New File-Eventually Fatal Injuries

[Atgxtg]

I just uploaded a new file with rules to handle eventually fatal injuries in BRP. The option can be used with in in place of the normal Hit Point system.

[Nightshade]

I just uploaded a new file with rules to handle eventually fatal injuries in BRP. The option can be used with in in place of the normal Hit Point system.

I'll give it a look when I get a little time.

[Simlasa]

I'll have to run some test battles with this later today... it looks pretty straightforward and reasonable... though I think, in practice, it might slow things down just a tad, since I'm likely to use it in conjunction with HP and hit locations.

I didn't notice anything regarding multiple wounds... If I were using just the chart, without HP, how would the wounds add up?

[Nightshade]

I'll have to run some test battles with this later today... it looks pretty straightforward and reasonable... though I think, in practice, it might slow things down just a tad, since I'm likely to use it in conjunction with HP and hit locations.

I didn't notice anything regarding multiple wounds... If I were using just the chart, without HP, how would the wounds add up?

I suspect they don't; barring blood loss or some shock issues, wounds in the real world just don't operate in a cumulative way the way most game systems think they do. An injury to your arm doesn't make an injury to your torso any worse, in practice.

[Simlasa]

Would multiple wounds add up to decrease competence though? More distraction, more limited movement, more blood loss leading to more dizzyness?

[Atgxtg]

Would multiple wounds add up to decrease competence though? More distraction, more limited movement, more blood loss leading to more dizzyness?

Realistically, yes and no. In some ways multiple injuries offset each other. Sort of like the old joke about getting rid of a headache by slamming a hammer on your foot. Even blood loss works against itself somewhat. If a chest wound is putting you into shock, an inured limb isn't going to matter much.

As far as my idea goes, I suppose you could use the wound penalty as a modifier to any additional mortality rolls.

If you are using Hit points, then the loss of HPs will take care of itself. In fact, I7d serious consider kicking up the time increment by a factor of x5 or x10 with the HP option. I juet left it out to keep things simple.

BTW, the original idea for the STUN roll was much simpler. Luckx2, Luck roll, and Luck x1/2%

[punc_e]

I can't wait to try these in my game.

[Atgxtg]

I can't wait to try these in my game.

I hope you players don't know where I live.

[Questbird]

On 12/28/2007 at 5:55 AM, Atgxtg said:

I just uploaded a new file with rules to handle eventually fatal injuries in BRP. The option can be used with in in place of the normal Hit Point system.

 

I found this in my Downloads folder when I was cleaning it out. I like it! I wonder if I can combine it with my own hitpointless combat system, which uses the Resistance Table.

[Atgxtg]

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

I found this in my Downloads folder when I was cleaning it out. I like it!

Oh,m that's really old. I think I posted it before the BGB came out., back when everyone around here was all enthusiastic about the announcement and hoping that it would actually come out and not turn into vapor.

 

If I had seen the BGB first, I'd have used difficulty modfiers (easy x2 , hard x1/2, etc.) which were in my first draft, instead of the flat percentile modifiers..

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

 

I wonder if I can combine it with my own hitpointless combat system, which uses the Resistance Table.

Yeah, probably. If I recall correctly I was trying to introduce a hit pointless wounding system similar to what was used in BRTC's Timelords system which compares the ratio of damage taken to total hit points to determine how serious a wound is in a manner very similar to the resistance table. 

Since the resistance table relies upon the difference between damage and hit points rather than the ratio between the two, you might have a problem with light attacks having no effect as hit points increase. For instance a 13 point wound on a 52 HP elephant is in the 25% category (13/52=25%) where on the resistance table anything below 43 points of damage will get lumped together into the "automatic failure" range. If I were trying to offset that, I'd divide hit points into some sort of threshold, like 10% of hit points, or 25% of hit points and then compare damage taken to those threshold values.  So an elephant might have a 5/10/15/25/30/35/40/45/50 thresholds, or 1/13/26/39/52 thresholds depending on how graduated you want it to be. 

 

If you want any help or insight into what my warped brain was thinking when I wrote that stuff,  just let me know. 

 

Oh, and if it helps I have another method of handling opposed rolls and success levels that doesn't use the resistance table or the critical/special tables. While I was planning on using it for opposed skill rolls, it could also work as an opposed  wounding system.

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by Atgxtg

[Questbird]

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh,m that's really old. I think I posted it before the BGB came out., back when everyone around here was all enthusiastic about the announcement and hoping that it would actually come out and not turn into vapor.

 

If I had seen the BGB first, I'd have used difficulty modfiers (easy x2 , hard x1/2, etc.) which were in my first draft, instead of the flat percentile modifiers..

 

Yes I was mentally subbing in 'Easy' and 'Hard' rolls when I looked at your table.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, probably. If I recall correctly I was trying to introduce a hit pointless wounding system similar to what was used in BRTC's Timelords system which compares the ratio of damage taken to total hit points to determine how serious a wound is in a manner very similar to the resistance table. 

Since the resistance table relies upon the difference between damage and hit points rather than the ratio between the two, you might have a problem with light attacks having no effect as hit points increase. For instance a 13 point wound on a 52 HP elephant is in the 25% category (13/52=25%) where on the resistance table anything below 43 points of damage will get lumped together into the "automatic failure" range. If I were trying to offset that, I'd divide hit points into some sort of threshold, like 10% of hit points, or 25% of hit points and then compare damage taken to those threshold values.  So an elephant might have a 5/10/15/25/30/35/40/45/50 thresholds, or 1/13/26/39/52 thresholds depending on how graduated you want it to be. 

 

If you want any help or insight into what my warped brain was thinking when I wrote that stuff,  just let me know. 

 

Oh, and if it helps I have another method of handling opposed rolls and success levels that doesn't use the resistance table or the critical/special tables. While I was planning on using it for opposed skill rolls, it could also work as an opposed  wounding system.

 

 

My system, which I've playtested in Swords of Cydoria, was derived from the ideas in Fire and Sword. Ray Turney was saying that players don't track hitpoints properly so it's good just to have a roll to determine the essential outcome: Can I still fight?

My system:

Quote

When a combatant is wounded, instead of tracking hitpoints, the character makes a resistance roll of Resilience (avg of STR, CON, POW) vs. maximum weapon damage, after armour has been subtracted. If he fails, he is incapacitated for the rest of the fight. At the end of the fight the character will be in one of several wound states based on a CON check.

 

I also tried to incorporate the BGB rules for different types of weapons, to varying degrees of success (those rules seem to add clunkiness however they're applied).

In practice, my system had a few flaws.

1. Calculating Resilience was slightly different to standard HP (I did that so that it could slowly improve -- there's no POW limit for humans), though I just use HP for NPCs
2. Weapon and armour damage became max instead of rolled -- which does cut down on rolls but makes for one more change to the rules.
3. I couldn't think of a way of doing -- as in your system -- you are stunned, shocked, out-of-it temporarily. My 'temporary' was enough to knock you out of action until afterwards. Maybe failing 3 sequential damage resistance could mean 'permanently out of the fight'
4. It didn't work with huge creatures (as we previously discussed)

Apart from those I was OK with the system, which was very useful for a swords and blasters science-fantasy settting (in the real world, the blasters would tend to predominate).

[Atgxtg]

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

Yes I was mentally subbing in 'Easy' and 'Hard' rolls when I looked at your table.

I'll look to see if I can find the orginal version of the tables that used x1/2 and x2 multipliers instead of the modifiers. Ironically, it was a case of changing things to be more compatible with BRP, as it didn't use multipliers at the time. Then the BGB came out and introduced difficulty and aI kicked myself.

 

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

My system, which I've playtested in Swords of Cydoria, was derived from the ideas in Fire and Sword. Ray Turney was saying that players don't track hitpoints properly so it's good just to have a roll to determine the essential outcome: Can I still fight?

 

I beleive I've seen it, I'm just haven't looked at it in awhile.

 

 

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

I also tried to incorporate the BGB rules for different types of weapons, to varying degrees of success (those rules seem to add clunkiness however they're applied).

Yeah. I think they have a few bugs with them. If I were redoing them from the ground up, I'd probably do something like Pendragon where weapons get a bonus against certain types of armor.

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

In practice, my system had a few flaws.

1. Calculating Resilience was slightly different to standard HP (I did that so that it could slowly improve -- there's no POW limit for humans), though I just use HP for NPCs

 

1. Weapon and armour damage became max instead of rolled -- which does cut down on rolls but makes for one more change to the rules.

Yes, but it works out becuase the damage value is the number used in the opposed resistance roll, and not the actual damage inflicted or the effect suffered. 

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

1. I couldn't think of a way of doing -- as in your system -- you are stunned, shocked, out-of-it temporarily.

That mostly came from games like Timelords, CORPS and the James Bond RPG. I was frustrated that in most games, if an attack doesn't kill or disable someone, they can just continue on as if nothing happened. RQ is a bit better about that, thanks to hit locations, but people still shrug off gunshot wounds. In Bond, however, there is a Pain Resistance roll that a character must make whenever they get injured, and they can't act until they recover. There is a similar mechanic for stuns too, which allows people to beat each other up in fistfights without necessarily suffering serious injuries.

 

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

1.  
2.  
3.  
4. My 'temporary' was enough to knock you out of action until afterwards. Maybe failing 3 sequential damage resistance could mean 'permanently out of the fight'

Well, BRP didn't really have anthing to cover that sort of thing. It the reason why fistfights don't work out well in BRP. By the time somone is taken out of a fight, they have broken bones or some such.

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

1. It didn't work with huge creatures (as we previously discussed)

Yeah, because anthing ten points lower than the critter's hit points can be shrugged off. That's why a ratio of damage vs. total hit points probably works better. Timelords did that. Damage taken was compared total hit points to get the severity of the wound.

 

CORPS did something similar, and in a simpler, tidy way. Basically the damage taken determined the difficulty to remain conscious, the degree of impairment, and the leathery of the injury. Basically you'd roll a d10 against the damage, modified by hit location,  and if you rolled equal to or under the damage taken the wound was eventually fatal- meaning that the character would die from the wound over time, unless they received medical treatment, magical healing or some such. Head hits that made the roll by 3 points, and torso hits that make the roll by 5 were instantly fatal. CORPS handled larger creatures by giving them a multiplier to the damage taken. So, say a .44 magnum bullet that did 9 damage to an elephant would be multiplied by 0.2 and get round down to an eventually fatal chance of 1, or 2 for a head hit. 

Of coruse, in real life it's less about how much damage a wound inflicts, and more about what exactly got damaged. A two point hit through the eye is probably going to be more of a threat than a ten point hit to the pinky.

What you could try in your system could be to just double the damage for each success level. That way a 13 point bullet wound that gets a critical would be doubled to 26 and then again to 52, making it capable of dropping an elephant. Of course such a hit will take out any normal humanoid opponent, but that's to be expected, and really isn't all that different from what a critical hit would do in BRP.

 

13 hours ago, Questbird said:

Apart from those I was OK with the system, which was very useful for a swords and blasters science-fantasy settting (in the real world, the blasters would tend to predominate).

Yeah, as long as the values stayed under 25 or so everything would be fine. Most games are designed with a certain "sweet spot" in mind and the rules are optimized for that. RQ/BRP was really designed around humanoid characters with under 30 hit points, and works well for that, but gets a little wonky at higher values as everything doesn't scale proportionally. 

 

Anyway good luck.. If you want any help or feedback, just let me know.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Atgxtg

[Questbird]

On 2/7/2023 at 6:53 AM, Atgxtg said:

That mostly came from games like Timelords, CORPS and the James Bond RPG. I was frustrated that in most games, if an attack doesn't kill or disable someone, they can just continue on as if nothing happened. RQ is a bit better about that, thanks to hit locations, but people still shrug off gunshot wounds. In Bond, however, there is a Pain Resistance roll that a character must make whenever they get injured, and they can't act until they recover. There is a similar mechanic for stuns too, which allows people to beat each other up in fistfights without necessarily suffering serious injuries.

 

Well, BRP didn't really have anthing to cover that sort of thing. It the reason why fistfights don't work out well in BRP. By the time somone is taken out of a fight, they have broken bones or some such.

 

 

 

 

I'm thinking that maybe the 'can you fight or not?' question is maybe too essential. So here's an idea for the effect of the Resilience Roll which makes it a bit more nuanced while still not requiring hit point tracking.

When a combatant is wounded, instead of tracking hitpoints, the character makes a resistance roll of Resilience vs. maximum weapon damage, after armour has been subtracted.

Resilience roll result:

critical success :: the pain gives you focus: your next action is Easy
success :: you shrug off the wound
failure :: you are stunned by the pain and miss your next attack
special failure :: as above but the pain is intense: from now on actions in this combat are Hard
critical failure :: you are out of this fight, unable to perform any actions

'Special failure' can be hard to calculate, and also not in any players' interest to do so. You can substitute odd failure and even failure for the two types.

If you get a another 'stun' result while you are already 'stunned' then you treat it as a critical failure -- you are out of the fight.

 

On 2/7/2023 at 6:53 AM, Atgxtg said:

What you could try in your system could be to just double the damage for each success level. That way a 13 point bullet wound that gets a critical would be doubled to 26 and then again to 52, making it capable of dropping an elephant. Of course such a hit will take out any normal humanoid opponent, but that's to be expected, and really isn't all that different from what a critical hit would do in BRP.

 

Yeah, as long as the values stayed under 25 or so everything would be fine. Most games are designed with a certain "sweet spot" in mind and the rules are optimized for that. RQ/BRP was really designed around humanoid characters with under 30 hit points, and works well for that, but gets a little wonky at higher values as everything doesn't scale proportionally.

 

 

 

 

Currently I ended up on:

With a a critical attack it ignores armour; and the Resilience of the target is halved for this attack.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex (BRP pp.339-340) has Resilience of 34 ((CON 35 + SIZ 53 + POW 13)÷3), with 10 point hide, though I would halve this vs modern firearms

Time Soldier Joe shoots it with an assault rifle (BRP p.255), max damage 14

A normal hit would require a Resilience check of 34 vs (14-5)=9 which is a negligible chance of failure but the thing might be felled if it rolls a '00'*.

With a critical it would be 17 (ie. 34 halved) vs 14 --> a 65% chance of success for the creature to stay fighting -- still not great chances for Soldier Joe but them's the breaks when you fight a tyrannosaur by yourself.

OR

To try your suggestion, Resilence could be halved for a Special and a critical. That would mean:

A normal hit would be as above, a 125% chance of shrugging off those bullets

A special hit would halve the Resilience. The tyrannosaur would be rolling 17 (ie. 34 halved) vs (14-5)=9 --> a 90% chance of success for the creature to stay fighting

A critical would quarter the Resilience and ignore armour. The tyrannosaur would then be rolling 9 vs. 14 --> a 25% chance to ignore the injury

 

* in fact it has 125% chance of success, which translates to a 6% of being enraged and focused by the pain if you also use the Resilience roll results suggested above

Edited February 8, 2023 by Questbird

[Atgxtg]

12 hours ago, Questbird said:

I'm thinking that maybe the 'can you fight or not?' question is maybe too essential. So here's an idea for the effect of the Resilience Roll which makes it a bit more nuanced while still not requiring hit point tracking.

When a combatant is wounded, instead of tracking hitpoints, the character makes a resistance roll of Resilience vs. maximum weapon damage, after armour has been subtracted.

Resilience roll result:

critical success :: the pain gives you focus: your next action is Easy
success :: you shrug off the wound
failure :: you are stunned by the pain and miss your next attack
special failure :: as above but the pain is intense: from now on actions in this combat are Hard
critical failure :: you are out of this fight, unable to perform any actions

'Special failure' can be hard to calculate, and also not in any players' interest to do so. You can substitute odd failure and even failure for the two types.

Is this a one time thing or do you keep  rolling until you shrug off the pain? 

12 hours ago, Questbird said:

If you get a another 'stun' result while you are already 'stunned' then you treat it as a critical failure -- you are out of the fight.

How about you just increase the difficulty of the resilience roll instead? Otherwise I can see a plethora of double attack weapons (twin barreled stun guns).

12 hours ago, Questbird said:

 

Currently I ended up on:

With a a critical attack it ignores armour; and the Resilience of the target is halved for this attack.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex (BRP pp.339-340) has Resilience of 34 ((CON 35 + SIZ 53 + POW 13)÷3), with 10 point hide, though I would halve this vs modern firearms

Time Soldier Joe shoots it with an assault rifle (BRP p.255), max damage 14

A normal hit would require a Resilience check of 34 vs (14-5)=9 which is a negligible chance of failure but the thing might be felled if it rolls a '00'*.

With a critical it would be 17 (ie. 34 halved) vs 14 --> a 65% chance of success for the creature to stay fighting -- still not great chances for Soldier Joe but them's the breaks when you fight a tyrannosaur by yourself.

OR

To try your suggestion, Resilence could be halved for a Special and a critical. That would mean:

A normal hit would be as above, a 125% chance of shrugging off those bullets

A special hit would halve the Resilience. The tyrannosaur would be rolling 17 (ie. 34 halved) vs (14-5)=9 --> a 90% chance of success for the creature to stay fighting

A critical would quarter the Resilience and ignore armour. The tyrannosaur would then be rolling 9 vs. 14 --> a 25% chance to ignore the injury

 

* in fact it has 125% chance of success, which translates to a 6% of being enraged and focused by the pain if you also use the Resilience roll results suggested above

I  think it is easier/more intuitive to double the damage rather than halve the resilience.

For example Joe's assault rifle would do 14/28/56 damage, adjusted to 9/23/51 for neglible/neglible/automatic success for Joe.

Oh, and I suggest using the 5% minimum chance of success for something like this because we've all been stunned for a bit by a minor injury, bee sting or some such. I once hurt my back while rising out a pair of socks in the sink (I don't know how) and spent a few rounds on the floor checking out the dust bunnies under the tub. I was messed up for a good week, until a friend brought me to the Emergency Room and they gave me Valium. Then I spent 6 hours rolling around the hospital in a wheelchair with the brakes on. 

[Questbird]

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Is this a one time thing or do you keep  rolling until you shrug off the pain? 

 

You would make a separate roll each time you get hit. On a failure you get a 'stunned/unable to act' for one round and if it's a special failure then you make all rolls Hard until the end of the combat. Although if you roll a critical success on a future roll you get one Easy roll, then back to Hard. Basically if you roll 2 failures in a row from separate wounds, you are out of the combat.

 

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

How about you just increase the difficulty of the resilience roll instead? Otherwise I can see a plethora of double attack weapons (twin barreled stun guns).

I  think it is easier/more intuitive to double the damage rather than halve the resilience.

For example Joe's assault rifle would do 14/28/56 damage, adjusted to 9/23/51 for neglible/neglible/automatic success for Joe.

 

I did try the double damage idea first. I was only doubling on a critical (not special also) so it made no difference as you noted above

I had 14/28 damage for normal/critical which meant neglible/negligible chance for Soldier Joe to take down the T-Rex, which wasn't what I wanted. Halving the Resilience made much more difference than either doubling the damage or making the Resilience check Hard, though I agree it's less intuitive.

 

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, and I suggest using the 5% minimum chance of success for something like this because we've all been stunned for a bit by a minor injury, bee sting or some such. I once hurt my back while rising out a pair of socks in the sink (I don't know how) and spent a few rounds on the floor checking out the dust bunnies under the tub. I was messed up for a good week, until a friend brought me to the Emergency Room and they gave me Valium. Then I spent 6 hours rolling around the hospital in a wheelchair with the brakes on. 

 

For characters, I agree.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll test some simulation battles and reboot my hitpointless combat thread to make this idea easier to find.

[Mugen]

On 12/28/2007 at 5:57 AM, Atgxtg said:

Realistically, yes and no. In some ways multiple injuries offset each other. Sort of like the old joke about getting rid of a headache by slamming a hammer on your foot. Even blood loss works against itself somewhat. If a chest wound is putting you into shock, an inured limb isn't going to matter much.

Old French game Légendes handled this with a 4-level malus system (-25%, -50%, -75% and Incapacity) for physical impairments.

If you suffered from more than one physical problem (a wound and exhaustion, for instance), a quick table told you what your "effective malus" was.

I don't remember the actual numbers, but a -25% over a -50% certainly resulted in a -50%, whereas two -50% certainly resulted in a -75%.

[Atgxtg]

12 hours ago, Mugen said:

Old French game Légendes handled this with a 4-level malus system (-25%, -50%, -75% and Incapacity) for physical impairments.

If you suffered from more than one physical problem (a wound and exhaustion, for instance), a quick table told you what your "effective malus" was.

I don't remember the actual numbers, but a -25% over a -50% certainly resulted in a -50%, whereas two -50% certainly resulted in a -75%.

A few other games do similar things. The James Bond game has a series of would levels, namely Light Wound, Medium Wound, Heavy Wound, Incapacitated, and Killed. But they do not add up entirely linearly. You can't be killed by a series of light wounds, for instace.

EABA is another example. Basically for every die you lose from wounds you get a die of "armor" to reflect the fact that it will take progressively more serious injuries to actually make a difference. 

It's a stand against the ridiculousness of killing someone who is heavily battered with a 1 point foot injury.

[Atgxtg]

17 hours ago, Questbird said:

You would make a separate roll each time you get hit. On a failure you get a 'stunned/unable to act' for one round and if it's a special failure then you make all rolls Hard until the end of the combat. Although if you roll a critical success on a future roll you get one Easy roll, then back to Hard. Basically if you roll 2 failures in a row from separate wounds, you are out of the combat.

Okay, for one round, that's what I wasn't sure about. In some systems the character remains stunned until they make the roll. 

17 hours ago, Questbird said:

 

I did try the double damage idea first. I was only doubling on a critical (not special also) so it made no difference as you noted above

I had 14/28 damage for normal/critical which meant neglible/negligible chance for Soldier Joe to take down the T-Rex, which wasn't what I wanted. Halving the Resilience made much more difference than either doubling the damage or making the Resilience check Hard, though I agree it's less intuitive.

Hmm, that doesn't sound right mathematically.

14/28/56 (9/23/51 after armor) vs 34(39) shouldn't be worse that 14 (9) vs 9/17/34.

Doing the math I get 0%/0%/110% vs. 0%/10%/50%

17 hours ago, Questbird said:

For characters, I agree.

It's not an issue for characters, unless they are giants. It is an issue for high hit point creatures.

Basically the resistance table's automatic success was designed for situations such as a tug of war when one side so clearly outmatched the other that the really inst a contest. Like say a contest of strength between a grown man and a field mouse, or a half dozen adventures against a dragon.

 

But injury is something different. It's not as much about how much damage one takes, but how imporant the bits that got damaged are. Getting your throat cut might only be a 2 point injury. So I think the minimum success should probably apply for damage. In real life you can kill an elephant with a .22 pistol. 

Oh, and another thing you might want is the eventually fatal idea. Naemy it's possibly to inflict a wound that will eventually kill theopponent, but might not take them out of the fight. This happens a lot with hunting. THe animal takes a mortal wound, but runs off for a half an hour before dropping.

 

 

17 hours ago, Questbird said:

Thanks for the suggestions.

Sharing ideas is what that's what forums like this are for.

17 hours ago, Questbird said:

I'll test some simulation battles and reboot my hitpointless combat thread to make this idea easier to find.

Yeah, test it. Then post it. The testing tends to find most of the bugs, but posting it means more sets of eyes, and a better chance to spot something that you overlooked. 

[Mugen]

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

A few other games do similar things. The James Bond game has a series of would levels, namely Light Wound, Medium Wound, Heavy Wound, Incapacitated, and Killed. But they do not add up entirely linearly. You can't be killed by a series of light wounds, for instace.

EABA is another example. Basically for every die you lose from wounds you get a die of "armor" to reflect the fact that it will take progressively more serious injuries to actually make a difference. 

It's a stand against the ridiculousness of killing someone who is heavily battered with a 1 point foot injury.

Légendes Health system is not a wound system like in Star Wars.

The game has a Health track, a Stamina track and a Wounds system, similar to RoleMaster, but with a random Hit location system. Old age can also put such conditions on your attributes.

Each of these 4 sources can give you a malus, and you have to "dynamically" determine what malus you use.

IIRC, some wounds also reduce your maximum Health.

It's a rather old system (1983), influenced by RuneQuest and other games that were popular back then.

[Atgxtg]

Sounds interesting. I'm not familiar with it- probably because it is French.

So when you say ."you have to "dynamically" determine what malus you use" do you mean that the GM picked something like a broken arm or sprained wrist to reflect the malus, or that the player did, or that it was determined by a roll on a table?

[Mugen]

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Sounds interesting. I'm not familiar with it- probably because it is French.

Well, most French speaking players are not familiar with this game either. Essentially because it's old, horribly complex and was not really successful.

And perhaps because people thought it was about playing in strict historical settings, whereas the game really is about playing in real-world myths. Unfortunately, only two versions were published : a celtic one, and an arabic one.

A second edition was published a few years later, with 3 settings (Celtic, Egyptian and Arthurian), but with a much more simple system, which doesn't include the rules I'm describing here. The Celtic version of that second edition was translated in English, but without much success. 

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

So when you say ."you have to "dynamically" determine what malus you use" do you mean that the GM picked something like a broken arm or sprained wrist to reflect the malus, or that the player did, or that it was determined by a roll on a table?

The "table" I'm speaking about is 3x3 and the "dynamic" part is where you cross-index 2 maluses from different sources on it to find which "effective malus" you must apply.

The wound tables are really a mix of RoleMaster and RuneQuest.

-you first roll on a hit location table to determine which part of the body was hit. The table is more complex than RQ, and use a d100.

-then, you determine on a table the amount of damage you cause, depending on your Strength and the Margin of Success of the attack.

-then, you subtract armor (which depends on the kind of armor worn and the kind of weapon used)

-then, depending on the damage inflicted, you can get a criticity level between I and V (roman numbers, of course). Low damage only reduce Health track.

-then, you roll on a table to determine the exact effect of the wound, depending on the criticity level.

The results on the severity table really look like what you see in RM.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Mugen

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, Mugen said:

Well, most French speaking players are not familiar with this game either. Essentially because it's old, horribly complex and was not really successful.

Quelle Domage. There are a lot of old, unsuccessful games in English, of various complexity to join it. Kabal for instance. I had to run that with a calculator.

6 hours ago, Mugen said:

And perhaps because people thought it was about playing in strict historical settings, whereas the game really is about playing in real-world myths. Unfortunately, only two versions were published : a celtic one, and an arabic one.

A second edition was published a few years later, with 3 settings (Celtic, Egyptian and Arthurian), but with a much more simple system, which doesn't include the rules I'm describing here. The Celtic version of that second edition was translated in English, but without much success. 

The "table" I'm speaking about is 3x3 and the "dynamic" part is where you cross-index 2 maluses from different sources on it to find which "effective malus" you must apply.

The wound tables are really a mix of RoleMaster and RuneQuest.

-you first roll on a hit location table to determine which part of the body was hit. The table is more complex than RQ, and use a d100.

-then, you determine on a table the amount of damage you cause, depending on your Strength and the Margin of Success of the attack.

-then, you subtract armor (which depends on the kind of armor worn and the kind of weapon used)

-then, depending on the damage inflicted, you can get a criticity level between I and V (roman numbers, of course). Low damage only reduce Health track.

-then, you roll on a table to determine the exact effect of the wound, depending on the criticity level.

The results on the severity table really look like what you see in RM.

Yeah, sounds a lot like RollRoleMaster. Lots of rolls on tables to determine anything in combat.

 

It also reminds me of the MARS system. It was basically a D100 type of system that used rather extensive hit location tables that detailed the injury right down to which organs were damaged. I was not a bit fan of instant kills on hit location tables, but the one in MARS involved damaged every major organ in the chest (heart, lungs, kidneys,etc.) and a severed aorta so it was one I had a hard time arguing against. I mean you probably hope you die instantly from that.

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Kabal for instance.

wow, DARLENE did the cover for that, how cool

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

wow, DARLENE did the cover for that, how cool

Nice cover too, although the digest format didn't do it justice. 

The game was somewhat math heavy but have a few novel ideas, such as the one second combat rounds and being able to roll attacks on warriors based on their level (i.e. you rolled to hit a 3rd level warrior every 3 seconds, a 4th level warrior every 4 seconds and so on.) with spells taking multiple seconds (rounds) to cast.  I still remember a tense battle where the warriors had to hold off something long enough for the wizard to get a spell off. If I recall correctly the fact that the PCs had just reached second level and that slowed down the damage (attacked every other second) just enough for the wizard to be able to get off the spell.