Is STUN more important than BODY?

[yosimitsu]

I am relatively new to HERO and perhaps my question was already discussed, but I simply can't find any threads that will answer my question.

 

I started a post-apoc campaign where the use of firearms can be quite frequent. The average killing damage is usually 2d6 for firearms. That means an average of 7 killing damage. While it is fairly easy to prevent such damage by putting armor and using damage resistance power, it is harder to protect against 3-times as much of STUN damage.

On an average every killing attack does 3 times more STUN. That means that at some point it is much more threatening than killing damage as the character could get knockout or stunned often enough.

 

What are usually the house rules regarding PD and ED? should those be allowed to reach 3-times the rPD and rED? How does killing damage gets the threatning level it deserves?

[Silbeg]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

All of that really depends a lot on the genre, and what you want to do with it.

 

You are correct that even reasonably light body armor can mitigate most of the effects of killing damage from small arms (at least the BODY of the attacks).

 

Is this a problem? Probably not. There is a reason that police and soldiers wear body armor. If it didn't give them any benefit, they wouldn't.

 

Now, you say that killing attacks aren't lethal enough? There are a couple of ways to handle this.

1. You could increase the DCs on the killing attacks. Many people believe that they are too low in any case, so, you could go to town there
   
2. Restrict access to armor (or more importantly, to any non-equipment-based powers in a heroic game).
   
3. Use the encumbrance rules (and watch out for STR inflation). Armor does have a cost... typically it will make you easier to hit, but you'll take less damage per shot.
   
4. Use hit locations. Not only will this mean that it may be easier to avoid the armor (such as with an arm hit, or whatever), if you get the lucky shots (such as a head shot), you'll do more BODY.

I am sure you can come up with more things.

 

To specifically answer your question... neither is more important.

 

Also, I would not allow defenses to rise like that. For a heroic game, defenses should be pretty low. So, if they are wearing kevlar vests, they may have 7-10DEF on their torsos, but more like 3-6 (non-resistent) elsewhere. Heroic characters should be quite a bit more vulnerable.

[Vondy]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

This is wholly dependent on the ratio of regular defenses to normal attacks, and resistant defenses to killing attacks, in the game. In games where the ratio of defenses that soak body damage to the attacks that cause body damage is high stun becomes increasingly important - to the point that in many superheroic games taking any body at all is a rare thing. On the other hand, in grittier games where there are a lot of killing attacks and medium or low amounts of resistant defense body becomes preeminent. Something to keep in mind, though, is that body factors into your stun score on a 1:1 basis, so its a good buy in of itself.

[yosimitsu]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Well,

It takes some time testing and thinking until you get the right ratio, iguess.

Thanks

[Vondy]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Well,

It takes some time testing and thinking until you get the right ratio, iguess.

Thanks

 

That's the main issue with hero when you fist begin - the learning curve.

 

When the system is as open as hero is experience is the bell-weather.

 

But I submit that its well worth the effort.

[tesuji]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

What are usually the house rules regarding PD and ED? should those be allowed to reach 3-times the rPD and rED? How does killing damage gets the threatning level it deserves?

 

in most or maybe many settings, based on howcharacters are built (compare stun to body of character, compare damage after defense,, see how the ratios fall) most character will be knocked out before they are dead. Many will reach zero to negative stun well before zero to negative body.

 

this is referenced iirc in the core book when it talks about how that result (lots of unconscious but not dying foes) can be incongrous in some settings (well, having knocked out al the goblins, my noble dwarven fighter now walks among the sleeping foes and cuts their throats.)

 

One suggestion made there was to possibly get rid of stun entirely.

 

other possibilities exist...

 

drastically raising damage levels will work so0metimes but likely still just mean te enemy goes down quicker but if the damage level is way above defenses he might die at the same time as he goes unconscious.

 

removing rmor or drastically reducing it might help, but only if the relative levels of body and stun on the character is similar to killing attacks. If your typical warrior has around 15 body and 35 stun, (consider something like 15 str 15 con 15 body = 31 base stun) then even with no defenses he will go down from stunb first.

 

A possibly better solution in such a game is to alter the costs...

 

let body provide 2xstun and let buying extra stun cost only 1/2 cp... both of which raise te amount of stun vs body you are likely to see. your 15 str 15 con 15 body guy now has a base 46 stun and for 5 cp that bcomes 56... and he is likely to still be up when he gets to negative body, unless defenses are too slanted.

 

but, in general, using hero, using sample characters in many genres, getting kncoed out while still abopve 0 body is common simply because the ratio of stun to body on character is often very different than the ratio of stun to body done by attacks after defenses.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

**cough**stun lottery**cough**

 

There are those of us who think that the mechanics for killing attacks in Hero are fundamentally flawed, and those of us who disagree with that proposition.

 

Another potential problem with Hero is that there is quite a bit of debate, in some circles, about whether it has defence values quite right.

 

The answer to this latter question is probably along the lines of, "Good guidelines, you should adapt to your campaign"

 

Now if we assume firearms average 2d6 damage (and that is possibly a tad high) then, yes, the average Body is 7, but there will be a lot of variation in there: 6 out of every 36 shots are 10 or more Body and 10 out of every 36 shots are 9 or more Body. There is an equal number of low hits, of course, but the point is that, even if you are wearing 8 DEF armour you are far from invulnerable to Body damage.

 

There are various mitigators to the stun/body divide that you can employ, but you are not playing core Hero if you do. That is no bad thing though - most people have their own house rules to get the flavour they want.

 

Here's a couple of options.

 

1. (A house rule method) Replace killing attacks with an equal DC of normal attacks that are defended against by resistant defences as killing attacks are now. Sounds more complex than it is: each 1d6 of KA becomes 3d6 rolled as normal dice and you apply the damage as you would killing attack damage. Problem is that causes less Body, so the attacks become less dangerous.

 

2. Build your flak jackets differently: instead of a 6 pd armour vest, build it as a 6pd armour vest with 6 additional points of (normal) pd. That cuts some of the sting from the killing attacks, but does make you very tough indeed against normal attacks.

 

3. (Officially approved method) determine a non-random stun multiplier. THEORETICALLY is should be 2.667, but most people don't like fractions (for some reason) so either 2 or 3 will do, and it will curb the wilder excesses.

 

4. Build characters with no added Body - they'll be more wary of Body damage!

 

5. Reduce the amount of defence for body armour, or build it with an activation roll: yes that bullet will stop if it hits you from the front in the middle of the chest, no it won;t if it comes up under your armpit, and bounces off your shoulder blade from the inside....

 

6. There's plenty more.....

 

Have fun

[Sean Waters]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

....and, of course, welcome to the boards

[archermoo]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Are you more likely to take STUN damage than BODY damage? In most genres, yes. Is this a problem? I don't think so. Without powers to alter it, BODY comes back at a rate of your REC/month. Your STUN on the other hand can come back as often as your (SPD+1)*REC/turn.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Are you more likely to take STUN damage than BODY damage? In most genres' date=' yes. Is this a problem? I don't think so. Without powers to alter it, BODY comes back at a rate of your REC/month. Your STUN on the other hand can come back as often as your (SPD+1)*REC/turn.[/quote']

 

You are certainly more likely to take stun damage than body damage in most realities, but I think the question is more along the lines of: if someone shoots you, is the potential unconsciousness or the potential death your biggest worry. Or which should be?

 

Judging by all the people who lie around bleeding and screaming in war movies, that genre believes that pain does not equal unconsciousness.

 

I rather like the Hero 'wound = ego roll' rule that turns you to jelly when you are first hurt if you don't pull yourself together.

 

Archermoo makes a good point though: if you look at the big picture, rather than the individual frames, getting shot is something you recover from very quickly, in stun terms, but not so much for Body.

 

Shoot someone and assume that massive stun lottery total is a shot term blackout, and it all makes much more sense.

 

I still don't think that you should be able to get massive amounts of stun through defences that stop all the body, but that's just me. If it bleeds, I can see the 'shock' value, but if the only damage is gone 60 seconds later, I just don't see it.

 

Well, maybe the first time you're shot and the flak jacket takes it. Not after.

[archermoo]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

You are certainly more likely to take stun damage than body damage in most realities, but I think the question is more along the lines of: if someone shoots you, is the potential unconsciousness or the potential death your biggest worry. Or which should be?

 

Judging by all the people who lie around bleeding and screaming in war movies, that genre believes that pain does not equal unconsciousness.

 

I rather like the Hero 'wound = ego roll' rule that turns you to jelly when you are first hurt if you don't pull yourself together.

 

Archermoo makes a good point though: if you look at the big picture, rather than the individual frames, getting shot is something you recover from very quickly, in stun terms, but not so much for Body.

 

Shoot someone and assume that massive stun lottery total is a shot term blackout, and it all makes much more sense.

 

I still don't think that you should be able to get massive amounts of stun through defences that stop all the body, but that's just me. If it bleeds, I can see the 'shock' value, but if the only damage is gone 60 seconds later, I just don't see it.

 

Well, maybe the first time you're shot and the flak jacket takes it. Not after.

 

Well, there is the phychological shock and physical shock. In the real world even if the bullet is stopped by the vest a pretty large amount of energy is still transferred to your body. The body has a wide variety of ways of reacting to that.

 

But to answer the initial question in your post: It depends. Just like in the real world, you are in general more likely to lose consciousness as the immediate result of being shot, rather than dying immediately.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Well, there is the phychological shock and physical shock. In the real world even if the bullet is stopped by the vest a pretty large amount of energy is still transferred to your body. The body has a wide variety of ways of reacting to that.

 

But to answer the initial question in your post: It depends. Just like in the real world, you are in general more likely to lose consciousness as the immediate result of being shot, rather than dying immediately.

 

I'm fine with that - if you've been shot.

 

If you've had the bullet bounce off your defences that psychological shake up rapidly becomes old news.

 

Also if enough energy is transferred to, say, cause bruising, I'd suggest you've taken Body damage there. Against a 6 def flak jacket, if you take 7 or even 8 Body damage, the bullet was probably still stopped, and you probably don't have broken skin, but you probably do have extensive bruising and maybe a cracked rib.

 

If no Body got through at all then I don't see a great deal of passing out as the likely result for those experienced in combat.

 

That's the way I look at it anyhoo.

[archermoo]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

I'm fine with that - if you've been shot.

 

If you've had the bullet bounce off your defences that psychological shake up rapidly becomes old news.

 

Also if enough energy is transferred to, say, cause bruising, I'd suggest you've taken Body damage there. Against a 6 def flak jacket, if you take 7 or even 8 Body damage, the bullet was probably still stopped, and you probably don't have broken skin, but you probably do have extensive bruising and maybe a cracked rib.

 

If no Body got through at all then I don't see a great deal of passing out as the likely result for those experienced in combat.

 

That's the way I look at it anyhoo.

 

Eh, I'd just say that is where reality is just more complex than the game is. For Hero to more realistically model what happens when you get shot I'd say that several more types of damage would need to be introduced, as well as potentially several more stats to be effected by those damage types.

 

Personally, I put off bruising and such as long term effects of taking lots of STUN. Role playing effects, rather than mechanical ones. Broken ribs would cross over into the "took a point or two of BODY" realm.

[tesuji]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

to me its more a matter of genre and conventon than reality...

 

i do not know if more people get knocked out by being shot than suffer mortally wounded states and die shortly thereafter. I honestly haven't shot or stabbed enough people in primitive conditions to know either way. My sample size is insufficient.

 

What I do know is, in many movies, in much fiction, and in the expectation of many gamers, the point where the foe goes down" does not usually mean "he is out but give him a few moments to catch his breath and he will be back up". Itmeans he is dead/dying/mision kill. For many of those genres, having the stage of "hit him while he is down to keep him down" (most common in actual hero play IMX in supers) or the "ok lets cut all their throats now" stage.

 

getting the body to stun ratio of the characters more in line with body to stun ratio of attacks, after defenses, will alleviate this. IMX just dropping/lowering defenses or upping attacks doesn't solve it as many characters have about a 2-1 stun-body ratio so even with NO DEFENSES the typical 3-1 STUN-BODy pof attacks will still give you the healthy but KOed.

 

of course, the simplest solution might be to rule "unconscious" as "going to die barring intervention" and thus leave them all there and let the gruesome coup de grace fest is basically eliminated by fiat.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Eh, I'd just say that is where reality is just more complex than the game is. For Hero to more realistically model what happens when you get shot I'd say that several more types of damage would need to be introduced, as well as potentially several more stats to be effected by those damage types.

 

Personally, I put off bruising and such as long term effects of taking lots of STUN. Role playing effects, rather than mechanical ones. Broken ribs would cross over into the "took a point or two of BODY" realm.

 

Stun is stuff that is gone in less than 5 minutes, to my way of thinking, I did try and do Long Term Stun to emulate longer lasting but non-fatal damage but it seemed a bit complicated - well, not complicated, but more trouble than it was really worth.

 

One thing I was thinking about on the way home - perhaps when you take Body the first point or two should be considered 'shock'. Shock can kill, but if you are not dead in 5 minutes or so you are probably going to make it, so all shock damage is removed after 5 minutes if you are not dead already.

 

In fact you could do this: point 1 of Body is shock, gone after 5 minutes (or an REC/hour or whatever).

 

Point 2 is bruising and contusion: REC/day

 

Point 3+ is normal Body damage: REC/month

 

That way (if you feel you need to) you can kill characters in combat relatively quickly, but there is a big difference between taking 10 Body damage from a single sword thrust and 10 individual nicks with a knife.

 

You record '1st point damage' with a slash, thus: /

You record '2nd point damage' with a slash, thus: \

You record '3rd point damage' with a cross, thus: X

 

Easy enough to sort out after!

 

Just thinking aloud.

[feralucce]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Thing is... in real life... you do take a lot of "stun" from "Killing attacks"

 

Getting hit with a 9mm round even while wearing a flak jacket hurts... and feels like you've been hit by an inconveniently large warehouse...

 

I personally like the stun vs body rules...

 

Boxers beat the living tar out of each other in many situations... but rarely is anyone suffering much body damage... it's all stun... endurance that recovers... most of the time, after the fight, they can both walk and talk and are not in any life threatening danger....

 

just seems realistic to me... at least moreso than D&D and RiFTS

[yosimitsu]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

....and' date=' of course, welcome to the boards [/quote']

Thank you!

[Dust Raven]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Well,

It takes some time testing and thinking until you get the right ratio, iguess.

Thanks

True. One of the things I've done, in heroic levels games at least, is reduce the STUNx on the Hit Location Table by 1 (with a min of 1). Also, just using the Hit Location table seems to reduce the average STUN, at least for me, because I end up rolling a lot of arm and leg shots.

 

Thing is... in real life... you do take a lot of "stun" from "Killing attacks"

 

Getting hit with a 9mm round even while wearing a flak jacket hurts... and feels like you've been hit by an inconveniently large warehouse...

 

I personally like the stun vs body rules...

 

I agree, from a realistic point of view, and to some extent a cinematic point of view. Heroes tend to get hit, go down, but get up later. Mooks tend to get shot, go down, and stay down. Then again, Mooks tend to have less STUN than heroes.

[Vondy]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

 

If no Body got through at all then I don't see a great deal of passing out as the likely result for those experienced in combat.

 

Have you ever actually been in combat?

[Dust Raven]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

If no Body got through at all then I don't see a great deal of passing out as the likely result for those experienced in combat.

 

Have you ever actually been in combat?

 

Um, yeah... Since when does experience keep someone from falling unconscious? You don't have to take damage to pass out, or to go into shock (effectively both the same as unconscious in Hero).

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Um' date=' yeah... Since when does experience keep someone from falling unconscious? You don't have to take damage to pass out, or to go into shock (effectively both the same as unconscious in Hero).[/quote']

 

 

I dont know if Sean is working from the same information as me (who has not been in combat and, if I can help it, never will be) but Reality Czech indicated that experience is a factor in the effect of the shock of BODY damage:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1301440&postcount=8

 

Sounds convincing to me.

 

Doc

[Dust Raven]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

I dont know if Sean is working from the same information as me (who has not been in combat and, if I can help it, never will be) but Reality Czech indicated that experience is a factor in the effect of the shock of BODY damage:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1301440&postcount=8

 

Sounds convincing to me.

 

Doc

 

Yes, very convincing. I believe it's an excellent argument for those with extensive combat training (or who have otherwise learned to take a hit) to have more STUN or DEF. My point, however, was that this doesn't make the experienced warrior immune to pain, it just means they can take more of it before they suffer extreme effects.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Yes' date=' very convincing. I believe it's an excellent argument for those with extensive combat training (or who have otherwise learned to take a hit) to have more STUN or DEF. My point, however, was that this doesn't make the experienced warrior [i']immune[/i] to pain, it just means they can take more of it before they suffer extreme effects.

 

Yeah, I was convinced too. My reading wasn't that there was less pain but that, in game terms, far less of the pain translated into STUN damage for veterans than it would for greenhorns.

 

As you say, that could be modelled either by increased STUN or relevant defences. possibly even higher CON to resist stunning.

 

 

Doc

[MorpheousXO]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Stun is stuff that is gone in less than 5 minutes, to my way of thinking, I did try and do Long Term Stun to emulate longer lasting but non-fatal damage but it seemed a bit complicated - well, not complicated, but more trouble than it was really worth.

 

One thing I was thinking about on the way home - perhaps when you take Body the first point or two should be considered 'shock'. Shock can kill, but if you are not dead in 5 minutes or so you are probably going to make it, so all shock damage is removed after 5 minutes if you are not dead already.

 

In fact you could do this: point 1 of Body is shock, gone after 5 minutes (or an REC/hour or whatever).

 

Point 2 is bruising and contusion: REC/day

 

Point 3+ is normal Body damage: REC/month

 

That way (if you feel you need to) you can kill characters in combat relatively quickly, but there is a big difference between taking 10 Body damage from a single sword thrust and 10 individual nicks with a knife.

 

You record '1st point damage' with a slash, thus: /

You record '2nd point damage' with a slash, thus: \

You record '3rd point damage' with a cross, thus: X

 

Easy enough to sort out after!

 

Just thinking aloud.

 

Oh my, I quite like this, putting this in my house rule ideas folder!

[Sean Waters]

Re: Is STUN more important than BODY?

 

Have you ever actually been in combat?

 

Have you ever met my wife?