Lets debate the pros and cons of Wound/Vitality-points vs. Massive-Dmg-Threshold

Nifft said:
IMHO, the best balance between a "realistic" and "heroic" system is a hybrid SWd20 and D&D.

- VP/WP
- Crits go straight to WP
- Armor as DR (only vs. WP damage)
- High crit multipliers bypass DR (x3 -> 5, x4 -> 10)
- Class-based Defense bonus, which is limited by armor.
- Many mooks don't have any VP at all, just WP.

This models several situations:

1) High crit ranges are great against the unarmored.
2) Armor is great for mooks, less great for heros.
3) High crit multipliers are great against armor (punching daggers, axes, picks).
4) You can wear down a hero, and you can cleave through mooks.
5) Crits are still exciting.

-- N
Personally, I'd rather use Unearthed Arcana "Armor as DR" rules rather than the SW d20 Revised "Armor as DR." UA offer both bonus to Defense/AC as well as DR value for armor stats. I also would like to apply DR to damage vs. VP as well as damage vs. WP.

Of course, the disadvantage of VP/WP System is when it comes to large creatures with large hit dice. Note that just one point of damage to WP from a successful critical hit automatically makes the creature fatigued. Good for humans, sucks for giants.
 

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Generally speaking, here's what I've run into:

HP/MDT: People who take little bits of damage over the course of the day several times end up being low on hit points, which is kind of a bummer when a real fight rolls around. In a game where I as the GM wanted something more realistic, it was tough to come up with reasonable areas of injury -- I could do it, but it took work. And there was always the "Okay, you are now 18 seconds from death... okay, now you're 12 seconds from death... okay, now you're -- wait, you made your save. Okay, you were six seconds from death, but if Ol' Doc can stitch you up, you will be completely and totally injury-free in all respects inside of a week." I was trying to run an X-Files-style game, and nobody ended up with casts or slings... which I sort of wanted. Not that I wanted to screw over my players. I just liked that flavor, but it was never warranted.

On the other hand, unlike many, I enjoyed the MDT when it came to nonlethal combat. My investigators could slug people, grapple people, whatever, and never be in danger of really hurting folks unless they really tried to do so. A fight that included two agents, one amazingly tough and one trained in the martial arts, and three angry frat-boys, was both comical and fairly realistic, turning into an ugly, messy wrestling match in a hallway, right up to the point where the martial artist decided to start doing lethal damage and seriously slug people.

WP/VP: My experience is fairly limited, but I liked some of it -- the quick recovery of hit points that allowed me to model VP damage as near-misses and fatigue instead of light wounds was wonderful. There were times when the flavor-text was difficult -- when someone took VP damage from jumping off a building, we had to make an awning for his character to heroically bounce off of before landing on the hood of a car and groaning.

I don't like how VP/WP seems to result in the race to get the crit, but the problem is about equal to the MDT system's race to bypass the MDT and force the "save or go to -1" situation. Just based on flavor, I don't like games where th scimitar and rapier become the coolest weapons by default. I know that they might not actually be that much cooler, based on the lower damage and the fact that such lower damage might be soaked by armor, but if a rule causes players to think, "I should really use ____, unless I'm willing to take a less-good weapon for roleplaying reasons," regardless of whether or not that thought is accurate, then that's something that needs to be addressed.

With the MDT, I didn't see this as an issue as much -- d20 Modern weapons have enough tradeoffs (at least in the core books) that there's no one "best" weapon in all cases. There are some weapons that are obviously not as good, or that have only limited appeal (lousy but cheap, lousy but much smaller and easier to conceal, mediocre but can autofire, etc), but my players never found one weapon that was always the best weapon to use.

So fundamentally, I agree with folks who said that either system works well. Gut-level, if I were making a new campaign, I'd go with WP/VP if the campaign were low-magic or no-healing-magic and didn't have a good Surgery system. I'd go with MDT for a Modern campaign in which my characters weren't expected to be action heroes -- an X-Files campaign, an "if we get shot, we should hurt for awhile" game, that kind of thing. Of course, I'd also modify this by allowing someone to spend an Action point once they hit -10 to be "in a coma or suffering some kind of longer-than-one-week injury", so that I could better model the TV shows that fuel most of my campaign ideas -- where characters might get serious injuries (in a coma, broken arm, etc), but don't require a Treat Injury check (DC 30) by a Field Medic to save somebody who hits -10.

In an Action Hero game, where the hero should be able to whup a whole bunch of bad guys, even getting hit along the way, and still be fresh as a daisy when he runs into the end bad guy, I'd use WP/VP, since it allows for faster recovery times. Or I'd use the M&M injury system, which goes something like this, since you asked earlier:

(Note: I'm describing how this works in M&M, not how it works in Unearthed Arcana -- Unearthed Arcana is a bit of a kludge this way, in my opinion, and it's better to just wholly transition over to the M&M damage system if you're doing to use this type of mechanic)

-All attacks do a set amount of damage. A Longsword does +4 Lethal, 19-20 crit. A baseball bat does +3 Stun. A chainsaw does +6 Lethal. A rapier does +3 Lethal, 18-20 crit. You add your Strength bonus to damage like normal.

-Armor soaks damage. A chain shirt might soak 3, while plate might soak 7.

-Whenever somebody is hit, they make a Damage Save (which is a Con-based save that is like a Fort save but applies only to damage -- the Fort save stays around for poisons, diseases, and other stuff like that). The Save DC is 15 + (damage dealt to them). If the damage is reduced below 0, they don't need to make a save -- so good armor gets you out of a lot of save attempts.

-If you make the save, all is well. If you fail the save by 1-5, you take a Hit -- which means a -1 penalty on all saves. If you fail the save by 6-10, you take a Hit and are Stunned for one round. If you fail the save by 11 or more, you are unconscious.

The result of this system actually mirrors hit points or vitality points fairly well, and requires less math. People ignore a lot of hits, but as those penalties start to creep up (2 hits gives you a -2, 3 hits brings it to -3, 4 hits bumps it to -4), they come closer and closer to failing saves by larger amounts and being rendered unconscious.

It's a good system -- I've liked it a bunch as I've used it, and I've used it in both Superhero games and fantasy games -- but it requires a lot of fuzzy math or a conversion that makes your d20 Modern or D&D books less useful.

Really, any of these systems can be good. It all depends on the game you want to run.
 

Pbartender said:
Right, but the check for MDT is a flat DC 15, the more times an enemy has to make that check, the more likely they are to fail a check eventually, and more damage doesn't make that DC any higher (Though I like to house rule that). Once your weapon damage exceeds the MDT, there little point in inflicting more damage... Just make more attacks to force more checks.
There is always a big point in inflicting more damage: You can bring down the enemies hit points this way. Regardless of MDT or saving throws, you still apply the damage to hitpoints.
 

takyris said:
WP/VP: My experience is fairly limited, but I liked some of it -- the quick recovery of hit points that allowed me to model VP damage as near-misses and fatigue instead of light wounds was wonderful. There were times when the flavor-text was difficult -- when someone took VP damage from jumping off a building, we had to make an awning for his character to heroically bounce off of before landing on the hood of a car and groaning.

For the Star Wars W/VP system falling damage goes directly to wounds unless the character makes a successful reflex save (then the damage is applied to VP first).

I enjoy the W/VP system that star wars and the spycraft system use, it suits dangerous, cinematic, and heroic styles of play nicely. Though HPs are a near-identical mesh of Vitality Points and Wounds that mix every hit (taking damage) with a little bit of turning-aside-a-lethal-blow and getting-hurt-a-bit, works almost better in a sense. No crits and BAM, dead as with the W/VP system. Though I happen to like this sort of realism for games, but for an epic-style fantasy game HPs is definately the way to go, no quick one-shot crits to take down the heroes.
 

Ki Ryn said:
In something like M&M, each time you are hit you basically make a damage save vs the damage done. If you fail by a certain amount, then you are wounded. Fail by more and your are knocked out, dead, etc..

Each time you are wounded you take a cumulative penalty to future saves, so eventually you are going to fail and go down. You don't have any hit points, and characters often die with a surprised look on their face. :confused:

Is M&M system the same as the one found in Unearthed Arcana p.113 called "injury"?
 

Turanil said:
Is M&M system the same as the one found in Unearthed Arcana p.113 called "injury"?

MNM is similar to that, though MnM uses a separate damage save category rather than fort save. its close enough tho for my money i prefer having damage save as a different thing than fort saves.

TRhe upcoming Blue Rose rpg will use a damage save as well.

I have a little experience with MDT play, a bit more with a couple Wp/Vp and a lot more with damage saves. I basically expanded the MnM one (which is basically streamlined for four colors super) to use in my stargate game and it has worked wonderfully.

MDT: This is very fluid, as you can easily alter the MDT to give the feel of risk you want. MDT = Con is ok for some, MDT = 25 for others, and MDT = CON+LEvel works great for others. My main gripe is the "low percentage of hits that matter." Also, one thing I find helps give modern the feel is to have some extreme rule for surprise.

VP/WP: The ones i have tried left me cold. Stargate mainly but a few games of others. Even more of the "few hits matters" and the increased total hp makes the normal hp thing even worse. i did not find this giving me the "gunplay feel" at all.

DS: One of the things i like about these is the built-in shock effects. Any hit, not just the few "kill shots" can have an impact such as stunning you. For my own stargate game i expanded the effects a little more so that "most hits" have some impact as well as having the kill shot chance. Frankly, if being shot means its likely you don't get your next action, people take getting shot seriously.

So, if you are looking for good gunplay feel and flavor, i find the damage saves to be the better choice for me, heads and shoulders above the wp/vp and MDS.

If limited to wp/vp and MDS... i would choose a variant of mds.
 

Turanil said:
Is M&M system the same as the one found in Unearthed Arcana p.113 called "injury"?

Basically yes. Look in the middle of takyris post above for more details. UA suggests the bizarre step of rolling damage and then converting it to the injury system modifier which would just slow stuff down. Better to just make all conversions up front.
 

I like DMG saves, having just ran a very nice Nocturnals session where my players all decided they loved the system.

That said, it's alot of work converting and it doesn't map to the system as-is. You can't really take a short sword and say: "It does X damage, so it should have a +X DMG Save DC adjustment."

A 14 Str gives you a +2 modifier. In Modern that's +2 hp of Damage or the average of a 1d4 damage dagger.

In a DMG save game that's 2/3 the damage of your average handgun (+3).

If you map DMG Save DC Modifiers for weapons like the Unearthed Arcana system says to (5 points of damage = +1 DC) then most weapons average out at DC +0 or +1. If you take a note from the M&M books, then most weapons convert back doing 2x and 3x the damage they would in a "normal" game.

Basically it means throwing out all source material and winging it. If you're comfy with that, it's fine.

Damage Save can also be very touch-and-go. Last night's game, for instance. In a gunfight one Skerrl (with a +9 damage save) went down in the first shot fired on a flubbed damage save (rolled a 2). A zombie (not using mook rules, for added effect) in the first battle was still standing with 15 rounds in him (many saves to no effect, and 6 hits in him before he missed a save). It's a system where you find, very often, a battle can go something like this for the PCs:

No effect, No effect, No effect, Disabled.

Or, more commonly, a couple of stunned results and a disabled, leaving them having done nothing in the fight but get wailed on and go down.

That "Stunned" rating comes up an awful lot, and if it crops up at the begining of a combat, you're usually toast. More often with my badguys, who often never got a chance to act more than twice in a six round fight.

--fje
 


HeapThaumaturgist said:
That said, it's alot of work converting and it doesn't map to the system as-is. You can't really take a short sword and say: "It does X damage, so it should have a +X DMG Save DC adjustment."

Very true. And feats/abilities like power attack and surprise strike can become very, very effective. In a hp game these might nicely boost up yr average damage per round, but in a DMG Save game it can boost your KO% from 5% to 50% on each hit.

hobgob said:
thats when you bring out the hero and villan points

Word. In a game w/no hero points you might want to reset the base save DC to 10.
 

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