How to houserule/tweak Grim-n-Gritty Revised?

[JDowling]

I'm starting up a campaign within the next week or two, norse myth type setting, no magic, etc, etc. In the interest of having plenty of (balanced ans non-magical) character concepts aviable I'm going to use the d20 modern base classes (tweaked for fantasy setting) and homegrown advanced classes.

The question of how to tweak or deal with the rules comes in at a few points:

(1)- Tough Heroes can buy DR 1/-, 2/-. and 3/- as Talents (no problem, treat as Soak as per GnG Revised) - not a problem but helps demonstrate why (2) is a problem

(2)- Tough Heroes also can get an ability that adds +1HP / Tough Level as a Talent if they choose it. How to deal with this? It wouldn't make sense to just treat it as another +1 to Soak (Talent no longer scales and how is it different from the above Talents?). Would it be too powerful to convert it to pips with a 2-for-1 ratio? (10th level Tough Hero gains an extra set of 5 pips instead of 10 HP). Adding Pips sort of goes against the feel of the GnG thing, but it seems like the best way to do it for this ability.

(3)- Somewhat unrelated to this campaign, but something that this brings up anyway. How do you deal with +HP in a Pip-based combat system? Say there's a magical item / technology that gives you +100 HP. Maybe HP-to-Pips at a ratio? But then what ratio? 2-to-1? 5-to-1?

I guess for (3) it depends on if it adds HP because "it's an extra layer around you that they need to beat through" or if it adds HP in the sort of vague way HP stand for in d20 (not only how well you take hits but also other stuffs).

If the extra HP are supposed to be because you are sourrounded by something that is hard to beat but once it's gone then it's gone: it feels better to me to make it have Pips to beat through. For instance, if you had a mecha/worn-golem that added +100 HP to your character, it's not really DR because once the mecha is blown apart around your character, it's gone not like DR that lasts and lasts. It also doesn't make sense to have it work as +Defence inless there are areas that could be punctured (and presumably there are not).

Another problem with that is - how much a HP matters depends on what level you are and what class you are. There doesn't seem to be a good ratio to use that is consistant.

If I were using a hit location system then I could treat added HP from equipment as giving a hardness (Soak) and hit points (pips) per inch I suppose, so the mecha/worn-golem might give Soak +10, Pips +20 (or whatever, depending on material) to each area and the soak goes away once the pips are gone. It seems like too much book keeping to do that however, and I'd rather not get into rolling to decide where each hit lands.

Maybe the best solution to (3) would be +Soak and +Pips, soak is gone once Pips are gone? I'm still a little hung up on (2) because adding pips seems like it could be bad, but it might be alright I suppose.

Thoughts? Ideas? Help?

 

[the_bruiser]

I'm starting up a campaign within the next week or two, norse myth type setting, no magic, etc, etc. In the interest of having plenty of (balanced ans non-magical) character concepts aviable I'm going to use the d20 modern base classes (tweaked for fantasy setting) and homegrown advanced classes.

The question of how to tweak or deal with the rules comes in at a few points:

(1)- Tough Heroes can buy DR 1/-, 2/-. and 3/- as Talents (no problem, treat as Soak as per GnG Revised) - not a problem but helps demonstrate why (2) is a problem

I allow this as well through use of feats; this is a conversion of toughness / imp toughness / [monster] toughness feats. Last I read, Hood recommends limiting this to three.

(2)- Tough Heroes also can get an ability that adds +1HP / Tough Level as a Talent if they choose it. How to deal with this? It wouldn't make sense to just treat it as another +1 to Soak (Talent no longer scales and how is it different from the above Talents?). Would it be too powerful to convert it to pips with a 2-for-1 ratio? (10th level Tough Hero gains an extra set of 5 pips instead of 10 HP). Adding Pips sort of goes against the feel of the GnG thing, but it seems like the best way to do it for this ability.

Here we’re just getting into opinion, but I would never allow this. A key feature in my mind of the G&G system is that while some people are harder to hit / damage, ‘equal’ damage takes equal healing to repair. A first level farmer and a 20th level barbarian, equally hurt, take equal healing to repair; technically the barbarian may take less due to his superior constitution. To me it is a huge improvement that this is the case.

I personally wouldn’t want this re-skewed by allowing HP variances. In my campaign I’d either let it improve soak (for which you already have a mechanic) or defense (probably doesn’t make sense here).

(3)- Somewhat unrelated to this campaign, but something that this brings up anyway. How do you deal with +HP in a Pip-based combat system? Say there's a magical item / technology that gives you +100 HP. Maybe HP-to-Pips at a ratio? But then what ratio? 2-to-1? 5-to-1?

Same as above. One way to help with the conversion might be this – determine who would likely get the item and when – would it likely go to a 20th level fighter? If so, he might have something close to 200 HP, a 50% improvement. So I’d consider translating it into a 50% soak improvement over standard 20th level fighter, who might normally have a soak of, randomly, +14.

So maybe a soak of +7 would make sense. Or maybe not. Your call.

This is just how I’d play it; obviously just a matter of opinion, but to me static pip totals are a metric not to be changed.

Hope this helps at least some .

 

[Boddha]

Just finished our first session running the GnG rules and the barbarian player made a good point: Power Attack is redundant as stands (eg. a 5 point power attack means you hit by 5 points less, effectively 5 points less damage, then add 5 points of damage on, with the same net result at the cost of a feat). So now all weapons gain bonus damage on a 2 for 1 basis, like two-handed weapons in the standard rules.

 

[JDowling]

...This is just how I’d play it; obviously just a matter of opinion, but to me static pip totals are a metric not to be changed.

Hope this helps at least some .

Yeah, you've pretty well summed up one side of my mental debate about how to deal with the abilities.

Suppose I could whip something up and see how it runs out in play then tweak as necessary.

 

[apoptosis]

i would agree not to change the # of pips i think it kind of then starts breaking why the system was changed to the way it is (eveyrthing having a normalized number of hitpoints).

I love the system but certain things do pop up and wonder how people handle them.

how do people deal with small damage spells and such. Some spells seem like they will basically have no effect after a certain level (say any spell that does less than 10 points of damage). Also damage per round effects (do a more modest damage per round) are also of little use.

 

[JDowling]

while I agree that changing # of Pips is not ideal I am left with the problem of how to modify the following Talent:

Robust: The Tough hero becomes especially robust, gaining a number of hit points equal to his or her Tough level as soon as he or she selects this talent. Thereafter, the hero gains +1 hit point with each level of Tough he or she gains.

At this point I'm contemplating scrapping the ability and adding something else. Maybe a small amount of Fast Healing that can heal upwards of ((Tough Level)/2) Pips/day @ a rate of 1pip/round (or minute, hour, whatever makes sense). That again messes with the GnG idea that healing takes a while for everyone, but it doesn't screw with the "You could *DIE*!" aspect of combat is deadly, Fast Healing won't save you if you can get splatted in one hit.
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OTOH: (and this is more theoritical because it's not related to the campaign I'll be running) people have often said that they think GnG would work well with d20 Modern / Future. However, in Future we have Mecha. A large size mecha, among other things, does the following:

A Large mecha adds a +8 equipment bonus to a character’s Strength score. It imposes a –1 size penalty on attack rolls and to Defense. Depending on the material used, a Large mecha has 100 bonus hit points, which are added to the character’s total and subtracted first when the character takes damage. It takes a –4 penalty on Hide checks.
A Large mecha has a single slam attack that deals 1d8 points of damage (plus the character’s increased Strength modifier). Its reach is 10 feet, and its base speed is 30 feet.

You can add armor and shields and what not to mecha for more DEF and such.

So, how do you deal with those +100 HP? The Mecha is a shell around the player... so do you say the Mecha has 20 Pips and X Soak, Y Defense, once it's "dead" it's useless to the player? do you add "Mecha Pips" onto the character and once the "Mecha Pips" are gone the character is in trouble?

I'd lean towards the "Mecha Pips" option because needing to decimate the structure of the Mecha to get to the soft squishy interior (pilot) seems to make more sense than the mecha just adding Soak or Defense (and the pilot+mecha only having a total of 20 pips). Also weapons in these PLs are dealing upwards of 15d6 (personal or mecha weapons).

Basically a Mecha is putting a shell with Hardness and HP/Inch around the character (and mounted weapons). You could view this as an extreme case of the "+1 HP/Tough Hero level) Talent (the talent is adding more HP/Inch to the player's body).
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another point to make:
the GnG rules leave Hardness and HP/Inch alone, which would support the idea of a Mecha adding Pips, et cetera.

and in closing: if all +HP modifications were to Defense and Soak, what about the +800 HP Colossal mecha? Wouldn't the amount of Soak/Defense necessary to accomodate how much of a change 800 HP is (even to a 20th level character) make the character neigh-invulnerable (even to the 15d6 PL8 Mecha weapons?).

most of this is just speculatory but how the extreme case should be handled might effect how I handle the not-extreme case. Of course I'll preface my players with "here's how the rules are, we'll play with em and if they seem out of balance we'll tweak em" so I won't be locked into anything at campaign start before testing the rules for my own.