I’ve been wrestling with the combat mechanics of the Hogwarts RPG, mostly because combat(in an in-game sense) isn’t really meant to be a matter of life and death. So I thought, and the obvious answer was subdual damage. But that just seems like an excuse to replace “Killed” with “K.O.ed” for a PG rating and that feels like a cop out. So I brainstormed for a bit, and came up with a couple of ideas, the first of which will be playtested next week, but here it is.

To do this, begin with standard Health values, whatever the character has. This Health is considered, for the purposes of all spells that do not deal direct damage, is the fatigue of the student in the face of the spells cast upon him. Each time a spell is cast at the student, subtract one, until the Health value drops to 5 or below.

At this point, the character starts making yield rolls of 1d6 versus the health value. If the roll is higher, the student is overcome and yeilds to the opponent. However, if the character has WIL or STR at 5 or greater, he can reroll once on each yeild check, provided the hit is not a critical hit. A yeild does not imply anything greater than the effect of the spell cast at the player, simply that the effect was so extreme as to be disabling for the normal duration of the spell.

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