Death and dying percents in the new game...

Hey all,

Thought I would post this here, almost as much as a brainstorm type of thing as for anyone else to read...

So... as I mentioned previously, I am trying to get away from hit points and the like. So, I am considering something like this:

When shooting at a target, first the computer decides what area (legs, chest, head) are hit.

THEN it randomly generates a number; say, 1-100.

1-60 would be a miss
61-80 would be a minor wound.
81-90 would be a major wound
91-100 would be death

This would then be modified. For example... say a weapon was a bit crappy, it might get a modifier like -1.

However, this would not just subtract one from the number generated.

Rather, it would take away one space for each type other than miss and make it a miss! For example, a -1 weapon would be...

92-100 would be death
91 would be a miss
82-90 would be a serious wound
81 would be a miss
62-80 would be a minor wound
1-61 would be a miss

Things like long range, lower powered weapons, bad accuracy, moving while firing, armor, and the like would subtract. Things like shorter range, good accuracy, and more high power weapons would increase the number.

Keep in mind; this is a fairly representative system, in that it is not breaking up HITTING and HURTING. However, I like it. Rather than basically just making the extreme examples (i.e. the top of the chart, the death) less likely I think it spreads it out some. At some point (say at -6 or worse, or +6 or better) we could even start saying "penalties of -6 to -9 count as -6, -10 to -13 counts as -7) in order to make sure that it doesn't become TOO ridiculous. Also, there would have to ALWAYS be a chance of each category.

Just so folks know, I would imagine a light bulletproof vest might give you a -2, a heavy vest say a -4 or so, something like a wall a -6? I don't know, we'll have to crunch the math a little and see how it works out, percentage wise.

Plus, we could do some interesting things... lets say you were behind a wall that gave the shooting a -5 penalty.

96-100 would be a death
91-95 would be "the shot hit the wall!" (or "the bullet hit your armor" or...)
86-90 would be a major wound
81-85 would be "the shot hit the wall!"
66-80 would be a minor wound
61-65 would be "the shot hit the wall!"
1-60 would simply be a miss.

It opens up some possibilities for the narrative.

Now you might ask; why determine the TARGET of the shot BEFORE determining whether it hits? Well, that is to account for things like armor... for example, if your torso is armored to a -3, but your head has no armor, then the game needs to know if it should apply the armor penalty or not.

So. I don't know if this will be the way we do it (there may be consequences I haven't predicted) but we'll see!