I have no idea how stun damage works. Would someone explain it to me?

I have no idea how stun damage works. Would someone explain it to me?

I have no idea how stun damage works. Would someone explain it to me?

Why do only some weapons do that damage, and what would be an example?

What’s the difference between 1 stun damage and 100 stun damage?

14 thoughts on “I have no idea how stun damage works. Would someone explain it to me?”

  1. Nothing really. If a weapon does stun damage, the target is stunned. They stagger around, can’t focus, and need a little time to clear their heads. They can’t act normally, and other characters can take advantage of that.

    If you want to make it a bit more mechanical, I’ve had characters Defy Danger with the “danger” being they can’t focus clearly.

  2. Also, they can’t die from stun damage, so you don’t need to subtract from the HPs. Just use the stun damage to add to scene, descriptions and the established fiction

  4. Igor Toscano , is that from the book or an interpretation?

    I’d think 1 damage with the STUN tag would hurt the recipient by one HP and leave them dazed, unlikely to take concentrated or intelligent action for a few seconds.  100 damage with the STUN tag would kill them, unless they were unkillable for some reason, in which case they’d still be locked up, staggering around, or similarly ‘out of it’ for a while.

  6. No, you’re RIGHT!  I’m wrong.  Page 24 of the pdf, Stun Damage : Stun damage is non-lethal damage. A PC who takes stun damage is defying danger to do anything at all, the danger being “you’re stunned.” This lasts as long as makes sense in the fiction—you’re stunned until you can get a chance to clear your head or fix whatever stunned you. A GM character that takes stun damage doesn’t count it against their HP but will act accordingly, staggering around for a few seconds, fumbling blindly, etc.

  7. I kind of have trouble picturing it though. There has to be a point where stun damage turns into ‘real’ damage. I know it can be justified narratively, but it doesn’t read as if a weapon ever stops doing stun damage.

  9. I asked this same question elsewhere, & Adam Koebel himself clarified that stun damage is more of a binary thing here: it’s not about subtracting hp; you’re either stunned or you’re not.

    (Of course, if you take stun damage more than once, the fiction may demand longer or more severe symptoms. For instance, you might qualify for an ongoing -1 to INT rolls – i.e. the “stunned” debility.)

  11. A tag for a magic weapon.

    Bolas.  Nets.  Spider-web squirting bellows.

    My ‘Flow Monk’ class has an optional move that lets him deal Stun damage with whatever he’s wielding.

    Depending on the GM ‘I hit him with the pommel/blunt end’ may add the Stun tag if fictionally appropriate.

    Subterranean psychedelic mushroom spores, possibly used as a trap by cunning kobolds.

    Tazers.

    (Regarding the willingness to do damage when using a stun weapon – if the player has fictional positioning because their enemy can’t move they can, usually, close to ‘beating this guy to death with my bare hands’ distance.  Possibly dealing class damage, possibly outright killing them, depending on the situation.  If you hit someone with a tazer it’s unlikely to kill them, but you probably wouldn’t find any challenge/resistance to curb-stomping them to death at that point)

  12. well, the way I play it, the difference between 1 and 100 is if you have 1 armor, you can ignore the 1 stun damage. You can’t do that with the 100 stun damage unless you (somehow) have 100 armor. I don’t even want to think about the kind of situation where you can have 100 armor, and yet not be counting that as just “invulnerable to attacks”

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