Keeping Wounds in Critical Hits without One-Hit KOs.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

My gut reaction is Critical Injuries.  You don't die, but you are bleeding or have a broken arm.  It gets a cool subsystem into play more and keeps it distinct from being a Fatigued or Shaken duplicate.  It also keeps Critical Hits being threatening, because no one wants to start the next adventure on crutches.  That (lingering injuries) might be too harsh for some groups, but it's more in keeping with my previous continuum suggestion - the middle version is lingering injuries, the "hard mode" is death, and the easy mode is .... something else.

For Easy Mode you could still have the Critical Injuries, just let them heal faster say after 1 or 2 scenes.  Still something to be avoided, but doesn't create long stretches of less-effective characters.

[Dirigible]

So for the purposes of discussion what do people think would be some good penalties for beatdown to inflict?

If you want to avoid the death spiral, you'd want to not give anything that penalises saves or defenses. So perhaps a penalty to attack, or increased error with attacks and checks? Arguably, being more prone to critical failures is like a death spirial, but from what I gather crit.fails are intended to be more 'interesting times' than 'suck and die, PC scum!'.

Alternatively should it somehow empower the character it's imposed on to ramp up the action (and make it a tactical decision whether to get it healed or not-?

Perhaps you get+1 to your action die result for each beatdown, or increased threat ranges - so the more beatdown you get, the higher the odds of risky and mighty outcomes.

[Morgenstern]

Exactly, and that's why it's of no use to me - if I want a solution to "Problem X", I also need to use the solutions to Problems A, B, C, and many others (regardless of whether I actually think A, B, C, et al are a problem or not).  Because there's no Grace = Dex or NPSkill = Regular Skill conversion list, and that's entirely by design (heck, it was one of the stated goals).  The only alternate is to completely rewrite your text, and that's at least equal effort to just writing my own rules.

The exchanges seem obvious to me, but that's a pitfall I've learned ot watch for . I've split the BDH post into its component parts and peformed the requisite substitutions. Perhaps You'll find more utility in problems A, B, and C being addressed in seperate posts .

But that's moving away from the topic at hand, so back to this one.

Indeed.

Looking at beatdown, I have to ask - would just doubling the number of wounds character's have do the trick? It rules out oneshots in most cases. I'm just trying to get a feel for how deep the well of 'nope, not dead yet' needs to be and a better sense of what you want the feel to be for the Player. Should they be scampering for cover tail between legs ("I can't take another of those") or screaming 'Banzai!' ("Its do or die time!")?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Looking at beatdown, I have to ask - would just doubling the number of wounds character's have do the trick?

The design goal is simple: prevent one-hit KOs while not changing the number of Wounds.  There are already calculations for amount of Wounds that use multiplication no need to add more.

Besides this way there can be a sense of accomplishment along the way.  Just simply increasing the number of Wounds turns them into another version of Vitality, and what's the fun in that?

[Morgenstern]

The design goal is simple: prevent one-hit KOs while not changing the number of Wounds.  There are already calculations for amount of Wounds that use multiplication no need to add more.

Besides this way there can be a sense of accomplishment along the way.  Just simply increasing the number of Wounds turns them into another version of Vitality, and what's the fun in that?

I guess I'm wondering how many 'bars' of beatdown do I have to fill before the target (player or serious bad guy) actually dies?  Whatever that number is, that's how much the wounds just got multiplied by.

...unless beatdown only applies while they still have vitality left?

Is damage in excess a full bar of beatdown discarded or applied towards the next pool?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

...unless beatdown only applies while they still have vitality left?

If you read the original post you'll see that this is an affirmative: once Vitality is gone reducing Wounds results in a KO.

Is damage in excess a full bar of beatdown discarded or applied towards the next pool?

Discarded.

[Morgenstern]

If a character has less than full wounds, is there any penalty?

I ask, because there is a delicate dance with reaching the point where as the attacker I'd ask "Why would I ever want to activate a critical hit? It just dumps my damage into an infinite buffer..."

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I ask, because there is a delicate dance with reaching the point where as the attacker I'd ask "Why would I ever want to activate a critical hit? It just dumps my damage into an infinite buffer..."

Are you forgetting the stun?  Being reduced to 0 wounds under this system inflicts a stun for 1 round.  Is that not good enough?

You have a point.  The problem is I want this to to be both simple and meaningful.  Meaningful means there's an actual choice between choosing to do Wound and Vitality damage and they aren't just alternates of each other.  Simple means I have to change very little of the existing system so I don't want any complicated sub-systems based on number of Wounds left.

I'm not really concerned with low Wounds effectively being an infinite damage buffer: anyone who doesn't want to one-shot a bad guy but also doesn't want their damage wasted is too finicky for me to help.  That sort of person should use your rules instead.

The best I can think is that people shouldn't be forced to decide if they're going to activate the crit until they know the damage roll.  Low damage roll going to Wounds at that point won't waste much.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

What if a certain amount of damage in excess of remaining Wounds could contribute extra beatdown grades?  So you gain 1 beatdown + 1 beatdown per X Wounds over.

Mainly what I can't see is why it's so important to account for every single point of damage.

EDIT: Another possibility is excess goes back to Vitality.  Though I still worry that would turn this into a "two-tracks of Hit Points" problem.