D20Modern - massive damage threshold

[Crothian]

I'm sure Spycraft is an incredible game. All reports make it out to be. But d20 Modern is just fantastic. And it does the spy genre quite well, as my Chicago game day story hour will soon show, I hope!

Both are great, I have both. I'm now taking anything away from d20 Modern by saying Spycraft is great. Spycraft is better geared towards a spy game. That is what it is devoted to, so it has more info for that genre. However, I know I can run a great spy game with just d20 modern. The same with running modern horror and CoC. You can do it with d20 Modern, but CoC does have more info and a specific setting just for that.

 

[Gez]

I *like* that massive damage threshold rule ! I may even adopt it to D&D as a house rule.

This way, I'll get more dwarves and gnomes, and less elves, I think. Bah !

Note that the DC is still only 15. Not that hard. Maybe changing it to "15 +1 per point of damage exceeding the massive damage threshold" would feel better.

 

[Plane Sailing]

OK, I'm reading the real rules now, and I've decided that when I run a d20M campaign I'm going to give a straight damage threshold of 10 (and the higher CON guys are more likely to avoid bad effects because of their Con bonus).

i.e. Some people are not inherently harder to hurt, but they are able to shrug off attempts to hurt them better.

I'm also going to turn armour in DR, like in SWd20. In a system where they already use hardness for protecting vehicles, I can't see the sense in not using it for armour too.

Cheers

 

[Elric]

Con is already a very important ability score. The d20 modern massive damage threshold rules make your Con apply to: your HP, your massive damage threshold and your Fort save to avoid the massive damage. IMHO, that seems like too much. A character with 10 Con has enough problems without these rules.

I haven't played d20 modern, but in general the rules look very good! I think this rule just favors high Con characters even more at any level but the very early levels.

 

[Jeph]

We must remember that Con only applies to a SINGLE SKILL, and skills are at least half the character in d20 Modern (or CoC, or any modern d20 game, for that matter). This makes total and complete reliance upon Con for survival issues a bit more balanced, since characters with high Con and low Int may be hard to kill, but they won't be very versatile.

 

[Crothian]

Con is good, but Dex is still the overall best attribute.

 

[Goose]

I like the premise behind the rule, but that means that an ogre can literally kill anybody with an attack thats towards its lower end on the damage, even a level 20 char. I like realisim, but at the same time i dont want my guys rolling new characters every day.

Heres my thought:
Constitution + Character Level. So as you get higher level you can take bigger hits.

im just writing this as i think, but i think it could work.

 

[hong]

I like the premise behind the rule, but that means that an ogre can literally kill anybody with an attack thats towards its lower end on the damage, even a level 20 char. I like realisim, but at the same time i dont want my guys rolling new characters every day.

Massive damage in d20M doesn't kill you, it puts you at -1 hp (small point, but potentially important). Also, it's only a DC 15 Fort save, so high-level characters hopefully won't have too many problems. I don't know if save boosts are as prevalent in d20M as in D&D, though.

 

[bwgwl]

the one house rule i've been thinking of is modifying the Massive Damage Threshold by creature size. i think i have problems with a Huge dragon having a threshold of 19... or a bat with 1 hit point and a threshold of 10...

option A: big differences with size. Large is x2 Mas, Huge is x4 Mas, Small is x1/2 Mas, etc.

option B: small differences with size. just use the reverse of the size-based Defense modifier. Large is +1 Mas, Huge is +2, Small is -1, etc.

option C: somewhere in between. a flat +/- 4 per size category away from Medium.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I like the premise behind the rule, but that means that an ogre can literally kill anybody with an attack thats towards its lower end on the damage, even a level 20 char. I like realisim, but at the same time i dont want my guys rolling new characters every day.

Not a problem for me, since I'll be running Modern games, not fantasy games. No Ogres running around! It will be spy-cum-call of Cthulhu kind of things.

The threshold = 10 is actually an official variant in the book. By my treating of armour as DR, I'm actually helping the characters considerably.

(n.b. this also handles the issue I've seen some people raise where armour doesn't give any protection against an autofire attack, you just rely on the reflex ST. at least with DR armour your vitals still stay protected!

And if you're wondering, archaic armour only has half DR (rounded down) against ballistic attacks.

Cheers