Shrug It Off

Shrug It Off is a set of optional rules introduced 25 April 2013 on Gaming Ballistic, the blog of Douglas Cole. It was actually first alluded to in December 2012 in Grand Unified Smackdown Theory:
:During the writing of The Last Gasp, one of my helpers ran a boxing match, and we decided that a HT roll to avoid actual HP of damage (but preserving the AP loss damage causes) from punches would make a LOT of sense, since even with boxing gloves, a typical 15-round boxing match as played in GURPS would kill both fighters. Extending this to all blunt trauma wouldn’t be too much of a leap, and if there were a penalty to HT rolls based on the rolled damage or something, that would keep maces and staffs scary. Alternately, padded hands might do the trick for bonuses to HT. People CAN get killed in fights, after all. They just usually don’t.
==boxing==
Previous discussions of Boxing have pointed out how it's hard to emulate the number of punches there. Cole introduces the concept of a HT check (penalized by damage) to reduce damage taken.
==last gasp==
This somewhat resembles Injury and Damage (Varies) from The Last Gasp in June 2012, where a HT check is done to reduce the amount of Action Points lost in response to losing damage.
==full text==
:copied from https://gamingballistic.com/2013/04/25/shrug-it-off/ since the page doesn't always load consistently, and for clickable ToC and links to other articles, with some notes added in italics
While we were playtesting the Action Point rules for The Last Gasp, we ran through a boxing match. Or rather, one of my playtesters ran through a boxing match.
The AP rules worked well, encouraging fighters to take standing 8-counts, lots of recovery actions, and generally making it take longer to fight. All well and good.
Still, the reality of it is that in a match of fifteen three-minute rounds, that is, a whopping 2,700 turns in GURPS, two combatants of moderate ST and fitness (say, ST 13 with Boxing at DX+2, even with boxing gloves (see GURPS Martial Arts, p. 233) will be rolling 1d-1 cr on every hit, with the +2 per die damage you get from Boxing canceling out the -2 you get from your gloves. In short, three or four successful punches and your other guy is flirting with kissing the mat.
But wait, you say. These guys are throwing a lot of defensive attacks, which means that the above guy is probably only rolling 1d-3 cr instead of 1d-1 cr. OK, so? You’re still looking at 2,700 turns, with Boxing-14 you’re looking at a 90% chance to hit, and about a 75% chance to parry (assuming a retreating parry, defensive attack, no Combat Reflexes). Let’s say one hit in four does damage, and you only do damage half the time (1d-3). So one turn in eight you take 1-3 points of damage. You’re still looking at being KO’ed in the first round of the fight nearly always. If you stick with it, you’ll probably die by round two or three.
Now, not to make light of the punishment a real boxer can dish out – these guys hit hard – but boxing just isn’t that deadly. I think what’s missing is a chance for a fighter to brace him or herself against even as successful hit.
===Roll with it, baby===
Fortunately, GURPS provides one way of doing this, but it’s a cinematic technique: Roll with Blow, (Martial Arts, p. 87). Roll skill-2, and you can cut the damage in half . . . but you double knockback. This only works on crushing attacks, which is fine with me.
What I’d propose playing around with is a way to actually eliminate the injury of a crushing blow with a HT-based roll. But how?
===Straight-up HT roll===
One way to do it would be to make a HT roll whenever you’re hit with crushing damage, and your margin of success reduces the injury. Not the shock or knockback or the need to roll for Knockout and Stun if you get hit in the head, but the injury would be reduced.
Um, say what? So you get hit with a mace and a HT 14 guy effectively gets DR 4? No way, right?
Yes, right. I’d definitely use the damage inflicted as a penalty to the HT roll; not full damage, though. Maybe half damage.
:(note: judging by the examples below, Cole would be rounding this down, as the max of 1d-3 (three) halved is 1.5 and the max of 1d+1 (seven) is 3.5 and he only says a max of -1 or -3.)
I might even double penalties if you get slammed with a Parry 0U weapon like a mace – but let’s hold off on that for now.
DR subtracts right from damage, so no need to double-count that.
Let’s take that same ST 12, DX 12, Skill-14 combatant.
Wearing Boxing Gloves: He hits for 1d-3 on a defensive attack. His doppleganger foe will roll at no more than -1 to HT, and often soak a point of injury.
Barehanded and Regular Attack: Now he’s 1d+1, which means his foe rolls at up to -3 to HT. Most often, he will not soak injury.
With a Light Club: A baton does sw crushing, in this case a straight-up 1d+2, which is up to -4. A barehanded boxer isn’t much less dangerous thanks to the generous damage bonus from Boxing!
Mace: Now you’re facing 1d+5, looking at up to a roll vs HT-5 to soak damage, so even your HT 14 guys will mostly just take the full amount if they get lucky.
===Treat as a Parry===
Another way to make that roll would be to make it based off of something like 3+HT/2, which mitigates the impact of high HT a bit. Our HT 12 guy would only be rolling vs. a 9 usually, meaning he’ll only avoid injury by getting lucky. At HT 16, you’re looking at an 11, so on the average, that’s worth about DR 1 against a boxer’s defensive attack as above. Against that guy with a mace, that -5 penalty means at HT 16 you’re rolling against a 6-, meaning that 90% of the time you take full damage.
===Only applies to fists and padded weapons===
One way to make the advantage of using weapons that are harder than the surface you’re striking plain is to basically only apply this mitigation roll to fists and feet. So facing weapons, you take full damage, no roll allowed (which has the beneficial effect of not slowing down or altering weapon combats).
===Action Points===
:(note: this may be referencing Injury and Damage (Varies) on page 9 of Pyramid 3-44, a -4 cap is mentioned under the "Shock" section)
::"it might be desirable to halve injury (round
down) when figuring shock, or let the same HT roll mitigate
both shock and AP loss. In both cases, shock should be capped
at the same -4 to DX and IQ."
I’d probably combine the roll that allows you to mitigate action point loss in The Last Gasp with this same roll. The injury avoidance has the penalty of half-damage, and the AP loss reduction is capped at -4, the same as the shock penalty.
===Clench Up, Legolas===
I think it might be interesting to also try one of the following.
Perhaps allow All-Out Defense to give that +2 to any one defense to also give +2 to flat HT-based rolls, or even +4 to the Parry-like 3+HT/2 roll. So if you go defensive, you might even just be able to clench up and take it.
Another option would be sort of an active defense option: if you forgo a parry or block, and choose to just clench up and take it, you get +1 or +2 to the roll.
===Parting Shot===
GURPS turns, the lack of a real impetus to Wait or Evaluate in the basic rules, and the generally high nature of even punching damage means that lasting through a full round (again, 180 turns per round!) is virtually impossible.
The perceived problem that this is trying to solve is that boxers and other barehanded fighters just don’t wind up dead or unconscious in the first round of every fight.
Well, no sane person would play through 180 rounds of combat anyway, and this would be a good moment to invoke some sort of “OK, you both took either Wait or Evaluate, so 3d seconds later . . . “
Still, the number of blows that would successfully land means few fights would last long enough for the round-timer to sound. If we don’t change GURPS’ basic damage structure, then mitigating the damage of a successful blow is sort of the only option.
==further discussion==
gnomaszgames 
:why not add DR as a learned advantage to a typical boxer? I'm pretty sure that a boxer can take a lot more than an athlete, who's got his HT thanks to running and jumping and Extra Effort.
Doug Cole:
:That's a pretty good point. Allowing DR (cr injury only, doesn't mitigate shock, knockdown, etc.) of up to HP/4 or HP/4 or maybe even HT+Hard to Subdue divided by the same factor. That would be pretty good, and change fewer rules, and require fewer die rolls.
Cole further hypothesized a Pain Score, perhaps Pain Points?
:I wonder if one would want to handle this by not having the "soaked" damage go away, but go into some generic Pain score, representing bruising and stuff that won't kill you, but will certainly make you regret moving around.
Michael Zwick added:
:I like the suggestion of having a "crushing soak" pool to absorb some damage. It reminds me of Palladium's SDC (Structural Damage Capacity)
W Ian Blanton brings up Boxing Gloves:
:Why not just give Boxing gloves or any padded weapons an Armor Divisor? (no thought as to how much of one)
Doug replies
:I agree that boxing gloves should have an armor multiplier (an armor divisor of 0.5 or even 0.25), that actually doesn't have the effect that you're going for, which is to reduce actual injury.
*(note: This isn't actually true though because armor multipliers give DR 1 to someone with DR 0.)
**this somewhat relates to how in 3e's MA, Boxing Gloves halved punching damage but did full Stun Damage, which resembles Cole's "Pain score" idea
**Cole's rules for Action Points already have Pain reduce AP, so this is linked
Blanton suggests the idea of fractional DR (0.5 for human skin) using the present pricing structure, this should cost 2.5 points, buying 0.2 DR per character point would be useful if using Fractional Damage system.
*Too many useful and realistically overlapping limitations require useful enhancements for fair offset. Reduced Fatigue Cost and Relible are one possibility, since Extra Effort could temporarily boost DR, and Extended Duration if applied to DR should also boost the duration for which EE lasts. This could lead to training phases of increased durability which must be maintained and can wax/wane.
**since DR has no inherent duration, die roll or fatigue cost, reducing the costs of these enhancements via Limited Enhancements and applying Stunts Only borrowed from Energy Reserve to reduce them by 10% seems fair
==See also==
*HT roll to resist fatigue loss
*Knowing Your Own Strength also from Pyramid (page 16 of 3-83 Alternative Gurps IV from September 2015) where Sean Punch effectively does "change GURPS' basic damage structure" as Cole hypothesized, as Grand Unified Smackdown Theory attempted in 2012
**Rule of 10s and Fractional Damage from this could also be useful, if applied to all ST (not just below 7)
***Roll with Blow and either SUHR/TAAP could be applied prior to dividing by 10.
***instead of only applying to same SM or less, perhaps add your SM to damage and subtract your enemy's SM from damage prior to dividing by 10. This doesn't change anything for same SM but results in less damage to large creatures and more damage to small creatures, as these rules appear to intend for.
*Stun Points from 3e, which could be incorporated
*The Last Gasp from Pyramid, referenced earlier
*Using DR at default
*Bracing : Cole's "I think what’s missing is a chance for a fighter to brace him or herself against even as successful hit" might lead people to look for this verb, but that's actually just for teamwork v knockback
Category:Rules