Damage saves: Too deadly?

[Dragonblade]

Damage Saves do dramatically speed up combat. However, I found it very difficult to guage the difficulty of an encounter when every PC was essentially one failed save away from death. As soon as the PC's luck runs out, your PCs may get taken out by an average encounter instead of surviving to fight their way to the BBEG's lair.

Although, on the other hand, tracking hitpoints for every single mook the PCs fight tends to slow things down a lot. But the advantage of hit points is that as a DM, I'm much better able to control the lethality of the game, because I can keep an eye on how many hit points the PCs have remaining and if necessary can fudge the hits and damage that the bad guys deal.

Spycraft 2.0 has the best solution. PCs and major NPCs and villains use wound/vitality (basically hitpoints) but mooks use a damage save system.

Your PCs are fighting a horde of orcs? No problem, use the damage save system for the orcs which speeds up combat dramatically, while the PCs still take hit point damage allowing you to control the lethality of the encounter. Plus you still keep the bookkeeping to a minimum because the PCs are the ones tracking their hitpoint totals. You don't have to do it for them.

 

[Dragonblade]

As an addendum to my previous post, if you like the randomness and grittiness of the damage save system then it may be for you. A damage system where any blow may be a PC's last, appeals to some people.

It doesn't really work for me. In my 17 years of experience, I have found that it tends to encourage a more cautious, survivalist play style.

I simply prefer to run a more heroic, larger-than-life game, where the PCs can be reasonably confident of their own ability to kick ass and take names and not get taken down by a random kobold.

 

[swrushing]

As an addendum to my previous post, if you like the randomness and grittiness of the damage save system then it may be for you. A damage system where any blow may be a PC's last, appeals to some people.
.

All the damage saves systems i have played in had some form of hero points which gave the players some control opver the one bad save issue. if they were out of hero points, then "the next blow" could indeed take them down, just like a character low on hit points can be felled too.

What damage saves do that i likie, in the systems i use(d), is provide a lot of interim damage effects between "i am fine" and "i am out". A player is less likely to spend a hero pt to counter/reroll a dazed effect or sometimes even a stunned effect that lasts only a round or two. the number of times i have seen players scrambling to cover the dazed or stunned guy are quite rewarding and give the combat a good feel and a bit of unpredictability.

But, i haven't ran a ds game without hp, so whatever game systems you have run with one and not the other may indeed have very different results.

i think if i were looking for a DS without a hero pt mechanic, i would probably want a very broad range of effects, so that AT FIRST you don't have a real possibility of a one shot KO but have a variety of lesser effects and so that after damage accumulates, you get the harsher results.

So, which DS system withou hp have you played?

 

[domino]

One thing I've noticed that seems to happen, for reasons that defy probability, with Damage saves, is that the victim will either shrug it off completely, or get dropped with a single blow, about 80 percent of the time.

 

[Gundark]

I simply prefer to run a more heroic, larger-than-life game, where the PCs can be reasonably confident of their own ability to kick ass and take names and not get taken down by a random kobold.

Sounds like we have similiar views on how a game shoud be. I am seriously looking at having the PC and important NPCs using Hit points but using DS for the "mooks". I don't have a problem with PC deaths. It's just after playing a little Savage Worlds I like fast combats. I would have stayed with SW but there are some quirks about the system I don't like that d20 doesn't have.

 

[GlassJaw]

An alternative to the massive damage save system is the vitality/wound point system (which I prefer). One of my main problems with the MDS is that it's either all or nothing. You can be chugging along just fine and then bam, you're out because of a bad Fort save. It also gets to the point where it will require a bad die roll to fail a MDS; it's not that difficult to get a character's Fort save into the double digits.

I like the VP/WP system because it still makes "any punk with a gun" a threat but allows for degrees of physical injury.

You can also check out my Grim Tales variant ruleset (see sig) for some expanded VP/WP rules.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Damage saves are cool but it adds in something of an unpredictable factor with combat. For instance, hit points give you a general idea how long a character can last in a combat, as well as how long a creature may last in a combat. Damage saves have someone who could be out in a shot or two with one bad roll. For instance, a tough creature rolls a 1 or 2 on a damage save, well, there goes your encounter. Now, this may be something the GM is looking for (especially with low level creatures or minions of some kind) but be careful how you do it or else it could be a big mess.

 

[theRogueRooster]

As an addendum to my previous post, if you like the randomness and grittiness of the damage save system then it may be for you. A damage system where any blow may be a PC's last, appeals to some people.

It doesn't really work for me. In my 17 years of experience, I have found that it tends to encourage a more cautious, survivalist play style.

You've been using a damage save system for 17 years? Wow, I thought it was a relatively new development. At any rate, I've found the damage save system (at least in True20) helps foster creativity in approaching combat encounters, since the characters are playing for higher stakes than simply losing a percentage of hitpoints. It's not just about the tank in front, spellcaster in back, and the rogue on flank anymore. Obviously, mileage varies, but the damage save system is one of the many highpoints of True20 for me.

-tRR

 

[theRogueRooster]

Damage saves are cool but it adds in something of an unpredictable factor with combat. For instance, hit points give you a general idea how long a character can last in a combat, as well as how long a creature may last in a combat. Damage saves have someone who could be out in a shot or two with one bad roll. For instance, a tough creature rolls a 1 or 2 on a damage save, well, there goes your encounter. Now, this may be something the GM is looking for (especially with low level creatures or minions of some kind) but be careful how you do it or else it could be a big mess.

I don't know how other systems with damage saves resolve this, but in True20 important creatures/villians/npcs can also be given Conviction points, thereby avoiding this whole situation.

-tRR

 

[Plane Sailing]

An alternative to the massive damage save system is the vitality/wound point system (which I prefer). One of my main problems with the MDS is that it's either all or nothing. You can be chugging along just fine and then bam, you're out because of a bad Fort save. It also gets to the point where it will require a bad die roll to fail a MDS; it's not that difficult to get a character's Fort save into the double digits.

I'm not sure if you are aware of the difference, but they are not talking about the massive damage save as used in D&D/d20modern here, they are talking about the damage save introduced in Mutants and Masterminds and now showing up in other RPGs too.

You may have noticed this anyway, but I thought it was worth pointing out

Cheers