How would you describe damage taken by PC, ...realisticly? Options

[shon]

During GMing recently I bumped against a problem. There was a quick shooting in a bar and naturally some wounds. I tried to describe them to my players but failed a bit.

I mean a guy receives 3P damage (after armor and resistance roll) from a gun shot (the other guy was aiming at his chest and was fairly close). I guess that since it's P damage, the bullet went through armor, right? So this means that the guy either has a hole through his chest or has a bullet inside, correct?
Those were my assumptions and I started describing the events like that, but then realized that the guy has only 3P damages and still 7 damage boxes to fill before he's out of the fight. Which means he should be able to fight for a while, or at least run towards the door. On the other hand a person that has a bullet hole in their chest may not be in the best form for a brisk run and realistically should be just lying on the floor. He may not be dying (according to the rules and realistically, since the bullet might not have hit anything important) but still should not be running around.

So I'm thinking - maybe 3-4P damage is 'just a scratch' meaning the muscles in one hand or another limb are torn out by the bullet coming through and so on, but the major organs are untouched? Still, it would leave the guys arm in useless state for some time, right?

TL;DR: how do you describe a 3-4P wound to players?

And best of all, if one of the PCs gets a would like that from gun shot, shouldn't they, at least from time to time, have the bullet taken out? Not all shots should come right through them, no?

[Doc Chase]

Just because it's physical damage doesn't necessarily mean it blew through the armor. Getting hit by a round that's stopped by Kevlar can still bruise or break ribs, bruise internal organs and really make you feel like hell for days afterward.

That kinetic energy all has to go somewhere. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) A 3-4P wound is going to be a bruised rib or two from stopping a pistol round at close range. 5-7 is going to penetrate or hit a limb, and 8-10 is going to penetrate and hit something vital.

[Summerstorm]

Just because it went to physical, i think, shouldn't mean it penetrated the armor. Maybe it was high-powered... and crushed/broke your ribs. Or maybe he didn't hit the torso, like the attacker wanted, but the characters dodge positioned him a bit different (he was very near) and was wounded in the arm or even the head (maybe the bullet got deflected on his skull... nice concussion).

Also i wouldn't call 3 boxes "a scratch". It is a wound. Maybe even a pretty bad one. Just because he can take more doesn't mean it isn't serious. Also if someone takes 5 damage, that is only a few hits away from only 2 or mighty 8. Much variance.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Short answer: Describe anything you like. However, whatever you tell the PC, what happens is that he gets a -1 modifier, so it's not more than a slight inconvenience to most tasks.

As to having the bullet taken out: Yes, that should be done, for example by performing First Aid on the guy. As long as people do that, I would not inconvenience them further. If you want to do things more realistically, ask your players how they feel about some house rules to depict wounds better. However, usually it helps to just apply to their common sense. Just tell them, hey, you've got a bleeding wound, just have that taken care of. Medkits aren't that expensive, and can even apply first aid on their own. If they don't enjoy playing it out, well, then you can still implore to their powergame sense by reminding them that first-aid actually removes boxes of damage, and hence the modifier they might be taking. Plus the character performing it gets some easy spotlight. (And a few points of first aid are easily bought, IMHO.)

A system like SR isn't meant to depict wounds realistically. SR3 was a bit better in that respect, in that you at least had categories. Now... well, you could still categorize wounds by how many boxes they deal at once: A one box wound is a scratch. A three box wound is an uncomplicated flesh wound. A 5-6 box wound is a severe flesh wound. A 9-10 box wound is huge trauma with organ and extensive tissue damage, enough to kill a weaker human.

[Yerameyahu]

Well, 'slight inconvenience' in game terms to shadowrunners. For normal people (DP 3-6), -1 can be a pretty major deal.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Well, 'slight inconvenience' in game terms to shadowrunners. For normal people (DP 3-6), -1 can be a pretty major deal.

I would say you should notice it more on backup skills (or those you dipped simply in order to not have to default), since 5-7 is quite a normal pool on those - even for runners. Going from 5 to 4 dice is quite a big step down, and increases glitch chances by quite a bit. So, of course, it's a slight inconvenience when shooting more people in the face, a rather larger one when Mr. Sam "Troggy" Trogg starts talking to the Johnson. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

Right. From a fluff standpoint, it's a medium-to-huge deal for things that you *aren't* so good you can do in your sleep. Things on which you don't want to be distracted by lots of pain.

[WhiskeyMac]

Haha, I just pictured a beat-to-hell social adept successfully negotiating with a Johnson while bleeding all over the place, calm as Crater Lake.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I'd work at it from the healing end of the spectrum. How do you visualize first aid in shadowrun. Is it bandages etc, or is it super sci-fi nanothnigies that rebuild the damaged parts. If it is bandages it is a bit implausible to describe wounds as gaping holes etc, and then 1 first aid check later have the person be right as rain. In that case I'd describe most physical damage as more shock oriented, if you see it is super sci-fi first aid go with more real bloody wounds.

[Mr. Mage]

It doesn't tend to work well if you consider healing and first aid, but the way I tend to view wounds is that small amounts that don't kill you aren't actually wounds but your luck running out. In most cases, a single volley from a gun should be able to kill a person with a direct hit, but if you resist most of that damage, you got lucky and didn't die. You might have some bruising or the bullet may have grazed you, but you still survived. When you have 0 boxes left on your damage track, well your luck ran out and you got hit full force. I think that was actually how an early edition of the Start Wars d20 game explained their vitality point system.

Like I said, doesn't make sense when you consider healing, how do you heal "lost luck"? But I think under most circumstances it can at least help to explain your way through some combats.

Of course, where this really seems to be needed is in games like DnD, where you can have a character with 200 some odd hitpoints and who basically needs to be hit by a catapult 5 or 6 times to die, since luck is really the only "feasible" way you can explain why the first one didn't just freakin' squish him flat!

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

It doesn't tend to work well if you consider healing and first aid, but the way I tend to view wounds is that small amounts that don't kill you aren't actually wounds but your luck running out. In most cases, a single volley from a gun should be able to kill a person with a direct hit, but if you resist most of that damage, you got lucky and didn't die. You might have some bruising or the bullet may have grazed you, but you still survived. When you have 0 boxes left on your damage track, well your luck ran out and you got hit full force. I think that was actually how an early edition of the Start Wars d20 game explained their vitality point system.

Like I said, doesn't make sense when you consider healing, how do you heal "lost luck"? But I think under most circumstances it can at least help to explain your way through some combats.

Of course, where this really seems to be needed is in games like DnD, where you can have a character with 200 some odd hitpoints and who basically needs to be hit by a catapult 5 or 6 times to die, since luck is really the only "feasible" way you can explain why the first one didn't just freakin' squish him flat!

Huh? That's just wrong, the rules change reality of the game world. If you survived that hit by a bullet, then you were just that tough. Or when the 200HP character in D&D can have himself be mauled by 20 people and survive, then he was just that tough.

You run out of luck when the dice fail you, and that's that.

[Mongoose]

Haha, I just pictured a beat-to-hell social adept successfully negotiating with a Johnson while bleeding all over the place, calm as Crater Lake.

Done already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2fDJPS6aw...feature=related

[AppliedCheese]

Well, body armor is your best explanation. According to fluff, most body armor is modernized, lightweight version of ballistic fabrics, scale armor, and ceramic inserts. I.e. It works on dispersing the force of the impact, and thereby preventing penetration from a bullet. The majority of the kinetic force still transfers through the medium, just over a wider area.

This tends to result in bruises, contusions, minor internal bleeding, concussions, etc. Even broken ribs and such depdending on the armor and the round and the number of impacts.

For unarmored, while it is quite possible for one bullet to kill a man, it is far from the norm in most firefights. Thanks to a heaping dose of adrenalin running through the body, it is not uncommon for hits that don't directly lead to lights our or actual physical debilitation to leave the target temporarily functional, especially if shock doesn't kick in. It is quite possible that your runner took a low powered pistol round to the chest, and simply isn't dead. Or the assault rifle round in question punched right through the body without dumping most of its energy, leaving a clean hole.

As a bonus, since most ballistic armor degrades, you can use this to explain burst survival as well. The first two rounds crack some of your plates, and the third makes it through, but got deflected to a meaty part of the shoulder.

As for unarmored burst survival..well, usually your well on the road to dead anyhow.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Huh? That's just wrong, the rules change reality of the game world. If you survived that hit by a bullet, then you were just that tough. Or when the 200HP character in D&D can have himself be mauled by 20 people and survive, then he was just that tough.

You run out of luck when the dice fail you, and that's that.

Actually even back in 1e D&D HP were not defined by sheer toughness. It was luck, stamina etc. And when you finally got dropped that is when a solid hit connected with you. Everything up to then was nicks from near fatal blows that you mostly avoided. HP was more a concept of combat skill instead of toughness.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, the people who complained about "Heroes laughing off bone crushing injuries" were basically ignoring a few decades worth of Gygax and co. saying that's not how it was EVER supposed to be interpreted. That's part of why specific injury rules were first introduced to AD&D 2nd as an advanced application of critical hits rather than a standard feature of the game system. It's a lot like how attack per rounds weren't intended to be a literal interpretation of how many times a guy waves a sword around in a given interval of time.

Honestly, it really helps if you take a second to look at what the mechanics were derived from. Hit points were really only brought over from naval wargaming because players found the straight up chainmail rules waaaay too harsh when you were playing a single character rather than a whole troop of them. That's because under chainmail rules getting hit meant you took a mace to the face and had to roll up a new character. Hit points were simply a way of giving sufficiently skilled warriors a few mulligans before they were ruled as having been introduced to the pointy end.

[Tanegar]

This is one of those areas where even attempting to describe what's happening in real-life terms breaks the game, and occasionally your brain, IMO. Hit points and condition monitors are abstractions and should remain so. Equating a given number of boxes with a given type or severity of wound just opens up all kinds of consistency issues that don't improve the game in anyway.

[Whipstitch]

Recovery mechanics like heal spells and first aid don't do much for reducing cognitive dissonance in these things either, particularly in D&D's case since names like "Cure Critical Wounds" don't really sit well with what hit points were originally intended to represent-- I mean, really, that name is almost flat out contradictory. It's a real toughie, because on the one hand, a lot of GMs don't really like the idea of just letting people top off their "health bars" for nothing since that doesn't require any effort or resource management on the part of the players. But at the same time it becomes kinda hard to come up with a reason as to why Character A should be out of action longer than Character B if neither of them took a "real" injury. Like Tanegar said, these things are abstractions and thinking about them too hard isn't really recommended.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Actually even back in 1e D&D HP were not defined by sheer toughness. It was luck, stamina etc. And when you finally got dropped that is when a solid hit connected with you. Everything up to then was nicks from near fatal blows that you mostly avoided. HP was more a concept of combat skill instead of toughness.

Ok, really, you just need to read some manga or comics where people are gushing blood and guts and are still standing to see how this stuff is supposed to look. Even in movies, how often do the protagonists of action movies get shot repeatedly, yet they remain standing while everyone else around them falls flat on their faces.

I mean seriously, D&D 1e may have been an innovation of sorts, but we've moved far beyond that. Games have evolved, and so has - MY - expectation of them. We're not looking at any serious abstraction of reality, we're not playing simulationist war games, we're playing a fantasy setting, where things just work differently.

And I personally have no problems imagining a troll taking an artillery shell to the head and laughing it off. Things go boom, there is a huge explosion, but when the smoke clears there is the troll spitting out shrapnell and looking at who to kill now. And when a Body 2 civvy takes a round to the chest and doesn't die, well, then the wound just wasn't serious enough. I mean come on, there are REAL LIFE examples of little girls surviving being shot in the head (by death squads in Brazil somewhere).

The one thing it takes is preference: You have to like playing a game like that. If you want your game more lethal, sure, house-rule it, or play a more lethal game, it's really quite simple. I'll admit I argue any day that rules have to make sense, but I've accepted the basic premise that I don't want my character to die at every obstacle - hence I've come to terms with that simplification. Maybe some day someone will come up with other rules, to better capture stuff like heroic movie realism.

In addition, there IS factually NO drama to be had from curing wounds with simple applications of skill or magic, hence it's best to accept that and move on. Concentrate on the other things. It makes sense to play out treating wounds in LARP, or descriptionist freeform games, but in any game with mechanics for such a thing, and lots of combat, little is gained by repetitively describing what happens. Admittedly there is more drama to be had from games with wound modifiers than games without them, IMHO. It's more heroic and more tactical, albeit favouring a lucky first strike.

[Whipstitch]

n/t

[Shinobi Killfist]

Ok, really, you just need to read some manga or comics where people are gushing blood and guts and are still standing to see how this stuff is supposed to look. Even in movies, how often do the protagonists of action movies get shot repeatedly, yet they remain standing while everyone else around them falls flat on their faces.

I mean seriously, D&D 1e may have been an innovation of sorts, but we've moved far beyond that. Games have evolved, and so has - MY - expectation of them. We're not looking at any serious abstraction of reality, we're not playing simulationist war games, we're playing a fantasy setting, where things just work differently.

And I personally have no problems imagining a troll taking an artillery shell to the head and laughing it off. Things go boom, there is a huge explosion, but when the smoke clears there is the troll spitting out shrapnell and looking at who to kill now. And when a Body 2 civvy takes a round to the chest and doesn't die, well, then the wound just wasn't serious enough. I mean come on, there are REAL LIFE examples of little girls surviving being shot in the head (by death squads in Brazil somewhere).

The one thing it takes is preference: You have to like playing a game like that. If you want your game more lethal, sure, house-rule it, or play a more lethal game, it's really quite simple. I'll admit I argue any day that rules have to make sense, but I've accepted the basic premise that I don't want my character to die at every obstacle - hence I've come to terms with that simplification. Maybe some day someone will come up with other rules, to better capture stuff like heroic movie realism.

In addition, there IS factually NO drama to be had from curing wounds with simple applications of skill or magic, hence it's best to accept that and move on. Concentrate on the other things. It makes sense to play out treating wounds in LARP, or descriptionist freeform games, but in any game with mechanics for such a thing, and lots of combat, little is gained by repetitively describing what happens. Admittedly there is more drama to be had from games with wound modifiers than games without them, IMHO. It's more heroic and more tactical, albeit favouring a lucky first strike.

I'd normally consider describing a full burst ripping through the PC as a game getting worse not a positive evolution. Certain games can handle it, like super hero games, and yes manga like games or games where the healing is phenomenal. But anything where the players are supposed to be basically human I think it would be bad.

Even in action movies the vast majority of would are scrapes and minor cuts to the hero. If he is shot it is always through and through to a totally non-vital location, unless the movie is ending and his healing can happen off camera.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

I'd normally consider describing a full burst ripping through the PC as a game getting worse not a positive evolution. Certain games can handle it, like super hero games, and yes manga like games or games where the healing is phenomenal. But anything where the players are supposed to be basically human I think it would be bad.

Even in action movies the vast majority of would are scrapes and minor cuts to the hero. If he is shot it is always through and through to a totally non-vital location, unless the movie is ending and his healing can happen off camera.

It's a different world, and SR is about people putting ware into them to become superhumans. So... I think if you want a game with only humans you have to try something else. I suggest d20 modern without levels, i.e. staying at level 1 all the time. You could call it E1.

There is a German fantasy game called Das Schwarze Auge, which, while having horrible rules in many places (in their 4th edition), performs quite well at keeping the heroes largely on a human scale. They advance in skill to crazy levels, but they can still be taken out by a few good swings that actually connect.

I think it's actually really hard to come up with rules that abstracize a dramatic realism - i.e. you don't die at every corner - while maintaining a largely human scale, and still offering advancement.

[Whipstitch]

It's a different world, and SR is about people putting ware into them to become superhumans.

Yeah, see, I would argue strongly that it's not and never really ever has been. It's more like a setting where "superhumans" can still easily die because they're still just one person in a world filled with big immoral players. Most archetypes aren't even heavily cybered and most of the intro fluff pieces have featured "PCs" dying to standard gun fire.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Yeah, see, I would argue strongly that it's not and never really ever has been. It's more like a setting where "superhumans" can still easily die because they're still just one person in a world filled with big immoral players. Most archetypes aren't even heavily cybered and most of the intro fluff pieces have featured "PCs" dying to standard gun fire.

Well, then, if that was what they intended, then they simply made bad rules. Fact is, SR creates superhumans. Slightly less so at chargen in SR4, but...

What's human is that most characters still have at least some glaring weaknesses.

[Whipstitch]

I wouldn't go so far as to say they made bad rules. You just don't treat every net hit as taking a bullet to the head and for the most part you're golden. Like I pointed out earlier, there really isn't much in the way of explicit hit location rules so you're free to spin things pretty easily. That's important because there are some superhumans in the SR setting. There's also a lot of mundos. Having a damage system that accomodates both is a balancing act that can get out of hand at the extremes, but it's a lot easier to manage if you don't go in expecting Shadowrun to be different than what it is to begin with.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

I wouldn't go so far as to say they made bad rules. You just don't treat every net hit as taking a bullet to the head and for the most part you're golden. Like I pointed out earlier, there really isn't much in the way of explicit hit location rules so you're free to spin things pretty easily. That's important because there are some superhumans in the SR setting. There's also a lot of mundos. Having a damage system that accomodates both is a balancing act that can get out of hand at the extremes, but it's a lot easier to manage if you don't go in expecting Shadowrun to be different than what it is to begin with.

Oh, of course, but hit locations are also irrellevant. I can take a bullet to the head (as a called shot, for instance) in SR and walk away, that's the whole point. A hit with a single net hit can be anything, but whatever it is, the consequences are the same - you take damage modifiers to your rolls if you take enough damage. There is a certain inherent dishonesty in the system with to tons of calls for GM fiat, but that is a thing everyone has to deal with in their respective groups.

And what exactly is SR to begin with? IMHO the best way to look at a game system is first look at all the rules, without reading a single line of fluff, and then imagining what kind of world that would create. And then you read the fluff and see how they combine. Well... best way is... subjective, of course. It tends to happen that way for me, because when I want to play a new system, it's usually more important to find out about the workings than about the fluff. Then when I've gotten enough of a hang of the rules, I start reading into the setting more so that my characters don't blunder about the game world.
I think if you do it the other way around you need very good rules so that your expectations aren't shattered by deficiencies within the rules.

Good game desing IMHO incorporates that angle: You have a target effect on your setting, then you make a rule, apply it, and see what happens. Then you rework the rule if something happens that you didn't want.

Now if I were to interpret the rules of SR4, I would say that the authors wanted a more lethal game than SR3 tended to be (in my subjective opinion), and a more "low powered" game. But they did not remove the superhuman aspect entirely. A lot of good effort and thought went into the core mechanics of the game, but you could see they obviously missed THEIR goals in many places, because 20A revised so many core aspects - mostly numerical aspects as a reaction to PCs with humongous dice pools. As a direct result, the game works a lot "worse" for normal people, who suddenly see a lot of tasks outside their reach.

Going back to the original point: Many of these problems (with the damage) result from the fact that a lot of games create very different dramatic situations than movies. For example, take the final shootout of the movie Heat. In SR rules, that would largely not work to create a dramatic scene, whereas all the previous gunfights against tons of cops would work rather well - if the PCs are sufficiently superhuman to be able to take on 20 cops at once (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

So... the rules of the game tend to miss the possibility of attrition by skill, rather than damage, even though - as you have pointed out - that may have been intended in the first place, with a rather poor abstraction.