Problem with Wounds and Vitality

[Yora]

I often hear people saying that using the Wounds and Vitality system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) is a bad idea, because it's actually really broken in actual play.

However, I like the idea of differentiating between combat stamina and actual injuries. So what exactly is the problem? Despite the fact that characters can take a much higher number of hits per day than they normally would.

[Reluctance]

Critical hits go straight to wounds. Damage scales much faster over level than Con score does. Thus in practice, you have a system where crits can put a serious crimp in just about anything.

If you ignore that bit, you're simply giving everything more HP. That's usually an improvement in low-mid levels of play. Higher levels of play/optimization, you're merely giving everything more padding and making HP damage more of a grind.

[Antonok]

Perfect Example:

In a Star Wars campaign I played, we were lvl 1. We were playing jedi apprentices in lightsaber training. Mace Wendu was yelling at us. Friend got tired of it, took a swing at him, crit, and killed him.

Mace Wendu(lvl 20) got OHKO'd by a lvl 1.

[stack]

I actually like the idea for an E6-type game, where the massive piles of vitality wouldn't be an issue. It still penalizes melee though, as the increased deadliness of crits means the ones taking the hits are going to be killed by math eventually in their career.

[Draz74]

Pretty much any attack that can crit and can have its base damage boosted above 2d6+STR ends up making combat far too "swingy." For example, a Power Attacking falchion or a Scorching Ray spell.

VP/WP is a nice idea, and I've adapted it (with a little Star Wars Saga Edition thrown into the mix) for my homebrew system. But as-written, it's only a basic framework of an idea, not a true system that has any playtesting or anything to make it robust.

[Big Fau]

As stated above, the variant is far more unpredictable than normal HP is.

A way to solve the issue of a level 1 one-shotting a level 20 is to make the critical hits only deal damage equal to the weapon's multiplier instead of normal damage.

[Seerow]

Like others said, the biggest issue is that crits have damage go straight to wounds.

Personally I've adapted it so you have fewer wound points, but wound damage is lower/slower to accumulate. But even that leaves issues of scaling that really can't be fixed as an appendage to D&D, and needs its own system with a more tightly controlled damage.

[Eldan]

I remember that we had a homebrew project that got pretty big, here on the boards, with the working name Americanapunk. It was a kind of E10-ish setting which wildly combined Americana of the last four centuries (westerns, prohibition era detectives, 17th century trappers and pioneers) with horror and magic.

Anyway, the system we used there was that you had fewer wound points, but a critical only ever cost you one for a x2 weapon and 2 for a x3 weapon (there were, I think, no x4 weapons). That worked out pretty decently.

[Yora]

Reading more carefully through the SRD version, it's a really weird system.

It seems much easier to say that weapons deal nonlethal damage on a normal hit and lethal damage on critical hits. During an encounter it makes PCs and enemies survive just as long (if cure spells don't heal x points of both lethal and nonlethal damage), only requiring a few coup the grace once one side is completely out. But you heal most of your damage as 24 times the speed and there is less chance that falling under 0 hp actually killed you dead.

[gkathellar]

I remember that we had a homebrew project that got pretty big, here on the boards, with the working name Americanapunk. It was a kind of E10-ish setting which wildly combined Americana of the last four centuries (westerns, prohibition era detectives, 17th century trappers and pioneers) with horror and magic.

Anyway, the system we used there was that you had fewer wound points, but a critical only ever cost you one for a x2 weapon and 2 for a x3 weapon (there were, I think, no x4 weapons). That worked out pretty decently.

I was going to mention this if nobody else did, because I think it was very elegant. Let me second it: IIRC, what we worked out is that instead of having a critical hit multiplier, weapons had a "critical wounds" number. On a crit, you would deal X Wound Points in addition to your normal damage. After the opponent's vitality was out, you would deal that number of Wound Points automatically, on every hit.

I'll see if I can't find it with a quick browse. EDIT: Yup, that's how it worked.

[Feralventas]

Perfect Example:

In a Star Wars campaign I played, we were lvl 1. We were playing jedi apprentices in lightsaber training. Mace Wendu was yelling at us. Friend got tired of it, took a swing at him, crit, and killed him.

Mace Wendu(lvl 20) got OHKO'd by a lvl 1.

You say that like it's a bad thing though :3.

The possibility of a low-level character taking out a high-level one if not enough measures are taken to ensure their own safety and protection is the hallmark of a challenging, but not bad system. At the risk of a video-game example, Dark Souls and Demon Souls are incredibly difficult to power through without caution. At later stages in the game, it's possible, but still dangerous, to rush in and charge through an area unless you've simply been playing long enough to know it like the back of your hand. Dark Heresy has similarly high character mortality rates, although it's also 40k and therefore default silly in some regards.

Mind you, this is from a preference for consequences for foolish action or dangerous methodology, and attacking Mace Windu without cause was a rather silly thing to do in and of itself, but that it Worked seems more a positive rather than a negative.

[Seerow]

You say that like it's a bad thing though :3.

The possibility of a low-level character taking out a high-level one if not enough measures are taken to ensure their own safety and protection is the hallmark of a challenging, but not bad system. At the risk of a video-game example, Dark Souls and Demon Souls are incredibly difficult to power through without caution. At later stages in the game, it's possible, but still dangerous, to rush in and charge through an area unless you've simply been playing long enough to know it like the back of your hand. Dark Heresy has similarly high character mortality rates, although it's also 40k and therefore default silly in some regards.

Mind you, this is from a preference for consequences for foolish action or dangerous methodology, and attacking Mace Windu without cause was a rather silly thing to do in and of itself, but that it Worked seems more a positive rather than a negative.

If the PC had been the level 20, and a level 1 NPC attacked and killed him on a whim with some luck backing it up, would you still view it as a positive rather than a negative?

[KillianHawkeye]

Perfect Example:

In a Star Wars campaign I played, we were lvl 1. We were playing jedi apprentices in lightsaber training. Mace Wendu was yelling at us. Friend got tired of it, took a swing at him, crit, and killed him.

Mace Wendu(lvl 20) got OHKO'd by a lvl 1.

Except that's EXACTLY what would happen to somebody who gets critically hit by a lightsaber. The real problem seems to be how easy it was to get that crit (hence the usage of critical hit confirmation rolls to reduce the amount of fluke outcomes).

[Feralventas]

If the PC had been the level 20, and a level 1 NPC attacked and killed him on a whim with some luck backing it up, would you still view it as a positive rather than a negative?

Yes. I don't like that the PC decided to simply wreck a plot-important NPC, but that's a problem with characterization and cooperative play, not the system. I've lost PC's to that and I've killed PC's with unintentionally deadly mechanics and such. Two nights back I took out the party's alchemist with an Udoroot, CR5 psionic creature. A few poor will saves later, half the party was tossing explosions while the other half rolled a nat-1 attack and the other tried to take down the brain-addled ally.

Udoroot was CR5. Party was a 9th level alchemist, a 9th level fighter, a 9th level warlock/rogue mix, and a 9th level wizard.

[Reluctance]

You say that like it's a bad thing though :3.

The possibility of a low-level character taking out a high-level one if not enough measures are taken to ensure their own safety and protection is the hallmark of a challenging, but not bad system.

Remember that this is still D&D. Miss chance stacking still exists. Action negation abilities still exist. Swaddling yourself in buffs and then kicking the preemptive crap out of things still exists.

Games with a tighter power band overall can be fun. I have no problem with a system where a well-trained swordsman or sniper is a threat no matter who you are. In D&D specifically, though, this seems less like "lower-level mooks can still carry some threat", and more like "one hit in 20 will severely mess you up". Unless you make a habit of pissing off angry mobs, you'll take many more attacks from equal-level threats than you should "gritty" low-level ones.