What if Called Shot, when used in conjunction with Aim, decreased the Critical threshold? There are still the huge issues of paper cut, paper cut, paper cut, explosion on top of RoF oddities but the precision combatant who takes the time to aim at a vital area (called shot + aim) now has, say, to roll a 6-10 to get a Crit (insta-gibbing most NPCs). Would this be a welcome first step in addressing some of the problems?

How about creating a new weapon trait for heavy hitting weapons, such as Launchers, Grenades, Snipers, ect.

For Example(Name just placeholder)

Devastating(X) - When this weapon hit it activates righteous fury on (X) or higher

I.E. Give the Sniper rifle Devastating(7) and voila insta-kill on a 7 or higher more likely to critical wound

and take out that pesky mook in a single hit giving a more sniper feel

Also

I.E. Grenades (depending on type) Devastating(X) would allow you to plop a grenade in a group of mooks

and take them out not having to worry about them surviving automatically and coming to mob your face

Besides in DH1E a sniper shot that roll a five or below is most of the time only going to be a grazing blow anyways, this ability illistrates that as well as giving a sniper or another single hit weapon that feeling of doing damage and hitting hard.

I believe this also might help balance auto weapons and single shot.

This suggestion may be a little out there though.

I posted something like this on another thread, so it sounds good to me. Although there is a part of me wants to tie it to degrees of success, I just can't think of a good way of doing so.

For real hilarity go bare handed. It's like Fist of the North Star. You do six to seven tiny hits and then the seventh explodes their skull or blasts through their torso...

Probably the first good reason to give these rules a try at all

Lynata, I was thinking of something similar. It's an excellent solution to the problem, makes TB more useful and allows for all sorts of gorey special effects in combat. I second this.

Another idea that might work is just tiering the bonuses that wounds give to future wounds. Make all of the flesh wounds give a bonus of only 1, and then start bumping up from there. Example:

Wound 1-6 (+1 to future wounds)

Wound 7-9 (+2 to future wounds)

Wound 10-12 ( +3)

Wound 13-15 (+4)

Wound 16-18 (+5)

Wound 19-21 (+6)

Wound 22-24 (+7)

Wound 25-26 (+8)

Wound 27-28 (+9)

Wound 29-30 (+10)

A critical hit DOUBLES the bonus.

Cons: more book-keeping! Rather than just recording wounds and multiplying by 5 or 15, you have to record individual wounds and then do extra addition. Not very elegant.

Pros: this system works pretty well to reflect the narrative. I can buy a guy covered in a couple dozen flesh wounds being a lot weaker to a killing blow. It also mostly fixes the issue full auto having an advantage over low RoF weapons.

What remains to be fixed from this: righteous fury being slanted toward full auto attacks. No option for single shot kills when it would make sense.

The fact that setting someone on fire appears to cause them to inevitably explode, if I read this right.

Lynata, I was thinking of something similar. It's an excellent solution to the problem, makes TB more useful and allows for all sorts of gorey special effects in combat. I second this.

It's 90% stolen directly from GW's Inquisitor RPG, where it works nicely by transforming Toughness not into a secondary layer of armour, but rather a character's ability to deal with injuries they actually incur instead of negating them entirely. On the example of Space Marines, they do not become invulnerable to lasguns like they are in DW, it just takes a lot of shots to gun them down because their physiology lets them continue the fight even after ramping up injury after injury. A much more fitting representation, imo.

Given that I have a feeling that parts of DH2's injury system were at least inspired by Inquisitor, I'm at a loss for why the powers-that-be keep insisting on retaining TB as added armour. Admittedly, I'm biased in that I was never a fan of huge gaps between characters in RPGs - it's the bane of teamplay and versatility!

DH2 seems to move at least partially in that direction by lowering the differences between armour and weapon stats, but I'm not quite sure whether this isn't putting the cart before the horse ...

IMO, this system should ditch weapon Pen values, increase the protective values of armor by 2 points, make some very minor adjustments to weapon Damages (not all, mind you, just some), and ditch TB mitigating Damage. Weapon Qualities can be substituted for Pen values- something like a sniper rifle or long-las gaining Penetration (X), where (X) equals +1 per each 2, maybe 3 DoS on the to-hit Test.

However, Nimsim and Lynata have some really good ideas on this subject- perhaps we could use the best of both: Lynata's TB buffer suggestion with that of Nimsim's tiered increases and doubling the tracking value on Critical hits?

Concerning RA (currently) W, I'm also of a mind that the +5/+10 modifiers just don't make any sense within the framework of wound tracking. I realize the numbers are in keeping with easy math, but tracking wounds is not associated with percentages, which is why I think those numbers have been assigned- the devs are in the mind-set of 'Ungh...percentages...must use fives and tens...ungh.' I'm not blaming them for the narrow-mindedness. I'd actually expect it of myself if I were in their shoes.

We're already adding and subtracting varied small numbers for TB and armour to arrive at our Damage result, and none of those numbers have anything to do with percentages- the success of the hit has already been deemed positive by the time we move to the next step of tracking injuries. It's just simple addition, so would +6/+12 really be that much more difficult to calculate? Or any other combination of numbers, such as +4/+10 or +5/+12- and what's demanding the Critical tracking value be a multiple that is equally divisible by the non-Critical tracking value?

Related: Why do all the bonuses and penalties to tests even have to be in increments of ten? Speaking quite honestly, if you've picked up either of DH1 or DH2 and determined you'll be using the rules, surely it must imply you are intelligent enough to understand the rules, and simple math can't be more difficult than reading comprehension, can it?

I've been thinking of using the standard Difficulty categories as guidelines, rather than absolutes. I fully realize tens make things very simple. I just think the system (whether it be DH 1.5 or 2.0) would benefit from more granularity.

I'm not against TB modifying damage. Some people have survived multiple rifle wounds to the chest, and TB reflects how a given wound is less disruptive for some people than others. Also, TB doesn't stop bullets, it stops bruises and broken bones from the impact of the bullet on the jacket; at least, that's how I see it.

What I dislike about the wound system is that it looks like it will trivialize BOTH armor and TB (and that large amounts of chart-checking feels a bit like an 80s' version of rolemaster). Since it flattens every previous wound to a cumulative +5 bonus to the next wound checks, I'm afraid armor and TB won't increase survivability all that much. It's linked to the 'Fist of the North Star' effect that was mentioned above: whether you deal 8 net* damage every round or poke for 1 net damage every round, the enemy will die in approximately the same number of blows or bullets. The only difference will be that the "wound effects" will be somewhat more severe, but since the roll adds a cumulative +5 anyway, it doesn't feel like the difference is that important. For instance, in my 8 net damage vs. 1 net damage example, the severity of effects (and death) will be delayed by roughly 1 round in the '1 damage' scenario compared to the '8 damage' scenario; while this is 'nice', 7 points is more than the difference between a naked guy and someone wearing light power armor, so I feel the effect should be more significant.

Armor and toughness have always been quite important in the 40k universe (the IGEoM would not have bothered designing power armor if it wasn't efficient), and I feel the current wound rules don't reflect that.

There's a certain number of simple improvement that could help with this situation, the simplest being "no flattening of previous wounds to a cumulative +5; instead, you just accumulate the net wound values; critical hits bring an additional +5 to that value"

(Take my opinion with a grain of salt, I have yet to actually playtest on either side of the GM screen)

*By 'net', I mean after subtracting TB and armor

Crazy idea:

1. Allow AP to effect TB mitigation
2. Only allow armored targets to reduce damage with their TB, unless they have a special trait, lets call it Unnatural Toughness for now (so an unarmored Ork can shrug off a shotgun wound, a naked Guardsman cannot.)

3. PCs and Boss level NPCs only suffer wound effects when they take an amount of damage greater than their TB. Dmg still gets marked down, but you only refer to a table when you take a specific amount of damage and you add the +5 or +10 to the table if the character has taken a wound previously.

Okay, that's me spitballing, feel free to tear it apart.

For real hilarity go bare handed. It's like Fist of the North Star. You do six to seven tiny hits and then the seventh explodes their skull or blasts through their torso...

Probably the first good reason to give these rules a try at all

So, who has played Fallout 1 here?

This reminds me very much of the criticals, where you would give your opponent 1 point of damage and see their torso explode.

the only problem here is that you have to slap them three times first.

If you allow Pen to decrease TB as well as Armour, you might as well make it damage. Only in really big levels will you get through both Toughness and Armour, and their current trend seems to be towards less PEN, rather than more. This is like Star Wars and WFRP 3rd, where best I can tell Penetration does reduce both, and in neither cases rarely reaches a level where it exceeds both armour soak and toughness soak, and so there is always the question of "why not just add straight damage?" Seperating PEN and Damage only make sense when they will interact with things differently. If it doesn't reduce TB then it means PEN only matters against armoured foes, and sometimes you will over penetrate, making the extra Pen unnecessary. If it does reduce TB then it is only different from damage if it is more than at least 3 (as pretty much anything will have a TB of at least 3).

Isn't there a weapon quality that reduces TB? Felling?

I have the following ideas how to deal with the issue of automatic weapons and several minor wounds "till explode" and auto-weapons beeing the uber-****:

-> Wounds are inflicted on "attack"-basis rather than on "hit"-basis.

So lets keep it easy and say i get 6 hits with an autopistol with 8 damage each and the Target has a defense score of 5. Instead of dealing 6 wounds to the target each causing wound effect 3, it would deal 1 wound with wound effect 18.

This way single-shot weapons with higher damage will be better against tough enemies, while auto-weapons will be better against lighter enemies.

-> Righteous Fury can only be inflicted on the first hit each round. This is to prevent auto-weapons from increasing the fury-chance to 30+%. Also, this will benefit weapons with 2+ damage dice more, because they have a higher fury chance.

-> Weapons of the "heavy" type deal 2 wounds with each successful attack (see the first proposal), instead of one (on fury: 1 wound and 1 critical wound). This is to make heavy weapons more frightening (so better seek good cover, how it should be).

Personally, I would like to see the Wound system as follows:

1. Location-based Wounds.

Wounds are applied exactly to the location upon which they are inflicted, with no shared bonuses.

We played like that in our small community and trust me, it doesn't increase the time nor difficulty of combat encounters. A simple damage chart per player (one small page / scrap of paper) is sufficient to keep track on incoming Wounds for each character.

2. Damage-tied Wound modifiers.

Each Wound (inflicted upon a location) gives a bonus to the following one equal to it's unmodiifed Damage value minus target's Toughness value.

For example, an acolyte with TB3 is hit three times in his Body by a lasgun volley. After deducing his Armour and TB (for calculating the Damage values), we get 3, 6 and 1. Then we resolve the Wounds - result of 3 gives us something insignificant on the table and NO BONUS to subsequent Wounds (Damage 3 minus TB3 = 0). The result of 6 then gives us a relatively minor effect, providing a bonus of 3 (6 - 3 = 3) to subsequent Wound effects. Then the last result of 1 is increased up to 4 (1 + bonus of 3), but in itself will add nothing to the bonus pool as it's unmodified Damage value is 1 (and 1 minus TB3 = 0).

The above-mentioned is my humble attempt to summarize the ideas of Lynata and Nimsim, described in this thread earlier.

3. Damage charts.

IMHO, there should be 16 instead of just 9 charts:

3.1. By damage types - Energy, Impact, Rending, Explosive

3.2. By damage location - Head, Arm, Leg, Body

Removal of Explosive damage type and unification of Arms and Legs into Limbs is probably a result of simplification effort, but honestly, guys, those of us unable to rummage through a few tables play in computer RPG's. It is called Pen & Paper for a reason Besides, critical damage to Arms and Legs will by definition lead to somewhat different results, and the Explosive damage actually combines the Energy, Impact and Rending in one package, which must sensibly be reflected by deadlier damage results.

4. Critical hits.

Instead of giving a bonus / multiplier to Wound effects, Critical Hits should be additionally resolved vs. target's TB and be potentially fatal.

I think you'll agree that (almost) every Head has a a Brain somewhere deep inside, and any Damage applied directly to it will be very unpleasant for the recipient to say the least. Similarly, every Body has Liver, Lungs, Heart, in some cases - Balls (perish the thought), etc. In Arms and Legs we get major arteries, which if severed almost invariably result in a very bloody and very swift demise.

So, what I propose is for the Critical Hit to represent a (un)lucky hit to just such a location. To avoid tons of tables for each organ in question, the effects could be summarized in the following way:

1. Damage value (as per p.2) is less than target's TB = painful hit but no real damage; Toughness test (with a bonus = difference between TB and Damage multiplied by 10) to overcome the pain. Target Dazed if the test is failed.

2. Damage value is equal to target's TB = relatively minor damage. The same as above, but the target is Stunned if the test is failed.

3*. Damage value is greater than TB = Internal Bleeding (X). This is a Blood Loss condition, which can't be treated in the field and will require at least basic medical facilities. X = difference between Damage and TB.

4*. Damage value is twice (or more) greater than TB = target dies.

For example, an Ogryn with TB 6 is hit in the head by a sniper rifle. Sniper, the devious little bastard that he is, scores a Critical Hit and also throws in an additional damage dice for shooting at an unaware target, giving him an impressive result of 23. After substracting Ogryn's TB (let's assume he has no armour on the head) the resulting Damage value is (23 minus 6) 17. Ogryn got quite a headache! In addition, as this is a Critical Hit, we look up the Ogryn TB (6) and compare it with the Damage value (17)... Hmm... Rest in peace, our muscular friend...

* - as a side note, in this case Space Marine Implants and Strange Anatomy traits might come in handy, allowing for a Toughness test to avoid blood loss / death.

I have the following ideas how to deal with the issue of automatic weapons and several minor wounds "till explode" and auto-weapons beeing the uber-****:

-> Wounds are inflicted on "attack"-basis rather than on "hit"-basis.

So lets keep it easy and say i get 6 hits with an autopistol with 8 damage each and the Target has a defense score of 5. Instead of dealing 6 wounds to the target each causing wound effect 3, it would deal 1 wound with wound effect 18.

This way single-shot weapons with higher damage will be better against tough enemies, while auto-weapons will be better against lighter enemies.

Yes, this was our exact thought too. Simple to implement but works just fine.

I have the following ideas how to deal with the issue of automatic weapons and several minor wounds "till explode" and auto-weapons beeing the uber-****:

-> Wounds are inflicted on "attack"-basis rather than on "hit"-basis.

So lets keep it easy and say i get 6 hits with an autopistol with 8 damage each and the Target has a defense score of 5. Instead of dealing 6 wounds to the target each causing wound effect 3, it would deal 1 wound with wound effect 18.

This way single-shot weapons with higher damage will be better against tough enemies, while auto-weapons will be better against lighter enemies.

Yes, this was our exact thought too. Simple to implement but works just fine.

This proposal is both simple and clever.

Total supporter of this !

Developers, please read this ;D Honestly, that guy pointed something really good out.

It would solve:

> having to look for several hit locations

> limit RF on automatics reasonably

> limit number of wounds with automatics reasonably

> make automatic shots actually deadly NOW and not delayed

Maybe I would be careful with the heavy weapons, because they already have quite high damage.

Although I still would add a bonus damage on called shots also (+1 for 2 DoS, +1 for 1 DoS if the weapon is accurate). This would make sure, Automatics would not be too much OP regarding to a single shot.

The system breaks in two ways- 1) When a hit that is supposed to kill, doesn't [the much loved commissar example] and when a hit that's not supposed to kill does [A child stabbing you with a pin and inflicted one point of damage after you've been on receiving end of full auto power which left you with no visible effects [1-6 Damage on most of tables for example], causes you to BLOW UP. Which is ridiculous.

(Hey, a quoting system! Neat! Ah, it's been a while...)

Anyway to the point: both can be resolved by reshuffling the critical hit tables and the bonuses for wound effects by previous wounds. In effect you need to calibrate the proper balance between lethality of a single hit versus the increasing lethality of multiple wounds . The beta favors the latter. Therefore single shot kills are difficult.

The way to rectify this is to decrease the bonus for previous wounds from +5/+10 to, say, #3/+6 and then erase some of the middling critical effects so that the crit tables max out at 20 or so. That shifts the balance to single hit kills

The only alternative to that (if one wants to keep all the crits - because the more crits, the more variety) is to increase the damage of all weapons by 2 to 5 points.

Please note though that will make it more likely that players can be one-shotted. Yes, they have fate but... is that what we want? (I would prefer it so - but there is no accounting for taste.) So that's sth to keep in mind when balancing insta-death vs cumulative death .

Anyway... combat system analysis in progress, guys...

Alex

Indeed favour deadly systems, both for NPCs and Players alike.

Combat needs to be considered carefully and should never be something that seems like the easiest way to solve a problem. There always needs to be a high risk to get seriously wounded or even die.

That said, there also needs to be something that protects players or important NPCs from unlucky dying.

A bad throw here, a very lucky throw from the opponent there and things can go down very badly very fast.

But in shape of fate points this thing exists. So therefore I am fully ok with quite deadly systems.

First-hit-kills should be something rather rare anyway, and primarily reserved for very devastating Heavy Wepons, very rare and unique hightech weapons and weapons especially designed for assassination (sniper rifle etc.).

I would tie one-shot deadly weapons either to

A.) Accurtae

Or

B.) Directly very high damage

That said, I think there should not be several wounds accourding to one automatic attack with several hits.

One wound is enough, this one could be more severe though.

Also, one-time RF is enough for automatics.

At the moment because of above reasons, automatics are too strong compared to weapons with slow fire rates.

Okay, here's a reminder for everyone about the purpose of the Toughness Bonus:

TB's purpose is to be able to decrease the effect a wound has on you. If the TB soaks damage completely, it means you do get wounded, perhaps even catch a bullet, are bleeding a bit - but you continue without performance being degraded. As such TB is just fine.

Also it is incorrect to say: "Oh, my TB is 4, my armour is 3, so my body stops a bullet better than my armour." TB simply describes the above effect. We could also simply user Tb-3 for damage modification, if we'd also reduce weapon damages by 3. And then this argument would collapse completely.

What I do take from this thread is the fist of the north star effect so far. And the strength of that effect is tied to how much each previous wound adds to the wound effect relative to how much the damage of the current hit adds to the wound effect.

Alex

Honestly, I think the "Fist of the North Star" situation would be best solved by a change that FFG won't do, but I probably will house-rule:

Change the Critical Damage tables to just specify an effect (status condition / death). Leave out the description.

I always felt that the tables restricted the narrative aspect of combat. Describing what players did (or even better - have them describe it) on a specific attack has always been my favorite aspect of combat, and the 40k line tries to shoehorn it.

Hell, I'm tempted to do away with hit locations, while we're at it, and just describe a hit location that makes sense based on the status condition inflicted. Could make the tables a lot shorter.

Okay, here's a reminder for everyone about the purpose of the Toughness Bonus:

TB's purpose is to be able to decrease the effect a wound has on you. If the TB soaks damage completely, it means you do get wounded, perhaps even catch a bullet, are bleeding a bit - but you continue without performance being degraded. As such TB is just fine.

Also it is incorrect to say: "Oh, my TB is 4, my armour is 3, so my body stops a bullet better than my armour." TB simply describes the above effect. We could also simply user Tb-3 for damage modification, if we'd also reduce weapon damages by 3. And then this argument would collapse completely.

Why is that incorrect? If you really do want to describe the effect of an attack's damage in that detail for TB, then you should do the same for armour - meaning that your bullet hammers into the plating/leather/whathaveyou, creating huge holes or blowing chunks off the material ... yet just like TB it magically doesn't have a lasting effect. So, yes, TB still stops bullets better than your armour.

If TB's real purpose would be to "decrease the effect of injuries", then the designers should perhaps have adopted the combat system from GW's Inquisitor RPG, where TB was merely a buffer between Criticals. Currently, TB just doesn't do what you seem to imply it does. It negates injuries entirely, otherwise characters would be affected by them somehow , even if it just shows over time in a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of manner.

You know what "getting wounded, perhaps even catching a bullet, bleeding a bit but continueing without performance being degraded" is already represented by? A result of 10 or lower on the crit table .

Oh, hi!

A familiar face around here... How do you do, Sister Lynata?
Anyway! On to the point (please note that I am speaking mostly in terms of DH 1.0 here as I am not so familiar with 2.0 yet):

Why is that incorrect? If you really do want to describe the effect of an attack's damage in that detail for TB, then you should do the same for armour - meaning that your bullet hammers into the plating/leather/whathaveyou, creating huge holes or blowing chunks off the material ... yet just like TB it magically doesn't have a lasting effect. So, yes, TB still stops bullets better than your armour.

Yeah! When a bullet exceeds the armour value on a location, it can be assumed to have either penetrated or at least caused concussion damage on the body beneath it. But you are comparing apples and oranges. You can compare to sets of armours "Oh, my mesh stops bullets better than your robe." But a Tb is a permanent thing and as I have said (see above post), the level of it depends entirely on where the game designers want it to be: weapon damage and Tb are part of one and the same package, whether you have weapon damage 1D10+3 and Tb3 for average people or 1d10 and 0 respectively is irrelevant. Against this package overall package you are designing armor values of protective clothing. If weapon damage was 1d10 and a Toughness of 40-49 gave you a damage soak of 1, you wouldnt even have thought of comparing Tb and AP.

So in that sense "So, yes, TB still stops bullets better than your armour." is not to the point unless we have characters who only have Tb and some who have no Tb and only armour. But the fact is that we have an arbitrarily chosen Tb level on which AP gets added.

If TB's real purpose would be to "decrease the effect of injuries", then the designers should perhaps have adopted the combat system from GW's Inquisitor RPG, where TB was merely a buffer between Criticals. Currently, TB just doesn't do what you seem to imply it does. It negates injuries entirely, otherwise characters would be affected by them somehow , even if it just shows over time in a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of manner.

Look, I would have prefered myself a completely different damage system but let's just assume that FFG will not start from scratch on damage. So we will have to improve what-is, right?

Let me try to explain to you this way (DH 1.0): Let's say you have a NPC with 10 Wound Points. Any wound that would cause him to be less than 5% closer to death/unconsciousness/criticality (or whatever we want to associate with 0 Wound Points). would have to be rounded down to a loss of 0 Wound Points in that model of pseudo-reality, right? These are the 'shrug-off wounds'. If I cut myself in the hand, it might hurt but even if I had 10 such cuts, I wouldnt be dead or unconscious. And if I am a tough-guy PC, I might not even be hampered. A higher Tb than average (Tb 4) allows me to shrug-off wounds that would fall for normal people into 5 to 15% towards death/unconsciousness and so on.

So the dissent between us exists at this point: "It negates injuries entirely", you say. No, it negates injuries in game terms and in game terms only. The character is still wounded from a fluff POV but these are the shrug-off wounds.

And if you still dont buy it, i recommend you use the house rule of increasing all damages by 3 and reducing Tb by 3 for damage soak purposes. Armour is finally MUCH better than Tb, hooray!

Alex