Its Official: I HATE Vitality/Wound. You?

[LostSoul]

Without some additional mechanic for "Extra Lives" or "Get Wounded But Not Dead", you just end up with more random PC deaths.

In my d20 Star Wars game, I let PCs spend a Force Point to turn that death into a "Maim" of some kind. One of the PCs lost an eye that way. (I've always used that rule, even in the d6 system.) With this rule, it doesn't seem so bad.

 

[LostSoul]

(2) That said, your example is still easy to explain within the rules: Luke scored a crit on that blow, but got a really lousy damage roll, and Vader made his Fort save to keep going. Not every critical hit is going to do enough damage to drop the opponent to negative WPs, even discounting the effect of armor.

No way man, he used THE FORCE. 'Cuz he's Darth-frickin'-Vader: he don't need no stinkin' VP.

 

[Ranger REG]

This is one reason why I'm running my next Star Wars game using Spycraft 2.0 rules.

And how is Spycraft 2.0 differ from Spycraft 1.0 when it comes to the VP/WP health system?

 

[delericho]

I'm a VP/WP hater too, for precisely the reasons outlined by the first poster. The one and only Star Wars d20 game I ran hit exactly this problem - the climactic fight against the enemy Jedi ended in round one when the PC Jedi rolled a crit with his first attack, and killed him outright.

Now, in a campaign, this wouldn't be too bad - one NPC dead, a billion more to use. However, the reverse problem is a real killer. If the dark Jedi rolls a crit with his first attack, and kills the PC Jedi whom the player has been lovingly developing for months of real time, what do you do?

If you fudge the roll, you destroy the value of the system in the first place, since suddenly the lethality is not there. If you introduce house rules to wish away this problem, you're not using the system as written anyway, and you're reducing the effectiveness of the rule at performing its intended purpose. (Not that I wish to imply that "not using the system as written" is a bad thing. However, it rather negates any argument you put forward suggesting that the system isn't badly-designed.) If you enforce the rule as written, you wreck the players enjoyment of the session, and possibly the campaign, and you encourage players to view their characters as nothing more than disposable playing pieces, since they might lose them at any time.

Sadly, I have had to conclude that Star Wars d20 just isn't a good system. Critical hits, especially with lightsabers, are just far too lethal, so you can't really model any of the duels found in the movies. The starship combat rules are poorly designed, and don't model the space combat seen in the movies. (Primarily since the X-Wing Luke is piloting has the same 'hit points' as the X-Wing that Red 4 is piloting. I'm sorry, but unnamed NPCs should be expendable where the PCs are not.) Since those are really the two things I most wanted out of a Star Wars game, and since house ruling the system to fit what I want from it requires a 30-page document, and still isn't really 'right', I don't see any great value in the game for me.

 

[ThirdWizard]

My thoughts:

The anticipation of knowing your character can die at any time is great.

Characters actually dying at any given time is not great.

 

[Ranger REG]

If you fudge the roll, you destroy the value of the system in the first place, since suddenly the lethality is not there.

"When the dice conflict with the story, the story wins." (Role-Playing Game Manifesto)

While you cannot fudge player's roll, if you believe the dice roll will kill everyone's fun as well as the story adventure that you prepared for the session, err on the side of the story. Just make sure they don't know about it.

Lethality is still there. But there is always an anomaly popping up -- call it fate or a friggin' miracle -- just like in the real world.

 

[ThirdWizard]

PCs can die or they can't. I can't stand this in between concept of DMs saving PCs because it would disrupt the plot. So Bob's safe this session from crits, but Billy over there can die in an instant because he's not important this session. It sounds like DM preferancial treatment and whim. Just because the players don't know they're getting screwed doesn't mean they aren't getting screwed.

EDIT: Advocating a system with increased lethality while simultaneously advocating ignoring said system when you deem it necessary is not a reasonable support toward said system.

 

[Pbartender]

And how is Spycraft 2.0 differ from Spycraft 1.0 when it comes to the VP/WP health system?

By and large, VP/WP in SC2 work almost exactly the same as in the original. There's a few changes, though... Massive damage is handled just a little differently, using the "Table of Ouch". Subdual damage is much different than the usual, at each increment of your Con you sustain in subdual damage, it becomes more difficult to heal, and you must roll increasingly difficult Fort saves to avoid increasingly bad conditionsl.

Finally, and most importantly, objects, vehicles, animals and NPCs who are not 'special' (mooks and bystanders) have no VP or WP. Instead, they have a damage save vs. 10 + 1/2 damage dealt (rounded down). Failure means death, unconsciousness, becoming broken, destroyed, inoperable or totaled, depending on what you just clobbered.

Plus, and more pertinent to this discussion, non-special NPCs cannot use Action Dice, nor can they threaten critical hits, unless they are bequeathed with a special NPC Quality that allows them to do so.

That that one means that the vast majority of low-level mooks are easy to kill quickly, and cannot kill a PC with a lucky shot.

Special PCs can threaten criticals, and can activate them with Action Dice... But it has nothing to do with luck, since the GM must actively and purposefully spend an Action Dice to activate it. In that instance, if lots of PCs are dying to critical hits, its because the GM is being a jerk and not bad luck.

 

[Remathilis]

Wow, I'd hate to think what you feel about Call of Cthulhu or Runequest or Cyberpunk or a whole host of other games in which lethality is a serious issue.

Sadly, never played those. Just D&D, d20, WEG d6, and Storyteller 1st edition.

However, we have a running joke about CoC. Any PC without a real personality or background are called "old one chow" because the only experience someone I knew had with CoC d20, they were eaten within 1/2 an hour. Thus, from that point on, none of his PCs had personalities or histories cuz he didn't want to "put the effort" into it.

 

[The_Universe]

I'll add my voice (late) to the people who really like the vitality/wound thing. It's not really all that much different than a low massive damage threshold (as in D20 Modern) save that vitality/wound points basically doubles character hit points at first level. Above level 5, it all very nearly evens out, but they're just two different ways of getting to the same thing.

I like the added threat of death that both variants on "core" D&D provide, since I've been burned in the past by characters who expect the equivalent of immortality in their roleplaying experience. YMMV, but there's a high probability that I'll keep one of the variants, even if I go back to otherwise standard D&D.

As others have said, immortality doesn't make characters heroic. Daring *despite* risk does.