Health and Injury Systems

[takyris]

I've played with D&D hit points, d20 Modern hit points and lower MDT, VP/WP (but only a bit), and the Damage Save mechanic.

My players are fine with D&D and d20 Modern hit points, although there are sometimes arguments over flavor. One guy hates the idea of flavoring low damage attacks as near misses, and would rather describe them as ugly hits that he just lives through. At one point (in a non-magical game), he decided that an attack that dropped him to 2 hit points broke his arm and caused internal bleeding (spitting blood from a whack to the arm and chest). I said, "Sure, it's one of those broken arms that will be completely healed if you get five days of bed-rest, or if you have a few hours of surgery. Unless you want to voluntarily take some kind of penalty for the next six weeks of game time." At that point, he admitted that my "Just grazes and scrapes until you're in the negative" idea had some merit.

I wanted to love VP/WP when I used them -- I used the Unearthed Arcana rules, and maybe those aren't the best model, because it just didn't do it for me. The artbitrariness of having crits go to wounds didn't make my players cautious -- it made them frustrated.

I'm a big fan of the damage save, and I'd love to see it elsewhere. The biggest problem with it for me is porting it into existing games. I did a whole bunch of conversion to get it working in a d20 Modern game, and my players promptly said that they'd rather just use hit points, because that's how it was in the book, and they knew the rules in the book already and didn't see the damage save as cool enough to merit learning new rules.

The customer is always right, I suppose.

Our current in-game system in the D&D-with-d20-Modern-classes game I'm playing is this: hit points are recovered at level/hour, like vitality points, unless you drop into the negatives. If you drop into the negatives, then even when you are helped back into the positives, you recover at level/day until you get back to full hit points (at which point you heal at level/hour again when you take future damage). So somebody who gets dropped is walking with a limp and moving a bit slower for the next few days, unless magical healing gets them back to pristine condition.

Anyone taken to -10 is in a coma, and can only be revived through Surgery (which few people in this D&D-esque world have) or magical healing (which even fewer people have), or by waiting a long time (ie, weeks) to heal again. Anyone taken to -20 is dead. This extra buffer space is there because Raise Dead is only available as an incantation, and it's not an easy incantation to get your hands on.

 

[Desdichado]

Also bear in mind that this was written for use with Grim Tales and in GT, you can't get any sneak attack damage until you are at least 5th level.

This is true for Star Wars as well--the Scoundrel class never has anywhere near the kind of Sneak Attack damage as the Rogue does. I honestly think VP/WP was tossed into Unearthed Arcana without giving a whole lot of thought to SA damage and how the Rogue class might become seriously unbalanced in the wrong hands, or they might have addressed SA and VP/WP differently.

 

[Nim]

Anyone taken to -10 is in a coma, and can only be revived through Surgery (which few people in this D&D-esque world have) or magical healing (which even fewer people have), or by waiting a long time (ie, weeks) to heal again. Anyone taken to -20 is dead. This extra buffer space is there because Raise Dead is only available as an incantation, and it's not an easy incantation to get your hands on.

In our current campaign (which is using standard D&D hit points), the HR is that death occurs at negative (10+con modifier+level). The problem with the standard fixed -10 'death buffer' is that as characters increase in level, those 10 points are a progressively smaller fraction of their hitpoints (as well as being a relatively smaller when compared to the average damage of attacks that are wounding them). The result is that the higher level the characters, the more likely they are to be killed outright by damage rather than falling unconscious. We wanted that margin of non-lethal failure to scale better with level.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

While I like the IDEA of VP/WP, in practice and play, it's just been too much of a PitA to be worth it, IMHO.

We're already working with some major levels of abstraction, so I see HP + MDT working in the same vein.

So I stick with HP + MDT, for the most part. It's very simple, as a concept, but very tweakable for the type of game you want. MDT = 10, for a lethal sort of game. MDSave DC = 10 + 1/2 Damage for VERY lethal. All the way up to MDT = 10 + Armor + Level + Con Bonus for the "Um." version or MDT = 50 for the "Why bother?" D&D type.

Sneak Attack can be harsh in MDT games, but not as huge as VP games. But generally, I find that changing up the MDT system is simple, fluid, easily understood, and doesn't involve changing all the base damages and half the abilities in the game.

I also like Damage Saves, but only for a few types of games.

I've had a system bouncing around in my head for a while that most people would probably HATE, but which was spurred on by some themes I've been seeing in games: Do away with HP, do away with Spells Per Day or Spell Points or the like. Do away with Combat Tokens, Action Points and everything else in the game. Because, really, they're all representative of a single thing ... Mojo.

Still only in the concept phase, though. And I'm not sure it would be exactly popular.

--fje

 

[GlassJaw]

This is true for Star Wars as well--the Scoundrel class never has anywhere near the kind of Sneak Attack damage as the Rogue does. I honestly think VP/WP was tossed into Unearthed Arcana without giving a whole lot of thought to SA damage and how the Rogue class might become seriously unbalanced in the wrong hands, or they might have addressed SA and VP/WP differently.

Yeah, I'm actually not a fan of the VP/WP rules in UA. They seemed rather incomplete to me. I used the SW system as a model for my system.

Sneak Attack can be harsh in MDT games, but not as huge as VP games. But generally, I find that changing up the MDT system is simple, fluid, easily understood, and doesn't involve changing all the base damages and half the abilities in the game.

I like the VP/WP (duh) but I certainly agree that it doesn't work for every system across the board. Again, the biggest issue to deal with is sneak attack damage. I like VP/WP with Grim Tales because sneak attack is difficult to get. It balances out nicely.

My main complaint with MDS is it's either all or nothing. You can go from full hp's to dying in one fell swoop. I find that can be frustrating to players, especially at higher levels. Plus, there gets to a point where most characters will only fail if they roll poorly. I don't like basing the life and death of a character on a bad die roll.

I tried to design my system in a way that rewards players for using tactics, stealth, terrain, etc to their advantage, especially if they use those things to gain surprise. But even if you do get smacked, you still might be able to crawl to safety or go down fighting (even though it will get increasinly difficult). Considering I used it as a source of inspiration so it shouldn't be a big surprise but I feel my ruleset would *gasp* probably work pretty well for a d20 Shadowrun conversion.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

My main complaint with MDS is it's either all or nothing. You can go from full hp's to dying in one fell swoop. I find that can be frustrating to players, especially at higher levels. Plus, there gets to a point where most characters will only fail if they roll poorly. I don't like basing the life and death of a character on a bad die roll.
.

See, that's what my group most hated about VP/WP. We played a SWRPG game for a while, and it consistently annoyed my players that a halfway-decent crit with a lightsaber or blaster rifle IMMEDIATELY took you out of the game. There wasn't much player-end that could stop it.

It led to some ... not-quite and hastily-constructed cinematic situations. In one case, the group was fighting along-side their master ... or were SUPPOSED to. A lucky crit from a 4th level padawan mook took her to -7wp in the first round of engagement. I sort of had to swing that padawan into an in-story position of power to explain how somebody's 13th level Master just got "totally pwnz0red" in one blow.

With the way Jedi powers worked, Final Attack Bonus horribly outstripped Defense scores after the first-round "Jedi Buff" of Enhance Ability and Battlemind. So that wide lightsaber threat range, with the low Def, led to lots and lots of near-insta-crits and people getting cleft-in-twain all over ... which is great for lightsabers, but less than satisfying for the player when his PC is dead or out of the game on Round 2.

SWRPG then adds insult to injury by including a MDT-type system in that if you take WP you have to make a save or go to dying.

So combats were either traditional HP-blow-by-blow slogfests, or instant death. There wasn't much on the PLAYER end that controlled it. Luck of the draw, basically.

If we WANT that sort of "danger at every turn" combat, where you can go from full "Health" (VP or HP) to "Oh no, I'm dying!" in one lucky shot ... MDT and VP/WP both serve.

At least with MDT, the player gets something like control over his ability to survive those hits. Feats like Increased MDT, to lessen the number of saves, or Great Fortitude to help the saves, etc. In d20Modern and Grim Tales the players have Action Points they can spend on those saving throws.

This is just from having played both GT/Modern based games and SWRPG (VP/WP) for several months apiece. The whole time we were playing SW, my players were gritting their teeth in frustration at least two or three times a session ... they were basing the life or death of a character on a GOOD roll from the enemy, which is something the player and his choices has no real control over. In D&D, you have some gauge of how you're doing based on your HP, you know if a crit might take you out, or if a regular hit might take you out. With VP/WP you might stand toe-to-toe for a dozen rounds, or get pasted by the first blow, and none of it is up to you in the least.

--fje

 

[GlassJaw]

So that wide lightsaber threat range, with the low Def, led to lots and lots of near-insta-crits and people getting cleft-in-twain all over ... which is great for lightsabers, but less than satisfying for the player when his PC is dead or out of the game on Round 2.

That sounds like more of a problem with lightsabers than the VP/WP system. Lightsabers are pretty uber as it is, nevermind if they crit. No weapon in a fantasy setting (even one with firearms) can match the damage output of a lightsaber.

SWRPG then adds insult to injury by including a MDT-type system in that if you take WP you have to make a save or go to dying.

Yeah, I didn't like that either. I removed it for my ruleset.

 

[Ranger REG]

SWRPG then adds insult to injury by including a MDT-type system in that if you take WP you have to make a save or go to dying.

I hope you don't mean technically, because as far as that goes, you don't die but pass out (or knock out) from the damage inflicted on your WP.

You die when you reached -10, at least that's what it said in my RCR.

 

[genshou]

I hope you don't mean technically, because as far as that goes, you don't die but pass out (or knock out) from the damage inflicted on your WP.

You die when you reached -10, at least that's what it said in my RCR.

You are correct, Ranger REG. When a character fails a save against wound damage taken that round, they are knocked-out for 1d4 rounds. A knocked-out character falls prone unless something prevents it, can take no actions, and has an effective Dexterity score of 1 (note that this is my extrapolation based on the fact that they have a -5 effective Dex modifier, but are not helpless). After taking a good blow to the body, you drop and are unable to do much but moan in pain and roll around a bit to avoid a coup de grace.

A few house rules I've used before with regards to knocked-out characters are that they lose any dodge bonuses, class defense bonuses, or both. But I never let anyone sneak attack or coup de grace them.

VP/WP might sometimes make things lethal in the wrong sort of way, leading to player frustration, but it's a more gradient form of MDT, and in that sense it's more realistic.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Death / Knocked-Out ... It's been a month since we wrapped up the game, and I haven't looked at the rules since then. I remember: "Man, now you make a save or you're up the creek."

I might like a VP/WP system better in a modern or fantasy game, but I've never been convinced its superior enough to change weapon damage and the like. Lightsabers were just the most common weapon in our Tales of the Jedi campaign. (And, before lvl 5, actually well outshined by blaster rifles.)

--fje