Vitality/Wound Points in D&D

[squat45]

Ok all, this has probably been discussed here on the boards (I've probably lurked in a couple of the threads), but I have a question about vitality/wound points as presented in the Unearthed Arcana rulesets.

I am starting off a new campaign in a week or two and I would really like to try out this system, been reading some of the Talking the Talk and Story Hour forums here (mostly Star Wars) and the system seems to work really well. Anyways, I'm getting a few concerns from my players that the system could be deadlier than normal... especially considering that I like to use giants, ogres and trolls quite a bit and the high damage capacity on a critical can very well be deadly.

For anyone using the system in D&D (not Modern or Star Wars where it seems to be the default setting), what are your thoughts? Any issues? Also, what did you do about:

1) Really big creatures, did the doubling (or trebling) of wound points really make that big of a deal
2) Regeneration, this seems even nastier than normal regenerating creatures.
3) Undead and the like

Your thoughts are much appreciated. If you used it and ran into problems or house-ruled some things, please give me some details. For reference, the characters are starting off at 4th level and I run a fairly low-magic (especially arcane magic) campaign.

Thanks in adavance all...

 

[Thanee]

It will only work well, if you completely rework the threat ranges for every weapon, I think.
The critical hit range, especially with Improved Critical and similar abilities, is just too high.

It should rather be like 20 is normal. 19-20 is extremely good and 18-20 is the absolute maximum possible, or something along those lines.

Bye
Thanee

 

[squat45]

Ok, so...

So for example, a longsword (normally crits on a 19-20) should only crit on a 20 and a Rapier would crit on a 19-20? Could see where this might help, but what about the differences inherent in how they balanced weapons... a longsword was better than a mace mostly because of the critical range... but it was balanced with longsword needing to have martial weapon proficiency... but, I'm also going to use Weapon Groups so maybe this is all moot anyways.

I've already house-ruled that Improved Critical/Keen only add 1 to the threat range (Sharpness, is an improved Keen and adds 2, Deadly is an improved Sharpness and adds 3)... so even a keen longsword would crit on a 18-20... but I also allow Keen and Improved Crit to stack... so maybe a few changes will need to be made...

I'm really looking more to find out if the high damage dealers (giants and the like) really blow the system out of whack. By the time that the characters get to be 8th level or so, they will probably not be fighting too many creatures with Keen weapons or even improved critical... but that could change.

 

[Thanee]

So for example, a longsword (normally crits on a 19-20) should only crit on a 20 and a Rapier would crit on a 19-20?

See, that's where the problems start...

With that system, threat range becomes far more valuable than a simple +1 in average damage.

So the Rapier would be way superior to the Longsword and should then be turned into an exotic weapon, for example, to justify its advantage.

And so on... I really don't think there is an easy and balanced solution.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nifelhein]

I am using a variant Vp&Wp system on my Midnight game, I implemented it on the middle of the last session (which lasted 10 hours) and we had two combats with it. Basically I have reworked the UA system because regenration made the creature immortal and I thought having nonlethal damage was the right way to go.

I strongly advise having the Vp&Wp rules be used with armor as Dr and class defense to Ac, although I have made a different progression for Def that stacks with armor. I also revised the rogue core class based on Star Wars classes and PrCs. All in all i can say it comes out great, the group is 5th level.

I can say it sure improves the deadliness of combat but also, it does not go that much into the direction, softening criticals can be one idea, although a rapier has a good threat range it does not go a long way against a good DR from armor, for example.

I personally believe stacking effects and having them increase the threat range by 1 i okay too. Sure it is not a perfect fit for D&D< but I believe it comes up pretty well, and all the 4 players on my table agreed with how well they fared.

You can check my house rules on this thread on AtS.org Midnight fansite, there is a pdf for each one of them and some discussions on them. I have lowered the base daze Dc for taking Wp to 5 plus modifiers, by the way.

Cheers,

Nif.

 

[Thanee]

...although a rapier has a good threat range it does not go a long way against a good DR from armor, for example.

IIRC critical hits (in UA) bypass DR.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nifelhein]

Thanee, they bypass damage reduction bassed on the material of a weapon, thus Dr/- or based on alignment and magic are not bypassed.

 

[Thanee]

Ahhh... ok.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Several other things need to be done with the UA wound points system to make it work:

1. Wound points need to go up as characters increase in level. High level monsters routinely deal 20+ points of damage per hit. If you want the wound points to be something other than a binary: "you got critted--you're dead or unconscious, if you didn't you're fine" mechanic then you need more wound points than con normally allows. I suggest Con+character level myself.

2. You need to reign in the damage that PCs and NPCs deal on their crits. For instance, a typical 4th level fighter will deal 2d6+7 points of damage per hit. On a crit, that's an average of thirteen points without power attacking. A raging half-orc barbarian at that level could easily be doing 2d6+10 points of damage or more. That kind of damage puts critical hits into the binary range as well. One crit and you're down. Add in Power Attack, bardsong, or other bonusses and combat will simply be a matter of who crits first.

My suggestions for dealing with this: Apply only base weapon damage and enhancement bonus to wound points on a successful critical hit. Under no circumstances should you apply Power Attack damage unless you REALLY want the falchion to be the only weapon worth wielding in your game. I would suggest also limiting sneak attack damage on crits to +1 wound point per die of sneak attack.

Using this suggestion, you sould probably have crits deal hit point damage as normal in addition to the wound point damage without breaking things. You could also probably safely retain the full range of D&D crit qualities from 18-20/x2 to 20/x4 since crits from a x2 weapon are tide-turning but not necessarily combat ending while 4d6 wound points from a heavy pick hit is much more likely to simply be combat ending.

3. The fort save DC to avoid being stunned is too high and the duration of the stun is too long. One round of stunning is quite sufficient to be a tide-turning event. Multiple rounds of stunning essentially takes a character out of the combat.

4. You need to figure a fair method for resolving wound points due to critical hits from weaponlike spells. Critically hitting with a shocking grasp would do 5d6 wound points--and almost no-one has that many. Critting with a scorching ray is similarly combat ending in a way that it shouldn't be according to the core rules. (And worse yet, it gets three chances to crit per casting at high levels). Crits with disintegrate and meteor swarm are supposed to be combat ending so those don't bother me so much.

5. The pricing and prerequisites for crit related items and feats would need increasing.
I suggest:
Keen +2 enhancement bonus
Light Fort: +2 equivalent
Moderate fort: +5 equivalent
Heavy fort: non-existent

Power Crit (Complete Warrior Version): Prereq: Weapon Focus, BAB +8
Improved Crit: Prereq: Power Crit, BAB +12

You might also want to up Keen Edge to Sor/Wiz 4
Bless Weapon is problematic. It definitely gains a lot of power in this rules revision, but it's one of the few 1st level paladin spells worth casting so it hurts to revise it. I would probably increase it to Pal 2 but give paladins some other kind of spellcasting boost to make up for it--maybe let them cast at full paladin level instead of half (which would make Divine Favor a lot better) or add some good non-core spells to the paladin list.

6. If you're using any non-core auto-crit abilities like those found in some Arcanis classes and val bloodline abilities, eliminate them immediately. (Come to think of it,

 

[boredgremlin]

Thanee, they bypass damage reduction bassed on the material of a weapon, thus Dr/- or based on alignment and magic are not bypassed.

I did this like starwars and spycraft did. The armors DR is pretty high, but it only covers wound pts and only armor peircing weapons were able to bypass part of it. One side effect was at first players didnt take armor because it seemed like a waste because it didnt protect VP. However after they died with a few critical hits they coughed up a few bucks for armor.
As to giants and such being lethal. Yes they are. But i dont think thats bad. Afterall a man who is 15ft tall and over 1,000 pounds just hit you with a really big baseball bat. Sounds pretty lethal to me. I allways thought big creatures should be more dangerous then they are. And the system from modern and star wars etc.. is designed for games with some pretty high damage weapons, it works okay for them. It should work okay in any D&D campaign too, as long as the armor is DR.