Its Official: I HATE Vitality/Wound. You?

[barsoomcore]

Although in Skull & Bones, critical hits just did extra damage, like they do in normal HP systems. I like that better than crits going straight to WP.

 

[Karl Green]

Hmm I guess most of the VP/WP system I played in it did not feel any more 'lethality' then D&D... it just made crits more important then anything else...

See I like GURPS... but the game is lethal without the crits... an arrow will kill you if it hits you in the vitals etc.

 

[Izerath]

The only think that hasn't turned the typical Jedi/Sith fight into a TPK is SOMEONE is usually left standing long enough to drag the bodies back to the ship. 6 players typically 4 down/dying. 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)

Sounds to me like your GM needs to rethink his encounters a bit. And everyone needs to get new dice.

 

[Lazarous]

To the original poster -

I always viewed the single d20 die roll as a particularly nasty form of roulette that basically ignored character skill to begin with, but yes, the vp/wp system exacerbates that problem.

 

[tetsujin28]

I've been using a system basically the same for some 25 years. I love it.

 

[kenobi65]

I've been playing SW d20 since it came out, and while the prospect of getting critted *is* scary...it just doesn't seem to happen that often, at least not in my experience.

I've played 60+ Living Force adventures, and seen my PC drop into WP damage less than a dozen times. He's been critted maybe 6 times, tops. (And, there's little or no dice-fudging in there...almost all of the games I've played have either been online with a diebot, or with a F2F GM who rolls in the open). I've never seen a PC killed in combat in all those adventures...nor have I seen a large number of "important" bad guys get critted by us.

In fact, I can tell you that the single biggest cause of PC death in Living Force (not that there's been a large number, anyway) is a module that allows PCs to choose to sacrifice themselves for a noble cause. (The module is still active, so I shouldn't say more.)

That said...we haven't been playing at very high levels (the highest-level PCs in Living Force are just reaching 12th level), and while we've got some combat monkeys among our Jedi, maybe they're not as tricked out as they might be (esp. with Improved Critical). Maybe it's different when you get up into the levels where Jedi are doing 5-6d8 damage.

I've also been DMing for our home SW game...and the experience has been similar.

As others have posted, Toughness and armor are your friends.

 

[frankthedm]

In a typical combat (lets say 6 PC Jedi vs 6 slightly less leveled Sith) We average 5 crits between the parties involved.

That sounds like a climatic fight for a star wars, a situation encountered once the droids, goons and shlubs have been dispatched. If thats a typical fight, then yes i too would hate the game. Light sabers SHOULD be lopping off limbs [GREAT house rule BTW, consider it yoinked] and beheading people on lucky hits. If that style of play has depopulated the ranks of the Sith and Jedi Academy, the system has succeded.

 

[ForceUser]

I like deadly systems because they promote tension and drama, which has the nice side effect of instilling a sense of mortality to a game. When combat is unpredictable and one good hit can drop anybody players will learn to plan more and utilize more skills and strategies as opposed to Smashdoor gaming, which bores me to tears.

I find that high fantasy doesn't go well with one-hit kills. I dislike WP/VP for this reason. I certainly don't want to put tons of effort into developing a cool character just to have him offed by freakish luck on the monsters' parts. By the time I'm on my third character, I'm far less inclined to put effort into a backstory. :\

I enjoy the risk of death for stupidity, which hit points models just fine. One hit, dead? Pass.

 

[Herobizkit]

I'm not familiar with the SW system, but I can't help but wonder... if a hero can use action points to confirm a critical hit, can't the same heroes use their action/force/whatever points to automatically undo a critical against them?

Next, I have to disagree with the notion that a higher lethality rate makes for a poor RPG. The RP in RPG stands for role-playing. Star Wars isn't about the Jedi duels or the big ship battles... it is chiefly a movie about "morality" and politics whose characters are swept into the Empire's foul plans and put in a position to stop them somehow. That said...

I'm of the opinion that if you don't want to die, don't get in a fight. If you want to mop up every enemy without breaking a sweat, play D&D , or get your Game Master to lump VP/WP together into one stat. Seems an easy fix, really...

 

[genshou]

Pledge of Tyranny is a high-magic D&D campaign which uses vitalty/wounds. My solo player and I both love the rules, and the increased lethality is the best of the "more realistic" weapons for our style of play. I take it even further by requiring a d% roll to determine hit location anytime wound damage is dealt, and then having various things happen as a result. Called shots are even allowed.

While this does lead to more randomness, that's how I like it. While I'm going to use d20 Modern hp style for my online Arcana Evolved/Elements of Magic game, I'm going to stick with VP/WP in all my modern/future campaigns for as long as I GM.

All it really boils down to is that it's a matter of preference, and of understanding why D&D uses its style, and why Star Wars doesn't.