joaoperru
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Wed 27 Oct 2021, 21:10

It is fine to see that you all are suggesting things that i have already done and thought on my own. They are getting a little old and stale but that is the way to go to make the thing vibrant.
But.... after the tenth time or so that they've seen a normal hit on themselves i could see the expectation in their faces about the way i would portrait the scene :) :)

Manual anyway says: "Normal damage points represent fatigue, bruises, and flesh wounds – painful, to be sure, but not fatal." Easier to portrait in a melee oriented rpg. High velocity rifle rounds leave little to the imagination.

I''ll continue to work my way with my imagination then, leaving the "D&D HP style" behind.

Thanks to everyone
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Wed 27 Oct 2021, 21:20

Moderator Message: Please show respect and decency when you post. Thanks.
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omnipus
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Wed 27 Oct 2021, 23:18

I mean there are plenty of cases of people being shot by rifle rounds and being pretty ok. Maybe it makes sense that the PCs are just that sort of lucky SOBs.

But it sounds like you've been trying to band-aid over your core problem. Maybe you want to consider a house rule to damage entirely. To bring it up again twice in one day, I could see something like Blades In The Dark's damage tier system working. A tier one wound is a minor inconvenience. A tier two wound is fairly serious. A tier three wound is very serious, and beyond that, you're dead. And they fill up/stack, so if you have to take a level one wound but are all full up, it turns into a level 2, and so on.

Off the top of my head:
Roll damage as normal, accounting for hit location and armor.
1-2 points of damage is tier 1.
3-4 is tier 2.
5 is tier 3.
More than that is immediately lethal.
Bump up each one by one level on a crit.

The one thing this doesn't account for is that Blades is a game with a lot of player agency and a very different tone. The player always has at least one and usually several ways at hand to reduce the tier of incoming harm, at some other cost. I don't think that's thematically appropriate here and it's entirely possible the whole system is insanely lethal without that.
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baldrick0712
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Wed 27 Oct 2021, 23:47

I've actually read quite a lot around the subject of bullet wounds as at one time I was in search of the ultimate realistic firearms rules. I played GURPS with all the tactical firearm add-ons; I played Aces & Eights with its shot clock. The more I read however, the more I found that bullet wound effects are extremely varied. For example, there are cases of people not even knowing they had been shot until much later after the firefight. Some people can go on with multiple bullet wounds whilst others freak out at the merest flesh wound. The military was constantly debating "stopping power" as it seemed that small caliber, high velocity rounds often didn't drop the target with one hit. Bullets do strange things in the body, like glance off bones and change direction. A bullet that entered the chest might hit a rib and deflect off it, saving the victim's life. Bullets sometimes hit bits of clothing like belt buckles or the apocryphal lucky cigarette case. I know it might get boring thinking up whacky new ways to persuade the player why a high velocity round seemingly had little effect but it isn't that unrealistic.
 
AEB
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 04:54

There are so many variables on the battlefield that covering them all would bog down any RPG system.

A bullet that travels from the muzzle of a gun and then strikes a human in the head or centre of mass is going to do the kinds of damage that require hospitalisation, rehabilitaion or death. These are what the critical wounds represent.

However often that bullet leaves the muzzle, passes through branches or folliage, tumbles in flight, deflects off the ground or hard cover, kicks up stones or fragments, grazes, bruises or gouges a human inflicting blunt force trauma and pain but inflicts a wound that can be dealt with by first aid on the field.

A good example happened to Captain Winters of Band of Brothers fame who was hit in the ankle by a fragment of a bullet that struck street cobbles. It required the fragment to be removed, was painful and made his leg stiff, but he didn't require hospitalisation and stayed in the field. A another example was told to me by a Vietnam Vet who took cover during a firefight in a building made from concrete cinder blocks. Enemy fire smashed the blocks and he was pummelled by concrete fragments and eventually knocked unconcious. However not a single bullet hit his body, so he recovered after a short stay in the field hospital.
 
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Ursus Maior
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 09:36

You could also go the way of interpreting the damage as not resulting from actual hits by bullets from the weapon, but rather as the negative results of being fired upon in a more general sense:
- "You jerk back as bullets start landing around you, and hit your head on the wall behind you."
- "You go down on one knee to get better cover, but your patella hits a rock with full force."
- "The burst causes you to unconsciously shift deeper into the brush ... just enough for a sharp branch to poke you hard, straight into the corner of your eye."
- "One of the bullets land right beside your left hand. You yank it back ... straight into a piece of broken rebar, cutting a deep gash."
I could go on.

In other words — one way or another, the enemy's attack "scores" on you, but not necessarily with a bullet. Only the hit that brings you down to zero needs to be an actual hit.
This. So much this. To quote the rules, PM p. 74:
Normal damage points represent fatigue, bruises, and flesh wounds – painful, to be sure, but not fatal. Critical injuries represent a much more dangerous form of injury – these can maim or kill you.
Formatting in bold by me.

In short, this is much more a problem of narration and, in my eyes, letting players narrate their own characters' stories, than a problem of realism. As has been pointed out, simulating the plentiful realities of ballistics and especially wound ballistics makes it impossible to tell a well flowing story of heated action combat.
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Vader
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 09:51

High velocity rifle rounds leave little to the imagination.

Not entirely true, necessarily ... but even if it were — then don't let the round hit!

Instead, have a near miss by the round cause a secondary effect, physical or psychological, that accounts for a proper level of injury.
It's not only factually correct; the possibility of narrative variation — and room for imagination — is literally infinite.

That's the point with the examples I listed earlier (thanks, Ursus Maior), and the examples that AEB presented a couple of posts ago!


But since you've already done and thought of all this on your own ... then I'm not entirely sure I've understood your original question. Could you expound a bit — what else, or more, is it you need to narrate these events?
Before you use the word "XENOMORPH" again, you should read this article through:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aliens-throwaway-line-confusion
 
joaoperru
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 15:58

i'm ok with your answers, that's all. I was just wondering if other referees portrait the situation or, after a while, fall down to the "you just lose 2 HP" way of playing.
Anyway i don't like having psicological side effects instead of physical ones when a player loses wounds. The thing is already well potraied with the "stress" rule, which i love. This is MY idea of wounds.
I was just in search of some ideas that maybe you referees had, and i recieved some i didn't think of.
About side effects like hitting the head against a wall, hitting the ground with your knee.... hum... interesting.. but after the second time my players would ask: why does a pistol make me hit the head against the wall for 1 point of damage and the machine gun fire for three? Good question!
There are times (and it happened) that there's literally nothing between the shooter and the target. You cannot invent ricochet all the time, you cannot say he fell down because he didn't.. there are some situation that it's really difficult to come up with something. The problem arose after the tenth time in a row which they saw that bullets didnt hit them.

The rule is quite well written: fatigue, bruises, flesh wounds. Nothing too dangerous. 3 hit points are a flesh wound from a machine gun, maybe enough to take you out of the equation, but they heal in 18 hours. I will live with it.
Or: as a general rule of thumb. 1 success, near miss/ricochet/ecc, 2 successes (or anyway criticals), direct hit

So again, i thank you all.
 
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Vader
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 17:48

Anyway i don't like having psicological side effects instead of physical ones when a player loses wounds.

To clarify — I refer to a "psychological" effect meaning when the fire prompts the target to do something by reaction or reflex, that in turn causes a physical injury (e.g. "a bullet striking the pavement makes you to jump aside, but one foot lands askew in a deep pothole, so you fall and twist your ankle"). Thing is: if you say he falls, he falls. GM fiat, and all that.
"Physical" effects are when the rounds themselves cause the damage, albeit indirectly (as in AEB's example of a person pummelled unconscious by chunks of concrete knocked loose by bullets striking the wall behind which he was taking cover).

Good question, indeed ... um ... perhaps a salvo from an HMG is more startling than a shot from a 9mm, so it makes you jerk back more forcibly, so you hit your head harder...?

As for there being nothing between the shooter and the target ... well, nothing but distance, ballistics, and skill. It's perfectly possible to shoot a fair burst of automatic fire at a human-sized target standing clear in the open at 50m and not have a single direct hit. There's actually nothing strange with that — happens all the time. Could even happen at 10m.

Also, BTW — don't forget that you can engage your players to narrate what happens to their characters. "As you try to sidle along the wall, one of the Russians notices you and opens fire with his AK. [roll roll] You take some damage, perhaps from the bullets, but perhaps not ... tell us what happens."
Before you use the word "XENOMORPH" again, you should read this article through:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aliens-throwaway-line-confusion
 
joaoperru
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Re: Damage from firearms... Part 2

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 18:29

i'm not surprised by the fact that one can miss at 10 meters. Happens a lot during firefight. Real one i mean. Shootout between not so experienced people, with fear, adrenaline and all the like make people miss A LOT.
I was referring to finding ways to explain a wound at that distance (with just one success), with nothing in the way. I'm not saying it's impossible, i already did that more than a few times. I say that after a while gets stale. After all that glancing hits, ricochet from the ground....

Really like the way people should say what happened to themselves. Sadly didn't work in Forbidden Lands, and it's not working a lot here... but for their fault, otherwise has always been a good idea.

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