Its Official: I HATE Vitality/Wound. You?

[Karl Green]

I don't like them either and the MAIN reason why as opposed to say a lower Massive Damage Threshold from Modern, is that it comes down to one lucky roll. If I roll a crit I have a good chance of simply taking out someone. Especially high level Jedi, who ever gets the FIRST crit wins! Now true, in the movies when Jedi fight it sure seems like it might be a big blow or another tries out the other dude... but with MDT, the player or badguy get a Saving Throw to avoid falling (assuming they have enough HP still). They can use Action.Force Dice or whatever with that also. TO me this gives them a bit more excitement and tension (more rolls maybe??)

To each his or her own though.

 

[Karl Green]

Well, either you had really bad luck or something was off. Crits are a rare thing, so it should be easy to count them up.

Hmm in a typical D20 games that I play in, we generally have a LOT of 'natural 20's' rolled in a typical 4 hour game. But we are dice happy

 

[Crothian]

If you are playing the system and you are theat scared of it, take a feat to get more wound points, place a high score in constitution. Get a high AC so those lucky 20's are hard to confirm. The system provides ways for dealing with it.

 

[Karl Green]

If you are playing the system and you are theat scared of it, take a feat to get more wound points, place a high score in constitution. Get a high AC so those lucky 20's are hard to confirm. The system provides ways for dealing with it.

I thought in Spycraft if you 'rolled a 20' all you had to do was spend a Action Dice to confirm? IMO the system is NOT that well set up to 'deal with it'

 

[Turjan]

I'm not a fan of that system, either. But then again, I'm principally no fan of "grim'n'gritty" games, which seem to be very popular at the moment. I'm not the target group, I suppose.

While HP is unrealistic (20th level fighter vs. 200 goblins. Guess who wins?) it does do two things correctly: sacrifices realism for playability and protrays PCs and HEROES, not some dudes.

That pretty much sums it up for me .

 

[swrushing]

Well, either you had really bad luck or something was off. Crits are a rare thing, so it should be easy to count them up.

this really depends on the crit ranges of the weapons and how easy it is to raise them. I know in spycraft 1 it was possible to get crit ranges down to 10+ or something silly with the right combo of feats and class levels.

the guy here mentioned right away having crits on 16+ for blasters, and thats not going to make criticals rare.

the key is, with large amounts of hit points, any effect which lets you bypass that wall of hit points is going to be something worth investing in. I DnD, spending several feats and choosing weapons for crits isn't all that important since it doubles damage. But if the result of a crit is bypass hit points and go to con, thats worth a whole lot more than double damage.

 

[swrushing]

I agree. make crits an element of character skill, not weapon choice. i think grim and gritty has crits occur when you beat the needed roll by 10.

Hmm...

I like the concept of the wound/vitality system, but I'm not fond of its execution. I agree that fights shouldn't be a race to the first natural 20.

I'm not certain what the fix is, though. Maybe a system where you critical based on how well you exceeded the target number? That way, high-level characters crit more often against weak/easily hit foes, but less often against more evenly matched opponents? That would require more bookkeeping, and I'm not sure it'd be worth the effort, but it might work...

 

[Crothian]

I thought in Spycraft if you 'rolled a 20' all you had to do was spend a Action Dice to confirm? IMO the system is NOT that well set up to 'deal with it'

WEll, considering people have a limited amount of action points and they are used for a lot more then just criticals, the system is built to deal with them. Now, if all people use action points for are to confirm crits then the DM needs to encourage people to use action points for other things. But even so, action points are limited.

 

[Crothian]

this really depends on the crit ranges of the weapons and how easy it is to raise them. I know in spycraft 1 it was possible to get crit ranges down to 10+ or something silly with the right combo of feats and class levels.

the guy here mentioned right away having crits on 16+ for blasters, and thats not going to make criticals rare.

Yes, min maxing can hurt the game.

 

[argo]

While I don't like VP/WP either it is not because it makes the game more deadly. I dislike it because it occasionally introduces some rules-wierdness (like what do you do with injury poision? ).

Me, I like playing around with lower Massive Damage Thresholds (d20 Modern, Conan).

We even instituted a rule later (an attack that drops you below -10 without first bringing you into negatives allows you to lose a limb and be at -9 instead) that stopped a number of deaths. (but made a few PCs more machine than man now)

Oooo... that's good for a SW game.