That certainly makes a 1d8 pistol a lot more lethal...

These are great John.

When not running four color, we used to say that you couldn't 'roll with' any damage from a gun.
Anyone else ever try that out?

That's an interesting system, and I might end up trying that out.  In general, though, we play more 4 color, so permanent/serious injuries just didn't happen.  Now, if a player couldn't make it to the game, their character might have been suffering complications "from the last encounter with xxx", but that was purely cosmetic.

Without being quite as detailed, another option would be to allow any attack that does max damage to require a death touch save by the target.  If they fail one of them, they are seriously injured, if they fail both...

John,

I like your ideas and was thinking along similar lines. I came up with some Lethal Damage rules for a module I put up on Lulu.com.

To keep in step with the rules, I modified my houserule a bit.

Remember how the rules say "to avoid the sometimes cruel side-effects of super powers, a Special Roll to hit is necessary for them to occur: i.e. to set something ablaze with a Flame attack, you must roll twice to hit."

They don't go into the effect after that, but the idea is sound.

So I said the "cruel side effect" of bladed and piercing weapons is blood loss. You have to roll a Special Attack and - if you do hit point damage after all is said and down - the target begins losing blood between runs based on the damage received that strike, subtracting 1 Hit Point damage from the loss each turn after the first, simulating clotting.

Ex. the Green Meany is attacked by Wolfine, the female  steel-clawed mutant. Green Meanie has 12 points of Invulnerability and Wolfine does 18 points of clawing damage after making her two rolls to hit.

Meany also rolls with 4 points, so only 2 points are done.

In-between turns 1&2, ANOTHER 2 points are taken off and between 2&3, ONE point is taken off. Nothing happens between turns 3&4, since the minor wound has ceased bleeding.

This permits Normals to die from gunshot wounds and most heroes to walk away.

Special Lethal attacks (like a gun shot to the head) are treated the same way, just with the damage from bleeding being multiplied by the same factors used for K.O.

I dunno. I hope you like it.

I just wanted something that is chartless and straightforward.

Off to my cave!!

In playing through our Western last weekend, I wasn't entirely pleased with characters 'rolling with' damage from a bullet.  It ended up giving the impression of a Matrix-like "bullet-time" for each character, which is a bit much.  I could see a super agile PC being able to do this, but for the average man on the street to be able to minimize bullet damage seems a bit silly.

I'm still thinking through how I want to do this, and consulting the many variants of lethal damage out there as well; hopefully by the time we play next I'll have something nailed down.