Making combat less lethal.

[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?

[hcobb]

Between healing potions and Physickering, getting knocked down to adjST in the negative single digits is just a time out.

This then becomes an interesting technical challenge to the players to win with one down.

[Shostak]

Is less-lethal combat desirable? From my perspective, TFT’s lethality is a feature, not a bug.

A RAW approach to increasing combat survivability is to have losing-but-surviving be a more viable possible outcome. Characters who are badly wounded but still able to fight might want to throw down their weapons if they want to survive.

But, if you really want to reduce lethality with house rules, I’d look at a wider buffer zone of unconsciousness—say from 0ST to -5ST.

[pzmcgwire]

This makes it easier for PCs to go through a large number of opponents in a cinematic manner and not necessarily having to kill everyone in the process.

[hcobb]

Just use my mook rules as needed:

https://www.hcobb.com/tft/new_spells.html#Mooks

[Steve Plambeck]

I find many reasons to prefer a wide buffer zone between death and unconsciousness, primarily to broaden the chances for role-playing. (It can be a more intersting story to be taken prisoner rather than simply killed.) While the lethality of TFT is critical to its character, making it easier to incapacitate both NPCs and PCs doesn't really have to compromise that. For example, a prisoner can always be killed later. You can usually finish off an unconscious adversary, and if you can't then there's usually an interesting reason for that.

While I've worked out how to do that for another system, it easily translates into what could be house rules for TFT.

(1) There are two kinds of hits, labeled Lethal and Non-lethal, and they need to be tallied separately. Sharp and pointy weapon damage obviously counts as Lethal hits. Fatigue, blunt damage, and bare-handed damage count as Non-lethal hits. They'd each still recover naturally at the rates for regular injury and fatigue set in TFT: Lethal hits 1 per 2 days and Non-lethal hits 1 per 15 minutes.

(2) Death only occurs when Lethal hits equals or exceeds ST -- Non-lethal hits never count towards death.

(3) But Unconsciousness occurs whenever the total of Lethal and Non-lethal hits equals or exceeds ST.

Under these rules, death can never occur due to Non-lethal hits alone. A ST 10 figure with 12 Non-lethal hits and 9 Lethal hits is still alive, but unconscious. If left alone, they'll regain consciousness in 3 hours when the Non-lethal hits wear off but they'll still have the 9 Lethal hits and be close to death until healing occurs by any of the usual means -- they could wake up on a now quiet battlefield wondering which side won. If the same figure had the same 12 Non-lethal hits but zero Lethal hits, they'd regain consciousness in only 45 minutes because their total net ST at that point would then be back to 9.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

I find many reasons to prefer a wide buffer zone between death and unconsciousness, primarily to broaden the chances for role-playing. (It can be a more intersting story to be taken prisoner rather than simply killed.)

Agreed, although I think the wider buffer zone is between consciousness and death, not between unconsciousness and death.

(1) There are two kinds of hits, labeled Lethal and Non-lethal, and they need to be tallied separately. Sharp and pointy weapon damage obviously counts as Lethal hits. Fatigue, blunt damage, and bare-handed damage count as Non-lethal hits.

The problem with that is the fact that one can absolutely be pummeled to death. Fists and kicks can kill, and not just when aimed at the head; a ruptured spleen is no laughing matter. Rather than treat some wounds as lethal and other wounds as not, more detailed rules about the zone of unconsciousness might be better. I can’t claim to have developed them, because it is easy enough to hand wave when taking prisoners is desirable. But, if I were to spend time on mechanics, I’d probably go with something like: if brought to 0ST or below, a character is unconscious and needs to roll 3/ST. If they succeed, any fatigue will recover as normal. If they fail, they will die unless they receive medical attention within minutes equal to their basic ST, which will allow them to recover fatigue normally.

[hcobb]

We've already got our golden hour of dying. Does this need to be longer?

Whataboutism a talent that helps with some sort of immediate recovery roll?

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by pzmcgwire

This makes it easier for PCs to go through a large number of opponents in a cinematic manner and not necessarily having to kill everyone in the process.

It means parties will tend to take a lot of prisoners. They'll then have to decide what to do with those prisoners. Depending on what sort of game it is the PCs may end up more or less forced to slaughter helpless prisoners. It's not always going to be a problem, but it is sometimes.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by hcobb

a talent that helps with some sort of immediate recovery roll?

A talent that makes a character less likely to die could be given to PCs for free, but not given to grunt-level NPC enemies. That way the grunts still collapse in the approved manner but PCs are less fragile. Depending on campaign type it might be useful, but it's too cinematic to fit the spirit of TFT, which tends to treat PCs and NPCs alike.

Candidate rule: 15 minutes after losing consciousness the character gets 1d6 wounds back, which will raise her ST to a maximum of 1.