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Black Swan
Just wanted to run this by folks. Maybe get some constructive input.

One of my players and I have been talking about the condition monitor, and we never really liked how an average human who is one box away from incapacitated suffers less of a dice modifier (-2) than a big tough troll who is one box away from incapacitate (-5 dice).

So, that being said, we came up with idea of blacking out the unused boxes on the condition monitor vertically instead of horizontally. Starting the blackout at the bottom right corner and going up until you hit the top, then going up from the centre bottom. However, when you are taking damage, you are still marking horizontally from the top left. (did I make sense?)

Anyway, just looking for input.
RHat
Perhaps in more simple terms... -1 for every (Track Length/3, rounded up) boxes?
Raiden
QUOTE (Black Swan @ May 26 2013, 08:31 PM) *
Just wanted to run this by folks. Maybe get some constructive input.

One of my players and I have been talking about the condition monitor, and we never really liked how an average human who is one box away from incapacitated suffers less of a dice modifier (-2) than a big tough troll who is one box away from incapacitate (-5 dice).

So, that being said, we came up with idea of blacking out the unused boxes on the condition monitor vertically instead of horizontally. Starting the blackout at the bottom right corner and going up until you hit the top, then going up from the centre bottom. However, when you are taking damage, you are still marking horizontally from the top left. (did I make sense?)

Anyway, just looking for input.


kinda hard to follow. how would that change things? sounds like you are doing the same thing. how does the troll have 16 hit boxes? is he an adept? I agree with the first part though. something should be done.
Tanegar
I think the system as is makes perfect sense. The troll can push through the injury and keep going, despite being impaired, while the comparatively fragile human passes out.
Black Swan
QUOTE (Raiden @ May 27 2013, 01:53 AM) *
kinda hard to follow. how would that change things? sounds like you are doing the same thing. how does the troll have 16 hit boxes? is he an adept? I agree with the first part though. something should be done.


A troll with max Body can manage 15 boxes which is -5 dice.
SpellBinder
Wouldn't it be easier to have the troll metavariant and similarly significantly larger than human types (like sasquatch, centaur, dragons, etc.) base off every 4th box instead of every 3rd on the physical damage track?
Shaidar
Or how about (Max natural Body/6)*3 as the number of damage boxes between penalty increases.

So Trolls would take roughly twice the number of boxes to receive the same penalty as a Human.
Aaron
QUOTE (Black Swan @ May 26 2013, 08:31 PM) *
So, that being said, we came up with idea of blacking out the unused boxes on the condition monitor vertically instead of horizontally. Starting the blackout at the bottom right corner and going up until you hit the top, then going up from the centre bottom. However, when you are taking damage, you are still marking horizontally from the top left. (did I make sense?)

Anyway, just looking for input.

If I understand you properly, you're saying that a character takes a -1 dice pool modifier every 3 boxes only up to a certain point, after which it's an additional -1 every two boxes. If that's the case, then yeah, I can see that working okay. It'll mean higher wound penalties over all, but not so much it's unplayable. It's solid.
BishopMcQ
So, instead of:
Left to Right -->
[x] [x] [x] -1
[x] [ ] [ ] -2
[ ] [ ] [ ] -3
[ ] [ ] [ ] -4
[ ] [ ] [ ] -5
[ ] Dead

You want:
Top Down
l
v

[x] [x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
-1 -2 -3

So, it would take 5 boxes of damage to fill the -1 track instead of 3 boxes?
RHat
I think it was more:

[x] [x] [x] [x] -1
[x] [x] [ ] -2
[ ] [ ] [ ] -3
[ ] [ ] [ ] -4
[ ] [ ] [ ] Dead
Black Swan
QUOTE (BishopMcQ @ May 27 2013, 05:22 AM) *
So, instead of:
Left to Right -->
[x] [x] [x] -1
[x] [ ] [ ] -2
[ ] [ ] [ ] -3
[ ] [ ] [ ] -4
[ ] [ ] [ ] -5
[ ] Dead

You want:
Top Down
l
v

[x] [x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
[x] [ ] [ ]
-1 -2 -3

So, it would take 5 boxes of damage to fill the -1 track instead of 3 boxes?


Nope.

Example: body of 6, giving 11 boxes (using a # symbol to fill the unavailable boxes).
[ ] [ ] [#] -1
[ ] [ ] [#] -2
[ ] [ ] [#] -3
[ ] [ ] [#] -4
[ ] [ ] [#] -5
[ ] [#] [#] -6

Same character then takes 5 boxes of damage (symbolized by an x)
[x] [x] [#] -1
[x] [x] [#] -2
[x] [ ] [#] -3
[ ] [ ] [#] -4
[ ] [ ] [#] -5
[ ] [#] [#] -6
Draco18s
Basically it means that EVERYONE will be at a -5/-6 before passing out, regardless of how many actual boxes they can take.
(Exception: the full cyber troll tank, which has 19+ boxes; and I'm OK with this relative to the base idea)
Black Swan
QUOTE (Draco18s @ May 27 2013, 07:56 PM) *
Basically it means that EVERYONE will be at a -5/-6 before passing out, regardless of how many actual boxes they can take.
(Exception: the full cyber troll tank, which has 19+ boxes; and I'm OK with this relative to the base idea)


Exactly!

just like all of the older SR versions that had everyone suffering a +3 Target Modifier before passing out.
RHat
Which, unfortunately, produces the death spiral effect - which is neither realistic, nor fun for most people. But if it's what works for your group, great!
Black Swan
QUOTE (RHat @ May 28 2013, 05:08 AM) *
Which, unfortunately, produces the death spiral effect - which is neither realistic, nor fun for most people. But if it's what works for your group, great!


how is it not realistic? What they do now is not realistic, IMO.
RHat
Various studies have been conducted to see if that sort of performance degradation occurs - I can't remember the methodology offhand, but the conclusion in aggregate is that it does not. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug.

Hell, I remember reading about one case where a guy tried to punch someone with the hand that had been severed moments prior.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (RHat @ May 28 2013, 05:39 AM) *
Various studies have been conducted to see if that sort of performance degradation occurs - I can't remember the methodology offhand, but the conclusion in aggregate is that it does not. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug.

Hell, I remember reading about one case where a guy tried to punch someone with the hand that had been severed moments prior.


Wow. That must have sucked for all involved. Depending on how much follow-through he put into it, he might have stabbed the guy with his arm-bone.



Conclusion: Get rid of impairment for damage taken. Let people fight on through the end, and make subdueing someone more about inflicting temporary inability to function despite the adrenaline - such as beating them so badly their muscles won't work, tazing them to prevent them from controlling their body, manually restraining them in a grapple - and then affixing restraints, rather than just about inflicting nebulous "stun" damage.


I might propose making the difference between "dead" and "alive but unconscious" a matter of how hard you got hit when your last health box was filled in, similar to the Star Wars Saga Edition's damage threshold. If you suffer the beat-down of a thousand blows with a billy club, you'll wake up feeling like hell, but you will wake up. If you take a full burst from a machine gun, you probably won't, barring incredible amounts of armor or magic or the Hand of God.

And spells to stun people should still work, of course. They'd simply do the same as a spell to kill, but be unable to kill. The drain code on them should probably be a little higher, though, to discourage stun combat followed by a quick knife between the ribs being the optimal combat strategy.
Draco18s
I want to look up the rules that Albedo: Platinum Catalyst used again, sort of like what you describe, though not quite.

I vaguely recall it being (effectively) a willpower check every time you took damage to stay conscious. There weren't any real penalties from damage,* except that each time you rolled to stay conscious it got harder.

*Tops it was like -1 to a d20 for every wound. Compared to Shadowrun, pretty negligible.
KarmaInferno
I still like dual "Stun/Wound" damage tracks in gaming. Not like SR does it - Stun as an abstract combo of luck and toughness, and Wounds representing actual 'life'.

Most damage comes off Stun, representing stuff like minor cuts and bruises, near misses, battle fatigue, etc. Things that you can mostly shrug off or has minor impact on your functioning. Wound damage represents significant lethal effects, usually crippling in some way. Most damage affects your Stun track. Run out of stun and you start taking lethal Wound damage. Some effects can inflict Wound damage directly, like critical hits or being struck while incapacitated.


-k
ShadowDragon8685
KarmaInferno, we've had that. It was in the Star Wars RPG, the Revised Core Rulebook edition, and it divided your health into "Wounds" and "Fatigue." Fatigue was just what you suggest, and critical hits went straight to Wounds.

The problem with that was that it leads to critical hits being grossly overpowering. This is the origin of one of my first Star Wars stories of awesomeness, but it's much less awesome when it happens the other way 'round and the players are on the receiving end.
Black Swan
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ May 28 2013, 01:05 PM) *
..... Stun as an abstract combo of luck and toughness, and Wounds representing actual 'life'.


Other than the luck side of your description (which is embodied in the Edge attribute), it sounds exactly like SR to me.
Black Swan
QUOTE (RHat @ May 28 2013, 10:39 AM) *
Various studies have been conducted to see if that sort of performance degradation occurs - I can't remember the methodology offhand, but the conclusion in aggregate is that it does not. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug.

Hell, I remember reading about one case where a guy tried to punch someone with the hand that had been severed moments prior.


Can you please direct me to these studies?
RHat
Unfortunately it's been a number of years since I've read the material and I don't have it directly on hand; I did a little bit of searching but I just can't seem to find it in the plethora of results I've been getting and can't find a suitable way to narrow it down.

Though, if I recall correctly, it's not that there's zero performance degradation due to injury, it's just that there's not some massive amount of it as would be represented by the penalties going up as high as you've got them going.
Black Swan
QUOTE (RHat @ May 28 2013, 09:45 PM) *
Unfortunately it's been a number of years since I've read the material and I don't have it directly on hand; I did a little bit of searching but I just can't seem to find it in the plethora of results I've been getting and can't find a suitable way to narrow it down.

Though, if I recall correctly, it's not that there's zero performance degradation due to injury, it's just that there's not some massive amount of it as would be represented by the penalties going up as high as you've got them going.


Then why should a high-body troll suffer such a massive penalty then?
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Black Swan @ May 28 2013, 02:48 PM) *
Then why should a high-body troll suffer such a massive penalty then?


Well, by the time that Massive Troll is suffering those [higher] penalties (a 1 or 2 point higher penalty is still not MASSIVE, in my opinion), the human is already bleeding out or dead. *shrug*
RHat
QUOTE (Black Swan @ May 28 2013, 03:48 PM) *
Then why should a high-body troll suffer such a massive penalty then?


I never said the existing structure was perfect. I do like the idea of evening out the penalties suffered, basing when they're suffered perhaps on the overall length of the condition monitor.
Epicedion
Just ditch the variable track lengths and give everyone the same number of boxes regardless of their attributes.
RHat
... That doesn't sound like a great idea to ma.
SpellBinder
I'd have to look into it, but I think that's how it was done in SR3.
Critias
Done up to and including SR3, actually (it was around for a long time, though it evolved). Everyone used to have a set condition monitor with the same number of boxes, weapon damages were (initially) a lot more fixed (doing either 1, 3, 6, or 9 boxes base), and all kinds of stuff worked very, very, differently than it does in SR4.
RHat
Was there a satisfying way to build "big and tough" concepts? Seems like that's the risk in having everything fixed like that.
Cochise
QUOTE (Critias @ May 29 2013, 08:54 AM) *
(doing either 1, 3, 6, or 9 boxes base)

1,3,6,10 in accordance to the main condition monitor's damage levels of L,M,S,D and their associated number of boxes.
Critias
QUOTE (Cochise @ May 29 2013, 01:07 AM) *
1,3,6,10 in accordance to the main condition monitor's damage levels of L,M,S,D and their associated number of boxes.

Well, I know what I meant to type there, even if I was betrayed by falling into the 3-6-9 pattern. wink.gif Ah, good ol' Deadly base damage. You were truly sick. Some days I miss Light, Moderate, Serious, and Deadly. But mostly Deadly.
DMiller
QUOTE (Critias @ May 29 2013, 04:11 PM) *
Well, I know what I meant to type there, even if I was betrayed by falling into the 3-6-9 pattern. wink.gif Ah, good ol' Deadly base damage. You were truly sick. Some days I miss Light, Moderate, Serious, and Deadly. But mostly Deadly.

I often miss L, M, S, D damage codes.

@RHat,
Yes, you could easily build the "tough guy" build.
Cochise
QUOTE (RHat @ May 29 2013, 09:06 AM) *
Was there a satisfying way to build "big and tough" concepts? Seems like that's the risk in having everything fixed like that.


High body for damage resistance in combination with armor (which acted as a reduction of the varying TN) and moderate to high Quickness to wear higher armor values without penalties. Particularly trolls with double digit body stats and maximized armor usually shrugged off attacks that didn't include sniper rifles, full auto with machine guns or assault cannons
RHat
Ah, that would get around that issue - and the difference in damage mechanics is a reason why a static condition monitor might not work so well in SR4.
Black Swan
QUOTE (Cochise @ May 29 2013, 08:30 AM) *
High body for damage resistance in combination with armor (which acted as a reduction of the varying TN) and moderate to high Quickness to wear higher armor values without penalties. Particularly trolls with double digit body stats and maximized armor usually shrugged off attacks that didn't include sniper rifles, full auto with machine guns or assault cannons


or manabolts.
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