My D6 System: Character Injury

Continuing in my overview of my current revised and expanded D6 Star Wars system, I will now delve into the subject of character injury. It may seem like a very small mechanic of a game, but in a larger sense, it reflects the 'philosophy' behind a system. The way D6 initially handled injury was one of the things that first drew me to the system. Here we finally had a mechanic in a game system that gave even 'high level' characters a reason to be wary of even a lowly blaster-pistol. Where as in most D&D games, high-level characters scoffed at being shot by dozens of arrows, a Star Wars character always had to be careful of the possibility that one lucky hit, however unlikely, could take them down. To me, this added a bit of cinematic realism to the system—wherein characters weren't 'tanks' that soaked up damage until they finally went down. It gave players a real reason to try and avoid injury—but without being too 'lethal' when they didn't.

At least, that's how it was in the first edition of the game. For some reason, there was a shift in philosophy from first to second edition. A shift that, if I had taken it, would have made character injury much more 'lethal'. As I recall, the stated reason for this change was to put greater emphasis on 'not getting hit'. The rule book used the example of the characters in the movies rarely getting shot as justification. I never liked this reasoning, mainly because it went against my character death policy. To me, character wounds were a way to 'gently remind' the players to be more careful in their character actions without just killing them off and passing the lesson on to their new character. To their credit, my players seem to have learned this lesson. They are still brash, yes, but most of them still know when to cut and run and when something is too big for them to handle directly.

So, through my campaign, I kept the first edition injury system. I looked briefly at the system of 'body points' (or whatever) presented in the generic D6 system and DC heroes, but I never liked that either. It reminded me too much of D&D and hit points. Still, I wasn't entirely satisfied with what I had...so I tinkered. What I came up with was this:

DETERMINE AMOUNT OF DAMAGE

When struck by a weapon or otherwise injured, a character rolls their Strength attribute versus the damage-dice of whatever hit them. They then consult the following chart:

Damage roll ≤ Strength Roll x.5  =  Character Unaffected

Damage roll ≤ Strength Roll = Character Temporarily Stunned

Damage roll > Strength Roll = Character takes 1 Wound

Damage roll > Strength Roll x2 = Character takes 2 Wounds

Damage roll > Strength Roll x3 = Character takes 3 Wounds

etc.

DETERMINE EFFECTS OF DAMAGE

Unaffected

This means just that: There was no effect. Whatever hit you just glanced off or otherwise did no appreciable damage.

Temporarily Stunned

Your character receives a 1D penalty to all actions for the remainder of the round. The stun goes away at the end of the round. The character has to make a Very Easy Stamina roll (see below) to avoid being knocked out. NOTE: Temporary stuns ARE cumulative. Please see the Stun System (also below) for more information.

Wounded

Wounds are cumulative. Every character can take a number of wounds equal to their Strength Attribute (ignoring any pips) before becoming Mortally Wounded. Thus, a character with a 2D Strength attribute has the capacity to take 2 wounds. A character with a 3D+2 Strength has the capacity to take 3 wounds, etc.. The stronger a character is, the more wounds it takes to seriously injure him. For instance, a character with a 2D Strength...

1 Wound = Lightly Wounded (-1D penalty to all rolls; Easy Stamina roll to avoid knockout)

2 Wounds = Severely Wounded (-3D penalty to all rolls; Difficult Stamina roll to avoid knockout)

3 Wounds = Mortally Wounded (-4D penalty to all rolls; Very Difficult Stamina roll to avoid knockout)

A character with a 3D Strength...

1 Wound = Lightly Wounded (-1D penalty to all rolls; Easy Stamina roll to avoid knockout (See below)

2 Wounds = Heavily Wounded (-2D penalty to all rolls; Moderate Stamina roll to avoid knockout

3 Wounds = Severely Wounded (-3D penalty to all rolls; Difficult Stamina roll to avoid knockout

4 Wounds = Mortally Wounded (-4D penalty to all rolls; Very Difficult Stamina roll to avoid knockout

A character with a 4D Strength...

1 Wound = Lightly Wounded (-1D penalty to all rolls; Easy Stamina roll to avoid knockout

2 Wounds = Lightly Wounded (-1D penalty to all rolls; Easy Stamina roll to avoid knockout

3 Wounds = Heavily Wounded (-2D penalty to all rolls; Moderate Stamina roll to avoid knockout

4 Wounds = Severely Wounded (-3D penalty to all rolls; Difficult Stamina roll to avoid knockout

5 Wounds = Mortally Wounded (-4D penalty to all rolls; Very Difficult Stamina roll to avoid knockout

KNOCKOUT

As seen above, every injury comes with the chance of being 'knocked out'. This doesn't always represent straight loss of consciousness, but rather 'incapacitation' of some sort—shock or disorientation. Just something that takes you out of the fight for a while. The greater the injury, the greater the chance of being knocked out. In fact, since the dice penalty for injury is applied to the stamina roll, the chance of knockout increases almost exponentially. Only the toughest people will be capable of remaining conscious with a mortal injury.

As far as the duration of a knockout goes, I have not hard fast rules on that—generally playing it by ear or according to what would be most dramatically appropriate. As a rule of thumb, though, the more serious the cause of the knockout (a Serious Wound as opposed to a Light), the longer the period of incapacity.

STUNS

In the original system, the mechanics of the blaster stun settings were ridiculously unbalanced. It was actually much easier to stun someone into unconsciousness than it was to just blast them—begging the question of why would you ever NOT use the stun setting. I don't know if this was intentional by the designers or not, but in any case, I think its kind of dumb. In my own system, the Stuns are handled parallel to wounds. This means as you keep track of a character's wound level, you must also keep track of their stun level. The only difference is that Stun damage wears off at the rate of 1 Stun per round.