Adult: GUCK development forum III

[Sorn]

How about this for the lethality issue...

Basing damage on how much the roll failed by will skew the lethality towards the commoner end of things. Let's face it, even in the worst circumstances, a female fighter will shrug off the 12+ points of damage with ease, while it would kill a commoner or anyone with low hit points like mages. Historically speaking, death during childbirth was a fairly common occurence in all social classes. Hence, it should be failry equal for game purposes as well.

Instead of taking damage, the failed check will drop the mother to -1 hit points and she is considered dying. This will allow clerics/paladins/druids/bards to take care of the problem with healing spells, or lay-people to make heal checks to stabilize.

This might seem to favor the low-hp end of the spectrum, but I believe that it accurately represents the equality of all women giving birth. Note that a high Con modifier will still be very beneficial to the initial check, so adventurers (especially those high-hp/high-Con barbarian ladies) will still have the upper hand.

Other things on the agenda:

DbS, I'll be looking forward to the 2.0 rules (and the new thread). Btw, my email addy should be on my profile.

 

[Death By Surfeit]

A brief holding post: sorry for the delay, but the v2.0 rules and new forum will be posted on Tuesday, as I am currently stranded away from home and my files.

As a modicum of warning, I will be using a slightly modified version of brevdravis' rules. True, completely unassisted commoner births away from any healthcare have a 25% fatality rate, but all things considered I feel this is acceptable and no other model I've toyed with offers the balance and realism for that degree of complexity.

The emphasis of the GUCK is not pregnancy, childbirth and so on, although many people will be reading it for those mechanics. I feel that simple and concise rules are easier for players to handle and leave more room for the interesting things. The Prowess skill took ages to develop, as we wanted it as realistic as possible without degenerating into endless percentile dice, modifiers and suchlike. It is still the most complex system contained within the GUCK, but frankly is the area around which the rest of the book is based, and justifies the detail we've put into it.

However, I seem to be irrationally ranting, so I'll see you all on the new forum come Tuesday night. Oh, and if you wish to dispute the childbirth rules and can offer a viable alternative, by all means do so.

Cheers,

DbS

 

[Sorn]

Sounds good DbS. I'll be looking forward to seeing it.

What is your take on my alternative for death in childbirth?

Also, on a side note, I picked up all three revised core books last week. Right now, I don't see any significant impact of those for the GUCK, but I'll comb through once the 2.0 mechanics are up. The only place where I could see an impact is with PrC's, but since we haven't done those yet, we can worry about it then. And even there, it'll be minor things like feat and skill prerequisites.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Originally posted by Sorn
How about this for the lethality issue...

Basing damage on how much the roll failed by will skew the lethality towards the commoner end of things. Let's face it, even in the worst circumstances, a female fighter will shrug off the 12+ points of damage with ease, while it would kill a commoner or anyone with low hit points like mages.

Yeah--it's basically meaningless for most characters.

Historically speaking, death during childbirth was a fairly common occurence in all social classes.

But not 25% of unattended births! I do agree with your point that it's across all classes.

Instead of taking damage, the failed check will drop the mother to -1 hit points and she is considered dying. This will allow clerics/paladins/druids/bards to take care of the problem with healing spells, or lay-people to make heal checks to stabilize.

45% chance of death for the unattended birth from a con 10 woman?! 25% was already way too much!

You do have a valid point, though. Maybe we should be looking at con damage instead?

 

[Sorn]

I see what you're saying... Maybe a lower DC is in order. But, let's see what DbS has in the oven for the 2.0 post.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I see what you're saying... Maybe a lower DC is in order. But, let's see what DbS has in the oven for the 2.0 post.

Actually, I think it needs more than just changing the DC--I don't think even a 1 on a d20 should be death. Problems, certainly, but not simply death.

The big killer is disease. While there should be some sort of damage I don't think it should normally do great harm. However, how about DC5 (and a nasty minus for filthy conditions) to avoid childbed fever?

 

[brevdravis]

Reason I went with damage....

The reason I went with damage is to KISS. (Keep it SIMPLE, S*****) I admit that it isn't totally realistic, but allows the gm to handle all the difficulties with a simple roll.

Why don't we add a little note, that the gm should decide what went wrong when applying the damage. Perhaps stretch it out over a period... etc.

Since birth isn't the main focus, I felt simple rules were best.

Stuart

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Re: Reason I went with damage....

The reason I went with damage is to KISS. (Keep it SIMPLE, S*****) I admit that it isn't totally realistic, but allows the gm to handle all the difficulties with a simple roll.

Why don't we add a little note, that the gm should decide what went wrong when applying the damage. Perhaps stretch it out over a period... etc.

Since birth isn't the main focus, I felt simple rules were best.

Stuart

While I see your point I don't like rules that produce a result too far from reality. Com1's should be able to reproduce without dropping like flies. Yes, childbirth is risky but it's not like playing Russian Roulette.

 

[Sorn]

I agree with Loren. Straight damage is not scalable across the gap between commoners and adventurers. Anything involving hit points will be a pain to balance unless we want every average woman to die in childbirth. On the other end, any Level 1 Barbarian will never have any risks of the same happening due to a d12 hit die.

My proposal was to drop anyone who fails the save to -1 hit points, but as Loren pointed out, this could lead to a mass of deaths for unsupervised births.

How about a confirmation roll like for conception. If the fails her roll, there's a chance for a complication. Reroll with all the same modifiers and if that roll fails as well, death is coming quickly. We'd have to hash out the details on how things work and who actually dies, but how does that sound in broad strokes?

 

[brevdravis]

I see your point...

Okay, I see your points....

However I still worry about overcomplicating things. so how bout this, borrowing from sorn's idea...

So if we treat it like a critical for failures, how bout we make the follow-up a straight con check with no modifiers for both the mother and child.

Failure on the follow-up check results in dropping to -1 hit points.

That sound a little better?

Stuart