Damage Save
Just thinking about the Mutants & Masterminds damage save rules again. Someone on RPG.net talked about using them and discarding the "wound points" mechanism entirely, so that you didn't have any points to keep track of at all.
Let's see... in order of severity...
- No significant damage. You could get less than this, but it would just imply that you weren't even scratched.
- Stunned. Can only take a half-action next turn or -2 to all rolls or something similar. Lasts only until the end of next round. The advantage to going first is that this will only cost you one turn, instead of two.
- Dazed. As for Stunned, but lasts for the rest of the combat. You are advised to retreat if possible. We might include a way to "shake it off" by blowing a full action resting, dunno.
- Unconscious. You are knocked down and pass out at least briefly. Realistically, you should also get a point of long-term impairment, but we might gloss over that.
- Dying. As for Unconscious, but you also have a nasty wound that could well kill you if you don't receive medical aid soon.
- Dead. Killed outright. Probably revivable with a good enough medicine roll or the right psychic power, but otherwise, you're toast.
The big deal about Stunned and Dazed is that you're now more vulnerable to the
next hit, so your opponent will be trying to finish you off. For a lot of vulnerability, you could make Dazed include a round of not being able to act at all, including defending yourself.
What about the damage check itself, though? In M&M, the damage for a given attack is pretty well set, thus giving you a set target number to aim for. In Nuclear Beasts, that would be kind of problematic. To ensure that it's always possible to beat the difficulty, it would have to be a random roll.
Hm. Soak vs Damage. Tie = stunned, fail = dazed, crit fail = unconscious, extra fail = dying. extra2 = dead. Might even drop Tie and do fail = stunned, crit fail = dazed, extra fail = unc., extra2 = dying, extra3 = dead.
The Damage roll would have to be Muscles & Weapon, possibly plus some sort of bonus from a critical hit. Soak would be Muscles & Guts & Armor. Hm. Damage would probably range from 2d4 (the punch of a really weak character) up to 2d12+X (the blow of a 2H sword from a huge character).
Crits would have to provide some significant benefit, but I think that's a given.
What would it take to kill someone outright? Assuming that rolling all 1s isn't a botch, the target would have to roll 1 and you'd have to roll, let's see... 2-4 = stunned, 5-8 = dazed, 9-12 = unc., 13-16 = dying, 17+ dead.
So a d12 attack could do it, if it got a +5 bonus. A d6 would require a whopping +11... that's not impossible for an Extraordinary Hit, though.
How about the damage bonus per extra success varies by weapon?
- Claws, small blades: base d6, +6 per
- Swords, horns: base d8, +4 per
- Big swords: d12, +2 per.
What would that give us? An extraordinary hit from a big sword could do at most 12+4=16. From claws, we'd get 6+12=18. How about +8/+6/+4? 6+16=22, 8+12=20, 12+8=20. Hm. With +7, +6, +4, they'd all max out at 20. Of course, if you had a higher strength than your weapon's damage die, it would be higher. A really strong
and skilled dude might prefer a short blade or his claws, dunno. I don't want super-skilled folks to prefer knives over swords, but swords over 2H swords might be worthwhile, dunno.
I still like my idea of bigger weapons taking more actions to swing. I may have to go back and playtest that.
Posted by Kiz at May 12, 2004 04:17 PM