VP/WP for d20 M?

[ledded]

It's not from guns that you have to worry, it's for when you go up against that dragon at higher level that does mondo damage.

Personally, I'm a bit indifferent towards WP/VP. I'd just as soon use HP and a massive damage threshhold equal to the characters CON score. Effectively it works the same as WP/VP with the exception of healing speed (assuming little to no magical healing.) However, with beefed up Treat Injury the way d20 Modern does it, I don't think that this causes any undue concern.

So, I'm not against VP/WP, I just don't see how they really add anything to the mix that d20 Modern's interpretation of HP doesn't already do quite well.

Yeah, it really doesnt offer that much, but we have found it works pretty well.

It models actual injury vs. 'getting banged up' pretty well vs. just straight hit points. If you are reduced to 1 VP but havent taken wounds, you've been banged up and are worn out, but with a little rest you'll be ok. If you are reduced to 1 WP, you are seriously injured, and unless you get to a hospital soon you will probably be out of it for a while.

At mid-levels (4-8) it's a bit more cinematic while still modeling the process fairly well; you can take some damage, but a lucky shot or concentrated fire will take you down pretty quickly if you dont get some cover. However, on average a single shot from a .38 isnt going to put your guy out of action for a week unless you get a crit. Note that we play in a low-magic world, and most healing is done the old fashioned way; only one character has healing 'magic', and it's not very powerful.

With the static save on Massive Damage, at higher levels most people have set up their character so that they will rarely, if ever, fail. So if you have 70 hit points at level 9 and a fort save of +8 or so, it just doesnt seem to be that much of a threat, especially when you can toss an Action Point out when you really need to. If you dont metagame, it's more realistic, but it just seems way too easy to grab a feat or two and a level or two of tough and be pretty much in the clear.

I guess the 'increasing damage' could really be though more of as 'increasing threat level'. You dont do much more damage with a glock at 1st than at 10th level, but at 10th level the bad guys will probably have bigger guns at their disposal. You have the chance of running into really big beasties like dragons, etc that can do a lot of damage. We havent run into that yet in our games (and probably wont ever), but it may be a problem when a crit from a creature can do 40+ points to your WP, which is not survivable except by the toughest of high level tough heros.

Of course melee weapons with increased crit ranges used by people with power attack, weapon specialization, and higher strength at higher levels will eventually out-pace smaller firearms in damage potential, but that just makes the mooks wielding them much more scary to face for us. A 1st level ordinary with a wrench and a str of 10 isnt very threatening to a guy with a glock, but a 9th level strong hero with a keen katana and a slew of feats with it is a frightening opponent indeed, and darn well should be... if you dont pop him before he gets to you, you are most likely going to end up like an extra in a John Woo film.

Eh, to each their own. I like both, but I like WP/VP a little better because it fits our lower-magic realism game while still being cinematic enough to make it fun, and tough enough to make it tense at times. I dont see any real faults in the massive damage system other than it can be a bit too easy and too tempting to meta-game around most of the threatening bits, pretty much ruining the threat of guns against higher level opponents.

 

[Vigilance]

I prefer MDT over VP/Wp because of how easy it makes it to "dial in" your genre. As someone who runs both gritty special ops games, fantastic hong kong kung fu, and even a SHIELD-esque campaign from time to time, I find I am able to alter the MDT to make the game more or less cinematic, while still using the same NPCs (a mercenary with a 25 MDT suddenly seems a lot more Hydra-esque to the players).

So, while I think the rules sets accomplish the same things, I find MDT to be more elegant and easy to work with.

Chuck

 

[Desdichado]

Another thing to keep in mind relative to critical hits; if you eliminate the multiplication of damage, then you've eliminated the distinction between a number of weapons. If you keep it, any weapon that does x3 is a virtual death sentence on a crit, and is thus a very desirable weapon to own. There are a few tricky issues to porting VP/WP into a more D&D-like game. Not nearly so many for a modern game, of course.

 

[ledded]

Another thing to keep in mind relative to critical hits; if you eliminate the multiplication of damage, then you've eliminated the distinction between a number of weapons. If you keep it, any weapon that does x3 is a virtual death sentence on a crit, and is thus a very desirable weapon to own. There are a few tricky issues to porting VP/WP into a more D&D-like game. Not nearly so many for a modern game, of course.

Yeah, I dont think I'd do VP/WP for a D&D game because the entire differentiation between weapons is based on how the HP system works.

In modern, ignoring the multiplier or applying a much less scaled multiplier on weapons that do x3 or better works a little better (but not perfectly) because you are essentially descreasing the power relative to the power/ease of modern firearms at causing trauma and severe injury. Not to open that can of worms again... I know that getting your various parts cut off with a greatsword is just as bad as a penetrating chest trauma with a .38, but it's also much less *likely*, as firearms tend to make it a little easier to hurt people badly (if you were a guy with 8 strength and no training, which would you rather have?). My opinion only, of course.

 

[takyris]

In modern, ignoring the multiplier or applying a much less scaled multiplier on weapons that do x3 or better works a little better (but not perfectly) because you are essentially descreasing the power relative to the power/ease of modern firearms at causing trauma and severe injury. Not to open that can of worms again... I know that getting your various parts cut off with a greatsword is just as bad as a penetrating chest trauma with a .38, but it's also much less *likely*, as firearms tend to make it a little easier to hurt people badly (if you were a guy with 8 strength and no training, which would you rather have?). My opinion only, of course.

Not to dig into the can of worms you opened, but I'm not sure what your point here is. How is it less likely? Heck, I've swung a big sword and fired a gun, and without training, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. The fact that I didn't understand how to best use the sight, coupled with my tendency to pull the trigger rather than "squeezing the gun", with a healthy dose of flinching in anticipation of the gun going off, meant that my shots were absolutely pathetic. On the other hand, with the greatsword, all you have to do is swing. Anyone who has swung a baseball bat can swing a greatsword, and while it'll probably be less powerful and accurate than somebody who has trained, I think it has at least as strong a case as your average handgun.

Your untrained (BAB +0) guy with a Dex11 and Str8 is going to be attacking at -5 with the greatsword and doing 2d6-1 on a hit, or 4d6-2 in the unlikely event of a crit. He's attacking at -4 with the handgun and doing 2d6 on a hit, or 4d6 on a crit. So yeah, right there, the gun is a better weapon

This guy's chance of getting a massive chest wound on an opponent is about the same as his chance of lopping off somebody's arm, which is to say: negligible. Neither of those cases is even a simple crit -- it's a very high-rolling crit (say, 20 or above on 4d6) that takes an opponent immediately into the far negatives, most likely killing them outright. Remember that a crit with a greatsword that takes somebody to -5 is by no means an automatic kill, and your flavor text certainly makes it sound as though you think of it as such. This would imply that you are using improper flavor text, and then making rules assumptions based on said improper flavor text.

In any event, my personal opinion, as always, is that d20 Modern did a pretty great job of balancing weapons, and that any change you make (eg, adding a die to damage) should be made across the board. The average handgun is as dangerous as a greatsword, and can be used from a distance, and is also not all that great in the hands of an amateur, unless the amateur gets his victim to surrender based solely on the presence of the gun (as happens in real life -- ). And I think that that's both fairly realistic and good.

 

[shadowlight]

Just use it. You can easily take the rules from Star Wars or Spycraft and apply it over d20 Modern. Quite frankly, I think that the d20M's massive damage rule has an edge over the VP/WP systems.

I do like the massive damage, but I like the ability to use the VP as a "cost" for using FX abilities.

 

[shadowlight]

Oops double post!

 

[shadowlight]

Triple post! Can I go for a Post-Tacular?!

 

[shadowlight]

One ugly house rule I'll never use but love imagining is that you have a Fort save DC 15 whenever they do more damage than the target's Con, a Ref 15 save whenever they do more damage than the target's Dex, and a Will 15 save whenever they do more damage than the target's Wis. A Fort Failure does WP damage that directly bypasses your VP, a Ref failure takes away all of your VP in a single hit, and a Will failure causes you to become shaken for the next minute.

Woah. That's wild but really interesting. I like the Will save part.

 

[Ranger REG]

I do like the massive damage, but I like the ability to use the VP as a "cost" for using FX abilities.

You can easily do that by replacing d20 Modern nonlethal damage mechanics (IMHO, I find it sub-par) with D&D nonlethal damage mechanics. Just add the cost of the FX abilities toward nonlethal damage.