Character Shrugging Off Damage

[DougRed4]

I mentioned elsewhere how ridiculous it is to see Wookiee (and other extremely strong species) shrugging off blaster fire, lightsabers, and whatever else.

That's why I'm considering implementing the following rule in my game:

Characters who are hit, but who succeed on their Strength roll to resist damage, suffer a penalty of 1D to skill and attribute rolls for the rest of that round. This does not count as being stunned, but is cumulative with stunned results.

[atgxtg]

Not bad, but you might want to put some sort of minimums to that to prevent a swarm of STR 1D Jawas from incapacitating a strong character (or worse a creature like a Rancor) just through sheer numbers and/or multiple actions.

Maybe it has to be armed lethal damage (like a shiv) as opposed to just a punch?

[garhkal]

Alternately start having enemies use combined fire, heavier weapons and/or dice pooling or damage bonuses based on to hit rolls.
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[Quetzacotl]

What would be so bad about that a bunch of creatures can injure a Wookiee? Even if every hit on it's own doesn't really do much damage, on the long run it should have a significant influence on the character no matter who or what it is (unless it has some Armor that completely absorbs the damage).


Someone here wrote in a differen Thread something about "bruises", as a precursor to Stun.
One could maybe say that, whenever a Char gets hit but can shrugg of the damage, he get's a bruise. A Char can have as many bruises as the number of Dice in Strength. The next bruise would then be a "wounded" result and the bruise count goes back to 0.

That way a Wookiee would still be able to withstand the most but if a lot of enemies gang up on him he will go down eventually (so no more invicible Wookiees or other Races with high resistance to damage).

[garhkal]

I like that bruise idea..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Raven Redstar]

The bruise idea isn't a bad one. I know there are lots of people who fall victim to the high strength character ploy on both sides of the table. Also gives the possibility for taking down larger beast opponents.

I don't like the idea though that a swarm of 1D strength Jawas can overpower a Rancor or Krayt Dragon or whatever. Maybe make a ruling that damage being rolled needs to be within 1D of the base strength of the target. Or that the to-hit roll exceeds the defense roll by x number or more.
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[Quetzacotl]

Well, how about a minimum damage roll?

For example: A Person with XD+Y against damage (Strength + Armor) gets a bruise if two conditions are fullfilled:

1. The damage resistance roll exceeds the damage roll

2. The damage roll is higher then (either)
A) The Average damage resistance (which would be (X*3.5)+Y)
B) x*3 + Y
C) X*2 + Y
D) X + Y
E) X
F) or some other formula depending on the damage resistance

Thus creating a new stat, that we could call "Bruise Resistance", that is only looked at, if the damage roll is lower then the damage resistance roll.

Example:

Enemie has damage resistance of 6D+1 (Strength + Armor). Person shoots that enemie with 5D damage (maybe a Heavy Blaster or something like that).

1. Person hits the Enemie. He rolls a damage of 25. The enemie rolls his damage resistance and gets 30.
A) Bruise Resistance is 22. 25 is higher then 22, so he gets a bruise.
B) Bruise Resistance is 19. 25 is higher then 19, so he gets a bruise.
C) Bruise Resistance is 13. 25 is higher then 22, so he gets a bruise
D) Bruise Resistance is 7. 25 is higher then 22, so he gets a bruise.
E) Bruise Resistance is 6. 25 is higher then 22, so he gets a bruise.

2. Person hits the Enemie. He rolls a damage of 18. The enemie rolls his damage resistance and gets 17. The enemie gets a Stun result, no need to look at the Bruise Resistance.

3. Person hits the Enemie. He rolls a damage of 18. The enemie rolls his damage resistance and gets 25.
A) Bruise Resistance is 22. 18 is lower then 22, so he doesn't get a bruise and shruggs of the damage completely.
B) Bruise Resistance is 19. 18 is lower then 19, so he doesn't get a bruise and shruggs of the damage completely.
C) Bruise Resistance is 13. 18 is higher then 13, so he gets a bruise.
D) Bruise Resistance is 7. 18 is higher then 7, so he gets a bruise.
E) Bruise Resistance is 6. 18 is higher then 6, so he gets a bruise.


Personally, I would go for C, because it's not so high that you can just ignore the whole bruise idea to begin with, but not so low as that some 1D STR Jawas could overpower a Rancor or a Krayt Dragon or someone with really high resistance.

And you only have to write down the Bruise Resistance, because it's not gonna change that fast. Only when you change your Armor or when you increase your STR.


Edit:
A Rancor has 7D STRand 3D additional Protection. So with C) it would have a Bruise Resistance of 20. Damage under 20 would cause no bruise. But the Rancor can only withstand 7 bruises, with the 8th bruise it would get a wound.
The 1D STR Jawas, even with STR+2D weapons, can't even get that hight (unless they are very lucky with the Wild Die), so no Problem.

The Krayt Dragon with it's 12D in STR would have a Bruise Resistance of 24 (with version C)). Only sllightly higher then the Rancor, but the Dragon can withstand 12 bruises, which is a lot more then the 7 bruises of the Rancor.

[vanir]

edit. Oh I see more posts while I was writing this. Looks overcomplicated and too generalised to me. Why not use blaster skill/blaster damage House rule for blaster type damage, and for strength contests a half strength minimum cap to use bruising rules, melee combat you can leave as is.

[Quetzacotl]

@vanir
Well that's exactly what the "Bruise Resistance" would be there for. Unless the Jawa get's very lucky with his dice, it will be nearly impossible to make a bruise (not even talking about wounds and the like ^^).

[DougRed4]

My original rule was only for characters (not creatures), so this wouldn't even apply to rancors or krayt dragons.

I considered making the attacking character have at least 1/2 the Strength of the defender, but with really strong characters we're back to the same thing (ignoring anyone less than 3D Strength).

Taking into account some of the points raised here...

Characters who are hit, but who succeed on their Strength roll to resist damage, suffer a penalty of 1D to skill and attribute rolls for the rest of that round. This does not count as being stunned, but is cumulative with stunned results. It also does not apply to Brawling attacks where the defender's Strength is double that of the attacker.

[Quetzacotl]

Wouldn't we then have the Problem that a bunch of weak creatures can easily "stun" a person?

Take some Jawas with a knife against a 5D STR Barabel. He could roll 7D against the 2D damage but would always get -1D when hit, so you only need like 4 to 5 Jawas to make him essentially useless in battle.
And if it affects Attribute Rolls as well, the Barabel could easily get killed because against the 5th hit he only had like 3D resistance against 2D damage what could do considerable damage, any more and the Barabel might die within a round.

[vanir]

That kind of makes sense to me Doug. Might playtest that, as I said I have been looking for these kind of things but I just know I'm going to get some inspired arguing from the players

the half strength minimum cap on brawling to these effects sounds good, so you at least need 3D strength when you leap on the back of a 6D wookiee to not just wind up like a fly on a rhino, but with 3D you can at least have some actual effect even if you can't break his bones with some exploitive "balancing" rule, affecting him with bruising, sounds about right to me.

speaking about jawas, we do have this one GM who has a thing for making force using jawa darksiders....

[DougRed4]

[garhkal]

Alternately, how about use weapons that do NOT target their high strength?
Sonic grenades (resisted by perception) that daze/deafen the target. foam/poison (or what ever) that targets their dexterity, and once they hit 0d they are paralyzed..
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[DougRed4]

Those are good ideas, too, garhkal. But by far the most common attacks in the galaxy, from stormtroopers and other Imperial soldiers to random fringers, mercenaries, and scoundrels, the problem still exists with really common attacks like blaster fire.

I'm pretty pleased with this and eager to try it out (perhaps it will get tested out when we play tomorrow night).