I agree with you that the current system is unsatisfying for the reasons you state.

Regarding the save vs. endurance in your proposal, is it vs d20 or d100?

Your system really increases the toughness of the heavy hitters, but I suppose that makes sense.  Nobody one shots the Hulk.  Ya gotta beat the snot out of him.

80's,

If you're looking for a harder save than a d20 but not so hard as a d100, use a d40, d60 or d80 roll, depending on how tough the save should be. Imaginos has a neat idea with this that I am planning to adopt for my games. Instead of the standard 2 d10 roll with then tens digit and the ones digit called in advance, use a d4, d6 or d8 to mark the tens set and a d10 to control the ones digit.  The top number on the controlling die is the "0" digit. For example;

A roll against a d60 is a d6 and a d10.  If the d6 comes out as a 3 and the d10 comes out as a 7, the roll is 37. A 6 and a 7 is 07.

You can also roll against a d120 using a d12 or a d200 by using a d20 for the tens set.  It all depends on how hard you want the challenge to be.

I pretty much ignore the knock out rolls for characters until their hits go down to 100 or less.

The problem with radically altering the way KO works in V&V is that it makes high HP heroes and villains that much harder to take down. The KO chance makes it so ANY attack that does damage can be a threat. I look at KO as the attack just happening to hit a sensitive area/nerve cluster/whichever. Look at the mechanic in real life; you can have the toughest guy on the planet but if you happen to catch him on the chin *just* right he can still get taken out in one punch (ie. on a lucky hit even *I* could take out Mike Tyson in his prime).

If you really want to tweak the rule without ditching it completely you could always have big bricks of HP have a 50% less chance of being knocked out from most normal damage. There is still the chance of that lucky shot so they have to weigh whether they want to be surrounded by a bunch of things blasting or punching away at them while still having greater durability as far as the KO goes. I do understand the concern about the way the mechanic works, especially when talking about heroes/villains approaching/exceeding the 1000 hp mark but there has to be SOME kind of mechanic otherwise it just become a grind and makes the target all but impervious to attacks.

Also, looking at the Hulk example above, no "average" joe would ever be able to drop the Hulk with one lucky punch. Between what is likely *some* level of invulnerability/armor/whatever AND rolling into power, joe average doing at best 7 or 8 damage would never even affect him.

Maybe it is just me and not liking already high HP characters becoming MORE of a grind but that is my take on it; invulnerability/rolling into power will make it so those KO chances go down a lot already.

xhaosdaemon wrote on Jan 31^st, 2015 at 11:53am:

That's half of what I am aiming for.

xhaosdaemon wrote on Jan 31^st, 2015 at 11:53am:

I can certainly see that argument, but, ultimately, this is a superhero game.  I just can't recall reading any comic book story where a hero or villain who was really, really tough got knocked out by a lucky blow from a significantly less powerful opponent.

xhaosdaemon wrote on Jan 31^st, 2015 at 11:53am:

But how many hit points does the toughest guy on the planet have in real life?  10?  20?  Isn't it just as likely that your lucky hit was a high roll for damage, one that was high enough to break the 25% threshold in my house rules?

xhaosdaemon wrote on Jan 31^st, 2015 at 11:53am:

What qualifies as a "big brick of HP"?  Which character would get the 50% reduction in the chance to be knocked out?  Would a character with 100 h.p. get the reduction, but a character with 99 would not?  That's the problem with applying that kind of flat reduction, determining the line of demarcation.   

Also, a 50% reduction would mean that you would have to inflict 51 points of damage to get a 1% chance of a K.O.  51 points would usually be enough to get force a K.O. saving throw for most bricks (I used 1000 h.p. above as an extreme example, but most bricks, in my campaign world at least, would not have nearly that many h.p.; 1000 h.p. is flipping Galactus), which would mean they would probably have a higher chance of being K.O.'d under my proposed house rule than if I did the 50% reduction thing.

One of the previous house rules I considered was to reduce the percentage chance of being knocked out by the character's Endurance score.  That would make most bricks harder to knock out, but not impossible.  The problem is that it would also make most normals impossible to knock out  (i.e.: a character with 10 END would have to take 11 points of damage to have a 1% chance to be knocked out, when 11 points of damage would most likely incapacitate them instantly).   So I didn't go in that direction.

xhaosdaemon wrote on Jan 31^st, 2015 at 11:53am:

All but impervious to attacks that inflict h.p. damage.  There are still any number of ways to take out such a character that don't inflict h.p. damage and therefore don't rely upon a lucky punch (e.g.: mind control, paralysis ray, telekinetically levitating the character where he can't do any harm, reversing his gravity with Gravity Control, banishing him somewhere with Dimensional Traveling, etc.). 

Players should be forced to think outside the box when fighting an "impervious" character (if you're playing a street level hero facing a Hulk-like mega slugger and your best plan for taking him down is to stand toe-to-toe hoping for a lucky punch, you deserve whatever happens to you).

Also, remember that making bricks less likely to go down was only half the reason I came up with this rule.  The other was because normal humans with low HP score seem weirdly resistant to K.O. under the standard rules.  A normal human male with 4 h.p. who takes 3 points of damage would only have a 3% chance of being knocked out, despite the fact that he just lost 75% of his total h.p. in one blow, while a 100 h.p. brick who lost 75% of his h.p. in one blow would have a 75% chance of being K.O.'d. Any blow that would cause enough damage to have a decent chance of inflicting a K.O. would instantly incapacitate the character, so the K.O. roll would never happen. That just seems wrong to me.   

xhaosdaemon wrote on Jan 31^st, 2015 at 11:53am:

I understand the concern and appreciate the feedback (that's why I asked for it!). 

Maybe one solution would be to have the threshold for when a K.O. saving throw is required be based upon the character's current h.p. score, rather than full h.p. score, so that as a brick gets worn down he becomes more vulnerable to a lucky shot (e.g.: The Wrecker, already wobbly on his feet after being pummeled by Thor, finally goes down when Jane Foster konks him on the head with a wrench).  The problem with that is that you would have to recalculate the threshold over and over in combat (where using the full h.p. score I would only have to calculate it at character creation and could record it on the character sheet).

Thanks again, all food for thought.

I am not going to quote because I don't have a response for every point and also to avoid further large posts (not complaining about yours).

For one a 50% reduction in KO is based on the KO rules as written, so if someone took 50 points of damage they would only have a 25% chance to be knocked out.

As far as 1000 hp being Galactus I have seen combinations of powers in V&V that easily get to that mark. One PC in a game I was in had Size Change: Larger and had about 900 hit points and still had an accuracy bonus to hit. I even house-ruled Size Change rules in my PbP game because someone with the combo of Heightened Strength, Heightened Agility, and Size Change: Larger would have had almost 1400 hp, a carrying capacity of over 200,000 lbs, and 6d10 HTH damage with a decent accuracy bonus still.

When I said invulnerable I meant to physical damage, I should have been clearer. I know there are many other attacks that bypass hit points. Believe me too, I am all about tactics and trying to get my players to meet me there. I use them a LOT for the villains but the players haven't really embraced good tactics overall.

I do agree that the KO rules make weaker characters oddly resistant to being knocked out but as I have already tinkered with the rules in my game changing the KO rules to make it easier for the weaker players to get knocked out would be VERY unpopular.

All that being said I do agree that the rules as written are a bit wonky (as are a number of V&V rules TBH) and certainly are worth looking at. The threshold for triggering Endurance saves is an interesting idea. Having the threshold based on current hit points makes sense to me as well and the idea for the 4x damage for threshold purposes only for a head shot is likewise interesting. (I use a modified version of Jeff Dee's saving throw system so everything is based on d20 rolls with bonuses or penalties.)

Overall I don't have a problem with the RAW in this area.  Tough bricks (like the Hulk) should be given Invulnerability, which makes them then very tough to knock out (likely impossible for civilians or weaker heroes).

Another factor that I haven't seen mentioned is rolling with the punch (which the bigger characters can generally do more of, further reducing their chance of being TKOd).

But I get the criticism.  Honestly, I really like the game Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but one of the issues I have with it is this very thing (but the reverse; it works more like your proposal than V&V).  A brick (even a lower powered one like the Wrecker) can shrug off every physical attack, regardless of amount.  In other words, the only way to defeat them is to come up with alternate tactics.  There's so many Invulnerable characters that it makes this mechanic sort of strange to me.

Personally, I tend to give a power to super huge monsters and other massive characters that I don't want to see knocked out too quickly.  I make it so that they don't have to roll for unconsciousness as per the standard rules.  Usually I reserve that for RBTs (like Godzilla), but I've also occasionally done it for other adversaries as well.

I think the easiest, most elegant solution would be to do what they proposed for V&V 3.0.  IIRC, a character doesn't roll for unconsciousness until their HP score is 1/2 or lower.

The problem with having KO rules based solely on hit point damage is that the quality of the hit is only expressed through the quantity of damage and not accuracy, giving too much favor to large hit point volume.

A 'critical hit' system is what's missing, frankly speaking, something I would be inclined to house rule. If one was in place, then the knockout percentage could be enhanced by multiplied damage results and proportionate chances to subdue via 'knockout'.

Perhaps the save should be in the hands of the defender and consider remaining hit points in the roll somehow.

Failed knockout rolls against high hit point targets could still in this type of system have resulted in enough hit damage to discourage an enemy from continuing and choosing a tactical withdrawal to fight another day. The attack rang the bell sufficiently to get the character to think twice...

PS: This is one of those balance issues.
$.02

Don't try your clever spin on me!!  Magnum was never knocked out because he was simply awesome. Period.

Yes very similar to what I was trying to say but you said it better!

A blow to the noggin will just as easily knock out the world's strongest man as a 98-lb. weakling. Being strong or healthy doesn't make you harder to knock out.