Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Bliss 02-22-05, 09:31 AM	Posted this on another board and realized this is better thanx to someone's advice :) I have a Feat proposal that I was wondering if people could give their thoughts on. This is strictly for those D&D campaigns that are using the variant Wound/Vitality Point system found in Unearthed Arcana. What I am finding is that as my players reach higher level, and they Crit they are doing an excessive amount of Wound damage and eliminating their enemies rather quickly ... conversely the monsters they are fighting are capable of destroying them with one good Crit as they too have higher damage rolls (even when you eliminate the multiplier to damage as per the rules, a 2d6+STR damage roll can squash a normal player who has 12-18 Constitution and thus 12-18 Wound points). Add to that, that many upper level monsters are Huge or larger and therefore have multipliers to their own Wound points. So to help mitigate this at higher levels and in order to put into the mechanics the idea that heroes as they gain levels are not only able to roll with the punches better (ie: getting more Vitality Points) but also they are just toughter, I came up with this Feat idea. --------------------------- Feat: Tough Body Prerequisties: Toughness x2, Constitution 13+, Character Level 18+ Benefit: When determining Wound Points based off your Constitution score, double the Con score. Do this before adding benefits of Toughness or other effects. Example: For example Shai is a 17th level Druid. She has a Constitution of 13. At 12th level and 15th level she took the Toughness Feat. Thus her current Wound Points is 19 (13 Con + 3 Toughness + 3 Toughness). Upon reaching 18th level, she takes the Feat: Tough Body. Her new Wound Points total is 32 (Con 13 x 2 = 26 + 3 Toughness + 3 Toughness = 32 WP). Normal: To determine Wound Points, a character used their Constitution score and then adds Toughness (+3 for each time the player took Toughness). ----------------------------- Now here is some of my reasoning beyond what I explained earlier. First it is important to note that you double the Constitution score before adding the +3 to Wound for Toughness. Now to explain the prerequisites. The feat is really designed for higher levels when monsters are dealing out some extreme damage and with a Critical hit can in one lucky role destroy a high level character. In my own campaign where the players are just now reaching 11th level this is only now becoming a problem. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that the prerequisites were tough enough to make a player really want this feat. Thus the necessity to have burned two of your Feats on Toughness twice. Also the Constitution prerequisite is there to show that one should have above average (ie at least a +1 modifier) health to be able to do this. And the 18th level prerequisite limits this Feat to higher level players. I have only two other ideas for a variant for these. One is rather than a Character Level of 18+, have a prerequisite of 100+ Vitality. Yes that does keep the spellcasters from taking this feat for a longer period of time, but that in some ways makes sense. The other idea was to simply keep the prerequisites except the 18+ CL and instead just make it an Epic Level Feat. So any ideas or thoughts on this feat? -Bliss
magicchupacabra 02-22-05, 11:50 AM	Posted this on another board and realized this is better thanx to someone's advice :) <snip part about wanting tougher high level PCs with Wp/Vp system> Feat: Tough Body Prerequisties: Toughness x2, Constitution 13+, Character Level 18+ Benefit: When determining Wound Points based off your Constitution score, double the Con score. Do this before adding benefits of Toughness or other effects. Example: For example Shai is a 17th level Druid. She has a Constitution of 13. At 12th level and 15th level she took the Toughness Feat. Thus her current Wound Points is 19 (13 Con + 3 Toughness + 3 Toughness). Upon reaching 18th level, she takes the Feat: Tough Body. Her new Wound Points total is 32 (Con 13 x 2 = 26 + 3 Toughness + 3 Toughness = 32 WP). Normal: To determine Wound Points, a character used their Constitution score and then adds Toughness (+3 for each time the player took Toughness). ----------------------------- 3 feats to double the con score for wound points. Hmm. You know you could allow improved toughness to increase wound points and it would give your example character 33 wound points at 20th level at a cost of one feat and having a fort save mod of +2 or higher. With an 18 con you would come out ahead with your system at a cost of 3 feats for 4 more hp. I think you'd be better off house ruling improved toughness to work just like toughness. Now here is some of my reasoning beyond what I explained earlier. First it is important to note that you double the Constitution score before adding the +3 to Wound for Toughness. Now to explain the prerequisites. The feat is really designed for higher levels when monsters are dealing out some extreme damage and with a Critical hit can in one lucky role destroy a high level character. In my own campaign where the players are just now reaching 11th level this is only now becoming a problem. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that the prerequisites were tough enough to make a player really want this feat. Thus the necessity to have burned two of your Feats on Toughness twice. Also the Constitution prerequisite is there to show that one should have above average (ie at least a +1 modifier) health to be able to do this. And the 18th level prerequisite limits this Feat to higher level players. I have only two other ideas for a variant for these. One is rather than a Character Level of 18+, have a prerequisite of 100+ Vitality. Yes that does keep the spellcasters from taking this feat for a longer period of time, but that in some ways makes sense. The other idea was to simply keep the prerequisites except the 18+ CL and instead just make it an Epic Level Feat. So any ideas or thoughts on this feat? -Bliss For your high level characters (18+) you are just going to be better off with improved toughness being house ruled. This will keep things working for the most part till they hit epic(21+) levels. Then epic level toughness will be throwing in +30 HP per time its taken. That is ALOT of wound points if house ruled to work like toughness. Still it's not enough to where a well placed crit by a high level character is going to really matter much as the WP/VP system is suppose to make combat gritty and even the strongest most powerful fighter can be taken down with one lucky shot from Bob the commoner with his long bow. For what you seem to want, you might be better off with the base HP system instead of WP/VP.