VP/WP in D&D?

[Quickbeam]

I dunno. As far as the people I've played with go, dishing out 40 points of damage on a single hit definitely means something. All the more when the guy on the other end only has 20 hp to start with.

Like I said above, I would actually be junking the SW method of handling crits. I don't want a guaranteed one-shot kill system. I want a system that _facilitates_ gratuitous violence, rather than curbing it.

Sorry...I forgot about your stated goal . My group has a fascination with the David and Goliath possibilities of one well placed hit winning or ruining the day. I can't say that I necessarily agree with them, but I have no problem honoring their wishes .

 

[hong]

No, I'd say usually 5% of attacks will be crit threats (most weapons are on a 20 only threat range) and not much more than 25% of those will actually be crits (unless my experience is off because I haven't played enough high level.) That means that 1.25% of your attacks will be criticals. Unless you're having significantly more than 100 attacks per session, you're not going to have more than about 1 critical hit per session. You've got to have a lot of combat, or long sessions for that to happen.

The most common weapons I've seen so far (and this would probably be true of most people) are swords, which have a threat range of 19-20. Add in keen weapons and Improved Crit, and that goes down to 17-20 or less. In general, attack bonuses also tend to outpace AC, so that you hit more often over time.

You shouldn't even have to play at that high a level to see this. Even with a 5th-8th level group, I'd be surprised if you didn't see at least a few crits in a session. But then, yes, the sessions I've played tended to be extended ones...

I don't see how that matters. Armor didn't provide DR in Star Wars until the Revised book came out either.

Yeah, I'm talking about the Revised book. And as said, damage in D&D would tend to have a wider range than in SW. You get more wimpy hits from kobolds (which aren't a problem) and more big hits from giants and the like (which are a problem).

 

[Desdichado]

I haven't played much past about 8th or 9th level. But I haven't seen a proliferation of critical hits as we've gotten that far, either. Probably because the AC of our opponents has scaled with our attack bonuses.

 

[mmadsen]

Someone recently mentioned an interesting variation on Wound and Vitality Points. Instead of treating Vitality Points as Hit Points, rolled up as part of character generation, treat them more like Fate Points or Action Dice, as dice of damage you can avoid when you choose to.

For instance, our 5th-level Fighter might have 14 Wound Points and 5(d10+2) Vitality Points. If he gets hit by a sword, he can choose to use one or more Vitality Dice to avoid damage, rolling 1d10+2 per die and subtracting that from the damage he would've taken. Against a sword, he uses up a Vitality Die. Against a giant's club, he uses two or three.

This leads to a few points of damage sneaking through from time to time, so after a tough fight, our hero will be cut up and bruised -- as measured by Wound Points. And he'll be low on Vitality Dice, but those recover after ever fight (or after a few hours, or whatever).

 

[hong]

No HP is the big lie as it combines the 'miss me' factor with the 'Ouch that hurt' factor and the 'Bleeding all over the floor' factor all into one number.

D00d, they are both "big lies" (abstract methods of accounting for damage). VP and hit points are both variations on the Dude point system, where how mojo a Dude you are determines how much hurting you can take.

And I _like_ Dude point systems. If you don't, you shouldn't be playing D&D.

 

[mmadsen]

My group has a fascination with the David and Goliath possibilities of one well placed hit winning or ruining the day.

As anyone going by "Quickbeam" probably already knows, most combat in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings works that way. Smaug falls to one well-placed arrow. Legolas drops the Nazgul steed -- in the dark -- with one well-placed arrow. The Witch King falls to one Hobbit sneak attack and a follow-up sword blow from Eowyn. And so on.

 

[hong]

As anyone going by "Quickbeam" probably already knows, most combat in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings works that way. Smaug falls to one well-placed arrow.

Mang, I would just hate to have the future of the Lonely Mountain riding on rolling a natural 20 on that one attack.

Gaming and literature are different modes of storytelling, with different needs and restrictions. Get over it already.

Legolas drops the Nazgul steed -- in the dark -- with one well-placed arrow. The Witch King falls to one Hobbit sneak attack and a follow-up sword blow from Eowyn. And so on.

The Witch King can't have been a witch. Witches can't wear armour.

 

[coyote6]

If you use VP/WP with regular D&D crits (variable threat ranges & crit multipliers, damage comes off of VP), then what you have is basically the regular D&D system with two changes: natural recovery of most damage is faster (since VP recovery is per hour rather than per day), and dying is more difficult (instead of automatic death at -10 hp, characters will start saving to avoid death at -Con hp; and instead of being disabled at 0 hp & dying at -1, they'll be fatigued and maybe stunned at 0 hp).

That sounds fine to me.

It actually kind of solves some problems with using VP/WP with D&D (e.g., if I recall SW 1/e correctly, monsters basically had tons of WP, which worked okay in a setting where monsters were a bit uncommon & were basically mooks anyways. However, with D&D, monsters can & often are the big bad guys, and can have class levels & thus WP. Which means criticals vs. monsters are no better than regular hits, which seems unfair. However, with criticals working as per D&D, the difference between VP & WP are relatively minor, so it all works out).

Couple of questions remain:

How is subdual damage handled in SW? (my SW 1/e book is in a box in storage somewhere, doh) Did they even have subdual damage?

Assuming you keep magical healing (and I know I'd still want it, if I was a player), you have to decide how magical healing works with respect to WP damage. (I don't recall how Force Healing works in SW.) You could have cure spells work equally well on VP or WP, but that seems kind of lame. Seems like WP should be a bit harder to heal. A quick rule for cure spells would be healing 1 wound point per d8 the spell would normally cure.

That still leaves questions -- how would heal work? (Raises a related question: how would harm work?)

What about monsters (or PCs) with Fast Healing or Regeneration? Just treat it as working equally well for WP & VP?

how mojo a Dude you are

Shouldn't that be "mojoful"? "Mojo" is a noun.

 

[Uller]

I haven't played much past about 8th or 9th level. But I haven't seen a proliferation of critical hits as we've gotten that far, either. Probably because the AC of our opponents has scaled with our attack bonuses.

As you get beyond 10th level with ACs around the 20-25 range for monsters and attack bonuses for fighters starting to get up around 16-20, 3 or more attacks per round and crit ranges giving threats 20-30% of the time, it is not uncommon to have a crit every couple of rounds.

Think about it...12th level Fighter with 20 str carrying a +3 keen longsword with Improved Crit has a threat range of 15-20 and an attack routine of +21/+16/+11. He'll hit and AC 25 1.85 times per round and crit more than once every other round assuming he can do a full attack each round.

So you should definately see an increase in crits as you go up in levels.

 

[hong]

How is subdual damage handled in SW? (my SW 1/e book is in a box in storage somewhere, doh) Did they even have subdual damage?

No subdual damage, at least in the revised book. Unarmed attacks deal damage like everything else, they just can't critical unless you take the Martial Arts feat (which is equivalent to D&D's Improved Unarmed Strike).

Alternatively, you could say that VP _is_ subdual damage, in the D&D sense of the word. It comes back at 1 point/level/hour, and if you take too much, you get knocked out.

Assuming you keep magical healing (and I know I'd still want it, if I was a player), you have to decide how magical healing works with respect to WP damage. (I don't recall how Force Healing works in SW.) You could have cure spells work equally well on VP or WP, but that seems kind of lame. Seems like WP should be a bit harder to heal. A quick rule for cure spells would be healing 1 wound point per d8 the spell would normally cure.

I was actually going to rejig the cure spells at the same time:

CLW: 1d8 + 1 hour healing (1 pt/level)
CMW: 2d8 + 2 hours
CSW: 3d8 + 3 hours
CCW: 4d8 + 4 hours

Your suggestion of 1 pt per d8 for WP is basically what I was thinking of.

That still leaves questions -- how would heal work? (Raises a related question: how would harm work?)

Heal would probably be unchanged (heals all damage except 1d4 VP). Harm would take you to 0 VP, or maybe take off 1d4 WP at the same time.

What about monsters (or PCs) with Fast Healing or Regeneration? Just treat it as working equally well for WP & VP?

I haven't really come to a definite conclusion about these yet. I suspect you could just leave them as they are.

Shouldn't that be "mojoful"? "Mojo" is a noun.

Hey! Verbing nouns is a hallowed tradition.