Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

[Phil]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

As I recall, it wasn't the beating* that killed Houdini, it was that the beating aggravated an existing bout of appendicitis, rupturing the appendix.

 

*It wasn't just one punch. The guy slugged Houdini in the stomach several times very quickly, before Houdini--who was already not feeling well--had a chance to prepare by tightening his abdominal muscles.

 

And unless that person had a speed of 10, it seems likely that that series of punches was in Hero terms one phase of the maneuver 'Strike'. The rest is SFX.

 

This is a problem I've come across in my own Fantasy Hero game. I don't like using BOD multipliers for different hit locations, but without them it is impossible for an arrow to kill anyone.

[Phil]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

This thread has actually come at an opportune time for me, because after 1 session of FH I'm in the process of throwing around possible changes.

 

For one, we don't like the Hit Locations. It adds an extra roll and introduces a degree of granularity that isn't necessary in a heroic fantasy game. Hit locations also, as does any system that increases damage based on a random roll, works against the PCs who inevitably engage in many more combats than any single NPC. Personally I prefer post-hoc rationalisation with my damage rolls. Which is to say, if that mad axeman rolls 16 on 3d6, he's probably got your head. If he rolls 6, he's just sliced your arm.

 

However, without hit locations and specifically the BOD modifier, Killing Attacks don't really work. They either do too much damage and armour never stops them, or do too little and can't ever kill anyone. As a veteran Champions GM and player this revelation has actually taken me somewhat by surprise.

 

Every message in this thread explaining why 2 BOD is too low has pointed to hit locations. I happen to agree, but perhaps 5 BOD is nearer the mark.

[Grail Quest]

Re: Lion versus Gazelle / Buffalo Benchmark

 

You sure the lion' date=' in the name of game balance, didn't buy Continuous on that neck grip? [/quote']

 

I've thought about Grabs and having to make an attack roll to maintain a Squeeze. That just gets into a whole lot of complication and it falls short of SFX. For example, it means that Pythons need a limited Continuous advantage on their STR in order to properly Constrict when the SFX of their "Grab" is such that they really don't need to make new attack rolls.

 

Further, Continuous would mean that a Lion could bite and then release, and allow its bite to keep inflicting damage so long as the lion maintains LOS and the END cost--calling for a limition on the Continous advantange. It just gets messier.

 

I wonder if something couldn't be done here. Perhaps if the maintenance of a Grab is high enough, a character is Pinned instead of merely Grabbed, and no hit roll is required to manipulate the character.

[Markdoc]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Yes. Way too low, and obviously too low. So obviously I'm having trouble understanding why you are asking the question.

 

You want a club or mace to "have a decent chance of braining you in one go, and getting stabbed by a dagger can actually be fatal." Just make BOD 10, or maybe 8 for a normal Human, and use the hit location, impairing and disabling and bleeding rules. That gives you what you say you want.

 

Remember, even a mortal wound is seldom INSTANTLY fatal. People killed by knives and clubs tend to die in seconds or minutes, not right that second.

 

Real life numbers from US trauma centres

 

About 3% of stabbings result in death. That includes multiple stabbings, so the actual chance of death from a single bottle/knife/secrewdriver/axe would is somewhere between 1-2%. Very few of these result in death within the first few minutes, so we can assume much less than 1% "instant kill" from a single stabbing (more than 1/3 live more than an hour afterwards). This of course does not include "lingering death from infection or blood loss" which is the way most people traditionally went after a swordfight.

Firearms are a lot more lethal - about 12% of reported shootings result in death - again, this includes shootings where the victim was shot multiple times. A mortality rate of around 8-9% from a single firearms wound is probably a good best guess, though again few of these are "instant kills" - in roughly a third of cases the victim lives more than an hour.

 

So 2 BOD appears to not only be too low, but ridiculously too low - 8 to 10 seems to be in the right ballpark, given standard weapon damage levels, especially if you use bleeding and impairing rules.

 

I think the 2 BOD idea is inspired by the utterly moronic scenes in movies where someone is shot with an arrow (or a .5 Desert Eagle - in movies, they are more or less equivalent in damage terms) and instantly falls motionless to the floor instead of hopping around dripping and shouting "Jeezziz! He shot me!" like people do in real life.

 

Regards real life - two months ago a kid got shot outside our hospital in Addis (actually a bunch of people got shot, but this was the first one to turn up in the morgue). He took two AK-47 rounds right through the chest - and I mean right through. Both rounds went in the front. One came out just under his shoulder blade, one spun and came out under the ribs. He still had time to shout something (probably "Jeezziz! He shot me!" in amharaic) and then ran a half kilometer up onto the campus before collapsing while trying to persuade the guard let him in through the gate. When he collapsed, they dragged him inside but he died 10-15 minutes later from massive blood loss.

 

If a bullet goes right through your chest, where you keep a lot of valuable stuff, it's safe to say it's going to do maximum damage or close to it - so we're looking at 12-14 points minimum on that kid - and that STILL didn't kill him outright.

 

People are a lot harder to kill in real life than in the movies, thank god.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Even better' date=' hit location Head or Vitals, an angry cat would take out a 2 BODY person. [/quote']

 

So how come Pinky the cat didn't kill that guy?

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Lion versus Gazelle / Buffalo Benchmark

 

My revised lionness writeup (a typical female lion' date=' massing 126 kg, and assuming a bite force corresponding to mass) does 4 DC killing on her bite against a Thomson's Gazelle and can hang on with STR 17. The Gazelle (large 30 kg specimen) has STR 5 to shake her off, PD 1, 9 BODY, and would be dead in approximately 5 phases, or, at the lion's SPD 2, about 30 seconds from the time the jaws go around its neck.[/quote']

 

Which is actually pretty fast - they can go on kicking for a few minutes while being chewed on.

 

cheers, Mark

[Susano]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

People are a lot harder to kill in real life than in the movies' date=' thank god.[/quote']

 

Silverado is a perfect example of this. Every single bad guy is a "one shot, one kill" death. The heroes plug 'em in the torso every time, and every hit (but maybe one or two) is instant death. The worst offender? Mal (Danny Glover) tossing a knife at the evil deputy. Hits him in the gut and he sort of staggers and slumps over. But then, Mal must have +2d6 of Deadly Blow with knives, because he does the same to Slick (Jeff Goldblum) with Slick's rather small knife. And I've seen even worse in some samurai films where guys in full armor are shot with an arrow dead in the breastplate and drop like limp dishrags.

 

And, of course, look at the attack of the Uruk-hai from Fellowship. Boromir drops like 20-30 orcs and none of them are crawling around wounded when Aragon shows up. They are all stone dead -- which hardly seems likely. But then, few such movies show masses of wounded men crawling around on a battlefield after any sort of fight.

 

Compare this is Unforgiven where the Morgan Freeman's character shoots one of the cowboys and he just lays there in pain asking for water and the like before Eastwood finally does him in with a second shot. The same goes for Tombstone's fight at the OK Corral -- but since that is an historical event, they had to stick to history for the most part.

 

Oh, and try reading Black Hawk Down for some more on Mark's account of people getting hit in the chest with assault rifle rounds and not dropping. The Rangers reported blasting people with high-velocity rounds and the bullets would go straight though -- minimal tissue damage and no impact trauma. Drove 'em crazy, IIRC. Same thing was reported by the US Border Patrol down south of San Diego. In all the gunfights with smugglers and bandits they only had two instant kills -- one was a headshot that dropped the guy right there, the second was a shotgun blast to the chest -- and the guy still staggered about 5-10 feet before collapsing.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

If you don't want to use Hit Locations, then instead of changing the Body score, why don't you institute a critical hit rule? A natural 3 or 4, or a hit by ten automatically does double body against soft targets. Or perhaps does full damage. Or something like that.

In otherwords, try to increase the range of damage an attack does. Personally, I'd shy away from making combat more lethal unless the point of the genre is to avoid combat.

 

Keith "stabbbity-stabbbity-stabbbity" Curtis

[ghost-angel]

Re: Lion versus Gazelle / Buffalo Benchmark

 

I've thought about Grabs and having to make an attack roll to maintain a Squeeze. That just gets into a whole lot of complication and it falls short of SFX. For example, it means that Pythons need a limited Continuous advantage on their STR in order to properly Constrict when the SFX of their "Grab" is such that they really don't need to make new attack rolls.

 

Further, Continuous would mean that a Lion could bite and then release, and allow its bite to keep inflicting damage so long as the lion maintains LOS and the END cost--calling for a limition on the Continous advantange. It just gets messier.

 

I wonder if something couldn't be done here. Perhaps if the maintenance of a Grab is high enough, a character is Pinned instead of merely Grabbed, and no hit roll is required to manipulate the character.

Whether Continuous continues to allow damage after a HtH Attack has disengage is dependent on SFX, with the lion: no. I wouldn't allow it.

 

This falls under "common and dramatic sense" - it's not applied enough.

 

And yes - that snake should have Continuous on it's constriction if you don't want it to make attack rolls every phase.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Brain and heart are the only chance of instant killshots, barring massive overall damage. The skull can be quite difficult to crack (it has evolved that way) and the heart is buried behind bone and tissue and is also quite difficult to get at. Also a lot of anecdotal evidence indicates that there is not necessarily much correlation for physical damage between stun and body delivered (but I bet there is a far better correlation for energy damage).

 

Personally, if you don't want to use hit locations, here's an idea:

 

When you roll your 3d6 to hit, have them different colours. The white one is your stun multiple (subtract one when applying then multiply by the DC of the attack, or roll BODY dice as normal) and the black one counts like a BODY roll and is applied as a BODY damage multiplier, so you can do twice the damage, or none (it was a flesh wound!) and BODY and STUN are only then linked through the DC of the attack. You can of course do the same for normal attacks, either as above (but without the -1 on stun multiple) or rolling stun and body normally and just applying the BODY multiplier die.

 

If you DO use a body multiplier die AND a roll for damage then you have to decide whether there is a damage cap (2xDC) or not. Depends on your attitude to the occasional ridiculously extreme damage roll.

 

This means that extreme damage hits are very unlikely if you are having trouble hitting your target, and more likely, but by no means guaranteed, if you have an OCV advantage.

 

It has the advantage that you are extracting more data from a single roll, so it should not slow combat, and (to my way of thinking) mirrors dramatically the vagaries of combat whilst still favouring the more skilled fighters. It also means that attacks have a realistic prospect of sometimes doing maximum BODY damage, thus upping the perception of real danger in combat.

[sinanju]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

8 or 10 is a good starting number in most cases.

 

In real life, most people who are the victim of a single stab or gunshot wound live to tell the tale. It's actually incredibly rare for such people to die. A vital organ would have to be punctured (which to me, indicates a roll of Head or Vitals on the Hit Location Chart), and even then, they don't die right away in most cases.

 

When people die of such wounds, it's usually because of one or both of two things. 1) They are hit multiple times and the cumulative damage to their body causes so much damage they die of shock or immediate organ failure, or 2) they don't receive medical attention fast enough to prevent death from shock and blood loss.

 

Yep--remember that as of the 1950s, soldiers who survived to reach a MASH unit had a 90-95% chance of survival. And trauma medicine has only improved since then. Short of nearly instant kills (which I'd argue generally involve considerably more than minimal dice of damage), someone who gets medical treatment immediately is likely to survive.

 

I think that standard Body of 8 (10 for heroic PCs), plus use of hit location and bleeding rules works pretty well...given that the Hero System is designed for heroic games. There are better systems if you want a really gritty and "realistic" system.

[Lamrok]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

If you don't want to use Hit Locations, then instead of changing the Body score, why don't you institute a critical hit rule? A natural 3 or 4, or a hit by ten automatically does double body against soft targets. Or perhaps does full damage. Or something like that.

In otherwords, try to increase the range of damage an attack does. Personally, I'd shy away from making combat more lethal unless the point of the genre is to avoid combat.

 

Keith "stabbbity-stabbbity-stabbbity" Curtis

 

I ran a game for quite a while with the rule that if you made your "to hit" roll by half, you did maximum damage. I used hit locations on top of that, so there was the possibility of doing fairly huge damage on any given roll (3d6 normal damage strike to the head had the possibility of doing 12 body. Our martial artist used an 8d6 offensive strike to accidentally connect for a 32 body insta-kill in the first fight, an event that haunted him for the rest of the game.) That made things significantly more lethal. It worked well for the grim feeling I was looking for in that game.

 

I wasn't really trying to model reality - I was modelling a situation in which the players had to deal with the fact that their powers were lethal. I think that a lot of people say they want reality, when what they really mean is that they want a game in which death comes easy. These are two different goals.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Lion versus Gazelle / Buffalo Benchmark

 

I've thought about Grabs and having to make an attack roll to maintain a Squeeze. That just gets into a whole lot of complication and it falls short of SFX. For example, it means that Pythons need a limited Continuous advantage on their STR in order to properly Constrict when the SFX of their "Grab" is such that they really don't need to make new attack rolls.

 

Further, Continuous would mean that a Lion could bite and then release, and allow its bite to keep inflicting damage so long as the lion maintains LOS and the END cost--calling for a limition on the Continous advantange. It just gets messier.

 

I wonder if something couldn't be done here. Perhaps if the maintenance of a Grab is high enough, a character is Pinned instead of merely Grabbed, and no hit roll is required to manipulate the character.

 

Continuous doesn't mean fire and forget. The attack still has all of it's characteristics once it's on and damaging as when it's original used. This includes Range. A Continuous HTH attack will still have a HTH range, and moving out of that range instantly stops the attack. So applying Continuous would work just fine for this.

 

My problem is that I don't think you should require Continuous (or any advantage) to model what someone can obviously do without having special skills or powers.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

I wasn't really trying to model reality - I was modelling a situation in which the players had to deal with the fact that their powers were lethal. I think that a lot of people say they want reality' date=' when what they really mean is that they want a game in which death comes easy. These are two different goals.[/quote']

Exactly.

I usually try to model the "reality" of heroic fiction. Nameless bad guys die cleanly after one or two hits. No one lingers and pleads, forcing the hero to immediately become gray in their morality. Nowhere in the LotR, for instance, does it say, "The party left the area after Aragorn directed them to cut the throats of the surviving wounded orcs and hill men. "We cannot have them following us, and they are too much trouble to feed," said the ranger darkly."

Even Shakespeare had to invent a French atrocity (sneaking behind the lines to kill the luggage boys) to justify Henry's historical act of killing all but the most ransomable prisoners. Necessary in real life, not in fiction.

If you want to play that level of reality, that's cool. Just not my cuppa.

Conversely, heroes stick around a long time. Of the Fellowship, only Boromir dies, and I always considered him a GM NPC. Gandalf "dies", but the player whined and cried in between games until the GM allowed him to invent a resurrection story and redesign his character with kewl new skillz.

Seriously, with the time and thought required to create a decent character in Hero, they should usually be given an out, as long as they are trying, and not just being suicidally stupid. You can always find other revoltin' developments to take the place of a kill. As I am fond of saying, there are many fates worse than death.

 

Keith "There are many fates worse than death. See? I said it again." Curtis

[Susano]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Exactly.

Even Shakespeare had to invent a French atrocity (sneaking behind the lines to kill the luggage boys) to justify Henry's historical act of killing all but the most ransomable prisoners. Necessary in real life, not in fiction.

 

I think the real reason was he (Henry) thought the day was lost and he didn't want the French to rise up behind him.

[Gary]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Starting Body at 2 would work really well for certain Anime universes such as Inuyasha where it's possible to kill dozens of minor demons with one swing of a sword, staff, boomerang, claw, energy whip, or any number of other weapons.

[Markdoc]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Exactly.

I usually try to model the "reality" of heroic fiction. Nameless bad guys die cleanly after one or two hits. No one lingers and pleads, forcing the hero to immediately become gray in their morality. Nowhere in the LotR, for instance, does it say, "The party left the area after Aragorn directed them to cut the throats of the surviving wounded orcs and hill men. "We cannot have them following us, and they are too much trouble to feed," said the ranger darkly."

 

Yeah, but that's because Tolkein was a good GM. A lot of those orcs were severely wounded and a few just lightly wounded but playing doggo. Aragorn wasn't worried about them, because you know in real life, decent fiction and good roleplaying, NPCs who have been severely beaten about don't go chasing after the people who did it to them. They lie there pretending to be dead, and then crawl away once the heroes have moved on.

 

After all, how many people spring to their feet after recovering consciousness and shout "OK, they kicked the crap out of us when we were all healthy - now there's only a third of us left and we're all wounded. Let's get 'em!"

 

Players do that - but that's why they're PCs.

 

I never have the "throat slitting dilemma" in my games for the simple reason that I don't make my NPCs attack mindlessly until they are all stone cold dead. Beating the NPC unconscious or dealing them a severe flesh wound and knocking them down is enough to get the message across that the NPC in question would be better off doing something else with their time. Do it to enough of a group of NPCs and the unwounded survivors will normally run away.

 

Wounded NPCs do plead for mercy - and if granted it scuttle away offscene. They don't (normally) come back that night and stab the players just to make the point that it's stupid to leave survivors. That way the players - if good - get to show that they *are* good. There's a teeny tiny risk, so the action is not without meaning but I don't use it to punish players who show a little mercy

 

That has the side benefit that when I occasionally do use mindless fanatics who *will* attack until killed, that the players go "Wow! Those guys are fanatics!" instead of just assuming that everyone behaves like that.

 

cheers, Mark

[Zed-F]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Did it really contribute that highly toward your death? If ten of them did it do you think you'd be dying? Or did it just make you say/think: OOOUUUCCCHHH!

I mean, I guess it could depend on the focus of your game (with all due respect, if I had squirrels as PCs I might consider the matter differently).

 

Depends on the cat. Some cats are BIG mofos. A big, aggressive cat can usually kill a similar size dog. The main advantage a dog has over a cat in a fight is purely that most dogs are bigger than most cats.

 

A big cat going all out to hurt you will do damage and will make you bleed. One attack is probably not going to kill you. But repeated attacks can in fact inflict serious injury. A 1-pip HKA doesn't seem unreasonable.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

I think the real reason was he (Henry) thought the day was lost and he didn't want the French to rise up behind him.

Historically speaking, he was deep in enemy territory, surrounded by villages upon whom he depended for supplies. He ordered no sacking and looting, so as to maintain the good will of the French commoners. (The dramatic Henry of course had to hang an old friend to prove the point). He had more captives than he could feed or properly guard. If he had tried to keep them prisoner, they would have eventually 'done him in'. It was an "I do not have the luxury of mercy" moment.

 

Keith "Kobyashi Maru" Curtis

[Susano]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Historically speaking' date=' he was deep in enemy territory, surrounded by villages upon whom he depended for supplies. He ordered no sacking and looting, so as to maintain the good will of the French commoners. (The dramatic Henry of course had to hang an old friend to prove the point). He had more captives than he could feed or properly guard. If he had tried to keep them prisoner, they would have eventually 'done him in'. It was an "I do not have the luxury of mercy" moment.[/quote']

 

That says it better than I did.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

If a bullet goes right through your chest, where you keep a lot of valuable stuff, it's safe to say it's going to do maximum damage or close to it - so we're looking at 12-14 points minimum on that kid - and that STILL didn't kill him outright.

 

People are a lot harder to kill in real life than in the movies, thank god.

 

Or at least they die UGLIER than they do in the movies. I dunno if it was all that good a thing for that kid to live as long as he did before dying. If I believed in a god, it would be one who approved "movie deaths" rather than the long painful attrocities of our current reality.

 

I do wonder... from a player point of view... which is preferred. Your player character takes an unlucky high dice roll shot to the 3... would you rather the "DAMMIT! I'm dead!" or "My action? Ok, my leg thumps and twitches as I lie on the floor while a thick wet bubbly sound pours from the bright red three inch hole that used to be my forehead!"

 

Wheee!! And I get to role play that for at least 8 more phases according to the bleeding rules!

[Markdoc]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Or at least they die UGLIER than they do in the movies. I dunno if it was all that good a thing for that kid to live as long as he did before dying.

 

Yeah, but it's a good thing death is ugly - otherwise everyone would do it !

 

Oh, hand on a minute....

 

cheers, Mark

[Dust Raven]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Yeah, but that's because Tolkein was a good GM. A lot of those orcs were severely wounded and a few just lightly wounded but playing doggo. Aragorn wasn't worried about them, because you know in real life, decent fiction and good roleplaying, NPCs who have been severely beaten about don't go chasing after the people who did it to them. They lie there pretending to be dead, and then crawl away once the heroes have moved on.

 

After all, how many people spring to their feet after recovering consciousness and shout "OK, they kicked the crap out of us when we were all healthy - now there's only a third of us left and we're all wounded. Let's get 'em!"

 

Players do that - but that's why they're PCs.

 

I never have the "throat slitting dilemma" in my games for the simple reason that I don't make my NPCs attack mindlessly until they are all stone cold dead. Beating the NPC unconscious or dealing them a severe flesh wound and knocking them down is enough to get the message across that the NPC in question would be better off doing something else with their time. Do it to enough of a group of NPCs and the unwounded survivors will normally run away.

 

Wounded NPCs do plead for mercy - and if granted it scuttle away offscene. They don't (normally) come back that night and stab the players just to make the point that it's stupid to leave survivors. That way the players - if good - get to show that they *are* good. There's a teeny tiny risk, so the action is not without meaning but I don't use it to punish players who show a little mercy

 

That has the side benefit that when I occasionally do use mindless fanatics who *will* attack until killed, that the players go "Wow! Those guys are fanatics!" instead of just assuming that everyone behaves like that.

 

cheers, Mark

 

I couldn't agree more with this philosophy, and I can't stand "heroes" or "good guys", even ones who's desire it is to kill the enemy, makes sure everybody taken down gets an extra arrow just to make sure they'll never get up. Any military force (even a small one) would scare the crap out of others. No one would want to hire them or even associate with them. The common folk would view them as assassins, and actual assassins would hate them for being far to open with their killing. Eventually, somebody who hears about them near their area would send real assassins to kill them.

[Old Man]

Re: Hitting the Head an FX or mandatory?

 

2 BODY because it affects other things than just getting stabbed. It means that lions can kill antelope with a bite to the neck instead of having to chew there. It means grizzlies can kill cows with a swipe with their paw (which they are reputedly able to do). With BODY at a base of 10' date=' this seems remarkably hard to do [u']without using Hit Locations[/u].

 

I thought Lions and Tigers and Bears had pretty impressive attacks. Was that my imagination?

[Inu]

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

 

Silverado Unforgiven TombstoneBlack Hawk Down

Add to that: Hostage. Until the film goes all typical action flick in the last five minutes, it's incredibly tense, scary, and includes some truly horrifying death sequences. Such as the cop who gets shot a half-dozen times in the chest, and manages to crawl about fifty feet down the road before finally, mercifully, dying.

 

You got some good examples up there. Just adding to the list.