My "Savage" Experience

[Staffan]

Usually, in practice, that's multiple rolls too. If someone is Toughness 10 and gets hit by 2D8+2 damage, chances are it takes more than 1D8 to reroll before you're going to get smashed by that. After all, to get 3 Wounds you probably had to get 12 over their Toughness.

Yeah, but it's a single event. With d20, you or one of your party members usually have a chance to react by tossing a heal, or distracting the opponent, or something else. With exploding dice, the damage just comes out of nowhere and pastes you.

 

[Retreater]

It should be pointed out that in SWADE even taking four wounds isn’t a dead character. They are Incapacitated, get to roll on the table. There’s a chance they die with the table roll but it’s rare.

Yeah. The character who died still had a Bennie remaining to soak. Or I was going to offer "Blaze of glory" or rolling on the chart. However, the player just had enough and wanted the character to die.
Of course, the party has no one who can heal, because that's "boring" - so there is a good chance that any character might bleed out because no one can stabilize or heal wounds.

 

[thullgrim]

Not even any dice in the Heal skill? They can always try an unskilled roll.

 

[Retreater]

Not even any dice in the Heal skill? They can always try an unskilled roll.

Come to think of it, one of the characters does have a d4 in the skill. Hope it's enough.

 

[thullgrim]

D4 + wild die. Not great but better than nothing for sure. You could even toss some
Kind of herb, poultice, kit or something that adds a flat +1 or something to help out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It should be pointed out that in SWADE even taking four wounds isn’t a dead character. They are Incapacitated, get to roll on the table. There’s a chance they die with the table roll but it’s rare.

An Incapacitated party is just another chance for adventure after they wake up imprisoned or left for dead after being looted.

Though it can matter a great deal what optional rules are in use regarding the former. The table for Incapacitation has a whole lot of "not good" on it that many people can find worse than death.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, but it's a single event. With d20, you or one of your party members usually have a chance to react by tossing a heal, or distracting the opponent, or something else. With exploding dice, the damage just comes out of nowhere and pastes you.

Depends. In the case I was discussing, that was a whole bunch of mooks (in 13A) and nobody was going to get to do nothing until they were done. Same thing can happen any time you have a bunch of weaker opponents with clustered initiative in other D20 games, though maybe not to the same degree.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. The character who died still had a Bennie remaining to soak. Or I was going to offer "Blaze of glory" or rolling on the chart. However, the player just had enough and wanted the character to die.
Of course, the party has no one who can heal, because that's "boring" - so there is a good chance that any character might bleed out because no one can stabilize or heal wounds.

At a certain point, in a game with actual serious damage, if no one will bother to take even minimalist medical skills, my sympathy for them utterly evaporates.

 

[Reynard]

I don't care if people don't like games I like, but it does rankle a little when it appears they don't like it because they can't be bothered to learn it and/or try and play it like another game and call it "bad design" when it fails.

That's not necessarily pointed at OP, it's just a thing that bugs me. We played Clank! tonight and one of the group just couldn't be arsed to read his cards and (shocker) had a bad time and downvoted the game for future game nights.

 

[dbm]

Come to think of it, one of the characters does have a d4 in the skill. Hope it's enough.

Lost Colony has at least one type of med kit, possibly two IIRC.

Even if the players aren’t carrying them, sensible NPCs might have them on them to be found…