Vitality Dice: A damage variant

[AverageCitizen]

In some home brews I've enjoyed having armor DR expressed as a die roll to represent coverage/hit location... Sometimes the blow catches you full on in the joint, other times it glances off the breastplate.

However, we already have rolling DR, and adding more rolls would slow things down more. Probably not worth it.

I somehow missed that vitality dice add proficiency. I'd assumed CON. I think I like proficiency to it more than CON or DEX... Agree that DEX gets too good otherwise.

Question: does heavy armor prevent applying DEX to defense?

If so, defense is even more laughable, which I'm not a fan of... Heavily armored Warriors were absolutely still able to avoid blows. But if it doesn't, then the only penalty for heavy armor is stealth, don/doff time, and RP concerns. That's actually plenty for me and my standard group, but it's worth bearing in mind.

This gets into a whole new debate about AC, because Defense for unarmored characters is just like AC and in RAW heavily armored characters don't add Dex to AC, which rustles a lot of feathers. I didn't add that part, it just got translated over. I feel like adding Dex to Defense for heavily armored characters would make heavy armor proficiency much better. In D&D, heavy armor needs to be balanced. Although, really, the weight and inconvenience of heavy armor should be a much bigger drawback than it proves to be in D&D, and heavy armor was just better.

 

[MostlyDm]

Well, except that in D&D AC in heavy armor gets pretty good. Being hit is a lot harder. Your Defense caps out at 15, 17 with a shield... A full 3 points lower than AC in D&D, and with way fewer paths to get there. Ignoring specialist stuff like Defense (because I don't know how that will be expressed in his system... Bonus Defense or bonus damage reduction?)

In general, damage mitigation, while excellent, is not as good as avoiding a hit entirely. So in this system, being hit is much easier, and that will have serious consequences. I'm not sure the Proficiency parry is enough to compensate, but maybe it is. If there's a 3 point difference as mentioned above, proficiency certainly can exceed that difference by 2X. Maybe that's enough.

One more thought, about HP. Using CON doesn't sit super well with me; it incentivizes odd stats which is kinda against form, and creates a very large spread of potential HP; between3 and 20 for most PCs.

Consider using a flat base of either 10 or 15, modified by CON. This creates a spread of just 9 points, from -4 to +5 CON. If I use this system it's probably how I will go, but it's more a stylistic choice than a mechanical one.

 

[MostlyDm]

I still love what you did here. I've been playing around with some ideas, and I'm probably going to run armor as providing a supplementary pool of Armor Dice, used similar to Vitality Dice (though I'm just keeping the Hit Dice name). Except, I'm thinking they'll have a fairly large pool, but a limit to the number of dice that can be used on any given hit.

Still considering the specifics, just wanted to reiterate my thanks for your work on this. Very cool stuff!

 

[StuckInTheEther]

I am using a simple wounds/vitality system.

Health points are equal to CON score and don't change. Hit points level up as usual (I call them "stamina" for flavour).

Most damage goes to stamina first. When stamina runs out, damage goes to health points. If the character loses health points from an attack I have them roll on the DMG lingering injuries table. This creates a buffer between 1hp "I'm fine" and 0hp, crap I'm dying.

I also allow some things to affect health points directly, such as falling/lava damage, making them deadly at higher levels. I also make some lethal poisons go straight to health points (although I have to reduce the poison damage so as not to kill outright). That way poison is feared at all levels.

 

[AverageCitizen]

I still love what you did here. I've been playing around with some ideas, and I'm probably going to run armor as providing a supplementary pool of Armor Dice, used similar to Vitality Dice (though I'm just keeping the Hit Dice name). Except, I'm thinking they'll have a fairly large pool, but a limit to the number of dice that can be used on any given hit.

Still considering the specifics, just wanted to reiterate my thanks for your work on this. Very cool stuff!

Thanks! And both of those are good ideas. I'll have to think about them...