The ∞ Infinity Gaming System

[Daddy Warpig]

When You Assume
pt. 2

The assumption with this system has been that Skill = not being hit. A high Melee skill = not being hit. A high Dodge = not being hit. Therefore, defending = not being hit. But that's not how combat works.

There's a boxing maneuver called "caging". When attacked by an opponent, the boxer "cages", putting both hand up in front of their face, allowing their opponent to pound on them. Punch after punch after punch lands. But the guy getting pummeled isn't taking damage — the guy hitting him is! He's tiring himself out (i.e. fatigue or Shock). When he's tired, the defending boxer begins striking back at the weakened opponent.

He defended himself, by letting himself get hit. Melee skill means (in part) knowing when you should let a blow land, because that's the smart play.

Functionally speaking, the Melee skill allows you to minimize damage, whether you got hit or not. It's mostly damage reduction, not just hit avoidance. (And maybe the mechanics should reflect this.)

And attack skill isn't just about hitting. It's easy to punch someone. Any asshole can do it. What's difficult is to land blows with sufficient force as to hurt your opponent.

Attacking is about doing damage and defending about avoiding it. (Something else that should make its way into the mechanics.)

That gives us three concepts we need to incorporate:

1.) It's pretty easy "to-hit".

2.) Defense skill is about reducing or avoiding damage, not if you got hit or not.

3.) Attack skill is about maximizing the damage of attacks.

I'll talk about how to do this next post.

[Daddy Warpig]

Makin' Mechanics
pt. 3

Let me butcher a quote: Like laws and sausages, those who love game mechanics should never see them being made. That definitely applies to this thread. That said, let's make some mechanics.

These are the ideas I want to build into the combat mechanics:

1.) It's pretty easy "to-hit" (in most circumstances).

2.) Defense skill is primarily about reducing or avoiding damage, not if you got hit or not.

3.) Attack skill is about maximizing the damage of attacks.

(Why these three? See the prior two posts.)

So, how do these three ideas fit into the combat mechanics?

The base mechanic is the same as before: attack Skill + Damage = Attack Rating; defense Skill + Toughness = Defense Rating. Roll the Attack, read the Success Ratings as Wounds (+1 Shock for any level of Success).

The defense Skill of the character represents their default Defense in any combat situation. That is, in any situation where they're alert for attacks and are trying to defend themselves. It applies against all attacks in a round.

By adding the defense Skill to the Defense Rating, it reduces damage. Sometimes by blocking or other maneuvers, sometimes by not being hit.* The GM determines which when describing the scene. This covers #2.

Attack Skill, by adding to the Attack Rating, increases Damage. That addresses #3.

What about #1? If a character isn't aware they're about to be attacked, they do not get the benefit of their defense Skill — their Skill is treated as 0 when calculating their Defense Rating. This happens during a sudden ambush, when an infiltrator knifes an unaware guard from behind, or a sniper takes a shot at a patrol.

The rules cover all three goals. There is one last wrinkle, however:

Aren't there times when it isn't easy to hit targets? Yes, and I'll talk about that next post.

- -

* When you take no damage from an attack, you might have been missed. Or hit, for no damage. Or hit, for cosmetic damage (bleeding, bruises, etc.) The mechanic doesn't distinguish, and the GM decides which when describing the outcome.

[Daddy Warpig]

Wait... Is It Actually Easy To Hit?
pt. 4

From the first post: "Unless some kind of adverse circumstances apply — darkness, fear, the target moving — it's really easy to shoot a man-sized target at [close] range. (I'll talk about these circumstances in a bit.)"

So let's talk. One of the necessary parts of a combat system are mechanics that deal with adverse circumstances.

Is the target far away? That's range. Is the gun difficult to aim? Accuracy. Is there thick smoke on the battlefield? Concealment.

There are several more, and all of them make it harder to hit a target. Fortunately, there's a specific mechanic for that: Skill Penalties.

Skill Penalties reduce the attacker's effective Skill (and can even reduce it below 0). If your Skill with, for example, Thrown Weapons is 15 and you have a -3 Skill Penalty, it's effectively a 12. When you calculate your Attack Rating, you use Skill 12 instead of 15. Since such penalties can reduce your Skill below 0, if you have a Skill of 5 and -6 in Skill Penalties, your effective Skill is -1.

All Skill Penalties stack. If you have -3 from Wounds (Impaired) and another -3 from Shock (Impaired again), plus -3 from Range, your total Penalty is -9.

If your effective Skill is reduced to 0 or lower, you are Stymied. In addition, you cannot nominate a specific target to shoot at. You can, however, shoot at an area.

Skill Penalties cause attacks to be less effective. If they negate the Skill of the Attacker, he'll be much less effective. (Stymies hurt. A lot.)

It can be easy to hit targets, depending on circumstances. For those cases where it isn't, Skill Penalties reflect that mechanically.

[Daddy Warpig]

Concision At Last!
pt. 5

These messages have been one long thesis to explain the game's combat mechanic, why it is plausible, and how high-damage weapons fit into the system. So let's summarize.

1.) Combat Challenges are Attack Rating vs. Defense Rating, result read as Lethal Damage (1 Wound per SR, + 1 Shock). Attack Rating is Skill + Damage, Defense Rating is Skill + Toughness.

2.) When you are surprised or otherwise not expecting an attack, your effective defending Skill is 0.

3.) When you're ready for combat, your defense Skill is normal. It applies to all attacks during the round. (Unless you're Incapacitated, and so unable to defend yourself.)

4.) The defending skill is mostly about reducing damage. Defense might involve avoiding hits, but only as a means to an end: avoiding damage.

5.) The attack skill is all about causing as much damage as possible. Weapons only help.

6.) Weapons which do a lot of damage don't help you hit more. They just add to damage.

7.) Certain situations might cause you to miss. In game terms, these are expressed as Skill Penalties, which impair your attacks and can make it impossible to select a specific target.

All in all, the combat rules take into account most major elements pertinent to combat. More, they do so in a manner that, while definitely not the norm for RPG's, is plausible. Most importantly of all, the mechanic is simple and easy to implement.

It's that last which makes it most useful. "As simple as practical" is one of my chief guidelines when it comes to rules, and these definitely qualify.

All mechanics are compromises with reality. But these compromises make for a vastly simpler game. Which is (mostly) the point.

[Daddy Warpig]

Designers can't argue with players: something that isn't fun, isn't fun. But you can explain odd mechanics in such a way that they make sense. Players still may not enjoy them, but they very well may accept them.

This is a sidebar which will appear in the actual rulebook, explaining the combat mechanic. (Which is why I have all the "we's": it's the editorial "we", not arrogance. Honest.)

The Oddity of Rolling Once
pt. 6

Fighting for your life is a whirling, confusing, chaotic mess, and game mechanics allow us to impose a modicum of order on the chaos. They give us the illusion of clear and reliable and exact laws that govern a brawl, when in reality there are no such laws.

∞ Infinity rolls once for combat, and that one roll determines if you hit and how much damage the target takes, if any. This feels weird to people used to a traditional to-hit/damage split. It seems weird because we only roll once, and we don't have an exact number that you need to beat in order to hit.

In real life there is no difference between to-hit and damage. An attack is just an attack, and how well you did determines how much damage you do. So that's what the mechanic does.

In real life, the point of defending isn't to avoid every single blow, but to protect yourself (even if you get hit): to reduce the damage taken. So that's what the skill does.

In real life, the point of attacking is to hurt or kill your opponent, to do damage. So that's what the skill does.

Fighting for your life is a whirling, confusing, chaotic mess, but the combat mechanic imposes a modicum of order on the chaos. And since combat is chaotic, and since the exact answer isn't relevant to the mechanic, we leave it up to GM's to decide if this specific Failure on a Combat Challenge means you missed, or you hit but didn't hurt them enough for them to notice.

You have the same answer as a traditional mechanic, and we take into account the exact same factors as a traditional mechanic, and we give a balanced and reasonable outcome, like many traditional mechanics. But the way it's done seems odd, because we do it in a different way.

Give it a chance in play, is our suggestion. You may come to prefer it. We certainly have.

[Daddy Warpig]

Another FAQ-ing Pun?
Tangent, pt. 7

Last night, one of my No-Men asked me some important questions. They deserved some good answers. (Note: The questions have been rephrased, to turn definitive statements into questions.)

Q1: Is the Dodge skill realistic?

A1: Nope. It isn't even slightly realistic. If I ever wrote a "brutal, real-world combat" version of these rules, it wouldn't include that skill. It might include a maneuver to dodge (spend a Shock and buy a move to throw yourself out of the way, this causes a -5 Skill Penalty to the shot), but not the skill.

It is, however, perfectly suited for an action-movie. And this is an action movie game.

Q2: How does the Dodge skill work?

A2: How do Hit Points work? Sorry, my bad. That was rude of me.

The Dodge skill — whether against arrows, bolts, or bullets — is about trying to get the attacker to miss. And, failing that, to hit an extremity or other non-vital location. Dodge, dip, duck, dive, turn your body to the side...

Like I said, not realistic. But it's realistic enough for an action-movie game. In 24 years, I've yet to hear a single complaint about the skill. I assume that means players and GM's are cool with it.

Q3: How do you "reduce the damage" from a bullet by dodging? Isn't it pretty much hit or miss? And if it hits you, aren't you hurt pretty bad?

A3: Not necessarily. There are grazing shots, where a person is hit with a bullet, but not deeply wounded. That's a real-world event. Then there's the ubiquitous mainstay of the cinema: flesh wounds.

Any time you're hit for Shock or no damage (as always, DM's call to split the difference between "miss" and "hit, no damage"), it's a flesh wound. Flesh wound = cosmetic damage (hurt, a little blood). (See John McClane in the good Die Hards.) You'll have to first aid it later, but it isn't a Wound or even Shock.

(The same sort of thing applies to unarmed and melee: "hit, no damage" and Shock can cause flesh wounds - bruises, shallow cuts, split lip, loose teeth. In fact, I encourage it. It makes fights more colorful.)

The Dodge skill turns Wounds into Shock, Shock into flesh wounds, and flesh wounds into misses. Wounds and Shock are Damage, flesh wounds and misses aren't. The process is no more unreasonable than allowing a Dodge skill in the first place.

(One more FAQ post tomorrow. What can I say, he asked a lot of questions.)

[Daddy Warpig]

FAQ Attack (and Damage)
pt. 8

This is the second FAQ post.

Q4: You keep saying that big guns don't make you more accurate. But it sure seems like they do. Whassup?

A4: I want to restate the mechanic, then give the system assumptions that apply.

• Attack Rating is weapon Skill plus Damage Rating.
• Defense Rating is defense Skill plus Toughness.
(Then roll the dice once and generate Damage.)

The question is: since Damage Rating increases Attack Rating, doesn't that mean you hit more often?

No. But to answer that, I need to restate a few of the axioms undergirding the mechanics. (Sans supporting evidence. Just the bare statements.)

1. It's easy to shoot/punch/stab people, under optimal conditions, so the base "to-hit" CR is 0 (Routine).
2. Less than optimal conditions are represented by Skill Penalties.
3. If no Skill Penalties apply, the base CR to hit anyone is a 0.

That's attack. What about defense? Back to the axioms.

4. Combat is a confusing, whirling, chaotic mess. There are dozens of factors that could be considered when adjudicating any given blow. We do not explicitly account for all of them, or even a majority of them. We focus on those that are critical to game play.

5. Defense skill is focused on reducing damage, so they do not usually increase the base "to-hit" number. They can, in a few instances, but usually they don't.

6. Because defense Skill rarely applies "to-hit", the actual "to-hit" number is usually 0, sometimes varying slightly higher.

Why is it so low?

Because that number — usually 0, but sometimes varying a few points upward of that — only includes a couple of factors. Other factors make it harder to hit, and could increase it, but those get added in other places. The number is low, because nothing directly increases it.

Those "make it harder to hit" factors go into Skill Penalties (primarily) and also go into reducing damage. They do not increase the base "to-hit" difficulty. So it stays low. The "to-hit" CR is usually 0 and if not, near 0.

So people hit all the time?

No. Skill Penalties are applied in less than optimal conditions, which causes people to miss. But if no Skill Penalties apply, the "to-hit" CR is 0 or near 0.

And that's low enough that even the weakest and most incompetent character can score a "hit". (Again, when there's no Skill Penalties, so under optimal conditions.) "Hit, no damage", usually, even with a BFG (because of Skill and Toughness), but they could at least plausibly hit.

They won't, most of the time, but it is allowed for. It can happen.

And in the real world, too.

Once again: The "to-hit" is 0, all by itself. With Skill added in, it's usually 0, but can be higher, always within a couple of points. (We don't pick an exact number.) Skill Penalties are what cause you to miss (among other things). And we don't call out the to-hit number, because we don't need to.

The mechanic works. It's theoretically sound, and it's balanced.

Big fraggin' weapons don't let you hit more often and they don't break the game. Even an untrained Barney-Fife-alike who gets ahold of a plasma caster can't break the system over his knees and laugh maniacally as all foes fall before him.

The rules don't allow it. The rules are plausible, plausible enough for an RPG, and more than plausible enough for an action-movie RPG.

And that's "Whassup?" ;)

(One more FAQ tomorrow. Not as long, hopefully.)

[Daddy Warpig]

Fighting FAQs
pt. 9

Last FAQ post.

Q4: In a sword fight, how do you get a "hit, no damage"? Won't all hits cut you up?

A4: Knife fights are all about bleeding. You cut, they bleed, and blood loss knocks them out.

That said, preferably you block their blade with your blade. That's one of the benefits of carrying a chunk of metal: you can interpose it between your fragile flesh and other chunks of metal.

Think of a movie sword fight. Every time one blade clanks against another, that's one kind of "hit, no damage". And every time someone swings, and the other person jumps over it or leaps back, that's a miss. It's GM's call as to which happened.

Don't forget flesh wounds. They happen in swordfights, too. A cut shirt, a single trickle of blood trailing down the arm... it's not a Wound, so it's "no damage". And they are cool and colorful.

Q5: An unarmed person fighting a guy with a blade. How do they get "hit, no damage"?

A5: First, in that sitch the unarmed guy has a -3 Skill Penalty. This impairs his offense and defense. It's hard to fight a knife bare-handed, much less a sword. (Contemplating a reach modifier, as well. Not sure.)

Second, "hit, no damage" flesh wounds apply here, as well. A cut on the bicep, a shallow gouge across your belly, and so forth. They're not Wounds, but flesh wounds.

Q6: What about a gunslinger vs. a guy with a sword?

A6: Ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark?

That's the last of the FAQ's, and the last of this line of posts. (Unless something else comes up.) Next up, we're gonna start talking about the core of the combat system: Shock, Actions, and Initiative.

[Daddy Warpig]

A Producer?
Shock, Actions, & Initiative, Prologue

I love The Producers. It's funny and offensive in just the right mix. At one point Max Bialystock tells his would-be-producer friend Leo Bloom, "Has the curtain gone up? Has the curtain gone down? Then you're not a producer." I like this rule, it makes a lot of sense, and it applies to fields far beyond producing a Broadway play.

Per the Bialystock Rule, I'm not a designer, because I've never finished a game and shipped it. But I am engaged in designing a game, and this is a little note about that process.

Inventions are messy. Like a gasoline engine. The central idea is absurdly simple: take a highly combustible substance, make it combust, use a piston and a shaft to turn that into mechanical energy. Actually building the engine is far, far more complicated. Pistons, crankshaft, gaskets, fuel injection, spark plugs, exhaust, lubricant, filtration, and on and on. But it's all necessary to make the engine work.

What I'm saying is that everything sounds simple in concept, but when you actually implement something it becomes more complex, more baroque. If you've never actually shipped something, you don't know this. Until just this week, I didn't know this. Not really.

The Shock mechanic is the gasoline engine of the game. It's a little bit ugly, a little bit odd, a little bit baroque. But it works.

And, like an engine, it drives most of the rest of the game. It sits at the heart of nearly everything outside of Skill Challenges — damage, Initiative, Actions, even FX use. Its role is more critical than the combat mechanic. (Which shocked me when I realized it.)

And I'll start talking about it next post.

[Daddy Warpig]

Shock: The Rules
SAI, pt. 1

Complexity is a budget: you spend it where you need it. Where you don't, you simplify, abstract, or just plain ignore. I simplified the combat mechanic, because it isn't the heart of combat. Initiative is the heart of combat, and Shock the engine. What is Shock?

Wounds represent physical trauma: broken bones, torn flesh, pierced organs, and the like. Shock, as a mechanic, represents the many sorts of injuries or damage that don't manifest in gross physical trauma: physiological stress, fatigue, shock, pain, exhaustion, and related effects and conditions.

Physical exertion (such as running or climbing) causes Shock, as can extremes of heat or cold. Getting punched in the face can cause Shock (in addition to Wounds), so does severe blood loss. In some settings, so can casting a spell.

Points of Shock are cumulative: a character with 3 Shock who takes 1 point now has 4 Shock. Accumulating Shock eventually impedes characters' abilities, cripples them, and can even lead to death.

Shock is compared to a character's Endurance. The higher a character's Endurance, the more Shock they can take before suffering penalties:

• A character can take Shock up to their Endurance without suffering any penalties.
• If their Shock points are higher than their Endurance, they are Impaired.
• If their Shock points exceed twice (x2) Endurance, they are Incapacitated.
• If their Shock ever exceeds x3 Endurance, the character starts Dying.

Example: A character with an Endurance of 5 can take up to 5 Shock with no penalties. If they take 6 or more, they become Impaired. If they take 11 or more, they become Incapacitated. If their Shock ever exceeds 15, they begin Dying.

A character with a 10 Endurance can take up to 10 points of Shock with no penalties. If they take 11 or more, they become Impaired. At 21, they become Incapacitated. At 31, they begin Dying.

These categories are noted on the character sheet after character creation. They list 3 numbers: Endurance (Impaired), x2 Endurance (Incapacitated), x3 Endurance (Dying).

Next to each is a space for the calculated number, and atop the column a block for their current Shock. (Typically, they are tracked like Hit Points.) Compare the current Shock with the 3 numbers to see what penalties apply.

If you'll excuse the crudity, it looks something like the following:

Current Shock: ___
[When your current Shock
exceeds the number below,
you suffer the listed condition.]

Endurance (Impaired): ___
x2 Endurance (Incapacitated): ___
x3 Endurance (Dying): ___

I'll define the conditions, and explain how they interact with those from Wounds, next post.

[Daddy Warpig]

Wounds & Conditions
Shock, Actions, & Initiative, pt. 2

Because of my nine-day tangent to explain the combat mechanic, the rules for Wounds are probably long forgotten. A quick recap:

Wounds = Condition
1 Wound = None
2 Wounds = Impaired
3 Wounds = Incapacitated & Dying
4 Wounds = Dead

The penalties for accumulated Shock (from yesterday's post) are the same for taking Wounds, and they interact with those from Wounds. This is deliberate.

Impaired: The character suffers a -3 Skill Penalty to all rolled Challenges. (This can represent being drunk or tired, for example.) This stacks with all other Skill Penalties.

This is the same penalty for Shock exceeding Endurance, so suffering both is a -6 Skill Penalty.

Incapacitated: The character is conscious, but can make only move (at half speed) or make Simple Actions (i.e. nothing that requires a roll). (This can represent being stunned, exhausted, and so forth.) In addition, they cannot make Passive Defense checks (meaning their effective defense Skill is 0). If they take another "Incapacitated", they go Unconscious.

Taking Shock in excess of 2x Endurance also causes Incapacitation. If you take one from both, you go Unconscious.

Dying: The character is expiring, and takes 1 point of Shock per round until exceeding 3x Endurance. They then take 1 Wound a round until 4 Wounds, when they are dead.

Taking more than 3x Endurance in Shock also causes Dying. The effects are the same.

All of that is fairly straightforward, and the progression is obvious: the character is impeded, then crippled, then they begin dying. I'll dive into why that exact progression is necessary, next post.

[Daddy Warpig]

Why Do It This Way?
Shock, Actions, & Initiative, pt. 3

There's a question I want to answer before I go any further: why these conditions, why this pattern (hampered, disabled, dying)? I'm not talking mechanics, points and numbers and all that. I'm talking about that progression: why use that progression?

Shock is an abstract mechanic that can be used to represent a several real-world conditions and effects. Fundamentally speaking, it began as a Fatigue mechanic (and went under that name for several of these posts while I dithered over a name for it). But the same progression which described fatigue — difficulty concentrating (Impaired), crippling weakness and inability to focus (Incapacitated), and organ failure and eventual death (Dying) — also served to describe a number of other conditions:

• Hypothermia: you get cold, your hands are shaking and you can't concentrate (Impaired), then you lose sensation and can barely function (Incapacitated), then your core temperature drops below a critical point and you begin to expire (Dying).

• Heat exhaustion: Dizziness, weakness, vomiting (Impaired), crippling headaches and loss of concentration (Incapacitation), eventually organ failure and death (Dying).

• Bleeding out: Weakness and difficulty concentrating (Impaired), debilitating weakness (Incapacitation), critical loss of blood volume leading to death (Dying).

Other conditions the mechanic covers include sleep deprivation, some bacterial or viral illnesses, and hypoxia (among others). All these conditions can roughly be represented by the same progression, so we do.

The real world is complex, and this progression is a massive simplification of a large number of complex conditions. But it works. And one mechanic can cover all of them, making that mechanic very useful.

Shock sees a lot of use in the system, beyond just the medical: Pushes, Knockout Attacks, the Action model, and so forth. The same progression that covers medical issues also addresses those, as well.

The reason the rules have the "> Endurance, x2, x3" is because it's useful and it works for those other applications. I want to start talking about applications of Shock itself next message.

[Daddy Warpig]

[Note: I've been posting about once a day, barring gaps for various reasons. Now that we're out of the combat mechanic swamp, occasionally I'm going to be doing one or two posts a day. Apologies if this is too much. I just want to get to Initiative fairly quickly. It's the next major "swamp" I need to drain.]

Knockout Attacks
Shock, Actions, & Initiative, pt. 4a

The first application of the Shock rules isn't a direct implementation, but rather something which taps into them: Knockout Attacks. You know what I'm talking about: hit someone across the back of the head, and POW! down they go. This is ubiquitous in movies, especially action movies, and makes appearances throughout TV and written fiction also. (Once you start looking for it, it's insane how often it pops up.)

These kinds of attacks are absolutely not realistic, concussions and internal bleeding and on and on, but any game with pretensions to action-movie RPG status has to include them. Fortunately, the same rules which cover striking someone with the butt of your gun also cover knockout darts, certain types of poison, chloroformed handkerchiefs, boxing, possibly tasers, and several other similar situations.

("Never use two mechanics when one will do." It's a good guideline.)

Knockout Attack

Attempts to knock an opponent unconscious use the standard Combat Challenge rules: Attack Rating vs. Defense Rating. However, the Success Ratings from the check do not cause Wounds. Instead, you deal 1 Shock for any level of Success (0 SR or higher), plus the listed condition for a specific Success Rating.

1 Shock for 0 SR or higher, plus:

SR = Result
1 SR = Impaired
2 SR = Incapacitated
3+ SR = Unconscious

These are the same conditions caused by Wounds and Shock, and they have the same effects. (In theory. I've modified and clarified a couple of the conditions since the last time I posted them. But those changes apply to Wound- and Shock-caused conditions as well.) I'll describe the conditions next post.

[Daddy Warpig]

Knockout Attacks: Conditions
Shock, Actions, & Initiative, pt. 4b

Knockout Attacks don't cause a lot of Shock (1 Shock or 2 if Encumbered), but they do tap into the same progression: Impaired, Incapacitated, Unconscious. These conditions are identical to those caused by Wounds or Shock, and interact with them in the same way.

(By reusing the same conditions and the same rules for them, it simplifies the game: there are fewer rules for the GM to remember and apply.)

1 SR causes the Impaired condition, which imposes a -3 penalty to attacks (as a Skill Penalty), Reactive and Passive Defenses, and Skill Challenges. Multiple Impaired conditions do not stack, but the penalties from the condition do stack with penalties from other sources.

[Rule Change: An Impaired condition only applies once, no matter the source. If you're Impaired from Wounds, and take an Impaired from a KO attack, you're still at -3. The alternative would be to track Impaired separately by source (Wounds, Shock, KO, and potentially others), which would also necessitate tracking multiple KO-caused Impairs. Can of worms, so I simplified.]

2 SR causes Incapacitation: the target can't Passively Defend and can only make Simple Actions. If they already have an Incapacitation from any source, they go Unconscious.

[Any source: this includes another KO attack. If one punch didn't do it, try again. It can't hurt. (Okay, it'll probably hurt the target, but you know what I mean.)]

3 SR (or higher) knocks the person out. Congrats, they're KO'd. This condition typically lasts 30 min - 1 hour. (I'll get more specific when I post Healing rules.)

[Daddy Warpig]

Knockout Attacks: Comments
Shock, Actions, & Initiative, pt. 4c

In movies, KO attacks are dead easy. They happen so frequently, with such casual effort, you get the feeling that, in movieland, a 5-year-old child could toss a stale Cheeto at the back of his mother's head and knock her unconscious for an hour or two.

In an RPG, they just can't be that easy. They have to be possible, but not easy. Above all, they can't be a more efficient means of neutralizing enemies than physical combat, or everyone will start carrying DMSO water pistols everywhere they go. (Hiya, Shadowrun!)

The KO Attack chart makes them a little more efficient than regular attacks, but not hugely so. This is balanced by the relatively higher Damage Ratings of guns, swords, etc. (Plus, most of the weapons that deal KO damage are easily stopped by pretty much any kind of armor.)

What is most important about them, though, is the least obvious: the role of surprise. As previously noted (during the 9-day-long tangent), the effective defensive Skill of a surprised person is 0. This means that, if you sneak up on a guard, he can only defend with his Endurance and any armor he might be wearing. A quick pistol whipping, and he'll likely drop. (Assuming you're not a useless bastard in hand-to-hand combat, that is.)

Even if he doesn't, assuming you get at least 1 SR, he has a -3 Defense Penalty against your next attack. This translates to, on average, the attacker doing 1 more SR on the next strike. If you roll exactly the same, he'll be Incapacitated. Once more, and he'll be Unconscious.

In action movies, it's rare that you have to hit someone more than once to knock them out. (I can only recall it happening once, and that was played for laughs. ( <thud!> "Are you still awake?" "Yeah, okay." <thud!> ) It can happen more often with these rules, because this is an RPG, not a scripted movie. Even so, if you get the drop on a guard, they're likely going down, especially if they're unarmored.