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Dan Solo
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 Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 3:54 pm Post subject: Alternate Damage System: Wound Points |
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My group (who had never played Star Wars d6 before this campaign) are getting very paranoid about how, even with armor, their characters are one unlucky dice roll away from being incapacitated or worse (character points nonwithstanding). So, to keep them willing to engage in unlikely and ridiculously dangerous situations, I've been considering putting in a hit point system. This is my current version:
All characters have 20 or 30 wound points (I have yet to decide which is more appropriate). They lose wound points with the difference between their opponent's Damage roll and their Strength roll. When they reach half their wound point maximum, they are wounded as per the RAW (I might have them be wounded at 2/3s maximum wound points and wounded twice at 1/3 if I go with the 30 point maximum).
When their wound point total gets into negative numbers, each time they are damaged they have to make a Strength roll. If they succeed, they're still up (but wounded). If they fail, the degree of failure determines whether they're incapacitated, mortally wounded, or dead (I have yet to determine the failure thresholds for each level).
For healing, characters regain a Strength roll's worth of wound points each day they heal (possibly with a low difficulty to allow for stable or worsening conditions). Medpacks now come in different grades, with the standard version in the rulebook healing either 2d or 3d worth of wound points with a successful use, as well as being able to stabilize a mortally wounded character. Havn't come up with rules for a bacta tank yet.
So, what does everyone think? I'm sure a lot of you are thinking that it's a lot of extra bookkeeping for little benefit, but it's mostly intended to get my players to think they have a bit of a safety barrier between their characters and instant death. |
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Gry Sarth
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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Honestly, I really hate that system you're trying to create. Part of the fun of D6 is how deadly it is, it adds to the tension of every encounter to know that an unlucky blaster pistol shot could very well down your mighty warrior. To remove that is to remove part of the excitement this system offers.
If your character has 30HP and he can even keep on going after he's gone into negative numbers, then a player can really just decide to march headlong towards an attacking E-WEB, knowing that he can get a couple of holes through his chest with no fear of dying. And after he's defeated his enemy, even if he's down to zero HP, he only has to wait a couple of days and the holes in his chest will close up like he's Wolverine or something.
So, yeah, if that's what your group feels is best for your enjoyment of the game, more power to you. Just be sure that's REALLY what you want before going down this road. Remember that the enjoyment of an adventure shouldn't come from being victorious over your enemies, but from actually playing the game.
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Rerun941
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Joined: 27 Jul 2004
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Location: San Antonio, TX
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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If you really want to implement a Body Points system in D6, check out the D6 Core books (D6 Fantasy, D6 Adventure, D6 Space). Body points are an optional rule. The D6 Core books are available as a free PDF download under the Open D6 license. I'd put in the link, but I'm lazy.
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Ankhanu
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Gry Sarth wrote: | Honestly, I really hate that system you're trying to create. Part of the fun of D6 is how deadly it is, it adds to the tension of every encounter to know that an unlucky blaster pistol shot could very well down your mighty warrior. To remove that is to remove part of the excitement this system offers.
If your character has 30HP and he can even keep on going after he's gone into negative numbers, then a player can really just decide to march headlong towards an attacking E-WEB, knowing that he can get a couple of holes through his chest with no fear of dying. And after he's defeated his enemy, even if he's down to zero HP, he only has to wait a couple of days and the holes in his chest will close up like he's Wolverine or something.
So, yeah, if that's what your group feels is best for your enjoyment of the game, more power to you. Just be sure that's REALLY what you want before going down this road. Remember that the enjoyment of an adventure shouldn't come from being victorious over your enemies, but from actually playing the game. |
My feelings are completely in line with Gry's. The deadliness of combat is one of the defining, and in my opinion, best features of Star Wars d6. It would lose its character if something like an HP system were added. You should never feel comfortable going into combat... think of how often you'd be comfortable going into combat if you were going into a fight; even the strongest person on earth can be taken out by a skinny mugger with a shiv.
That said, do what you need to make your game work within your group.
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jmanski
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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And that deadliness is what makes d6 so much more fun than d20. The players look for other avenues, as they should.
In d20 you hear GMs complain that their players won't avoid fights, which makes it less fun as a whole because players don't want to chance the fluke roll to, say, sneak around the guards... they'd rather just shoot them.
Taking the deadliness out of combat, IMHO, makes d6 a lot less fun and takes out the creativity on the part of the players.
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Nico_Davout
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| jmanski wrote: | | And that deadliness is what makes d6 so much more fun than d20. The players look for other avenues, as they should. |
I don't find SW D6 'deadliness'. It is very heroic I would say.
SW D6:
Someone shots you with Blaster Rifle and hits. Average roll of 5D gives 17 damage.
Character has average 3D of Strength. Average roll gives 10.
17-10=7 Character is wounded.
Second shot.
Character is wounded twice.
Third shot.
Character is incapacitated.
Fourth shot.
Character is mortally wounded.
Fifth shot.
Uff. Character is dead!
What about Wookie?! Ahhh can't kill it! 
In movies and books and comics if someone is hit, he goes down after one shot.
SW D20:
Someone shots you with Blaster Rifle and hits. Average roll of 3D8 gives 12 damage.
Beginning character has 6-10 Vitality Points and 12 Wound Points (average).
First shot character is wounded.
Second shot, character is mortally wounded (negative Wounds).
Third shot, character is dead.
Wookie has +4 to Constitution so he has 4 more wounds, so he is dead after fourth shot.
Higher level character in D20 has more vitality points, true, BUT, 'higher level' character in D6 has a lot of Character Points to spent on damage. In fact Vitality Points is nothing else than Character Points implemented to the D20 in different way.
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I prefer to play SW D6 where character use number of dice on Strength to resist damage (not roll, but number). Now the combat is deadly! 
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jmanski
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:58 pm Post subject: |
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Well, you are talking averages- but how ofted does that happen? Take that 5d blaster and roll all fives for a 25 and your 3d Strength rolls all 2's for a 6. Now you're hurting.
And realize, too, that a wookie is like someone carrying a repeating blaster: they become a target. Targets don't live long.
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Gry Sarth
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:18 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, you're talking averages. But the beauty of the D6 system is that that doesn't count for much. You're always at the risk of rolling way above or way below average, and then you're toast. There's ALWAYS a very real risk of dying from a blaster pistol. If you have 30HP and can go into negative numbers, well, it's technically impossible to die in one shot.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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I've been tempted to up the lethality a little. In the films every time a Stromtropper gets shot he drops. In fact, every character who gets shot does. Now in the RPG a 4D pistol only has about a 50% chance of dropping (wounded) a Stromgtrooper (STR 2D+1 D armor).
But we don't see every other trooper drop, we see them all drop. So it looks like all the weapon damages could be upped by 1D or so.
I'm tempted to do it, but PC in the RPG tend to get hit more often than their counterparts in the movies. |
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jmanski
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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That's my point exactly, Gry. You can quote averages all the time, but they just don't happen all that much.
atgxtg: Well, if they all carry rifles it helps. You can also add deadliness for for exceeding the difficulty (which helps skilled characters a lot).
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 12:40 am Post subject: |
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| jmanski wrote: | | atgxtg: ... You can also add deadliness for for exceeding the difficulty (which helps skilled characters a lot). |
Yeah. I've considered using one of the options form the Spec Forces Handbook. I think I prefer splitting dice from attack to damage-the scene where Jango Fett shoots the Reek springs to mind. It's also a bit more PC friendly, since average thugs won't be splitting off dice from attack.
The only thing that stops me is the thought of what it would do to Jedi characters. Like they need to be able to add their Sense dice to damage, too!  |
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Dan Solo
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| Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 1:44 am Post subject: |
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| jmanski wrote: | In d20 you hear GMs complain that their players won't avoid fights, which makes it less fun as a whole because players don't want to chance the fluke roll to, say, sneak around the guards... they'd rather just shoot them.
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Meanwhile, I'm finding that my players are avoiding the fights that are intended to be the big setpieces of the session. It's great to have fragile characters when you want your players to realize that there are alternatives to fighting, less so when as a GM you'd prefer a fair fight to all this sneaking around.
Gry, you do make some good points: as I was thinking, 30 wound points are far too many, and with the greater durability of even 20 wound points, I don't have to improve healing speed to get PCs back into action so that their players aren't bored for the rest of the session, since they're only likely to get incapacitated if they get really unlucky or do something very stupid (unlike now, where they tend to end up victims of my probability-defying damage rolls). |
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 2:24 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Solo wrote: | | jmanski wrote: | In d20 you hear GMs complain that their players won't avoid fights, which makes it less fun as a whole because players don't want to chance the fluke roll to, say, sneak around the guards... they'd rather just shoot them.
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... as I was thinking, 30 wound points are far too many, and with the greater durability of even 20 wound points, I don't have to improve healing speed to get PCs back into action so that their players aren't bored for the rest of the session, since they're only likely to get incapacitated if they get really unlucky or do something very stupid (unlike now, where they tend to end up victims of my probability-defying damage rolls). |
Uh, do you realize that makes the character less durable than in the core system?
In D6, injuries don't accumulate the same way the do when you add up wound points. For example, a character who takes four 2 point hits may be stunned into unconsciousness, but he is unharmed.
In D6 a character who takes two wounded results is wounded twice, but he is still no more likely to be killed outright from a third hit. With a wound point system, the characters will become progressively more vulnerable to getting killed as their wound point totals go down.
Just wondering, how many fights have your players actually gotten into? And how many medpacs have they used?
Barring an outrageously bad roll, or fighting something of walker scale or larger, it is rather difficult to get killed outright in this game. Even a "mortally wounded" character can be up and about fairly quickly with the help of a character skilled in first aid with a few medpacs. |
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Hellcat
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| Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 3:42 am Post subject: |
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Why not use the optional hit location rule and then the optional severe injuries rule (pages 96 and 98 of the R&E). Roll 1D to determine where their hit
1 - Head
2-3 - Torso
4 - Arms (roll again to determine which arm; 1-3 left and 4-6 right)
5 - Left leg
6 - Right leg
Then under sever injury when you get a killing roll you can maim or paralyze them for life instead. You could even change the various wound status just to affect where their hit if it's one of their limbs, like if their carrying their blaster in their right hand and recieve stunning damage to their left arm then maybe you rule only their left arm is stunned. Mortally wounded could be just as bad as killed (maimed for life and cybernetic time), while incapacitated could mean you need to get stiches (or maybe you broke something and are in a cast) while wounded is just a more standard bandage.
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cunning_kindred
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| Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:14 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Meanwhile, I'm finding that my players are avoiding the fights that are intended to be the big setpieces of the session. It's great to have fragile characters when you want your players to realize that there are alternatives to fighting, less so when as a GM you'd prefer a fair fight to all this sneaking around. |
As GM, you can make these fights all but unavoidable in the plot. If the rebellion wants to destroy the death star and save billions of lives they have to attack. There is no hope of destroying the death star any other way. If, after setting up the situation and making it all but impossible to avoid the fight, the players still do... good for them.
They must have gone to some massive measures to do so and that in itself will be just as epic if you just allow the story to unfold naturally. If they avoid the fight by letting billions die, well that's got consequences too and you might not be playing a game with heroes in it at all. That kind of game can be fun in a completely different way. As GM you sometimes have to adjust your expectations to suit what your players are actually doing. If its a game of cowards, well then play to that.
As for changing the system to a hit point system. I actually did something not entirely unlike that. As atgxtg said, I did it because I like that star wars is lethal. What you suggest is likely to make it even more dangerous. Which is a brilliant thing. Realism, Fun and Simplicity (the three core directives for designing and creating a game like star wars) all agree on this one... d6 is lethal and it should be.
You are a hero because you're afraid and do it anyway. If even the cowards are willing to fight, how do you tell the heroes from the cowards?  |
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