Some thoughts on modelling damage, trauma and injury

[TheVaultDweller]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

And if you don't like the details, try Condition-Based Grappling using Control Points.

I'm definetly going to use that, at the minimum, yeah!

I really like the technical grappling stuff, and I want to use at least SOME of it. The whole CP attack/defence thing is a given. What gets complicated really fast is keeping track of who's grabbing what with each limbs. The constant shifting effective ST is a bear. How many CP's there are in each body part and in total. That kinda thing. It's not difficult per se, it's just a lot of bookkeeping.

Let's picture a scene here. Our armored hero is surrounded by a pack of pesky kobolds. They start to grab him whenever they could. Some go for the arms, some for the legs, some for the torso. Some of those are grabbing with both arms. The one who grabbed his left leg is using all four limps. At least a couple of the kobols are trying to stab him while holding on with their left hands. That sort of thing makes me cringe about using your whole suit of rules ;)

[TheVaultDweller]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Go with Armor as Dice here. There should still be some randomness involved (no armor gives exactly the same protection from every angle), however, so you may want to work that out.

As I said, I'm fine with a variability within the 20%-25% range for armor penetration. Weird effects are best handled by crit table, IMO.

What would be perfect would be a mostly predicatable armor penetration, but a highly variable INJURY model. That would be the gold standard. Have no idea how to achieve it :)

If your "blunt trauma" idea from that post you linked above works like I think it does, it's a very, very elegant solution and I might end up just ripping you off on that :)

Originally Posted by Varyon

Subdual damage is probably a myth, but incorporating it with the Semi-Cumulative Wounding system should be doable. Subdual wounds would be just as likely to incapacitate or temporarily cripple, but would be unable (or simply far less likely) to kill or permanently cripple.

As I said above, to a certain extant, "subdual damage" exists. Not as in, you can safely get beaten and will only make you pass out. But it is the most survivable form of injury, the one with the least potential complication and the one more easily healed. It's a continuum, but, like I said, it's actually quite hard to kill a adult human with your barehands without either choking them or bashing their heads against a hard surface.

Originally Posted by Varyon

As noted by Tomsdad, Partial Injuries (MA136) has this bit covered.

Meh, I think that's too mild, frankly. 2xHT before it even starts to be a issue. The modifiers only enter into play if you use the limb. There's no rule for crippled members doing anything more then "you can't use said limb anymore". Like I said, let me get a hammer and whack your left hand with it really hard and let's see if your overall performance isn't degraded. Granted, being on a life-and-death situation will atenuate it somewhat, but I don't think it would do completely.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

I'm definetly going to use that, at the minimum, yeah!

I really like the technical grappling stuff, and I want to use at least SOME of it. The whole CP attack/defence thing is a given. What gets complicated really fast is keeping track of who's grabbing what with each limbs. The constant shifting effective ST is a bear. How many CP's there are in each body part and in total. That kinda thing. It's not difficult per se, it's just a lot of bookkeeping.

Let's picture a scene here. Our armored hero is surrounded by a pack of pesky kobolds. They start to grab him whenever they could. Some go for the arms, some for the legs, some for the torso. Some of those are grabbing with both arms. The one who grabbed his left leg is using all four limps. At least a couple of the kobols are trying to stab him while holding on with their left hands. That sort of thing makes me cringe about using your whole suit of rules ;)

While I enjoy the thought experiment, I'm going to demur on responding in this thread so as not to derail.

Let me just close by saying "I hear you, I somewhat agree, and there's a solution . . . "

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

What would be perfect would be a mostly predicatable armor penetration, but a highly variable INJURY model. That would be the gold standard. Have no idea how to achieve it :)

Armor Revisited, from Pyr #3/34, has a few building blocks for you if you haven't already leveraged the concepts.

[TheVaultDweller]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Armor Revisited, from Pyr #3/34, has a few building blocks for you if you haven't already leveraged the concepts.

Oh, cool, I haven't read that. I only have a few issues of Pyramid. Need to put that in my shopping list.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

The -2 for the boxing gloves would only counter the +2 you gain from having Boxing skill at DX+2.

With boxers of that skill, yes, but it will just take 2 away from total damage for everyone else. (as a point of reference a ST10 person is now doing 1d-5 with punch)

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

If you stat heavy-weight boxer champions to have something like Striking ST 16, which is not unreasonable at all and arguably low for some of them, it's quite clear that all boxing matchs would end up in the first couple rounds, with one of the boxers either knocked out or seriously injuried/dead.

That's certainly true, but Striking ST16 is v.high (IMO) however if anyone would have it a boxing ring it would be professional super heavyweights. Of course they probably also have hard to subdue, high pain tolerance and a high HT as well as partial compensation.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

So, yes, RAW is not a good simulation of a boxing match, but we all know that already. What I'm pointing out is that the boxing match is just a extreme case of a fist-fight, and I think GURPS is also a poor simulation of those, as well, though to a smaller extent. Much better then most other RPG's, but could be better.

I think this is what's partly causing the problem. It's not really, 12x 3 minutes rounds between two evenly matched opponents is a very long way from a real fist fight. I think GURPS sacrifices an ability to model a super heavyweight bout in order to do better at a real street fight here. You must have seen some real fights. They are generally scrappy quick* affairs, with few really telling blows landing, and the ones that do quickly deciding the outcome. Skill, experience, numbers and desire to actually seriously hurt all acting as force multipliers.

Honestly if was to actually do GURPS: Boxing I'd make Boxing gloves transform the first 4hps of damage into AP and only after that have HP damage. (this is of the top of my head)

*once the mouths stop flapping and the fists fly anyway

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

I think is has been clearly demonstrated in the forums that ST-based damage (bows, melee weapons and unarmed combat) is very, very overpowered compared to firearms. The issue isn't so much overpowered injury (though there's some of that, specially with unarmored attacks), but overpowered penetration. With sword figthing between unarmored opponents, it's arguably close to reality, but it significantly overestimates the effectiviness of handheld weapons against armor.

Well again that will depend on what your set up is, (but again this will be about what's a realistic ST, and we have plenty of those threads) suffice to say that for me the majority of hand held weapons are doing damage less than a 9mm pistol round, and nothing is doing anything like a rifle round.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Realistically, there should be zero chance of a sword cut doing ANYTHING against decent plate armor, and possibly also against a good suit of maille. No matter the force you applied. You would bend or break the sword before it did significant damage to the plate. You might cause some blunt trauma to the armored person behind the plate with it, though swords are very poor instruments for that, being light and having most of the weight close to the hand, but that's pretty much it.

I agree (but see above) for me GURPS quite ability demonstrates that someone with a reasonable ST is far better of with a mace than a sword for relying on cr damage transmitted through armour for precisely those reasons.

Basically at my table, ct weapons are almost never doing ct damage through armour. But I run for want of a better term a "low St" campaign.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Anyway, this all comes from medieval fantasy expectations of heroes in mail and plate and carrying swords. If the basic rules made a person wearing chainmail basically immune to sword cuts, a LOT of people would cry foul. Since I'm not one of those people, I'm going to house-rule it :)

Immune is big word, but there are a couple of ways to go about limiting High St hand held powered weapons against armour.

1). Layer you armour. (layered armour existed it wasn't aimed at stopping swords, but again you get into what side of the question is realistic here)

2). thicken your armour (there's a pyramid article that allows you build your own armour, you'll end up possibly with thicker than historical armour, but again which is the unrealistic bit here).

3). If you are running a campaign where ST are 'high' and armour is routinely penetrated give all hand powered weapons an AD(0.5). However I wouldn't given 0DR bare skin a DR of 1 in this instance.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

The thing is, most of the variation should be in actual injury effect. People are very complicated squishy things that are, for the most part, very fragile, and yet surprisingly tough on occasion (there has been a few well documented cases of people surviving falling from an airplane without a parachute). Penetration of armor is a very precise thing, though, even on "field conditions". A certain margin of error, yes, to account for a weird angle, a "shot trap" or something like that. Let's say, 20%, but no more then that.

True but there are lots of factors that effect that precise calculation. Either way it's only really an issue for attacks with lots of dice. So I'd suggest looking at the various solutions in Pyramid

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Most of the variation in penetration in a real world situation would be a all or nothing case, which is difficult to model precisely (maybe a crit strike?). Let's say you're wearing a full on army ballistic vest with trauma plates. That's a DR 12 against bullets, plus 23 DR from the trauma plate. I shoot with you with a .357 magnum revolver (3d). If I hit the trauma plate, you're good, which is also realistic. But, if I hit anywhere else there's a not inconsequent chance of my shot penetrating your armor, although with greatly reduced effectiviness. That shouldn't be possible. These armors are proofed against handgun cartridges, as in, they should NEVER be penetrated by a shot of that cartridge unless degraded (by having been shot before, for example).

You have to be careful there, proofed as in factory tested, doesn't normally mean 'never' More over 'never' in test situations and 'never' in combat situations are two different things. And also don't forget that it's the end result that matter here. DR10 vs 12 damage might not have been completely proofed against the hit, but it turned a serious wound into a minor one. I.e the armour hasn't 100% protected you, but it has done it's job.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

What could realistically happen in a combat situation is that, due to your movements the armor could "rise up" a bit and I could land a shot on your low abdomen. Or I could get lucky and hit you in the armpit. Or I could aim to your torso and miss by a couple inches up and end up hitting you in the lower neck. Whatever. In these cases, though, the shot should basically ignore the armor. Penetration is much more a business of "all or nothing" then the RAW states. This ends up getting even more pronounced with rifle ammo, in which you're throwing 6-7d.

That would be modelled by partial coverage and aiming at gaps, but the armour not being there is not the only variable here when it comes to attacks vs. armour.

Also its all or nothing as in did it penetrate, not all or nothing as in did all the damage penetrate.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

INJURY is a different thing, like I said before. I'm all for having a great randomness built into injury. Some people survive being shot 6-8 times in the chest at close range with 9mm guns. Without vests. If I'm not mistaken the world record for ligthing bolt strikes was a guy who was struck over a dozen times during his lifetime ans still survived. There's all sort of freakish things that can happen. But penetration of plate armor by human-powered hand weapons, or penetration of balistic vests by handguns should be more predictable. The freak hits that bypass the armor can be acomplished by tweaking the crit table.

Yep I definitely agree with the general principle that injury/result should be variable than armour penetration. And there are lots of variables in deciding the effect of hits in gurps so I think your covered well in GURPS for that.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Oh, cool, I haven't read that. I only have a few issues of Pyramid. Need to put that in my shopping list.

Yep that's the article I was thinking of.

Sorry you replied to other points, I'll try and reply to that later (have to go to work now, boo!)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

I like your idea, but I don't want to add another stat to keep track of.

If you're going with a semi-cumulative wounding system, the Basic Set's bleeding rules won't really work, because you don't have a pool of HP to deplete. Luke uses FP for this, I created a BP pool instead.

Of course, if you'd like to ignore bleeding from a mechanical standpoint, that works just fine as well.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

There are mechanical differences between being knocked out cold and being in a lot of pain that I think are important.

Do note the former only happens when you fail a Knockdown/Stunning check by 5 or more. Stunning rarely lasts much beyond a second or two, and its primary effect is probably making you drop whatever you're holding and fall prone.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

I think a 10 fold increase actually pushes the granularity too far in the other extreme. I'm thinking on a flat doubling of HP. A normal human would have 20HP and most fights would be resolves within a 40-point range, possibly going to 80-100 on the extreme cases. That ought to be enough resolution.

You note later that you don't want to have to deal with fractional dice if using Douglas Cole's damage tables. Doubling will only prevent fractional dice that are less than 1 (and only if you have nobody with ST less than 10) - ST 12 will still be 1.2d thr / 2.4d sw. A 10 fold increase will avoid this (although you'll still probably have a few fractional dice sneaking in if you use my suggestion for handling adds).

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Actually, one of the things that led me to start posting this here as a way to organize my thoughts was that article. I've read it and it intrigued me. I really like some of the stuff he does there. I'm still on the fence about it because I'm afraid it will add to much to the bookkeeping during the game, but I might adopt a simplified version of it.

For PC's, I suggest making cards that have places for the number of wounds for each location and a list of the thresholds for each wound category (for completion, you'll want to simplify the special effects of each category and list those to the side). For NPC's, just write down the thresholds on a piece of paper and write down each wound they receive.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Your (and DouglasCole's) aproach of taking the fractional dice, adding a multiplier then figuring out the damage, including the use of fractional dice, is definetly the more comprehensive aproach, but, like I said, I'm afraid it's going to bog down on actual play. Ideally, I would want a simpler system that kept as much of the nuance as possible, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet. Maybe I should just build a excel script to handle this... though I don't always like to GM with a computer on the table.

A spreadsheet would make it easier, sure, but what I'd do is, well, what I suggest in the thread - record what bonus each adds corresponds to for your character, then use the breakpoints I list there - .15d is +1, .5d is +2, .7d is +1d-1, .9d is +1d. You may want to write down the damage for typical combat options for each character if you think working out +3 sw for ST 12 might bog things down too much (doubled, that's going to be 2.4d + 3*0.24d = 3.12d = 3d).

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

As I said, I'm fine with a variability within the 20%-25% range for armor penetration. Weird effects are best handled by crit table, IMO.

If you want around 20% variability, I'd suggest using Armor as Dice for 80% of the DR and the current system for the other 20%. Something like 5d armor (~DR 18) would thus be 4d + DR 4 - against a 5d rifle, that reduces things to 1d vs DR 4. As Doug notes, this option and several others are available in Pyramid #3/34.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

What would be perfect would be a mostly predicatable armor penetration, but a highly variable INJURY model. That would be the gold standard. Have no idea how to achieve it :)

One thing I suggest in that thread, and which I mercilessly pilfered from Luke, is to only ever roll 1d for damage. With Armor as Dice in play, you'll only ever roll injury, and that will give you a high degree of variability. Luke also has some rules for variable blowthrough that you could also incorporate - see here.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

As I said above, to a certain extant, "subdual damage" exists. Not as in, you can safely get beaten and will only make you pass out. But it is the most survivable form of injury, the one with the least potential complication and the one more easily healed. It's a continuum, but, like I said, it's actually quite hard to kill a adult human with your barehands without either choking them or bashing their heads against a hard surface.

It's debatable how much better it is to be struck by crushing than cutting and similar damage (notably, Miyamoto Musashi is claimed to have espoused a belief that the internal bleeding, bruised organs, broken bones, and so forth that result from using blunt weapons was preferable to the clean cuts of edged weapons). I think one of the big reasons, in GURPS terms, why crushing is typically safer is that it tends to do less injury per hit (so you're less likely to reach a death check threshold before you pass out), doesn't cause (as much) bleeding, and may be a bit less prone to infection.

Also, I think most fistfights end before anyone's actually making consciousness checks - they fall down due to knockback, knockdown/stunning, and so forth, and decide it's probably in their best interest not to get back up and keep fighting. Knocking someone out pretty much requires a concussion, and those are pretty serious.

Originally Posted by TheVaultDweller

Meh, I think that's too mild, frankly. 2xHT before it even starts to be a issue. The modifiers only enter into play if you use the limb. There's no rule for crippled members doing anything more then "you can't use said limb anymore". Like I said, let me get a hammer and whack your left hand with it really hard and let's see if your overall performance isn't degraded. Granted, being on a life-and-death situation will atenuate it somewhat, but I don't think it would do completely.

Adrenaline can let you get away with some pretty crazy stuff, honestly. Of course, it might be appropriate to halve the penalties if not using the limb in question, and apply it normally if you are (the Torso is used for pretty much everything, so its penalty would always be in play).

If you're using Luke's wounding system, of course, many wounds do cause Pain, which addresses this issue nicely.