My Vitality/Wound System - Feedback Wanted

[shadow]

The homebrew d20 system that I'm designing is supposed to heroic and cinematic. The heroes will be able to take on large numbers of "mooks" and still be able to fight the big villain at the end of the day. Also I want to minimize "down time" spent on healing. Nothing breaks the flow of a game more than having to spend several days resting and healing to prepare for the next leg of the adventure. To that end, I'm using a vitality/wound point system. The rules work pretty much the same as optional vitality presented in the SRD or the first two editions of WotC's Star Wars rpg.

The common complaint with the vitality/wound system as presented is that combat can turn pretty deadly with critical hits. My solution to this is twofold:
1. Characters now gain an extra wound point per level after 1st (plus the bonus to constitution if positive). Therefore a 3rd level fighter with 15 Constitution would have 21 wound points. (15 first level and +3 each additional level). This gives characters more wound points, but nowhere near the amount of vitality they gain.

2. Characters can spend an action point to convert a critical hit into a normal hit.

In addition, attacks that add bonus dice of damage (such as the rogue's sneak attack), only do an additional point of damage when applying to wound points. (Thus a +3d6 sneak attack does +3 damage when applied to wound points.)

Of course, the game I plan to run is to be low magic with little magical healing. Resurrection is out of the question (although I'm thinking of possibly implementing a "cheating death" mechanic to prevent players from losing a favorite character to a bad roll).

Given the above information, what do you think of the rules that I've come up with? Do they seem too powerful or do they still seem too deadly? I welcome your feedback.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't increase wound with level, but the way you've done it is kind of slow, and thus not killing the concept while increasing survivability. I might reduce the con mod per level, as this gets out of hand at high levels and with big creatures (which already have a wp multiplier). The other rules make sense.

My issues with vp/wp were healing (I made cure spells heal a small amount of wound and inflict splls deal a small amount of wound, for instance), nonlethal damage (how does that work?), and special abilities (fast healing, regeneration, etc.) which are things the UA rules don't address well and thus you should probably have some rulings on.

 

[ValhallaGH]

The homebrew d20 system that I'm designing is supposed to heroic and cinematic. The heroes will be able to take on large numbers of "mooks" and still be able to fight the big villain at the end of the day. Also I want to minimize "down time" spent on healing.

Then Wound / Vitality isn't what you really want.
That system has two goals:
1) most damage is cinematic, allowing the standard d20 attack / damage rubrics without breaking the "feel" of the game (action heroes almost never stop to bind wounds).
2) keep heroes mortal, where a single solid blow (or long fall) can kill them, no matter how awesome they are.

You want the first but not the second. Which means that you need to go a different direction with it.
I'd recommend taking a look at the plans for Iron Heroes, Second Edition, which gives all heroes the same base hit points (1d6 + Con bonus per level) and adds a layer of heroic protection (5 + Class bonus [4 to 6] per level) as heroic hit points.
Heroic hits come back after a minute of rest (all of them, immediately). Actual hit points take standard healing times (X per night of rest), and characters can be running around with full heroic hits and 1 hp, fighting the big bad boss.
You can keep or discard the other heroic qualities as you see fit. I like them, since they reduce the systemic reliance upon magic, but tastes vary.

Good luck.

 

[Inez Hull]

I'm looking at trialing a new VP/WP system in my next game - pretty much per SRD but critical hits do damage to VP as per normal 3E but also do 1 point of damage to WP. The clincher is that any damage to WP results in a -1 penalty to all actions per point of WP taken. Usually this will be more of a concern once VP are expended but the damage from crits will mean they have an instant effect without being too deadly

 

[Mon]

I'm looking at trialing a new VP/WP system in my next game - pretty much per SRD but critical hits do damage to VP as per normal 3E but also do 1 point of damage to WP. The clincher is that any damage to WP results in a -1 penalty to all actions per point of WP taken. Usually this will be more of a concern once VP are expended but the damage from crits will mean they have an instant effect without being too deadly

I've tried a system similar to this (VP/WP as per UA except that crits, sneaks, etc deal just 1WP and cure spells restore 1 WP per spell level). No action penalties for being wounded, though.

It worked pretty well, I thought. None the less, I only used it for that one series (a mini-campaign of three adventures with the PCs at 3rd, 9th, and 15th level).

 

[Tranquilis]

I'm looking at trialing a new VP/WP system in my next game - pretty much per SRD but critical hits do damage to VP as per normal 3E but also do 1 point of damage to WP. The clincher is that any damage to WP results in a -1 penalty to all actions per point of WP taken. Usually this will be more of a concern once VP are expended but the damage from crits will mean they have an instant effect without being too deadly

Except for your extra damage to Wound points per critical, my group follows a similar houserule:

Criticals do damage to VP and not to WP. Once in WP, -2 To-Hit, can't run, and whatever else the SRD says =)

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed