PDA

View Full Version : [homebrew system] Altered VP/WP System, etc. (PEACH)



Draz74
2008-12-02, 03:13 AM
OK, so my ongoing quest to put together a wonderful, streamlined "home edition" of D&D continues ... and the latest hot topic is, once again, the HP system.

Here's what I've got so far that I will most likely be building on. To briefly summarize its main differences from the standard VP/WP system found in Unearthed Arcana:


the entire system for determining critical hits has been rewritten
the issue of bonus damage being too powerful has been solved in a new (but still subject-to-change) way
approximates "Armor as DR" variants, without opening up those variants' usual cans of worms


How Characters Defend Themselves

Characters have WP ("Wound Points") equal to their Constitution score. (Plus whatever they get from size modifiers, possibly the Toughness feat, etc.)

Characters have level-dependent VP ("Vitality Points"). The amount of VP gained per level depends on the class:

0 VP/level for Commoners
3 VP/level for classes that would have d4 or d6 hit dice in 3.5e
5 VP/level for classes that would have d8 hit dice in 3.5e
7 VP/level for classes that would have d10 hit dice in 3.5e
9 VP/level for classes that would have d12 hit dice in 3.5e

Certain monsters will also get large amounts of bonus VP ...

Characters have a DV ("Defense Value") equal to

10 + (level/2) + Dex mod + shield bonus

and an AC ("Armor Class") equal to

15 + base attack bonus + armor bonus

Other modifications to 3.5e AC, such as deflection bonuses, insight bonuses, and morale bonuses, might apply to DV only, or might apply to both equally, or might not exist at all in some cases. I'm not sure which. Natural Armor is an exception to this; it will definitely apply to AC and not DV. (How (or if) it stacks with armor bonuses is still up for debate, though ...)

How Attacks Succeed or Fail, or Critically Succeed

When an attack is made, the result of the attack roll is compared with the target's DV. If it meets this DC, the attack is a "hit."

When a hit is made, immediately compare the same attack roll result with the target's AC. If the attack roll result also meets this DC, it is a critical hit. (No special threat range or confirmation roll required.) If it is not a critical hit, I will, for the purposes of this post, refer to it as a "normal hit." (Probably need better terminology for this later on.)

Consequences of Damage

On a normal hit, deal damage to VP, if the target has any remaining. Only once the target has zero VP do attacks start affecting WP.

On a critical hit, deal damage to WP directly, bypassing VP.

Whenever a character has lost WP, she is fatigued.* First aid (Heal skill) may be able to remove this condition even without restoring WP; this makes sense, but I'm not sure I want to add another aspect of bookkeeping.

In addition, every time a character takes WP damage, she must make a Fortitude save or be "clobbered" on her next turn (lose her move action for the turn).

*Of course, my revised system also includes a revised Condition Summary, as you can see from the existence of the "Clobbered" condition; and the effects of being wounded probably won't be exactly the same as 3.5e's "fatigued" condition. But that's about the level of penalty I'm aiming for.

Death and Dying Rewritten Rules, Short Version

When a character reaches 0 or fewer WP, she is Dying. She is not, however, automatically unconscious. Every time she takes a strenuous action, she takes 1 damage. Every time she takes damage (including 1 damage due to strenuous action), she must make a Fortitude save or go unconscious. This Fortitude save will have a fairly high DC, and will take a penalty equal to current number of WP.

I'm still working on bleeding and stabilizing rules for unconscious, dying characters, but the short of it is that stabilization is much easier than in 3.5e or 4e. Characters are unlikely to die after combat unless they are killed by an instant death effect, coup-de-grace'd, or left lying on the battlefield for days without medical care. (Or if their medical care doesn't include decent disease treatment, but that seems unlikely in a setting with healing magic.)

Dealing with Bonus Damage

In this system, damage bonuses that are a constant number will be rare. Most bonus damage will be in the form of bonus damage dice, i.e. +xd6.

To prevent critical hits from being too powerful, bonus damage dice on critical hits will not be applied to WP. It will be applied to VP, just like it would be on a "normal hit."

Draz74
2008-12-02, 03:14 AM
Weapon Properties

Weapons will, of course, have very different mundane properties in this system than in 3.5e. For one thing, threat ranges simply don't exist -- or at least need to have their effect modified.

One standard property that many weapons will have is called "penetration." This is a bonus (or penalty, for some weapons?) that is applied to an attack roll after it has been established as a "hit," but before it is established as a "critical hit" or "normal hit."

Penetration will usually be a +0, +2, or +5 bonus. (E.g. +2: longbow, heavy crossbow, lance (?), battleaxe; +5: pick, hammer.)

Damage Reduction

I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of damage reduction as it currently exists. Instead, creatures who are supposed to be especially resilient to physical attacks would just have unusually large AC values and VP pools. So you're not likely to get a critical hit against them, and as long as you don't critical, you have to bash your way through a lot of VP before you have a chance of beating such a creature.

If a monster has a particular weakness to some type of weapon (e.g. lycanthropes and silver weapons), that can be easily simulated by giving that type of weapon a large Penetration value against the proper monsters (as a property of its special material or magical properties). So silver weapons gain +10 Penetration vs. lycanthropes and devils, for example.

Nonlethal Damage

Nonlethal damage does not deal damage to WP. It deals damage normally to VP (you don't have to keep track of "lethal VP damage" and "nonlethal VP damage" separately).

If a creature has run out of VP and takes nonlethal damage, it must make a Fortitude save to avoid going unconscious (but without the Dying condition).

If a creature is struck by a nonlethal critical hit, it must save vs. unconsciousness just as if it had no remaining VP. A mid-level rogue with a sap, sneak-attacking a high-level warrior, no longer has to bash her way through all of the warrior's hit points before having at least a small chance of instantly knocking the warrior out.

Other Rules of My System

I'll add to the following list as various non-HP-related aspects of my system become relevent to the discussion.



I'm using something similar to the E6 (or E8, the less-famous version) variant. Characters will only ever reach Level 8, at least in terms of their VP, BAB, caster level, and so on.
A lot of feats will have "ways that an untrained character can 'fake' this feat" built into them. For example, my version of Power Attack says that anyone can make a Power Attack if they wield a two-handed weapon; but they provoke an opportunity attack if they don't actually have the feat. I call this "emulating" the feat.

Draz74
2008-12-02, 03:18 AM
Things I Really Like About This System

Spoilered because some people won't care about reading this part. Some of it's not so much great "features" of the system as it is me bragging about problems I already figured out how to solve.



The ability of Armor to turn a hit into relatively-harmless VP damage is kind of like an "Armor as DR" variant. However, since you can still eventually wear an opponent's VP down and kill them, this system avoids the invincibility issues (e.g. full plate vs. dagger) that usually plague "Armor as DR" systems.
Without too many extra rules (like the table that everyone ignored in 2e because it was just too complicated), this system should be able to simulate how certain weapons are better against certain types of armor. Though I'm still working on how that all works out -- see Concerns section.
Critical hits are not as automatic and bland as in 4e, but they still don't require any more dice rolling like 3.5e's confirmation rolls. This should speed up the game, and also avoid the disappointment inherent in 3.5e when you roll a critical threat and then roll poorly on the confirmation.
Since DV scales with a character's (level/2), and BAB scales faster than that (for characters that are at least somewhat martial), "hits" will be more common in high-level combat than in low-level combat. However, this won't necessarily mean combat is over faster at higher levels, because high-level characters have more VP to weather such "normal hits." Meanwhile, since AC scales with BAB, critical hits should more or less stay equally rare throughout a campaign as characters (and their foes) level up.



Concerns

Let's face it ... in real life, even very tough and skilled warriors can get killed (or, at least, put in "Dying" condition) by a single blow from a weapon if they get very unlucky. It kind of bugs me that, in my system, a warrior with 16 Constitution can never go to "Dying" from a single short sword attack that does 1d6+2 damage, even if it's a critical hit and it rolls maximum damage. That's just too unrealistic. On the other hand, making this "Instant Dying" possible, without making combat too "swingy" and random, is quite a task. But I'm still going to try, and I welcome suggestions ...

Of course I could solve the previous paragraph's problem with special abilities, like an assassin-friendly death attack ability that adds +3d6 damage to critical hits (and, unlike other bonus damage dice, this applies to characters' WP). But that doesn't really solve the problem, since realistically even a Level 1 Commoner can deal a one-hit death if he gets lucky enough.

Weapons need more special properties to differentiate them. Base damage dice size and Penetration aren't enough to simulate the important properties held by historical weapons:

I think heavy (but not especially penetrating) weapons, like the mace/morningstar/flail, will be represented mostly just by having the biggest base damage dice ...
Some weapons are more likely to cause "instant Dying" on an especially-lucky critical hit than other weapons. An arrow, for example, is more likely to get especially-lucky this way than a sword. How do I represent this?
Some weapons aren't very likely to go through armor, but are valued because they tend to cause a lot of bleeding if they get a critical hit anyway. Normal (straight) swords should be this way, to a small degree. Curved swords like the scimitar and kukri should have this as their main feature. Same with the bagh nakh ("tiger claw"), a traditional assassin's weapon. How do I model this "especially good on a critical hit, not as good on a non-critical" behavior?
Ideally, I'd even like to represent the disparity if a warrior with a greatsword is fighting a warrior with a dagger. A greatsword isn't big enough to grant Reach, but it's still got a lot longer reach than a dagger. D&D has traditionally handled this by just giving the greatsword a larger base damage die, and by pointing out that the dagger has at least a speed advantage. I can keep to this solution if necessary, but if anyone has any better ideas, I'm open to them!


Besides the "instant Dying" possibility, there's a lot more nastiness involved in combat. Solid hits can blind you, slow down your movement, knock you out temporarily even if you still have a fair amount of fighting energy in you, knock you prone, push you away from your attacker, and so on. These effects should be much more common if an attacker has special abilities relating to them (e.g. "Hamstring sneak attack" or "improved trip"), but there should be some way to model that they (occasionally) happen even without such special abilities. Should this just be done by characters' ability to "emulate" (e.g.) the Improved Trip feat? Or can I build some kind of "extra effect on a critical hit" system into the system, in addition to (or instead of) the "clobbered" effect when a character takes WP damage?

Keeping "bonus damage dice" from being too lethal by applying them to VP is elegant mechanically, but does it make much sense? What effects should actually be represented mechanically by bonus damage dice? Should sneak attack be represented this way, or should it just have more to do with scoring critical hits?

What exactly do VP represent? Their ability to make "hits" relatively harmless, as you go up in levels, makes them seem like a natural Parrying system. But then, do you lose them if you aren't wielding a weapon that you could use to parry? Or do they represent short-term stamina? In which case, do I have to figure out a way to make them depend on Constitution? (without making Constitution too important compared to other stats, like it was in 3.5e?) Can a "normal hit" deliver a dose of injury poison? It is, after all, a "hit," and VP could just represent your ability to shrug off minor scratches ... but that doesn't quite go with the other two definitions I've mentioned. Do I need to split VP up into several kinds of VP to represent these different concepts? :smallyuk:

Brainstorming Crazy Ways to Modify this System

The formula for DV (10 + (level/2) + Dex + shield) is actually pretty similar to this system's formula for Reflex saves (but of course with a d20 instead of that "10"). I wonder if I should combine the two, and just define DV as "10 + your Reflex save modifier." It would be one less number to keep track of on one's character sheet; but it would also make Reflex saves (and therefore sundry bonuses to them) much more important. Maybe too important. If I do this, I will at least have to introduce other rules into the system to make Fortitude and Willpower saves equally increased in importance.

I kind of like the "damage threshold" concept* from Star Wars Saga Edition, and wonder if it could be incorporated into this system as well, as a way of rewarding characters who roll high damage one way or another. Of course if the AC system is unchanged, and armor also is an important component of a character's Damage Threshold, it makes armor too important. Perhaps damage thresholds could be related, instead, to a character's Fortitude Save value? That would go well with the previous paragraph, where I speculate about the need to make Fort saves more important ... but I don't know exactly where in the attack process a damage threshold would come into play.

*For those who don't know, the Damage Threshold system means a system where an attack deals an extra harmful effect, of some sort, if it deals at least a certain amount of damage. How much depends on the target's defenses.

I could get rid of Wound Points entirely. Critical hits would just deal their normal damage to VP, and also cause other penalties (e.g. the "fatigue and clobbered" effects). Then Dying would just happen when VP reached zero ... or something?

The 4e mechanic where weapons simply deal their maximum damage under certain conditions (in 4e, it's on a critical hit) is really pretty elegant. It's like a "damage x2" mechanic, but it actually reduces the amount of dice rolling involved in combat (and thus actually speeds up the game). Sweet! I kind of want to include this somewhere in my system. Not on a normal critical hit, obviously. Maybe still with some kind of "threat range" system involved? Could this somehow tie to either the scimitar's "nasty on a critical" ability, or the "instant Dying on an especially lucky critical hit" phenomenon?

Bonus damage dice, instead of affecting VP even on a critical hit, could be used to cause alternative status effects on a critical hit, e.g. knocking prone. How? I don't know.

One more crazy idea is to make my system a little more like True20: weapons don't have individual base-damage-dice at all. Instead, nastier weapons just add a modifier to the Fortitude Save DC to resist nasty effects of weapons. Perhaps, if I did something like this, I could eliminate rolling for damage (except bonus damage dice) entirely, and weapons would simply do a set amount of damage on a hit? But that's not particularly realistic either.

System In General Is Still In Progress

Here are some things I am open to changing, if people have recommendations:


The actual quantity of VP gained at each level by different classes.
What to do about deflection, insight, and other bonuses to AC
(more)

Pronounceable
2008-12-02, 09:52 AM
OK, so my ongoing quest to put together a wonderful, streamlined "home edition" of D&D continues ...

I believe there are many who've embarked on this quest. Including me. What I'm gonna do is not to critique your system, but tell you some stuff I've implemented. This way, you can kill it and take its stuff if you so desire (and it seems to me you're more interested in new concepts to implement than evaluation of the yet incomplete system).

*Attacking: The name of the game is tiered success. Roll d20, add your Attack, compare to target's Defence. The more you exceed enemy's Defence, the more damaging your hit is. Here I cut the number of rolls to determine an attack in half with one fell swoop.
And if your attack result is much lower than enemy's defence, enemy gets an interrupt (a name far too much better than AoO). Lower results give bonus to the interrupt.

*Attack and Defence: Your stats, weapon skill and weapon itself give bonuses to attack. Bigger weapons give more bonus: starts with +4 for tiny weapons, goes to +10 for large weapons increasing by 2 each size category. On the down side, bigger weapons are slower (see Speed below). Your stats, speed and armor give bonus to your defence. Armor bonuses are equivalent to DnD numbers. Wearing armor (and shields) also decreases you speed much as it increases your defence.

*Speed: Everything gets speed points to act in combat. Base is 20, gets modified by stats. Moving (2 pts per square) and attacking (pts equal to their attack bonus) spends speed points. When you're out of speed points, your turn ends.
There's a whole lot of optimization available for those who want it in choosing equipment. Wear plate and wield a greatsword, you get 12 speed; and as attacking costs 10 speed, you can't attack if you move than a single square. Wear no armor and wield a dagger, you can make 5 attacks a round if you don't move, move 8 squares and attack once, or anything in between. Of course, the guy with the greatsword is far more damaging and durable with his +10/+8 equipment bonuses compared to other guy with +4/+0.

*Ciritcals: Natural 20 means +10 to next result, whereas 1 is -10. So, a ridiculously lucky farmer can roll 10 consecutive 20s gaining +100 which'd be enough to one shot a dragon. Or a too unlucky dragon can get itself killed by an interrupt. (Disclaimer: There are actually no dragons in my settings. Cos I hate them) Once there was an actual 3 consecutive 20s during a playtest.

*Hits and Wounds: Everything (except the exceptions) have 10 HP and 5 WP. When you're out of HP you're knocked out. When you're out of WP you're dead. HP heal fully with rest, WP don't. Any WP damage instantly deals triple HP damage. (WP damage also prevents HP from healing)
HP damage also decreases total speed (-2 speed for each HP damage), which makes fighting when wounded a losing proposition.

*Damage: Attack result exceeding defence deals damage by increments of 5. 1-5: Hit, 6-10: Wound (and 3 hits), 11-15: 2 Wounds (and 6 hits), 16-20: 3 Wounds (and 9 hits, very likely a KO), 21-25: 4 Wounds (and KO), 26+: Kill.
As can be seen here, consecutive 20s is deadly.

That'd be enough I guess. Feel free to abscond with any idea you like.

Draz74
2008-12-02, 08:37 PM
I believe there are many who've embarked on this quest. Including me.
Yeah ... incidentally, I started on it before 4e was even announced. While my system has a long way to go, still, it seems to me that it's much more streamlined (less complicated) than any other 3.75 attempts I've looked at (except maybe the ones that were more like 3.52, with very little changed from 3e).


What I'm gonna do is not to critique your system, but tell you some stuff I've implemented. This way, you can kill it and take its stuff if you so desire (and it seems to me you're more interested in new concepts to implement than evaluation of the yet incomplete system).
No; new ideas are appreciated, but what I am really looking for is help/feedback to complete the health/damage system I've drawn up here.


*Attacking: The name of the game is tiered success. Roll d20, add your Attack, compare to target's Defence. The more you exceed enemy's Defence, the more damaging your hit is. Here I cut the number of rolls to determine an attack in half with one fell swoop.
Hmmm, I'd have to play this to know if I like it. I might. But then, I'm one of the (apparently rare) players who never had a problem with THAC0 and subtraction. In general, for the sake of those players, I'm trying to avoid tiered success. Still, I can't criticize your rule too much for slowing down the game, since it does essentially cut the number of die rolls in half ... but I don't think I'll be adopting this general idea into my system.


*Speed: Everything gets speed points to act in combat.
This in particular is further from D&D than I wish to wander. Good luck with this idea, though!
... actually, I have a friend who was working on something kinda similar. Let me know if you want me to PM you some of the stuff he came up with.


*Hits and Wounds: Everything (except the exceptions) have 10 HP and 5 WP.
Yikes, what are you playing? Call of Cthulhu? Either AC is really high in your games, or your front-liners are left dead by single blows from monsters in every battle.

Thanks for contributing to the thread!

Pronounceable
2008-12-02, 11:18 PM
This in particular is further from D&D than I wish to wander.
I noticed that was happening when I threw out classes and levels, before implementing speed. Nowadays, even Gygax wouldn't recognize what I play as DnD... But it started as my very own personal DnD 3.5 (official 3.5 wasn't around back then). The good ol days...

OK, you want evaluation. I'll evaluate.


How Attacks Succeed or Fail, or Critically Succeed

*After implementing vitality system, you split 3e's AC into two parts for ease in determining crits.
I'm not sold on the idea that easing crit determination justifies addition of a new stat. Less is more.

*Crits (actual wounds) impose a status effect and force a save to prevent stunning.
There'll be additional crunch with every crit. Which'll slow down the game, disrupting the flow ever so slightly. Better that than inherent unflinchibility in DnD, but maybe you can find some diceless way to keep the disruption low. Probably easiest way'd be a threshold.

*Dying condition inflicts constant WP damage.
Why bother? Use a flat fort save with increasing DC. What's the point of having negative WP seeing there's no death threshold?

*Penetration weapon property makes it easier to crit.
What happens to DnD style +s? Are they gone completely, or do they stack? Depending on that, a +2 dagger means +2/+4 DV/AC, or +2 to AC. Needs better wording, sounds convulted (it isn't, but still).

*Damage reduction might equal boosted normal defences.
Not sure about this. Increased normal defences equals a prolonged grind. However DR already does that.

*Nonlethal damage KOs when VP are gone.
Good enough. It'd work. Except for the crit, which is a Batman. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever in dealing lethal damage when nonlethal attacks still deal "normal damage" and crits as a SoL. That's gotta go.


The ability of Armor to turn a hit into relatively-harmless VP damage is kind of like an "Armor as DR" variant. However, since you can still eventually wear an opponent's VP down and kill them, this system avoids the invincibility issues (e.g. full plate vs. dagger) that usually plague "Armor as DR" systems.
Doesn't suffer from invincibility issue but VP damage is not harmless.


Critical hits are not as automatic and bland as in 4e, but they still don't require any more dice rolling like 3.5e's confirmation rolls. This should speed up the game, and also avoid the disappointment inherent in 3.5e when you roll a critical threat and then roll poorly on the confirmation.
Nope. Crits are forcing saves, so you're not speeding up. May even be slowing down to calculate status effects they also inflict.


Since DV scales with a character's (level/2), and BAB scales faster than that (for characters that are at least somewhat martial), "hits" will be more common in high-level combat than in low-level combat. However, this won't necessarily mean combat is over faster at higher levels, because high-level characters have more VP to weather such "normal hits." Meanwhile, since AC scales with BAB, critical hits should more or less stay equally rare throughout a campaign as characters (and their foes) level up.
You're assuming equal leveled combatants. Just pointing out.


Let's face it ... in real life, even very tough and skilled warriors can get killed (or, at least, put in "Dying" condition) by a single blow from a weapon if they get very unlucky.
See what I did with criticals. That works.


Weapons need more special properties to differentiate them.
Why? They all deal damage. You can make special feats, manuevers or whatnot for weapons to spice them up but ultimately a piece of sharp/blunt metal is a piece of sharp/blunt metal. Which is used to deal damage.

*Combat should be more complex.
Yes and no. It's my belief that implementing rules for fancy stuff is not cost effective. They are either unused, too complicated to use or combine into exploits. So, I KISS. And suggest the same to everyone.


What exactly do VP represent?
Exactly the same thing HP represent in DnD...

Might I suggest going 4e with saves? They work well.


I kind of like the "damage threshold" concept* from Star Wars Saga Edition, and wonder if it could be incorporated into this system as well, as a way of rewarding characters who roll high damage one way or another./QUOTE]
If you add more thresholds after a threshold, you get a tiered results system...

[QUOTE]I could get rid of Wound Points entirely. Critical hits would just deal their normal damage to VP, and also cause other penalties (e.g. the "fatigue and clobbered" effects). Then Dying would just happen when VP reached zero ... or something?
Or something, yes. Definitely a worthy possibility. Deal damage to con score when VP (you might as well name it back to HP then) is gone. Make death spells, coup de graces, etc target directly con as well. Then the one and only condition of death will be con=0 and you're good to go. Maybe make a few status effects to slap on like "Bleeding: take 1 damage per round until you win fort save" after a crit and "Wounded: take various penalties to various stats" when VP is gone.
.....


Yikes, what are you playing? Call of Cthulhu? Either AC is really high in your games, or your front-liners are left dead by single blows from monsters in every battle.


Yes. CoC without Lovecraftian elements sums up my games better than any definition of DnD. If you think you, a mere human, can go toe to toe with a 50 foot tall fire breathing reptile (or some eldritch horror from beyond space and time or five tons of animated stone) you're very wrong. And you're going to die for that.

Draz74
2008-12-08, 03:35 PM
OK, you want evaluation. I'll evaluate.

Much obliged, sir; this is good feedback. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to respond properly, as a lot has been going on in Real Life. But I'll be continuing this conversation soon.

Draz74
2008-12-12, 03:45 PM
A detailed response to your feedback:

I noticed that was happening when I threw out classes and levels, before implementing speed.
Understandable. But classes and levels are still sacred cows I'm clinging to ...

Generic Classes and Levels up to 8. But still classes and levels. :smallwink:


*After implementing vitality system, you split 3e's AC into two parts for ease in determining crits.
I'm not sold on the idea that easing crit determination justifies addition of a new stat. Less is more.
Maybe. I'm a little uncomfortable about adding stats to the character sheet. But really, how hard is is to look up a number on a char sheet or stat block? The real challenge is to avoid these stats getting changed all the time by modifiers.


*Crits (actual wounds) impose a status effect and force a save to prevent stunning.
There'll be additional crunch with every crit. Which'll slow down the game, disrupting the flow ever so slightly. Better that than inherent unflinchibility in DnD, but maybe you can find some diceless way to keep the disruption low. Probably easiest way'd be a threshold.
Yeah, my thought was that crits would be relatively rare, but really, you're absolutely right. This additional save would slow down the game.

So what if there's a Damage Threshold listed on your character sheet, equal to your Fortitude Save Modifier +5 (or so), and any critical hit that also exceeds this amount of damage also imposes the stunning-like 1-round condition? Is that still too clunky, or is it workable? Essentially it changes the damage roll (which you're already doing) into a type of check of its own, on crits only.


*Dying condition inflicts constant WP damage.
Why bother? Use a flat fort save with increasing DC. What's the point of having negative WP seeing there's no death threshold?
Well, the idea was that there would still be a death threshold, though it's a lot lower than -10.

I dunno, I'll worry more about the Death & Dying part of the rules when some other things are worked out better.


*Penetration weapon property makes it easier to crit.
What happens to DnD style +s? Are they gone completely, or do they stack? Depending on that, a +2 dagger means +2/+4 DV/AC, or +2 to AC. Needs better wording, sounds convulted (it isn't, but still).
Yeah, needs better wording.
D&D-style +'s ... actually might go away completely, when I get to redesigning magic items. But if they still exist, Penetration stacks with them, as does everything that goes into the initial attack roll. Penetration is only added to an attack roll after you've determined (including +'s) that the attack is a hit.


*Damage reduction might equal boosted normal defences.
Not sure about this. Increased normal defences equals a prolonged grind. However DR already does that.
Exactly. Also, in many cases (e.g. low-level characters w/out silver weapons vs. a werewolf), if you can't overcome DR or my new equivalent of it, you're probably smartest to run away. But at least in my system, you could theoretically beat down the werewolf eventually if for some reason it didn't attack you back.


*Nonlethal damage KOs when VP are gone.
Good enough. It'd work. Except for the crit, which is a Batman. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever in dealing lethal damage when nonlethal attacks still deal "normal damage" and crits as a SoL. That's gotta go.
It'll have to be an easy save to make ...
Although I'm not sure I dislike the idea of normal humanoids often trying to knock each other out rather than kill each other, anyway.


You're assuming equal leveled combatants. Just pointing out.
Yep, that's part of the "all else being equal" assumption.


See what I did with criticals. That works.
You mean the part where, on a natural 20, you reroll and add your result in (repeating on consecutive natural 20's)?

Possible. How would that be transferred to this system? And this system still seems frighteningly "swingy." A 1 in 400 chance that something really bad happens to you, every time a monster swings at you, is still too nasty for PCs in high fantasy. Maybe a 1 in 8000 chance is about the level of unavoidable risk I'm ok with, though.


Why? They all deal damage. You can make special feats, manuevers or whatnot for weapons to spice them up but ultimately a piece of sharp/blunt metal is a piece of sharp/blunt metal. Which is used to deal damage.
For better or worse, it's a nod to realism. Even a low-level warrior who hasn't trained beyond the basics with a weapon is still going to want different types of weapons in different situations. A hammer or pick or heavy crossbow vs. heavy armor, for example, rather than a scimitar.


*Combat should be more complex.
Yes and no. It's my belief that implementing rules for fancy stuff is not cost effective. They are either unused, too complicated to use or combine into exploits. So, I KISS. And suggest the same to everyone.
I heartily agree. Overall, I'm trying to make combat simpler, not more complicated. It's just that this unfortunately conflicts with some of my other design goals. :smallconfused: So please, help me know when I really should be willing to sacrifice other things in the same of simplicity!


Exactly the same thing HP represent in DnD...
*Buzzer* Bad answer! What HP represent in D&D is as vague as they get!


Might I suggest going 4e with saves? They work well.
You mean, turn Fort/Ref/Will into "Defenses" that the attacker always rolls against?

Tempting. I've certainly considered this. And I think I mentioned that I was considering combining DV and Ref Save into a single stat, kind of like this.

But there are a lot of problems I've also hit, trying to figure out how to merge saves with "Defenses." If you have the patience for it, I'll try to list 'em off, and you can tell me how to fix them. :smallbiggrin:


If you add more thresholds after a threshold, you get a tiered results system...
Yep, you caught me, I was being hypocritical. I actually do want a tiered results system; just not one where you have to perform any arithmetic on the fly. You should just be able to roll a die, add a modifier, and compare the result to a number (or numbers) on a page.

I haven't tried it enough yet, but it seems to me that this form of tiered results would be the best of both worlds (between margin-of-error tiered results, and boolean success/failure results). Am I missing something?


Or something, yes. Definitely a worthy possibility. Deal damage to con score when VP (you might as well name it back to HP then) is gone. Make death spells, coup de graces, etc target directly con as well. Then the one and only condition of death will be con=0 and you're good to go. Maybe make a few status effects to slap on like "Bleeding: take 1 damage per round until you win fort save" after a crit and "Wounded: take various penalties to various stats" when VP is gone.
.....
Problem here is that ability damage is the #1 bookkeeping nightmare in the game. I don't want wounded people to have to recalculate Fort saves, etc., as they get wounded.

And as soon as you introduce a temporary CON score to keep track of wounds, but don't let it affect Fort saves and their ilk, you're really just using Wound Points all over again.

If I get rid of WP, it will mean something like this:

HP = your CON score + a level-based amount
HP damage doesn't affect your abilities at all, until HP reach 0. However, before HP reach 0, you can still take negative status effects along the way if you are hit by crits.

I suppose that could work. It just means I have to revise what happens when you hit HP = 0 to avoid this situation:

I have 1 HP, but I've taken all that damage in pretty small increments, so my combat ability isn't affected at all. I'm running out of stamina, but not quite out yet. Now a gnat bites me for 1 more damage, and suddenly I'm dying. :smalleek:


Yes. CoC without Lovecraftian elements sums up my games better than any definition of DnD. If you think you, a mere human, can go toe to toe with a 50 foot tall fire breathing reptile (or some eldritch horror from beyond space and time or five tons of animated stone) you're very wrong. And you're going to die for that.

Valid for some settings. I tend to think high-level characters hardly qualify as "mere humans" anymore, though, even if they're not magical or wuxia. Perseus or St. George or especially Fingolfin (definitely an epic-level hero, though not quite a demigod like Heracles) should be able to go toe-to-toe with a dragon and come out alive.

Although I still try to simulate what you're describing using a variant of the E6 rules. Good luck, sir, you may be epic, but you still only have the base stats of a Level 8 Fighter, boosted a little bit by Epic Feats. Have fun vs. that 15-HD Old Red Dragon or that 18-HD demigod.

So if I'm not mistaken, you're saying that the following system could be rather workable:

Change Fort/Ref/Will saves into 4e-style Defenses.

AC stays more or less like I was saying: 20 + (level/2) + Armor Bonus or so.

If attack rolls beat Reflex Defense, they hit. If they also beat AC, they are critical hits.

HP = CON score + level-based amount. On a hit, roll damage and subtract it from HP.

In addition, on a critical hit, impose a minor status effect as a penalty. If the damage on the critical hit exceeds Fortitude Defense, make the status penalty more severe.

Once HP = 0, every hit is treated as a critical hit regardless of AC, and the target starts having to make saves to avoid unconsciousness and/or death.

Workable, in its basics? I think so; although two things still concern me. The first is all the system-wide implications of changing Saving Throws into Defenses; the second is that the final, "only-when-HP-equals-zero" system (in order to be at all realistic) will turn into a whole status conditions system that, all by itself, is too complicated (in which case I'll kind of want Wound Points back).

Pronounceable
2008-12-15, 04:15 PM
A detailed response to your feedback:
Understandable. But classes and levels are still sacred cows I'm clinging to ...

Generic Classes and Levels up to 8. But still classes and levels. :smallwink:
You might want to look for Djinn in Tonic's G6 thread buried somewhere in this forum (whatever happened to that I wonder).

Maybe. I'm a little uncomfortable about adding stats to the character sheet. But really, how hard is is to look up a number on a char sheet or stat block? The real challenge is to avoid these stats getting changed all the time by modifiers.


Yeah, my thought was that crits would be relatively rare, but really, you're absolutely right. This additional save would slow down the game.

So what if there's a Damage Threshold listed on your character sheet, equal to your Fortitude Save Modifier +5 (or so), and any critical hit that also exceeds this amount of damage also imposes the stunning-like 1-round condition? Is that still too clunky, or is it workable? Essentially it changes the damage roll (which you're already doing) into a type of check of its own, on crits only.
I have one roll, whereas this'll still have two both of which will need to be compared to a number, in addition to HP loss. But mine's got tiers to resolve, so I'm not sure if there's any time difference. Playtest is needed, and results may vary with GMs.

Well, the idea was that there would still be a death threshold, though it's a lot lower than -10.

I dunno, I'll worry more about the Death & Dying part of the rules when some other things are worked out better.
Seeing death is the ultimate point of combat, it's gotta be set in stone at the beginning, and crunch should be weaved around it IMO. Not that I actually did that, but it's good advice (which also sets the tone of the game).

Yeah, needs better wording.
D&D-style +'s ... actually might go away completely, when I get to redesigning magic items. But if they still exist, Penetration stacks with them, as does everything that goes into the initial attack roll. Penetration is only added to an attack roll after you've determined (including +'s) that the attack is a hit.


Exactly. Also, in many cases (e.g. low-level characters w/out silver weapons vs. a werewolf), if you can't overcome DR or my new equivalent of it, you're probably smartest to run away. But at least in my system, you could theoretically beat down the werewolf eventually if for some reason it didn't attack you back.


It'll have to be an easy save to make ...
Although I'm not sure I dislike the idea of normal humanoids often trying to knock each other out rather than kill each other, anyway.
Your average DnD player's gonna want to kick them while they're down. Not to mention the average orc or bandit will be happy to return the favor.

Yep, that's part of the "all else being equal" assumption.


You mean the part where, on a natural 20, you reroll and add your result in (repeating on consecutive natural 20's)?

Possible. How would that be transferred to this system? And this system still seems frighteningly "swingy." A 1 in 400 chance that something really bad happens to you, every time a monster swings at you, is still too nasty for PCs in high fantasy. Maybe a 1 in 8000 chance is about the level of unavoidable risk I'm ok with, though.
If there's HP, crits gotta deal more damage. Simply double the damage with every 20. A triple damage %.25 of the time isn't that bad statistically.

For better or worse, it's a nod to realism. Even a low-level warrior who hasn't trained beyond the basics with a weapon is still going to want different types of weapons in different situations. A hammer or pick or heavy crossbow vs. heavy armor, for example, rather than a scimitar.


I heartily agree. Overall, I'm trying to make combat simpler, not more complicated. It's just that this unfortunately conflicts with some of my other design goals. :smallconfused: So please, help me know when I really should be willing to sacrifice other things in the same of simplicity!
I maintain that weapon differences aren't cost effective.

*Buzzer* Bad answer! What HP represent in D&D is as vague as they get!

You mean, turn Fort/Ref/Will into "Defenses" that the attacker always rolls against?

Tempting. I've certainly considered this. And I think I mentioned that I was considering combining DV and Ref Save into a single stat, kind of like this.

But there are a lot of problems I've also hit, trying to figure out how to merge saves with "Defenses." If you have the patience for it, I'll try to list 'em off, and you can tell me how to fix them. :smallbiggrin:


Yep, you caught me, I was being hypocritical. I actually do want a tiered results system; just not one where you have to perform any arithmetic on the fly. You should just be able to roll a die, add a modifier, and compare the result to a number (or numbers) on a page.

I haven't tried it enough yet, but it seems to me that this form of tiered results would be the best of both worlds (between margin-of-error tiered results, and boolean success/failure results). Am I missing something?


Problem here is that ability damage is the #1 bookkeeping nightmare in the game. I don't want wounded people to have to recalculate Fort saves, etc., as they get wounded.

And as soon as you introduce a temporary CON score to keep track of wounds, but don't let it affect Fort saves and their ilk, you're really just using Wound Points all over again.
Body takes time to recognize it's been hurt and stat damage doesn't affect stats during combat. Handwave it away, GM haz the powa.

If I get rid of WP, it will mean something like this:

HP = your CON score + a level-based amount
HP damage doesn't affect your abilities at all, until HP reach 0. However, before HP reach 0, you can still take negative status effects along the way if you are hit by crits.

I suppose that could work. It just means I have to revise what happens when you hit HP = 0 to avoid this situation:

I have 1 HP, but I've taken all that damage in pretty small increments, so my combat ability isn't affected at all. I'm running out of stamina, but not quite out yet. Now a gnat bites me for 1 more damage, and suddenly I'm dying. :smalleek:
HP is the barrier between the body and the incoming hurt, it's not something that has mechanical repercussions. HP=0 is you're exhausted and about to get wounded (which is what VP/con represents). And if a gnat can deal real damage, it's gotta be a giant mutated gnat.


Valid for some settings. I tend to think high-level characters hardly qualify as "mere humans" anymore, though, even if they're not magical or wuxia. Perseus or St. George or especially Fingolfin (definitely an epic-level hero, though not quite a demigod like Heracles) should be able to go toe-to-toe with a dragon and come out alive.
Perseus is a zeuson just like every fourth greek hero...

Although I still try to simulate what you're describing using a variant of the E6 rules. Good luck, sir, you may be epic, but you still only have the base stats of a Level 8 Fighter, boosted a little bit by Epic Feats. Have fun vs. that 15-HD Old Red Dragon or that 18-HD demigod.

So if I'm not mistaken, you're saying that the following system could be rather workable:

Change Fort/Ref/Will saves into 4e-style Defenses.
Yes. Just change DCs into attacks. There can't be any problems with that.

AC stays more or less like I was saying: 20 + (level/2) + Armor Bonus or so.

If attack rolls beat Reflex Defense, they hit. If they also beat AC, they are critical hits.

If you use ref to determine attacks you're better off renaming it as AC/Defence. Then AC'd be Crit Threshold/Toughness/Whatshisface.

HP = CON score + level-based amount. On a hit, roll damage and subtract it from HP.

In addition, on a critical hit, impose a minor status effect as a penalty. If the damage on the critical hit exceeds Fortitude Defense, make the status penalty more severe.

Be a bit crunchety, but theoretically works. Needs playtest.

Once HP = 0, every hit is treated as a critical hit regardless of AC, and the target starts having to make saves to avoid unconsciousness and/or death.
No more saves, assuming you went 4e. If it's over targeted defence, it's successful. Maybe "negative HP" becomes bonus to all incoming attacks? Or a simple constitution check against negative HP as DC? This might be a point in favor of not going 4e.

Stupid forum software

Fax Celestis
2008-12-15, 04:31 PM
If you want to introduce the possibility of one-hit kills due to luck, then possibly you could institute a triple-crit system: roll an attack. If you threaten, roll again to confirm. If you confirm, roll again to confirm. if you confirm again, target makes a fort-save or dies (DC = damage).

lesser_minion
2008-12-15, 05:48 PM
Just a few ideas:

This might raise the terrifying spectre of 4e a bit, but there are some good ideas in that edition so I'm not too worried:

If you wanted a single hit to be able to flatten a character, you could probably come up with a reasonably lightweight system which limits the damage a character can take in one fight without too much bookeeping. A simple 'you start each fight with VP equal to your current WP' would make WP damage very important, but still allow a character to take a hit. You could probably then proivide healing spells that are more accurate to their names - Cure Light Wounds heals a truckload of VPs, while Heal can restore VPs and WPs. If you were worried about the ability of characters to keep going for ages, you could provide a pool of hitpoints that characters had to take any VP damage at the end of the fight.

With regard to the 'being killed by a gnat' issue, I tend to use a WFRP-style system in my campaigns for adjudicating damage past zero hitpoints (ie. the more damage done in excess of your remaining hitpoints, the more dead you are).

Although I try to make them a lot less dangerous than 1st edition WFRP's slightly excessive gore (virtually every critical hit we obtained was either result #15 or result #16 - both of which mean that the character dies horribly)

Draz74
2008-12-16, 02:07 AM
You might want to look for Djinn in Tonic's G6 thread buried somewhere in this forum (whatever happened to that I wonder).
Yeah, I read over it. Not bad stuff, I've adopted some of its principles about what should and should not be a Feat in a generic classes system. What in particular did you like about it?


I have one roll, whereas this'll still have two both of which will need to be compared to a number, in addition to HP loss. But mine's got tiers to resolve, so I'm not sure if there's any time difference. Playtest is needed, and results may vary with GMs.
True. I guess I'm not sure, without playtesting, that two rolls is faster than a roll + some more math. But I'm pretty sure it's the way I'd prefer, and probably that other people will prefer. :smallsmile: At least that's the theory I'm gonna go with ...


Seeing death is the ultimate point of combat, it's gotta be set in stone at the beginning, and crunch should be weaved around it IMO. Not that I actually did that, but it's good advice (which also sets the tone of the game).
Hmmm. Wisdom you speak, perhaps ...


Your average DnD player's gonna want to kick them while they're down. Not to mention the average orc or bandit will be happy to return the favor.
True, except in campaigns that particularly have a theme of either chivalry or swashbuckling humiliation-is-worse-than-death attitude. But I don't mind making people commonly go around the battlefield after the battle, performing coup de graces; it's realistic, and it's an interesting extra little way to differentiate brutal from more-graceful characters.


If there's HP, crits gotta deal more damage. Simply double the damage with every 20. A triple damage %.25 of the time isn't that bad statistically.

If you want to introduce the possibility of one-hit kills due to luck, then possibly you could institute a triple-crit system: roll an attack. If you threaten, roll again to confirm. If you confirm, roll again to confirm. if you confirm again, target makes a fort-save or dies (DC = damage).
A crit doesn't have to do more damage. It could just do normal damage plus nasty status effects.
But yeah, this is the kind of ideas for possible instant death that I want to bounce around. But maybe only after the rest of the system is working.


Body takes time to recognize it's been hurt and stat damage doesn't affect stats during combat. Handwave it away, GM haz the powa.
Hmmm. So include ability damage in my system after all, but just have it only take effect when characters take a short rest? Still seems like, eventually, it's a pain to recalculate. Or that players will just insist on never taking a rest so their nasty ability damage won't kick in!


HP is the barrier between the body and the incoming hurt, it's not something that has mechanical repercussions. HP=0 is you're exhausted and about to get wounded (which is what VP/con represents). And if a gnat can deal real damage, it's gotta be a giant mutated gnat.
Point is, if you're not actually hurt when you're at 0 HP, then there's got to be some way to make sure you (usually) survive a hit even after you get to 0 HP. Your "start taking CON damage" idea is one method, but not one I'm quite satisfied with yet. Nor do I want to make a big True20-like system of status conditions to kick in at this point. Overall, I'm leaning towards just reinstating traditional WP as part of the system.


Perseus is a zeuson just like every fourth greek hero...
Whoops, my bad. Drop all the Greek heroes as examples, then; all the ones who were really mighty had divine blood. :smallyuk:


Yes. Just change DCs into attacks. There can't be any problems with that.
There are ... for example, your own responses point out that, if saves are only DCs for attacks to beat, it makes it hard to test whether a dying person stabilizes or whatnot. (4e had to introduce a whole new system of Saves, completely separate from Fort/Ref/Will, to adapt to its own changing of Fort/Ref/Will into static DCs. I'm not sure I want to do that.)


If you use ref to determine attacks you're better off renaming it as AC/Defence. Then AC'd be Crit Threshold/Toughness/Whatshisface.
Yeah, I'd call it Reflex Defense or something. AC can keep its name as long as it's primarily determined by armor.


This might raise the terrifying spectre of 4e a bit, but there are some good ideas in that edition so I'm not too worried:
Yeah, no worries. I'm already planning on stealing the things from 4e that I like (that won't get me sued), like the Rituals system.


If you wanted a single hit to be able to flatten a character, you could probably come up with a reasonably lightweight system which limits the damage a character can take in one fight without too much bookeeping. A simple 'you start each fight with VP equal to your current WP' would make WP damage very important, but still allow a character to take a hit. You could probably then proivide healing spells that are more accurate to their names - Cure Light Wounds heals a truckload of VPs, while Heal can restore VPs and WPs. If you were worried about the ability of characters to keep going for ages, you could provide a pool of hitpoints that characters had to take any VP damage at the end of the fight.
Yeah, I'm planning on something along these lines, as far as recovering damage goes. The only part of this I hadn't really thought of is penalizing VP, or the recovery of VP, for being wounded. That's an interesting possibility, but a little bit difficult since I was planning on VP capacity being something that scales with level.

Hmmmm ... actually, there's another concept in here. "You gain VP at the start of each fight." Meaning "you don't have VP except when you know you're in a fight." That could make surprise attacks very, very nasty, as well as explain why (e.g.) falling would damage your WP rather than your VP. Definitely has possibilities.

New crazy idea: What if quantities of VP are quite small, but they don't go away when they get damaged? So they'd act kind of like DR, except that they would be a dynamic quantity that can be buffed/debuffed ... I'd still need a way that they can run out eventually as you get tired. Everyone loses one VP every round? :smallconfused:


With regard to the 'being killed by a gnat' issue, I tend to use a WFRP-style system in my campaigns for adjudicating damage past zero hitpoints (ie. the more damage done in excess of your remaining hitpoints, the more dead you are).

Although I try to make them a lot less dangerous than 1st edition WFRP's slightly excessive gore (virtually every critical hit we obtained was either result #15 or result #16 - both of which mean that the character dies horribly)

So it's kind of like a system where, after you run out of HP, you save to not die every time you get hit, and the Save DC is based on the damage you've taken. No problem with that, as long as I keep the Fort/Ref/Will save system at all.

lesser_minion
2008-12-16, 07:30 AM
Hmmmm ... actually, there's another concept in here. "You gain VP at the start of each fight." Meaning "you don't have VP except when you know you're in a fight." That could make surprise attacks very, very nasty, as well as explain why (e.g.) falling would damage your WP rather than your VP. Definitely has possibilities.

Well...I meant as in 'when an encounter starts, figure out how many VP you have'. So you calculate VP before you resolve the damage from a trap, or a fall off a cliff. The idea being that you can sort of 'shrug off' any minor injuries you took very easily. It was something I was thinking for a homebrew ruleset I had planned out when I was kind of at a peak of annoyance with D&D's flaws. However, I like your version. It means that a trained assasin can probably slit a character's throat without any real problem. It may be difficult to write the fluff out though.

IIRC, the plan for death and dying in that system was either going to be a 'No Rules For Dying' system, or a system where characters can only be killed by an attack dealing more than a certain threshold damage, with anything less causing unconsciousness.

In both cases, I think I prefer a 'roll on this table' system for dying/death, such as the stopgap version that WotC posted for people to adopt in their 3.x games if they wanted.