House Rules for Combat

[Chaos]

@Sigg: would you really like a Virushi to have 200+ Lifeblood?


Another option, adapted from Mechwarrior 2nd edition, would be to have a rather generous general hit point pool, maybe the same amount as Stamina now is. Also, each limb, the torso (maybe divided in upper and lower torso) get their own hitpoints, maybe the Con score for arms and leg, double Con for Torso and half Con for the head. Or maybe twice that if you like it less deadly.
Any hit would then reduce both the total hit points and the hitpoints of the region that was hit. That way, a few lucky (or well-aimed) hits to the same region would disable a character, but it would be difficult to kill him right away.

 

[mike wightman]

I'd change the divisor for the larger races - how much blood volume does a rhino have?

 

[archhealer]

In my campaigns, whenever a character suffers more than 1/2 his/her lifeblood from a single blow, I roll 1d6 for the following results:

1. 1d3 STR damage
2. 1d3 DEX damage
3. 1d3 CON damage (W/reduction to lifeblood)
4. 1 point CHA damage
5. 1 point INT damage
6. No serious damage.

Any of these results has a 50/50 chance of being temporary or permanent. I like these, because it makes for more of an "I can be injured" feel, my players actually seem to ENJOY bragging about their PCs scars, and, I've devised a way to actually USE the surgery feat:
Any permanent damage suffered in this way may be made temporary damage with a successful T/Medical check (By a character with the surgery feat) DC = 10 + the amount of lifeblood damage + 2xthe Stat Damage. So if a characer with 10 lifeblood suffered 5 points of lifeblood damage from a single blow, and suffered 2 points of STR damage, the DC would be 19 to make the STR damage temporary.

 

[loconius]

This post is long as it contains the rules you have all been wanting for your T20 game [those of you who want to maintain a since of danger but not change the primary feel of combat]. i will sumurize below:

basically, there is no more negative life blood, once you hit 0, you make fortitude checks per attack [DC based on damage] or become dying. you continue making checks once dying to actually die.

low level characters really won't notice a huge change, and high level characters will still be out of the fight from lucky shots. rules follow, and are similar to the Unearthed Arcana:

0 Lifeblood
With this variant, characters can’t be reduced to negative lifeblood—0 is the minimum. There is no automatic lifeblood total at which a character dies. Instead, any character who takes damage that reduces his lifeblood to 0 must make a Fortitude save to avoid falling unconscious or dying.

The Fortitude Save
When a character’s lifeblood is reduced to 0, he must attempt a Fortitude save (DC 10, + points of damage dealt by the attack). Success means the character is disabled; failure indicates that he is dying. Failure by 10 or more means the character is dead. (If the character rolls a natural 1, he is dying. Calculate the numeric result; if he missed the DC by 10 or more, he is dead.)
The possible results of the save are as follows.

Disabled
A disabled character is conscious, but can only take a single move or standard action each turn (but not both, nor can she take full-round actions). She moves at half speed. Taking move actions doesn’t risk further injury, but if a disabled character takes any standard action (or any other action the Referee deems strenuous, including some free actions such as casting a quickened spell), she must succeed on a Fortitude save (against the same DC as the save made when reduced to 0 lifeblood) to remain disabled; otherwise, she becomes dying after she completes the action. If a disabled character takes any lethal damage, she must make a new Fortitude save (DC 10, + points of damage dealt by the attack or effect), but any result other than dead means the character is now dying. A disabled character who is dealt (or who is currently suffering from) any nonlethal damage suffers the standard effects for loss of Stamina but does not begin dying.
A disabled character must undergo surgery or to be brought to 1 lifeblood, after which point he heals naturally. After 1 week of being continuously disabled (no back and forth between dying and disabled), a character heals 1 lifeblood and will resume natural healing from that point after.

Dying
A dying character is unconscious and near death. Each round on his turn, a dying character must make a Fortitude save (DC 10, +1 per turn after the first) to become stable.
If the character fails the save, he dies.
If the character succeeds on the save by less than 5, he does not die but does not improve. He is still dying and must continue to make Fortitude saves every round.
If the character succeeds on the save by 5 or more but by less than 10, he becomes stable but remains unconscious.
If the character succeeds on the save by 10 or more, he becomes conscious and disabled.
Another character can make a dying character stable using his medical skill as per the rules in the skill section.

Stable
A stable character is unconscious. Every hour, a stable character must succeed on a Fortitude save (DC 10, +1 per hour after the first) to remain stable.
If the character fails the save, he becomes dying.
If the character succeeds on the save by less than 5, he does not get any worse, but does not improve. He is still stable and unconscious, and must continue to make Fortitude saves every hour.
If the character succeeds on the save by 5 or more, he becomes disabled and has 0 lifeblood.
Another character can grant a stable character a +2 bonus on his Fortitude save to remain stable by tending to him for at least 10 minutes during the hour between saves and by making a DC 15 medical check.

Dead
A dead character’s well… dead. Unless you have access to divine intervention, you can’t do much to a dead character except go through his pockets for loose credits.

Healing
A disabled, stable, or dying character has 0 lifeblood. Healing that raises her above 0 lifeblood makes her conscious and fully functional again, just as if she had never been reduced to 0.

For example, Tirsa is blown up by a marine’s RAM grenade for 26 points of damage, but she only has 14 lifeblood. She is reduced to 0 lifeblood. She must immediately attempt a DC 36 Fortitude save (base DC 10, +26 because the damage dealt). She rolls a 27, so she is unconscious and dying. (Had she rolled any worse, the grenade would have killed her outright.)
On her next turn, she must succeed on a DC 10 Fortitude save to become stable. She rolls a 13, which is enough to remain dying but not good enough to become stable. Next round, the DC increases to 11, and she rolls a 16. Since that result exceeds the DC by at least 5 points, Tirsa becomes stable but remains unconscious. Assuming that she isn’t tended by her friends (or slain by more grenades) in the meantime, she must succeed on a DC 10 Fortitude save 1 hour later to remain stable.

 

[princelian]

Another possibility is that medical technology can deal with the "dead" category. We see that today at TL7 medicine - people who are clinically dead for minutes at a time who can be brought back...imagine what TL15 medicines can do.

Character catches a gauss rifle critical and CRACK, he's dead, blood blossoming all over his chest from the heart shot. No! Johnny! He falls immediately to the ground, and his friends avenge the villanous assult and then drag him back into the ship. Note that immediate medical aid is critically important.

They throw him into the autodoc, which tosses a force field around the holes in his heart and uses pressor fields to make it pump Medical Slow (or is it Medical Fast, I forget; the one that puts you in almost suspended animation) through Johnny's system. There wasn't any signficant brain trauma, so as soon as the protoplaser (that a Star Trek toy that seals wounds) is done fixing the heart, and the autodoc has repaired any other ancillary damage (splintered ribcage, the holes in Johnny's chest and back), he's good as new.

Maybe he's down for a week while the 'doc is working on him.

The game mechanic here would be a T/Medical skill roll against a DC that increases for damage taken past -10 (maybe +1 per 5 points of damage?) and for time (+1 per 5 minutes after the first 5 minutes spent dead-and-not-under-Medical-Slow). The autodoc in the above example might have a programmed T/Med of +10, say, and since Johnny was only down for a few minutes, just had to deal with the damage DC modifier.

Good thing the killer shot him on the loading ramp and not out in the stinking desert....

 

[archhealer]

Making sure your PCs have armor will help dramatically. I recently had a character wearing TL12 Combat Armor w/Reflec coating take a direct hit from a rather large laser cannon... and miraculously, survive! He certainly wasn't untouched, but he was still moving.

Cloth & Mesh armor are both very valid options if Combat Armor is too much.

Also... After a few unpleasant encounters, my players did learn to reevaluate their attitude toward combat as an option. There was a period of intense frusteration and dissappointment, and it's been a learning process for all of us (There seems to be a lot more odd little rules to keep track of in T20 combat), but we stuck it out and now enjoy the game immensley. We still play D&D occasionally to get our hack & slash in, of course.

 

[Klaus]

Cut off the head of the dead comrade (assuming it's intact), stick it in a high tech ice bucket, then grow a new body back at the medlab....

 

[archhealer]

That's what emergency low berth chambers are for!

 

[stofsk]

But! What if the clone body doesn't work?

"I used to have a body... sniff."

 

[Lochlaber]

Combat isn't deadly, critical hits are deadly. For a non-critical hit, say wearing cloth armour AR6, even if you are hit by a gauss rifle, you subtract 1d12, then 5 from the roll of the damage dice, with a minimum of one. To do even 1 full dice of damage, the bad guys have to use a spray for 5 more dice of damage, going through their ammo fast and for those weapons that don't allow sprays, they basically can't really do any damage.

Critical hits bypass AR and have a double or triple damage but they don't have to be autmoatically deadly. Many people think that a critical hit automatically goes against lifeblood and I don't play or think as if it does. It simply does damage against your stamina points first, then life blood and that makes combat much more survivable, although it does make it longer. Of course we have armor piercing rounds for our weapons which helps against the length and most thugs don't bother with them.

Just remember, it isn't supposed to be a combat monster game but a role playing game. Use your mouth to get out of trouble and it works more ofthen than not, after all, the rules are set up for the player's advantage, as in most RPG's.

By the way, remember that as vehicle weapons ramp up against pc's and npc's, so does the damage done by them, ramps down. So unless those insects were vehicle sized, they really shouldn't have been a threat against an armored vehicle.

 

[stofsk]

One house rule I've thought of is this: instead of dying at -10 for everybody, increase it to accout for high constitution scores. If your Con score is 12 you die at -12. If your Con score is 18 you die at -18.

Of course if your Con score is 8 you die at -8 too. This method represents tough characters having a better chance at recovery after taking a hit, while weaker and feeble characters won't 'hang on' for long. Thoughts?

 

[Liam Devlin]

I concur Stofsk. I tend to let the Character's Con/ LB be the benchmark of 'in-game' death.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Even primitive weapons can be deadly in T20. Our last session dealt with killing off a band of planetary raiders--the player's and ship destroyed (yes by ship's weapons) the raider's vessels from orbit, preventing their escape.

two players had the 10dton gig, and rammed a raider 20dton Launch...

everyone aboard both small craft took damage. The raider's not being 7-10th level's died, as well as those the two craft fell on (why bother to roll? 30dtons is 30dtons-"squish", to quote River).

It was the 40-50 raiders afoot in the town that remained.

Only 12 had firearms, the rest had axes, blades, repeating crossbows & spearguns.

The locals of the town (a RR-crossing town near a TL5 hydroelectric dam 3km to the west of it) had a LL-3, so they holed up in houses and shot bad guys trying to break in when the PC's ship (and 8 of the other players aboard) pasted their way off world silly to the dirt.

Luckily, the locals had been given radar and other assistance by the orbital player's ship, and had sent their troops in as well (the starship was faster than all their land or aircraft however)

Still, the two players, & 1 NPC crewman got into a pretty good scrap..The other PC's hovered in, and di an extraction: 1 required surgery later, but he was stabilized first; the other two, had bloodloss, but were conscious.

Granted, the players I have know triage procedures, and how to prioritize by urgency.

yes, the two players were severely wounded. they'd taken each 3d10 Stam in the collision, then additional wounds from the now grounded bad guy-raiders (they were armed ala Firefly's Reavers for the most part, and juiced up on drugs to a berserk savage fury).

This was a raid, not an very day/ every game occurrence, & certainly not a starport ambush by local toughs. In my case, the Player's all had far superior firepower and weapons than the enemy they faced. the enemy only had numbers, and after they lost their way to get offworld, were destroyed piecemeal.

I concur with Bill, you need to keep the action toned down to what the players can handle, weapons wise. They call it balance, last time i checked.

Good ideas here tho. Thanks ya'll.

 

[Rover]

IMTU we like our games a little more on the cinematic side. What we use as house rules are as follows:

Lifeblood: Add level. They are unlikely to die from a single wound, but I don't feel it it too extravagant.

Role initiative every round: Combat is hectic and chaos rules. I mute the improved initiative to +2, not +4

Lastly I give PC's 4 "luck points." These are like a get of jail free cards. They can change the outcome of any single die role. A hit becomes a miss, a miss becomes hit. You make that save, the opponent misses a save. Etc. Once spent, these do not regenerate.

I know that there are many who would look at this as being too generous. That may be so but it fits our style of play. I personally enjoy a good scrap in the game every now and then, and like the action.

There is nothing wrong with the grittiness of standard T20, if you enjoy what you’re playing that’s great. No sane person would ever do, in real life, a small fraction the things our players do in any given game session. I personally don’t want to play a game that mirrors real life too much, that’s what real life is for.