Alternate Damage System: Wound Points

[cheshire]

[Grimace]

Well, I'm going to be one who goes against what most are saying.

What you're proposing will work, but you would need to tweak it. How do I know it will work? I ran a 2+ year long campaign in D6 where the character had Health of STR roll +20.

They took damage when the damage roll exceeded the resitance +armor roll. The more damage they took, the effects of wounds started to add up.

Just don't use negatives. Going negative is not a good idea, as it's completely counter-intuitive to D6. Use percentages for the wound levels.

So lose 10% of the Health, you're just scratched, beat up...no other effect.
Lose 25% of the Health, you're Wounded.
Lose 50% of the Health and you're Badly Wounded (Wounded Twice)
Lose 75% of the Health and you're Incapacitated
Lose 90% of the Health and you're Mortally Wounded.
Lose all of the Health and you're Dead.

If you don't mind the tiny bit extra bookkeeping, it works.

[bobenhotep]

star wars has a kinda wonky damage system. but i dont think it needs fixed too much. i use an alternate hit location table someone might want to steal though. i imported it wholesale from my cyberpunk game. i allow characters to spend a CP to reroll a hit location roll (on themselves when hit, not when they shoot bad guys).

roll 2d

2-head [1 in 36]
3-lower left leg[2 in 36]
4- left arm[3 in 36]
5-upper left leg [4 in 36]
6,7,8-torso [16 in 36]
9-upper right leg [4 in 36]
10- right arm [3 in 36]
11-lower right leg [2 in 36]
12-equipment hit (normally what is in the character's hands) [ 1 in 36]
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D&D 5e DM and WEG Star Wars GM for two kids who will hopefully carry on with RPGs for years to come

The Chijawa said so, that's why.

[ZzaphodD]

I find our slightly modified SW wound system lethal enough..

-Players cant use character points for anything other than raising skills/abilies.

-The 'wild die' has been removed from damage and strength rolls.

-I have a 'bruised' result at -1 to 0 result. A 'bruised' means you have -1D to your next action (only) and also a -1 penalty to your next Strength roll to resist damage (or until you recieve medical attention).

-When 'Stunne', in addition to the normal rules, the character also suffers a -1 penalty to his next Strength roll to resist damage.

[garhkal]

[schnarre]

...I am among the many opposed to a Hit Point system for use in Star Wars (aside from being grossly unrealistic & lacking the feel of the movies, it also smacks of D&D in space). The randomness of the D6 system is part of what makes it challenging. Combat is deadly--it's supposed to be--& a hit point system doesn't really reflect this.


...Among the D20 advocates (*throws curses upon the lot*) the arguments in favor of it usually reflect on a Wookiee being immune to small arms fire, & that a character only having to spend CPs to get through what ought to be lethal. I'll take these from the bottom up:

...Even though the amount of CPs that can be spent for resisting damage is limited, I find the notion of it cheap. Instead, I don't permit CPs to be expended for this: the players must buy up their stats & skills, as well as whatever equipment they might be using. The sight of characters with mediocre abilities but loads of CPs doesn't capture the heroic feel. However, for the benefit of those that want something like it available, I created what I call "Adventure Points": available at a cost of 10 CP each--making it more of a drawing upon inner strength. That said, it can boil down to priorities of whether to improve or simply bank CPs.

...In the case of Wookiees being immune to small arms fire, it may appear so when you consider the dice codes. Modifying & jury-rigging for extra damage makes even a Sporting Blaster capable of taking such a big opponent down. Another option is the "Degree of Success on Damage" optional rule.

...I myself made combat even more lethal by adding a random hit chart (borrowed from the old Legionnaire RPG, from FASA's Renegade Legion setting). With modification to a D6 system from a D10 system it came out like this:

(ROLL 4D6)
4-5= Head (triple damage)
6-7= Upper torso (double damage)
8-9= Upper left limb(s)
10-11= Lower left limb(s)
12-13= Lower torso
14-15= Lower right limb(s)
16-17= Upper right limb(s)
18-19=Upper torso (double damage)
19-20= Head (triple damage)
21-24= Reroll

...not perfect, but suits my needs well enough. With this, a head shot from even a Hold-out Blaster becomes nasty! I use the damage roll multiplied (doubled, or tripled) for the final tally. Sometimes I let the players roll the dice themselves (love to watch 'em sweat!
).

...In any case, D6 offers enough to keep the combat & non-combat PCs heads down during a firefight!
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The man who thinks he knows everything is most annoying for those of us that do.

[Yak Face]

...In the case of Wookiees being immune to small arms fire, it may appear so when you consider the dice codes. Modifying & jury-rigging for extra damage makes even a Sporting Blaster capable of taking such a big opponent down. Another option is the "Degree of Success on Damage" optional rule.

The use of modified/rigged weapons is a good tool for the GM to use to overcome the strongest party member, but to me it is a sacrifice of realism that goes against my style of play. I like to keep the obstacles as realistic to the situation as possible, and if my players outsmart me, so be it. Heavily modified blasters just won't be that common, in my view. I like the "degree of success on damage" that you show - but there the opposite problem is the increased mortal risk to regular players (though I don't mind that as much - combat in real life is pretty deadly).

I am not yet eager to throw in my lot with the hit point system, but the fact is that you can engineer a nearly invulnerable character. For example, a player in my campaign recently set up a max-strength (6D) wookie with body armor, for 7D damage resistance vs. energy, 8D vs. physical. I have yet to see a blaster rifle shot flukey enough to overcome that extra 2D, and I can't have an E-web waiting around every corner or handily whipped out during every bar fight.

A more extreme example is the rancor monster. You can blast at it all day with a blaster rifle and basically just tickle it. Whereas when Han let fly with his heavy blaster pistol at the Mos Eisley space port, he was blowing hunks out of concrete with it.

Hit points are not a terrible idea, in my view, but finding a system that provides any realism is tough. If it were up to me, damage resistance in the D6 style would be based on a separate attribute from Strength - something more like a "Toughness." That would allow normalization of damage resistance across species that had very different levels of strength. In order to compensate for size and the ability to soak up more pin pricks from smaller enemies, I would dole out extra wounds based on size. A wookie might get 3 "wounds", and a rancor monster 10, just for a crude example. These are just rough ideas, but I think we can all agree that D6 combat damage is problematic in more ways than one. Another example of a problem is that medpack use is an action - rather than a 5 - 10 minute process. If you've got a guy with a blaster burn, maybe a round is all you need to slap on a bandage and inject pain killers. But if your buddy just got a slugthrower-bullet through his spleen, that takes a lot more time to address in order to get him ambulatory again.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill

[ZzaphodD]

I feel that adding 'hit points' will make it very non-star wars-ish at least for us.

Two exceptions. Very large monsters and very large ships. The damage ruels as is stop working when there are large differences in size within the same 'scale'. Exaples are Krayt Dragons/Rancors vs characters and Star Destroyers compared to Corellian Corvettes.

[remo moxey]

Honestly.............Use the gamemasters screen. That's what it's there for. So you can flub NPC's rolls.

D6 works better BECAUSE of the fact your PC can die at any time. PC's don't even have to die, a good one shot incap makes most people try to see if there's a better way that gang rushing that e-web.

[Revenant]

I had a similar issue when teaching my group to play D6SW. So I gave them a 'training wheels' option. It went like this:

They could take 2 stuns for every 1D of Strength (dice penalty still applied though!).

They had Wounded Once and Wounded Twice as well, but could also withstand 1 additional 'Wound' for each 1D of Strength they possessed.

This kept them alive rather easily, since Incap was simply changed into 'Wounded Thrice' and killing in a single shot was no longer possible unless they were already pretty well injured.

There was one caveat... these were training wheels. Once they grasped the system, got their feet wet and learned how to make use of some of the options for staying alive in combat, then the dog was off the leash and the wheels came off.

I'm not opposed to making thing 'easy' for new players, but I always let them know that it's only temporary and eventually they will need to learn to adapt to a faster paced combat that is more deadly.

Thus far, this method has worked very well for me and my group.
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"Told you, we did. Warned you, we tried. Now screwed, we all are... way to go Kenobi." - Jedi Master Yoda

"The boy is plain dagnasty evil!" - Obi-Wan Kenobi