Weapon Threat, Crit. Multipliers, & the VP/WP system

[Wolfspider]

In my Middle Earth conversion (the one I'm always jabbering away about), I've decided to use the VP/WP system that was introduced in Star Wars (and seems all the rage these days).

I was just wondering what I should do about weapons. A weapon with a small threat range and a large crit multiplier will really suffer in a system that ignores crit multiplier (normal damage being applied to WP in case of a critical instead of multplied hp/vp damage).

What should I do? Give all weapons increased threat range? Increase damage? Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Ranger REG]

The simples solution: ignore critical hit damage multiplier.

Alternatively, you have to decide for each weapon if you want to increase threat range or give a x2 critical hit damage multiplier to Wound (I think this multiplier is more than enough when using the VP/WP system) ... or perhaps both.

 

[Wolfspider]

Any other suggestions?

 

[Darkness]

Look at Star Wars for an example:

knife - 1d4, threat 20 (D&D dagger - 1d4, threat 19-20)
vibro ax - 2d10, thread 20 (D&D - all axes have a x3 multiplier)

So I'd say just drop it.

 

[Rinndalir]

Here's what I did - leave your crit ranges the same, and reduce all the multipliers by 1 - so a longsword becomes x1, and a battleaxe becomes x2. The highest base multiplier you'll have will then be x3 for say a scythe (or a mercurial greatsword ). Apply your crit damage as normal to WP, except on your x2 and above multipliers, only multiply the damage dice so that your greataxe (for example) does 2d12+bonuses in WP. This keeps the simple/martial/exotic distinction in the weapons without making them too terribly deadly - if you multiplied the bonuses as normal, it'd be overkill. This way, an axe or a bow remains a viable threat to dropping someone in one hit.

I also had to nerf Improved Critical and Keen a bit to where they only reduce the crit range by 1, no matter the weapon. Again, if you keep it as is it's too deadly (SW doesn't even HAVE Imp Crit or Keen).

Another thing I'd suggest is cut the number of sneak attack dice for a rogue (or anyone else who has it) in half. That way, you end up with about the same amount being thrown about in SW, and you can just apply sneak attack to WP directly like they do.

Overall I'm very happy with this system - it puts the danger back into combat, that's for sure. It's easy for someone to drop but harder for them to actually die (if you follow the SW rule that you make a Fort save vs. 10 if you run out of WP, that is - most characters can make that unless they just blow the roll). One thing I'm still working on is whether or not a spell should inflict some kind of WP damage if you fail the save against it, if it's a damaging spell. Seems to me like it should but I've yet to come up with a good way to handle it.