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Re: (TFT) Experimental Injury and Healing rules - comments appreciated.
At 11:33 AM 12/28/04 -0500, ErolB1@aol.com wrote:
...
No, because I'm talking about *lethal* wounds - the kind that normally would
drop the guy dead at once. (In particular I'm thinking of a case where the
guy
remained standing and shooting for about 10 seconds after taking a 12-gauge
slug through the heart.)
Oh I didn't realize that was the example you were focusing on.
How can that be interpreted as anything but negative
St in by-the-book TFT? Especially since the guy does drop dead, without
having taken any further damage, after a couple of turns or so.
Well let's see, actually... remember the Berserk rules on Advanced Melee
page 20? Psycho Bob has ST 11. He makes an IQ roll and goes berserk. He
gets nailed with a shotgun which rolls double damage but rolls a low number
- Bob only takes 10 damage. Since he is berserk, he ignores the usual DX
penalties from extreme injury, even unconsciousness at ST 1. A couple of
turns later, he thinks for a moment that his enemies are all dead for some
reason, makes an IQ roll, recovering from berserk state, which causes him
to lose 2 ST, dropping him to -1 = dead.
The only stretch there is the "he thinks for a moment that his enemies are
all dead for some reason", but it would be a small house rule to apply some
chance each turn that berserk wears off before the end of combat.
Still, that's not what I thought we were discussing; I thought we were
discussing the DX penalties for even non-lethal wounds (on people who are
not berserk). It's a different issue whether or not you allow negative ST
figures to keep fighting or not.
So assuming a system such as GURPS where it is quite possible to keep
fighting even with a soon-to-be-lethal shotgun blast to the heart, even
when not berserk, and taking this example, are you saying that not only
should the victim be able to keep fighting for a while, but that it should
be at zero penalty? Or are you suggesting that the penalties should only
kick in at ST 0 rather than ST 3?
I agree that it affects tactics - but I think it makes hard-hitting
characters less favored, not more. With Dx penalties for damage, a
character who hits hard enough to inflict a Dx penalty is favored over one
who hits less hard, even if he hits sufficiently more often that his
average-damage-per-turn is the same.
That's another side-point, but I was considering something like the two
typical 32-point thugs:
Thug A: ST 10 DX 14 Cutlass Small Shield
Thug B: ST 15 DX 9 Battleaxe
In b-t-b TFT, Thug A will go first and have a great chance to hit, with a
good chance to do average or better damage, which is 5+ points, and enough
to drop Thug B by -2DX. That effect will make a huge difference on Thug B's
chance to hit, dropping from DX 9 to DX 7, though it's still quite possible
Thug B will nail Thug A and very likely do lethal or debilitating damage.
Without the DX effects of injury, Thug A has will have a much smaller
chance of doing the 8 points damage now needed to have any effect on Thug
B's counterstrike, so he'll likely have to risk the DX 9 counterstrike
which can easily kill Thug A.
If I'm Thug B, I would rather play with your rules.
If I'm Thug A, or a player fighter character who is going to have to fight
a typical adventure involving a series of combats, then I prefer b-t-b
rules, because it's easier to take out people who are on their way down
without getting pounded in return with nothing to do about it except change
tactics to missile weapons or polearms or magic or cannon fodder.
...
Except that it's realistic for people in deadly-serious fights to keep
fighting at full effectiveness until dead (and occasionally to keep
fighting at full effectiveness even after they're dead...)
Even after they're _dead_ would be even worse! ;->
I'm not at all convinced it is more realistic to have no effect from
injury. I see no reason to presume that the cases where people have kept
fighting after mortal injury are not the exceptions which get mentioned
because they are unexpected and rare. If humans _usually_ were completely
unaffected by wounds in combat, then it seems to me that would be what most
people would expect, and we would instead be surprised to hear of cases
where someone was blasted in the heart and were affected by it before they
dropped dead.
Moreover, b-t-b TFT doesn't deny badly injured figures the opportunity to
retaliate - it just applies an effect. You're suggesting that getting
seriously injured has no effect at all - has no chance of reducing
someone's effectiveness. Again, having seen very non-serious blows cause
people to be stunned and completely out of action for quite some time, I
would disagree. I think both extremes are possible, but I think for
instance that if you do a marksmanship or other DX-related test between
people who are not under attack, and those who are getting beaten up,
getting pounded will be a noticeable negative factor in their performance.
If anything, the TFT penalties actually seem pretty low to me, except for
the sudden death point. By comparison, in GURPS, where the usual penalty is
-1 per point of damage you just took (though only for the next second) and
health and DX rolls to avoid being stunned and losing your ability to act
or falling down, but negative damage characters are allowed to keep
fighting for a while, it often happens just as you are describing your
anecdotes, with some healthy or berserk victims continuing to fight on,
often quite dangerously, for a significant time after they have been
seriously and likely mortally injured. That's with what seem to me like
more severe effects of injury rules than TFT. What allows it are the rules
which allow continued fighting - not any reduction in negative effects from
injury.
Also, it can lead to situations which are counter-intuitive - such as in
the earlier thread on this list where someone mentioned their first
experience trying to play GURPS, and not understanding why people weren't
getting taken out right away by serious injuries. Again, it seems to me
that people surviving massive injury and continuing to fight on just as
dangerously should be the exception rather than the rule, unless trying to
reproduce the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
...
PvK
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