The "Dazed By Damage" Effect

[Paladin]

I just ran my first "test drive" of the game today with my crew, and their reactions ranged from cautious optimism to downright excitement. I can say for certain we'll be continuing our exploration of the system.

One thing that stuck out, though - either I've missed something completely, or there's no "in between" effect where damage is concerned. You are standing until the last Hit, and then you're out.

Most of us are accustomed to dealing with that "blow that left your bell ringing," and it's certainly appropriate to the superhero genre.

My current idea is to add a figured stat to the mix called Stun, and it's calculated as (BRAWN + MIND) x10. This is the threshold of damage that gets through Soak (is taken as damage) which causes the victim to be in the Dazed state (as per the Power).

Example - Mistress Miracle is facing one of Doctor Terrible's new *-commissioned war machines, and it blasts her for 72 damage. She rolls 23 to soak, thus taking 49 Hits!

Her Mind is 4 and her Brawn is 2, so she has a Stun threshold of 60; though she's clearly hurt, she hangs in there and returns fire with an eldritch bolt that reduces the machine into a Tinker Toy set...

The next day, Doctor Terrible exacts his revenge by launching a powerful missile from ambush. It hits her and does an astounding 108 damage! Her soak of 34 is valiant, but way short - 74 damage gets through. This exceeds her 60 Stun threshold, and she is Dazed; she'll have to roll a 20 on a Mind check to clear her head and get back into the fight... assuming she lives that long!

Thoughts?

[BASHMAN]

Not bad. I like that it uses Mind and Brawn.

My only thought would be that you may want this effect to be irregardless of soak. So a person with a Stun threshold of 60 and a x8 Soak may be able to eat a hit that does 80 damage no problem, but still has to worry about being stunned.

Instead of having the stun be automatic, you could have it be a function of a dice roll. Maybe give the injured party a save vs. stun (roll Brawn or Mind, whichever is higher maybe).

[Paladin]

I appreciate the input, Chris. I think I'd like to avoid adding any more rolls to the process, though. Not that the current need for rolls is so much a problem (my players enjoyed the randomized Defense and Soak, actually), but adding any more might clog things up just a bit more than desired.

I might experiment with making the Stun number an average of Brawn and Mind...

[Paladin]

As a follow up, we ran a session using the original Stun threshold calculation; the numbers are too high to be very meaningful.

My current calculation brings them in to half that value; in other words: (Brawn x10 + Mind x10)/2

This will give a much higher possibility of hitting folks hard enough to Daze them, so we shall see how that plays out.

(As an interesting aside, we are giving my 11 year old daughter a serious workout with her math skills, and that's been pretty cool!)

[BASHMAN]

Cool! When I first designed the game, I was playing with 11 year olds at an after-school program where I worked. so that was definitely a design goal!

Let's see, regarding stats:

Brick: B5 A2 M1 = Stun 30

Mystic Martial Artist: B2 A3 M2 = Stun 20

Psionic/Magician: B1 A2 M4 = Stun 25

At these numbers, you'll definately want to to be based on how much damage got through soak, not before soak.

I do have one more suggestion on how to make it random without slowing down the game. If the attack roll is DOUBLES maybe those are the attacks that add a stunning effect? That way you could stun someone even if no damage got through.

[Paladin]

Just wanted to post a quick after-action report.

Went with the numbers as I described, and it worked beautifully. Using the "Dazed" mechanic also seemed the right way to go (rather than coming up with a separate "Stunned" mechanic).

[MrJupiter]

This Stun Threshold looks like a really cool derrived stat. Thanks for sharing it Paladin.

[BentonGrey]

Ohh! I love this! I've been trying to find something just like this for our campaign, feeling a need for more dynamism to the combat, and this should really help me capture the feeling of superheroics a bit more. Thanks Paladin!