Role-Playing Games | 

  What I'm interested in from a damage system is usually genre-realism. Most of the games I run are "reality plus a minor twist", so I want "real" realism. Even in the most heroic fantasy and pulp literature, though, people do not get that much tougher. Heroes get more skilled, but a single successful hit can still ruin their day. To pick the ultimate over-the-top example, Cohen the Barbarian from Discworld is simply insanely skilled. But he's an old man, if anything he has less "HP" than he used to.

  So with that in mind:

  Inflationary single-pool HP suck. They might suck only a little, if you gain less than 25% of your starting HP per "level" or whatever. Palladium is a good example of "sucks only a little"--you start with your PE stat (3d6) + 1d6 HP, and gain 1d6 per level. Hackmaster also sucks only a little in this regard--that starting pool of 20 HP makes a big difference to the game. Ones where you gain 100% of your starting HP every level, those suck a lot. Non-inflationary single-pool HP are tolerable, but still mildly sucky.

  The problem with all three kinds of single-pool HP is, what do they represent? Is that 5 HP damage your arm burned to a crisp, or a hole through your intestines, or what? Note that Storyteller's and Ars Magica's "wound levels" are just single-pool HP.

  Hit locations and location-specific HP/wound levels are the best. You know where you've been hit and how bad it is. They don't have to be as complex as Rolemaster (which isn't that complex, but does require some basic arithmetic and thinking skills some people don't have) or Phoenix Command or Tri-Tac. You can also do fast and slightly abstract hit location/wound systems like James Bond 007, or Paranoia, or my Phobos system, where wounds are marked off your stats (you take an arm hit, you lose points from STR. You take a head hit, you lose points from INT, LOG, or PRE).

  Just as bad as inflationary HP, though, is the "death spiral". In real combat, people don't notice wounds except as they're physically impaired by them. So having a "-5 to all tasks until healed" is totally unrealistic, until you start going into shock. What does happen is that the adrenalin keeps you from noticing the pain, but you still can't do anything with your maimed arm. Once you calm down, you may go into shock.

  Storyteller's about the worst at this--two foes start out shooting the crap out of each other, but as they get hit they get worse and worse at shooting, or running away, or anything. Finally you end up with two crippled gimps sissy-slapping each other, because they can't do anything else. Shadowrun's not quite as devastating, but the best combat strategy in SR is still to cause a light injury to all of your opponents, then pick them off one by one.

  Health rolls to avoid HP/wound level damage are one of many ideas that sound good, but turn out to take too much time in play for no real advantage. Add a bonus of HP or whatever for good health, and forget about it. Survival rolls are great for splatter horror one-shots, but really don't work well in play.

  IMO the perfect damage system would use only location-specific wounds during combat, and track blood loss and general trauma for post-combat effects. Which is basically what Phoenix Command does; the "lite" version of PC in the Living Steel, Aliens, Dracula, and (I'm not kidding) Lawnmower Man RPGs is a pretty good balance of realism and playability.

Last modified: 2003Jan06
Updated