Anyone familiar with d20?

[Edi]

If anyone wants a system that has a relatively realistic combat and damage system as RPGs go, DragonQuest is good. You just need to know where to get your hands on it.

All characters have Endurance points equal to their Endurance score (duh!). These represent your essential health. They also have Fatigue points, which represent their physical stamina/tolerance for exertion. Fatigue is a derivbative of Endurance, so high Endurance also means you will have higher Fatigue. Average character Endurance is 15 (normal peons would have 10 to 13 on average), which means average Fatigue is 21.

In combat, you take damage to Fatigue first, and after that is depleted, you start taking Endurance damage. It should be noted that simply walking around with your equipment will drain your Fatigue at a rate determined by how greatly you're exerting yourself and how much shit you're carrying, so you almost never have full Fatigue at the beginning of combat. Fatigue is also restored at a rate of three or four points per hour of sleep or similar. The Fatigue damage you take basically means that you got off with a light scratch, some bruises or whatnot, but nothing serious. When your Endurance starts taking hits, you recover those at a rate of one poingt per three days IF you only used no more than half your Fatigue per day. If you use more, it's one point per four days.

Armor works by reducing damage taken from blows. Of course, if the enemy hits a critical (15% or less of his strike chance, i.e. 15 or less when he has 100% accuracy), you take damage directly to Endurance and your armor does not count. If they hit 5% of strike chance or less, you'll also get a Grievous Injury, which usually means a shitload of extra damage directly to Endurance, crippling effects, permanent stat loss or even instant death (assuming you survive the damage in the first place).

So when the iddly, piddly little goblin takes a swing at you with that short sword that does D10+3 damage, he is dangerous. When the hobgoblin takes a whack at you with a twohander that does D+7 damage, you will likely die if he hits and you don't have friends to cover you while you recover from being stunned. If he gets a citical or a Grievous blow, you will die, period. If you want to go up against giants or something like a dragon with multiple attacks in the D+8 or above range and magic enough to flatten cities, you need a very, very good plan. Then you just might survive, though my money would still be on the dragon.

In DQ, combat is lethal, and you really, really don't want to go into a fight unless you get to do it from ambush, with superior numbers and equipment and preferably with some kind of ranged weapons to start with. If you're the unfortunate sods being ambushed, well, you get the idea... Bottom line, you really need to use your wits and a group has to act as a cohesive unit or even a relatively small band of what would be yawn-worthy cannon fodder in D&D can make a swift end to your career. Unless you happen to have something like Miriel Cheysel (my friend's character in a game I ran) in your party, but you can use the search function to find what that comment means...

It also makes for great actual role playing. You are not immune to anything that threatens normal folk, so you need to negotiate, trick, outfox and outmaneuver your opposition and make friends with people who can shield you with their influence. Going through on the traditional D&D hack-n-slash "Bring it on!" approach will result in the GM telling you to roll up a new character.

Edi

[consequences]

Complete Mafia for D20, which uses the Modern D20 system for the most part, has a nifty effect, where whenever you get shot with a modified roll of 20 or greater, you get to roll fortitude save or have a horrific effect based upon bullet location, presuming you weren't wearing armor there(Which reminds me, I need to post a theoretical realism fix at the game's forum to account for things that armor has no business stopping). On top of this, the bullet can do lots and lots of damage in varying forms based on a percentile roll. So you too can die from a .22 rimfire to the eyeball.

This still allows a fair degree of cinematic stuff, my Constitution 8 weedy runt got shot up horrifically twice during the demos I participated in, and came through fine(Ironically, the guy patching him up took a fatal burst and died immediately after stabilising him). Conversely, I had a character brutally put down by two bullets on another occasion.