If I want more realistic I'll just adapt to BX Arneson's HP location and crippling system from Blackmoor.

Quote from: Omega;897084If I want more realistic I'll just adapt to BX Arneson's HP location and crippling system from Blackmoor.

As someone who likes alternate rules, is there a place I can get those?

Quote from: Dumpire;896961Well, that's a little different ... Do you think Savage Worlds would be as popular as it is if players died with the first Wound but suffered wounds only 25% as often?

No, PCs can often suffer 5 or more wounds in the course of a session that includes healing. By your system, they'd be dead at least once! And many SW settings don't even talk about revivification.

It's not like Savage Worlds isn't a meatgrinder already, I don't need more than that:)!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;897092As someone who likes alternate rules, is there a place I can get those?

Wouldn't it be in Blackmoor;)? It was released recently, after all.

Do I have to quote myself from page one? I guess I have to.

Quote from: Opaopajr;892558Yup, it's abstract, just like quite a bit about rpgs.

"One attack (and not too much more) within 6 seconds or 1 minute"? It's about the opportunities to breach defenses, not how many times someone can swing at another. Even I in my full pathetic glory can flail and slap more than once in six or more seconds (I know, right?, a gamer not gloating about their martial prowess?).

Skills are abstractions. Hit points are also abstractions, even if you call them "wounds" to assuage your inner-pedant's desire for realism. Essentially just about everything that has received a numerical value is an abstraction.

But without abstraction into a numerical value, you got a fascinating challenge for statistical probability...

Level or skill system, hit points or wound spirals, "combat rounds" by the minute 6-seconds or by the second, first impression reaction rolls, et cetera, on and on we can go about how all of these system DON'T EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD. They are abstractions, for the very simple reason that we are playing in imagination land and have no interest in liability lawsuits. But there is a difference between more aesthetically palatable and less so, and often the reasons for such involve coherency, verisimillitude, and ease of playability (among others).

What's next, a nominalism versus realism discussion? "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

The argument is not about abstraction -- it is an abstraction, that is fact and true of all methods. The argument is about aesthetics and the playstyle values that shape such aesthetics. Get there and you have a more interesting discussion.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;897092As someone who likes alternate rules, is there a place I can get those?

Basically you took your total HP and then assigned a percentage to body locations. Head was 15%, Chest was 80%, Arms 20%, Legs 25%. So for example 10HP would get you a 1 point for the head, 8 for the chest, and 2 for arms and legs. (I rounded down for convenience) Direction of attack determined what locations were likely to be hit if you scored a hit. (There was also an optional modifier table based on height I believe. So a shorter attacker would more likely hit the legs for example.) Depleting the head or chest was death. Depleting a limb severed it and you bled out each round at 1hp a round till treated. Loss of a leg reduced you to a crawl and loss of an arm reduced you to -50% crawl per harm.
Excess damage to a limb at the moment it was disabled/severed took off DEX for the excess amount up to the limbs points. (Which I think was the severing moment?)

There were a few other rules for it but that was the gist of it.

Pretty harsh system introducing more realism while still being abstracted to a degree. Though I though there should be a corresponding STR loss too. We used it about 2 years ago for a BX mini-campaign and can say it definitely made tactics and maneuvering more vital. As well as an absolute need for Clerics. Surviving the early levels was brutally hard and combats were dreaded. Least not as bad as when a DM used Role Masters tables with a 2e session.

Quote from: AsenRG;897093Wouldn't it be in Blackmoor;)?

I would think so. It is in my copyright 1975 edition.

Oddly, none of the three columns in the humanoid Hit Location Table include the abdomen as a location even though the Damage Allocation for humanoids assigns 60% of total hit points to the abdomen and even though all the humanoids I know obviously have abdomens. Personally, I'd use Runequest's hit location table and an expansion of RQ damage allocation to account for the larger hit point totals.

I figured the abdomen section for humanoids was a typo. Seems like Abdomen here was used to represent long bodied animals. I used the reptile section to represent most 4-legged creatures.

Its a jumbled section of rules to be sure. But still functional.

Quote from: Omega;897408I figured the abdomen section for humanoids was a typo.

I agree there is a typo. Where it is seems unclear. You might be correct, but an abdomen, groin, stomach, on a humanoid seems like it should lie in between LEGS and CHEST. As it stands, given the existing hit location table, if you try to eviscerate someone or kick them in the balls, you’d end up hitting them in the chest...or maybe their third leg.

But it's a start and it is the first hit location table I remember seeing. It wouldn't be hard to tweak it to address the missing location. It's kind of a clue that it’s D&D because there is a hit location table for reptiles and insects but no hit location table for mammals like horses, bulls, and tigers.

The entry for reptiles mentions "other quadrupeds" so I just assume its meant to cover all. Weird. But there you go.

Adding a STR loss as well as DEX did though introduce the "death spiral" as losses accumulated.

Brutal. But I liked it for its median between the pure abstraction of just HP, and other systems with all sorts of damage and wounds to track.