Grim-n-Gritty: Revised and Simplified

[Coredump]

I hope you are not gone... as I would really like to hear your opinions on this. I am thinking of running a game with these rules, and any input would be valuable.

I dislike especially the fact that the high level character can withstand many "helpless" strikes by a low-level character.

I may be not understanding... but this is *very* much true of the stock D20 game. a level 12 fighter can stand there and ignore the first 2-5 hits (which may take 10+ rounds to achieve) of a low level fighter before deciding to turn and swat him dead in one round. I find the *opposite* true of the GnG rules. Every fight is dangerous, and the low level fighter can take down the other with a lucky attack. It makes every fight a real fight, and not something to ignore and take easy. What do you see in the rules differently than I do?

Furthermore, I find that this reminds me entirely to much of the d6 starwars system that preceded the WotC d20 version (wizards.com/starwars I believe) which I firmly disliked in its general nature and was quite happy to switch systems.

I played that system, but years ago. What do you see that seems the same? What were the aspects that make it sub-par?

I believe that there is too much of a change in the standard d20 system to really work for compatibility and ease of use.

Now, this I will call you on. I do not think this is a fair statement to make without trying it first. There are a ton of changes out there, from campaign settings, to alternative classes, magic, etc. They seem to integrate well enough. Lots of people have used this system, even *before* the revision. Before making this assertion, I would hope to see your group at least run one encounter using the rules. See how you like it. It really doesn't seem to make much time to 'convert' the info from stock to GnG. And all that would be your DM's time anyway

Now beyond that, I personally dislike this system for several reasons, but I will not mention them here because they are simply personal and have no place in a rational argument.

Well, like SSquirrel, I would like to hear them. It may give additional insight to us before using the rules. (like the changing of the 2-4-8-16 modifiers)

.

 

[Ukyo the undead]

So Ukyo, would you think giving cover a soak value against AoE of x2 its AC bonus would be sensical?

I would give simply de AC bonus( I dont think the cover would offer much more protection against a "splash" attack than against a melee or ranged attack), but you could say that the AoE attacks loses a lot of offensive power if it doesn´t hit directly on the target.

In the end, its a matter os personal taste, so a 2x AC bonus sounds ok as well.

 

[SSquirrel]

Heh one of these days if I get bored, I'll redownload the SRD, delete anything superceded by this and put a Grim n Gritty SRD up on the web.


edit:

Actually aya know I have the day off so I'm looking in the SRD and did a search on hit point to replace with life pip or pip in each instance...and the point of ability loss came along. How is that covered? If we utilize the extra lightly wounded box idea professed early in the thread (so Con 16 has 8 pips instead of 5 for that wound category) then those boxes can be easily removed and we could even take some more away as we went along.

Hagen

 

[SSquirrel]

Slowed down.

Bump

Hagen

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Heh. My apologies for my enthusiastically naysaying players, although I must profess myself amused by the whole incident. I'm afraid it's partially my fault; my willingness to try new systems has led them to grow tired of me bringing new toys to gaming sessions. I will attempt to persuade them to try at least an encounter in it, and see how that goes.

 

[Happiest_Sadist]

As for regeneration, it might be good to make regeneration just 1. I looked around the MM, and I didn't see any creatures with regeneration above 10% of their HP. Considering that monsters fall after 15 damage, that seems more in keeping with the spirit of regeneration.

However there is a real problem with this system. Lucky shots are not truly devestating. Take the following. Level 1 orc with greataxe vs level 10 fighter.

The fighter wears +2 full plate armor and has a 12 dex. He wields a +2 shield. However he rolls a natural one on his defense check.
Defense result is 1 + 10 (bab) +1 (dex) +4 shield = 16

The orc rolls a natural 20. His attack is 20 + 1 (bab) = 21

Say the fighter has a 16 con and has taken toughness twice. His soak is 3(con) + 2 (toughness) + 10 armor = 15

The orc rolls maximum damage. That is 5(beating the defense check by 5) +12 (roll) + 3 (str) = 20.

The fighter takes only 5 points of damage, not even enough to make him slighly wounded. Most likely the orc would do no damage whatsoever, as a change of just 5 total from the best possible roll on a d20, a d20, and a d12 would lead to no damage.

This hardly seems as grim and gritty as one would expect, because a charachter can eventually almost ignore a strong opponent (14) swinging a giant axe at them.

Also, what happens to the BAB bonus to defense when someone is caught flatfoooted? I would suggest that it is either completly lost or halved in any situation when the attacker would lose their dex bonus. Invisible attackers mop up on those without blind-fight. To balance this out, in symettric situations BAB to attack should be lost. Skill isn't that important when you have no idea where your opponent is.

 

[SSquirrel]

As for regeneration, it might be good to make regeneration just 1. I looked around the MM, and I didn't see any creatures with regeneration above 10% of their HP. Considering that monsters fall after 15 damage, that seems more in keeping with the spirit of regeneration.

However there is a real problem with this system. Lucky shots are not truly devestating. Take the following. Level 1 orc with greataxe vs level 10 fighter.

The fighter wears +2 full plate armor and has a 12 dex. He wields a +2 shield. However he rolls a natural one on his defense check.
Defense result is 1 + 10 (bab) +1 (dex) +4 shield = 16

The orc rolls a natural 20. His attack is 20 + 1 (bab) = 21

Say the fighter has a 16 con and has taken toughness twice. His soak is 3(con) + 2 (toughness) + 10 armor = 15

The orc rolls maximum damage. That is 5(beating the defense check by 5) +12 (roll) + 3 (str) = 20.

The fighter takes only 5 points of damage, not even enough to make him slighly wounded. Most likely the orc would do no damage whatsoever, as a change of just 5 total from the best possible roll on a d20, a d20, and a d12 would lead to no damage.

This hardly seems as grim and gritty as one would expect, because a charachter can eventually almost ignore a strong opponent (14) swinging a giant axe at them.

Also, what happens to the BAB bonus to defense when someone is caught flatfoooted? I would suggest that it is either completly lost or halved in any situation when the attacker would lose their dex bonus. Invisible attackers mop up on those without blind-fight. To balance this out, in symettric situations BAB to attack should be lost. Skill isn't that important when you have no idea where your opponent is.

Considering that in current D&D in that same situation there's NO chance of said orc hurting the fighter....that's an improvement *grin* If he had a couple of other lucky buddies around that would be good. If one is a sorceror even better. GnG works best with 2 evenly matched fighters. It still doens't produce some of the Warhammer RPG or ROlemaster results you'll see, but you will see him actually managing to wound the fighter instead of nothing.

Hagen

 

[Wolfix]

A friend of mine just started a GnG game last week, and I'm playing a monk (lvl 1, human). I found out that my monk has a great bonus to the defense roll (because of high dex & wis, and in later lvls the monk's ac bonus), but his soak sucks because of a con of 11 and no armor. Now don't get me wrong, I'm definately not complaining (I created the char myself), but I was wondering what tips you guys could give me to improve soak.
In non-magical combat my bonus to defense seems better than if it was a bonus to soak (both reduce damage taken, but the defense bonus also adds to miss chance), but spells are going to hurt. Fortunately, magic is rare in that world . But anyway, I was wondering if anyone had some good ideas other than increasing con at lvl4 or taking the toughness feat.

 

[Happiest_Sadist]

Actually, he does more harm in standard D&D. If he rolls a 20, that hits automatically. It does a d12 + 3 damage, In G&G the rolls I had to describe had a 1 in 4800 chance. There is a comparable chance of the orc rolling 2 natural 20s for 3d12+9 damage, which is a chunk of the fighter's HP, to him doing even 1 pip of damage in G&G.

Also, I think that the defense roll creates some problems, because large creatures have much higher defenses than small charachters. Older dragons have incredible BAB. For instance a great worm white dragon has a BAB of 36. Even with its size modifier, it has a defense roll of 32. This makes it almost unhittable, and after that there still is soak to deal with. It seems that large creatures should not be difficult to connect with, just difficult to damage. This defense, assuming it rolls an 11 on its d20 roll is higher than its AC in the standard d20 system. I don't quite see that.

 

[Strithe]

Actually, he does more harm in standard D&D. If he rolls a 20, that hits automatically. It does a d12 + 3 damage, In G&G the rolls I had to describe had a 1 in 4800 chance. There is a comparable chance of the orc rolling 2 natural 20s for 3d12+9 damage, which is a chunk of the fighter's HP, to him doing even 1 pip of damage in G&G.

Also, I think that the defense roll creates some problems, because large creatures have much higher defenses than small charachters. Older dragons have incredible BAB. For instance a great worm white dragon has a BAB of 36. Even with its size modifier, it has a defense roll of 32. This makes it almost unhittable, and after that there still is soak to deal with. It seems that large creatures should not be difficult to connect with, just difficult to damage. This defense, assuming it rolls an 11 on its d20 roll is higher than its AC in the standard d20 system. I don't quite see that.

The GnG rules state:
"Your base defense bonus equals your base attack bonus or your base Reflex saving throw."

I'd use base Ref save for Defense bonus for monsters (anything without class levels). This gives the Great Wyrm white dragon a defense bonus of +20 (+16 after size modifier). Considering that characters facing monsters of this CR would be +20 to hit for fighter types I'd say that would balance pretty well.