only versus STUN).

 

That is another way to show that prior injuries or pain may make subsequent attacks more effective.

 

 

Doc

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Pain

 

I might introduce Long Term Stun Loss and Long Term End Loss associated with Damage.

 

I took a pretty solid beating on Sunday from running around and getting knocked down and slipping on the grass.

 

My body is pretty sore, but I'm not injured. At leat I have no Body Loss, but I am definitely not in peak performance - my elbow and thigh still hurt from a solid knock to the ground. I would say in a pinch I could perform but I walk a bit stiff.

 

Take enough Stun Damage and you are at reduced Endurance; you tire out more easily due to a general knocking around. The source of the damage (i.e. how you model it) is a bit irrelevent to the idea of damage itself.

 

I'm in favor of the idea myself, as the exact thing you've described is one of the elements of damage modeling that is a result of injury in R/L but has no counterpart in the system. Optional Long Term Stun rules would solve this nicely, and would also help close the "Why can a person go from comatose to fully functional in just a few seconds, once they actually start getting recoveries" logic hole that currently is entrenched in the system (which is fine for Cinematic/Comic action, but far lass appropriate for Gritty & Realistic genres). Long Term Stun should probably come with associated penalties that can be overcome in the short term with an Ego Roll, which ties in nicely with the Wounding rules.

 

I like the Wounding rules as another core element of Pain Modeling, but I think they need more tweaking.

 

The main reason I like this structure is it increases the function of the Resistance Talent, which I've always felt needed more breadth than just "resisting torture", because I've done a lot of things associated with pain in R/L down through the years and I can firmly say it's a lot more complex than most games ever deal with, and I'd like to see our pet system fill that gap.

[secretID]

Re: Pain

 

I might introduce Long Term Stun Loss and Long Term End Loss associated with Damage.

 

I took a pretty solid beating on Sunday from running around and getting knocked down and slipping on the grass.

 

My body is pretty sore, but I'm not injured. At leat I have no Body Loss, but I am definitely not in peak performance - my elbow and thigh still hurt from a solid knock to the ground. I would say in a pinch I could perform but I walk a bit stiff.

 

Take enough Stun Damage and you are at reduced Endurance; you tire out more easily due to a general knocking around. The source of the damage (i.e. how you model it) is a bit irrelevent to the idea of damage itself.

You could just look at a KO or a CON stunning as representing either stunning in the usual sense, or just severely distracting pain. To make it work better (and fit your RL example), you could have all DEF be ablative, which gives an effect like Doc's villain example.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Pain

 

The distracting pain is what I was thinking of with the STUN suppress. Real damage may take you so far and the pain effectively takes you out of the game while it lasts...still conscious but ineffective.

 

Doc

[ghost-angel]

Re: Pain

 

You could just look at a KO or a CON stunning as representing either stunning in the usual sense' date=' or just severely distracting pain. To make it work better (and fit your RL example), you could have all DEF be ablative, which gives an effect like Doc's villain example.[/quote']

 

what is "con stunning"?

 

Part of it is it's easier to get hurt.

 

But also I don't have immediate performance issues, but I certainly couldn't go another 3 hours bout today like I did on Sunday. I'd wear down much faster.

 

So a combo of reduced Endurance (tire faster) and reduced Stun (I will go down faster) is a good model for an all around minor damage/muscle wear type situation.

 

Things like Headaches are best modeled as Negatives to INT (loss of awareness and concentration). As another aspect of pain that Doc mentioned.

[schir1964]

Re: Pain

 

I was trying to get an idea of how we might approach building pain based attacks. Most attacks are done with NND normal attacks.

 

Wounding, like suffocation is a mechanic that is used in the system but is not available directly to be used in power building. It might be useful for such things to be a component part of the toolkit rather than an effect accessed through the application of damage.

 

Chris - what mechanic are you using to apply the penalties? Transform??

 

Doc

My approach was for the GM to create a new Combat Pain Sense Category and treat it like the other Senses with environmental penalties pre-defined by the GM and imposed as the situation dictates just like the other Sense penalties.

 

A Perception Roll is only required if the sum of all Penalties/Bonus results in a negative number which becomes the penalty to the Perception Roll.

 

Therefore, a Pain Roll is only required if the sum of all the Pain Penalties/Bonuses result in a negative number which becomes the penalty to the "Pain Roll" or "Stat Roll" or whatever might be appropriate.

 

Hmmm... you've got me thinking now about how a more fleshed out mechanic might work...

 

Anyway, the current system does not require that the player define whether their attacks cause "Pain" or not. It is something that perhaps should be required since you can have the following:

 

Personal Taser: Energy Blast (Stun Only) [Causes Pain]

Sonic Attack: Energy Blast (Stun Only) [Causes Pain]

Carbon Monoxide Attack: Energy Blast (Stun Only) [Causes No Pain]

Sleep Gas: Energy Blast (Stun Only) [Causes No Pain]

 

One could argue that the last two should require some level of Invisible Power Effects, but these are quick examples and given some time I'm sure there are examples of visible attacks that cause no pain but only do stun damage.

 

So if the rules/GM were to require definitions include Pain/Non-Pain attacks then you are halfway to creating a workable mechanic based on Pain.

 

I'll continue thinking on a more developed mechanic that works consistently with the existing mechanics.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Pain

 

Okay here's another 2 cents. Gritting your teeth and working through the pain is heroic, and in combat adrenaline will keep you going anyway, so mostly I would let the players ignore the fact that their characters are in terrible pain unless they had some Disad that dictated otherwise.

 

That said, I can see where you might want to build a "pain" attack. For that I think you have to have some pain effects first. So I would require an injured character to make an EGO roll at -1 for every 2 BDY the character has taken to perform a strenuous action or they have to take a PHA to just grit their teeth (maybe a CON roll would be complimentary, and certainly the Resistance talent would help). Probably just one roll at the beginning of combat, and every time they take damage. You might put negative modifiers if the attacker specifically targets the wounded hit location, or conversely only apply the penalties for BDY taken if they get hit in the wounded spot, depending on the nature of the injury.

 

Now for a "pain" attack, you throw penalty skill levels on top of some other attack to represent the fact it is more painful than most. Every time it hits, the injured character will have to make an EGO roll at the penalty to avoid losing a PHA due to pain. Because that could be a pretty powerful effect, the PSL should be at least 5 pts each (kind of like 1d6 of Flash).

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Pain

 

I also like the idea of fighting through pain. NND energy blasts do not allow for this. A continuing STUN suppress that can be 'switched off' by someone making a resistance roll allows for some heroic action scenes - the hero lies writhing in pain but manages to raise his gun and take out the villain just before he pushes the red button of death....

 

 

 

Doc

[Utech]

Re: Pain

 

Penalty Skill Levels. Combine with a STUN attack if you must, but I wouldn't bother.

 

If you don't like Penalty Skill Levels, lower the target's Speed and/or DEX with Drain, Transfer, Suppress, what-have-you.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Pain

 

Drains with a custom Limitation "Target can make EGO Roll to force an Instant Fade in Heroic situations"

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Pain

 

That said' date=' I can see where you might want to build a "pain" attack. For that I think you have to have some pain effects first. So I would require an injured character to make an EGO roll at -1 for every 2 BDY the character has taken to perform a strenuous action or they have to take a PHA to just grit their teeth (maybe a CON roll would be complimentary, and certainly the Resistance talent would help). Probably just one roll at the beginning of combat, and every time they take damage. You might put negative modifiers if the attacker specifically targets the wounded hit location, or conversely only apply the penalties for BDY taken if they get hit in the wounded spot, depending on the nature of the injury.[/quote']

 

It seems that this could be simulated, without the BOD loss, by change environment which applies a -1 to Ego Rolls - much like an ice area forcing a -1 on DEX rolls and requiring such a roll when characters enter the area, the "Pain Field" would require an Ego roll to withstand the pain, at a -1 penalty or such larger penalty as the power pays for. Limit CE to remove its AoE (and hope we get single target CE in 6e) and we have a Pain Ray.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Pain

 

It seems that this could be simulated' date=' without the BOD loss, by change environment which applies a -1 to Ego Rolls - much like an ice area forcing a -1 on DEX rolls and requiring such a roll when characters enter the area, the "Pain Field" would require an Ego roll to withstand the pain, at a -1 penalty or such larger penalty as the power pays for. Limit CE to remove its AoE (and hope we get single target CE in 6e) and we have a Pain Ray.[/quote']

 

Oh yes, that would work well. If you want slightly more lasting effects, you might couple it with an NND, but I think you have it there.

[nexus]

Re: Pain

 

Okay Doc... here's my take.

 

Based on your analysis, it sounds like a Combat Option that imposes a Stat Roll to the Character's actions based on what is being attempted. A Pain Penalty is obviously in effect which why a Stat Roll is required at all. The particular Characteristic that needs to be rolled against is determined by the action the character is attempting to perform.

 

Writing a Term Paper during a Migraine (vs INT or EGO)

Running/Walking with a sprained ankle or broken bone in the legs (vs DEX or EGO)

Lifting weight with a muscle cramp (vs STR or EGO)

Any action during the bends (vs EGO)

 

Does this help?

 

- Christopher Mullins

 

So in game terms could that be reflected a single target "CE" since it can force a Characteristic roll where one isn't usually required?

 

Edit: Scooped by Hugh

 

So much of a limitation would "one target only" be? Its similar to 1 hex accurate but requires the user to hit his target's DCV (or possible ECV).

[Sean Waters]

Re: Pain

 

The nearest Hero gets to pain mechanically is the optional impairing rules that work with Body damage.

 

Alternatively it is just a sfx.

 

Having fallen off a ladder and broken a couple of my ribs and the end of my radius last week, I feel I am qualified to comment.

 

Pain is your body yelling for attention. It can completely paralyse you, or drive you to greater effort, it can distract you or concentrate your mind, it can keep you awake or make you tired.

 

I can not lift as much with this injury than without it, because if I try it hurts so much I stop trying. It could be the sfx of a STR drain. Mind you I probably am actually weaker even if I take all that codeine and oramorph because there is actual tissue damage, so gritting my teeth through the pain (if I were minded to try that approach) would only neutralise SOME of the weakness.

 

Hmm. Not very helpful, I suppose, but it might be that the system doesn't model 'pain' because it is not any single thing.

[Lucius]

Re: Pain

 

On a scale of 1 to 10 for Pain, she ranked it 11. Maybe 1 Body done to her wrist and in her own words "I've done child brith twice, I can do this. . . . no I can't."

 

ONE BOD?

 

From your description I'd say it was at least four or five BOD damage.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, unless she was only a 2 BOD character

[ghost-angel]

Re: Pain

 

Hard to judge something so subjective.

 

But it was "only" a broken wrist. 4-5 Body on a "normal" - and I'd give her no more than 8 Body anyways - is over half their life. She wasn't anywhere CLOSE to that dead.

 

Just in a LOT of pain.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Pain

 

Looks like this would have been a good article in Digital HERO. Pain in the HERO system.

 

If you are building an attack that is pain based then you should be thinking very carefully about what sort of pain you are thinking of inflicting, what sort of effect that you intend it to have and what might blunt the attack. Like AmadanNaBriona said, resistance should play a part in overcoming the effects of these kinds of attacks.

 

I guess this re-iterates HERO principles but it might be worth elcidating how HERO might model pain in the system and how the GM might adjudicate painful situations...

 

 

Doc

[Alibear]

Re: Pain

 

ONE BOD?

 

From your description I'd say it was at least four or five BOD damage.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, unless she was only a 2 BOD character

 

A friend of mine came off his bike over the handlebars and broke both his wrists. He survived somehow.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Pain

 

It really points out that Body Damage is just a measure of how Alive/Dead you are. And nothing else.

 

Taking Body Damage certainly factors into how you can operate (damaged body parts don't operate very well if at all - the broken wrist for instance, total motor control loss below the elbow, if she could rotate she never even tried).

 

But there is obviously way more than that going on in regards to relevent pain and how the rest of you operates.