Its Official: I HATE Vitality/Wound. You?

[Psion]

And those are?

1) Invincible hero syndrome. Players with full HP don't fear crossbows, or in severe cases, leaps off of cliffs, etc.
2) Up or down syndrome. Heroes low on HP suffer no apparent penalty until they are very close to death.
3) Hardy old sage syndrome. In traditional D&D and similar syndromes, high skill rank = high level = a significant amount of HP. Star Wars (frex) allows you to make an old scientist that never gains vitality over the day that they graduated high school.
4) Hard to heal syndrome - a great hero who is taken to near death status is harder to magically heal than an inexperienced one. Yet their natural healing time is the same (the above are just hiccups AFAIAC; this is the one that really buggers with me.)

Note here that I am not saying that HP systems don't have their advantages; I use them myself. I am saying these are things I frequently consider when it comes time to house rules, variant systems, etc., and when it comes to evaluating how suitable different variant rules are.

 

[Ranger REG]

I know my experience is atypical, and fairly unlikely, but it can happen. And when it does happen, it is very, very lame.

Yep, very atypical. Lucky I'm not in your gaming group.

 

[genshou]

20th-level D&D fighter with all appropriate magical gear vs. 10,000 orcs, all 1st-level warriors: An easy win for the Fighter, unless you use combat exhaustion rules

20th-level D&D fighter with all appropriate magical gear vs. 10,000 orcs, all 1st-level warriors; using vp/wp: Same as above. Nothing the orcs can throw at him will overcome his phenomenal, magically-augmented armor DR.

But what happens if we throw in a critical multiplier variant designed to work with vp/wp? He's screwed. As he should be.

I can't imagine the party in Pledge of Tyranny performing the braggadocio I've witnessed in many a D&D character, including some of my own. They can hold their own in fights, especially against mooks (who have no vp), but against anything above their own size category? They're more cautious. I hope no one gets mad at me for this reference, but I like to think of Peter Jackson's LoTR as a visual representation of vp/wp. Here we have a large number of high-level characters, all fearing even a single hit from a cavetroll. And you'll notice that anytime someone gets hit in the movies, they're dead or at least severely incapacitated. This is the kind of setting I wanted in Pledge of Tyranny, not one where the Fighter stands toe-to-toe with a purple worm without worry.

 

[genshou]

As for Star Wars, I too dislike how lightsabers cause the holes in vp/wp to appear. I've always wanted a house rule that would prevent death at some cost to the player. Consider the one presented here, featuring loss of limb, stolen.

 

[Quasqueton]

I've never played with VP/WP, so I have no experience with it. But I'm interested in the concept (for games other than D&D), so I've been reading this thread with interest.

It seems to me that the "VP/WP haters" use much more/mostly hyperbole in their complaints, and the "VP/WP lovers" use more precise anecdotal support.

If you folks were debating for the hearts and minds of those thinking about using VP/WP, the "lovers" would be winning. I'm just sayin'....

Quasqueton

 

[kenobi65]

precise anecdotal support

Q, you made the market researcher in me laugh. I know what you meant (and I agree with you, for what it's worth), but in research, "precise anecdotal" is a contradiction in terms.

 

[scourger]

We never had this problem in Star Wars. In our first game the problem was that some of the other players turned it into D&D in Space. My first character was crushed by a starship, and the second was Force-gripped to death (I think). Luckily, it's gone unplayed for a while. The current all-jedi game hasn't had the crit issue (but the GM may have missed it)--but it's all-jedi so we exhaust every other possibility before combat.

This discussion has made me wonder if VP/WP could "save" mt last D&D camapign. Now, to unearth some arcana and ponder...

 

[Ace]

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.

I agree with this. WP/VP turns the game into Rainbow 6 or Thief Dark Project rather than a Conan movie

In thi system (at high levels) a fighter or rogue has roughly a 1 in 10 chance (or better with certain weapons) of killing anyone with a shot -- instantly

Lets say you have a group of bad guys 1 5th level Rogue per each party member with a crossbow with +1 keen bolts, a MW rapier and a few other minor items. Running the numbers you have 50% to kill 1 PC in the surprise round -- than another 50% chance you will lose another in the responce round.

Thats much too much body count and it that makes players far too paranoid. I don't mind this in GURPS (where players are easy to incapacitate but harder than you would expect to kill) or even Buffy where Drama points can bail you out, but in D&D -- not so cool. Its too err clumsy and random

 

[humble minion]

Late to the party here, but in my group's experience the WP/VP system produces the 'every fight in dangerous' feel quite nicely. But the ultimate effect is hampered by the other problems in the d20 SW system. Attack bonuses far outstrip defense bonuses at higher levels, making almost every attack a hit and almost every threat a critical. There isn't an 'avoid crit' use for Force Points (unlike Eden's much superior Hero Points system as used in Buffy). Threat ranges are too easily increased through Improved Critical and various prestige class effects. Poison (which requires WP damage to take effect) is useless while stun damage (which bypasses VP and WP entirely) is overpowerful as written. Stacking lightsaber damage bonus dice mean that any lightsaber crit at higher levels is almost guaranteed to be fatal. And so on and so on.

Our group has house-ruled a lot of these issues, and we now have something that, while it's not really Star Warsy, at least functions ok. There are still problems - the attack/defense imbalance is the biggest one, but every system has it's issues. I'm not sure the VP/WP rules (taken in context with the rest of the ruleset) are cinematic enough to do justice to Star Wars, but for creating a genuine sense of threat and deadly combat, they work admirably.

 

[kenobi65]

useless while stun damage (which bypasses VP and WP entirely) is overpowerful as written.

Yes! You want to talk about something that's busted in SW, it's stun. They even revised it substantially in the RCRB, and it's still busted. Even Living Force had to create a house rule on stun, because it was just too good.