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lesser_minion
2009-05-20, 02:33 PM
I'm trying to choose between several different damage systems to use in my games IRL, and I thought I'd ask for opinions from the rest of the playground.

What damage systems do you like best, and why?

A few examples that I've encountered:

Hitpoints and healing surges (or Reserve Points). Under this system, hitpoints become a measure of system shock more than anything - take enough damage in a short period of time and your character drops.At the same time, there is only so much a character can soak - even though most injuries are largely inconsequential. Traditional hitpoints, where one number tracks how close you are to death. Abstract, but very simple. The effects of running out could be death, incapacitation, or vary depending on an 'overkill' system such as the one found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Wound and Vitality Point systems. Characters have a store of Vitality Points which recover quickly, and once these are gone, or under certain other circumstances, the character loses Wound Points. Similar to damage box systems (e.g. the Alternity system). Threshold-based systems. Based on hitpoints, with the additional caveat that any attack dealing more than a certain amount of damage may have an additional effect - e.g. moving the character on a damage track or even dropping the character instantly as in Call of Cthulhu. 3.x D&D is a bad example of this, as Massive Damage exists only as a 'chunky salsa rule', rather than a major gameplay element. Injury systems, like the system from True20 - when you hit someone, they roll a saving throw against a DC depending on how hard you hit them. A failure causes penalties, with worse failures leading to other effects. A failure by 10 or more effectively incapacitates the character, while a failure by 20 or more is fatal. There are also table-based examples, which often combine with hit locations. Wound Levels. Similar to injury systems, but failing saves drops your character a level on a 'wound track'. The further down you are, the closer your character is to death and the more serious the penalties imposed. Doesn't feature in D&D to my knowledge, but older versions of Ars Magica use it. Hit Location systems - similar to other systems, but adding a table to determine where you were hit. One of the other systems is used to determine the overall effect of a hit to any given location.

shadzar
2009-05-20, 02:39 PM
I don't know if it really fits any of those, but I always thought of hit points in a more traditional manner. Meaning physical damage from being wounded. They heal slowly without magical assistance, and lost limbs don't lower your hit points, but are their own problems to have to be healed by non-natural ways.

Probably best fits into 3rd edition still healing/hit points..

The Rose Dragon
2009-05-20, 02:43 PM
M&M version.

Basically, it's like True20, only simpler and failing your Toughness save by more than 20 doesn't mean instant death.

RTGoodman
2009-05-20, 02:50 PM
Wound Levels. Similar to injury systems, but failing saves drops your character a level on a 'wound track'. The further down you are, the closer your character is to death and the more serious the penalties imposed. Doesn't feature in D&D to my knowledge, but older versions of Ars Magica use it.

Star Wars SAGA Edition uses something like that. I don't own the book, though, so I can't give specifics.


I'd say that I prefer Option 2 (HP and Healing Surges), but it depends on the game. In general, though, I'd go with it or Option 1 (Standard HP), since I don't really like VP/WP systems or Track systems.

Mando Knight
2009-05-20, 02:50 PM
Game-wise, I prefer 4E's system of set HP and Surges. Not because of any value they have or lack regarding to verisimilitude, but rather because they're easier to keep track of.

Xallace
2009-05-20, 02:57 PM
M&M version.

Basically, it's like True20, only simpler and failing your Toughness save by more than 20 doesn't mean instant death.

Whole-heartedly this.

I really can't think of a system I like more.

Morty
2009-05-20, 03:00 PM
I don't have much experience with health systems not based on hit points, but I'll say that neither the HP system from 3ed nor from 4ed pleases me. I like the one from 3ed more - it has a semblance of realism - but it's still not very good. It would work much better without HP inflating by level and with loss of HP having an effect on character's effectiveness.

Dentarthur
2009-05-20, 03:05 PM
This may sound like a cop-out, but it really depends on what kind of game you're playing. Take the list of options you gave, but put "HP and healing surges" at the top. You now have a scale going from "heroic and awesome" to "gritty and dangerous". At the heroic end, individual PCs are self-sufficient and can take on armies single-handedly at high levels. At the gritty end, even the toughest character must realize that he's putting his life in danger every time he goes into combat.

I greatly prefer the heroic end of the scale, and find the HP/surges mechanic to be excellent for that kind of play. Characters can prevail in fight after fight, and if it feels too easy then the DM can always send in tougher badguys or challenge the players in a non-combat manner. Nobody has to play a walking medicine cabinet, since everyone can recover wounds on their own (though having a healer still helps).

At the gritty end of the scale, I think the game is more about avoiding combat than prevailing in combat. The more you fight, the worse off you will be. This is the more 'realistic' style of play, where the world is dangerous and the game relies more on the players' wits than the PCs' abilities.

lesser_minion
2009-05-20, 03:11 PM
Take the list of options you gave, but put "HP and healing surges" at the top. You now have a scale going from "heroic and awesome" to "gritty and dangerous". At the heroic end, individual PCs are self-sufficient and can take on armies single-handedly at high levels. At the gritty end, even the toughest character must realize that he's putting his life in danger every time he goes into combat.

This isn't necessarily the case. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Dark Heresy use what amounts to a traditional hitpoints system, but nobody gets into a fight lightly in those.

At the same time, Exalted is supposed to be all about being heroic and awesome - but it uses a scale based on wound levels.

And I know some of the less complete homebrewed RPG ideas I've had used something very similar to the Healing Surges and Hitpoints system, but were still intended to be quite gritty.

I personally feel that it really could be more of a matter of personal taste than gritty realism, but I wanted to see people's thoughts and reasoning.

Doug Lampert
2009-05-20, 03:21 PM
I'm trying to choose between several different damage systems to use in my games IRL, and I thought I'd ask for opinions from the rest of the playground.

Which of the following damage systems used in d20-based roleplaying games do you like best, and why?

Traditional hitpoints - the pre-4e way, although regeneration mechanics can vary.

The problem with this is that it strikes most people as unrealistic. The advantage is that it's simple to track and understand. It's not even all that unrealistic if you avoid wierd corner cases and ignore the fact that whether a wound drops you in combat isn't neccessarily all that well related to its survivability. But if you're rating wound severity with one number, than some sort of HP is a pretty good method of tracking the results.


Hitpoints and healing surges (or Reserve Points). Hitpoints become the amount of punishment a character can withstand in a short space of time, with a separate stat tracking how much they can take over the course of a day. Long-lasting injuries are basically absent.

Longer lasting injuries can be fairly trivially added back in if you want them by allowing the reserve to regenerate at less than "everything back every night". Try 4th ed with recovery of healing surges being limited to no more than one per week and no more than your total number per year and you have slow recovery.

I always love that most game systems seem to claim that all long term fatigue (or game equivalent like lost HP/reserve) can be recovered by one night's rest in rough country. I can only assume the system's writers have either never actually been seriously tired, or they are grossly oversimplifying for gameplay and in game speed something which happens in down time and thus doesn't need much simplification.

In the real world mild fatigue from yardwork can still hurt days later, and something like an ultra-marathon can take weeks to recover from.


Wound points and Vitality points - VP recover rapidly and increase with level, but creatures can easily be felled by one mighty strike.

Only because they make it too easy to bypass Vitality Points. Every critical, bah! If you're going to do that you NEED to add a way for skill to substantially reduce the chance of the opponent criticaling. But then if you're doing that you have two mechanisms to represent skill at "not being badly hurt", vitality and crit avoidance, where either one would do if implemented whole-heartedly.


The injury system from True20 - when you hit someone, they roll a saving throw against a DC depending on how hard you hit them. Failing the save imposes penalties to further saves, failing it badly results in the character being stunned or dropping. Failing by 20 or more is instant death.

Tends to reproduce a HP system in that we have ablative damage that high levels can take more of but to be more complicated to execute and subject to more random noise. What exactly is the advantage here?


Wound Levels. Similar to injury systems, but failing saves drops your character a level on a 'wound track'. The further down you are, the closer your character is to death and the more serious the penalties imposed. Doesn't feature in D&D to my knowledge, but older versions of Ars Magica use it.

Problem with this is that it is actually less realistic than straight HP! Intuitively it seems like a serious wound "must" slow you down, but what evidence is available from actual life or death combat implies that adrenline letting you ignore wounds till you drop is actually more realistic! (Up to and including some people ignoring wounds that will kill them dead in a matter of seconds and keep coming, while others fall down from something trivial.)

And ignoring non-disabling wounds is certainly a better match to heroic fantasy and typically makes for better gaming since wound penalties tend make almost any attack into a "save or suck" situation.

When something is better for matching genre, actual reality, AND for good gaming just go with it. People are either fighting at nearly full strength or unable to fight is fine.

The Rose Dragon
2009-05-20, 03:34 PM
Tends to reproduce a HP system in that we have ablative damage that high levels can take more of but to be more complicated to execute and subject to more random noise. What exactly is the advantage here?

It works better than the three above it? It's more intuitive and easier to keep track of? It means you cannot jump off a plane and survive with what barely amounts to a scratch?

High levels cannot take more damage in True20, barring magic. Their Toughness save does not increase with level, and a gun shot is just as likely to kill them if it connects. And considering that high levels of damage is trivial to access, it just makes high level combat deadlier.

You always need more Conviction to survive. Always.

Knaight
2009-05-20, 03:36 PM
I like Mutants and Masterminds system, which is fairly similar to True 20. I'm not a big fan of hit points, and like wound based systems, so its perfect for the job. That said, it is a bit generous, to fit the superhero style, so something as simple, but a little less lenient would be ideal. There are some Fudge wound systems I've seen that do that, and they aren't bad at all.

lesser_minion
2009-05-20, 03:50 PM
Tends to reproduce a HP system in that we have ablative damage that high levels can take more of but to be more complicated to execute and subject to more random noise. What exactly is the advantage here?

I have to admit that out of the ones I listed, it's probably the one I was leaning towards the most when I posted

The biggest point I felt was in its favour was that it seems much easier to relate the damage roll to the action than when using hitpoints. The chance to shrug off an injury entirely, or to be seriously injured, also makes some sense from a realism point of view.

My main reason for asking this is that I'm not sold on any given system, but I think all of these have merits.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-20, 04:11 PM
My first favorite is easily the system of The Riddle of Steel. You've got hit location tables (the only ones used in the game, and very fast to use; nothing like Rolemaster), and for each location there's five damage levels. Each one has a different amount of Shock (immediate penalty to combat dice pool), Pain (cumulative, persistent penalty to combat dice pool, also measures healing time), and Blood Loss (cumulative from different locations). There's additional effects like knock-out and knock-down, cripplings, etc. There's no hit points of any sort; you can be instantly killed by hits to vitals, KO'd, or have your dice pools reduced so far by Pain you're incapable of fighting. In a really long fight (which doesn't take all that long to play, thanks to simplicity), you can also bleed to death (losing points from your Endurance score) over a few minutes or seconds, depending on the severity of your blood loss. Healing takes forever, because the game is low-to-no-magic by default, and big on realism. Combat is, overall, realistically dangerous and undesirable (unless you're a big burly knight in full armor who can expect to surrender when losing and get ransomed).

(Rolemaster's system is theoretically similar: hit points measure the ability to stand bloodloss, shock, and pain, wounds cause injuries like bleeding, penalties, cripplings, etc. But in practice it's too married to hit points, and the tables are random and "harmless" my players had, at levels 6-10, to literally beat on trolls and dragons until their hit points dropped to 0, despite constantly scoring the most severe level of critical hits.)

After that come wound level systems, like in White Wolf games, Legend of Five Rings, Decipher's LOTR (where you have hit points on each level), etc.
edit:
I should elaborate on my favorite, the system in Decipher's Lord of the Rings. You have a Health value based on your ability scores, and on each of six levels you have that amount of Health points. A solid blow from a sword can take an average unarmored Man down several levels, while a great blow from the same sword may not take a Troll down even a single level - but that troll could cripple a healthy Man in one critical blow. Each level has its own penalty. Heroes are fairly resilient, but Health is recovered very slowly indeed; getting injured is very undesirable because the penalties will make everything harder for you, but random dice-based death is rare. Very appropriate to the theme and style.
/edit

Then come locational hit point systems, like in RuneQuest. They tend to be over-lethal and in RQ are not very granular, but that's fine.

Then it's M&M and True20.

Then it's hit points and healing surges, like in 4E, because I don't like the abundant (and worse, required) magic of 3.X.

And finally, just hit points. Bleah!

Stegyre
2009-05-20, 04:17 PM
I have to admit that out of the ones I listed, it's probably the one I was leaning towards the most when I posted

The biggest point I felt was in its favour was that it seems much easier to relate the damage roll to the action than when using hitpoints. The chance to shrug off an injury entirely, or to be seriously injured, also makes some sense from a realism point of view.

My main reason for asking this is that I'm not sold on any given system, but I think all of these have merits.
My own preference is for this system. I even learned enough perl to write a script to calculate the average number of hits a character could take, assuming a certain starting fortitude save.

That being said, I've not had the chance to use it in a campaign. Has anyone tried it out? It strikes me as a good approach particularly for an e6/low level campaign, but I'm sorely lacking in experience.

The Rose Dragon
2009-05-20, 04:22 PM
Then it's M&M and True20.

Then it's hit points and healing surges, like in 4E, because I don't like the abundant (and worse, required) magic of 3.X.

And finally, just hit points. Bleah!

I don't think the rest are d20-based systems. So these three are the only ones that really apply.

Hit points can actually be good if they are done right, like in Unisystem. While you have a hit point total around 30-60, most attacks cause at least 10 point damage, so you can take about six hits at best. However, since we're talking d20-based systems, I think we all agree that Toughness Save System is the way to go.

lesser_minion
2009-05-20, 04:27 PM
I've expanded the discussion to include non-d20 systems, although you're right about the discussion starting with d20 and True20.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-20, 04:39 PM
I don't think the rest are d20-based systems. So these three are the only ones that really apply.

Hit points can actually be good if they are done right, like in Unisystem. While you have a hit point total around 30-60, most attacks cause at least 10 point damage, so you can take about six hits at best. However, since we're talking d20-based systems, I think we all agree that Toughness Save System is the way to go.

Oh, true, I forgot Unisystem. It's totally different from the D&D-style hit points, though, and almost a locational hit point system done in reverse; hits to various locations deal more damage, etc. It's similar to GURPS. Both are characterised by static hit points, too - it's pretty drat hard to raise them, and there's no leveling up and eventually having ten or twenty times the hit points you started with. Both are pretty excellent.

Morty
2009-05-20, 04:39 PM
However, since we're talking d20-based systems, I think we all agree that Toughness Save System is the way to go.

I can name at least one person in this thread who doesn't agree... I'm not sure about myself. I don't have much experience with non-HP based health systems.
Anyway, to elaborate on my earlier post, another system in which hit point damage works well is WFRP 2nd edition - a character's got hit points, but they don't get inflated so much that a sword blow doesn't mean anything but despite the system being gritty, you don't die automatically. The worst way I've seen HP used is 4ed D&D, because they don't mean anything - it's too easy to regain them. 3ed HP would be good, if high-level characters didn't have so much HP and if there were some penalties for losing HP - sure, the game's supposed to be heroic, but taking a hail of crossbow bolts and still living?. More wide use of coup-de-grace would also be handy, so it's easier to just kill someone without caring about HP. The big advantage HP have is that the're simple to use - you get hit, you lose HP. No additional rolls required.
tl;dr - HP are good if there's not too many of them.

The Rose Dragon
2009-05-20, 04:48 PM
Oh, true, I forgot Unisystem. It's totally different from the D&D-style hit points, though, and almost a locational hit point system done in reverse; hits to various locations deal more damage, etc. It's similar to GURPS. Both are characterised by static hit points, too - it's pretty drat hard to raise them, and there's no leveling up and eventually having ten or twenty times the hit points you started with. Both are pretty excellent.

Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for you to find time to return to your Fallout Unisystem conversion.

Though you might consider largely nerfing AP bullets to remain true to source material.

Halaster
2009-05-20, 05:25 PM
After playing several variants I would say there are two I really like:

- systems that track actual injuries and use hit points at best as a complementary. Harnmaster and Rolemaster come to mind. You can go unconscious through hit point loss, but by the time that happens you probably have a bunch of bleeding cuts and busted bones.
- systens that use a damage track which results in measurable penalties to the PCs abilities before they drop, like just about anything White Wolf.

Both varieties allow for an end to combat that doesn't result in everyone's death (everyone on one side, at least). In D&D and similar systems, there is no real reason to surrender, unless you know for sure that the other side still has significantly more hit points than you do. Even if you're down to a few points, you can still hope that your enemy will drop first.
If you are hardly able to lift your sword, however, there is a genuine incentive to cry for quarter.
Even the new bloodied rule in 4.0 is still kind of light on this.

Now you might say that the purpose of D&D is not this kind of realism. But it severly limits the options anyway. You either win or die - no daring escapes and such.

NPCMook
2009-05-20, 06:19 PM
Star Wars SAGA Edition uses something like that. I don't own the book, though, so I can't give specifics.


I'd say that I prefer Option 2 (HP and Healing Surges), but it depends on the game. In general, though, I'd go with it or Option 1 (Standard HP), since I don't really like VP/WP systems or Track systems.

Since no one seemed to cover this I will. SWSE has the condition Chart, if an enemy's damage is equal to or greater than your Fortitude then you drop down on the condition chart taking a -1 to all actions until healed, further down is -2/-5/-10/Helpless

If you reach Stage 5 on the track you fall unconscious, but are not dead. If the Damage dealt to you is greater than your remaining HP, and Exceeds your Fortitude then you are dead(Hope that made sense)

lesser_minion
2009-05-20, 06:23 PM
@NPCMook: I'll separate out threshold-based hitpoint systems on the list. I remember seeing a homebrew wound track system for d20 Modern, so I kind of understand you there.

Artanis
2009-05-20, 07:24 PM
Since it's expanded beyond just d20, one that I like is Heavy Gear. It falls into the "Injury Systems" and "Hit location" categories.

In Heavy Gear, a combatant has X armor. When somebody takes a hit, the damage is calculated:

*If damage < X, no effect
*If X <= damage < 2X, it's a light hit - armor goes down by 1 and you roll on a table to see what gets knocked out as the target is hurt, but not really crippled
*If 2X <= damage < 3X, it's a major hit - armor goes down by 2 and you roll on a table to see what gets knocked out as the target is seriously messed up
*If 3X < damage, the target goes down

Saph
2009-05-20, 07:36 PM
I can name at least one person in this thread who doesn't agree... I'm not sure about myself. I don't have much experience with non-HP based health systems.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of M&M style Toughness saves. When we tried it it led to:

*shot with gun* *roll of 12*
"Hah, bounced off!"
*shot with gun* *roll of 14*
"Hah, bounced off!"
*shot with gun* *roll of 1*
". . . and I'm down and dying."

So everyone just saved their Hero Points to neutralise hits, except for the character with Regeneration who could ignore them. It didn't feel very satisfying.

Personally my favourite is the 3.5 style Hit Point system. It's crude, but it's also fast and intuitive. The 4e addition of Healing Surges I've found to be just extra bookkeeping, as I've yet to see a game where lack of surges had any significant effect.

- Saph

TheThan
2009-05-20, 08:37 PM
I like the system used in D20 modern. It felt perfect for the styles of games that system can run.

It uses the standard D20 hit point system with an added “damage threshold” mechanic. When you take X or more damage in a single attack (x=your constitution score), you make a fort save, if you fail it you die. It you make it, you take the damage normally. It makes it feel like a character can be in an epic fistfight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y3uM_1ce6Q), yet still die from a single gunshot.

But the problem is that the DC for the fort save is only DC 15, which eventually becomes really easy to make. So really it needs to scale to pose a risk to high level players.

Dhavaer
2009-05-20, 08:42 PM
I like the system used in D20 modern. It felt perfect for the styles of games that system can run.

It uses the standard D20 hit point system with an added “damage threshold” mechanic. When you take X or more damage in a single attack (x=your constitution score), you make a fort save, if you fail it you die. It you make it, you take the damage normally. It makes it feel like a character can be in an epic fistfight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y3uM_1ce6Q), yet still die from a single gunshot.

But the problem is that the DC for the fort save is only DC 15, which eventually becomes really easy to make. So really it needs to scale to pose a risk to high level players.

As long as you do something to the nonlethal damage rules, it works fine. But since non-lethal only has the massive damage rule and doesn't add up like in D&D, you can have two people punching each other more or less until they die of old age.

TheThan
2009-05-20, 09:16 PM
As long as you do something to the nonlethal damage rules, it works fine. But since non-lethal only has the massive damage rule and doesn't add up like in D&D, you can have two people punching each other more or less until they die of old age.

Yeah, there's that.

I think the easiest solution is to simply remove the standard non-lethal system, and use the standard system, only if they fail their save or get their HP reduced to zero, they fall unconscious (getting KOed essentially).

I just thought this up so It’d need testing. But it seems like a fair solution to a problem they should have seen coming when they designed it.

Draz74
2009-05-20, 09:56 PM
I'm trying to choose between several different damage systems to use in my games IRL, and I thought I'd ask for opinions from the rest of the playground.

What damage systems do you like best, and why?
Oooh, good poll! Just the topic I need to see a lot of well-explained opinions on.

Unfortunately I myself am going to be ambivalent ...


Hitpoints and healing surges (or Reserve Points). Hitpoints become the amount of punishment a character can withstand in a short space of time, with a separate stat tracking how much they can take over the course of a day. Long-lasting injuries are basically absent.
The virtue of this system is that is can prevent the 15-minute workday syndrome, if there aren't too many ways to use up Reserve Points mid-combat. Because as long as you survive a battle and are able to take a short rest, you can be reasonably functional in another battle ... but eventually you will still need a real rest. I like that. But the lack of clarity about what exactly HP represent in this system is still a sore point for me.


Traditional hitpoints, where one number tracks how close you are to death. Abstract, but very simple. The effects of running out could be death, incapacitation, or vary depending on an 'overkill' system such as the one found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Yuck. The DM has to make up way too much on the fly to describe what combat actually represents.


Wound and Vitality Point systems. Characters have a store of Vitality Points which recover quickly, and once these are gone, or under certain other circumstances, the character loses Wound Points. Similar to damage box systems (e.g. the Alternity system).
This is currently my favorite ... but I'm still looking for ways to combine the best aspects of several of these systems, rather than using this one as-is. Definitely at least needs crit rules tweaked.


Threshold-based systems. Based on hitpoints, with the additional caveat that any attack dealing more than a certain amount of damage may have an additional effect - e.g. moving the character on a damage track or even dropping the character instantly as in Call of Cthulhu. 3.x D&D is a bad example of this, as Massive Damage exists only as a 'chunky salsa rule', rather than a major gameplay element.
The problem is the effects of the damage track. RPGs have enough modifiers flying around to keep track of without having to add in another penalty to your die rolls anytime you're hurt. If appropriate penalties were invented for the damage track, that didn't involve more bookkeeping on die roll modifiers, then maybe I would love this system.

Although there's also the part of me that says that one nasty hit should have a tiny chance of killing you by itself, no matter how many HP you have. And the damage track prevents that. But I'm not sure it's possible to include that in a system without making combat too swingy. (1/400 is too big of a chance for instant death. Maybe even 1/8000 is too much, because it's just not fun when instant death happens.)


Injury systems, like the system from True20 - when you hit someone, they roll a saving throw against a DC depending on how hard you hit them. A failure causes penalties, with worse failures leading to other effects. A failure by 10 or more effectively incapacitates the character, while a failure by 20 or more is fatal. There are also table-based examples, which often combine with hit locations.
Eww, first let's scrap the table-based examples.

OK, now in general I feel like this is similar to the last system -- good potential, but in practice requires a lot of easily-forgotten die roll modifiers. Plus there's the swinginess that Saph and others have mentioned. This system is elegant in its simplicity, until you add in its relationship to Conviction and so forth ...


Wound Levels. Similar to injury systems, but failing saves drops your character a level on a 'wound track'. The further down you are, the closer your character is to death and the more serious the penalties imposed. Doesn't feature in D&D to my knowledge, but older versions of Ars Magica use it. Hit Location systems - similar to other systems, but adding a table to determine where you were hit. One of the other systems is used to determine the overall effect of a hit to any given location.

Meh, doesn't leave enough flexibility to the DM. Maybe I've just never seen a well-balanced example of this system, but in my experience it doesn't work out well. Also, making it work for bizarre aberrations with various strange arrangement of body parts is a pain.

Draz74
2009-05-20, 10:00 PM
Re: VP/WP


Only because they make it too easy to bypass Vitality Points. Every critical, bah! If you're going to do that you NEED to add a way for skill to substantially reduce the chance of the opponent criticaling. But then if you're doing that you have two mechanisms to represent skill at "not being badly hurt", vitality and crit avoidance, where either one would do if implemented whole-heartedly.

One idea I've been toying with is where armor is the main system for crit avoidance. As in, armor has nothing to do with avoiding a hit in the first place, but is quite potent at preventing crits. That makes vitality and crit avoidance feel like two very different methods of "not being badly hurt."

Come to think of it, we should list the role(s) of armor in each of these systems ...

TheThan
2009-05-21, 12:02 AM
Re: VP/WP

One idea I've been toying with is where armor is the main system for crit avoidance. As in, armor has nothing to do with avoiding a hit in the first place, but is quite potent at preventing crits. That makes vitality and crit avoidance feel like two very different methods of "not being badly hurt."

Come to think of it, we should list the role(s) of armor in each of these systems ...

Armor is one of the major problems I have with the D20 system. But in order to see what this problem is you have to take into account what happens when a character levels. He gains more hit points, higher bab, more skill points and better saves. These are all tied directly to level.

But the one thing that isn’t tied to it is your armor class. Or the thing that keeps you from getting killed in fights. Your armor class is related directly to the armor you’re wearing. The better the armor, the better your AC, its as simple as that. Just look at the equation they use [AC=10+ Dex modifier + armor bonus + misc. bonuses]. Which means a 20th level character, 15th level character, 5th level character, and 1st level character all without armor, will all have ACs of the same. Or if they were all given the same armor, the same is true. The only time this will differ is if there is a difference in the character’s dex bonus.

Which would be great, if AC represented “the amount of armor a character is wearing”. But it doesn’t AC represents a characters ability to defend himself in an abstract manner, its his ability to dodge attacks, roll with hits, absorb attacks etc. Which is why it is really difficult to create Princesses Bride style swashbuckler characters. The system just doesn’t support it; you have to modify it. The other weird thing is that it doesn’t take into account character skill. You would think that a high level fighter would develop the defensive skills he needs to avoid getting killed and an untested 1st level fighter wouldn’t have had the chance to learn such skills. But this is not the case if you look at the system. A low-level fighter stands a good chance of hitting a higher level guy if he is not wearing armor. In order for the high level fighter to be unhittable to the lower level guy, he has to put on his level appropriate armor.


Which brings me to another problem. The standard 3.5/4.0-armor system is entirely dependent on the DM. Your character is at the mercy of the Dm to provide you with upgrades to your armor as your character advances in level. Otherwise your mundane armor will stop providing you with the defense you need to survive, as monsters will eventually be able to hit your AC with ease.

The above is also a problem for DMs like me, as a Dm I don’t want the game system to dictate when I give out magic gear to my players. To me magical gear, weapons and armor are rewards for when the players do well (or exceptionally well). The heroes rescue the maiden, slay the dragon and save the town from a fiery fate that’s great; they did something heroic and deserve a reward. But if they do something mundane like slay a gang of highwaymen, while that may be a good deed, it doesn’t really fall into the realm of fantasy heroics (at least not in my book, YMMV), after all the NPCs town guards could have done that as well.

Fortunately there is two variant systems that fix this, the Defense bonus system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) and the Armor as Damage reduction system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm), both of which seem to work just fine.

Draz74
2009-05-21, 02:21 AM
Armor is one of the major problems I have with the D20 system. [explanation]
Amen, amen. Good explanation of the problems.


Fortunately there is two variant systems that fix this, the Defense bonus system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) and the Armor as Damage reduction system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm), both of which seem to work just fine.

No, actually they're both pretty clunky in some ways. Hence why I'm searching for an alternate role that armor can perform, such as crit prevention.

Morty
2009-05-21, 08:14 AM
Personally my favourite is the 3.5 style Hit Point system. It's crude, but it's also fast and intuitive. The 4e addition of Healing Surges I've found to be just extra bookkeeping, as I've yet to see a game where lack of surges had any significant effect.


As I said, my biggest issue with 3.5 HP system isn't that it's crude but that characters become invunerable too easily. The amount of HP rises too fast and there are no reprecussions for loss of HP as long as you're in the positives. I admit that I prefer more realistic and less heroic systems, though.

lesser_minion
2009-05-21, 08:15 AM
The issue with classes not getting better at avoiding hits is something I like about the toughness and injury system, as the chance for armour to make an attack completely ineffective is factored into the damage roll in a way that doesn't make weak weapons worthless.

I'm not sure I've ever seen an Armour as DR system that I like, and I think CDB just has trouble combining with a system built from the ground up to hate The Princess Bride for all it's worth.

Something I considered at one point was a WP/VP system using increased crit damage, where the character's VP equalled their remaining WP and were determined at the start of the encounter.

I never tried it out though.

I guess what I'd be looking for is a way to get the best of two or more different worlds. Possibly an injury system where most hits reduce the character's Toughness and a serious success is needed to avoid damage altogether?

Artanis
2009-05-21, 10:56 AM
*points to Heavy Gear*

It's pretty much the same end effect as what you describe. I've never played True20, but it sounds sorta like if you always Take 10 on a True20 Toughness check:

*You only take a hit if you're hit with an attack that really should punch through your defenses
*You need some serous defenses to ensure that you never take a hit
*If you do take a hit, your defenses wear down, making those hits more and more likely to do some real damage

lesser_minion
2009-05-21, 11:19 AM
Hmm... the problem is translating that into normal D&D, where a dagger really ought to be able to hurt somebody in full +(6.023x1023) plate mail. If you're actually good enough to hit that AC, anyway.

Twilight Jack
2009-05-21, 11:19 AM
M&M version.

Basically, it's like True20, only simpler and failing your Toughness save by more than 20 doesn't mean instant death.

Yes please.

Baxbart
2009-05-21, 11:27 AM
Whilst not necessarily practical or 'best', I do find a certain attachment for the GURPS (3rd ed revised since 4th was simplified a little) style of damage tracking. You have a general pool of hit points (based off your HT, usually) to represent roughly how much punishment you can sustain.

Then you have an extensive hit location rules set-up: Head, Brain, Jaw, Eyes, Nose, Ears, Throat, Chest, Abdomen, 'Vitals' (generally covering most organs), Kidneys, Heart, Arms, Legs, Groin, Hands and Feet. Each of these locations then has an entry in various rulebooks (the most detail being presented in Compendium II) that dictates various ailments and effects associated with sustaining damage (as well as different effects from different sources. E.g. crushing or slashing blows to the throat). Many of the locations then have a maximum amount of damage that can be sustained (limiting the ability to kill someone by shooting them in the hand, for example) and a massive variety of crippling effects (not to mention variable levels of crippling effects....)

*deep breath*

Then you've got Shock rules, Stun rules, rules for knockback (for different types of damage and location), rules for knockdown, rules for bleeding, rules for infection, rules for lugging around the kitchen sink.... etc etc. Oh, and I forgot to mention that different damage/weapon types also have different damage multipliers for any given location (impaling weapons are more likely to blow-through a hand or limb compared with the extreme damage they might inflict on a vital organ or torso).

It gets a little out of hand, I admit, but if you've got someone with a good memory for rules its a wonderful way to run an extremely gritty game. If you're not extremely familiar with the rules, combat will slow to a dead pace and you likely won't really enjoy yourself at all. Its a big but, and I can easily see why people favour the HP/VP/Health levels route to circumvent excessive rules memorisation - but I do occasionally find myself drifting back to GURPS when extreme simulation is required for a certain game (low powered fantasy, survival, horror etc).

Doug Lampert
2009-05-21, 12:15 PM
No, actually they're both pretty clunky in some ways. Hench why I'm searching for an alternate role that armor can perform, such as crit prevention.

Agreed:

Damage reduction doesn't work for Armor unless you include some sort of penetrating quality with every weapon.

Bodkin points do less damage than broadheads, but were prefered in combat because they were better at getting through armor.

AP ammo does less damage than HE but is better at penetrating armor.

Full metal jacketed bullets do less damage than soft-point, but are better at penetrating armor.

It's quite likely that more men in full gothic field plate were killed by daggers or other short knives (Misericorde) than by any other weapon.

Broadly, how much damage something does and how well it handles armor are more often inversely related than directly corralated; simply because the weapon designer can optimize for armor piercing or for massive damage but not normally for both at once.

A WP/VP system with armor as crit prevention actually sounds kind of nice. It stops the dweeb in full armor from being unhittable, and it makes sense to put your high skill/high levels in the very best armor possible.

I'd worry about two things:

1) Do you want badly beat up characters to regularly declare that they're "too tired" to wear the armor and take it off? Because that's likely to happen. If armor is pure crit avoidance/mitigation then you have no reason to wear it unless you have VP. This may also matter if you don't give non-heroic/mook types many VP, you've risked removing the advantage of giving such characters armor.

2) At high levels this is likely to kill swashbucklers dead. You may want to give an alternate crit avoidance method or to allow some characters to take a small increases in WP when advancing rather than the usual larger increases in HP.

DougL

Draz74
2009-05-21, 01:23 PM
I guess what I'd be looking for is a way to get the best of two or more different worlds.

That's exactly what I'm currently stuck on in my homebrew too. So I definitely want to keep discussing this.

Here's my latest thoughts for a system (and, like many of the ideas proceeding it, I'm far from certain that it's a *good* idea, but maybe it's a good place to start):


Characters have VP/WP, but the number of VP is much greater than the standard rules at low levels, and much less than the standard rules at high levels. Let's say a weak Level 1 character will have about 20 VP, while a tough high-level character will have about 60 VP.

If an attack roll succeeds against a DC of the target's Defense Value, it's a hit. But if it succeeds against a DC of the target's current VP, it's a critical hit. (Critical hits become more likely as you wear down your opponent.)

Roll damage more or less normally (but make large amounts of bonus damage much harder to get than in 3.5e). If rolled damage exceeds a certain threshold, the attack is a "threat." The main determiner of this threshold is the target's armor.

On a (non-critical) "hit," the target loses only 1 VP, but can also have other effects happen to them if the rolled damage was a "threat." (By default, they could get knocked prone or pushed one square or something -- sort of a lite version of Awesome Blow or Knock-Down written into the rules. Special abilities could make more exciting things happen on a non-critical "threat.")

On a critical hit, the target loses WP equal to the rolled damage. In addition, other effects happen to them if the rolled damage was a "threat." (By default, a critical hit that is also a threat makes them lose their next move action due to being "clobbered." Again, special abilities (e.g. Smite Evil, ambush feats, maneuvers) can create other effects.)

One goal of this system is to make characters not always use their most powerful attacks at the beginning of a battle; the paladin might save his Smite Evil until he has a better chance of getting a critical hit.

oxybe
2009-05-21, 02:11 PM
depends on the game, really.

for a more "heroic" game, 4th ed's HP + surges allow me to "John McClain" my way through it. If I'm playing the hero, i'm playing the "Big Darn Hero": i can take several bullet wounds, grind my teeth, get up again and save the day/town/world.

HP systems with cascading effects really aren't meant for combat IMO, or at the least make combat "unfun" for lack of a better word, after taking a few hits so we tend to reserve those systems for games where we want to dissuade combat or go for a more "realistic" game.

lesser_minion
2009-05-21, 02:12 PM
Homebrew VP/WP system


An interesting idea, although you are making characters much less resilient than they were before (not that it's a problem).

Something I want to see is at least some emphasis on not getting hit, over soaking damage. Not that soak builds wouldn't be possible - it's just that the game would generally assume that you are going for an agile, get-out-of-the-way build.

I personally still like the emphasis that True20 has on avoiding damage instead of just going ahead and soaking it.

However, I think I would prefer for characters to be able to ensure that they can soak at least one hit without raining down upon the landscape. A 'second chance' system or 'lives' system, maybe?

Lamech
2009-05-21, 03:15 PM
I think rolemaster has a good system. Hit points and the differant kind of injuries that can be sustained. Although it makes blood loss a little silly at high levels. "My slit throat has been bleeding for the last 12 minutes, hurry up healer."

Stegyre
2009-05-21, 03:46 PM
However, I think I would prefer for characters to be able to ensure that they can soak at least one hit without raining down upon the landscape. A 'second chance' system or 'lives' system, maybe?
Assuming I understand you, this is part of the more general problem of a system where one lucky shot (or unlucky defense) can kill a character.

My preferred solution to this problem is to give characters a very small number of "karma points" (or something similar): when a character gets an "instantly fatal" result, they may spend (permanently!) a karma point. Depening upon the house rule, this either allows a re-roll or simply voids the failed roll.

I'd give a first-level character no karma points, and allow them to be acquired at the rate of 1 per level advancement or (in an e6-type campaign) for the expenditure of some quantity of experience points. Thus, it doesn't protect beginning characters who've yet to prove themselves, but characters that represent a substantial investment of game play get some protection against bad luck.

To be fair, BBEGs (and important NPCs) should also get some karma, so they enjoy some of the resilience of PCs, but that's a DM option.

Draz74
2009-05-22, 11:35 AM
An interesting idea, although you are making characters much less resilient than they were before (not that it's a problem).
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I'm ok with "less resilient" for sure, except at low levels. High-level characters were ridiculously tough in 3e.


Something I want to see is at least some emphasis on not getting hit, over soaking damage. Not that soak builds wouldn't be possible - it's just that the game would generally assume that you are going for an agile, get-out-of-the-way build.

I personally still like the emphasis that True20 has on avoiding damage instead of just going ahead and soaking it.
Yeah, it's a nice thought, but the problem with systems where not getting hit at all is a major focus is that people will optimize it, and then you'll have combats where both sides don't hit each other very often. "Swinginess" issues aside, that can just get plain frustrating. Sometimes when neither side is making progress at hurting the other feels more like a grind than an actual grind.

Now, one variation which is very possible is to use VP/WP, but work the rules so that taking VP damage, rather than representing minor bruises and scratches, represents not getting hit at all but getting worn out and weary of dodging. Then you can have people making crazy awesome dodges regularly without the feeling that no progress is being made.


However, I think I would prefer for characters to be able to ensure that they can soak at least one hit without raining down upon the landscape. A 'second chance' system or 'lives' system, maybe?

Yeah, as I implied before, I'm torn on this issue. Gamist priorities say it's a necessity, while Simulationist principles condemn it.

VirOath
2009-05-22, 08:23 PM
I'm a freak. 4E Shadowrun's Wound Box system, in with the rest of it, has a special place in my heart.

And there is something epic about needing six pounds of dice at a table.

Pronounceable
2009-05-23, 02:04 AM
For the systems proposed: I like none. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

In my quest to get rid of the ridiculous stupid little polyhedra, I merged DnD's attack and damage rolls. My system runs with a single d20 and we LIKE it.

Result's a combination of HP/WP, thresholds and damage track.

The attack roll is identical to DnD, but the result is compared to target defense.
The damage inflicted is tiered with thresholds of 5 by the difference.
An attack that exceeds defense by 20 kills, while 3 is only a scratch or a near miss that just fatigued the target a little (mere HP damage).
Also, a pathetic attack (10 or lower than defense) causes an AoO (renamed interrupt, cos frankly, AoO SUCKS).
A crit is merely reroll at +10, and a fumble is a reroll at -10 (cumulative).
10HP and 5WP are static for everything that lives, where HP is mostly fatigue (heals fully overnight) and WP (heals VERY slowly) is actually the damage track that inflicts penalties (which of course stays a LONG time).
A hit that actually wounds (exceeds defense by 5 or more) also deals HP damage, and each WP damage prevents 2 HP recovery.
Little bits of odds and ends here and there: corporeal undead only have an extreme amount of WP (like around 50), constructs are immune to weapon damage, incorporeal undead can't be harmed ever, demons heal instantly thus can only be stopped by one instakill attack, vampires regenerate WP and will get back up even if reduced to 0 or below.


AFAIC, it works. I can hear the wails: it's only good for gritty games, it discourages combat and there's little to no room for advancement. Cry me a river. I run oneshots...tho i hate them, imagine a smiley here

Fri
2009-05-23, 02:14 AM
Well, my favourite explanation for HP is, it represent near misses and lucky dodges instead of physical health. As shamus young once said for his imaginary fencing video game, it represents your character's focus on the battle. once your hp is down, you're tired, you're struck physically, and you're down.

Tequila Sunrise
2009-05-23, 02:50 AM
I don't have much experience with health systems not based on hit points, but I'll say that neither the HP system from 3ed nor from 4ed pleases me. I like the one from 3ed more - it has a semblance of realism - but it's still not very good. It would work much better without HP inflating by level and with loss of HP having an effect on character's effectiveness.
Yeah, this. I'm actually working on a game currently where HP are static, and losing hit points means you got hit. When you lose a bunch of HP you start bleeding HP every round. There are also Stamina Points, which are spent on strenuous actions. When you lose a bunch of SP you start getting penalties. We'll see how it plays.

The Rose Dragon
2009-05-23, 05:01 AM
Well, my favourite explanation for HP is, it represent near misses and lucky dodges instead of physical health. As shamus young once said for his imaginary fencing video game, it represents your character's focus on the battle. once your hp is down, you're tired, you're struck physically, and you're down.

Injury poisons can still affect you by those "near misses" though.

When poisoning your weapon means your weapon has a higher chance of connecting, you're doing something wrong.

lesser_minion
2009-05-23, 06:36 AM
My general impression of how hitpoints work in 3e is that the number of hitpoints you have remaining represents how close you are to death in dramatic terms. Once you drop below zero hitpoints, you suffer a genuine life-threatening injury. Before then, most of the injuries are light - but get nastier as you get closer to zero - and could be foreshadowing the point where your character actually drops with a life-threatening injury.

It's all down to some invisible 'screenwriting force' or 'Director', separate to the Dungeon Master, in effect.

This also means that a mook is defined in the very 4th edition terms of someone with very few hitpoints.

For my homebrew, I'm considering using an injury system where Death by Dodging has a clear mechanical representation, rather than using the hitpoints system which can be pretty confusing (because it makes no allowance for Death by Dodging whatsoever).

I'd also prefer mechanics which I can explain without having to add in an imperceptible Director.

Chrono22
2009-05-23, 09:21 AM
As long as you promise not to publish this, I'll go ahead and share what my rpg uses for a damage system:smallwink:
Characters have an endurance score. Since attributes in my system apply bonuses for a 1 for 1 basis (1 in a stat = +1 to modify), most stats aren't grotesquely high. Your endurance and the armor you wear apply as DR (your damage resistance) against attacks that you are unable to defend against. Whether or not you are hit comes down to opposed combat skill checks, where you have an attacker and a defender.
Try not to see this solely through the lens of DnD 3.5. There are several other major and fundamental differences to my system that make this balanced in respect to action efficiency, length of turns, and "level" advancement.

lesser_minion
2009-05-23, 10:04 AM
As long as you promise not to publish this, I'll go ahead and share what my rpg uses for a damage system:smallwink:
Characters have an endurance score. Since attributes in my system apply bonuses for a 1 for 1 basis (1 in a stat = +1 to modify), most stats aren't grotesquely high. Your endurance and the armor you wear apply as DR (your damage resistance) against attacks that you are unable to defend against. Whether or not you are hit comes down to opposed combat skill checks, where you have an attacker and a defender.
Try not to see this solely through the lens of DnD 3.5. There are several other major and fundamental differences to my system that make this balanced in respect to action efficiency, length of turns, and "level" advancement.

That's actually very similar to how a hybrid of D&D and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay might look.

Vikazc
2009-05-23, 10:51 AM
I personally prefer the system from Cyberpunk 2020 as far as realistic damage in a game world.

Armor prevents damage if the total from an individual source is less then the armor value. if it does penetrate, the remainder above your armor value gos thru, and your armors value gos down by 1 permanently from the hole/damage to it. Damage that gos thru your armor is reduced based on your toughness modifier. Your toughness modifier is based on your Body stat (effectively constitution) and reduces incoming damage by its value, leaving a minimum of one point of damage going thru. The first 5 points of damage you take classify as a Light wound, and give no penalties. Between 6 and 10 damage you are in Serious wound territory and take mild penalties. 11 to 15 and you are in the critical range and are barely able to function but are stable, making saves to remain awake and coherent. 16 to 20 is a Mortal wound. You are unable to act and begin bleeding out, making death saves until you die, or someone else stablizes you, still making saves to stay coherent as well. Each 5 points beyond 20 is further in Mortal wounding, Mortal 1, Mortal 2, etc, and confers more negatives upon your death saves.

Damage from weapons ranges between 1d6 for the lightest pistols, to 6d6 per round from assualt rifles, not even counting heavy weapons. Its extremely easy then for an unarmored man to be shot to death by any reasonable weapon. I like that instant death is improbable however, even catching a slug in the chest and hitting Mortal wounds in one shot, will leave you a few rounds where your bleeding out and possibly saved by someone else.

Its also worth noting that location is important. 8 or more damage to any limb from one source blows it off, dropping you immediately to Mortal wounding and forcing a save to remain awake. Losing your head is instant death.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-23, 11:56 AM
I personally prefer the system from Cyberpunk 2020 as far as realistic damage in a game world.

Vanilla CP2020 has the worst armor and weapon damage relationship there is. With bog-standard 12-point Skinweave and a bog-standard 18-point trenchcoat, your face is impervious to knives and firearms under 9mm (and about 75% impervious to firearms up to 11mm), and the rest of you is invulnerable to anything short of 5.56x45mm/5.45x39mm, which can cause some injury in bursts, and 7.62x51mm which can penetrate by a few points about half the time. Special rounds can hurt you (heck, Reaper Rounds destroy everything in soft armor and non-power-armored infantry in hard armor), but if the GM throws enemies with those out, the PCs will get some soon, too. Melee weapons, other than katanas and full 'borg unarmed combat, are completely worthless.

Also, wound levels have 4 boxes each, not 5.

Fortunately, this is all fixed in Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!, with a slightly more complicated damage and armor system (only requires one table and the roll of one d10 for damage); PCs in soft armor can be injured by punches and knives, and have less of an incentive to armor up at all. Pistol rounds can cripple you on a good hit. Rifle caliber rounds will punch through concealable armor and kill you dead. It's way, way, way better, and makes combat as lethal as it should be without requiring the GM to arm all enemies with monokatanas and 7.62x51mm weapons with special ammo.

The injury track and hit locations are pretty boss, although BTM is way too huge a factor; my players (having all played the game for 10-15 years) naturally armor up invisibly (Skinweave and armored clothing) and get transplant muscles and bone lace, and as a result they never take more than the minimum 1 point of damage from anything thanks to armor and BTM, and survive ridiculously deadly barrages of machinegun fire. It's just awful.

I really recommend using LUYPS, and either eliminating BTM, or changing it into a positive modifier that gets added to each wound level's boxes (so with BODY 10 you'd have 8 boxes per wound level). It just doesn't make sense to me that someone can shrug off bullets in a combat system that's supposed to be lethal. Limbs would be crippled at 4+BTM damage and amputated/mangled off at twice that.

Alternatively, remove BTM, each wound level has BODY boxes in it, and crippling/amputation happens at BODY/BODYx2 damage.

lesser_minion
2009-05-23, 12:57 PM
I guess I could build something based on Ars Magica - opposed attack and defence rolls, and the type of injury depends entirely on the difference between them.

Then you could have something like:

Hit by 0 to (toughness - 1): target's toughness drops by 1
Hit by (toughness score): Shaken and stunned, as in True20.
Hit by (10+toughness score): Incapacitated
Hit by (15+toughness score): Mortally injured
Hit by (20+toughness score): Raining down upon the landscape

With weapons adding their damage bonus to the amount by which they hit.

How would that sound?

Knaight
2009-05-23, 02:12 PM
The opposed attack and defense rolls, with weapons and armor affecting the difference works really well for fudge, although it has simultaneous combat(meaning that both people make a roll that covers both attack and defense) as an option.

What I would do is basically the same thing, but don't reduce toughness for failing to reach the toughness. Instead get a bonus of +2 to the next attack. However there would be a simpler system. If you fail to hit toughness, then the attack is shrugged off harmlessly. If you do hit, every point over hits physical abilities(strength, dexterity, constitution), with at least half of it hitting constitution. Constitution goes to 0, you are unconscious. If it goes negative, you are dying, and deplete the amount of points negative you are from all your other physical abilities.

So lets say Ahye and Bhye are fighting.

Ahye & Bhye
Offensive Skill-5(BAB)
Defensive Skill-6(BAB+dex)
Strength-14
Dexterity-12
Constitution-14
Damage-5(2 from strength, 3 from long sword)
Toughness-6(2 from constitution, 4 from mail hauberk)

Ahye attacks first, and rolls a 12. Bhye rolls an 8. This means Ahye gets a 17, and Bhe a 16. Ahye hits, adds his damage, and Bhye subtracts his toughness. 0, so nothing happens.

Bhye attacks, rolling a 15. Ahye meanwhile rolls a 7. Bhye gets a 20, and Ahye a 15. Adding damage and toughness Bhye gets 4 points through. Ahye takes 2 points to constitution, and 1 to each strength and dexterity.

Ahye
Offensive Skill-5
Defensive Skill-5
Strength-13
Dexterity-11
Constitution-12
Damage-4
Defense-5

Ahye attacks again, rolling a 12. Bhye gets a 14. Adding offensive and defensive skills, its 17 to 20. Bhye blocks Ahye's attack.

Eventually, Ahye is reduced to.
Strength-7
Dexterity-8
Constitution- -2

This means every turn Ahye reduces either strength or dexterity by 2, or splits the difference. In 8 turns Ahye will be dead.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-23, 02:13 PM
I guess I could build something based on Ars Magica - opposed attack and defence rolls, and the type of injury depends entirely on the difference between them.

Then you could have something like:

Hit by 0 to (toughness - 1): target's toughness drops by 1
Hit by (toughness score): Shaken and stunned, as in True20.
Hit by (10+toughness score): Incapacitated
Hit by (15+toughness score): Mortally injured
Hit by (20+toughness score): Raining down upon the landscape

With weapons adding their damage bonus to the amount by which they hit.

How would that sound?

The Riddle of Steel uses the difference between the attacker's and defender's rolls as a bonus to the weapon's base damage (which is Strength +/- X); this is reduced by Toughness and armor. The damage left over translates directly into wound levels - 1 is a scratch, 5 is lethal or crippling, so even a 1-point difference in the result of the attack-defense test is important. If the defender gets more successes, the attack doesn't hit, obviously (on a tie, there's no wound but the attacker keeps initiative).

Knaight
2009-05-23, 03:33 PM
That's relatively common, in Fudge for example a 1 point difference can be the difference between taking a minor penalty to all actions, or taking a major penalty to all actions, both of which will result in more injuries more often. Only one of them is enough to pretty much lose the fight unless it was a huge fluke taking it to begin with. Plus its a one point difference between a major injury, and getting taken out of the battle waiting for somebody to come up and finish you off. Of course, the problem with the Riddle of Steel is that it can take a long time to do anything. Its a beautiful system, and a lot of video games would benefit by putting something like it in in place of hit points. They can work at full speed.

Draz74
2009-05-25, 11:26 AM
I guess I could build something based on Ars Magica - opposed attack and defence rolls, and the type of injury depends entirely on the difference between them.

Personally, I've found that adding a rule of "depending on the difference between dice roll results" instantly means "slows the game down." It's just like putting THAC0 back in the system.

lesser_minion
2009-05-25, 11:40 AM
Personally, I've found that adding a rule of "depending on the difference between dice roll results" instantly means "slows the game down." It's just like putting THAC0 back in the system.

I have to admit, I have some trouble understanding exactly how THAC0 slows anything down.

Current Method:

You hit, provided that d20 + modifier > A.C.

Old Method:

You hit, provided that d20 > THAC0 + modifier

There is little real difference - apart from the fact that THAC0 feels like it makes it easier to precalculate things and cut down on the maths you have to chuck around once you actually get to hit the monster.

I actually agree with you that it's easier to just roll something else than to spend ages figuring out by how much you succeeded, however.

Draz74
2009-05-25, 12:40 PM
I have to admit, I have some trouble understanding exactly how THAC0 slows anything down.

Oh, it certainly shouldn't, in theory. Subtraction really isn't all that hard. :smalltongue:

I have no explanation; it's just something I've noticed in practice.

* * *

With this thread running, I find myself pondering a lot about the "HP plus a damage threshold" system found in SWSE. Those who have played with such a system -- what are its flaws?

lesser_minion
2009-05-25, 12:47 PM
Subtraction is actually slightly harder than addition, but there is little difference in the amount you will find in either system (neglecting the counter-intuitive AC mechanic which isn't that hard to grasp).

I haven't really tried HP & Damage Threshold systems yet though.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-25, 12:53 PM
Personally, I've found that adding a rule of "depending on the difference between dice roll results" instantly means "slows the game down." It's just like putting THAC0 back in the system.

How? Instead of comparing a roll and a number, you compare two rolls. It can hardly take appreciably longer.

lesser_minion
2009-05-25, 01:07 PM
How? Instead of comparing a roll and a number, you compare two rolls. It can hardly take appreciably longer.

The idea is that how complicated a particular dice roll is to resolve can be more important than the number of dice rolls that go into a particular check - a system with three dice rolls which just have to be compared to another number can run more smoothly than a system with two dice rolls which have to be subtracted from each other.

Draz74
2009-05-25, 01:09 PM
It's not the "compare two rolls" part that slows things down. Opposed rolls do slow things down, but not because of comparing them -- just because of actually rolling them. (When more than one person at the table has to roll at the same time, one of them is bound to be distracted for at least a few seconds. :smallwink:)

But even that's not really what I was saying is a problem. Opposed rolls are not intolerable. What really slows things down is having to figure out, not just which of the opposed rolls was higher, but by how much it was higher.

YMMV, but based on the groups I've played with, I'm unfortunately going to be quite stubborn on this issue in my search for a satisfactory damage system.

AgentPaper
2009-05-25, 01:51 PM
I don't think I could stand any other system than HP and surges, ala 4th edition. It's simple, easy to understand, and about as realistic as you can get without bogging down play more than is worth it. And it works all up and down the "heroic vs gritty" scale, just by tweaking how fast surges regenerate.

Armor and item usage is a different matter, and I don't really like the way 3.5 and 4E do it all that much. However, the 4E system, at least, is easily modified to work without any magical items at all, simply by re-fluffing magic items to be "skills", and using the mechanics of the system as-is. (Like I have in my "Styles and Techniques" variant.)

lesser_minion
2009-05-25, 04:09 PM
I might as well share the system I was thinking of using at one point. It has similarities to 4e in terms of the 'per-encounter' hitpoints, but it also allows for much longer-lasting injuries, at the cost of having fights that don't necessarily cost a character anything:

Characters have WP equal to their Constitution score + Level/2.

The maximum VP a character can have equals their WP.

A character's VP are restored fully by the start of the next fight, assuming that a given cooldown period (probably one minute) passes.

VP can also be recovered during a fight - in particular, you gain VP equal to half your WP as a full-round action. With the right feats or CP expenditure, a character can also gain a bonus to all checks while doing so.

WP recover at about the same rate as Call of Cthulhu characters recover hitpoints.

Rutskarn
2009-05-25, 04:12 PM
Most recently, I used the Vitality/Wound variant system outlined in the Hypertext SRD.

I mostly just flavor losing HP as dodging something, or superficial damage...up until the last blow.