Making combat less lethal.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Make forced retreats automatic.

You mean, if you get hit you must step back? Will that make us wonder why we can't step back if we haven't been hit?

[hcobb]

When you get a Stun result in combat, pass a 2/ST roll or pass out?

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

A wider range for unconsciousness without medical intervention does make for more roleplaying opportunities, if done right. This may be worth adding a bit more complexity.

As it is, for every point of fatigue past 0, I see someone recovering from at 1 ST per 15 minutes. That is not a bad model and some say you get an hour to recover from dead, so up to -4 ST from fatigue looks to be a natural line to copy.

So, let's say anything from ST 0 to ST -4 is the unconscious zone. At -5 you have an hour to restore them to the uncon zone. At -ST, there is no recovery.

The question then becomes with damage (not fatigue), what happens to the ST -4 hero without medical intervention?

I've been thinking along parallel lines to just these things, and dropped a little of that into an earlier post here I believe.

I'd be perfectly happy with what you just suggested. My variant on that might make less sense, but I've considered no limit at all on how many fatigue (or other non-lethal) hits a figure might accrue without dying, all recovering at 1/15 minutes as long as the figure wasn't actually dead from wounds. At ST 0 (for any reason) the figure must be unconscious of course, but if they aren't truly dead let the fatigue wear off.

Practically speaking one can't actively do anything to accumulate more fatigue after losing consciousness anyway, so no unbelievably large number is normally possible. But even if someone somehow got to -23 ST with all the hits being from fatigue or exhaustion, if doesn't defy any laws of physics if they get back to ST 1 and wake up in 6 hours (4x6) all on their own. (I'm fondly recalling the film Excalibur, where Merlin sleeps almost 9 months after enchanting Uther so he could... impersonate Gorlois -- not that we have to go quite that far!)

What one would do to keep things reasonable, in the case someone was out cold with a combination of hits for a very long time with no one looking for them, would be to start adding new hits to them for exposure, starvation and dehydration until they really were dead unless help came in time. (Figure even if they were mending from a wound at the same time, 1 ST / 2 days, the environmental damage would have to exceed that rate fairly soon, resulting in ST declining further.)

All excellent fodder for story-telling and role-playing.

[David Bofinger]

It seems to me that widening the gap between unconsciousness and death has some dramatic effects on the game. Whether these are good changes or bad changes might depend on the campaign.

1. The chance of an individual PC being killed goes down, for a given strength of opponent. If strength of opponent is increased to keep PCs in danger then we're likely to see fewer individual PC deaths and more TPKs.
2. The risk of killing someone you shouldn't goes down. PCs can afford to shoot first and ask questions later more, because they know if the victim turns out to be someone they didn't want to kill then they can be dragged back from the edge of death a lot easier.
3. Taking a prisoner is much easier. No need for, "Pull your punches, we need one alive!" Instead just stab them into unconsciousness and save as many as required.
4. After a party victory there will be lots of bad guys lying around who can be saved if the party wants to save them. The party will have to choose between keeping them prisoner (which in many campaigns will be impractical), releasing them (which may lead to catastrophe when they tell the army of darkness where you are) and killing them (which may be distasteful to players and/or incompatible with player codes of honour).
5. Assassination becomes a more difficult and specialised mission.

There are probably other effects. But it seems to me the posts in this thread have mostly focused on the first point, and not thought much about the others. And those others matter.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

It seems to me that widening the gap between unconsciousness and death has some dramatic effects on the game. Whether these are good changes or bad changes might depend on the campaign.

1. The chance of an individual PC being killed goes down, for a given strength of opponent. If strength of opponent is increased to keep PCs in danger then we're likely to see fewer individual PC deaths and more TPKs.
2. The risk of killing someone you shouldn't goes down. PCs can afford to shoot first and ask questions later more, because they know if the victim turns out to be someone they didn't want to kill then they can be dragged back from the edge of death a lot easier.
3. Taking a prisoner is much easier. No need for, "Pull your punches, we need one alive!" Instead just stab them into unconsciousness and save as many as required.
4. After a party victory there will be lots of bad guys lying around who can be saved if the party wants to save them. The party will have to choose between keeping them prisoner (which in many campaigns will be impractical), releasing them (which may lead to catastrophe when they tell the army of darkness where you are) and killing them (which may be distasteful to players and/or incompatible with player codes of honour).
5. Assassination becomes a more difficult and specialised mission.

There are probably other effects. But it seems to me the posts in this thread have mostly focused on the first point, and not thought much about the others. And those others matter.

David, at least as far as my own comments on this are concerned (particularly in Post 6, http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...26&postcount=6) something got lost in translation.

My suggestions have all been about making the causes of unconscious easier to come by without reducing the chance of death. I've stuck to death starts at ST 0 for all normal wounds. What I am in favor of is a few softer forms of damage (hit with a light club, smacked with a broken chair, a punch in the nose, a knee to the groin) counting more like "fatigue", and only the hits tallied for "fatigue" being excluded from counting directly towards death.

Indirectly of course these "fatigue" or "non-lethal" hits still count. An unconscious figure is the easiest figure to kill in TFT. As the rules stand, it's almost impossible to knock out an opponent without killing them even when you might not want to. My advocacy if only for more choice in the matter. If you do still want them dead, finishing them off while unconscious is technically easy. Knocked out is a lot like being knocked down -- mortality goes way up in this game, not down, when figures are off their feet.

If an assassin's blow reduces a target's ST from 10 to 0, the target is dead, period, and that doesn't change. My idea is that if the target had 6 hits of fatigue first, if should still take 10 hits to kill then, not 4. The target will still be down and helpless after only 4 hits, and then it's up to the assassin to do something about that.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

David, at least as far as my own comments on this are concerned

I was speaking generally about the ideas I see in this thread, not about yours specifically.

My suggestions have all been about making the causes of unconscious easier to come by without reducing the chance of death.

You've classified attacks as lethal and non-lethal, and non-lethal can only cause unconsciousness. That makes unconsciousness just as easy and death harder. Doesn't it? Maybe I misunderstood.

I wonder what you mean by a "blunt damage" weapon. Does it include a war hammer? A mace? A giant's club? The UC V touch of death? Because it would be a little weird if those weren't lethal.

An unconscious figure is the easiest figure to kill in TFT.

Unless someone in your party finds it unethical to murder helpless people.

As the rules stand, it's almost impossible to knock out an opponent without killing them even when you might not want to.

Use of the RAW non-lethal damage rules is more difficult than killing, but far from impossible.

My advocacy if only for more choice in the matter. If you do still want them dead, finishing them off while unconscious is technically easy.

My point is that it comes with huge role-playing implications, e.g. for characters that consider themselves heroic.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I was speaking generally about the ideas I see in this thread, not about yours specifically.

Oops, sorry if I sounded defensive, it's a great discussion and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

You've classified attacks as lethal and non-lethal, and non-lethal can only cause unconsciousness. That makes unconsciousness just as easy and death harder. Doesn't it? Maybe I misunderstood.

How to put this? True, what I mean by "non-lethal hits" only cause unconsciousness in and of themselves, but that only brings about a state of defenselessness that lets you finish off an opponent easily with a coup de grâce. Whether the hits that got the foe to ST 0 were considered lethal or not, won't they be just as dead a turn later if that's what you want?

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I wonder what you mean by a "blunt damage" weapon. Does it include a war hammer? A mace? A giant's club? The UC V touch of death? Because it would be a little weird if those weren't lethal.

Certainly not! I'm thinking much more along the lines of improvised weapons, a chair or bar-stool, a clay vase, wooden practice swords, unskilled punches. We had a whole thread about "friendly brawls" not so long ago that included other examples. "Blunt" may not be the best synonym, gotta think about that.

I'm on the fence where clubs are concerned. Past a certain weight the damage can only be lethal, perhaps regulated by the ST of the wielder. A good rule for borderline objects might be to say half the hits are lethal and half are not, but that's getting way too granular for TFT rules, which should remain elegant in its simplicity.

UC/martial arts attacks should definitely be lethal, but here there's wiggle room -- allow the attacker to decide if they are making lethal hits or not. Same damage rolls, but a master should be able to beat someone senseless to teach them a lesson at no risk of killing them, because they know exactly what they're doing.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

Use of the RAW non-lethal damage rules is more difficult than killing, but far from impossible.

Never been fond of the voluntary half-damage, pull your blows approach -- it takes twice as long for one thing! And if the target is in armour it could take even longer (more turns). Those Taking Prisoners rules are almost half a page long in ITL; if tweaking the injury rules automatically addresses the same things, and eliminates all that text in the process, it's an improvement.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

Unless someone in your party finds it unethical to murder helpless people....
My point is that it comes with huge role-playing implications, e.g. for characters that consider themselves heroic.

That's not a bug, it's a design feature! That really is the "flavor" I'm going for. But no, not everyone will want to run that kind of game.

[Drakenbow]

Originally Posted by pzmcgwire

What if knockdown (8+damage) and the DX -2 penalty (5+ damage) applied even if stopped by armor?

A corollary to this could be that half the damage or all of the damage stopped by armor become fatigue hits?

Maybe this should apply just to NPCs to increase the survivability of PCs?

I'm a little late on this discussion, but this is an interesting idea. Perhaps a hit of 8+ points of damage induces a save like the Trip spell.

As someone else suggested in this thread, make some damage non-lethal. I've used this idea in some groups (I moved around a lot). My thought was however for not all blunt damage, but for sapping, bare handed, kicks, magical punches (magic fist and hammer touch), or like. The damage was halved with a portion being lethal and the other portion non-lethal. The character would be knocked unconscious when the Lethal + Non-Lethal was more than the character's ST. Death only with Lethal being more than ST (or whatever House Rule which allows for going negative). As someone said, it is possible to kill by punching.

It allows for story content of someone who is left for dead on a battlefield. It also allows for the enemy to take prisoners of the characters only to have the characters negotiate with their captors or make a daring escape.

[David Bofinger]

I think if you want some characters (e.g. PCs) to more often survive being made unconscious then give those characters a talent which lets them do that. e.g. by allowing them to add 1d6 ST some time after being injured up to a maximum of ST 1.

Most of the time, in most campaigns, most GMs will be happy enough for average grunt enemies to die when made unconscious, unless specifically attacked with the intent of a less than lethal result. If so, don't give the talent to everyone.

You could even say to players that they can have the talent but it counts as, say, one attribute point. So they can choose between carrying the insurance the GM sells or trusting to their own skills and fortune.

Another class of character you might give the talent to is campaign-level influential NPCs who the GM would prefer did not die, because replacing them in his plots would mean a lot of work and perhaps stories would suffer. The king who rules the city the party lives in might be such a character. Giving them the talent is a compromise between letting them die and railroading their survival.

Whether a talent like this should exist depends heavily on the kind of campaign and the GM's style. In the style of play imagined by RAW it probably doesn't make sense.

[pzmcgwire]

Good discussion here. I think increasing the range for unconsciousness is good. The original Melee rules of unconsciousness occurring only at ST1 was much too narrow, though surprisingly in practice how often it happens.

My original proposal of knockdown and DX penalties for hits even if stopped by armor was to make things more cinematic.

The examples that prompted this for me are big hurly burly brawls such as in the recent D&D movie where the barbarian plows through a platoon of armored guards, not killing many that I surmise, but definitely reducing most of them hors de combat.

After winning a battle, combatants are often rushed and don't have time or inclination to finish off unconscious foes. You loot the bodies then move on. If you're in a dungeon, you're moving toward the objective since likely the noise of battle probably is alerting the denizens much more quickly than unconscious foes waking up to sound the alarm.

The issue with TFT is the need to rest for spellcasters to recover strength which then makes it more likely for a PC party to hang around and investigate fallen foes further.

Just like with the ambient powerstone recharging rules, perhaps there should be an ambient fatigue recovery rule that fatigue recovers at 1 ST per 30 minutes of light exertion, such as walking, riding, hiding. As long as no combat is occurring, fatique just recovers.