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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / On Combat
« on: December 14, 2012, 11:46:18 PM »
New to the forums and the podcast.
I enjoyed your podcast this week talking about combat & how to work it into the game, but I wanted to comment on a component of what you mentioned.
When it comes to HP, Soak Dice, etc. It seems like there is an endless debate as to how it should be done or perceived. The biggest argument (one that you guys posed) is why a dagger does 1d4 damage when it can kill you, while characters can have 100+ hp.
In D20 land, the answer is that HP are supposed to be represented as "exhaustion points" and that ultimately the last 4 hp of any character is considered their actual "health" points.
This can be difficult to GM with players because they'll hammer a monster for 20 damage and want to imagine that they've cleaved a massive chunk out of them, while in theory they just made them stumble, hit them with the flat of the blade, etc.
I struggle with it a lot in my campaigns for just this reason. It's one of the main reasons I really REALLY like the chaozium(cthulhu) system, because actual damage is represented by a hit. World of Darkness is good also, especially when the soak rolls are limited depending on if you are mundane/supernatural/etc.
Anyone else run into this and find a good way to GM in a high hp/low damage output character game that doesn't just increase damage to enable faster kills?
I've taken to using the old-school 2nd Edition Combat & Tactics to allow for Critical hits that are specific, but the challenge there is that I feel compelled with specific results to offer similar results with called-shots, which is another animal alltogether.
I enjoyed your podcast this week talking about combat & how to work it into the game, but I wanted to comment on a component of what you mentioned.
When it comes to HP, Soak Dice, etc. It seems like there is an endless debate as to how it should be done or perceived. The biggest argument (one that you guys posed) is why a dagger does 1d4 damage when it can kill you, while characters can have 100+ hp.
In D20 land, the answer is that HP are supposed to be represented as "exhaustion points" and that ultimately the last 4 hp of any character is considered their actual "health" points.
This can be difficult to GM with players because they'll hammer a monster for 20 damage and want to imagine that they've cleaved a massive chunk out of them, while in theory they just made them stumble, hit them with the flat of the blade, etc.
I struggle with it a lot in my campaigns for just this reason. It's one of the main reasons I really REALLY like the chaozium(cthulhu) system, because actual damage is represented by a hit. World of Darkness is good also, especially when the soak rolls are limited depending on if you are mundane/supernatural/etc.
Anyone else run into this and find a good way to GM in a high hp/low damage output character game that doesn't just increase damage to enable faster kills?
I've taken to using the old-school 2nd Edition Combat & Tactics to allow for Critical hits that are specific, but the challenge there is that I feel compelled with specific results to offer similar results with called-shots, which is another animal alltogether.