Idea:Battle Damage System

Battle Damage is a mechanic where a Monster becomes physically debilitated from receiving repeated punishment on certain body parts. This manifests in noticeable changes to a Monster’s behavior, mobility and their ability to utilize affected body parts.

Application
Battle Damage consists of three variations that are based on a weapon class’ damage typing.


 * 1) Impact: Bruising and Fracturing
 * 2) Slashing: Bleeding and Severing
 * 3) Shot: Special

The effects of these debilitations work differently based on the body part that is affected. To give an example of each:

Bruising a Monster’s head will cause them to occasionally attack thin air or a nearby small Monster as a result of confusion and disorientation. Likewise, bruising a Monster’s leg will limit their mobility and prevent them from executing charge attacks.

Its advanced stage is called Fracturing and can completely render a body part useless. In short, this category is focused on immobilization.

Bleeding is the result of repeatedly slashing at a body part and inflicting wounds that, not only do not heal but also become infected and cause damage over time to the Monster. In some cases it may also lower the strength of certain attacks and cause Monsters to use specific actions less frequently.

Its advanced stage is called Severing and does not only result in a body part becoming unusable but also grants the Hunter an extra carve.

Special applications for Bowguns and Bows
Unlike their melee counterparts, shot-type weapons have the ability to inflict both Impact and Slashing-based debilitations depending on the type of ammo that is being used.

For Bowguns: Pierce S and Pellet S are Slashing-based, whereas Crag S and Clust S are Impact-based.

For Bows: Rapid S and the Explosive Arc Shot are both Impact-based, whereas all remaining Shots are Slashing-based.

Implementation and Balancing
Since Battle Damage is the result of repeated punishment on a Monster’s body parts, the mechanic works based on the Stagger Limits all Big Monsters share. That way it is possible to scale the difficulty of inflicting debilitations on a Quest’s Rank and the Monster’s HP-level.

The reasoning behind this is that we may assume that a low-level village quest Monster is a younger, weaker and less experienced individual than the one fought in G-Rank. Therefore, the Monster’s stats (Health, Attack Mod, Defense Mod, etc.) can be used as an anchor to decide and balance the effort required to debilitate them.

While the mechanic is designed to grant weapons more defined utility and add strategic depth and diversity to hunts, it is not intended to allow players to cripple Monsters to the point where they instantly die or cannot defend themselves anymore.

In other words, this mechanic does not allow the player to cut off a Monster’s head, break their neck or shatter their backs. However, if a Monster has breath attacks, it is possible to bust their throats and disable them from successfully performing such attacks.

Elemental Battle Damage - Blighting
Battle Damage that is the result of Raw-type damage is called debilitations. However, there also exists an Elemental counterpart which is known as blighting. These 2 variations of battle damage are separate in nature and as such can be stacked atop one another.

The blights that Hunters can inflict are derived from those caused by Monsters but function in a slightly different manner. Each elemental blight is basically its own unique status effect. As such:

Fire inflicts Fireblight or the Burn status. It causes damage over time and lowers the attack potency of affected body parts.

Water inflicts Waterblight or the Soak status. It softens the affected body parts, increasing their vulnerability to all types of Raw and Elemental damage by +5 of their natural hit zone values.

Thunder inflicts Thunderblight or the Shock status. It causes the Monster to flinch at fixed time intervals over a set period of time.

Ice inflicts Iceblight or the Freeze status. It lowers the attack potency of, reduces the Monster’s ability to effectively use affected body parts and adds the Ice element to attacks that involve them.

Dragon inflicts Dragonblight or the Disrupt status. It disrupts the flow of energy through a Monster’s body and disables them from using their elemental abilities. It also causes them to receive more Stun damage from Impact-based attacks.

Coming Soon
There is a lot more in the making.

Credits
This will be written in due time but for now I (Arty) am the sole contributor. The users Elusive Materialism and TheBrilliantLance are also part of this project and will contribute their share in the near future.