(Iapheia) Pain and Violence on the Continent
Iapheia overview post here.
Jose Clemente Orozco, Combat (1927)
Iapheia's basic rules framework is fairly vanilla GLOG: d20 roll-under, modular classes, skills mostly as permissions, etc., etc. One major omission is hit points. Here's how damage works instead.
Pain Threshold, Damage Dice, and Grit
Instead of hit points, characters have a Pain Threshold (PT). Human PT defaults to 6. Armour can give +1 or +2 PT, but always has some sort of catch (impedes movement, only works against certain types of attack, might break if heavily damaged, etc.).
Weapon damage is still measured in dice, as per usual. Melee weapons range from 1d6 (knife or knuckledusters) to 1d10 (two-handed). Pistols deal 2d6, rifles 3d6, and shotguns 2d8. More detail on weapons in a future post.
All weapon damage dice explode on a 6 or more. Total dice are capped at 2 x base dice, so a melee weapon can only explode once, a pistol twice, and so on.
PCs and some NPCs have a resource called Grit, which they can spend to mitigate injury. After damage is rolled, each point of Grit spent cuts the highest single die roll from the total. Attacks always deal 1 damage even if Grit completely nullifies the dice.
Taking Damage
When you get hit, compare the damage roll to your Pain Threshold.
Damage < PT: Take a Graze. -1 PT, stackable.
Damage ≥ PT: Take a Flesh Wound. Until this wound is stabilised, add a d6 to attacks and stat checks. (Iapheia is roll-under, so this is a penalty.) If you already have a Flesh Wound, even a stable one, instead take a Mortal Wound (below).
Damage ≥ 2 x PT: Take a Mortal Wound. Add a d6 to attacks and stat checks, even after this wound is stabilised. If you already have a Mortal Wound, you die.
Damage ≥ 3 x PT: Die.
Stabilising and Recovering from Wounds
Grazes expire after taking 10 minutes to catch your breath and patch yourself up.
Flesh Wounds and Mortal Wounds stabilise automatically if you receive first aid within 1 hour of injury; this takes 10 minutes and cannot be performed on yourself. After that hour, an unstabilised Flesh Wound becomes a stable Mortal Wound (which can kill you if you already have a Mortal Wound), and an unstabilised Mortal Wound kills you.
Flesh Wounds heal after 1d6 days. Stable Mortal Wounds downgrade to stable Flesh Wounds after 1d6 days.