For a more realistic game: WP/VP or D20 Modern KO rules?

[Gothmog]

For those of you who have some experience with WP/VP and D20 Modern:

I am running a lower-magic, realistic style game, and regular hit points just don't cut it for my group. We have used WP/VP for a while, and while they make lower level characters less fragile, combat is still a matter or beat it until it goes down.

I remember seeing in D20 Modern that there is a rule that anytime a character takes over his Con in damage from a single blow, he must make a Fort save or be reduced to 0 hp.

How have your experiences been with it? Do you feel it is better or worse than WP/VP? What about large creatures- do they require more punishment than their Con to make their save? (such as an Ogre- 15 hp isn't that much for them). What about the D20 Modern save against high-damage magical melee and spell attacks in D&D? Would it be too unbalancing?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I like the d20 Modern massive damage rules, but I find their nonlethal combat pretty useless-- a better system would be to use D&D's subdual damage, but have massive subdual damage force a Fortitude save to stay conscious.

For realism, it might be a good idea to make the Fortitude save DC variable upon the amount of damage that invoked the saving throw in the first place.

D&D's spells do more damage than this system was designed for, but that also adds elements of realism, because those spells are extremely damaging. For balance, though, you should remember to split up damage from separate magical attacks (like the individual missiles in Magic Missile, or separate meteor strikes from Meteor Swarm) to avoid overly high Fort save DCs.

 

[Skywalker]

How have your experiences been with it? Do you feel it is better or worse than WP/VP? What about large creatures- do they require more punishment than their Con to make their save? (such as an Ogre- 15 hp isn't that much for them). What about the D20 Modern save against high-damage magical melee and spell attacks in D&D? Would it be too unbalancing?

I find both to have a similar feel. Neither is very realistic as both remain cinematic.

One advantage of VP/WP is that you can do DR more easily and this is more realistic.

One advantage of Massive Damage Threshold is that it's easy to add to existing games.

Alternatively have you considered something like this -

The reason why BAB increases and AC doesn't increase in D&D is that you are expected to hit more at higher levels to cope with the increasing HP.

To achieve a realism level you could use a static or slowly increasing HP (Con + current Fort save as an example). To do this you would need to insure that AC increases like BAB. This isn't a silly idea and has been adopted in many d20 games including D20 Modern and SW.

You can do this by either giving each class a AC progression matching BAB progressions. Wizards get slow progressions where fighter get fast ones.

Another option is to make BAB and AC skills. This will achieve similar progressions - maxing out at +4 to +23 for classes with them as class skills and +2 to +11 for classes with them as class skills. You may need to assign some more skill points. Also you could spilt Melee BAB (Str) and Ranged BAB (Dex) into seperate skills.

Wizard would BAB and AC as cross class skills. Rogues may have AC as a class skill and BAB as a cross class. Fighters would have both as class skills.