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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2278199" data-attributes="member: 172">My system doesn't recognize an "almost made it" state of being. And such a mindset works counter to the logic of staging the table the way I have staged it (See below.) If you failed the save, it is just a failed save.Look at it like this: If you need an 21 or better to save, the d20 roll, for all practical purposes, wasn't a saving throw. It was just a random table roll. You could get the same effect by using the same "high is worse" table, rolling a saving throw normally, and then if you fail, rolling a second dice of a size equal to your "failure range". (For example, if you needed a 13 to save, roll d12 on the table, etc.) I just compress this into one step to make things quicker. That was one of the central criteria in my injury system. I discared systems like Rolemaster's crit tables because I felt they slowed down play too much.Okay, what I am getting here is that you don't want a 20 save to be the worse result, right? I understand that goes against conventional D&D thinking, but there's a reason for it.It's imprecise to say that you are punishing them for their high fort saves. I would have been better off saying that you are insufficiently rewarding them for it. If 20 is the worst result, then if a save is possible at all, then the worst result is the first to go, which makes sense to me. If you make the 1 the worst result, then the worst result is always possible, even when you have eliminated considerable less hazardous outcomes. IT becomes impossible to give the character a bleeding wound while the chance of lopping off his head remains.If a character with (say) a +10 fort save and takes a power attack from a dragon doing 42 points of damage, presuming it does half of the character's remaining HP, the save DC is 31. The character cannot make the save, and on a 20 roll, the character suffers the worst possible result.If the same character only takes 40 points of damage, the save DC is thirty; a 20 on the dice will save, thus the 20 result becomes impossible.Now, lets say the same character is down to 4 HP. He takes 2 HP from... a rat bite... forcing a save. The only roll that will fail is a natural 1, and by my take on the rules, the only result that is possible is the stagger result.Now, lets invert the one and the 20. The first situation is essentially identical, the only difference being which end of the d20 the worst result is on. It's a 5% chance of the worst result.A few less points of damage, and the worst results still remains a possibility, since a 1 will still fail. But the least harmful result leaves the table.Now let's go to the rat bite again. If the character rolls a 1, and fails the save, there is only one possible result -- the limb maim/decapitation result. Meaning that a nibble from a rat can lop off our poor fighter's arm. But no chance, at all, that there is any less severe result on a failed save like a little bleeding or stunning.Making the chart so that the worse results corresponds to the higher roll makes it such that the worst results correspond to the higher damage and/or lower fort saves. Which makes it so it's only the power attacks with great swords that lop off limbs of dragons with huge fort saves, not nicks with daggers and rat bites.Does that make sense?</blockquote>

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