Quasi-Playtest: OSR Fighter

[GMMichael]

If anyone feels like thinkin' 'bout stuff, I have a quasi-playtest for you. I'm tinkering with my OSR Fighter class, and want to give it 4 hit points per level. It, like all other characters, gets base hit points equal to CON score. Armor works normally (increasing AC), but to utilize it you must use one of your three actions per round. Otherwise, all damage gets through.

Also, damage dice are more or less capped at 1d12, and you can spend about 1d6 per level, per day, to regain hit points.

Does 4 HP per level make the fighter too squishy?

(Bonus) How do you see this affecting combat?

(Double bonus) How do you see this affecting adventures?

 

[Yora]

What does everyone else get per level?

 

[MattW]

It seems a little odd that armour requires an action. I can see that using a SHIELD or a PARRY might need an action but something like chainmail should have an effect even if the wearer isn't expecting an attack. Could you explain the thinking behind that choice? Also, I can see Yora's point. How does this compare with all the other classes?

 

[Marc_C]

Armour question: If four opponents attack the fighter in the same round what happens? He blocks once with AC and gets hit three times for full damage?

 

[Aelryinth]

If anyone feels like thinkin' 'bout stuff, I have a quasi-playtest for you. I'm tinkering with my OSR Fighter class, and want to give it 4 hit points per level. It, like all other characters, gets base hit points equal to CON score. Armor works normally (increasing AC), but to utilize it you must use one of your three actions per round. Otherwise, all damage gets through.

Also, damage dice are more or less capped at 1d12, and you can spend about 1d6 per level, per day, to regain hit points.

Does 4 HP per level make the fighter too squishy?

(Bonus) How do you see this affecting combat?

(Double bonus) How do you see this affecting adventures?

4 hp per level is equal to a d7 for Hit Dice. Fighters are supposed to be tough because they do get hit and take damage more, getting into melee. Thus, I think it is low. More hit points is the 'magic' of the fighting classes.
My rule of thumb is primary melee, secondary melee, partial Casters, full casters, in terms of descending HD. I.e. a pure Fighter with no Casting is either a d10 or d12; a Fighter with partial casting is one die lower; a secondary melee, like a Rogue/Thief, is one die lower, and full Casters sit at the bottom of the stack at a d4 or d6.

So, a primary no-magic Melee character should be a d10 or d12; a rogue or Casting Melee should be a d8; a Casting rogue (like a bard) should be a d6, and a full Caster should be either a d4 or d6.
Yes, this makes Casters squishy. As I said, Hit Points are the magic of the fighting Classes.

 

[Yora]

Armour question: If four opponents attack the fighter in the same round what happens? He blocks once with AC and gets hit three times for full damage?

I think the old Star Wars d6 system actually does something like this. The number of actions you take in a round affects the difficulty for all those actions, so if you decide to dodge more enemy attacks, you have a harder time succeeding on the other stuff you still want to do that round.

 

[GMMichael]

@Yora Clerics get 3, Thieves 2, and Magic-users 1.

@MattW Active defense is the standard rule from the base game. I wanted it to carry over because it makes combat (decisions) more interesting. To nitpick, the mail you mentioned does jack and squat against a mace, doesn't prevent your knee from getting kicked in, and doesn't much prevent someone from ringing your bell. My hope is that armor (and shield) bonuses will give defenders a good chance to negate attacks, but Fighters will still have a distinct advantage with a steady increase in THAKO.

@Marc_C If four (non-defending) opponents attack the fighter, the fighter wants to 1) use her three actions to defend against the heaviest hitter, or 2) use her three actions to disable the most opponents before they can attack. There are lots of options, but fighting four opponents at the same time is generally a bad idea. Also, spending a hero point for 1d6 healing is probably going to be a non-action.
So let me ask, how did the fighter get so badly outnumbered?

@Aelryinth You make a good point - but it's hard to say how many hit points per level are enough for a No-Magic-Melee. As you saw above, I have fighters at 4 (hit points per level), Casting Melee at 3, non-Casting Rogue at 2, and Full Caster at 1. The numbers are, currently, ad-hoc. I could say that the spectrum covers the types of damage dice and their half (or full) values, so maybe a fighter should have 6 hit points per level (half a d12). For reference, here's how the weapons are set up:
d4: tiny or non-weapons
d6: light weapons (easy to carry)
d8: standard weapons (one handers)
d10: heavy weapons (zwei handers)
d12: special
So should the hardiest warrior have (about) four times the hit points of the squishiest caster? Or some other amount?

 

[Marc_C]

@Marc_C If four (non-defending) opponents attack the fighter, the fighter wants to 1) use her three actions to defend against the heaviest hitter, or 2) use her three actions to disable the most opponents before they can attack. There are lots of options, but fighting four opponents at the same time is generally a bad idea. Also, spending a hero point for 1d6 healing is probably going to be a non-action.
So let me ask, how did the fighter get so badly outnumbered?

4 kobolds maybe? They don't have to be life threatening opponents. It doesn't really matter. I wanted to know more about your system.

 

[Lanefan]

@Marc_C If four (non-defending) opponents attack the fighter, the fighter wants to 1) use her three actions to defend against the heaviest hitter, or 2) use her three actions to disable the most opponents before they can attack.

This is fine if the fighter reliably gets to act first, but potentially rather lethal if action order is random, or mixed, or (worst) if the opponents can reliably act first.

If nothing else, having to proactively use an action to get your armour going makes surprise a much bigger factor. Question: does using a shield require a second action to gain its effect? If yes, then sword-and-board becomes very sub-optimal.

In any case, my initial thought is that if armour is to be so much less reliable overall then unless you're specifically after a high-lethality (or very low-combat) game you'll want to jump up the hit point values for all classes. A lot.

A metric for fighters might be the number of hits it'll take for a given weapon to bring them down, and how this number changes as the levels go up, relative to the level. For example, if the average fighter starts at 12 h.p. and a longsword does an average of (I'll round this off for simplicity) 5 points per hit then it's going to take 2.4 hits to knock out a level 1 fighter: a 2.4:1 hit-to-level ratio.

Let's run that fighter up to 10th level. She's only gaining 4 points per level but the average weapon damage is 5 points. She's at 52 h.p. now as a 10th, meaning now it's going to take 10.2 hits to get her to 0, giving a hit/level ration of 10.2:10 - which when reduced means that 2.4:1 hit-to-level ratio has shrunk to close to 1:1. Put another way, the fighter is by this metric getting progressively easier to kill as she gains levels - are you sure that's what you want, when coupled with less-reliable armour? (note this decreasing ratio is a problem with any system where hit points are front-loaded at 1st level)

Compare this with standard D&D and its d10 per level for fighters. Here, the average point gain per level is slightly higher than the average weapon damage, meaning that while the fighter's hit-to-level ratio is much lower at 1st level (6:5, or 1.2:1) it stays there throughout and thus by 10th level outstrips your model above.

There are lots of options, but fighting four opponents at the same time is generally a bad idea. Also, spending a hero point for 1d6 healing is probably going to be a non-action.
So let me ask, how did the fighter get so badly outnumbered?

Bad luck, bad tactics, ambush, or intentionally (e.g. if fighting what appear to be mooks); and over the course of a fighter's career a situation like this is inevitably going to happen numerous times.

So should the hardiest warrior have (about) four times the hit points of the squishiest caster? Or some other amount?

I'm confused - elsewhere you talked about a no-magic system yet here you talk about casters. Which is it?

I ask because if there's casters and if those casters potentially have traditional area-effect damage spells then you might want to jump the casters up just a bit - even making it 1.5 / level instead of 1 / level could make a big difference.

 

[Aelryinth]

@Yora Clerics get 3, Thieves 2, and Magic-users 1.

@MattW Active defense is the standard rule from the base game. I wanted it to carry over because it makes combat (decisions) more interesting. To nitpick, the mail you mentioned does jack and squat against a mace, doesn't prevent your knee from getting kicked in, and doesn't much prevent someone from ringing your bell. My hope is that armor (and shield) bonuses will give defenders a good chance to negate attacks, but Fighters will still have a distinct advantage with a steady increase in THAKO.

@Marc_C If four (non-defending) opponents attack the fighter, the fighter wants to 1) use her three actions to defend against the heaviest hitter, or 2) use her three actions to disable the most opponents before they can attack. There are lots of options, but fighting four opponents at the same time is generally a bad idea. Also, spending a hero point for 1d6 healing is probably going to be a non-action.
So let me ask, how did the fighter get so badly outnumbered?

@Aelryinth You make a good point - but it's hard to say how many hit points per level are enough for a No-Magic-Melee. As you saw above, I have fighters at 4 (hit points per level), Casting Melee at 3, non-Casting Rogue at 2, and Full Caster at 1. The numbers are, currently, ad-hoc. I could say that the spectrum covers the types of damage dice and their half (or full) values, so maybe a fighter should have 6 hit points per level (half a d12). For reference, here's how the weapons are set up:
d4: tiny or non-weapons
d6: light weapons (easy to carry)
d8: standard weapons (one handers)
d10: heavy weapons (zwei handers)
d12: special
So should the hardiest warrior have (about) four times the hit points of the squishiest caster? Or some other amount?

Are there no hit point bonuses for Constitution? Because that will instantly change the ratios.
A no-magic rogue should be as tough as a Casting Melee. Seriously, having no magic means you're tougher. That's why I made the difference between a casting rogue and a non-caster. A rogue with no magic should fight better than a bard who does have it.
1 hp/level is not a lot of difference, equivalent to 1 Feat (toughness). If you think all that magic is only worth one feat, okay then?...