Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Tuneless Bard 01-14-05, 12:24 PM	WP/VP rules are a great way to spicen up a campaign and give some sense to the whole HP issue that most people cant grasp. It helps define what "damage" actually means... however...there are alot of obsticles to using this mode in a system designed around HP... The Cure Light Wounds Issue has been addressed in UA...but what about Lay On Hands? Thoughts? The troll has become a pushover that can be taken out with an acid splash because all fire and acid goes straight to wounds....thoughts? The concept of having a low con is proposterous...if you have an 7 con than you cant ever take a crit....thoughts? Critting with sneak attack or burst weapons are a near insta-kills....thoughts? The Justicar deals extra damage when dealing nonlethal damage....but all VP damage is nonlethal....thoughts? Keen weapons, improved crit, and power critical become that much more powerful....thoughts? Any more obsticles people come across? any fixes people have tried out? I have a few ideas myself but want to see what everyone else has to say....
Ranger REG 01-15-05, 03:21 AM	The Cure Light Wounds Issue has been addressed in UA...but what about Lay On Hands? Thoughts? Unearthed Arcana, page 118... Spells or effects that return a number of hit points not based on a die roll, such as heal, apply healing to lost wound points first than lost vitality. Lay on Hand fall under that category of "effect." The troll has become a pushover that can be taken out with an acid splash because all fire and acid goes straight to wounds....thoughts? Give it a boost in intelligence. Make him a much smarter and cunning foe for the PCs. The concept of having a low con is proposterous...if you have an 7 con than you cant ever take a crit....thoughts? Use Star Wars d20 Toughness feat: Add 3 points to PC's total WP. Critting with sneak attack or burst weapons are a near insta-kills....thoughts? 1 point of wound damage for every remaining d6 sneak attack damage. The Justicar deals extra damage when dealing nonlethal damage....but all VP damage is nonlethal....thoughts? Depends. Some gamers like "accidental death by nonlethal damage" rule. But for those that do not, Justicar can apply his damage to Fort Save DC in order to knock his opponent out. Keen weapons, improved crit, and power critical become that much more powerful....thoughts? Obviously, any feat, spell, or effect that offers critical damage multiplier is out. Either that or convert them to increase threat range or inflict additional damage.
Tuneless Bard 01-15-05, 01:46 PM	so a first level paladin who has lay on hands for 4 can heal wounds better than a first level cleric who heals 1d8 vitality and 1 wound?
murte 01-15-05, 05:50 PM	For any curing type magic we always just house ruled that you get a choice. Either WP first then VP or it could go all to VP. As far as Crit ranges/mult. We did same thing, you could choose VP or WP when you crit, just a matter of whether you get the multipliers or not.
Ranger REG 01-15-05, 10:01 PM	so a first level paladin who has lay on hands for 4 can heal wounds better than a first level cleric who heals 1d8 vitality and 1 wound? Aha! A trick question. There is no such thing as a 1st-level paladin with lay on hands feature. You no fool me. :smirk:
Xeviat-DM 01-16-05, 12:10 AM	WP/VP rules are a great way to spicen up a campaign and give some sense to the whole HP issue that most people cant grasp. It helps define what "damage" actually means... That's why I'm using it. however...there are alot of obsticles to using this mode in a system designed around HP... ... The troll has become a pushover that can be taken out with an acid splash because all fire and acid goes straight to wounds....thoughts? UA gives them a fort save to turn wound damage into vitality damage. Did you forget about that part? The concept of having a low con is proposterous...if you have an 7 con than you cant ever take a crit....thoughts? Unhealthy people shouldn't adventure, or they should take toughness (which was stated before). Critting with sneak attack or burst weapons are a near insta-kills....thoughts? Bonus dice deal +1 wound damage on criticals. Burst should deal +2 wound damage on criticals. Wounding weapons should deal 1 wound damage per attack and increase to a +3 ability, maybe higher. The Justicar deals extra damage when dealing nonlethal damage....but all VP damage is nonlethal....thoughts? I would allow nonlethal damage still, but I just like it. Keen weapons, improved crit, and power critical become that much more powerful....thoughts? They're just potent now. Any more obsticles people come across? any fixes people have tried out? I have a few ideas myself but want to see what everyone else has to say.... I utilize the alternate death and dying rules, which requires fortitude saves when your hp reach 0. This way, you make fort saves when your wounds equal zero to determine what condition you'll be in. This gives people more survivability.
Vassily Luzhin 01-16-05, 01:11 PM	Keen weapons, improved crit, and power critical become that much more powerful....thoughts? My DM has a great solution for this. Instead of having all damage from a crit go to WP, he has it do ordinary crit damage to VP and the crit multiplier to WP. So, for instance, if you crit with a sword, you'd take 2 points of WP damage in addition to the VP damage normal for a crit in DnD. If you crit with an arrow or an axe, you'd take 3 points of WP damage. It still makes crits dangerous, but not as utterly crippling as they are with standard WP/VP. It allows for the picturesque cut across the cheek in the middle of a fight instead of having the whole thing end suddenly just because somebody rolled a crit. I think it tends to fix a lot of problems with WP/VP, including many on your list. The troll has become a pushover that can be taken out with an acid splash because all fire and acid goes straight to wounds....thoughts? Well, that's if you use WP/VP with the troll. In my opinion, the best way to make WP/VP work in a DnD game is to apply it selectively. Humanoids are reletively easy to kill, but humanoid adventurers have trained themselves to be experts at evading harm. They dodge, they parry, they take cover, they use armor and shields to take the brunt of the assult. That's what VP represents. Big dumb monsters and huge beasts, on the other hand, don't know squat about evading harm. They're just really hard to kill. So it seems to me that either WP/VP or HP should be chosen by the DM on a case-by-case basis. Trolls would definitely get HP. Smart, fast monsters might get WP/VP. Depends on what makes sense. (The way they treated this in the Star Wars game always irritated me a little. A Bantha has VP? It's dodging me how, exactly?) That also raises the question of whether fire and acid should go straight to wounds or not. It seems clear to me that it shouldn't. I mean, wouldn't that mean you could kill practically anyone with a fireball, no matter how high-level? Damage is damage. It goes to VP first, then WP, with the one exception of crits. The real balance problem we've come across with WP/VP (and the reason why my DM still hasn't embraced it entirely) is poisons. WP/VP completely nurfs poisons, since you rarely actually hit your opponents anyway. Personally, I'd be OK with that (frankly, I think the use of a poisoned weapon has come up maybe once in years of gaming) but he points out, rightly, that that eliminates an entire balanced aspect of the game. Still not sure how to deal with that one.
Xeviat-DM 01-16-05, 05:34 PM	My DM has a great solution for this. Instead of having all damage from a crit go to WP, he has it do ordinary crit damage to VP and the crit multiplier to WP. So, for instance, if you crit with a sword, you'd take 2 points of WP damage in addition to the VP damage normal for a crit in DnD. If you crit with an arrow or an axe, you'd take 3 points of WP damage. It still makes crits dangerous, but not as utterly crippling as they are with standard WP/VP. It allows for the picturesque cut across the cheek in the middle of a fight instead of having the whole thing end suddenly just because somebody rolled a crit. I think it tends to fix a lot of problems with WP/VP, including many on your list. I'm liking this a lot. I'll give it some consideration in my games. My worry is that this will make larger creatures much harder to kill. If they have close to 30 wound points, it will take 10 criticals with a x3 weapon, or simply bringing down their vp as if it were hp; that's basically like giving the creature 30 extra hp compared to the standard system.
Vassily Luzhin 01-17-05, 07:41 AM	I'm liking this a lot. I'll give it some consideration in my games. My worry is that this will make larger creatures much harder to kill. If they have close to 30 wound points, it will take 10 criticals with a x3 weapon, or simply bringing down their vp as if it were hp; that's basically like giving the creature 30 extra hp compared to the standard system. Well, not if you use my suggestion above of having large creatures use HP instead. Or, if you think they should use WP/VP, go ahead and take 30 VP off to make room or something. This leads to another alternate way of looking at WP/VP that I've been thinking about. All systems of WP/VP that I've yet seen rely on the idea of adding additional WP on top of HP-equivilant VP, thus increasing the whole number of points in general. Admitedly, this means that my idea of mixing WP/VP and HP is unbalancing because some creatures will have extra points and some will not. But how about this: say you have someone with a 14 con. Instead of adding 14 extra points for WP, just say that the first 14 points of the character's hit point total will be WP and the rest VP. This means that at first level many characters won't have any VP, but that should still be balanced because, essentially, that just means that they have the normal number of HP they'd have in the game anyway. Basically, it puts WP/VP and HP on the same level when it comes to total number of points, thereby solving any problems of compatibility. And also solving your 30 WP problem above.
Xeviat-DM 01-17-05, 11:49 AM	Vassily, the point of the VP/WP mechanic is that combat is both more and less risky. Creatures do have more HP, but one or two critical hits can drop you quickly. Someone drawing a knife on you is serious, because they might actually stab something important (critical hit) and you're in trouble (suffer from fatigue, and you're that much closer to dying). I think that if you use the mechanic, everyone should use the mechanic. Characters built for the game will tend to have higher cons, and melee characters will heavily focus on their ability to deal critical hits.
Tuneless Bard 01-17-05, 02:50 PM	Characters built for the game will tend to have higher cons, and melee characters will heavily focus on their ability to deal critical hits. there-by removing a good deal of the flavor from building a character... Who would ever use a 20 x2 weapon? Who wouldnt make thier weapon keen? Who would ever make a classic sickly mage? or a mage at all...you cant crit with magic missle...
Xeviat-DM 01-17-05, 03:08 PM	The sickly mage archtype tends to not adventure until they are high enough level to negate their weakness. 20x2 weapons are simple weapons generally, so people use them who don't have martial weapon profs. Other weapons that are 20x2 deal more damage than the 19-18x2 weapons, and thus would deal more wound damage on a critical hit. And I've never played in a game where the combat characters didn't go for keen or improved critical ASAP. Keen might need to be boosted in power to a +2 enhancement though. And wizards have spells which can critically hit.
Wrathamon 02-06-05, 10:46 PM	I use a Massive Damage variant with Armor as DR. If damage goes above your Massive Damage Threshold score you make a Fort save, if you fail you take the damage over your Massive Damage Threshold as Wound Damage. If you make the save the damage just goes to Vitality. So on a critical hit, you deal damage as normal, if it goes above their MDT they make a fort save, if they fail they take wound damage. Same with Spells, Sneak attacks, etc. The potent thing about spells is they ignore DR.
Galamdring 02-11-05, 03:22 PM	I am also thinking of using this system... I was thinking of reducing every weapon critical multiplier by x1 as well as changing Imp Critical and Keen ability to add just 1 to the weapon's threat range... Keeping DR against critical hits would also be an option. Opinions? :)
trodaimionn 02-17-05, 06:57 PM	I am also thinking of using this system... I was thinking of reducing every weapon critical multiplier by x1 as well as changing Imp Critical and Keen ability to add just 1 to the weapon's threat range... Keeping DR against critical hits would also be an option. Opinions? :) I like the WP/VP system, but it was first drawn up for Star Wars, where there is a differnet class dynamic. I have come up with/stolen a few ideas and this is what I use. 1) Weapons critical ranges stay the same, but the damage multiplier is reduced by half. This retains the flavor of all the wierder weapons. 2) Characters WP equal thier Con score plus their HD/class level. Thus higher level characters and NPC's are harder to kill. 3)The Toughness feat adds to WP's. 4)VP's recover at the same rate as WP's, thus returning healing characters to thier previous importance to the party. 5) Keen ability does not change, Imp Crit does not change.