Quote:
Originally Posted by Azel
So... why not take certain Power modifiers (usually the negative ones for brawling) and just turn them into non-lethal damage modifiers. All the previous calculation of damage counts toward unconsciousness, so let's make non-lethal modifiers account for how much real Body HP loss is taken. Just do a running two-part tally, and it'll sort out fast. Throw in a faster non-lethal HP rate of recovery time, and work in its function w/ regards to a Str roll to wake up and things should be *much* easier.
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This is a very interesting idea, but I could never use it. For me, the issue with combat isn't that there's too much addition and subtraction, but that too much time is spent trying to keep track of different numbers. It only takes a moment to subtract one number from another; the tricky part is when everyone's chiming in to throw in different modifiers. Here's a paraphrased excerpt from the fight I ran this past Saturday:
"All right, you roll a check digit of 6, and the target rolls a check digit of 2 on dodging, so that's 4 damage.
"Oh, but there's a -3 modifier to punch damage."
"Also, but he has superhuman strength (because it's above 9), so he gets a +2 bonus."
"Also, don't forget that he has to add 2 because Corporeal Forces are added to rolls for close-range attacks."
"But isn't that just added to the target number, not the damage number?"
"Yes, but 4 Corporeal Forces puts his target number at 14, so the excess 2 is added directly to his check digit."
Were you keeping a running tally in your head as you read that? I certainly lost track of what the heck we were talking about by the end of that snippet of conversation. There's no way I could keep track of an additional separate running tally of damage for each character, let alone healing rates that take effect during a fight.
What I like about your idea, though, is the implication that the mechanics could be finessed to end more fights with knockouts or incapacitation rather than death. I think it would be nice if, along the way, we could make vessel level more crucial to character durability, and tighten the range of hits that it takes to bring down a character.
In my own fight scene, we had two people brought down in just a couple attacks because they had so few Body Hits that nearly every hit stunned them. I kindly left them stunned on the floor and sent the bad guys after the guy who had 50+ Body Hits and was actually posing a threat in hand-to-hand, as I didn't want to deal with two PCs in Trauma with a good portion of the game to go. I had to bring in an NPC with a powerful gun to help clear out the next room, as my PCs were doing all right against the 36-hit demons, but it was taking a while. I think I'd rather see it practically impossible to get Body Hits above 30, and/or see weapons deal a whole lot more damage. Mind you, this is all AFTER I had already house ruled that there was no Dodge skill; it's just an unmodified roll vs. Agility to dodge, as I wanted to increase the likelihood that beefy enemies would get hit so they wouldn't take forever to kill.