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Showing posts with label Ability Scores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ability Scores. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Hit Points as Real Damage, Part II

In the last post, small changes to how healing worked were introduced into the current system of Onn and in general any retro- or oldschool-style game. I say small, but also far reaching due to the fact that hit points are a central part of the game, as is their loss and recovery.

Damage and Death is the way hit points are lost (obviously). Individual Referees may desire to come up with systems of their own to simulate the declining health of an adventurer as they lose hit points, but for the scope of Onn, the fact they are getting so close to death is enough for this one.

If a character is reduced to 0 hit points exactly, he is unconscious but stable. If left alone long enough, the character may recover or die on his own (Referees are free to adjucate this to what best fits their game).

Under 0 hit points, a character is considered dying from internal and/or external damage. Each round the character rolls a Toughness saving throw with his negative hit point total applied as a penalty to the roll. If he fails the roll he takes an additional point of damage; suceeding the roll places him stable at 0 hit points.

Characters reaching a negative hit point total equal to their maximum 1st level hit points are dead.

If a character heals naturally or is magically healed back to positive hit points, he suffers a -4 penalty to all die rolls until he has a full day of rest.

Natural Healing is the most often neglected recovery method of hit points. In worlds where magical healing is available, natural recovery is often moot or all but forgotten. Characters regain their Constitution's Natural Healing rate for each day of rest. Rest is considered non-stressful activity (equipment upkeep, foraging, small game hunting, sitting around or praying/studying, etc) no matter where the character is. Adventurers don't need a warm bed and cushy settings to be considered resting (though of course it is the most preferred!).

Now, if a character spends 2 weeks in a civilized location and comfortable while under the care of another tending to him, he regains full hit points at the end of the 2 week period regardless of how hurt he is.

Fast Healing is a weaker form of regeneration (that all-too-familiar property of Trolls). Characters with Fast Healing heal the indicated rate regardless of their activity level until they reach 0 hit points...at that point the body is too damaged to continue to repair itself.

Magical Healing is the most common form of healing adventurers encounter. The 4 healing spells Clerics, Druids, Divine Champions and Rangers have access to in the World of Onn would look like so:

Cure Light Wounds*
Spell Level: Cleric/Druid, 1st Level
Range: Touch
Duration: Instant
Immediately cures wounds on the target equal to 1 point, plus the target's natural healing rate. Optionally, this spell can remove paralysis but when cast in this fashion no damage is cured.
An evil reversal of this spell allows an Anti-cleric to cause light wounds for 1+1d6 damage if he successfully strikes the victim with a +2 bonus on the ‘to-hit’ roll.

Cure Serious Wounds*
Spell Level: Cleric/Druid, 4th Level
Range: Touch
Duration: Instant
Immediately cures wounds on the target equal to 4 points, plus double the dice of the target’s natural healing rate. Optionally, this spell can remove paralysis, cure blindness or deafness but when cast in one of these fashions no damage is cured.
An evil reversal of this spell allows an Anti-cleric to cause 4+2d6 points of damage if he successfully strikes the victim with a +2 bonus on the ‘to-hit’ roll.

Healing Circle*
Spell Level: Cleric/Druid, 5th Level
Range: Self
Duration: Instantaneous
This spell heals the caster and all allies in a 10 ft radius around the caster of 4 points, plus double the target’s natural healing rate. Optionally, this spell can remove paralysis, cure blindness or deafness in an ally at the caster’s desire, but when these maladies are removed only 1 point, plus the target’s natural healing rate are cured for that individual.
An evil reversal of this spell allows an Anti-cleric to cause a circle of wounds inflicting 4+2d6 points of damage to all enemies in a 10 ft radius around the caster.
 
Cure Critical Wounds*
Spell Level: Cleric/Druid, 7th Level
Range: Touch
Duration: Instant
Immediately cures wounds on the target equal to 16 points, plus quadruple the target’s natural healing rate. Optionally, this spell can remove paralysis, cure blindness or deafness but when cast in one of these fashions no damage is cured.
An evil reversal of this spell allows an Anti-cleric to cause 16+4d6 points of damage if he successfully strikes the victim with a +2 bonus on the ‘to-hit’ roll.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Hit Points as Real Damage

Working off the supposition that Hit Points are purely how much damage a creature can sustain before being killed, the Constitution ability can serve as more than just a Hit Point adjustment for hit dice gained when levelling up. Constitution can be used to affect natural healing as well in a definable way.

Ability ScoreAdjustmentNatural HealingFast Healing
1-41-
2-31-
3-4-21-
5-8-1d2-
9-12-d3-
13-14+1d4-
15+1d6-
16+1d6-
17+2d8-
18+2d8-
19+3d101/hour
20+4d101/turn


Like normal, Adjustment affects the amount of Hit Points per HD the character has. Natural Healing is the amount of hit points a character regains for a day of rest, while Fast Healing is a slower but similar ability of regeneration.

Likewise, Clerical healing magic would work by using the character's Natural Healing rate. The more robust/tough/quick to mend/etc the character is, the more damage healing magic repairs, speeding up the recovery of wounds through holy power, like so:

Cure Light Wounds
Spell Level: Cleric, 1st Level
Range: Touch
Duration: Instant
Immediately cures wounds and injuries equaling 1 point, plus the recipient’s natural healing rate. Optionally, this spell can remove paralysis but when cast in this fashion no damage is cured.

So a Cleric casting Cure Light on a character with an average Constitution (9-12) heals 1+1d3 hit points of damage, while a more robust individual (Constitution 15-16) would be healed 1+1d6 points of damage.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Choosing the Best Ability Score Method for Your Game

I've been part of some of the bonus inflation discussions for Ability Scores over and over again. It's like the Level Limit discussions - someone posts their opinion on it and people come out of the woodwork either decrying or espousing why their camp is 'right', but little actual discussion happens. When Swords & Wizardry came out, I was on a backslide from my regular 3.5 group. I just can't get into 4e, it goes against my own personal preference so I went searching. I had a BFRPG game going for a while, and even an OD&D game going for a long time, but when I found Swords & Wizardry that little moment of clarity hit me: my game my way. As much as OD&D (I consider OD&D the original 3 booklets and Greyhawk, I have all of the little books but the others saw little use) was a framework, the aspects of the ability scores had little application in actual play other than for players to compare them against each other.

Move forward, each edition added importance in the form of adjustments, but each edition made the numbers larger and more important - the ‘bonus inflation’ mentioned earlier. 1e/2e AD&D made the largest blunder in this area by adding the % roll to an 18 Strength. Normal Men, the baseline all characters lives are measured against, have but 1-6 hit points. With a large enough % roll, rolling a ‘1’ for weapon damage could result in 6+ points of damage. Indeed, adventurers should be tougher than a common man, but 1-shoting low level opponents is a bit much, even if the high rolls for Strength and its accompanying % roll are rare. The Cook/Marsh B/X line used up to -/+3, not bad but at the higher end of the spectrum can be unbalancing. The 3.x editions bumped this higher with the highest rolled scores garnering a +4. Enter the retro-clones, moving back the clock in terms of rules and play. Through my small contributions to BFRPG’s 2nd printing I found Swords & Wizardry. Now S&W rolled back the clock almost to the beginning - the best adjustment was minimal - nothing more than -/+1.

In using the base of S&W and keeping the 3d6 bell curve, I wanted a slightly larger chance for adjustments but I was dissatisfied with the odd groupings of B/X and inconsistent groupings used by AD&D. Using the average group of 9-12, I came up with what I though would be a good set of adjustments for Onn:

3 - 4 becomes a -2 penalty
5 - 8 becomes a -1 penalty
9 - 12 remains average
13 - 16 becomes a +1 bonus
17 - 18 becomes a +2 bonus

Using a base grouping of 4’s provides a good spread of adjustments to ability scores. This also gives the players a chance for the adjustments on both ends of the scale. Technically, the lowest end of the scale is 1-4 and the highest is 17-20, but characters for the World of Onn can’t roll a 1, 2, 19 or 20. It is easy to figure out though, so getting drained to a 2 Strength by a Shadow, for example, won’t cause any confusion like it would in the Cook Basic Set or the character with a 17 Dexterity that dons a set of Gauntlets of Dexterity +4 and ends up with a 21, using the 4-point groupings it’s easy to figure out on the fly (21-24 is a +3).

This also is low enough not to impact the simpler play style of older games and their clones - simply put, you don’t need high stats or huge adjustments to do anything like you do in more modern games. This also has the effect of keeping any bonuses more important since they are less numerous and smaller than more modern games, as well as having a larger impact on other systems within the game.

More on that later though…