Fabio.MilitoPagliara wrote:I see that you changed the massive wound (I was going to point out the problem of low level characters
)...
Yup. I was playing around with it and ran into that problem early on. I decided to go with one of the official variant options in the d20srd. I liked that it scaled by level, instead of the straight CON option. I felt it was a happy medium between a gritty option that never changes (CON score) and a way-too-high option (for DCC) that never changes (50 hp).
In the end, Massive Damage may not be the way to go. I'm thinking about how the weapons and such pan out in DCC. I'm wondering if it's even possible to hit massive damage without using a spell, special attack, trap or falling off a cliff. Considering that criticals are their own thing, with their own tables, I think there's a real question of whether or not a character could hit massive damage via weapon alone. Maybe CON MDT is the way to go?
I think not knowing much about DCC makes Massive Damage tricky. I like the concept because it allows for high-level characters to get dropped and for a result other than death to finish a combat. But I won't carry it over if DCC's crits take care of those issues or if it's not going to see use at the table. I like the idea, but I'm not sure if it will fit with DCC.
A lot depends on rules I haven't seen.
Fabio.MilitoPagliara wrote:back to it, the big problem of wound/vitality is that it changes the game
the point is: if I give stamina points to characters how should (if I should) treat monsters? should I give them a boost of some kind? or character are "special", if we give life points to monster should we consider giving them hp for size/level? BUT this means longer combat at 1st level, more similar to 3rd-4th level combats.....
the good thing of a wound/vitality system is that you can treat "hit points" as "defense points" that can get back quickly and wounds/life points as something that get back slowly... but then you have healing spells... do you want to keep them as they are? how much an healing spell heals? full hp and 1 life points per level of the spell?
I have nothing against Wound/Vitality points. I've used them in Star Wars and Conan. But I look at them as "extra hit points" that require a bunch of funky rules. I prefer a simpler system like Death Saves, Hamakto's 1d4-1/1d6-2 or just dropping to -10. WP/VP is a fine system. But it doesn't address some of my hangups (listed earlier in the thread).
And they require a lot of extra rules and considerations. Just checkout the d20srd link in this thread. So, I'd be unlikely to use a system that "heavy" that doesn't meet my needs.
That said, I think Hamakto makes some good points about what a VP/WP system would need. I mean, he brings it as close to workable (for me) as anyone has. Same with Damage Reduction. He's got really good ideas on both.
But, in regards to VP/WP, I'd rather have something more abstract. Like the "wound system" before the one in this thread. Something that I can do more with. Wound Points, to me, are just like hit points. I mean, it's not like losing Wound Points means a whole lot. No penalties for it or anything. And it's not like they give a lot of drama to the situation, other than the attrition thing -- which is what regular hit points are for, IMO.
Wound Points (to me) are just different enough to need pages of rules to get to work with everything else but don't bring enough of what I want for me to prefer them over everything else. So I'm not likely to go with them. But if DCC decides that's the way to go, I hope they choose something simple and abstract that still allows for high-level characters to be threatened and not the sort of mega-mega-damage that they represent in other d20-based games. I mean, it's really just MDC and SDC from Rifts scaled down to D&D, right? Man, I shudder that I even know what that means.
Fabio.MilitoPagliara wrote:I like very much the idea of the d4-1 or d6-2 system of losing hp once you are dying
Yeah, it's a great suggestion. Thanks again to Hamakto for that one.
Fabio.MilitoPagliara wrote:another thing to consider is that having low hit points at 1st level makes hight level character more powerful in comparision
consider a fighter:
a) if you have 1d10 hp at 1st level, at 10th level you are 10 times stronger (on average you go from 5,5 to 55)
b) if you have Stamina+1d10hp, at 10th level you are "ONLY" 4 times stronger (on average you go from 16 to 65,5)
I usually give max hit points at 1st level. That might need to make it into the 3PP supplement. Maybe not. We'll see how it plays out. I think there are a lot of options to keep people standing. I'd hope that DCC curtails the hit point inflation of high levels. Maybe through smaller hit dice or some other means.
I think the solution to making 1st level characters more survivable is to give them more hit points out of the gate, not a one-time bonus that increases their hit points across the board.
Something along the lines of characters starting out with Stamina and then just getting a flat bonus each level (like Wizards/Elves get +1, Thieves/Clerics/Halflings get +2, Fighters/Dwarves get +3).
So by that, an average 1st level Fighter would start out with 11hp and then increase up to 44hp. Same ratio as above, and the 1st level character is
more survivable. But the inflation at 10th level is mitigated by almost 33%. And you could have something like a Wizard with 18 CON starting out with 18 hit points and then increasing to 28 at 10th level.
Come to think of it, I don't think it would hurt to just set a starting HP total for the classes, modified by CON. A lot like how 4e does it, only tailored to increase the viability of a 1st level character and mitigate the high level inflation. Something like: Wizards start with 3 and get +1/level, Thieves/Clerics/Halflings start with 4 and get +2/level, Fighters/Dwarves start with 6 and get +3/level and Elves start with 4 and get +1/level.
Fabio.MilitoPagliara wrote:as for spellburn for combat I think that this would take away from the idea of corrupting magic UNLESS the fighter don't have some sort of patron...
I see the point. But Skillburn is more of an option to incorporate Pyrrhic Victories in combat. So, a Fighter charges into an Ogre. He misses by 4 but really wants to take out this Ogre because the Wizard is dying and the Cleric is almost out of healing spells. So the Fighter takes damage to increase his attack and drops.
My biggest concern with Skillburn, as its presented, is how easily it could be abused. I mean, with hit points recovering faster and stuff, there's a real problem there just waiting to be exploited. I'm likely to move Skillburn back to CON damage for a higher return. Or maybe a combination of hit point and CON damage. We'll see.
But it's not intended to compete with the Magic-Users' Spellburn, except in name alone. If I were going to do that, I'd probably come up with a table for it that enforced some penalty on the character. And that's not sounding like a bad idea at them moment. I'd have to see the Spellburn table to get an idea of what kind of penalties and consequences I could bring to Skillburn.
It's a tricky balance, to be sure. And will take some thought and lots of dice hitting the table to get right.