Postby shiinx » Tue Jan 21, 2014 2:35 pm
I would like to caution you not to alter or simplify rules just for the sake of change. From what I gather from your post, you try to address two issues, shorten combat at higher circles and increasing the use of talents with strain. The second issue never occured at my playtables and the first one is debatable. Your proposed primary solution, however, does not address either. It only leads to more deadly combat as others have said.
If you want to shorten combat, you have to either decrease maximum health pools- however they are measured; or you have to rework the complete scaling of the talent system towards higher circles. Two important question in this direction are, why does combat take too long and what is considered too long. Maybe you are trying to solve a symptom and not the cause? Does it take long because the damage dealt is small compared to the health pools? This indicates a scaling issue; maybe due to the new armor defeating rules? Does it take long because characters are hit rarely? This indicates something has to change with avoidance talents or defense ratings. Does it take long because player require a lot of time for simple actions due to game mechanics?
If you want to increase the usage of talents that cause strain -again this never was a problem at our table- you need clarify the difference between non-lethal, lethal, and also illusionary damage. Maybe these types of damage also need to be separated a bit more. I always found it borderline, that a single cut for 1 point of damage could kill you, if you just received enough non-lethal damage in advance (but then again, one could argue that if your body is in such a strained state, a small wound could kill). The same goes for a lot of illusionary damage and a single real papercut.
In general, I would keep the distinction between Unconciousness Rating and Death Rating in some form or another as it allows for a well-needed buffer between life and death, for player characters as well as for NPCs. I would also keep scaling of the range between unconciosuness and death. With increasing damage values, the range has to grow as well, otherwise its purpose is gone with attacks that bring you straight from life to death, by dealing more damage than the entire range.
Considering strain, I would keep track of it as a separate value that is easier to refresh than normal damage, counts against your Unconciousness Rating, but not against your Death Rating. I know this makes things even more complicated than the current state, though.