What's your experience with WP/VP?

[Hunter Simon]

I'm considering introducting WP/VP to my D20 Modern games to try to give firearms some actual firepower. I'm sick of mid-level D20 Modern characters laughing as they get shot at with AK-47's.

What are your experiences with WP/VP, either in D20 Modern or in its default system, Star Wars? Does it help increase deadliness of firearms (and combat in general)? Worth doing?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

You can get pretty much the same effect through A) Reducing the Massive Damage Threshold and/or B) Increasing the Fort Save DC of the Massive Damage Save ... and/or requiring a MDT Save on all critical hits, regardless of actual damage done.

VP and the MDT system are, effectively, the same sort of thing ... occassionally bullets "hit home" in vital areas and even though you got shot with that .22 pathfinder five times before and kept coming, that last one hit something important.

I use my "Save on a Critical" variant and will be using upped MDT save DCs in my next game (MDT Save DC = 10 + 1/2 Damage).

I know I didn't reply to the question posed, but I thought I'd address the reason BEHIND your post, as stated in the first sentance. WP/VP is a fine system, but it's all just mechanics to model the same EFFECT, so if you don't want to go changing all of the damages on your firearms etc etc you might think about some other types of house rule that are more transparent to the rest of the d20M system.

--fje

 

[takyris]

I like it, but I advise caution. The variant as posted in Unearthed Arcana didn't exactly do it for me -- I was fine with most of it, but the "And then, at 0 WP, you save or become unconscious" bit resulted in somebody getting trounced for 25, 28, and 22 points damage (when already at 0 WP) by a Cloud Giant, making his Fort 15 save each time, and hanging on. We joked that he was stuck to the Giant's morningstar and was just getting bounced up and down on the ground.

Beyond that, I'd say that you should watch out when doing encounters. If you combine WP/VP with "I'll throw a lot of bad guys at them to keep them excited", you can accidentally make things less than fun for the team. I recently put the heroes in a ballroom with eight or ten 6th-level ordinaries with rifles looking down from a gallery. I'd wanted scary, but what I got was frustrating, after a few unlucky criticals resulted in lots of people grumbling about stuff. In the hit point system, it might have been different, but as it was... less than fun.

(Note: The riflemen were supposed to be a "Run Away" situation, but that didn't work out well for the group... they, uh, didn't run.)

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

(Note: The riflemen were supposed to be a "Run Away" situation, but that didn't work out well for the group... they, uh, didn't run.)

If the PCs didn't run away when they should have, they hardly have the right to be frustrated with you...

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

B) Increasing the Fort Save DC of the Massive Damage Save ... and/or requiring a MDT Save on all critical hits, regardless of actual damage done.

I really, really, really like this. And since I, personally, am not a big fan of major house rules, this seems like a nice "tweak".

"MDT save on all critical hits, DC=20. Fail? Reduced to -1 hp."

Word!

 

[takyris]

If the PCs didn't run away when they should have, they hardly have the right to be frustrated with you...

Well, that wasn't the whole story.

The whole story is that this was the first session of a new campaign, but also the last session for awhile for one of our players, who's taking some night-school classes and won't be around for awhile. We were already ready to have the first session, and then he announced that he could make it this one last time -- so it was decided by general agreement that his character would get killed sometime during that session. (The player gets his guys killed all the time through good roleplaying -- he's a tactical genius, but will say things like, "Well, if I tumbled past these guys, opened the door, and then used Heroic Surge to fire a single shot at the computer system, I think I'd be fine... but that's not what my character's 8 Int and 9 Wis tell him to do. So I'm gonna charge.")

He was supposed to hold off the charging guardsmen (this is a Renaissance game, 3-Musketeers-ish, with d20 Modern rules) and get the riflemen to concentrate on him while the rest of the party fled. But the rest of the party also engaged the guardsmen, and then a few unlucky crits brought a couple people down, and you know how that goes... "Oh, Bill's down, we must run back through the withering rain of rifle shots to rescue him while massive guards with claymores swing at us up-close!"

Just enough unlucky crits for everyone to go, "Gosh, it's easy to die when we're using VP/WP..."

 

[Ranger REG]

Just enough unlucky crits for everyone to go, "Gosh, it's easy to die when we're using VP/WP..."

Cover is your best friend.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

WP/VP not the same as a lowered MDT

The effects are not quite the same. I like the fatigue if you have no VP or any WP damage (if you have both then I like to apply exhaustion). The only problem with VP/WP is balancing it with the amounts of damage in D&D (or Modern). If a touch-attack spell is used then a critical with it can kill a character.

 

[Ranger REG]

Then you need to tweak the spells to accomodate the VP/WP system. Unlike Star Wars and Spycraft which is built with the VP/WP in mind, you need to make adjustments in order to make the VP/WP conversion into HP-based game complete.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

As Ranger said. VP/WP involves alot of conversion. All damages, every NPC you come across, any spells you use, every weapon you use, have to rebalance touch spells (as you bring up), etc etc.

Tweaking the MDT system is far more transparent. You KNOW what it's going to do, and all of the things produced for D20 Modern are using, effectively, the same rules as you are. Just my observation about using d20M stuff, anyway.

As far as Exhaustion and whatnot goes. I use combined Subdual/Nonlethal damage from D&D/D20 Modern ... I.E., accumulating nonlethal damage with a MDT save for instant knockouts. Nonlethal inflicted by exhausting things causes fatigue if/when I want it to, etc. So far I've only used that for spells. (Imported the CoC spells to d20Modern and reworked the Alternity magic system as well.)

--fje