D20Modern - massive damage threshold

[Plane Sailing]

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...

The way I do it is set damage thresholds as follows:

Fine = 2
Dimin = 4
Tiny =6
Small = 8

Medium = 10

Large = 20
Huge = 30
Gargan = 40
Coloss = 50

(this is the same as the "maximum -ves" which I use in D&D)

Cheers

 

[bwgwl]

that's the kind of gradation i want, Plane Sailing, but i still want to use Con as the threshold and not a static number.

so maybe:

Fine = Con -8
Diminutive = Con -6
Tiny = Con -4
Small = Con -2

Medium = Con

Large = Con x2
Huge = Con x3
Gargantuan = Con x4
Colossal = Con x5

 

[Jeph]

If you're going to go on body mass, it should be more like . . .

Fine: con x 1/16
Diminuitive: con x 1/8
Tiney: con x 1/4
Small: con x 1/2

Medium: con x1

Large: con x2
Huge: con x4
Garagntuan: con x8
Collossal: con x16

And yes, this does put a dragon's MDT somewhere around 600. But, do you think a huge, badass dragon is going to fall down and start bleeding out from a wimpy burst of autofire? From a wimpy tank cannon? No way!

 

[Plane Sailing]

that's the kind of gradation i want, Plane Sailing, but i still want to use Con as the threshold and not a static number.

I had originally considered this, but I found that I ended up with thresholds that were much too high.

 

[Gez]

What was the formula for WP in Star Wars ? IIRC, it was something like
Diminutive: Con ÷ 8 (rounded up)
Fine: Con ÷ 4
Tiny: Con ÷ 2
Small and Medium: Con
Large: Con × 2
Huge: Con × 4
Gargantuan: Con × 8
Colossal: Con × 16

(I think Small and Medium were at the same scale for balance reason, to not penalize players with Small characters. Since d20 Modern normally won't have ewoks or halflings, that may not be necessary.)

Note that I'm not sure my numbers are accurate. I don't have the book, only perused it in a shop a while ago.

 

[Mistwell]

This is the best series of posts on the subject of the Massive Damage Threshold. It starts with someone named Zelgadas over on WOTC answering someones suggestion about scaling the MDT. Then Charles Ryan, one of the designers of d20M, chimes in with agreement. I thought it was worth posting over here:

Question: Why not just make the Fortitude check equal to the damage dealt? With the current system a regular hit of 24 damage is nothing better than a x2 critical of 48, both require a DC of 15.
That way a massive Fortitude check would be needed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zelgadas Answer:
Except that the critical deals a lot more damage; that's what makes it better. 48 points of damage is going to be enough to drop most 5th-level characters, and even a fair number of 6-10th level characters in a single hit, without even factoring in the massive damage save. Also, remember that base save bonuses aren't as high in d20 Modern as they are in D&D. Most people who want to have the massive damage save scale are assuming that, by 10th level or so, you'll succeed 19 times out of 20. This isn't exactly true. I did some calculations (which may be incorrect, so feel free to correct me if you can), and figured out that the highest base save you can have in Fortitude (without figuring in feats or Con modifiers) is +12 at 20th level. This is assuming that you take 10 levels of Tough hero (for a +5), and then 10 levels of Daredevil (for an additional +7). So, yes, if you're 20th level, and you've maxed out your Fort save, and you have a Con modifier of at least +1, you can make 19 out of 20 Fort saves with a DC of 15. Seems fairly reasonable to me. However, it should be noted that most characters are going to be of a level lower than 20, and will not have tried to max out their Fort saves like this. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Four out of the six basic classes will have a +5 base Fort save by 10th level; the other two will have a +3.
2. Two out of the twelve advanced classes will grant an additional +7. Five will grant an additional +5. Five will grant an additional +3.
3. That results in a maximum base save of +12 by 20th level, or a minimum of +6 by 20th. The average will probably be +8 or +10.

Now, bearing those statistics in mind, I must say that I really don't see the need to make massive damage saves scale. Sure, it'll be easy for a 20th-level character to succeed. So what? Shouldn't someone that powerful be pretty hard to kill? The simple fact that, at higher levels, those massive damage saves are going to be a more frequent occurance than at lower levels should help to balance out the fact that higher-level characters have an easier time succeeding their saves. Besides, is it really a good thing to impose a house rule that will make it that much easier for the PCs to die quickly? That doesn't sound like a fun house rule to me.

Charles Ryan chimes in:
Zelgadas hit the nail right on the head; I'd love to see his little essay added to the FAQ.

We added the massive damage threshold to the game because we wanted firearms to be relevant at every level of play. Picture this scene:

A low-level thug with a gun stumbles on a high-level character. He completely has the drop on the character. "Freeze!" he shouts. "If you so much as move, I'll plug ya!"

Now, without the massive damage rule, the character simply charges the thug. Why not? The most damage the thug can do with his 2d8 rifle is 16 hit points--32 with a critical--and the character can take that with 75+ hp to spare.

We didn't think this was either realistic or cinematic. Even a high-level character faced with a low-level thug should worry about dying when a gun is in the equation. He may still choose to charge, thinking he's so quick and agile that the thug won't hit him. He may just decide that getting hit is worth the risk, if he's tough and the situation is dangerous. That's fine--but at least he'll have to make a meaningful decision first.

The massive damage rule was not designed to create a shortcut for killing characters; it was simply designed to retain an element of risk at all levels of play. If you want to really, reliably kill someone, the primary method is still the old fashioned way: to whittle his hit points down to zero.

As Zelgadas pointed out, even by 20th level few characters will have reduced the chance of failing a DC 15 Fort save to 5%; most will be looking at a 10% to 15% (or more) chance of failure. We think that's entirely appropriate. So in answer to the original question, I don't think any tinkering with the rules is necessary. YMMV, but my recommendation (as usual) is to try the system as written before deciding it doesn't work.

[In specific response to the suggestion that the save DC equals the damage dealt, let me make this point: Most often, massive damage checks will be caused by firearms dealing less that 15 points of damage. That means that in most cases, this house rule will actually make it easier to succeed in the Fort save. You'll be lowering the DC far more often than raising it.]

Hope that sheds some new light on why the rules were written the way they were!

--------------------
Charles Ryan
Editor, RPG R&D
Wizards of the Coast

 

[Mistwell]

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

So you are going to fundamentally alter the rules without giving the rules as written even a single game tryout?

Why not just give it a try, at least one time. Sometimes things on paper don't work out the way you think they will, when handled in an actual game. Shouldn't your default presumption be the rules as written, and then only change them when something actually happens to rebut the rule?

 

[Plane Sailing]

So you are going to fundamentally alter the rules without giving the rules as written even a single game tryout?

Why not just give it a try, at least one time. Sometimes things on paper don't work out the way you think they will, when handled in an actual game. Shouldn't your default presumption be the rules as written, and then only change them when something actually happens to rebut the rule?

Sure


I might point out that damage threshold of 10 is a standard variant given in the book.

And just because they continue the (to my mind continually bizarre) idea of armour adding to defensive DC doesn't mean I shouldn't change it.

I change rules (and write new rules) because I enjoy it and because I disagree with some of the basic assumptions which game designers make from time to time. Always have done and probably always will.

Furthermore, it is easier to introduce these changes at the start of a campaign rather than midway through.

Cheers

 

[Gez]

And just because they continue the (to my mind continually bizarre) idea of armour adding to defensive DC doesn't mean I shouldn't change it.

I find it much less bizarre than a full-plate that leave you vulnerable to sword blows, but immunize you against dagger, whereas real word full-plates were made to protect against big swords, and real world daggers were made to pierce full plates.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I had a big, complicated and yet surprisingly witty post to reply to this, but in the board shenanigans over the last few days completely lost my saved copy of it...

So instead I'll just point out that knights chose big weapons to hit each other with, not daggers. The one exception I can think of is the misericord, a dagger used for "mercy killing" which had a narrow blade that could be thrust through chinks in the armour of a downed foe to finish him off. You could easily replicated that with an exotic weapon dagger which ignored DR when performing a coup-de-gras. Fact is, that real world daggers were *not* made to "pierce full plates"

Cheers