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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 2527746" data-attributes="member: 5171">Glad I could help. <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=":)" />I wouldn't go that far. You can, of course, and there's nothing illogical about it, but in D&D, hit points are not only a measure of toughness but of ability to react in order to minimize or avoid attacks that would kill a normal person. Unless you want to declare that anyone flatfooted can be coup de grace'd (which isn't waaaaay far from what Black Company does, no, with its killer surprise-round system?) to force a save-or-die and bypass hit points entirely, you're accepting that a highly trained person, even when surprised, will react in some way.It's a continuum. d20 Modern says that if you're flatfooted, you don't get the extra bonus from your natural agility (Dex score), but your training and experience (class bonus) always applies unless you're helpless. Conan, however, says that you don't get any kind of bonus when you're stunned or flat-footed (class-based bonuses to Defense, seperated into blocking and dodging), so in the Conan world, training and experience don't matter if you're not aware of the situation. Those are both valid concepts for one type of adventure or another, but they're quite different. In Conan, if you don't see the attack coming and you don't have Uncanny Dodge, you ARE gonna get hit. In d20 Modern, you can still instinctively dive to the side.Yep. And there are times in my game where I'd like to see the class bonuse to Defense go away if the target is flatfooted. If I were running a pulp-detective-noir game, for example, it might make holding a gun on someone a lot more threatening. Because in those kinds of stories, if the bad guy has a gun on you, you're pretty much helpless unless you can Bluff them into distraction. (In those games, I'd also increase all gun damage by 2 dice, so that almost any normal shot can break the MDT and force a Massive Damage save.)</blockquote>

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