Health and Injury Systems

[Michael Tree]

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.

That's one of the biggest problems I have with high level D&D.

I quite like the solution that Iron Heroes. Rather than dying automatically at -10 HP, characters must make a Fortitude save with a DC equal to the amount they're in the negative. If they fail the save, they die. If they make it, they continue living but lose another hit point the next round (unless someone binds their wounds) and thus must make another Fort save the next round or die. In Iron Heroes, Fort saves bonuses are Character Level + Con bonus, so this scales rather nicely with level, and makes death a bit more unpredictable.

 

[arscott]

I've been playing a doctor in Stargate, which uses VP/WP, and it's kinda annoying. I'm pretty much useless.

You heal VP equal to your level per hour. I can double that, but our combats are never close enough together that it makes a difference. And so far, I haven't seen any wound damage.

My other VP/WP experience was with starwars. And the only problem I had with damage there is that the jedi did way to much of it compared to everyone else.