Damage in Traveller Combat

[Golan2072]

Traveller uses four kinds of rules in regard to damage in combat:

1) Direct Damage to Stats (CT and T4).
2) Abstract Damage (Striker).
3) Life Force/Hit Points (MT/T20, respectively).
4) Hit-Points per Hit Location (TNE).

Which one of them do you prefer?

 

[Whipsnade]

2-4601,

That was a tough poll to vote in. I eventually voted for the CT/T4 method, but that was mostly by default. You see, I don't have a problem with any of the damage methods listed in the poll. All are perfectly valid for different games, different groups, and different styles of play.

When roleplaying, most of my groups enjoyed the CT/T4 method because it was fast. Damage effected a PC immediately and without any intermediate steps. Of course, most of my groups didn't do a lot of primarily military roleplaying. That is, the PCs weren't in a firefight every other day.

Now, when I did have a more military-flavored campaign or sessions going, the more detailed damage systems were better. The players wanted to know if they'd been hit in certain locations or didn't want to be almost totally incapacitated by their first hit.

It's a matter of Horses For Courses. Choose which system fits the campaign or session at hand.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Rover]

I really like the T20 rules for damage. that is once we got used to calculating it. It was a little awkward at first, but now it flows.

R

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I think the stats-as-hit-points is a wonderfully elegant solution to the problem.

 

[mike wightman]

CT/T4 for me.

It's quick and easy to describe as actual wound effects.

 

[Supplement Four]

I like how the CT/T4 reduce-stat-damage thing integrally implements lowered ability due to wounds.

A CT character with a lowered DEX, for example, might now make that requirement for the DEX bonus.

A CT character using UGM is effected in that his natural ability modifier will be harder to obtain.

A T4 character has ever task he does effected when a stat (used as the governor on that task) is lowered due to damage.

Other games implement damage level effects (like in D6 Star Wars, where different things happen depending on the wound inflicted). CT makes this happen all in one elegant step.

 

[aramis]

MT as as written:
Hits for during combat, and stat damage once the adrenaline wears off...

Yes, that really is how MT is written, so the survey is BADLY flawed...

 

[Golan2072]

An interesting point which arises from the poll is that none of the voters have favored abstract damage (i.e. stun < light wound < severe wound < dead). It'll be equally interesting to hear the reasons for that. My reason for preferring direct damage to stats is the sheer elegance in this method - it is simple and intuitive.

 

[robject]

That's one place where I found T4 superior to CT; when you took damage in T4, it became harder to do things. Your DEX took damage? Now it's suddenly difficult to fire your gun.

Granted, adrenaline is a very good excuse for not doing combat this way, and DEX ain't really a hit location, etc etc. But the abstraction is elegant.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Another point is the way armor is handled.
In CT it was armor makes you harder to hit but was otherwise irrelevant. In MT Armor didn't make you any more difficult to hit but it made you very difficult to damage. T20 tries to strike a happy medium, making you a little harder to effectively hit, do less lethal damage to you but you would feel the hit.

T20 also allows epic brawls but lethal combat retains most of the CT lethality.

I think it is a brilliant compromise.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

This seems to be a perennial question/arguement/issue/whatever on the board, but since combat is a vital part of the game, why not?

Here are a couple things I had to say this month on the subject in the "How do you like your body armor rules to work" topic:

OK, I base my opinion here on two things: a couple of years of wearing kevlar in the US Army and alot more years designing and using armor for a medieval re-creation group (the SCA).

1. Armor actually makes you easier to hit and only mitigates damage taken.

2. The human body is generally not designed to easily accept another several centimeters of hardshell on it. This can me made more tolerable by having armor custom fitted, but that takes additional time/expense (in d20 terms, masterwork). While you can in fact do several interesting stunts (cartwheels, etc.) while wearing fitted armor, it is nevertheless very fatiguing and claustraphobic to wear, and most people have an almost uncontrolable urge to get the helmet and torso section off if they are not actually expecting immanent combat. This urge can be lessened with training, but for most folks, the weight and encumberance of armors is a factor in it's use.

3. Armor only mitigates damage. Armors can only rarely actually stop an assault on the body with no consequenses to the person wearing it. This is on the order of a tactical vest or helmet stopping a punch or swung baton. Anything more than this does increasingly more damage to the wearer, though not life threatening damage in most cases. The fact is that several pounds per square inch of pressure applied to any armor is going to bruise, cause muscle sprains, cause stress injuries on joints or organs, and otherwise be quite annoying to the wearer. But this damage is most often not immediately life threatening, though in some cases it is (impact related heart arythmia [sp], blood poisoning due to bruising, etc). Simply put, an opponent in armor requires some extra work to kill, but not that much more, really. Once you defeat the material technology, there is only a soft bloody bag behind it. And that bag bruises pretty easily. Trust me on this. I've had some pretty spectacular multi-colored beauties on various parts of my body all in 'fun'...

4. There are several portions of the body that are difficult to armor and are almost immediately fatal if penetrated, and severely debilitating otherwise. These are: the jucture of the neck shoulder (carotid artery), the armpit (there is only lung tissue between an impact and the heart and aorta at the armpit), and the groin area (femoral[sp] arteries). These areas are almost impossible to armor effectively, though deflective armoring techniques can dramatically reduce the dangers involved.

So, taking all that into account, the system that most realistically portrays armor use is, IMHO, the RuneQuest 3rd ed. system. Hit locations (and hit points) are divided up into Head, Chest, Abdomen, Left and Right Arm and Left and Right Leg. The heavier the armor, the more points of damage can be resisted. So, for example a bandit wearing Hardened Leather with Padding might have 3 pts of Armor and 4 Hit points in his Right Arm. So, in order to injure that limb, an opponent must first hit the limb and then do more than 3 pts damage. Once an individual reaches zero hit points in that hit location, it is useless until healed. HOWEVER, the body also has a given number of Fatigue Points and each layer of armor deducts from those FP. Once you pass zero Fatigue, you begin to loose accuracy in your blows (a negative modifier to your Attack rolls). Once you reach negative-the-starting-value (you have 33 FP, and you reach -33), you are exhausted and may no longer fight.

But all this adds alot bookeeping and more steps in a combat round...

So, as usual, we are back to the gritty realism versus dynamic play arguement.

But there you go.

There are basically only 5 ways to injure a person:
Bash: Concussive force; baton, mace, ball-and-chain
Slice: Applying a sharp edge to the skin in order to separate tissues; Some swords, almost all knives, a great many pole arms
Chop/Hack: A strike to deeply separate tissues, be removed and struck again; Axes, nearly all swords, pole arms
Pierce: A thrust deep into tissues seeking immediate access to vital organs; Spears Arrows, most swords
and
Energy: An attack meant to inflict extreme environments upon the body; Lasers, Grenades, NBC, Fusion and Plasma.

Some weapons use combinations of these elements... Ballistic damage is energy and piercing, for example. But all these threats contribute to the design of protective gear. The fact is that whether it be a tank, a battleship, or an infantryman, you cannot perfectly armor an object without severe restrictions to its mobility, sensory input, and combat effectiveness as a whole. You have to make trade offs from among Firepower, Mobility, and Protection. Guess right and you're a genius. Guess wrong and you've got alot of angry widows to explain it to.

Again, I think that most games systems allow for all this stuff. Fantasy games have fireballs and healing potions. We have in Traveller unlimited energy in Fusion power, advanced computing to assist a weapon user, advanced training, and so on but it all comes out in the game as:

"Roll 8 or better to hit."

It's the same with fantasy, with cyberpunk, with sci-fi, and with post-holocaust-anime-ninja-undead-in-sailor-suits. At the end of the day, combat is supposed to be anticipated, exciting, and more than alittle scary for players, not CSI: Regina.

 

[aramis]

You left out pull/twist/stretch for the list of damage modes. Few weapons do it, but it's not uncommon in HTH or animal attacks. It's often an unintended side effect of a hit that is prevented from direct tissue disruption by rigid armor. It's also a not infrequent effect of shield-hooking with an axe or mace.

 

[McPerth]

Also:

• compression/strangulation can be quite damaging, although, again, few wepons do it, but a few animals do (e,g, constrictor snakes).
• Intoxicating: as chemical gases can do, or as some animals do in one way or another (e.g. snakes, medusae).

In both cases armor affects in other ways than the ones told. In the first case, only rigid armor can have effect and, in case of strangulation, only if it efectively covers the neck.

In the case of intoxicating weapons, only avoiding the poison can avoid the damage (antidotes can mitigate it afterwards). For injected/contact (as the animals told) any armor will help, in the case of gases, only insulating armor would.

 

[nobby-w]

I used the striker damage system with the translation to 3D/6D (and 9D for a 'death' wound). However, I did nerf some of the weapons to make it a bit less deadly for player characters; the main thing I did was to stop using 'exploding round' rules for lasers and snub pistol HEAP rounds.

 

[mike wightman]

I quite like that idea...

 

[ovka]

Most of the RPGs that I have played over the years have used hit points, and that does a pretty good job of abstracting the damage. I've played Str+Dex+End = hp and gone that route. I've also played that damage is deduted from Str, Dex, and End. I try to stick with the latter because it has more of the Traveller flavor, but may of the people I have gamed with over the years like the simplified hp. I'm about to start a new campaign with a lot of my previous players and will probably go the hp route.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[aramis]

Most of the RPGs that I have played over the years have used hit points, and that does a pretty good job of abstracting the damage. I've played Str+Dex+End = hp and gone that route. I've also played that damage is deduted from Str, Dex, and End. I try to stick with the latter because it has more of the Traveller flavor, but may of the people I have gamed with over the years like the simplified hp. I'm about to start a new campaign with a lot of my previous players and will probably go the hp route.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

essentially, MT does this, too. Except that it simplifies to not rolling the dice of damage until after combat, and THEN doing attribute damage.

 

[ovka]

essentially, MT does this, too. Except that it simplifies to not rolling the dice of damage until after combat, and THEN doing attribute damage.

So you are saying that it uses hp = Str+Dex+End, then after the combat is over apply the hp damage to the ability scores? Hmmm, I think I like that. It adds the Traveller flavor to the hp that my players understand, and avoids the hassle of needing to readjust pre-calculated values on the fly.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[creativehum]

So you are saying that it uses hp = Str+Dex+End, then after the combat is over apply the hp damage to the ability scores? Hmmm, I think I like that. It adds the Traveller flavor to the hp that my players understand, and avoids the hassle of needing to readjust pre-calculated values on the fly.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

If I'm remembering the errata correctly (and I might not be!) in CT effects of reduced characteristics for weapons are not applied until after combat is finished. So adjustment are made after the heat of battle and apply for the next fight, until healing is done.

 

[aramis]

So you are saying that it uses hp = Str+Dex+End, then after the combat is over apply the hp damage to the ability scores? Hmmm, I think I like that. It adds the Traveller flavor to the hp that my players understand, and avoids the hassle of needing to readjust pre-calculated values on the fly.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

(Str+dex+con)/3, actually. And damage points are by weapon, pevn vs armor, and to hit roll.... but each dp becomes 1d6 to an attribute at end of combat or end of hits....