Don’t worry, I will not make Nightvale go swimming. Sage is more watery anyway.
Also Baklava Day, which I randomly am able to celebrate.
Read (manga): Mysterious Disappearances vol 7 (Nujima): More people from beyond, more eldritch train stations, return of the girl with the string on her finger. Also swimsuit episode.
Written (game design): 356:
Back to the damage system! I want to keep damage rolls and effect rolls
in general at one point per die (plus/minus) if possible, so we need to
adjust what stats the target has and what they mean.
(A feature of the Res-converts-Body-to-multiple-Stun system we were
looking at is that the higher your Res, the more total damage you take,
even if it’s less lethal. It’s good to not die, but this is probably
still not how things should work.)
As we just saw, in the old system, a normal (2 PD/ED, 10 Con, 10 Body,
20 Stun) should be knocked out by an average 7d6 attack (22-23 Stun
after PD/ED). A 6d6 attack (19 Stun) won’t quite do it unless it rolls
up a bit, but will definitely stun them. Either of these will put them
in the ER (average 5 or 4 Body respectively). 2d6 (5 Stun, 0 Body) takes
four hits to knock them out, and won’t even stun them unless it rolls
all the way up (10 Stun, 2 Body). 10d6 (33 Stun, 8 Body) pretty much
can’t fail to knock them out, and is extremely likely to put them in
hospital. 12d6 will on average leave them dying, but even rolling up
won’t kill them instantly. 4d6 (12 Stun) is enough to stun them on
average, 3d6 (8-9 Stun) would have to roll up.
If each point of effect goes through to do a point of Stun (on an
unarmored normal), that suggests base Con is 6; if you take more
than half of it, you’re stunned, and if you take more than all of it,
you’re out. More precisely, every point of damage that ends up with you
being at more than 1/2 Con stuns you, so don’t get hit if you’re already
beaten up. (Is this a good idea?)
Does each point of effect go through? In the old system, normals have 2
PD/ED, but each new point represents 3.5 old Stun, so that’s just over
half a point, which is probably the most incovenient possible value. If
we generously round up to 1 Def, then they get stunned by 3 damage and
knocked out by 6. That’s one more than 2 and 5 respectively, which is
not nearly as felicitous a pair of numbers since we probably still round
in the character’s favor. 2d6 against 1 Def does an average of 1 damage,
so three hits until they start getting stunned with every hit, six until
they’re knocked out. There’s a 1/4 chance of doing nothing (rolling
down), and a 1/36 chance of rolling up enough to stun. That’s more
nothing, but about the same stunning. Obviously we don’t have to match
the results of the old system exactly, but I think the 0-Def option
works better here. Maybe.
Let’s look at some other cases. In the old system Doc Savage (max human
stats, let’s leave out the martial arts for now) would on average stun a
normal with every hit, and knock them out with two hits. The normal
would on average do nothing (2d6 vs PD 8), and at most would do 1/12 of
his total Stun.
In the new system, that would be Def 2, Con 15 (stunned at 9, knocked
out at 16), Str 4d6. 4 damage stuns the normal, another 4 knocks them
out, so that matches. The normal would again typically do nothing, but
could maybe do as much as 2 damage, or 1/8 of his total. Not the same,
but pretty close.