Trent Yacuk's page

When Vitality/Wound Points debuted with Star Wars D20 waybackwhen, I didn't like them - for the exact reason you seem to like them. My players knew one lucky hit could wipe them out, and became a bunch of weak sissies in combat. You won't have someone play a meat shield and accept that they'll be taking damage. Everyone takes cover with that system. It's not fantasy, in other words.

So if you really want a game that models after real-life, vitality/wound points gets you that much closer. But I think most people like a little escapist fantasy in their game.

That's fair enough. But I was requesting this as an option only. I think it's such an important option that it should be considered or a footnote should be mentioned. Some people like gritty combat and for them: Vitality/Wounds is the way to go. Some like escapist fantasy and for them, straightout HP's is the way to go.

Any thoughts to the Surge concept? I recommend trying it out to see how much it adds. Even if it's just affecting your HP's, it still makes the HP's dynamic rather than a static ablative shield.

How does this work when a 10th level dude crits for over 60 damage with a greataxe? That means insta-death to anyone with this message unless I am missing something.

Sorry, yeah, I forgot. They increased the critical threat range and removed the damage multiplier, since it wasn't needed anymore.

Also you circumvent any D/R for the attack.

So the Great Axe will only do 1d12+bonus, which is enough to kill the vast majority of low-mid Constitution monsters.

I've looked over Pathfinder's Fighters and still find them titanically boring. I applaud Pathfinder for giving more combat Feats, but the Feats presented are available to all classes, not just Fighters.

Fighters get nothing unique to call their own. Barbarians get Rage points (awesome), Rogues get Rogue Tricks (awesome), Rangers and Paladins get their own host of abilities (from before). I cannot fathom why Fighters would not have exclusive and cool options like the Barbarians and Rogues. Yes, they get more Feats but everybody likes things that are exclusive to that class. That's why people play prestige classes.

Fighters should have a unique set of abilities, just like the other classes (heh...that sounds ironic but you know what I mean).

Furthermore, all martial classes need some capacity to move and use more than 1 attack. The best thing about 4th edition was that they dropped the 'Full Attack' option. Full Attack only promotes your character from rooting yourself to the ground and makes for a boring tactical challenge.

There should be a way for the Fighter, if not other martial classes to circumvent this limitation. Doing this would allow higher level fighters to at least be a bit more on par with higher level rogues and wizards.

Vitality and Wound points

At the beginning of the Pathfinder book, it presents several options for starting HP's. Well here is my thoughts on that:

I tend to prefer my fantasy games more gritty than normal.

I’ve run D&D. I’m here to say that HP’s are inferior to the Vitality/Wound points presented in the Unearthed Arcana.
I feel that HP’s are a piss poor representation of taking wounds. When you have over 50, you’re pretty much immune to ever being taking down in one shot. You can walk through burning building and fall down mountains and survive. HP’s in D&D do nothing to evoke any emotion in the players.
Unearthed Arcana presents Vitality and Wound points. Vitality is essentially equal to your HP’s. Wound points is equal to your Constitution.
Your Vitality represents you escaping with minor cuts and bruises and getting yourself tired. Wound points represents serious hits where you are in a real danger of dying. You chip through your Vitality and then eat into your Wound points.
Now the ‘trick’ here is that Critical hits bypass your Vitality and score damage directly on your wound points.
So far, I LOVE how this plays out, both mechanically and visually. The players have a nice protective ‘shield’ of ‘hit points’ (Vitality) which actually represents them getting out of the way just in the nick of time. But doing that tires them out or that last dodge makes them pull a muscle.
But every character, whether 1st or 20th, has a static wound point value (again, equal to their Constitution). At 20th level, if your Con is 12, your wound points are 12. One critical hit that causes 12 damage…you’re taken out.
The system is simple and yet visually fantastic. I love to describe combat and I can explain when a character manages to dodge or takes a ‘scrape’ of damage (Vitality) or when a character takes a serious, bleeding painful hit (Wound points).
Oh yeah, your Vitality comes back in hours, your wound points come back in days.

I would love if Pathfinder offered these as optional rules in their book. They are open source to my knowledge.

Surges
Now then, this is my own creation and I know that a lot of players will not like to use ‘house rules’. But whatever, they work so well, I barely want to play D&D without them.
As a player, have you ever rolled an 18 to hit when you needed a 19. Or rolled a measly 1-2 damage on a longsword? You feel rather defeated. Your contribution to the fight was negligible to the point of being ignorable. It’s unsatisfying and boring.
Thus, during combat, I allow players (and smart NPC’s) to make Surges. A Surge is: spend your own Vitality and you get either a +5 bonus to hit and/or damage. You can do a Surge before you roll to hit (costing 1d6 Vitality for hit or damage bonus of 2d6 for both) or you can do a Surge AFTER you roll to hit/damage (costing 1d10 for hit or damage bonus or 2d10 for both). It really gives power to the player and I always encourage that.
More than that, it makes Vitality come alive, making it a dynamic element to the game, rather than a static one. (Vitality as written is just as static as HP’s are. It’s a cushion of points that need to be whittled down.)
With Surges, the player essentially chips into their own Vitality. And it makes a ton of sense if you think about it. Dodging attacks isn’t the only thing that’s going to tire a person out. Throwing those powerful attacks or missing and then following up with a last second adjustment (i.e. taking a +5 to hit after you’ve rolled and ‘missed’) is quite taxing to a character.
So far, the Vitality/Wound points and Surges has been working out amazingly. I love it and all other D&D seems a little drier and stale in comparison.
(And in case you care, I plan to have some progression so that at 10th level the hit and damage bonus will increase to +10, then +15 at 15th level and +20 at 20th level. But the cost will increase as well. But I started at +5 to make things simple and smooth. Anything less is such a trivial bonus so as to not be worth it and having it equal to your level creates the weak at 1st through 3rd level and I didn’t want players to have to add things like +7 to hit or +13 to damage. Easier just to keep it in increments of 5).

Surges make combat much more exciting and allow combat to be finished faster. Oh yes, and I do let mages do it too to power their spells. Mages can get tired too, ya know. For them I tend to describe it as them giving their own endurance for their spell, but RP descriptions are neither here nor there.

The point being: I want to put forth that Pathfinder gives Vitality/Wound point as an option in their book and Surges are to be considered. They are simple enough to include in combat and make things flow better.

Thoughts?

His argument was that I should have ruled that the creature charged after the ranger and blundered into the prismatic wall because it made for “good story.” When I explained to him the reason for my decision (detailed previously) he called me a “simulationist,”

Wait? He called you a simulationist? His plan relied entirely on knowing how the spell prismatic wall works. I believe that is a case of the kettle calling the pot black.

Anyway, you were in the right. I wouldn't boot the player so much as talk to them. Explain to them, very clearly, this is the game I run. If he wants to continue playing, then he has to accept the game and how you run it. If you don't want to continue playing then you thank him for his time and contribution and invite him to stop playing.

I've tried the D&D 4th edition Solo monster and this is a similar problem (which often goes unsolved) that you find in Superhero games (in which you try to have a 'archvillain' face off against a superteam).

The problem is two fold. One the solo monster needs to have staying power. This is often easily solved by giving it max HP, double HP or more HP. D&D 4th edition solved this problem.

The second and by far more important problem is that the solo needs to be able to threaten an entire group. I don't just mean which 'squares' they threaten but it needs to have the ability to respond to each character. This is where 4th Edition fails as many of their so-called solo monsters have few attacks and average damage.

If the solo monster is going to deal with multiple characters then it needs a way to attack them all. More attacks is one solution but it's only a basic solution. Area of Effect attacks also work but players will manipulate the battlefield so that only some are hit while others are fine.
Ultimately the ability to react to the characters better is needed. This could be as simple as adding a counter attack ability, so that went attacked in some fashion, your solo monster can make an immediate, if not basic, attack back. Unfortunately, D&D doesn't support much 'acting out of turn', so some players may cry foul.

Anyway, that's breaking the problem down into it's components. Find an answer to Survivability and Being able to threaten multiple opponents is the key.

I still think that a lot of the uses are situational at best. Yeah, if there happens to be a cliff, a player will dust off Bull's Rush. But if not...it serves virtually no purpose. Trip is somewhat worthwhile, but if it fails...you've just lost your opportunity to inflict damage (via hopefully an AoO which comes later - see stalling below).

As it stands, I still don't see the reward being worth the effort.

Combat should be the most exciting part of the game. CMB could be interesting but I just don't feel that they do enough. They are still quite boring. More importantly, with some obvious situational exceptions, do not progress the fight, but only serve to stall it.

At it stands, CMB are very static. You give up a chance to progress combat (since the only true gauge of combat progression is defeating your opponent which requires you to chip away at their HP's) and instead choose to stall or slow down combat.

4th edition showed an interesting direction in that many of their powers had damage + effect. The problem was that it was just too overdone. Doing so many effects became hard to track and eventually every fight threatens to be overwrought with the exact same tactical choices/moves.

CMB seem to me to be the perfect venue to make 3.5 combat interesting again. Allow the player to make some choices. But I feel they will only be viable choices is they don't serve to stall the fight but progress it towards an end.

Maybe they could make Advanced CMB which have a dual purpose. Or maybe they could actually give Fighters exclusive CMB's which would open up some neat options.

I don't see the appeal here, a 1 level wizard or sorcerer dip would pick up more spells plus some decent SLAs and blow open the class for magic item use. You have to take 2 levels of bard to get 1st level spells and the bardic abilities are of questionable use as a one level dip.

Sorcerer with draconic or abyssal bloodlines is my choice right now because give 2 attacks/ round at full BAB. Regardless, why are you 'not in the camp' of rogues getting this ability? Do you seriously think it's broken or is this just a flavor issue?

I don't particularly care if Rogues have the ability or not. for me it's just nonsensical. Despite the argument that Rogues can use magic items intended for others, I think it still largely comes out of nowhere.

Why can't Monks have this? Why not Barbarians? Why not Fighters? It just seems to be put in for the Grey Mouser enthusiasts and nothing else.

I do like the explanation that they 'stole' the spells. That's cute logic.

I guess I just don't see why it's a Rogue thing and not an anybody thing. I guess I don't associate Rogues with magic, anymore than I associate Fighters with magic.

Here's one thing I do not get or agree with in Pathfinder. Why do Rogues get the Magic trick (or whatever they are called)? That makes no sense to me why it's part of the Rogue package in any way. This should be a pair of Feats that anybody can take, IMO.

Why couldn't a fighter take those, for example?

Hello,

So here's the thing: While I find the concept of CMB a step in the right direction, I feel it's not enough.

Fighting is about progressing the combat and D&D has only one real level of progression: Damage. You win a fight not by knocking an opponent down or pushing him through squares but by inflict damage.

Now under more (ahem) real circumstances, a person would use something like a CMB to gain a serious advantage over an opponent which could then be used to hammer home what would hopefully a victory.

How many times have you seen a fight won or nearly won because one fighter stumbled backwards and the other fighter was able to capitalize on that.

D&D in general has a very...I dunno...static system of combat. I trip you. If I have no more attacks, you can stand up on your turn (there's little I can do other than get an Attack of Opportunity on you). Then you hit me. The only real thing I gained from tripping you was the AoO. Really...I could have just hit to you begin with.

So my thoughts were to make the CMB a bit more dynamic. Have three levels actual.

Light - 10 base difficulty - You perform a Maneuver that does a simple effect (trip, grab but not grapple, etc)

Medium - 15 base difficulty - You perform a Maneuver that grants you a follow up attack.

Hard - 20 base difficulty - You perform a Maneuver that grants you a follow up attack that's considered a Critical if it hits.

Something like that. It promotes doing the little stuff because it's easier but having an option to perform the big stuff because, while it's harder (and risky if you don't have the right Feat) it could yield more potential.

My two cents.