Pathfinder E6 variant + minions + vitality/wounds (Help?)

[Relecs]

Hey Giants,

So right now I'm working on a virtually no magic setting for pathfinder (e6) in addition to this I'm working in a vitality/wound point system. In addition to this I want to work in minions, I've looked at some of the threads on the board about minions and I would like to start by saying:

Disclaimer/Warning

I am going to create a minions system, I will not be talked out of it, so either help (helping is preferable) or do not post, there is no reason to explain why minions absolutely won't work and how I should give up, because I won't; I'm stubborn that way. If you think that a particular rule proposed by myself or someone else is bad say so and explain why but do not just state that it is a bad idea without further explination.

I'll start with a quick overview of the vitality/wound system as I believe it will have an impact on the minion system.

Vitality Wounds

Characters have vitality points equal to whatever their hitpoints would usually be (d10+con for a fighter, d8+con for a rogue, etc.) In addition to this all characters have wound points equal to 2+constitution modifier. Vitality points are lost just like regular hitpoints based on damage rolled. Wound points however are lost differently, after all vitality points have been exhausted players will lose 1 wound per hit no matter what damage is dealt. I'm playing with the concept of "elite/boss" monsters dealing wounds equal to 1/targets constitution score (when hitting a rogue with a con of 12 the rogue takes 1 wound when the elite rolls between 1-23 damage and takes 2 between 24-35 damage, etc.).
Upon taking a wound we look at how much the attacker hit by, if the roll was between ...
1-4 higher than the targets ac then it was just a flesh wound bringing the character that much closer to death but providing no penalties (eg. shallow cut)
5-9 higher than the targets ac then it is a minor wound applying some sort of penalty which will last until combat is over (eg. deep cut )
10-14 higher than the targets ac then it is a moderate wound which will persist in penalizing the character until he receives medical attention (eg. broken arm)
16-19 higher than the targets ac this is a major wound and can result in permanent penalties (eg. severed limb)
20+ higher than the targets ac, this is a fatal wound and will result in death unless immediate medical attention is received, and even the the outlook is bleak (eg. throat slashed open)

Vitality points restore fully between battle (some wound penalties may hinder this) while wounds recover only with rest or possibly medical care, some wounds are permanent.

This system is meant to allow multiple battles without rest but where danger is still present.

Feedback and (constructive) criticism of this system is welcome and would be much appreciated.

Onto the Minions...

Now here is the next part, I want the heroes to be able to wade through multiple enemies and feel heroic but I don't want them to be able to just ignore them and focus on the BBEG, in addition to this I want minions to be essentially no paper work, allowing me to throw them at the party without bogging down gameplay.

So this is the initial rough version I propose. Rather than making minion a template I apply to an individual creature I just make a generic creature called "minion" and flavour it through roleplaying rather than giving it any unique combat aspects.

Now a few thoughts on it statistically
one hit ko
relatively low damage
able to hit the party members
the absence of spellcasters (because this is a low magic setting) means area of effects will be lacking making them more challenging (feats such as cleave or whirlwind may help to balance this but this is up to players to pick these)
they possibly need some mechanic allowing them to gang up or to support a more powerful ally

My initial thought was to have them with...
5+average party level to hit (possibly also for cmb)
10+average party level AC (possibly also for cmd)
1/2 average party level for saves (less important with no spellcasters around)

The minion section is where I am most uncertain critique and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Help me playground you're my only hope...

Relecs.

EDIT: forgot to give credit where it is deserved, I'm borrowing the initial minion stats from a forum poster by the name of dok who posted this on this other forum (http://okayyourturn.yuku.com/topic/18072/Importing-the-4E-Minon-mechanic-to-3-5?page=1#.TyJVLPk8CSo)

[Nakun]

I'm going to say first that I think the vitality system looks good. You might also want to edit the number of wounds based on race/class (although I know standard hit points are already altered by the classes.)

For the minions,
The only thing that seems too high is the 5+1/2 Party Level BAB. I think in the first couple of levels that may be too high because it is as good as or better than a fighter/barbarian and makes minions a serious threat to players because they will almost always hit.
Of course this depends on how much damage they do. In the link to dok, he says 1d4+1/2 Party Level. This isn't much, and I like the dice rolling because it prevents the canny player from knowing they are minions (4e had set damage which would always tip us off.)

I would maybe recommend having two types, one for low and one for high level. The low level (levels 1-3) minion might only have 3+1/2 Party Level to hit and deal 1d4+1/2 Party Level damage and the high (levels 4-6+) might have 5+1/2 Party Level to hit and do 1d6+1/2 Party Level damage.

I would also take another page out of dok's book and not grant the BAB modifier to CMB because that would be too high.

[Relecs]

Thanks for the reply Nakun,

In response to your first comment, I've considered altering wound points based on class in the past and I still might do this. I'm a little worried about to many wounds as they can only be dealt one at a time (or otherwise as stated in the initial post) and if I grant to many players may feel invincible (albeit mangled from all the wound modifiers) If I did decide to go with this what I may do is...

4+Con modifier if they have a d12 hd
3+Con modifier if they have a d10 hd
2+Con modifier if they have a d8 hd
1+Con modifier if they have a d6 hd (I believe abolishing spellcasters also removed all d6 hd from the game)

Onto your second point, I tend to agree that 5+1/2 party level is to high for bonus to hit (also if it makes a dfference this will be their total to hit not just their BAB). Looking at your suggestions my thought is that making them have a bonus to hit equal to 1.5 x party level (rounded up; +2 @ 1, +3 @ 2, +5 @ 3, etc.) may be appropriate. In addition to this I think I will just directly use your suggestion for damage (1d4 +1/2 party level 1-3; 1d6+ 1/2 party level 4-6).

I think even at this point these bonuses may be too high for cmb, any thoughts on how I should calculate these bonuses?

Also how should minions deal damage to wound points? my initial thought is that they should only be able to deal 1/4 of a wound point and it takes four minion hits to wound a hero (represented possibly with tokens to avoid confusion) In addition minions may only be able to deal flesh wounds, thoughts?

How many minions with these stats equal the parties challenge rating? (dok suggests 16 but this is assuming a party level of at least 8, I'm worried that the party may not be able to handle so many.)

Thanks

Relecs

[Nakun]

I don't know what a good number for CMB would be...I haven't used Pathfinder enough. My initial thought is give minions a CMB equal to the party level. That way, it won't be challenging for a character who has invested in combat maneuvers to out maneuver them, but they still might be able to wrestle something out of a rogue's hand...

As for wounds, I would have minions able to deal one wound because your quarter wounds system seems like too much paper work (and that's what minions are supposed to eliminate) and if an orc runs you through with a sword, it'll still hurt, no matter how beefy the orc is.

For suitable balance, I do think that having minions only able to deal flesh wounds is the best system, that way no PC is going to have a broken leg because of a mook.

[Relecs]

Thanks for all the feedback Nakun

I think that party level for cmb would work since even though minions don't technically have hd it would assume a bab approximately equal to the parties level with no strength modifiers to boost it. In which case I will also give them a cmd of 10+party level.

I also somewhat agree with the full wound rule as this would remove paperwork however this will make minions even more deadly, and this is ok however it will affect the number of minions/cr.

I may have to run some mock battles to see what number approximately challenges the pc's. I'll probably start with 16 minions/cr=party level.

Any additional thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Relecs

[Relecs]

I've been considering how to handle critical hits both with regards to vitality/wounds and minions.

As to the former my thought is that the critical multiplier will give a higher chance of a deadlier wound (x2 = +5 when considering wound type, x3 = +10 and x4 = +15). When dealing with vitality points critical hits act normally, dealing their respective multiplier of damage.

However...

This favours the enemy since weaker enemies won't have wounds or the players won't care if they have wounds because they want to kill them not dismember them. In the case of recurring villians this may be useful to the pc's but I'm worried it may give an unfair advantage to the enemies. Thoughts?

On Minions...

With regards to minions there are two things to deal with both how minions deal and receive critical hits. I believe that minions should be unable to deal critical hits and receiving them seems irrelevant although it may be disappointing to players. Maybe grant the player a free attack upon critically hitting a minion?

[SpaceBadger]

Another system for vitality/wounds that I am going to be trying out does not give each character a separate pool of wound points, but just makes some more serious wounds take longer to heal.

Like this: each character has a hit point total, generated by whatever method you prefer.

When a character suffers damage, most of that damage is just what you have called vitality damage, and heals reasonably well between encounters (through cheap healing, or surges, or it just heals) so that these points are mostly restored before the next encounter.

Some damage is more severe and takes longer to heal, either by more expensive healing magic, or required days of rest, or something to make it more meaningful in terms of resources or delay. Some ideas for what kinds of damage qualify here would be the bonus damage on criticals, or some portion of falling damage or other unavoidable damage that you don't like within the regular hit point model.

Note that the character does not have a separate pool of points for the more severe "wound" damage; add up the wound damage taken and the regular HP/vitality damage taken, and when they exceed the character's hit points the usual bad stuff happens (unconsciousness, dying, however you do that).

This system is simpler because you have only one hit point total to measure against (well, plus temporary HPs of various kinds...), and two types of damage to track (note that if regular HP/vitality points are mostly recovered easily, there is no reason to track nonlethal points separately). It is up to you whether you even bother tracking serious wounds on minor NPCs or mooks, or just let them fall when they hit zero, but at least you can use standard HP totals rather than having to figure a whole new set of wound points.

I would love to take credit for this idea, but really I got most of it from Keith Davies at this blog page (http://www.kjd-imc.org/2011/10/20/on-hit-points-and-healing), although we each have a few different ideas on refining the details (read down through the blog and various replies).

[Relecs]

Hey SpaceBadger,

I think that this seems like an interesting system of damage management and I like that it would allow wounds to be taken throughout combat and not just at the end when you were already close to damage.

I might appropriate some of this and have certain things automatically deal wounds. I was already wondering how to handle falling damage since vitality in this system represents heroic dodging or plot armor and its ability to restore between combat would make traps such as pits basically worthless. This is the system I'm considering

falling damage = 1 wound/ 10 feet fallen after the first 10 feet (1 @ 20, 2 @ 30, etc.)

you can avoid this damage with a reflex save allowing you to ignore your roll - 10 feet of falling (you roll a 20 you can ignore the first 10 feet of falling taking your first wound after falling 30 feet etc.) This seems like very quickly you wound not be able to stop much but it also seems grittier than standard d20 which fits for an e6 system.

You mentioned that the separate pools make it easier to track but I'm trying to make the vitality represent plot armor or heroic dodging so I feel as if one pool removes this and people start thinking of it in terms of hp again taking multiple sword blows and laughing them off rather than dodging sword blows and slowly getting worn out. I don't know if this makes any sense.

On the note of vitality being heroic dodging, I'm wondering how people might recommend handling diseases, touch effects, and poisons. This is a weakness of the system as it doesn't seem to make sense that you get diseased by the mummy's slam if the description is that you just barley dodge out of the way. One option wound be to simply describe these as grazing hits and just allow the attacks to take effect as normal. any other thoughts?

[SpaceBadger]

You mentioned that the separate pools make it easier to track but I'm trying to make the vitality represent plot armor or heroic dodging so I feel as if one pool removes this and people start thinking of it in terms of hp again taking multiple sword blows and laughing them off rather than dodging sword blows and slowly getting worn out. I don't know if this makes any sense.

That has always been a problem with abstract HP damage, and is a reason why people have been fiddling w alternate damage systems as long as D&D has been played (yeah, you really wouldn't want to see the system I had back in 1980 or thereabouts, with detailed hit locations and HP totals for different parts of the body... Yuck! :smalleek:). Anything more complicated just makes the game drag too much. I guess we just need to adjust our visualizations of the action to make a lot of hits be minor bruises and cuts that shake someone up and diminish their ability to continue the fight, but are quickly shaken off once the fight is over. Not necessarily misses/dodges, but not real damage.

The real damage would be those critical hits, or falling injuries, or coup-de-grace injuries, or whatever you feel should be special damage that takes real healing time rather than just resting a bit and catching your breath.


On the note of vitality being heroic dodging, I'm wondering how people might recommend handling diseases, touch effects, and poisons. This is a weakness of the system as it doesn't seem to make sense that you get diseased by the mummy's slam if the description is that you just barley dodge out of the way. One option wound be to simply describe these as grazing hits and just allow the attacks to take effect as normal. any other thoughts?

See above. Those should be considered hits that made contact (and in the case of poison/disease, at least cut the flesh or did whatever was necessary to inflict the poison/disease), but didn't do real permanent damage requiring serious healing.

*********
Edit: Forgot to mention, I see the main advantage of having one pool of HP and tracking two different types of damage against that pool as simply not needing to refigure HP totals for existing NPCs or monsters, or even PCs. Keep the same HP total, just change the way you track damage against that total, rather than coming up with new stats for everybody's Wound Capacity.