Topic: No Damage but a Crit?

[markc]

 After reading the Whats wrong with RM and Help Fix AT's thread, I was wondering if there should be a case for weapons to do 0 damage but do a crit? Can you think of any?
MDC

[ironmaul]

Hmmm...that's rather an interesting thought. AFAIK I don't think there is a crit with no dmg in RM. I like the concept though, not that it would be in RM otherwise it wouldn't be RM. It could possibly be used in something like brawling where the combat is not meant to be lethal. At least it would give a generalization on various weapon objects like chairs, tables, watermelons etc. to subdue an opponent?

[jaranka]

I don't think a weapon should crit without doing hits.  MA Nerve Strikes could.  And you could make a case for Locks & Holds, Grappling, or Unbalancing, but most of the time those are hard to accomplish without hurting the opponent a little bit.  And hits are, in essence, hurt.

[Arioch]

AFAIK I don't think there is a crit with no dmg in RM.

There are quite a few spells that inflict a crit on their target but do no damage. (Also, IIRC, in Spacemaster the Stunner always does 0 damage + crit of ascending gravity).
To tell the truth, imo doing just crits and no damage to subdue an opponent is not a very good idea: HPs are non-lasting, incapacitating damage. It takes a really massive amount of damage to die simply for hits. OTOH crits always have a chance of killing or inflicting a permanent or long-lating injury to your opponent.

[yammahoper]

Certainly.  I think many weapons in RM have over exagerated hits.  Bows jump to mind.  So do many of teh gun tables.  Why do i think this?

I have been in numerous fights, real knock down all out trying to kill each other brawls.  It is HARD to knoock a man out.  You can daze and stun pretty easy (though some take blows better than others), but to knock out, normally first you have to "stun", typically by a very strong blow to the head or chin, side of face or knocking all the wind out of them.  THEN you have to "put the boots to em."  Just wail on em with feet ot chair or club or what ever.  They curl up at best, or keep trying to run

Movies make killing seem very easy, almost painless.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Killing a human being with your hands or a melee weapon takes work.  Obviously, stabbing through the heart gets it done quick, but oh what a mess, and no one sits there to be stabbed.

When the crossbow was banned across Europe, it was in part because it was to good at its job.  It wasa killing machine, just like the gun is today.  It made killing to EASY.  Knights went to war knowing they may loose, but most didn't think they would die.  The wounds that would defeat a knight took him out of the fight long before they killed him, generally speaking.  The crossbow delivered wounds so severe recovery was unlikely, with death after being shot highly probable.  To fully grasp this, imagine if the nut case in Colorado had gone into that theatre with a sword and mace instead of guns.

RM attack tables deliver to many concussion hits.  MA Strikes in particular is utterly rediculous, at least against the lower AT's.  The Lock and Hold tables is well done (4 hits is the 150 result I believe?).

We RM players already know, it ain't the hits that tend to kill, its the critical damge, bleeding, etc.  The attack tables could better portray that reality.

P.S.  I have been thinking of play testing reducing hits delivered by Co mod x3 (in RMSS, would just be Co mod in RM2).  This could lower hits delivered and allow Co to truely represent the ability to withstand pain.  Not with the kids though (my current group lol).  I want a more experienced group to try such a change with.

[jdale]

Criticals don't provide any way to represent cumulative wounds. It's basically just luck each time whether the opponent is done or not. Hits provide the only way to show that the opponent is getting worn down. That includes activity penalties that accumulate gradually.

You could represent that in other ways, like knockout from too much accumulated stun, but the criticals aren't really structured to support it, and stun has a lot of consequences of its own.

[rdanhenry]

Concussion hits aren't just pain, it's all the damage that isn't intense enough to create specific penalties. It includes, for example, any bleeding that will stop on its own (which include bruising). If you're hitting hard enough to do damage, there's going to be hits involved.

[JimiSue]

in Spacemaster the Stunner always does 0 damage + crit of ascending gravity

Not unless they changed it for Privateers - in SM2 the stunner did a small number of hits with some fairly early criticals, but the criticals were almost all non-lethal. I think you had to roll 100 on an E for a 'death' critical. The trouble in SM2 is that the other weapon that uses the same table is disruptors, which cause sympathetic vibrations in flesh and blow it apart (they are lovely weapons, really). However, they make up for the low damage by having one of the most dangerous crit tables in the game - Internal Disruption.

There are some effects in SM that do stand alone criticals - for example the residual criticals (enhanced plasma grenades do a residual C heat critical the round after detonation in ground zero, which doesn't make much sense if the initial blast only caused an A, but never mind). I think the Energy Channel psions (from the Thought Into Pain list, think Star Wars Emperor zapping Luke Skywalker) also caused Electricity criticals without hits.

I can see the rationale behind it if you separate hits out such that they are caused by the method of delivery. So in the examples above the heat is already there - the hits damage came from the explosion the round before. Likewise in the energy channel the delivery system caused no damage of itself, just 'placed' the electricity in the target's body. You could say a similar thing for a maintained lock on a martial arts person - the damage is caused on the initial attack to land the hold, but you could do free criticals in following rounds if you maintain that hold.

[Dax]

Weapon with no damage but a crit.

A net (this means a grappling attack) comes to mind (at least mine).
But in the end the crit table gives hits.

Grapple an opponent might also be something that is "Wrong in RM".

I addressed the problem with the hits by simply giving them more:

A character has a maximum hits based on race.
Instead giving them Co/10 + race bonus + (body dev ranks)x 1d8 (or d10) at first level,
I give them 1/2 max hits + Co/10 + + + ...
Lately the fighters even started with 2/3 max hits + all the normal adds.

[Marc R]

A non tangible weapon, like say a "Blade of Cold" which has absolutely no impact aspect, might cause only the hits indicated on the critical, and not actually make sense to do damage on an attack table. (Thus acting more like say a "Wall of fire").

[yammahoper]

It makes sense period in a crit based system.

However, the AT can be subtacted from hits delivered or a hit reduction rating worked into the armor, which of course adds complexity, thus...

...Arms Law stays as is, even if it is far from the best it could be, it has a "good enough" ease of use with "realistic enough" to meet our needs.

I'm just offering ideas, not slinging stones 

[Vesuvius]

Sorry for resurrecting this post but it brings up a reoccurring question in our games. The skill "Subduing" as per the original RM2 rules is wholly unsatisfactory. We have had to frig the rules so as to represent the situation where someone is ambushed and hit over the head with a blunt weapon, like a Billy club? What we've done is remove the crits from the weapon attack result and convert the number of hits to equal a number of rounds of stun given. We also happen play another rule that says each round of stun = -10 to actions and -100 = unconsciousness. Therefore the blunt weapon only has to do over 10 hits to knock someone unconscious.

It would be good to have a table for a billy club (or similar weapon) which does little or no damage but does stun crits?

[Cory Magel]

The absolute first thing that popped into my head was Whips.  You could use them to grapple (not damage) and then try to pull someone off balance.  I've assigned secondary criticals to things like Jousting where the target suffers a possible impact or unbalancing crit also.

[JimiSue]

I guess the main thing that this raises is taking into account the method of delivery of the 'damage' over and above the type (e.g. crushing or slashing). It isn't unreasonable to have a stun table for weapons that do damage and don't - in the same way that it's not unreasonable for the whip example to do grapple and unbalancing criticals on their own. Which essentially comes down to how in depth you want the attack tables - there are some who say there are already too many.

I would be hesitant about equating hit damage directly with unconsciousness As Vesuvius noted. There is the possibility that the user times the strike poorly or lands it where the skull is especially thick or something - I can easily see it doing damage (sometimes severe) but not even coming close to knocking ourt the victim. I would take the line that the intent and situation would come into play - a billy club used normally might do Krush criticals - but if being used to attempt to stun someone, I would instead use the same attack table (hits and all) but substitute Stun criticals instead. That way you're not changing the basic mechanic, and the desired outcome becomes more likely - especially if the Ambush skill (from RMC - I don't know enough to know if it's in RMSS etc) comes into play as it should. However, if the initial attack yielded a brief stun result (e.g. target stunned for 2 rounds) I would be tempted to allow a full round action to complete the job and allow the attacker to take the target to unconscious.

There is a line here though - as Yammahopper mentioned earlier on, it's really difficult to batter someone unconscious in real life. But if you want things to happen in your game in a more cinematic fashion there's no harm in doing so - provided that the bad guys get to do it too of course!