Alternate END/Pushing/AP limit rule - Nitpickers wanted

[Duke Bushido]

Gotcha

[Hugh Neilson]

8 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

 

So, by RAW, 0 to -9, the character is still standing, but knocked out?  I'll look at the books. I've always played the mechanical result... DCV 0, has to recover and x2 Stun if hit... but your comment about upright staggering and not down on the ground was what I thought was different. So, if the punch that puts someone into 0 to -9 range doesn't do knockback/knockdown, the character is still standing, but effectively "unconscious" by the rules?

 

I've always played it that way to an extent. I'll describe the villain as "they hit the ground, head spinning, there is a that brief rag-doll look... FOR THE MOMENT they are out of it"... at which point the PCs curb stomp him accordingly. If the character is "Con stunned"... I tend to say, "they stagger... not down, clearly trying to shake it off. You rang their bell!" which also tends to prompt a follow up, hoping to hit before they recover.

 

If a character is -10 or more, I will indicate, "They are down, rag doll and not moving..." which tends to imply truly unconscious... but also tends to provoke a curb stomping anyway.

 

Yeah, it's the "does not drop and is still conscious and aware" aspect, which makes it more reasonable to hit him again, much like a Stunned target.  "Another hit to make sure he does not get a recovery and rejoin the fight" is pretty common, but if the players know "down" means "earliest possible recovery is PS 12", they tend to be less inclined to hit him again, and if they know tat dazed guy probably took double stun from the followup hit, they tend to pick a new target.

 

Whereas, if 75% of those who fall bounce back up, it feels like the players are being punished for "not hitting a man when he is down".  If the GM wants heroic behaviour, then he needs to use the game rules to encourage it, or at least not punish it.  Once Hero means "takes an approach likely to lose the fight", layers tend not to wish to play heroes.

[dsatow]

In my games, most villains will cry uncle as soon as all their stun goes away (<=0).  Only the die hard villains or ones with emotional issues continue to fight.  It seems to limit garbage collecting (hitting an unconscious NPC) when the target first hits a negative stun.

[RDU Neil]

21 hours ago, dsatow said:

In my games, most villains will cry uncle as soon as all their stun goes away (<=0).  Only the die hard villains or ones with emotional issues continue to fight.  It seems to limit garbage collecting (hitting an unconscious NPC) when the target first hits a negative stun.

 

Yes... in game play is very important... circumstances are everything.

 

If the villains cry uncle after a simple bank robbery where no one was really harmed... ok. If the villains cry uncle after burning to death a busload of children... no, they get beaten down and a pushed RKA blast through the eyeball when down to make sure they never come back. As a GM, to expect heroes to play by silver age rules while the villains are iron age extremists, is unacceptable. It is why I really hate DC comics for the past 10-20 years. They made the villains more and more evil, murderous and destructive, while, for some reason, the heroes are supposed to just slap their wrist and put them in jail, where they will escape and slaughter 20 more people on the way out. I've been hating a lot of Marvel comics featuring Bullseye lately, because he is shown as slaughtering dozens of people in comic after comic, somehow miraculously surviving getting shot and clawed by Wolverine, whatever... and then he just goes back to jail to get out again, and I'm supposed to think this is interesting and satisfying to read?

Bullseye would have been killed off years ago, with no regret, in my world.

 

Named villains have no special status. PCs can do horrible things and pay for it, too. One of the greatest moments in 30 years of play was after the first decade, in a finale showdown with Dr. Destroyer, who had terrorized the world for 40 plus years and been unbeaten and the 'big bad' for a decade of actual play... his ultimate bid for supremacy (getting ahold of progenitor technology that would have made him godlike) was thwarted by two generations of heroes, multiple NPCs, world militaries, cataclysms and thousands dead world wide... the heroes finally beat him. Three of the most prominent heroes fished him out of the ocean where he fell, and landed with him on board a battle cruiser.  He was unconscious in front of him, and they had 30 seconds before everyone else showed up. One was a massively powerful esper, one a massively powerful TK, and a third a galactic police officer type... they had a hasty mental discussion, purely those three PCs (the other six I had playing, this was a weekend long epic session, weren't in on it) and they debated "Should he be allowed to wake up?"  They made the hard, moral choice that "No... he is too much of a threat, and letting him possibly return was a greater evil." They then put all their power into psychicly weakening him to disconnect him from his armor's auto-safety functions... then the TK reached inside and stopped the villain's heart. AVLD Killing Attack type of thing that he used maybe three times in decades of play. To the rest of the world, they simply stood there looking... then announced, "Destroyer, Dr. Zerstoiten, has died of natural causes."

 

It was the ultimate "hit them when they are down" and one of them most heroic moments as well. It haunted them... their decision, and the lie... the necessity of it... but they never thought it was wrong... nor did I as GM. I was prepared, had they lost, to have Destroyer take over the world and completely change the game... the stakes are as real as make believe can be.

 

All that said, a game mechanic that enforces a type of play you don't want. (We are silver age heroes, but the game keeps making me hit opponents when they are down... this sucks!) is a game mechanic you need to change.

[Hugh Neilson]

On 8/29/2018 at 12:10 PM, dsatow said:

In my games, most villains will cry uncle as soon as all their stun goes away (<=0).  Only the die hard villains or ones with emotional issues continue to fight.  It seems to limit garbage collecting (hitting an unconscious NPC) when the target first hits a negative stun.

 

My easy compromise (over and above following the "0 to -9 remains conscious" rule) is that the villains get recoveries just like heroes do.  When they regain consciousness, they behave as their personalities dictate, considering the circumstances.  Often, that means quietly slipping away, maybe with some small fraction of the loot.  Sometimes, it  means just staying down (it's over and I'm easily seen - why get the other eye blackened?), or it may mean rejoining the fight (three of us left and one of them, with his back to me?  ZAP!).

 

Not many are so devoted to their cause or their team that they leap back into the fray to suffer near-certain defeat.

 

Now, if the PCs were known to be in the habit of killing defeated opponents, that would change the decision-making process.  If defeat means death, what do they have to lose?  Slip away or fight, because surrender means execution.

[dsatow]

I generally don't rule on the morality of the character and their actions unless it goes against their complications.  Players actions always have consequences for good or naught.

[Doc Democracy]

I do rule on the morality of the character and their actions when I stipulated a heroic campaign. ? However, I do understand the need to encourage heroic action and not to incentivise behaviour that I think inappropriate for the genre I want to run.  If I have villains continually rise from the ground to re-enter the combat, I encourage curb-stomping, if I continually allow villains to escape from prison then I encourage players to take alternative action when they capture villains.

 

As such, I tell the players that while I may allow them to re-enter combats when they go down, villains will rarely re-enter combat, if they do recover, it will be to run away and then only if I really need it for the scenario.  I also tell them that when villains are put away, they will not escape unless it is an integral part of a planned scenario that the players participate in.  Once it is a shared responsibility then the players need to live up to their part of it too.

 

Doc