Vitality Damage and Damage-based Special Attacks

[genshou]

Due to GlassJaw's many recent threads about gutting the VP/WP system, I want to see what people think about a crucial topic not yet covered in any of his threads.

It's been pointed out to me before that the Vitality Point/Wound Point system, despite its many other favorable qualities (IMHO), isn't very good for Dungeons & Dragons, because it nerfs many special abilities that rely on a successful "hit" to affect the target, such as injury type poison and disease, and energy drain. Since vitality damage doesn't represent an actual successful "hit" against the character, that essentially negates many of these special attacks (touch spells and stunning fist still work normally, unfortunately for their targets). This system is the one in which that problem is most apparent, but it crops up in any d20 System game where vp/wp is featured.

So, I've been thinking a lot about a way to overcome the problem that–by the time a character takes wound damage–they're almost dead and those special attacks are nearly pointless. Sometimes, vitality damage may represent "but a scratch" or "only a flesh wound," so could poison or supernatural abilities sometimes affect a character despite the fact that they did not take any wound damage?

My own workable solution follows.

For nonmagical attacks such as poison, the attack has a 2% chance per HD of the attacker (maximum 40%) of successfully functioning when the attack deals only wound damage. That equates to a 40% chance for a 20+ HD monstrous vermin to deal poison damage... pretty scary. I'd use a lower number, but that would make it all but pointless to roll the percentile dice at lower HD–it would never work, so what's the point of the rules change?

As for effects of the magical sort, such as a vampire's level drain via a slam attack, it is a 5% chance per HD of the attacker (maximum 75%). My reasoning? When that vampire's arm barely misses you or just barely touches you but deals no effective "damage," you still might get close enough to have the life sucked out of you.

I welcome the thoughts of others on my idea, as well as any suggstions of their own.

 

[Khorod]

That seems needlessly complex. Vitality is only slightly less abstract than Hit Points. Its reasonable to handwave that such attacks that must do damage to hit manage to scrape the character for vitality damage, and as such the special mode works.

Vitality can be a scrape, and that's all it takes for a poison to be injected, or the touch of dark energies to sear your soul.

 

[GlassJaw]

Yeah, those rules seem overly complex to me as well.

I haven't looked at some of these special cases in detail but at first glance, I don't really see the need to change how poison works at all. If the poison inflicts ability damage besides Con, there's nothing to change at all.

If the poison inflicts Con damage, it lowers WP (and VP) accordingly. What's the problem?

I agree Energy Drain might be a bit more difficult. The loss of 5 hp's from being drained is supposed to emulate losing a HD's worth of hp's. This could just be taken from VP. Now you certainly could think of WP as "life force". I think I might lower the victim's WP by one for every level they lose. Con would remain the same however. This would just illustrate that the victim has lost some of this life force and can't take as much physical punishment anymore.

So sure, while some abilities will have to be handled slightly different with the VP/WP system, don't overthink things - take the path of least resistance.

 

[genshou]

I suppose the system does end up being overly complex, but I wanted a way to emulate the fact that sometimes vitality damage means you really did avoid the attack, but at the cost of loss of "energy" to be applied to further "dodging." I'll try just counting vitality damage as a successful "hit" for the purposes of special attacks and see how it works.

[Edit: As far as energy drain goes, I didn't cover that entirely in my post, because it is often delivered via touch attack. I was referring specifically to a vampire's level drain, which requires a successful hit as opposed to just a touch attack. I'd say it's fair for such a form of energy drain to only deal additional vitality damage when it doesn't successfully deal wound damage, however, since vp loss can represent fatigue due to negative energy just as easily as it can abstractly represent all those "flesh wounds."]

Thanks for the input, and sorry I lost this thread somehow.

 

[Skywalker]

I suppose the system does end up being overly complex, but I wanted a way to emulate the fact that sometimes vitality damage means you really did avoid the attack, but at the cost of loss of "energy" to be applied to further "dodging." I'll try just counting vitality damage as a successful "hit" for the purposes of special attacks and see how it works.

That is how it works in SW IIRC. The fact you take Vitality Point damage (rather than Wounds) is inherently the thing that lessens the effect of the attack and has the effect you are looking for.

 

[argo]

That seems needlessly complex. Vitality is only slightly less abstract than Hit Points. Its reasonable to handwave that such attacks that must do damage to hit manage to scrape the character for vitality damage, and as such the special mode works.

Vitality can be a scrape, and that's all it takes for a poison to be injected, or the touch of dark energies to sear your soul.

So if VP damage can now be a scrape then why does DR still only protect your WP?

And this is yet another reason why I dislike VP/WP.

Sorry, nothing more constructive than that to add.

 

[AmorphousBlob]

So if VP damage can now be a scrape then why does DR still only protect your WP?

And this is yet another reason why I dislike VP/WP.

Sorry, nothing more constructive than that to add.

IIRC, in Star Wars, you are only affected by injury poison if you take wound damage from the attack.

 

[GlassJaw]

So if VP damage can now be a scrape then why does DR still only protect your WP?

The VP/WP system still has a degree of "abstractness", just less so than the hp system.

I tend to define VP's as your ability to turn a potentially deadly physical wound into a glancing blow. You still might get bruised or nicked and scratched by the attack, but it's nothing serious enough to impede you. The saying "it's merely a flesh wound" comes to mind.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Yea. This whole thing is one reason I've never switched my own games from HP to VP/WP.

It might help to seriously raise the threat associated with poisons. But it just increases the obvious: Once you can get poisoned, it's end-game anyway. People seem to be much more seriously affected by actual poisons in the real-world than D&D-land, as it is.

I just had a thought: VP/WP is a very "ACTION!" sort of HP method ... if you're also using an Action Point system, maybe you could just combine them. The enemy has a poisoned dagger ... as long as he's doing VP damage, he's not going to poison you. But maybe the GM can spend an AP (from a heroic NPC or via GT's rules by giving the player one) to "strike true" and affect the PC with the poison.

That way it's sort of in the domain of the GM whether the poison is going to come into play: I.E. - Is this the scene in the movie where one of the main characters has a tense, close struggle with a guy with a poisoned dagger ... stopping it inches from his face, wriggling aside before getting knifed, knowing all the time that the merest scratch is DEATH. ... or is this the scene in the movie where one of the main characters gets slightly nicked by an assailant with a poisoned dagger and the rest of the character have to rush to get an antidote and save him.

Honestly, I've never liked the rules for poison anyway. People don't get hit up with a deadly toxin and shrug and walk away OR topple over dead. But some things ahve to be abstracted.

--fje

 

[genshou]

Yea. This whole thing is one reason I've never switched my own games from HP to VP/WP.

It might help to seriously raise the threat associated with poisons. But it just increases the obvious: Once you can get poisoned, it's end-game anyway. People seem to be much more seriously affected by actual poisons in the real-world than D&D-land, as it is.

I just had a thought: VP/WP is a very "ACTION!" sort of HP method ... if you're also using an Action Point system, maybe you could just combine them. The enemy has a poisoned dagger ... as long as he's doing VP damage, he's not going to poison you. But maybe the GM can spend an AP (from a heroic NPC or via GT's rules by giving the player one) to "strike true" and affect the PC with the poison.

That way it's sort of in the domain of the GM whether the poison is going to come into play: I.E. - Is this the scene in the movie where one of the main characters has a tense, close struggle with a guy with a poisoned dagger ... stopping it inches from his face, wriggling aside before getting knifed, knowing all the time that the merest scratch is DEATH. ... or is this the scene in the movie where one of the main characters gets slightly nicked by an assailant with a poisoned dagger and the rest of the character have to rush to get an antidote and save him.

Honestly, I've never liked the rules for poison anyway. People don't get hit up with a deadly toxin and shrug and walk away OR topple over dead. But some things ahve to be abstracted.

--fje

Wow, thanks for that! Your reply was full of all kinds of useful tidbits.

Mostly, I use this system in Modern games, so the action point idea is excellent. My D&D games, on the other hand, don't use action points, which is why I need another sort of solution.

As stated above by AmorphousBlob, you are normally only affected by poison if you take wound damage. That makes poison fairly useless, negating an important special attack of many D&D creatures. What has been said about armor blocking those "scrapes" is true also; perhaps with my originally suggested solution, each point of armor bonus would reduce the percent chance of a successful "non-hit hit?"

Keep the ideas flowing. This thread is starting to get good n' gritty.