Thinking about Intiative

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

In conclusion, I believe that the initiative system is fine as long as you make your NPCs fight sensibly and use the wound rules strictly.

Exactly right. An Initative 6 character isn't going to stay that fast very long in a proper combat. The first "scratch" wound will cause them to loose an action. The second "scratch" or first decent injury (more than half the hit location's capacity) is going to drop a whole point of initiative as well as make them sit out the rest of the turn (30 seconds). Meanwhile the enemy has free reign to plug away at them.

Add on top of that a "serious" (more than capacity) injury and the character has lost 3 points of Initiative AND the use of the limb. If that's a leg, they're not walking. If an arm, they're not using it to steady their weapon. If it's abdomen or chest, they're not doing ANYTHING and if it's the head, they're probably already unconscious.
A serious wound also cuts Strength in half. This means the character is rather unlikely to be able to move at all, even if it's an arm injury, due to their suddenly reduced load carrying capacity. They're also MUCH less able to control their weapon - they may have been able to fire off say 3 single shots before injury without recoil penalty, now they might manage just one.

And then there's "critical" wounds (x2 capacity). Cut intiative again and if yourre lucky enough to still have an effective 1, EVERY action requires a roll to stay conscious as well as all the previous penalties. A critical head wound means you're dead and given the average head hit capacity is around 10, a single bullet could well put you down for good.

Armour helps, but the wearer still suffers some injury even if the bullet doesn't penetrate. The first round will inflict a "scratch", and the second a "slight" even if both rounds are nothing more than a .22LR. What armour will do is allow you to be injured more times before decending further down the one way slide into combat ineffectiveness.