Seeking some feedback on a possible ED4 change

[Telarus_KSC]

I've seen Attack to Stun used fairly well, but only in recent games where I made sure everyone knew of the option. Maybe Josh &/or one of the other Devs will comment?

I could see dropping Stun Damage completely. Some ideas I came up with as a replacement mechanic are: A) Treated as Illusionary Damage (I.e. it's "Real" until you hit your Uncon Rating, and then does no further damage). B) You could rule that, after checking the Damage Test vs Wound Threshold for the Stunned effect, that character takes Damage Result - WT real damage. Still carries some real risk there....

[Gkeckley]

Actually I always had more of an issue with the grapple rules and hope they are changed. Once you have been successfully grappled to break free you need to roll strength step or unarmed combat test versus a difficulty of whatever they rolled to hit you, which by the way they needed a good success to hit you in the first place. So if they rolled a 20 to hit you then unless you have unarmed you are hosed. What is weird their were similar mechanics for other abilities in previous editions where you used to have to roll against the effect total that got changed to you just had to just beat the step number of the ability (terror was an example of this change) even entanglement with a net or whip, got changed to a set difficulty to break free. I house ruled that you just had to beat their unarmed step. Still difficult if you do not have unarmed but not impossible.

[Mataxes]

Grappling rules are almost always messy. Any system with the general complexity level of Earthdawn frequently has crap grappling rules.

We are looking at it. I am not sure at this point what the final shape will be, but going against Step rather than Result is a possibility.

[Gkeckley]

Glad to hear it.

[Sundahk]

Here are some things that have been mentioned that we use in our game that work well and others that we think need improvement:

1. Attack to Stun - As 'heroes' my players nearly always employ this option when they come across some poor Horror marked fool/someone they want to interrogate/people that don't deserve a good killin'. So it's a good option, however the tracking of 'Stun' damage in addition to normal damage and then calculating Recovery Steps to recover 'Stun' damage is IMO unnecessarily complicated;
2. Strain - The Swordmaster and Outcast Warrior in our group have pointed out how they are Strain sponges, and often in battle the Strain they take outweighs the damage from injuries. Then there have been edge of your seat battles where a player has made a final desperate Aggressive Attack at a Horror and taken that extra point of Strain that tipped him over his UR. Those moments are awesome! Our problem is that Strain damage = physical damage i.e. it uses the same rules of recovery. We house ruled that Strain is Stun damage, but then we got stuck with the problems I mentioned above;
3. Knockdown - Knockdown is great! It's a pain for players when it happens to them, but they love it when they smash a Theran slaver down and know that all he can do on his next action is merely standup (and in 3rd Ed not even move away!). However, like others have said, the Damage - Wound Threshold +3 = Knockdown TN is a pain (although after 20 years or so we're kind of used to it). A Damage VS Character's Knockdown Value(?) seems like the easiest way to resolve this (much like Melee Weapons Vs Character's Physical Defense), with Wound Balance used like Avoid Blow/Parry. While it's the easiest I don't know if it's the best;
4. Unconscious and Death Ratings - We've always like the buffer between UR and DR. There have been many games where some players have hit their UR and are desperately counting down the six rounds (i.e. one minute) before then can make a Recovery to see if they wake up. W don't know how you could improve it, it seems quite simple, but we don't think it needs fixing (definitely not Toughness VS Wounds * 5. If you get hit by a Horror's Skin Shift power I doubt you'll survive those automatic Rank wounds!).

Anyway, that's what works/doesn't work for our little group for what it's worth. We're just happy that someone who loves the game like we do is taking it to the next level and considering the opinions of fellow fans. And how cool is it that Lou Prosperi is still invested in all things Earthdawn?!

[Tattered Rags]

[bleeding]

I would keep UR and DR.
Then, for each battle, players should keep tracks of the damage received. After the battle is over, they should consider one half, one quarter (?) is some Stun damage and recover it automatically, without spending Recovery Tests, after one minute (or more) of rest.

Of course, if the damage is only Stun damage, they could recover it automatically too but in more than one minute, maybe at a rate of 10 per hour ?

[Slimcreeper]

Ugh, that's getting a little too fiddly for me. I like my idea of having stun 'damage' temporarily reduce the UR (my favorite person thought of it!).

I agree with them that say that strain should be treated as Blood Magic, a sacrifice of life energy to power magic, and not as a fatigue mechanic to limit skill use and the like.

(Really, 3rd ed ED? If I walk through a crowd Detecting Weapons I will take fall unconscious from real damage after checking a couple dozen people? The life of a TSA agent is tougher than I thought.)

[Mataxes]

Feel free to keep talking about these issues, but I did want to put out there that we've decided to keep the DR/UR pretty much as-is from prior editions (the base values may not match exactly, but the execution of the rules around them is the same), and not have a strain pool outside of that. When all was said and done, there just weren't any solutions that didn't introduce a whole other mess of other problems that needed to be addressed.

[Telarus_KSC]

That sounds good. I think the thread is in agreement that the buffer between Death and Unconsciousness Ratings is key to the feel of the game. I can even remember having a "dead" gargoyle wake up on us as the Obsidiman was carrying him out of the kaer. Maybe that's where the "active Toughness tests" should go...Mataxes & the test crew noted that it would not work as a "Death" check, but maybe you get a check per round to resist passing out -until you do-, and then another check to wake up if you get aid. I think with the simplification of Wounding/Knockdown this will work nicely.

I really like the idea of just listing a single number in the Characteristics table (*DR or UR) and having an easy way to calculate the other. Don't know how that would work with scaling tho...

I'd also keep in mind the Blood Charm Strain Pool idea, that's interesting... I had an idea of a pool which soaks strain until it hits a cap, and then you roll that cap as a Damage test ( & hope nothing explodes)... maybe I'll roll that into my version of the blood charm.

Also, regaring "Speeding" Combat from earlier:
"One of the goals here is to try and reduce how much damage needs to be thrown around to take down an opponent -- especially as we get into higher circles and are looking at adepts and tougher creatures. Combat can be a bit of a slog, taking people down through death by a thousand paper cuts, scaling back on these numbers to some extent can speed things up in that regard." -Mataxes

I would love to see some clean Morale rules which interface with the Charisma mechanics and the Leadership talent/skill. I think that would go a long way to ending combats without dragging them out into slogfests. The new Success Level system makes this seem workable, as coward/elite characters can be modeled as having to get a higher/lower success level to stay in the fight....