Re: Star Wars: Armour and damage: straw poll

On Feb 11, 2:57=A0pm, gleichman <fox1_...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> I don't think I've near seen a good genre based reason provided for
> the death spiral. That always comes from people wanting to be
> realistic without really understanding the subject.

Maybe we just need to produce "The Rockford Files: The RPG." Although
to be honest I'm not sure how badly hindered Jim Rockford ever
actually is by his injuries and I haven't seen that show for years.
But that might have it in Genre to include a death-spiral....

In most cases I've concluded over the years that I DON'T WANT
realistic damage mechanisms in my games.

I want reasonably fast and very reliable recovery: "You need a cane to
walk for the rest of your life" isn't a good result for a PC in a
game. Lingering death after the battle is BAD in a game, especially
bad are most mechanisms for wounds that don't put you down immediately
but that do kill you later: Recovery rolls for people who don't go
down are bad. Berserkers who take mortal damage and keep coming for a
round or two are fine as a special case, but this shouldn't happen to
most PCs.

I want the damage mechanism to tell me functional or non-functional
without much work or wound tracking and to not include too many
intermediate states involving injury penalties or continuing bleeding:
If it doesn't remove the limb don't sweat the details. If there is a
death spiral type effect then the first penalty SHOULD NOT START until
the level of damage reaches the point that you need to hit the players
over the head with the need to run away (i.e. at a minimum half damage
or more).

I want a mechanism that keeps PCs from getting seriously hurt by a
mook with a single lucky shot. I want that mechanism to be ablative
because I will not plan in advance to systematically fudge and I do
expect the PCs to be at risk in a prolonged combat against lots of
mooks. Only an Ablative defense makes individual hits incapable of
"really" hurting the character but leaves the character in danger.
Having just reinvented HP I don't really if they refresh very fast
(i.e. instantly after every battle) or take weeks to come back. That
just changes the pacing, and I'm perfectly capable of saying "three
weeks later after you've all recovered". Having reinvented the wheel
(aka HP) I'm VERY reluctant to let anything bypass it. HP are general
mojo, they don't model anything "real", my mojo that protects me ought
to protect me. Bypassing HP should only exist for things that I want
to have be a potential single shot kills and there aren't many of
those because "mook" is a relative term and this sessions BBEG may be
a mook class character ten sessions from now. And yes "Dominate
Person" is a single shot kill and thus should IMAO be resistable with
HP (something like "spend X HP to break-free by an extream act of
will" is fine with me; it's no less sensible than the HP protecting
you from axe hits and probably more in genre for most fantasy where
breaking controls is possible but exhausting and stressing).

DougL