The Campaign Builder's Guild

In default d20, a character can fight on perfectly fine until their Hit Points reach 0, without poison, spells, or special attacks coming into the picture.

In the Wound/Vitality system, a character can fight on perfectly fine until their Vitality Points reach 0, or until they take any Wound Point damage. Normally, Wound Point damage causes fatigue. This helps to mimic how pain from injuries affects ones ability to act.

In Star Wars Saga edition, they introduced the Condition track. The condition track applies a penalty to a character's saves (called Defenses), attack rolls, ability checks, and skill checks (the condition goes -1, -2, -5, -10 with half-speed movement, and then helpless). This, too, helps mimic the effect of many things.

Now, I'm a fan of realism and simplicity. All three of these systems work to some degree or another (Wound/Vitality has a reputation for being very fatal, but some people are looking for that). What I'm wondering is what is the general opinion here: does having a side system that represents injuries make the game better, or do they just add frustration?

I'd like to include a system based on the Condition track, as many systems have a similar system, but I'm wondering if there is a net gain from the introduction of such an ability.

Thanks for everyone's input.

I love the condition track. We've begun using it, as well as converting the four core classes from SW Saga over to the standard fighter, ranger, warlord and rogue.

The condition track adds an air of realism, without slowing the game down. It helps my players manage their character's health in a more "realistic" fashion, if you will. They also enjoy being able to debilitate enemies with devastating blows that push past their damage threshold.

I think the key consideration is the DM and the players.  Are they the type that relish in recordkeeping and math, or do they prefer the more simple side of battles.  

Do you groan when a character initiates a grapple because of the multitude of rolls involved?  

Do the players generally avoid buffs and/or forget bonuses because it makes the math complicated?

I'd look at when the conditions are advanced.  The traditional HP system says that you can actually fight until you get down to low HP unhindered because you aren't actually taking physical blows.  You're using luck, etc.  So for me the conditions would be advanced only at low HP stages, like this:

HP Remaining-Condition
20%-(-2)
10%-(-5)
etc.

I'd also get rid of the -1.  Just seems to trivial to bother with.  My conditions would only be -2,-5,-10.  Make sure the -10 would be only at the lowest HP.

A condition track sounds like an excellent way to model injuries during the course of a battle.  However, be sure that you as DM AND the players are willing to put up with that extra bookeeping.

It all depends on how realistic a game you want. For some campaigns, realism is very important. For others, not at all.

If you are interested in realism, I think the system in GURPS works rather nicely:

Every character starts out with a number of hit points equal to their Strength score (since stronger characters also tend to be larger and thus are able to suffer less from the same blow than smaller characters - though this score can be modified by advantages).

Once those hit points drop to zero, the character has to roll versus his Health score (possibly modified by Strong Will and some advantages) each round to stay conscious. In the d20 system, you could represent this by Will saves.

Once those hit points drop to -1x(starting hit points), the character has to roll versus his Health Score or die (or at least require immediate medical attention to avoid death). This could be represented in the d20 system by a Fortitude check.

The same is true once the character reaches -2, -3, and -4x(starting hit points). Once he reaches -5x(starting hit points), he is automatically dead.

This keeps combat and injuries risky while still permitting the possibility that some people are able to suffer tremendous injuries and survive - just like in real life.

Just as a tangential question regarding GRUPS: What is the average strength score?

At Rael: 10

Actually, the interest of realism, if that is the top priority, cannot really be served by a numeric system like hit points.

Really, you want each wound tracked separately. Some games (see Shadowrun, WoD) may also use a damage track where the total of all wounds can kill you, where others (TRoS) track each wound completely separately (a thousand paper cuts won't kill you, but the blood loss still might).

I'm not that big on realism per se. Although the condition track system isn't realism in any particular way - it still represents wounds using an abstraction (penalties to saves and/or actions).

I'm really okay with either the ordinary HP system, or WP/VP system, depending how much risk you want involved in combat.

What I would like is something that is a little more atmospheric. "I just went through a tough battle, and now my HP/VP are down to 4," just isn't very cool. I'd prefer to have the wounds show up in something more specific and atmospheric: "Since that battle with the orcs, I've been hobbled by a deep thigh bruise," gives more of a sense of what the wounds actually mean to the character. You can feel it, and it is easier to roleplay.

If I had time, I'd model stuff like that with a critical hit/fumble system that was not very fatal but resulted in a larger number of minor but nagging injuries.

I'm thinking that my like of the system, combined with the benefit of players being able to roleplay and react to injuries better, plus all of the little side effects the system allows (such as semi-permanent injuries through persistent conditions) might make the system worthwhile.

In the end, I'll only really be using these rules for another year or so, but I'm looking to slap them together because I'll be running two games, weekly or bi-weekly, from not till 4th.

@Ivar: the problem is that you cannot easily resolve that percentile scale without using a calculator at the gaming table. For a computer game, %-ile stuff works great because the machine can handle it in the background, and only present the final result to the player. However, this doesn't quite work with a PnP rpg.

@Raelifin: you must also consider that at higher techlevels a character's STR becomes virtually unimportant. Portable heavy weapons used in a typical sci-fi setting include things like plasma cannons and other stuff that can very well deal 20d6 damage. At higher techlevels, a character's gear and equipment (cyberimplantants, armor, forcescreens, etc) become much more important than his stats because if one hit gets through he's most likely dead anyways, no matter if he has STR 10 or 17.

Quote@Raelifin: you must also consider that at higher techlevels a character's STR becomes virtually unimportant. Portable heavy weapons used in a typical sci-fi setting include things like plasma cannons and other stuff that can very well deal 20d6 damage. At higher techlevels, a character's gear and equipment (cyberimplantants, armor, forcescreens, etc) become much more important than his stats because if one hit gets through he's most likely dead anyways, no matter if he has STR 10 or 17.

And I think this is a good thing. It stretches verisimilitude a bit to imagine someone hit with a particle beam and still walking around.

But in the case of Xev's question, the medieval stuff is more likely to matter, so, if we're talking about that, I think GURPS might work okay.

I've run and played in several GURPS fantasy campaigns. In my experience, it was relatively easy for a character to become unconscious during a fight after suffering injuries, but it is much harder to actually die, especially if you have a Health score larger than 10 (which most characters who want to get into fights should have). I rather like this balance.

The dynamics of course change when you switch to high-tech weaponry. For example, a modern-day rifle might do 7d6 damage with one hit, which averages out to 24.5 points of damage - which gives an "average" human with 10 hit points and a Health of 10 past his first "death roll" threshold and has a 50% chance of killing him outright. But combat-focused characters again can better the odds with the right attributes, advantages, and skills. Those can increase their odds of survival dramatically after such a hit, though their survival is by no means certain - and even if they survive, they still suffer from a serious injury.

A variety of things can be done in GURPS to improve combat survival:

- Make the character tougher: Buy more hit points (as much as the GM allows, depending on how realistic the campaign is), advantages and attributes which improve the odds at the survival rolls, and so on.

- Avoid getting hit: For ranged combat, this means improving Dexterity and Health, since those determine the character's Dodge value. For melee, this means improving the weapon skill of weapons you parry with.

- Wear armor: If it's available, it can be a life saver. If you wear plate mail in a typical fantasy world, the injuries from sword blows might be reduced from "major" to "minor" or "none at all" - armor values are subtracted from the damage you receive.

- Use smart tactics: This is probably the most important issue. Don't let yourself get surrounded by foes. If under attack by ranged attackers, use cover or move fast. Work as a team. The GURPS rules were made to reward good and realistic combat tactics, and it shows.

There are also all sorts of optional combat rules which allow for more tactical finesse - individual hit locations, bleeding rules, and so forth - but these are the major issues.

[blockquote=Ra-Tiel]
 @Ivar: the problem is that you cannot easily resolve that percentile scale without using a calculator at the gaming table. For a computer game, %-ile stuff works great because the machine can handle it in the background, and only present the final result to the player. However, this doesn't quite work with a PnP rpg. [/blockquote]

I don't think it get's rid of the calcualtor, but I do it slightly differently in my games.  Instead of assessing a condition penalty based on the amount of damage and monitoring it, I assess a penalty based on the amount of damage a character takes at the time of damage taken, less of a consideration of the total condition of the character and more of a comment on the shock of taking damage.
Also understand that I run a very low HP world...the highest HP a PC has right now is 34.  Also, I use a continuous initiative system instead of round-based one.
So when a player takes a hit that is more than 10% of their total, they suffer an initiative pentalty of 1d10, and during that time their armor protection and any CC rolls are at -10/-10%.  When a player takes a single hit that is more than 50% of their total HP, they suffer an initiative penalty of 2d10 and the protection/CC penalty becomes -20/-20%.  


Not that is better or more relaistic, but it accomplishes a similar end, and the math and effects are very easy to administer.

@PK: Definitively. However, I have never played a fantasy GURPS campaign. *thinks about poking his GURPS DM* :poke:


@Jürgen: Well, my experiences with GURPS so far have only been more or less hardcore SciFi campaigns. And combat in those was pretty nasty because of the techlevel the campaigns were set in. Especially starship combat was very ugly...


@Xeviat: Anyways, in my opinion it is still impossible to create a "realistic" injury simulation with any mechanic involving abstract HP. Even with "wound levels" like the WoD has it becomes a mess quickly. The only thing that seems to be reasonably realistic is a system that does away with the definitive amount of punishment a character can take. In almost all systems that use wound levels, hit points, or somesuch characters can take a definitive amount of damage. And this is the unrealistic thing that breaks realism over the knee. When somebody gets shot with a gun, you cannot say "oh, five more of those and he's done".

Especially in DnD, the amount of damage characters can take is absolute (total HP + 10), while the relative impact of damage is highly relative (2d6+4 for a 1st level char are a highly different thing than 2d6+4 for a 17th level char). However, if you switched the thing around it would become much more realistic. If you cannot exactly say how much more hits the character can take before going down, and all attacks that inflict a given amount of damage are equally threatening no matter what level the target has, it's more like the world we know.

To elaborate the last point, there's this classic example. In a war there are many victims. Farmer Bob, a 1st level commoner with average Con and 2 HP, has been hit by an orc arrow in the head for 6 damage, and was dropped to -4. He is brought to a low-level cleric who casts cure light wounds for 1d8+3, healing 8 HP of damage. Farmer Bob is saved, feeling as good as when he was born, not a single sign of the arrow in his face left. Then General Gorin, a 12th level fighter with 98 HP, who has been ambushed by the orcs and dropped to -4 is brought to the same cleric. The cleric casts his cure light wounds again, healing again 8 HP. But instead of curing all the glaring wounds on the fighter's body it merely stops most of them from bleeding and barely brings Gorin back to consciousness.

This is the reason why I like Blue Planet's wound levels so much. Each hit can inflict a wound of varying intensity: light, serious, critical. Only serious wounds can cause a character to fall unconscious, and only critical wounds can cause a character to die. The resistance checks against unconsciousness or death are NOT influenced by other wounds (if someone stabs you with a glowing metal hook it doesn't matter if you had broken your leg earlier, you fall unconscious because of the pain from the current wound, not the wound from 10 minutes ago).

So far, this is the most "realistic" system for handling injuries I've seen so far. No more "I die from a shotgun wound in the chest because someone broke my nose an hour ago" or other irregularities that can come up with HP/wound levels. Also, weapons are reasonably realistic, either. For one, you just cannot dodge ranged weapons. The bullet will be at your chest with 500m/s before you even completed the thought of "must seek cover". Then you just have almost no chance of surviving heavy weaponry. The mechanics account for the fact that a character even wearing the best available body armor would just be shredded to pieces by a 30mm auto-rotary cannon.

Well, I'd apply a somewhat different definition of "realistic" in these cases:

1) It should be consistent with the conventions of the genre, setting, and campaign. This is different from being consistent with our real-world expectations.

2) It should be possible to make sense of the outcomes in game-world terms, without making reference to mechanical constructs.

Ra-Tiel points out one of the many areas in which D&D falls short on the second point. Going to a WP/VP system helps a little, but there are still some problems making sense of healing, rest, etc.

(Actually, if you use a system like that, I'd modify the healing spells. Cure Light Wounds should either heal the normal amount of VP, or just 1d2 WP.)

So I think you can use abstractions like WP/VP to create something that is realistic in the genre sense, provided you actually make the effort to match the mechanics up with some reasonably concrete game-world concepts, in a fully consistent way.

A pure HP system like D&D's may be beyond hope though.