Star Wars Saga condition track in E6

[Yora]

In Star Wars Saga there is a Condition Track system in addition to hit points. Hit points and damage work normally, but when a single attack deals a vertain amount of damage, you suffer a penalty on most rolls as you get into increasingly worse shape.

Sounds like an interesting system to use in an 3.5e/E6 game, but I have neither played Saga or E6 that much that I could say for sure if it works well.

One way to handle it would be that every time you take more damage from a single attack than your Constitution score, you suffer a panalty of first -1 and then -2, -5, -10, and uncounsciousnes. Maybe also add +1 to your Con score when wearing light armor, +2 when wearing medium armor, and +3 for heavy armor. And every healing effect that cures more than 5 hp also reduces the penalties by one step, as do 8 hours of rest (two steps when recieving long term care).

It's a nice way to have characters not fight at full strength unteil they reach 0 hp, but in an E6 game, you usually don't have a lot of hit points to begin with.
Has someone tried something like that before, or do any of you see any obvious problem with that?

[Dienekes]

Saga's system is awesome, as far as d20 systems go it's my favorite.

The Condition Track is a nice way for physical characters to actually affect their opponents other than winding away at health while seeing no actual affects.

Currently I am making my own Saga to DnD conversion thingy for my own entertainment and think the CT fits into it well. However I'm not certain about how useful it'll be in d6. Mostly because by the time the CT actually becomes important tactically it more or less means that that's the tail end of the system. Remember, Saga first level characters start with 3x health so while at low levels the CT won't be as important it'll still find a use, and gets much stronger later levels.

For d6 first level your constitution score is close to your hp and beyond that dealing that much damage means they'll probably be dead next turn or two anyway.

[raitalin]

Keep in mind that in Saga characters start with 3X max HD, so the track is more relevant.

Weapons do more damage at low levels in SAGA as well (the standard is a 3d6 blaster pistol). Which is why Damage Threshold in SAGA is based off of Fortitude defense instead of Con.

One big advantage to the condition track for the player is that while it's easier to get knocked out of the fight, it's harder to die since being taken down the condition track knocks you out instead of kills you.

[Draz74]

One problem with this is simple: it's a pain in the butt to keep track of all those penalties.

In CRE8, instead of a lasting scaling penalty, I just have the target of an attack get Staggered for one round if the attack damage exceeded his Armor Value (akin to Saga's "damage threshold"). Staggered = lose your Move Action for your next turn. (Since 5-foot steps also require a Move Action in CRE8, a la 4e, this is often a significant loss even for casters or low-level melee.)

[SexyPlantLover]

Although I was interested in this mechanism for my E8 generic classes game, my players voted it down as being too much of a change from 3.5 and because they didn't want to lose actions, even if it may be realistic.

[Calimehter]

I've never played/run Saga, but since 2nd ed. one of my favorite D&D houserules has been to have some sort of penalty come up as you lost more and more HP. Some lessons I've learned:

- Make sure to toss something in that affects spellcasters too. Since most spellcasting does not require a check to cast a spell, penalties to checks alone can be seen as a (further) inequity between melee and magic. This also makes it more useful against a broader range of opponents.

- Keep it simple. Every group has its own tolerances for how complicated they want to run things :smallsmile: but the simpler you go, the easier it will be to remember and tactically plan for.

- My own preference has been to tie penalties into the total remaining % of HP left, regardless of whether the monster/character has been hit by many small attacks or one single larger one. This partly goes back to previous point, and also my own desire to keep smaller damage quantities more meaningful in game play. YMMV on this point, though, as I can see the desire to keep the focus on big hits having some merit.

EDIT: One other thing I forgot . . . virtually any HP=penalties system is going to make the '15 minute adventuring day' a bigger problem than it already is, since the melee types will want to be healed up to near max at the start of any fight. I usually structure my adventures with this in mind, usually by using fewer but tougher fights per day than most modules I've seen. There are other ways too, but you should at least give some thought to what you want to do about it (if anything).

[Dienekes]

One problem with this is simple: it's a pain in the butt to keep track of all those penalties.

Maybe because Saga puts it right out on the front page but I've never had any problem. You just subtract the penalty from every d20 roll really.

[raitalin]

It's not hard for the players, it can be a huge pain for DMs in fights with a modest number of enemies.

[Yora]

I think the main reason not to use it really lies in the fact that even at 6th level with d10 hp and Con 16, you still have only 55 hp on average. And most PCs will have a lot less. You can only take three or four good hits before you go down anyway, so combat will rarely last long enought to build up a -2 penalty without dying.
The actual impact on gameplay seems too low to justify adding additional mechanics to the game.

[Calimehter]

That is true to some extent.

All I'm doing for my 'current' E6 campaign is using an expanded range for Disabled, making it 10% or less of your max HP instead of just having it kick in at HP=0. Its quite simple compared to other systems I've tried, affects all classes equally, its led to some dramatic fight conclusions, and it makes HP a *bit* more important in a system (E6) where they don't need as much of a boost.

[Draz74]

If anything similar to Saga is being done, I'd do something with Hit Points and Con-dependence similar to 4e: Allow characters to add their Constitution score (not modifier) to HP, but only at Level 1. Constitution does not affect Hit Points gains at higher levels.

This makes CON a little less overpowered compared to other ability scores, and makes Level 1 combat a little less "swingy." May not change that "55 HP max at Level 6" statistic much, though.