UA: V/WP - what about this?

[Nifelhein]

Okay, I know it was taken from Star Wars, but reading the WotC website I found this small problem that is making me uneasy...

Damage Reduction

Damage reduction functions normally, reducing damage dealt by attacks. However, any critical hit automatically overcomes a creature's damage reduction, regardless of whether the attack could normally do so. For example, a critical hit against a skeleton (DR 5/bludgeoning) overcomes the creature's damage reduction even if it was hit with a weapon that does not deal bludgeoning damage.

So, a skeleton, that is normally immune to critical hits is not anymore when you use this system, is that so? If that is not the case, then the immune to critical hits creeps now have a larger damage threshold that they have penalties for being at?

Just hope those that play Star Wars can help, or else, someone who doesn't and already has an insight on how it works.

Cheers,

Nif.

 

[Piratecat]

While I'm not sure, I bet the folks in Rules might. I'll slide this over.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Well, in the VP/WP system, critical hits don't represent hitting a vital spot as much as it does actually HITTING. VP is dodging, near misses, glancing blows, etc. WP is the actual hits. So a critical hit would just be you catching the skeleton and hitting it before it could dodge.

Now, in SW, DR doesn't take effect on VP damage...only WP damage...which makes sense to me, but I guess D&D has a lot more DR so it would be near useless if it was only for WP.

 

[Ranger REG]

BTW, according to the excerpt, skeleton -- like all undead with no Con score -- don't have VP. All they have is WP (based on their HD). So, normal hit will apply to WP, but depending on the weapon, damage may be absorbed by the DR first. Critical hit, regardless of weapon you're using, will bypass DR.

 

[AeroDm]

slight hijack-

does anyone see the motivation for having crits ignore DR? This is basically opposite of what their other vita/wounds systems have done wherein DR only applies to wound damage (most often from crits).

This just seems a little backwards to me.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

slight hijack-

does anyone see the motivation for having crits ignore DR? This is basically opposite of what their other vita/wounds systems have done wherein DR only applies to wound damage (most often from crits).

This just seems a little backwards to me.

Well, it could be because DR isn't nearly as prevalent in other VP/WP systems...other than that? I dunno.

 

[Nifelhein]

Thanks for the move P-cat, I thought it should be here but was not so sure. Thanks for the answer too guys.

But what about those damage reductions that are /-, are they overcome too?

And as we are at it, this would happen with an elemental, plant or ooze, that is immune to critical hits and have a Con score? Do one with damage reduction takes teh DR out and suffers the damage or does it suffers it on VP?

It helped to have the missing and hiting idea, but it still bugs me a little bit... I never played Star Wars d20 and that system is completely new to me.

 

[James McMurray]

WP / VP is just a more complicated but more realistic way to express hit points. Hit points have always (up until the last couple of hits) represented the ability to narrowly avoid blows or shrug them off completely.

Sorry I'm not actually contributing to the thread much, but I had to get that out of my system, because I hate it when people are under the impression that getting "hit" with 15 arrows in D&D means that you now have 15 arrows poking out of your chest.

 

[Nifelhein]

No problem, I never actually pictured it that way, we made it be somewhat proportional to the damage dealt... it would scratches or a real shot in the chest depending on how mocu damage it pictured.

I am liking this system and the fact that I play Midnight makes it even better, but I am a little worried with teh body counts with this system, specially with the critical hits, if I got it roght one could be enough to kill most characters, is that so?

 

[James McMurray]

I am liking this system and the fact that I play Midnight makes it even better, but I am a little worried with teh body counts with this system, specially with the critical hits, if I got it roght one could be enough to kill most characters, is that so?

Under this system, Con will be a fairly important stat, so I'd assume most characters would have a 12 stat. That means they can take 12 wound damage before being in trouble. Without critical multipliers it is possible that a character would be killed by a crit, but not always gauranteed. In addition, there's the DC 15 save to stay alive (disabled instead of dead).

A few things would no longer make sense in that rules system. Ones that spring to mind immediately are the feats and items that allow one to continue fighting at negative hit points. Those should probably get converted to bonuses to the fortitude save and/or bonuses to your wound point total.

You might also consider removing Improved Critical and Keen from the game, since they can give a Scythe wielder a 13-20 crit range (11-20 if he's a weapon master, 9-20 if he's also a psychic weapon master). Unless of course you really want to mow through your characters quicly.

This system definitely fits better into a low magic setting IMO. In those campaigns healing is much harder to get, as are monstrous strength scores (at least for PCs) and heftily enchanted weapons (which almost gaurantee crit = kill).