Tweaking Grim & Gritty

[ViciousPenguin]

I and a friend of mine, whom we shall call D, have been play testing the Grim & Gritty system and have found a couple of issues with it that we need ironed out. We have some thoughts of our own regarding them, but I suspect that some of you have seen these issues as well and have found other, reasonable solutions for them. So please, share with us your wisdom.

Issue 1: Continuous Damage

It seems that some jamoke wearing full plate (Soak +8) could stand shoulder to shoulder to a magmin all day without having to worry about the monsters Fiery Aura (D6 heat damage per round). Likewise, if a 9th level wizard bad guy fired a Melf's Acid Arrow at this jamoke, he'd never feel a thing despite the acid burning and dripping its way into his armor for 4 rounds. Should this guy be immune to continuous damage from these energy sources? I don't think so.

One possible solution I've considered is subtracting armor and natural armor bonuses from Soak for all continuous damage after the first round. D doesn't see eye to eye with me, though. He brings up the example of an earth elemental taking damage from a relatively small fire starting the 2nd round, which seems rather absurd to him. He thinks that natural armor (but, perhaps not 'normal' armor) should resist energy damage for several rounds; perhaps 1 round per 4 or 5 points of natural armor.

Your thoughts?


Issue 2: Undead & Construct Soak

Skeletons, zombies and other undead, having no constitution score, have a relatively crappy Soak. It seems to me that the undead should be a little bit tougher than that. (The standard game gives them D12 HD for a reason.) What can / should be done to toughen them up?

My thought was to give all undead a +5 'racial' bonus to soak.

Constructs run into the same problem. Maybe they should be given extra soak based on their size. How about +1 bonus soak per 5 bonus hit points they would have received in the old system. Thus: small +2, medium +4, large +6, huge +8, gargantuan +12, colossal +16

Maybe you have some better ideas.


Issue 3: Temporary Hit Points

Another friend of mine brought up the point of temporary hit points as a potential system breaker. I saw no problem with it - just treat them as temporary 'pips' and carry on - until he pointed out vampiric touch. 10D6 extra pips?!? That is a system breaker! D suggested to me that temporary hit points should be turned into temporary soak, to be applied before other kinds of soak. Every time you are hit for 'X' damage, 'X' points of temporary soak go away. Now vampiric hit points don't last so long, but Aid and other spells still provide a useful function. Does that sound like a good solution?


Issue 4: Magic Missile

Several people I know believe that magic missile has always been a 'broken' spell. Now, under the Grim & Gritty system, it's absolutely nerf. Is this a Bad Thing? Should it be fixed? How?

I'm currently leaning against changing the spell, simply because I don't want to make more changes to the system than I absolutely have to. Does this spell NEED to be changed? I think not. D seems to believe that wizards need magic missile and need it to work. Is he right?


Thanks for your consideration of the above. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Grim and Gritty was designed to work in a low-magic world. Almost of all of your issues come from magic-related imbalances that introduce themselves into the game when you take away hit points.

 

[Fieari]

Low magic, yes (or even maybe). No magic: not. In the example text for the rGnG system one of the characters is a mage (and gets smaked down, but that's because said mage was attacked via melee, which more or less settled the issue instantly). Dragons are also referenced with regards to their fire breath. So I do think that taking a look at magic is worthwhile. In fact, I'm of the opinion quite a few spells need at least to be tweaked. You can have grim & gritty but still have magic... the magic just has to have the same gritty feel. Example: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Very Gritty, quite Grim, still has magic.

So.

ISSUE #1:

The thing about continual damage is that while it does very little per round, eventually it's going to get to you. This is easily simulated in the standard HP system, because an HP doesn't neccessarily have anything to do with physical health at all. Since rGnG doesn't work that way, something clearly needs to be done. Here's a thought:

Instead of changing how defense works, which is annoying and complicated and can be calculation intensive, or at the very least clutter up your character sheet more, why not change how the damage works for continual damage? I'm thinking that each round of continual damage should do the previous round's damage AS WELL...

So let's say our 9th level caster fires off his Melf's Acid Arrow against our warrior with +8 soak. The first round, he takes between 2 and 8 damage, but since his soak is 8, he ignores it all. The second round, he takes between 4 and 16 damage, but soaks 8 of that... so there's the possibility of taking between 0 and 8 pips of life. Ouch!

And things just get worse from there.... next round we add another 2d4, so the rolled range is now 6 and 20, making actual damage between 0 and 12 pips. On the final round, it's still POSSIBLE for this guy to avoid damage-- if all 8d4 land on 1. But in the worst case scenario, on round 4, he's taking 16 pips, killing him now.

This makes continual damage something to be feared all of a sudden. Which I think is right and just for the spirit behind the spell. As a DM, I'd make there be some way of dealing with this acid before it started dissolving my flesh... like taking off my armor for instance...

Now, this may break energy resistance, so I'd say that energy resistance increases for each round of continual damage as well. Only fair, and I don't think too hard to deal with. If our warrior had traded in his armor (+8 soak) for a +5 amulet of Acid Resistance, things would have gone like this:

1st round: 2d4 damage, -5 resistance = 0 - 3 pips.
2nd round: 4d4 damage, -10 resistance = 0 - 6 pips.
3rd round: 6d4 damage, -15 resistance = 0 - 9 pips.
4th round: 8d4 damage, -20 resistance = 0 - 12 pips.

And of course, this resistance would stack with armor, so the armor plus the amulet would mean he wouldn't have to fear the arrow at all, which I think is fair enough.


ISSUE #2:

For undead, "Racial" soak could work, but I think the thing that makes undead REALLY scary is that they're just as combat effective when barely hanging on to unlife as when they were first raised. That means that no matter how many pips of damage they have, they suffer NO combat penalties.

I would use a combination of the two ideas.


ISSUE #3:

Hm. Well, Vampiric Touch can't heal you more HP than the target had. So, if you kill your target, that's a MAX of +15 extra pips. That doesn't seem too bad to me, esspecially since you need to get past your target's soak here, AND it's a MELEE TOUCH ATTACK! Remember: MAGES DIE IN MELEE IN THE GNG SYSTEM! It's practically a forgone conclusion! If somehow you can survive this, well, it's a vampiric touch. Loads of flavor here... you get temporary survival abilities that you sucked out of your victim... +15 worth. Actually, come to think of it, that +15 isn't going to help a mage in melee much anyway.

For other forms of temporary hit points, why not consult the healing chart rGnG offers, and compare. Looks simple enough to me.


ISSUE #4:

I've given MM some thought myself. The main thing about MM is that it's supposed to be garaunteed damage... it never misses, it's a force effect so it hits even incorporeal, bypasses SR...

I would treat MM as if it was an automatic critical, meaning that you can choose to ignore armor or whatever. Which makes sense... aim the missiles at the target's face or whatever. And MM makes for another reason that mages should be feared on the battlefield. Remember in WoT, the guys in the borderlands said that Moiraine would be worth a hundred soldiers or more, just herself. Fits the mood GnG is looking for.


Hope this helps.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Altered GnG(r)

Glad to hear from some other players.. I am prepping to start a campaign with the rules and have not had the opportunity to do more than theorize-test.. not that useful

Issue 1: Continuing damage: IIRC, energy damage avoids any Armor based soak, so in the case of the Fiery Aura, he better have a high CON! If I am wrong about that, Fieari's suggestion looks good...cant seem to find my original copy of the rules...
Using The Elements of Magic rules, continuing Acid can be washed/scraped off by taking a Full Round Action.

Issue 2: Undead and Constructs: IMC, these guys are not affected by thier wound level penalties.. so they can keep on fighting to the bitter end.
I also have added a row of pips, making the total number 50 but once you have more than 20 lost you must make Fort saves or pass out ala CP2020. Undead and Constructs don't have to make these saves either. The combination turns them into very dangerous combatives and allows the players to be a bit more 'heroic'.

Issue 3: Temp HP: I can see it work either way.. as temp Soak or as temp pips.. the concept of temp pips could be interesting, possibly granting a 'super-healthy' bonus opposite of the wound penalty...

Issue 4: Magic Missile: Auto-Crit sounds very resonable.. {snag}.....

 

[Fieari]

My players have just reached the level where they're dealing more than 4 dice of damage at a time now, and have reminded me that dice above 4 should be changed into flat plusses to damage. So I'd better redo my chart...

+8 Soak
Round 1: 2d4 = 2 to 8 - 8 = 0 to 0 pips
Round 2: 4d4 = 4 to 16 - 8 = 0 to 8 pips (average 2 pips)
Round 3: 4d4+2 = 6 to 18 - 8 = 0 to 10 pips (average 4 pips)
Round 4: 4d4+4 = 8 to 20 - 8 = 0 to 12 pips (average 6 pips)

Maximum Damage taken: DEAD and then some (30 pips)
Minimum Damage taken: 0 pips
Average Damage taken: 12 pips (painful, but livable)

+5 Energy Resistance
Round 1: 2d4 = 2 to 8 - 5 = 0 to 3 pips (average 0)
Round 2: 4d4 = 4 to 16 - 10 = 0 to 6 pips (average 0)
Round 3: 4d4+2 = 6 to 18 - 15 = 0 to 3 pips (average 0)
Round 4: 4d4+4 = 8 to 20 - 20 = 0 to 0 pips (average 0)
(Any future rounds will also deal no damage)

Maximum Damage taken: 12 pips
Minimum Damage taken: 0 pips
Average Damage taken: 0 pips

This looks a lot better to me. Compared to magic, Armor SHOULDN'T be as effective a damage reducer against sustained elements. It is a little weird the way the maximum damage goes up and down with the resistance, but... eh... it works, and it's simple.


Oh, and about auto-crit on MM... I've ruled that none of the "Disable XXX" effects work unless the spell actually deals DAMAGE, meaning that against most foes, the crit of choice is "Bypass XXX Armor"... generally natural armor because that's what they come across the most. On rare creatures, the soak is low but the defense is massive, in which case the player can break that creature's arm or leg or knock it out with a blow to the head or whatever.