[3.x] Vitality and Wound points

[Mighty_Chicken]

Hi people,

I'm organizing to restart my group's semi-historical campaign.

I recently found out about E6 (limiting max level to 6, basically). I'm convinced to use this idea. I'll also use low-magic rules that I'm not fully decided about yet.

I started looking at Vitality and Wound points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) because the group is small and didn't have a dedicated healer. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Vitality/Wound points in a nutshell:
Characters have 2 different sets of hit points. Vitality points are the usual HP. They represent luck, agility, minor bruises, etc. After you lose all Vitality points, or when struck by a critical hit, you start losing Wound Points (critical hits don't multiply damage). A character who lost at least one WP is fatigued. Everytime he loses WP, he must make a Fortitude save (5+damage to WP) or get stunned for 1d4 rounds.

Vitality points are counted as usual HPs. The Wound points number is equal you Constitution value.

WP heal slowly, and VP heal really fast.

Overall, I don't want 1st level characters to be meek and squeachy - and I want "max level" (6th) characters to not feel invencible around normals. I want them to be (relatively) strong, but to know that combats are always risky. They could lose everything because of a natural 20. So diplomacy, stealth and running away must be options.

Problem is... I think that WP=Constitution value is too much. Any 1st level character would be a tank. I want players to be afraid that they can be taken down by a single long sword critical hit. At least, in the beginning.

In the other hand, I don't want lvl 6 characters falling after a first blow - I don't want things to get too random...

So I thought about a diminute number of initial WP: every player starts with half their Constitution score as WP. For example, a Con 13 character starts with 6 WP and a Con 16 starts with 8 WP. This number obviously has to progress, but I can't decide exactly kind of progression will fit better.

1: They get a bonus WP at 2nd, 4th and 6th level.

2: They get a bonus WP at every level.

3: They get 2 bonus WP every level. The final number can't be bigger than Constitution score.

In the fist model, character's WP at 6th level will range from 9 to 12. With this kind of rule criticals are very deadly.

In the third model, character's WP at 6th level will range from 12 to 18. a single critical is sometimes dangerous for the weaker characters, but not a real threat to the stronger ones.

I'm asking for veteran DM's and players experience here... What can be the short and long term consequences in the game for each of the models?

Here is other stuff I've been thinking about too. Not the main topic here. Ignore at will :) Healing: I want to limit WP healing, but expand VP healing to almost all classes. It's a low magic campaign after all - and healing VP doesn't even need to be magical. I'm also nerfing healing overall because I'm evil. 1d8+1 is 1d6+1, etc.

Different initial WP score: I thought of 8 + con bonus. Or 6 + con bonus. Or... you know, 6 WP seem's like too little (although a 12 damage points would kill most 1t level characters). So I could use standard numbers at 1st level. But I want the Constitution score to be an important investment.

Pathfinder: I think I'm going to use Pathfinder. This raises the offensive power of both players and foes. No need to worry about Critical feats because E6.

Critical effects: I want them to be more scary. The save for not getting stunned is still Fortitude (5+damage), but the character has to beat it for a 5 or more value, or get sickenned for one round. So it's like the Fortitude save is 5+damage for the stun, and 10+damage for the sickenning.

The original rules stand that x3 critical weapons don't deal more critical damage than x2 ones. Instead they just gain a 19-20 margin. I'm changing that. If you score a critical with an axe, for example, the damage is doubled; one part affects the WP, and the other part affects VP. The double value is used to increase the Fortitude save DC.

The party: just in case anyone wants to know: it's a small group. A bard, a palladin, a monk, and a barbarian that missed almost all sessions. It's a seafaring adventure where they're (still) low rank soldiers in the ship. I want each of them to have an alternate character, a commoner with bad stats, because I want to experiment with this. These characters would never go above 1st level.

[ArcturusV]

Vitality and Wound Points sounds almost like they were inspired by Paladium RPGs and their SDC and HP.

Anyway, I'd go for a Wounds equal to half your Vitality progression. Simple enough. It means that Wizards will always be squishy (As they should be), and that Barbarians will be tough, though even at level 1 they're likely to only have 8 Wounds, still in that "I can get shanked to death by a longsword" range. And that way the players do have their Wounds progressing every level... unless something like that Rogue with 10 Con rolled a 1 on his Hit Dice.

You might also want to consider a mortal danger rule as well. This is something I've had to do for Robotech, RIFTS, and DnD before. If someone has a knife to your back or something and tells you to hand over your GP... you don't get to go "Pssh, only 1d4. Probably only to my Vitality so what do I care?" Nope, if you're at weapon point like that, it's directly to Wounds, and if they crit it's double wounds.

Also consider allowing characters who have say, Precise Shot and take Aim actions to bypass Vitality in "Sniper" situations in a similar vein. In general combat, no. But if you spend 4 rounds zeroing in on a guy who has no idea you are about to put an arrow in his eye... you should get that effect.

[jedipilot24]

Actually, the Vitality/Wound system was originally created for the Revised Core rules of the Star Wars RPG. It has since been phased out in favor of a return to a modifed HP system.

If you want characters to be less squishy, then why are you decreasing their number of 1st level WPs? Under the existing system, characters start with a number of WP's equal to their Constitution score.

You might want to look at Monte Cooks Book of Experimental Might which postulates a similar Health/Grace system and both improve by level. I'm not sure how much more I can tell you without violating copyright.

[lsfreak]

Here are other stuff I've been thinking about too. Not the main topic here. Ignore at will :)

Commenting on side rules

Forewarning: None of these have been put into practice, I've never had a group that has a good sense of balance to put things into practice, and I don't have an outstanding sense of balance myself. So they're more ideas I've had floating around than suggestions.

You are fatigued upon hitting half vitality, and exhausted upon taking wound damage. The fatigue is removed after being healed above half vitality, the exhausted moves up to fatigue at the normal rate of 1 hour of rest, but you are always fatigued as long as you have wound damage. This may warrant nerfing exhaustion down to -4/-4.

To make up for this in part, characters can take a standard action (or as a swift action, while taking Total Defense) to heal their Con mod + level in vitality, plus the same benefit if they are not subject to any successful attacks or spells before the beginning of their next turn. This can never heal them above half their vitality (i.e. it can never remove the fatigue). Active healing without needing to come up with something for every class, and they can be expected to enter any new encounters with at least half their vitality even in hectic parts of the campaign and no genuine healers.

Vitality healing scales at 1 point/level/hour for d4 hit dice, 1.5/level/hour for d6 and d8, and 2/level/hour for d10 and d12. Keeps some of the silliness down of a wizard getting back to 100% faster than a barbarian.

A DC10 heal check as a full-round action heals 1d6 vitality, +1d6 for every 5 you beat the check by. -5 penalty for performing it on yourself, +5DC every time it's done on someone within 24 hours. If you need to, you get get up to near 100% vitality without spells, but likely only a couple times a day.

A DC15 heal check as a minute-long action heals a single wound point, +1 for every 10 you beat the check by. Failing by 5 or more deals one wound point. +5DC every time it's attempted, until the character returns to full wounds (or at least one day has passed, if they are healed to full within a day).

Healing spells only heal vitality, but they can trade increments of 4 points of vitality healing for one-quarter as much wound healing.

All those above healing rules are coming from the direction of a campaign that a) has zero healers, b) has magic items as a rarity, and c) has resources stretched by repeated or continuous fighting. Adventuring days are hectic flurries of activity, followed by a week of recovering, traveling, researching, and otherwise downtime. If healers are more common or if adventuring days are only a couple encounters long, these may be less appropriate.

I thought about going the other way with criticals, in part. Sneak attack or power attack on a crit are pretty much a one-hit kill even - or especially - at higher levels. So crits are for weapon dice + Str damage only, plus 1 point per die of extra damage. The remaining damage is dealt to vitality.

I like making higher crit multipliers into harder Fort saves. I wanted to do something with them, but the best I came up with is crits with certain weapons do ability damage; crits happen rarely enough, though, and often monsters/NPC's last so few rounds that it felt like it barely rewarded the PC's for getting crits but severely penalized them for taking them.

[TuggyNE]

You might also want to consider a mortal danger rule as well. This is something I've had to do for Robotech, RIFTS, and DnD before. If someone has a knife to your back or something and tells you to hand over your GP... you don't get to go "Pssh, only 1d4. Probably only to my Vitality so what do I care?" Nope, if you're at weapon point like that, it's directly to Wounds, and if they crit it's double wounds.

The logical thing to do here is something very similar to a coup de grace, which means it goes straight to WP and doesn't roll an attack.

[DaTedinator]

Overall, I don't want 1st level characters to be meek and squeachy - and I want "max level" (6th) characters to not feel invencible around normals. I want them to be (relatively) strong, but to know that combats are always risky. They could lose everything because of a natural 20. So diplomacy, stealth and running away must be options.

Problem is... I think that WP=Constitution value is too much. Any 1st level character would be a tank. I want players to be afraid that they can be taken down by a single long sword critical hit. At least, in the beginning.

Assuming you got this from Unearthed Arcana/the SRD, you must be forgetting about:

The first time a character takes wound damage—even a single point—he becomes fatigued. A fatigued character can’t run or charge and takes a -2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity until he has rested for 8 hours (or until the wound damage is healed, if that occurs first). Additional wound damage doesn’t make the character exhausted.

In addition, any time an attack deals wound damage to a character, he must succeed on a Fortitude saving thow (DC 5 + number of wound points lost from the attack) or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. (During that time, any other character can take a standard action to help the stunned character recover; doing so ends the stunned condition.)

Wound damage is never something you're okay with. If you want players to be less okay with wound damage, you can up the DC to avoid being stunned, or do like SWRPG, and make it a save to avoid being knocked out (rather than stunned).

[ArcturusV]

Solid idea Tuggyne.

Just you want to make sure you don't have to do something like they did in Robotech (Using a variation of Wounds/Vitality with HP/SDC). Where they actually found character would do things like jump on grenades and then get up and dust themselves off, "Eh, it was only 50 SDC" without a scratch on them. They actually had to add a rule in later books that said "Hey, if you jump on a grenade, you're dead. MAYBE just lose all your limbs and be a non-functional character if you're lucky. You gave your life for the team, good, but you aren't getting off scot free."

[RagnaroksChosen]

I have used the rules from UA/the SRD a few times. My group is a big fan of them..
Be warned your players will be squishy.
We had deaths regularly. Criting with these rules is deadly. I had an NPC with Improved crit on a falcion.. I killed two PC's in the first round.

You will also be surprised how fast the vitality goes. I would suggest playing at least 3 sessions with the rules as written then tweak it. Make sure you have a heavy stress session.

As a player who has used these rules, I felt squishy I am a huge fan of both E6 and the vitality rules. Also con damage hurts a lot.. We had to ban/tweek some poisons/spells/etc. The GM in the game I played in had to ban the spell poison(he was nice about it though).

[Zman]

Actually, you can p,ay the Wound/Vitality rules as written, they are pretty good and will deliver the feel you are after, especially if you keep ability scores reasonable. An Orc Warrior 1 can take out just about any PC in a lucky hit, though it's not a guarantee they die. The fort saves mitigate how lethal it can be, but has a nice feel to the system as a whole. Being fatigued with around Damage hurts. Alot. And characters are afraid of taking Wound Damage at any level.

[Draz74]

Yeah, I've heard a few people say that when they tried out the VP/WP system, it ended up being swingier (more random) when they thought, and it got frustrating. This is especially a problem with things like Power Attack and Scorching Ray, that can become insta-kills even at high levels if they just roll a 20. (The recommended nerf where Sneak Attack is reduced to 1 WP damage per die keeps it from being in the same category ... mostly.)

[chronomatophobe]

I love the way vitality/WP helps portray combat, but it has its faults. Anything that favors chance makes the PCs less lucky. Reasonably (and unbeknownst to the group that I run because they're relatively new and don't know of variants like this) I run the monsters with Vit/WP while the PCs go vanilla. Certain NPCs fit the same bill and follow the same rules the same ways PCs and important NPCs would treat Action Points in Eberron. Seems to work really well. It tends towards fair encounters favoring a high number of mooks and a mookish commander, but run well they still provide a challenge.

I tried with PCs using Vit/WP, and they just die for no reason sometimes. Really isn't fun. You don't want someone stunned for 1d4 rounds just because an NPC rolled well. The PCs are supposed to win and it's not only inconvenient but detrimental when you crit a wizard PC and say "Hey, what are your wound points?" They say '12' and you say "Whoops, you're dead. That actually sucks for everyone, because that wouldn't have happened without this variant which nets you no monetary gain and therefore no way to buy-off the extra risk I'm forcing you into."
Note that this is primarily true at levels 3-20 with a minimally cheesy wizard. We needn't discuss the fragrant Gruyere odor of an adept wizard player, because frankly, we all know what they do.

That's what they say to you. It's not what you get to say to them. I mean, obviously, a large amount of discretion is involved. I just find that it leads to the most fun if monsters abide the Vit/WP dynamic while PCs are unaware.

[Ashtagon]

V&W is one of the most misunderstood optional rules.

The RAW: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm

Vitality: This basically replaces regular hit points, and are gained at the same rate that hit points are in the core rules.

Wounds: A character has a wounds score equal to his Constitution. Wounds essentially replace negative hit points.

That last sentence can't be emphasised enough. When your wounds reaches 0, a you immediately make a Fort save or die (DC 15). Under e6, that isn't so sure a thing you want to risk it.

In effect, the changes can be paraphrased as:


Critical hits strike at your "negative hit points" instead of multiplying damage.
You can continue to fight while at negative hit points.
Your "negative hit point" limit is set to your Constitution score instead of a flat -10 limit.
Losing all your "negative hit points" means you start making death checks, rather than actually dying.


If you want to make it more lethal...


Zero wounds means you're dead. No save.
If you have lost even a single wound point, you are automatically fatigued, if you weren't already.
If you have lost at least half your wound points, you are automatically exhausted, if you weren't already.
Each time you lose wound points for any reason and have no remaining vitality points, make a DC 15 Fort save. Failure means you fall unconscious. If you fall unconscious from that failed save, roll another Fort save (DC 15) to avoid the dying condition.


Note that this set of house rules removes the disabled condition in favour of fatigue/exhaustion. Disabled essentially reduces the character to the status of "mobile target". By leaving characters able to choose to attack, you leave player agency in the game as an option, albeit a foolish one.

[Zman]

I love the way vitality/WP helps portray combat, but it has its faults. Anything that favors chance makes the PCs less lucky. Reasonably (and unbeknownst to the group that I run because they're relatively new and don't know of variants like this) I run the monsters with Vit/WP while the PCs go vanilla. Certain NPCs fit the same bill and follow the same rules the same ways PCs and important NPCs would treat Action Points in Eberron. Seems to work really well. It tends towards fair encounters favoring a high number of mooks and a mookish commander, but run well they still provide a challenge.

I tried with PCs using Vit/WP, and they just die for no reason sometimes. Really isn't fun. You don't want someone stunned for 1d4 rounds just because an NPC rolled well. The PCs are supposed to win and it's not only inconvenient but detrimental when you crit a wizard PC and say "Hey, what are your wound points?" They say '12' and you say "Whoops, you're dead. That actually sucks for everyone, because that wouldn't have happened without this variant which nets you no monetary gain and therefore no way to buy-off the extra risk I'm forcing you into."
Note that this is primarily true at levels 3-20 with a minimally cheesy wizard. We needn't discuss the fragrant Gruyere odor of an adept wizard player, because frankly, we all know what they do.

That's what they say to you. It's not what you get to say to them. I mean, obviously, a large amount of discretion is involved. I just find that it leads to the most fun if monsters abide the Vit/WP dynamic while PCs are unaware.

I don't think you are using Wound and Vitality points correctly and are failing to use the Fort Saves.

Chance a level 20 Wizard simply starts dying is 5%, if the enemy Crits them for their entire amount of WP, they then have to roll a 1 on their Fort Save. If they fail that, they then need to roll another 1 on their second Fort Save. So.... 1/400 chance the level 20 Wizard who took a Crit for his entire WP will die.

Also, the chance of being stunned when taking wound damage is relatively low as well.


If its priced so lethal, I think you are using the rules incorrectly. Yes, a character can be incapacitated more quickly, but it cpbecomes harder to actuall outfight kill a character.

[Mighty_Chicken]

If you want characters to be less squishy, then why are you decreasing their number of 1st level WPs? Under the existing system, characters start with a number of WP's equal to their Constitution score.

An usual 1st level bard has 7 hp. If I crit against him and get a 4, he's down. Actually, two non-crit times I hit him for 4 damage, and he's down.

A 1st level bard in my house rule would have 6 WP plus 5 VP. If I crit against him and get a 4, he's in danger, gets fatigued, possibly stunned (and in my houserule, even sickened). But he's fightin! Also it takes one extra average blow to bring him down. Certainly less squichy.

Isfreak, I like your ideas about healing. The easier fatigue/exaustion could work just as fine as the standard - because both sides of a battle are getting the nerfs, and wounded warriors have a disavantage. But things work without going that far, too. So I'll think.

I don't see why sneak attacks should harm Wound Points. Fluff wise, of course it makes sense. But remember, sneak dice are not multiplied on a critical hit. (But I think it's ok if they're being used against helpless targets, that's how an assassination should work anyway.)

The point is that even your "nerfed" sneak vs WP is a huge buff compared to RAW. I think if a rogue wants a buff, he needs to spend some feats. I'd allow a rogue to deal 1 WP damage per dice if he had a balanced feat tree figured out.


The logical thing to do here is something very similar to a coup de grace, which means it goes straight to WP and doesn't roll an attack.

Yeah, and that makes me think daggers should do 2d4 damage against any helpless target, but I digress. Aiming should do Wound damage, too, but in a way that leads to grittiness, not to easy exploitation.


Assuming you got this from Unearthed Arcana/the SRD, you must be forgetting about:


Wound damage is never something you're okay with. If you want players to be less okay with wound damage, you can up the DC to avoid being stunned, or do like SWRPG, and make it a save to avoid being knocked out (rather than stunned).

No, I'm not :) Read the spoilers. I even figured a house rule that if you don't success at the Fort test for a 5 or more margin, you get sickened for a round.

But I thank your feedback, that's the kind of experience I need to listen to. Maybe even if 6 lvl PCs have enourmous amounts of WP like ArcturusV suggested, the system will still make battle more gritty, dangerous and varied. Almost no one would die from a single sword blow, but any blow could lead to a stun, which is half a step from death in some cases.



Just you want to make sure you don't have to do something like they did in Robotech (Using a variation of Wounds/Vitality with HP/SDC). Where they actually found character would do things like jump on grenades and then get up and dust themselves off, "Eh, it was only 50 SDC" without a scratch on them.

Actually, if I tell a samurai, "go on! Chop my head out, I have 80 HPs!", I'm a helpless target regardless of being a voluntary. A soldier who jump on grenades is a voluntary helpless target. He should, in the very least, do a Fort save not to die. Not to mention Rule 0, the DM can decide he just dies - though he should explain that to the player before the action takes place.




As a player who has used these rules, I felt squishy I am a huge fan of both E6 and the vitality rules. Also con damage hurts a lot.. We had to ban/tweek some poisons/spells/etc. The GM in the game I played in had to ban the spell poison(he was nice about it though).

Good to know it's worth the risk :D As my game is low-fantasy, I intend to buff diseases, starvation and weather punishment. I don't like every single disease getting you fatigued though. Some con damage may be enough to convince players being sick isn't fun.


Actually, you can p,ay the Wound/Vitality rules as written, they are pretty good and will deliver the feel you are after, especially if you keep ability scores reasonable. An Orc Warrior 1 can take out just about any PC in a lucky hit, though it's not a guarantee they die.

That's the sweet balance point I'm trying to get... I want players to be afraid of big warriors. Fighting big guys who are armed with swords is never a good idea in real life, right? Even if he's goofy, he's big and can cut you in half. But I really don't want an Orc Warrior 1 equivalent to do that so easily.

The other problem with Vitality is that it makes Strenght the most. Overpowered. Ability. Ever. It helps both to confirm crits and to make them 'relevant' (aka "one blow killers"). Barbarians get ridiculous at both sides of a battle, and become an element of chaos. I'm even thinking of changing strenght damage/attack modifiers, something more grounded like Ad&d. Or maybe Strengh doesn't help to confirm criticals... or rage doesn't? Being awesome doesn't? :P

I mean, the randomness is a feature, not a bug here. Randomness is bad for the stronger/fewer numbers side. Usually the PCs, but also anything else. So no one can get too confident; political power gets even more lethal than magic, because mooks in numbers are more dangerous. I just don't want the randomness to get out of hand.


I run the monsters with Vit/WP while the PCs go vanilla.

Great idea. It helps combat to be more dynamic, players can stun enemies with crits and that's awesome; but no random player deaths. Problem is, I do want to use low magic/low healing and want my players to fear combat and being outnumbered by mooks.


V&W is one of the most misunderstood optional rules.

The RAW: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm

Vitality: This basically replaces regular hit points, and are gained at the same rate that hit points are in the core rules.

Wounds: A character has a wounds score equal to his Constitution. Wounds essentially replace negative hit points.

...

Note that this set of house rules removes the disabled condition in favour of fatigue/exhaustion. Disabled essentially reduces the character to the status of "mobile target". By leaving characters able to choose to attack, you leave player agency in the game as an option, albeit a foolish one.

I remember the Ad&d days when 0 HP meant instant death. Not actually nice.

I think that the more logical is that when the player hit 0 WP, he gets negative WPs until he reaches a value equal to his Con score. Then he dies. It is less random than periodical Fort saves anyway. I know Fort saves give a bigger sense of emergency, but players should be able to plan a little in combet... after all, a Con 15 character takes a minute and a half to die. That's emergency enough! With Fort saves, it feels like, "oh, too bad you took 6 more seconds to make a DC 15 Heal check on your brother, Jimmy, now your parents are going to be mad at you".

But you know, exausted/sickened instead of stun seems a cool way to save player agency. Also, 1d4 rounds stunned - no matter if you were hit by a club or a truck - is so random...


Good points, Zman.

[Zombimode]

Problem is... I think that WP=Constitution value is too much. Any 1st level character would be a tank. I want players to be afraid that they can be taken down by a single long sword critical hit. At least, in the beginning.

In the other hand, I don't want lvl 6 characters falling after a first blow - I don't want things to get too random...

I'm using the Wound & Vitality Point system with E6 D&D 3.5 for almost two years now, and this has not been my experience. Remember that you have to succeed on a Fort save when you loose WP, and failing that save means you are stunned for 1d4 rounds, which in most cases translates into being knocked out of the combat. So while, yes, 1 hd creatures will have something like 15-20 "hit point", a single hit can still remove them from combat, and even if not, for low-level creature being fatigued is quite a penalty.

But granted, I actually like the increased beef that even a first level warrior get with this system, and I've never started a campaign using this system with 1st level characters. I always have them start at level 3, with all the increased damage output and expected resilience that entails.

Here's how I use the system:

- wound and vitality points are calculated like described in the SRD
- all living creatures have wound and vitality points. Non-living get bonus VP equal to their con score. For creatures with no con score, well sucks to be them (this had the negative side effect that I needed to rebuild some of the lower level undead, since the original skeletons and zombies were to fragile in comparison).
- Critical hits do normal (not multiplied or modified in any way) damage directly against the wound points. They, however, do NOT ignore DR. Note that I would not use this like described if I wouldn't also use E6. In normal D&D you quickly get to the point where single attacks do massive damage. In the E6, this is far less pronounced.
- like described, crit multipliers are translated into increased crit range, but this may change since I don't like how it decreases weapon diversity. Maybe I will adopt your system :smallsmile:
- I don't use the suggested system for death and dying, but the normal system instead, meaning that your WP can drop below 0 and you are dead at -10 or more.

[lsfreak]

I don't see why sneak attacks should harm Wound Points. Fluff wise, of course it makes sense. But remember, sneak dice are not multiplied on a critical hit. (But I think it's ok if they're being used against helpless targets, that's how an assassination should work anyway.)

The point is that even your "nerfed" sneak vs WP is a huge buff compared to RAW. I think if a rogue wants a buff, he needs to spend some feats. I'd allow a rogue to deal 1 WP damage per dice if he had a balanced feat tree figured out.
By my reading of wound points, a normal, RAW crit bypasses vitality entirely. Sneak attacks, power attacks, bonus damage from feats, bonus dice from weapon enchantments, and everything else go directly to wounds, whether or not they'd normally be multiplied in a non-wound system. I'm moving everything to vitality except the base weapon damage + Str bonus + 1 point per die of bonus damage.

[Zman]

It's actually easier to kill a character with normal HP then Wound/Vitality, but much asker to disable a character using WP/VP.