[Omnirizon]

thanks for the tip on BaK. I actually recall playing that game now when it first came out, I never got too far into it though, but yes I remember it was quite innovative

so yes, i'm sold on vitality/health bifurication.

i'm more concerned with my system for handling and depleting vitality, where the defense roll is actually the generation of a fraction to multiply threat by; the 'roll' is to establish the denominator of that fraction.

this is combined with harmonic (or failing that, geometric) means for establishing threat and defense. 'threat' might typically be just the weapon damage and strength score, however since vitality is siphoned off without weapon contact, and weapons simply pose some abstract 'threat' in the hands of its user, a flat weapon damage makes no sense. weapons will have a base threat score, but that is averaged (harmonically!) with several other factors, including the array of mental skills I have (thus why I want so many of them). therefore, it is perfectly possible for a lean warrior weilding a dagger to present more threat against a massive warrior weilding a 2h-sword; it all depends on how skilled the two warriors are and how well the leaner warrior is at negating the range advantage of the larger sword. In fact, I was looking through the drawings of the old german school manuals on using 2h-swords, and warriors were often depicted using the sword more like a staff! in close combat the swords weight and leverage becomes a liability, and it had to be used differently. In actual combat, the dagger and the sword have a 'threat' separate from the amount of physical damage they could actually do.

for understanding the importance of the multiple factors and harmonic or geometric means, consider this (the following example is a geometric mean, since I don't know how to compute harmonic means or if it could be computed in this system [since I don't really understand it yet], but I know that harmonic means are sensitive to reverse salience the most, while geometric means are only a little.

1 + 1 + 1 + 2+ 10
arithmetic mean = 3
geometric mean = 1.71

this means a powerful weapon in the hands of a lousy user presents very little threat. so if the two-handed sword had a high base threat, but the user had no other stats or skills relevant to its use, it would do less threat than a stalk of grass in the hands of a person skilled in weilding stalks of grass. consider that even if the grass does no damage, it may still be used in a very threatening way that could reduce vitality. this is why 'psyche' and 'spirit' are part of vitality. they are those unspeakable but obvious items that we can feel but never understand. think about 'getting psyched out' or 'losing your spirit'. a person very good at using stalks of grass threateningly could do that to someone; while never inflicting physical damage, but forcing the person into a state of submission. for this reason, i'm even going to have 'charisma' be important for some martial arts (there are several that depend on feints and fakes to essentially psyche an opponent out).

ok, so the stalks of grass is completely absurd, but it makes the point of why i am so carefully parsing out the meaning of vitality and why I want all those stats which you may find unnecessary. also, there will be some systems in my game which need something like 'spirit'. some people may be completely dumb and naive, but have lots of spirit... I'm just trying to capture some of those less mechanical essences (in a mechanical way, no less, but that's the nature of the beast) and make them relevant for the game.