Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Valoy_Muniz 03-26-07, 05:13 PM	I know many people do not like the HP rules that way it is, as you have no effect except from massive damage until you hit zero hp. After reading some of the stuff from the new star wars saga edition and d20 modern I though about a way to maybe help this. Any time you take a physical attack (on that can be effected by DR) that does your Damage threshold (con score pulse feat if you take) or more you are hurt a little more. Each time you take your Damage threshold of physical damage you take a -1 to hit, Defense, and any skill check that uses a physical stat (Str, Dex, Con). This penalty can stack up to an unlimited amount. You keep this penalty until you spend 1 full round catching your breath during this time you are consider helpless. If you penalty hits -4 you are now Fatigued. If it gets to -8 you are exhausted. The Fatigue and exhausted stats is dealt with normally. New Feat Improve Threshold Your damage threshold is 3 points higher then normal. This can be taken multiple times. This is also available as a fighter feat. Using this system, it may be necessary for some one that has taken some solid hit to take cover for a moment to catch his breath and it also give a chance to players and monsters to become fatigued. I am this work on physical attacks only as I felt it would be to easy to trigger if most spell could do it. Since most spell bypass dr only a very few would interact with this. What do you all think about this?
Burgundy Lotus 03-26-07, 10:55 PM	The main problem I see is a 1st level wizard with a Con of 14 has the same threshold as a 20th level Fighter with a 14 con.
The_Levitator 03-27-07, 03:24 AM	The main problem I see is a 1st level wizard with a Con of 14 has the same threshold as a 20th level Fighter with a 14 con. I was thinking the same thing. What if the threshold was: Lvl. +Con bonus? It seems like this would still matter a lot more at lower levels than at high levels. That's why I created a similiar idea using a percentage system. My players also disliked the idea that the 100HP fighter fights just as well at 1 HP under the current system, so I came up with what I call Battle Fatigue. Battle Fatigue was created in an attempt to give some consequence to the wear and tear and cumulative effects of damage and exhaustion during combat. I use a percentage based system so that it scales equally for everyone. In addition to the Battle Fatigue system, it also corresponds to a Relative Health system that we use in a Virtual Tabletop program called Maptools. Maptools has the ability to add colored halos around creature tokens, so I use different colors to signify the different degrees of battle fatigue. Warning, this is pretty gritty, and not for everyone. Green - Healthy Yellow - Light Battle Fatigue - at 75% of total HP, (-1 STR, -1 DEX) Orange - Moderate Battle Fatigue - at 50% of total HP, (-2 STR, -2 DEX) Red - Heavy Battle Fatigue - at 25% or less of total HP, (-4 STR, -4 DEX) What makes this system so easy for me is that I have it scripted right into DM Genie so that it applies the appropriate condition automatically for me. The group loves the additional flavor this gives our combat and I love the additional information it gives me to assist in exciting combat descriptions. In addition to the above, we combine this with the Opposed Defense Roll (calculated automatically with DM Genie), Armor as Dr (also automatically calculated in DM Genie including physical damage to armor and shields), Facing Variant, Clobbered Variant, and Defense Class Bonus (ours is simplified, CDB=BAB). All of these things combine to give me as a DM tons of great information to keep the combat description varied and exciting. I think your idea will work fine if you find a way to scale it so that getting whalloped at high levels is just as dangerous as getting whalloped at low levels. Anything to add a little spice to the current system is a good thing to me! :D
SilvercatMoonpaw 03-27-07, 08:17 AM	The main problem I see is a 1st level wizard with a Con of 14 has the same threshold as a 20th level Fighter with a 14 con. Yeah, it should be the other way around. Then martial classes get some of their tank role back.
Segan 03-28-07, 01:33 PM	I was thinking the same thing. What if the threshold was: Lvl. +Con bonus? It seems like this would still matter a lot more at lower levels than at high levels. That's why I created a similiar idea using a percentage system. My players also disliked the idea that the 100HP fighter fights just as well at 1 HP under the current system, so I came up with what I call Battle Fatigue. Battle Fatigue was created in an attempt to give some consequence to the wear and tear and cumulative effects of damage and exhaustion during combat. I use a percentage based system so that it scales equally for everyone. In addition to the Battle Fatigue system, it also corresponds to a Relative Health system that we use in a Virtual Tabletop program called Maptools. Maptools has the ability to add colored halos around creature tokens, so I use different colors to signify the different degrees of battle fatigue. Warning, this is pretty gritty, and not for everyone. Green - Healthy Yellow - Light Battle Fatigue - at 75% of total HP, (-1 STR, -1 DEX) Orange - Moderate Battle Fatigue - at 50% of total HP, (-2 STR, -2 DEX) Red - Heavy Battle Fatigue - at 25% or less of total HP, (-4 STR, -4 DEX) What makes this system so easy for me is that I have it scripted right into DM Genie so that it applies the appropriate condition automatically for me. The group loves the additional flavor this gives our combat and I love the additional information it gives me to assist in exciting combat descriptions. In addition to the above, we combine this with the Opposed Defense Roll (calculated automatically with DM Genie), Armor as Dr (also automatically calculated in DM Genie including physical damage to armor and shields), Facing Variant, Clobbered Variant, and Defense Class Bonus (ours is simplified, CDB=BAB). All of these things combine to give me as a DM tons of great information to keep the combat description varied and exciting. I think your idea will work fine if you find a way to scale it so that getting whalloped at high levels is just as dangerous as getting whalloped at low levels. Anything to add a little spice to the current system is a good thing to me! :D I like the Battle Fatigue system. But I do have one question: Do the penalties stack? As for Massive Damage Treshold, I have a proposition: Massive Damage: If you ever sustain damage so massive, that a single attack deals an amount of damage equal or above half your total hit points and it does not kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails by 5 or more, you die instantaneously, regardless of your current hitpoints. If you fail by 1-4, your hit points are reduced to –1, and you are dying. This amount of damage represents a single trauma so major that it has a chance to kill even the toughest creature. If you take damage equal to half your total hit points or more from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt massive damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply.
Valoy_Muniz 03-28-07, 02:24 PM	Thanks for all your input.
The_Levitator 03-28-07, 03:14 PM	I like the Battle Fatigue system. But I do have one question: Do the penalties stack? I don't stack them with each other. If you are at Light Battle Fatigue, say at 30 of 40 total HP, and you get hit for 10 points of damage, you would change from being at Light Battle Fatigue to Moderate Battle Fatigue, not both at the same time. I was trying to come up with something that scaled along with the damage. What my players like about it is that tanks can still be pretty formidable when damaged because they normally have higher STR, DEX, and CON than other types. Whereas a spellcaster wouldn't have to take too many shots to realize that they need a more distant perspective to the battle. What they REALLY like is seeing the effects of their attacks on their enemies. We use Maptools as a Virtual Tabletop, and I use the colored halos you can place around creature tokens to show the relative health of creatures. Green = Healthy Yellow = Light Battle Fatigue Orange = Moderate Battle Fatigue Red = Heavy Battle Fatigue Black = Down (dead, dying, unconscious, faking or otherwise lying on the ground) I try to make my descriptions match the swing when a creature goes from one form of Battle Fatigue to another. We've been using this system for almost 3 years now and we haven't had any bad experiences with it. Combined with all of the other variants we use, it gives us a LOT of descriptive information. I like to approach combat with the same angle as regular roleplaying. I want it to be a visual and cinematic experience, and using this system really helps me to do that. One thing I should mention is that by using this system, I no longer use numbers to describe combat. That means that I don't recite the actual amount of damage (exact HP) during combat. This REALLY makes combat feel more dicey and risky. Once the battle is over, and PC's have had time to assess their wounds, I give them the exact totals. Since we use relative health anyways, they always have a pretty solid idea of just how injured they are. Right now we are experimenting with a scaling recovery system to match the Battle Fatigue system. The idea is that minimal HP damage would heal more quickly than HP lost closer to the 0 mark. This is a new idea for us, but one that the group really seems to like. Here is what we have so far: Light Battle Fatigue: heals at the rate of Creature's Level + CON Bonus per day Moderate Battle Fatigue: heals at the rate of Creature's level per day Heavy Battle Fatigue: heals at the rate of Creature's level * .5. This is only for natural healing. We play with no spontaneous healing potions. Healing potions heal at a variable rate depending on the cleric who created the potion. I created 5 levels of potency that range in healing rate from 1 HP/8 rounds at level 1 to 2 HP/rd. at level 5. One balancing aspect that I include is that healing potions and spells always cure their maximum amount. Healing spells still work the same way. But we do play in a low magic/low healing availability world. A player of mine and I recently played in a RAW group in a one off and really missed the Battle Fatigue. Of course, we missed a lot of our houserules, because we are so used to them. :D
Segan 03-29-07, 06:32 AM	I can imagine that. Have you also tried to implement fatigue from stamina being run out (mostly for melees)? I've got no idea if your battles last long enough without any major hp losses, that being fatigued just by continuous combat efforts would become an issue... But if so, I think that would be an interesting feature to add to descriptive flavor.
The_Levitator 03-29-07, 12:48 PM	When I came up with the Battle Fatigue idea, I wanted it to represent more than just physical damage. I envisioned Battle Fatigue to be a result of physical damage, physical strain, and the mental stress of fighting for your life. Since HP are an abstract concept, I was trying to stay congruent with that and use Battle Fatigue to cover those 3 areas, instead of just physical damage. So we don't have any hard and fast rules specifically for stamina drain during combat, but I sometimes use physical strain to describe "damage" in combat. For example, Bob the Barbarian has 20 HP. He takes a pretty good shot from an orc with a flail for 8 points, taking him to 12. I might describe it as a hard shot to the ribs that may have even cracked a rib and is making breathing a little harder. The next shot Bob takes is just 4 HP. I might describe that as something like, "as you twist your body to avoid the orc's flail, you feel pressure in your ribs where he hit you last time, and you feel a sharp pain when you inhale." At this point, Bob would be at Moderate Battle Fatigue, so his token would have gone from Yellow (Light Battle Fatigue at 12 HP) to Orange (4 hp. shot taking him to 8 HP). This would be a clear indication to Bob that he is in a little trouble as he is at half HP or less. By keeping the HP abstract, I can use the same injury to describe additional damage. I've used an abstract approach to describe mental stress too. A hit for a lot of HP can be a combination of damage and something like, "he hits you so hard with his sword that it actually feels like he hit you with a tree, forcing the air from your lungs and causing you some doubt as to the ease at which you may defeat him. Your mind is reeling with the thought of taking another shot like that." Battle Fatigue remains as long as the HP are at that level, so the wounds and physical strain and mental stress of combat don't just disappear when the battle is over. If the party goes from one fight into another and there are characters that have Battle Fatigue, it will affect their ability to fight, so it does carry over in a way. And it's easy to describe that they are a little less confident after the last scrap and are fighting a little more tenatively. Or that their ribs are still pretty sore so this fight might be a little more difficult. Or that they are still pretty worn out from the last fight and their sword feels a little heavier for this battle. Finding a more specific way to handle abstract damage is challenging. I know that the more we used it, the more natural it felt to us as a group, and the group felt that the combats were much more vivid in description. I think that the fact that we have a lot of other variants in place also adds to the vivid nature of our combat too.
True Archon 03-30-07, 08:23 PM	I'm kinda fond of an optional rule from the Ravenloft DMG. Basically, when someone reaches half their total hit points, they need to make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If they fail, they earn themselves a -1 penalty to attack rolls, ability checks, skill checks, and saves. The same save needs to also be done at a quarter hit points, and the penalties from previous failures stack. This is kinda nice, because: 1. High hit point and high Fortitude classes show that they are made up of tougher stuff versus the frailer classes. 2. Levels matter. A 10th level fighter is going to shrug off the pain and anxiety of damage that a 1st level fighter may balk at. 3. The relatively normal DC 15 save is low enough that most players won't overly flinch every time that one is required. Except at lower levels when fear of imminent death should be a reality.
hiryuu 03-31-07, 06:35 PM	THIS (http://www.nazro.net/newhealing.htm) is what I use. You could probably steal some things from that; its' designed for d20 Modern, but if you're importing damage threshold rules, there's bound to be something in there that's useful to you.