Simple Damage System
Okay, when you hit somebody, you'll roll a contest between your Muscles & Weapon Damage vs their Muscles & Guts & Armor Dice. If you scored extra successes on your to-hit roll, you get a substantial benefit of some sort.
Some possibilities:
- Add the amount you hit by to the damage roll, so that good hits almost always blow through their soak.
- Add an extra d12 for every X you beat them by (probably 4, might just be 2). This means that damage, like skill rolls, tends to plateau around 12. Strong folks wielding big weapons see less benefit, really, because they're probably already rolling a couple of d12s.
The results of the soak roll could include the following:
- Bounced off harmlessly.
- Target takes a -2 to their actions until the end of next round, as the pain distracts them.
- Target is seriously wounded and suffers a -2 penalty until healed. Additional serious wounds increase the penalty by -1 each time.
- Target is incapacitated as well as wounded. They get to roll a Willpower check to see how long it takes them to revive.
- Target is dying. Without medical aid, they'll croak within a few hours. They can make a Willpower check to regain consciousness long enough to talk, but that won't save them without aid.
- Target is dying fast. The delay until death changes to minutes.
- Target is dead. Cut in half or similarly killed outright.
What result levels would I use for this?
- Extraordinary Success: untouched by the blow.
- Critical Success: cosmetic wound; irrelevant unless the attack was poisoned.
- Tie, Success: distracted; you take a minor wound. Your minimum wound penalty is -2 until the end of the next round; note that if you are already at -2 or worse, this will have no effect.
- Failure: you take a serious wound. Your wound penalty is worsened by 1. This lasts until you heal it.
- Critical Failure: you are also stunned; make a Willpower check to see how long it takes you to revive.
- Extraordinary Failure: as for Crit Failure, but you will die within a few hours if you don't receive medical aid. Roll Guts & Spirit to see how long. If you keep fighting you get a -4 penalty to this roll.
- Extra2: killed outright.
Hm. Actually, poisoned attacks should probably only work on a Tie/Success or worse, not a Critical Success. Otherwise, I kind of like this. I should try some of the numbers in practice.
It might be better if the worse results increased your wounds by more than 1. And I'm kind of assuming that your Muscles & Guts roll is penalized by your wound penalty, so that badly injured folks are easier to kill... but it actually wouldn't have to be, because the penalties make you easier to hit, which would cause more crits anyway.
Posted by Kiz at June 21, 2004 11:54 PM