Goken100 said:
Fair enough. I'll just make one more point about massive hit points not being the same thing as cinematic. Han didn't get shot a single time when he charged down the hall at the storm troopers. Nor did anyone ever take a hit that had little or no effect. If anyone ever got hit, they felt it. Like, ouch that was my arm, felt it. That's quite different from Han charging down a hallway... GETTING HIT A FEW TIMES... but charging down anyway.
By your own definition, heroes should have some way of avoiding getting hit, not shrugging off damage from "mooks". As much as people laugh at how bad storm troopers are at hitting anything, they wouldn't even go SEE the movies if the main characters were constantly getting shot and didn't seem to mind.
Hit points do not represent getting hit and shrugging off damage Terminator style though.
That is the disconnect I think.
Hit points represent luck, dodging and grazes.
Episode I's sword fight is a good example of this. You can either say only two blows landed (the Darth Maul hit that killed Qui-Gon and the Obi-Wan hit that killed Maul) or you can see that fight as HP being steadily worn down.
Same with the mooks.
HP represent near misses, which is why a 10th level hero can have as many HP as an Elephant. The fact that it represents "telling blows" and not just HITS is borne out by the Armor Class/Defense System. If you have a 10 AC and are wearing platemail (for a total AC of 18 or so), any attack roll between 11 and 18 hits you but inflicts no damage.
THAT is you shrugging attacks off. If someone rolls a modified 19 and inflicts damage, it could be a graze that leaves you bleeding from the shoulder, or something.
It's an abstract system, meaning you don't micro-manage every detail of combat. As a matter of fact, the system SW currently uses, is one that tries to make this crystal clear to people who can't handle the abstractness of the system.
You have vitality, which repesents you doding and getting with with near misses, and then Wound Points, which repesent your physical body, an ACTUAL hit. In other words, Vitality Points work just like HP, but add a "winner take all" system where one good blow can kill at any time.
Again, I have no PROBLEM with alternate HP solutions, Ive used them myself for differing games and have used Wound Points in ALL SORTS of games.
However, the way damage works should fit the genre you're emulating.
And SW is, without a doubt, VERY cinematic.
That's the only point I was trying to make here. People are upset that Wound Points are going away, but they never fit SW in the first place. They are a MORE gritty variant, not less and one that I never felt was suited to SW.
See, because they run around getting shot at by armies of mooks, if you run SW that way, mooks will take out PCs more than any other method in the game. If 40 mooks are firing at you, and they need a natural 20 to hit, that means two will hit (on average).
Since a natural 20 is also a crit, that means you're probably going to go down and start dying from one of those lucky mook hits.
Of all the HP variants out there, VP/Wp is one of the LEAST likely to represent the experience of the movies.
Not a good choice.
That's all Im saying.
Chuck