A VP/WP system again

[Derren]

I want to implement a VP/WP System in my game, but I´m not sure if this is balanced so I would like to hear your comments, experience with similar system and critics.


HPs will be converted (or better renamed) into Vitality Points (VP) which represents the ability to dodge damage. In addition you have Wound Points (WP) which equals your Con score. Wound Points represent the damage the body can take before collapsing.
All damage (except some special cases like falling damage, they damage your WP directly) will be subtracted from the VP. If the VP reaches zero, the damage will decrease your WP. If your WP reach zero you are staggered like described in the PHB. The same goes if the WP fall under zero.

*Critical Hits*
When you roll a critical threat with a natural 20 (And only with a natural 20 regardless of the thread range of the weapon) and confirm the critical hit, it will do 1 point of WP damage in addition to its normal damage.

*Blood Loss*
When your body is wounded it will be harder for you to stay sharp in a fight.
For every point of WP damage you get a -1 penalty on attacks, AC, saves, skill-, ability- and caster-checks.
If a mage is wounded, every time he casts a spell he must make a concentration check DC 10+WP damage+Spell level. (Is this to hard for spellcasters, because they get doubled penalties for WB damage?)

*Modified Spells*
Cure ... Wounds
In addition to its normal healing a cure spell also cures a number of WP equal to its spell level.

*Modified Feats*
Thougness
In addition to the VP you get, you also get 1 additional WP.

*Modified magical Weapons*
Wounding
When you score a critical hit which damage the enemies WP, you do in addition to the normal bleeding one additional point of WP damage.

Vorpal
If you score a critical hit, the damage you do is directly subtracted from the enemies WP.

 

[Thimble the Squit]

VP / WP

I quite like the approach you've taken here. I might consider improving criticals however (to make them even nastier):

A weapon's Threat Range remains the same, and deals WP damage equal to its multiplier.

Thus, a lonsgword threatens on a 19-20 and deals 2 WP on a critical hit, whereas a battleaxe threatens on a 20 and deals 3 WP.

Since damage ranges can be significantly higher this way, I might suggest that WP be considered slightly differently -- such as :

• Temporary Constitution damage (ouchies)
• Every 2 WP lost is a -1 to rolls
• A rather rather more radical alternative might be to consider a Wound Points score as if it were an entirely new (derived) ability score (similar to Taint in the Oriental Adventures rulebook), which never applies bonuses, only penalties for a significantly lowered score:
  
  10+ ..... no bonuses / penalties
  9-7 ..... -1 to rolls
  6-5 ..... -2 to rolls
  4-3 ..... -3 to rolls
  2-1 ..... -4 to rolls
  0 ....... coma
  

Also, how are you going to handle natural healing and recoveries? I'd suggest perhaps 1 WP / day, or 20% of VP recovery (but at least 1).

 

[LostSoul]

Thimble; nice name.

Looks like a good system.

 

[gpetruc]

Nice system
I think timble's idea to have the weapons deal the critical multiplier to WP on a treat (in addition to the weapon's damage).
Maybe all the "keen" and "improved criticals" should be changed from x2 threat range to +1 threat range (like in SWd20), but I'm not that sure
In Star Wars a critical does straight damage to wounds, that is much more nasty (a dumb guy with a 3d8 blaster rifle, that rolls 19+ and then a good confirm roll can easily bring you down in one shot)

For the penalties I'd say either a la SW (fatigued, -2 str & dex, maybe removing the "can't run or charge"), or a -1 penalty every 3 damage.
(D&D tends to be more "heroic" than SW)

The only problem with all this is that it will be much harder to drop down little wimpy goblins and such: an average orc now has 4 VP + 10 WP, more than three longsword blows; a kobold has still about 2VP + 8WP (not sure).
Maybe we should introduce the Knockout rule: when you take WP damage make a Fort save or be knocked out (but not helpless, if I rember well the rules) for 1d4+1 rounds. In this way wounding a kobold should make him faint anyway.
In Star Wars the save is based on the damage but this does not work if we use the "multiplier goes to damage" rule. So maybe a fixed DC (what aout DC 12 ? enough to stun most non combat low levels, but easy to whistand by fighting characters and any mid/high level)

 

[RangerWickett]

I use something pretty similar in my campaign, and I think I might have some insight on a few points you may have overlooked.

First of all, try saying, "You narrowly evade the orc's sword slash, taking 8 vitality points of damage." Now, for one, it's counter-intuitive that near-misses really deal 'damage', so I've found myself reverting more to the blander, "The orc swings and hits for 8 damage." I might spice it up a little saying they get a small slash across the person's arm, or they manage to hit hard but the real damage is stopped by the armor, but generally I try to just have people do cool stuff instead of spending lots of time describing how the orc hits.

Continuing on the first point, 'vitality points' don't roll off the tongue quite as well as 'hit points.' I suppose you might get used to saying it eventually, but hit points are more comfortable for us. Or we just use damage.

Second, how do you plan to handle big creatures or small creatures? be back soon I'm at work

 

[Derren]

Second, how do you plan to handle big creatures or small creatures? be back soon I'm at work

I don´t have special rulings for bigger/smaller creatures, should I have some? I think the increased Con score shows already the greater thoughness of larger creatures.

 

[RangerWickett]

Continuing on a bit.

I don't use WP as much for the bad guys. For 'mooks' (anybody who's not a major threat), once they reach 0 hit points, they drop, though they're still conscious as long as they have 0 or more WP. This lets PCs cleave their foes (otherwise the cleave feat would be useless). Also, if the PCs don't quickly finish off the wounded opponents, they can get a second wind and come back in about a minute, though they'll still be weak.

Major bad guys keep on fighting until they die, as do people like berserkers, or large monsters.

I don't actually use penalties to actions once you're out of hit points, though I suppose I should. If I did, though, I'd just make it a flat -2 penalty to all rolls, for ease of book-keeping. I just really enjoy giving the PCs some extra damage padding, since it lets me scare them every once in a while. It was glorious last session when an NPC knight ran down the party wizard with a spirited charge and did 32 damage in one hit. Because of the wizard's WP, the 7th level mage managed to survive the blow, and the entire party realized they were facing one tough S.O.B.

For creatures smaller than medium size, I give them Wound Points equal to Con x 3/4 for small, Con/2 for tiny, Con/4 for diminutive, and Con/8 for Fine. Of course, so far I haven't had to worry about WP for creatures smaller than small.

For creatures larger than medium-size, I found an easy way to figure out how many WP to give a creature. I figure that smaller creatures like humans are mostly hit points, since they tend to dodge a lot, whereas bigger creatures are mostly wound points, since they have a harder time dodging, and their bodies can take the damage. So what you do is figure out how many bonus HP the creature would normally get from its Constitution score; they instead get these as Wound Points.

So a Troll (6d8+36) would have 36 WP and 27 HP, while a kraken (20d10+180) would have 180 WP and 110 HP.

Why does this matter, do you ask? Well, because of spells like Harm. Yippie-skippy, I get to keep harm without a saving throw, because now it just reduces you to 0 HP and does 6 WP of damage (minimum damage is equal to your caster level, so if your target's already at 0 hp, you'll still hurt them). Also, like in your version, cure and inflict spells heal or deal 1 WP damage per level. Healing circle just heals 1 WP, but it does it to an area.

I'm trying to think if anything else has cropped up in particular to these rules. HP heal at a rate of 1/level/hour, and WP heal at 1 per day. That's about it, from what I can remember.

 

[RangerWickett]

I don't have critical hits deal damage to WP directly, but that's just my preference. However, I do like your idea for vorpal weapons. Makes sense, and it's less silly than, "Oops, there went my head."

 

[Wolf72]

derren, that's one of the better vp/wp systems I've seen ...

you don't overdue the wound points. Some have it where all criticals do dmg to wp ... ie near insta kill ... and to make up for that they have a way to increase wound points ... which then seems like the standard hp system.

... normal crit +1 wp, that I like ... at only 1 wound point from the critical (well other than loosing a bunch of vp's) is manageable.

and I'm assuming that a vorpal hit will not do the crit multiplier dmg ... so a vorpal longsword with a successful hit+crit would a d8+ for dmg (not 2d8 for the crit). I'm not sure how you would do that for monsters/badguys ... like RW said, your hero's wouldn't be to heroic ...

a wee bit off topic: but it's like MechWarriorDarkAge/clickytech ... when you get hit with an energy attack it does normal dmg +1 heat

Blood Loss: this seems a bit extreme, but I'd like to see some comments on those that have tried it first. As an alternative, you could come up with a simple (I hope) fort save system (kinda like negative energy lvls) that keeps you from building up all those negatives ... first loss DC 10 ... second DC 14 ... third DC 19 ... etc. (cumalative of course).

ej

 

[Derren]

The Blood Loss is the main reason why I want a VP/WP System.

I didn´t liked it that you always fought with 100% efficiency regardless of damage you have sustained.
Making steps where you got -1 when you lost a specific amount of HP would be to complicated so I thought a WB system would be best.

Any ideas how I could keep the blood loss but make it fair?

For the vorpal weapons, I intended it to let it do crit damage (modified by DR,....). It is still a +5 enchantment. (But I also don´t intend to give vorpal weapons to my players)