Character Shrugging Off Damage

[Quetzacotl]

[garhkal]

[Naaman]

If we are talking about multiple attackers here, using melee weapons against an un armed for, lets remember that the attackers would each get a +10 bonus to their attack rolls. Combine this withe the optional rules for damage from the SpecForce sourcebook and you can see how damage can be achieved rather easily against something like a wookiee. Now, if the character has armor, a weak attack shouldn't even cause a bruise. Has anyone here ever been punched by a toddler? There is absolutely no potential for damage against an adult. Eapecially if the adult perceives that a "threat" (or just hostility) exists from the child. The reason is because the physics involved just don't allow it.

Now imagine a toddler punching (or even striking with a knife or "shiv") against an armor clad knight. The idea that such an attack could even register statistically (in game terms) is absurd.

One way you could handle this: one way to handle this could be to treat the melee weapons bonus damage as opposing just the armor bonus provided to the target. If the weapon boonus by itself can penetrate the armor by itself. (no strength bonuses allowed for either roll) then the winner can add the bonus from his equipment (weapon or armor) against the base strength of the loser. In effect, one piece of equipment defeats the other, rendering it useless for that one attack.

May need some refinement and playtesting...

[DougRed4]

One thing to keep in mind is that multiple attackers, even ones not as strong as the defender, can be quite effective, at least in tying up that strong defender. I've personally seen (and been involved with) tactics like this with my job, which occasionally requires hand-to-hand combat.

I could see possibly changing things to where the attacker always has to have at least half the Strength of the defender, as I certainly agree with the toddler example. But knives and other sharp weapons can be deadly, even against somebody very strong.

[DougRed4]

I've/we've been using this for quite awhile now, and it has worked really well. At most it's given a few penalties (like at most -2D to a character who is attacked by numerous characters).

I've officially called it "Dazed" now.

Dazed Characters

Characters who are hit in combat, but who succeed on their Strength roll to resist damage, are considered to be dazed. A dazed character suffers a penalty of 1D to skill and attribute rolls for the rest of that round. A character hit multiple times in this fashion can be dazed twice (or more), but they are not “affected” beyond that. Being dazed does not count as being stunned, but it is cumulative with stunned results. It also does not apply to Brawling attacks where the defender’s Strength is double that of the attacker.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[atgxtg]

We might want to look at 1E here. It had a rule where if the defender's soak roll was twice the damage total, the attack did no damage. Otherwise it was a stun result. @E got rid of that.

[Leon The Lion]

[Seghast]

Ever since our last campaign went on hiatus, my group has been discussing getting together to revamp several aspects of the D6 system in order to simplify and make things more realistic. One of the biggies on the list of things to change is how to do with damage.

It's absolutely absurd for some characters to be so strong they can shrug off blaster bolts without even trying, sometimes even without armor. Where's the realism there? Even the big hulking guys you see at bodybuilding competitions will fall to a hail of bullets, regardless of their strength or size, so why should it be different for Star Wars?

What we've been discussing is body points, kind of like D20 does.

You have a Wookiee with 6D strength? That's great for lifting and brawling and the like, but it's not going to save him when soaking damage anymore.

The system we're leaning towards right now is that, at character creation, you will roll your strength (designate one die as the wild die, re-roll it if it comes up a six), add up the total, and then add an extra 25 to it for being a "heroic" character.

Using a dice roller I found on google, our theoretical Wookiee has 27 by the dice plus the extra 25 body points for a grand total of 52.

He has no armor, but with 6D strength, it's never been necessary before; puny stormtroopers and their puny blasters!

But now... Roll the damage for the Stormie's E-11 and he has a 17.

Our Wookiee is down to 35 body points. He's not dead, but he's actually hurt for once. Oh crap, stormtroopers are suddenly dangerous!

What we haven't decided on is how to handle armor under these rules:

A) The attacker could subtract a die or pip from his roll as needed.

B) The armor can have its own body points that attacks have to soak through first. Once they do, the armor is gone.

C) Say your armor grants you an extra one die of protection against the coming pain; you can roll a single wild die (reroll if a six, of course) and subtract the total from the incoming damage. Your armor stays with you and never gets destroyed and every attack has to go through this procedure.

The problem with this body point idea is that stormtroopers themselves become even more fragile than they usually are. Your typical stormtrooper has 2D strength and using the dice roller I found on google, the five members of this particular squad have really low body points (5, 4, 4, 5, and 7 respectively). A sneeze would kill them unless we apply a bonus similar to the +25 we gave the Wookiee.

Maybe a +10 or +15 bonus would be good for stormtroopers; combined with their health pool and their armor, that gives them the fortitude to stand up and probably take at least one good shot before they go down.

[garhkal]

You still have the bullet proof wookie issue even with going to body points, simply cause of their higher starting strength giving MORE body points.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Seghast]

[Naaman]

I had a player with a wookiee who was at gun point (hold out blaster) say, " I dont even bother dodging. Im charging straight in." He suffered an automatic critical hit and was incapacitated. If he's not going to roll, Im not going to either.

[DougRed4]

I'd forgotten that last session my players came up with a better solution for this, as it had turned out to (occasionally) be a bit of a problem. It all came down to who went first during initiative, as it could end up not hurting a character at all (being as it ended when their turn was done).

In other words, if the person just won initiative the following turn, they immediately lost all penalties incurred.

So the new fix is: instead of saying "for the rest of that round" it now reads "until the end of their next action", and that seems to do the trick (I think we did it last session, and for sure we used it tonight and it worked excellently).

So the reworded rule is now:

Dazed Characters
Characters who are hit in combat, but who succeed on their Strength roll to resist damage, are considered to be dazed. A dazed character suffers a penalty of 1D to skill and attribute rolls until the end of their next action. A character hit multiple times in this fashion can be dazed twice (or more), but they are not “affected” beyond that. Being dazed does not count as being stunned, but it is cumulative with stunned results. It also does not apply to Brawling attacks where the defender's Strength is double that of the attacker.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green