Wound-Vitality systems and death risk
- Thread starter Lanefan
- Start date
It doesn't upset me at all--if it did, I'd be a lot more snarky and sarcastic. I'm just saying, I don't see what the narrative aspect has to do with whether WP/VP is more lethal than standard hit points.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Some people use the narrative frame to inform/interpret the mechancal results, thus (for example) disallowing that a snake which fails to actually hit you can poison you, disallowing the use of CaGI to lure salmon from a stream, and so on.
In these case, narrative aspect becomes relevant because a VP/WP system might actually limit when certain monster/character abilities come into play. In effect, in games where narrative trumps mechanics, the narrative meaning becomes the most important part of the rules.
RC
Fair enough. But in that case, we're moving away from the rules as written to consider how those rules were/are applied in actual play... which is a very slippery topic, since every table applies the rules differently, particularly in early editions.
I mean, just going by my own experience, pre-4E hit points were narrated as wound points, pure and simple. No table I ever played at treated them any other way. A DM of my acquaintance told me a story about when he tried to apply that "hit points are luck and skill and so forth" paragraph in game; so he would describe a (mechanical) hit as a near-miss and so on. The players all looked at him like he'd lost his marbles. He went back to the "wound point" narrative after one session.
How would any narrative frame for pre-4E hit points make them less lethal than WP/VP? (Assume WP/VP is being narrated in a way that doesn't involve anything bypassing vitality; I think everyone has already agreed that bypass mechanics can make WP/VP extremely lethal.)
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Raven Crowking
First Post
Perhaps.
But one can easily imagine hard-coding such a system into a game's RAW....so that certain special attacks only come into play when WP are taken. In this way, VP/WP could actually act as a potential buffer between some effects that would normally bypass hit points.
Likewise, one might argue that the "healing surge" mechanic in 4e, or the "Shake it Off" mechanic in RCFG, is essentially similar to a VP/WP system, where the mechanic acts as a buffer rather than to make the system more lethal.
Whether or not VP/WP makes a game more, or less, deadly is (IMHO) entirely dependent upon how easy it is to target WP. YMMV.
RC
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Of course I can! The snakebite scratched him/nicked his skin and thus introduced the poison.
Vitality/wounds (or however it is named) doesn't use vitality to say 'oh, 5 vitality was expended to avoid taking and real damage' which seems to be the way you take it (?). It in no way precludes nicks, scratches and so forth in the process of avoiding wound damage.
No case to answer here mate!
Remathilis
Legend
Then how did the armor protect him?
Its times like this I prefer the simplicity of AC and HP: both are abstract enough to account for armor absorbing a blow, luck, mettle, and defensive posture, etc without having to spell it out like Defense/Vitality/DR/Wound does.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
AC is nice and simple. No need to mess with it.
With hit points, it's handy to have some way of differentiating [easily-fixed nicks, scratches, fatigue, luck] from [hard-to-fix serious physical damage] both mechanically and narratively. A WP-VP system, in whatever skin it may live, does this nicely.
As for the snake example, 3e might have an answer: if the snake beats your full AC it does damage *and* possibly poisons you. If it beats your touch AC (or a variant) it doesn't do enough to represent game-terms damage but it nicks you just enough to potentially poison you.
Lanefan
Krensky
First Post
Simple solution.
If you don't overcome DR, you do no damage or special effects unless the effect specifically says otherwise.
