Clarified class defense bonus

I was wondering how this ounded to people. I know there have been many alternate battle systems going around and this one kinda mixes and matches quite a few. Please let me know how it looks. Suggestions welcome. I hope this is clear, let me know on anything that does not make sense.

Thanks

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HIT POINTS
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Characters have two "hit point" scores. Vitality points which represent normal attacks, and Wound Points which
represent taking extreme damage.

A characters Wound points are equal to your characters Constitution, plus his base attack bonus.
A characters Vitality points are the normal hitpoints your character gets from classes plus your
constitution bonus, per level.
Example: A fourth level fighter with a constitution score of 16 has 20 Wound Points. 16 for the constitution
plus 4 for his base attack bonus. The same fighter would have 22+3d10 Vitality points. 10 for first level 3 per level
for the constitution bonus and 3d10 for the other levels.

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DEFENSE
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A characters defense score replaces his AC. This represents how hard it is for oponents
to hit you.
To find your defense score, add your class defense bonus to your dex and add your shield bonus. The add ten.
Also add and deflection modifiers here.

Defense score=10+class bonus+Dex+Misc
Monks get their wisdom modifier as normal
Other classes that get bonus get them as well. Such as duelists from 3.5 DMG
Racial Armor class bonus is halfed round down. To a minimum of one.

A character gains a protection score. This number is subtracted from all damage the character
takes. Some kinds of damage bypass protection and is covered later.
To find your armor's protection, take your AC bonuds from armor and divide by two, round down. Then add one.
Add damage reduction as normal.
A monk gets her class AC bonus as DR. Her +1AC per five levels, that is converted into Damage Reduction.

Protection score=Armor+DR+Misc

Class Defence bonus
Good:Barbarians,Fighters,Ranger,Paladin,Monk
Fair:Bard,Cleric,Druid,Rogue
Poor:Wizard,Sorcerer

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DAMAGE
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Damage
Normal damage some one takes comes off their vitality points. This damage is reduced by protection.
When a character runs out of vitality points they take Wound points. If a caharacter has taken Wound damage
they are fatigued and take -2 str, -2 dex, can't charge or run.

Subdual
Subdual damage is subtracted from Wound points, when some one runs out of wound points from subdual they
becom unconscious. Subdual damage and normal damage do not stack for wound points.

Critical Hits
When a critical is rolled, the damage is done directly to the characters wound points. Roll the normal damage
the weapon does DO NOT MULTIPLY and add the critical multiplier to the damage. DO NOT ADD STRENGTH BONUS to this damage.

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Armor
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Armor
Characters are easier to hit while in armor. Consult the following table to find what defense penalty you take
due to armor worn. This penalty is in addition to the max dex for the armor.

Masterwork Armor reduces this penalty by 1.

EXAMPLE: A 6th level fighter is wearing breast plate. He has a dex of 16 and no magic items or racial armor.
His Defense score is 16. 5 for his class, 3 for his dex and -2 for wearing medium armor. His Damage reduction is 3.
5/2=2(round down) +1 is 3.

-Sravoff

Now that is a hell of a lot better. And I like the ideas, too. Although I usually like my armor-as-DR systems to include some kind of mechanic for bypassing or penetrating the armor (Conan d20 has a great system for that, in my opinion).

It looks like subdual damage is rather 'lethal' (i.e. incredibly dangerous) with this variant. Or am I just reading it wrong?

What I mean is, normal damage comes off VP, ok. But subdual always comes off WP? So, a standard blow dealing subdual damage could knock a high-level character down instantly, whereas a standard blow dealing normal damage has next to no chance to do so?

Is that right?

yeah...... That is a small problem I also found. I think it should be changed to subdual has to do around half of the characters vp. That was thrown in without serious thought. Though it does almost seem to make sense, people do get knocked out pretty easy. Needs to be up for debate.

Another problem I have seen is that the origanal purpose was to decrease the chance of a character getting hit in low magic campaigns. This does the opposite however as seen from the 6th level character. So that also needs some tweeking.

Perhaps decreasing the armor penalty would help this....

Thanks for input.

-Sravoff

You could make it so that non-lethal damage (subdual) doesn't stack. That is, they must deal non-lethal damage greater than your WP in a single hit. This would represent people being nocked out without making it as lethal. I think d20Modern does something along these lines.

hhmm.... but....That would make knockouts very hard. You must do subdual equal to their constitution plus their base attack bonus? Aside from rogues most characters coudn't even think about it at any level. Low level characters don't do that much subdual, 1d6+str. Maybe a seperate WP called knock out points. They should also restore them rather quickly. Maybe.

I didn't miss anything did I?

-Sravoff

It's interesting that you've separated the classes along different lines than in UA. It's not that I necessarily disagree with your judgement there, but I am curious as to your reasoning. It looks at first glance to be in the order of 'most combative to least combative', whereas in UA it is in the order of 'most armoured to least armoured'.

FWIW, I sympathise with what I perceive to be your preference for a more 'realistic' interpretation of Class Defense, i.e. one based on the principle that skill at arms should translate to uh, skill at arms.

Another possible concern: I think the 'max dex bonus' aspect of armour could be enough of a 'deterrent' as is, without the extra -1/-2/-4 Defense to contend with. But I'm not sure, as I haven't tried this variant (of course).

I thin you may be right. I got that from Grim-n-Gritty and that was with full AC being DR. So with the reduced DR I think that should be taken out. It will help out my 6th level fighter in the example.

Sravoff said:

hhmm.... but....That would make knockouts very hard. You must do subdual equal to their constitution plus their base attack bonus? Aside from rogues most characters coudn't even think about it at any level. Low level characters don't do that much subdual, 1d6+str. Maybe a seperate WP called knock out points. They should also restore them rather quickly. Maybe.

I didn't miss anything did I?

-Sravoff

Click to expand...

[Note: in the following post, "nonlethal damage" will be used to refer to the effective "subdual damage" as it would function in the rules I comment on/present. d20 Modern players will know the reference.]

That does indeed pose a problem. In Pledge of Tyranny (also a vp/wp D&D game), subdual damage functions differently than anything suggested here, due to campaign flavour. I do, however, love the idea of basing it off of d20 Modern's nonlethal damage mechanic. But I've always found it's far too difficult to achieve that result, and when you add BaB to the character's wp, it's even harder. Perhaps you could make the amount of necessary nonlethal damage be equal to half their maximum WP? That way, the average 1st-level human commoner can be dropped by 5 or more points of subdual (achievable by another 1st-level Common on a critical hit), but a 1st-level Barbarian will probably take at least 8 to drop (more, if he's a dwarf, raging, or both). A 20th-level Fighter with a 20 Constitution would require a whopping 20 points of subdual damage to drop! It can be done by a rogue of equal level, but anyone else will find they have a hard time indeed. A by-the-book ogre can deal that much damage on an unarmed strike only with a critical hit. Of course, this is a 20th-level soldier, so what do you expect?

Another question to consider is this: would nonlethal damage be affected by armor DR? If so, I'd say an amount equal to one-third their maximum WP would be more achievable. Note that grappling in core D&D allows you to bypass a high-AC opponent, so perhaps damage dealt in a grapple should ignore armour DR, at least in the case of nonlethal damage?

I would have to say that subdual equalling one half their Wp is a fair way to put it. DR would only have half its rating seeing as how DR is usually meant to stop actual weapons. Perhaps grappling would be 1/4 armor signifying how much easier it to choke hold some one through plate as ((a posed)<-SP??) to slug through their plate mail!

This seems to balance it out a bit better.

-Sravoff