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Message: <blockquote data-quote="azmodean" data-source="post: 2148401" data-attributes="member: 26590">Inspired by the damage save system presented in UA, I've been trying to come up with a similar system that eliminates (or at least manages) the problems it has. Summary of the system: Each time you take damage you make a fort save with a DC of 15 + (damage dealt/5).  On a failure you take a "wound", which inposes a -1 cumulative penalty on subsequent saves vs damage.  On a critical failure (failure by 10+ or a natural 1) you are dropped, effectively at 0 HP.It's problems (As I see them):1. a bit too random (5% chance of being dropped (natural 1) by any damage no matter how tough you are, even with a miniscule amount of damage)2. fort save doesn't map well to different hit dice3. a "wound" doesn't have enough effect (a mere -1 to subsequent saves)4. good chance of really tough creatures taking no damage at all from a "successful" hit.  This was pointed out by one of my players, in some systems a "hit" does not guarantee damage being dealt, but in normal DnD situations (barring damage reduction mostly) you deal damage if you hit, this is even more so in 3.5 after DR has been reduced.  I can see where a player who has only played DnD may have problems with this.What I have so far:1. I use "exploding" dice for saves anyway, when a natural 1 is rolled you roll again and subtract that amount from the total, and on a natural 20 the total is 20 + an additional d20.  With a few more tweaks (save vs getting dropped is 0+damage/5) others listed below) the chance of dropping a tough opponent with a "weak" (relative to the opponent) attack is more like 1% or less.2. I use a damage save seperate from the fort save, with 5 different base progressions to map to the 5 different hit dice in use(1/3 HD, 2/5 HD, 1/2 HD, 2 + 1/2 HD).  This also allow the system to be tweaked more easily, I think the final numbers involved would tend to be quite a bit higher than normal for saving throws (perhaps ranging from 1/2 per HD to 1 per HD).3. Complicating the system somewhat, I introduce more severe wounds, ranging from a "mere scratch" (-1 to subsequent saves) to a "serious wound" (-10 to subsequent saves)4. even on a successful save, the target takes a "mere scratch" for -1 to subsequent saves, this allows "whittling down" tough opponents and aviods the frustration of "you hit... but did no damage".In summary, the save DC is something like: damage/5: disabled (0 HP)5 + damage/5: serious wound (-10 to subsequent saves)10 + damage/5 :major wound (-6 to saves)15 + damage/5 :moderate wound (-3 to saves)success :minor wound (-1 to saves)With the system as written in UA, you have a high percentage of your "deaths" resulting from natural ones, especially in a situation where the damage is low compared to the toughness of the target.With these changes in place, the probability spread becomes much more interesting.  The first few hits are very unlikely to result in a debilitating wound (equivalent of 0 HP), but as the wounds accumulate, the chance of taking a more serious wound increases rapidly, as does the chance of being dropped.  I wrote a little program to help me visualize this, I know a little combanatorics, but not nearly enough to do this on paper.  One last thing I am thinking of is to eliminate the critical success and failure entirely, a.k.a. "a one is a one and a twenty is a twenty"  This makes it where it is impossible to take down a very tough target with a single weak hit.  A single hit kill is still possible, but only with a hit that is significant in magnitude (as always, compared to the target)I think I'll run that through my program and see how it works out.  (that makes the probability easier to calculate too <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )</blockquote>

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