New Unearthed Arcana info

[Green Knight]

OK, i've seen several posts now talking about the new rules in Unearthed Arcana that people are looking forward to, and there's one common thread that has me a bit puzzled: aren't all these rules already out? Is it really that much better if they're in a WotC book? You love the damage save from M&MM--so use it! Why do you need WotC to do the (rather minimal, in this case) conversion work for you? Now, i can see the appeal of having all these cool rules in one place, so if that's the appeal, i guess i see it. And, of course, there are likely going to be some new rules in there. But mostly people seem to be talking about ports of existing subsystems--why is armor-as-DR in Unearthed Arcana so much better than armor-as-DR in Spycraft? What am i missing?

Several reasons.

• 1. How would a Hit Die translate into a Damage save? I don't know how. Nevermind the conversion work necessary in converting weapons and spells to do Damage Save modifiers, rather than HP damage. That's hardly "minimal" conversion work. And that's just that one aspect by itself.
• 2. I don't have Spycraft, so I don't have their rules for DR armor. As a matter of fact, I don't have ANY book with DR armor.
• 3. I don't have any books with rules for magic cast with spell points.
• 4. I don't have any books with Critical Table rules.

I'm certain there're books out there that cover all that, but how much would they all run me, if I had to buy them separately? Is it REALLY worth it to spend $100 or so on various rules from various books which I'd THEN have to convert standard D&D into (Going through every spell in the PHB and assigning it a Damage Save penalty, etc) when I could just spend $35 and have all the work done for me?

 

[takyris]

Hey Woodsie,

Short answer: I'd rather it be in an official book, because then I can at least pretend that it's gone through more playtesting and rigorous thought in order to ensure that the rule change won't make an ordinary D&D game unbalanced in any way. Some rule changes are great for a particular world, but would ruin a normal D&D world -- or would work fine in that normal D&D world unless someone also used another seemingly benign rule.

I see the d20 stuff as being like the different GURPS books -- some of it shouldn't be crossed, either because two things already fill the same purpose through different mechanics, or because two things would build an uberpowerful combo that would ruin the game.

One thing I'd LOVE to see in UA is a note on "This rule will have the following balance effects... This rule change should not be used in conjunction with the following other rule changes..."

 

[ssampier]

Looks interesting; maybe. I'll wait until it's released and see how many people are happy/disappointed before biting.

Hope this "modular" concept is true. these variant rules are modular and can be imported into any campaign in any amount desired.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've seen multiple people comment on the Damage Save mechanic from Mu&MI. I'm not familiar with it (don't have the book yet). Could someone provide a brief summary? I don't want the nitty-gritty details, just a basic description of what the system is/how it works.

Thanks.

 

[d4]

re: Damage Save:

all characters have a damage save based off of Constitution, much like a Fortitude save.

attacks, instead of doing random dice of damage, have a single damage value.

if an attack hits, the defender makes a damage save with a DC = 15 + damage value of attack.

if you fail, you take a "hit" which gives a penalty to further damage saves. fail by a lot, you may be stunned for a round or knocked unconscious.

 

[Mouseferatu]

re: Damage Save:

all characters have a damage save based off of Constitution, much like a Fortitude save.

attacks, instead of doing random dice of damage, have a single damage value.

if an attack hits, the defender makes a damage save with a DC = 15 + damage value of attack.

if you fail, you take a "hit" which gives a penalty to further damage saves. fail by a lot, you may be stunned for a round or knocked unconscious.

Interesting. And death happens, when? When your damage save penalties accumulate to 0? If you fail the save by an unholy amount?

 

[Green Knight]

To get a little more specific...

There are two kinds of damage. Stun Attacks and Lethal Attacks. So an attack would be listed as something like +7L or +10S to represent how much damage it does and whether it's a Stun or Lethal Attack.

As d4 pointed out, Damage Save is modified by Con. So someone with a Con of 14 has a +2 Damage Save (There are other ways to improve the Damage Save, but off the top of my head, I can't think of any ways to do it in D&D). So let's see you get shot by a rifle which does +7L. The Difficulty is 15 + the damage modifier, in this case 7. So you need to equal or beat a 22 with a d20+2 roll.

So you roll your save. Depending on how you roll, it affects what kind of injury you sustain. For Lethal Attacks, if you fail the roll you're Injured (Which gives you a cumulative -1 to future Damage Saves against both Stun and Lethal Attacks). If you fail by 5 or more points then you're Stunned (Same as above, except you're also stunned for 1 round, and so can't do anything for 1 round. You also lose your Dodge Bonus to Defense and attackers gain a +2 to hit you). If you fail by 10 or more then you're Disabled (The equivalent of being at 0 HP. Any strenuous activity on your part will reduce you to Dying. More on that in a bit).

For Stun Attacks, you're either Bruised (Which is like Injured, except that those Damage Save penalties don't apply against Lethal Attacks), Stunned (As above), or Unconscious (You're knocked out cold. Further Stun attacks against you while you're unconscious count as Lethal).

Two other physical conditions are Dying and Dead. When you're Dying, you have to take repeated checks with an ever increasing Difficulty to avoid death. And Dead is, of course, death. You're gone.

There're also optional Damage rules for when you fail your Damage Save by an exceedily large margin. For instance, when failing a Damage Save against a Lethal Attack by 15 or more, you're Dying. And when failing it by 20 or more, you're instantly killed. Personally, I like these optional rules. But that's just me, of course (Though I imagine that, if Unearthed Arcana has the M&M Damage Save rules, that they'll include those Optional Rules as Standard, too. After all, D&D's supposed to be a lot bloodier than your average super-hero campaign).

But anyway, I like the Damage Save rule as a whole. It's quick and easy, and depending on how badly you're hurt by an attack, the injury can inhibit your ability to continue to fight. As opposed to the current HP system, which is an all-or-nothing deal. If you have 100 HP's and take 99 points of damage, then you're fighting ability isn't affected. Isn't until you take that one extra point of damage that you're affected. And after that, it'll only take one more point to knock you out.

 

[Green Knight]

Quick Note: According to the M&M FAQ, an attack which does damage against someone who's Disabled shifts his condition to Dying. An attack against someone who's Dying shifts his condition to Dead (The attacker, though, has the option of forcing a lesser effect on the target, like Unconsciousness, instead).

 

[d4]

the base rules in M&M make it rather difficult to kill someone, but that suits its genre well (4-color superheroes).

 

[Green Knight]

the base rules in M&M make it rather difficult to kill someone, but that suits its genre well (4-color superheroes).

Yeah. That's why I like those Optional Rules presented in the sidebar in the combat chapter. I prefer super-hero games bloodier, with heroes and villains actually dying. And of course, M&M doesn't solely have to be used for Super-Hero campaigns.