Using D20 Modern for T20: The Wall

[Reginald]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:

What this means is if we want the Massive Damage throw rules to reflect the desired 50% kill rate we would need to make the fixed value very low. So low you can hardly call it "massive" damage any more. In fact, to make this work it might be best to dispose of the damage roll all together and use a simple damage save. Like used in Blue Rose, True20, or Mutants and Masterminds.

So, you opposed the MDT value = fixed 10 (i.e., Realistic Reality Level, d20M, p. 196) because even though it would force a more frequent number of Fortitude saving throws, it doesn't matter because the Fort Save bonus would keep the Hero PC from dropping anyway.

Does the fact that rolling a natural 1 -- regardless of your high Fort Save bonus -- always mean an automatic failure of your saving throw have any impact on your statistical analysis?

OBTW, if the term "massive damage" is making your eyes twitch, you could always call it "injury trauma threshold."

 

[tjoneslo]

Originally posted by Reginald:
So, you opposed the MDT value = fixed 10 (i.e., Realistic Reality Level, d20M, p. 196) because even though it would force a more frequent number of Fortitude saving throws, it doesn't matter because the Fort Save bonus would keep the Hero PC from dropping anyway.

My real opposition to the MDT is it adds a another dice roll into combat sequence and adds a level or unpreditability into combat that some people dislike. Also see below.

Does the fact that rolling a natural 1 -- regardless of your high Fort Save bonus -- always mean an automatic failure of your saving throw have any impact on your statistical analysis?

No, the Fort save bonuses I'm using here are in the +2 to +5 range. D20 Modern saving throws advance much more slowly than the D&D ones, and there are fewer things to improve it. You would need a combination of 15th+ level with selected classes, ungodly Constitution, and a feat/talent selection before this becomes a factor.

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra
What if the fortitude save is made a bit more difficult?

This won't help as much as you would think. We're playing with statistics and these propbablities multiply. If we use the MD threshold of 10, and a Fort save of 15+damage (i.e. 100% failure on the Fort Save), the Shotgun takes you down 36% of the time.

Because we want a significant probablity of death in combat, we would need to both reduce the threshold below 10, and increase the save DC.

Lets try this again: MD Threshold is 5 points: 2d6 this occurs 72% of the time, 2d8 is 84%, and 2d10 is 90%. With DC15 fort save this gives:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Person 2d6 2d8 2d10
Mook 49% 54% 60%
Bob 43% 50% 54%
Al 36% 42% 45%</pre>[/QUOTE]My point above is illustrated here: We now are into the ranges we want for killing people, but almost every hit in combat results in a MD Fort save. So why not simplify things and remove the damage roll and assume every hit forces a MD Fort save.

I like the idea of weapon damage modifying the Save DC, and again statistics comes to the rescue. The save DC can be 10 + Average Weapon Damage. A 2d6 weapon is +7, a 2d8 weapon is +9, a 2d10 weapon is +11, a 3d6 weapon is +10, a 1d4 dagger is +2.

True20 (and IIRC M&M) have several damage levels depending upon how badly you fail your save, so the first hit does not automatically drop you, but will impair you.

 

[mike wightman]

Could you use a combination of systems.

The player rolls weapon damage and the referee uses this to decide if an NPCs critical damage threshold has been reached, while a PC receiving damage has to roll a fortitude save, DC determined by the referee.

That way the player always feels in control, sort of...

 

[Reginald]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:

My point above is illustrated here: We now are into the ranges we want for killing people, but almost every hit in combat results in a MD Fort save. So why not simplify things and remove the damage roll and assume every hit forces a MD Fort save.

Then the HP is a secondary measure for those who are just damn lucky to roll their Fort Save successfully. Even though you can survive the trauma of one particular attack, it still adds up to all your previous injuries and wounds that the body will eventually give in.

I'm not knocking MnM/True20 Damage Saving Throw. My hangup is the fixed weapon damage value/modifier that is applied to the DC. I still like the randomness of rolling weapon damage.

Is the level of unpredictability of d20M health system (using Realistic Reality Level) unfair to PCs? Do you think that players need some kind of safety measure to distinguish their PCs from the "ordinaries" (i.e., NPC extras) in the game? I mean with an established 50% kill rate, that would leave half of the group's PCs being dead, and other group's PCs somehow alive.

Granted, we want to be heroes by the actions we do, but it's not good for us if we end up dead before doing the deeds. Taking a cue from the Serenity film, at least Wash was able to heroically save the crew by making a hard landing ... before he was unceremoniously killed.

 

[Anthony]

If you like randomness of rolling damage, you can do MnM/True20 as a contested roll, or just a damage roll vs a flat target number (and more effect if you beat by 5/10/15).

The major problem is that, without a hero point system, the result is nearly unplayable lethality levels. It may be reasonable to have 25-50% lethality on the first shot, but it doesn't work very well in a game.

 

[tjoneslo]

True. But the example I was discussing above assumes automatic hits on an unarmored target with a high powered weapon.

The real debate here is how long do you want combat to last. D&D introduced the concept of ever increasing hit points, but also has ever deadlier weapons through magic. D20 Modern wanted to keep the hit point increases, but since the weapon damages don't increase, also needed a way to shorten high level combats. Hence the "shortcuts" from massive damage and/or WP/VP for when the attacker rolls well or the defender rolls poorly.

I was looking through my D20 collection and discovered a little gem: Ken Hood's Grim&Gritty Hit point system (Version 3.3). This gives each character and monster CON + BAB hit points (modified by size). GGHP was written for D&D, and includes a defense bonus, which works well with D20 Modern.

 

[tjoneslo]

Just to experiment with my last suggestion. Here are the hit points given out per level based upon your hit dice. These level based hit points are added to your consitiution to get a total hit points.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Level d4 d6 d8 d10 d12
1 +0 +0 +1 +1 +1
2 +0 +1 +1 +2 +3
3 +1 +1 +2 +3 +4
4 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5
5 +1 +2 +3 +5 +7
6 +1 +3 +4 +6 +8
7 +2 +3 +5 +7 +9
8 +2 +4 +5 +8 +11
9 +2 +4 +6 +9 +12
10 +2 +5 +7 +10 +13</pre>[/QUOTE]So characters range from about 10 to a maximum of 49 hit point (Toughness feat still adds 3 hp, which makes it much more attractive). Taking the middle route with our three examples we end up with Mook at 15 hp, Bob at 18, and Al the Tough at 21. Stacked against our basic weapons we get the following:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Person 2d6 2d8 2d10
Mook 3 2 2
Bob 3 3 2
Al 4 3 2</pre>[/QUOTE]The numbers are the number of average damage hits requried to kill the character (reduce to 0 hp or below). So how does this compare to above? With the massive damage rules there are two ways to take people down: Massive damage failure or plinking away their hit points. I make the same assumptions as above, the three persons are 7th level, with average d8 hit points. Mook has 31, Bob has 38 and Al has 52.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Person 2d6 2d8 2d10 2d6 2d8 2d10
Mook 15/5 5/4 3/3 2 2 2
Bob 50/6 15/5 8/4 3 2 2
Al xx/8 100/6 15/5 3 3 3</pre>[/QUOTE]The first number is the number of successful hits it would take to induce a failed MD throw on the character. The second number represents the number of average damage hits it takes to reduce the character to below 0 hit points in the usual manner. The second set of columns is number of hits to induce a failed MD throw using the threshold of 5 points.

To be fair, using the WP/VP system should be analyzed as well. All weapon damages have been increased by one die, which should reduce the number of hits required to kill a person. Each person now has more hit points. Mook has 31/10 hit point for example.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Person 2d6 2d8 2d10
Mook 5 4 3
Bob 6 4 4
Al 7 6 5</pre>[/QUOTE]As above, this is the number of hits required to kill the character in question. The critical hits occur 5% of the time, this means 40 hits are required for a critical hit takedown, somewhat less frequently than the MD threshold.

In conclusion, the MD system and the WP/VP system are simiar in their combat characteristics. Both system include a "surprise, you're dead" factor which should occur once per session or so.

Our goal for Traveller was to increase the lethality of the combat system beyond the usual D20 standards. The MD system and the WP/VP systems are designed to increase lethality, but do so only marginally. We can increase the lethality of these systems by modifying their thresholds. But they add complexity to combat.

 

[Reginald]

So, MDT = 10 means squat?

Hate to break this to the CoC d20 gamers.

 

[tjoneslo]

Well, it doesn't mean exactly squat. I didn't do that analysis properly.

With a fixed DC 10 Massive Damage throw both the number of hits required to kill the character and the number of hits to induce a failed MD throw increase. But the MD failure rate increases slower than the hit point rate.

This means once your character goes beyond 30-40 hit points, the probably is your character is more likey to be killed by a failed MD throw than by being "plinked" to death. With 2d6 you will have to kill targets the slow way. With 2d8 weapons this takes 5-7 shots, and 2d10 weapons this is 3-5 shots.

 

[Laryssa]

I don't like the random rolls for purchases of equipment D20 Modern has. It seems to me taht making the process radom doesn't make it easier.

I like Damage vs hit points, its nice and simple, so why complicate it. I kind of like characters to have separate defense and armor class statistics. The armor class include the defense within, but the defense is listed separatly and does not include armor bonuses. So armor class is always greater or equal to defense. When the attack role comes inbetween defense and Armor class, the difference between the attack roll and armor class is damage reduction subtracted from the damage rolled and applied to the opponents hit points.

That way armor is more effective vs primitive weapons that do less damage than against advanced weapons that do more.

I don't like the fact that T20 counts hit dice instead of points of damage. The fact is a weapon that does 2d10 will often do more damage than one that does 3d6, although the 3d6 weapon will penetrate more armor in T20 than the 2d10 weapon. I'd rather get rid of damage dice counting and just deal with hit points of damage, makes it simpler I think.

 

[Reginald]

Originally posted by Laryssa:

I don't like the random rolls for purchases of equipment D20 Modern has. It seems to me taht making the process radom doesn't make it easier.

We could use gear package, but then the drawback is that everybody buying the same exact package will have the same exact gear. Not so much personalization there.

Originally posted by Laryssa:

I like Damage vs hit points, its nice and simple, so why complicate it.

Because many gamers here think that HP have no place in Traveller nor anywhere outside of D&D/d20 fantasy genre RPG.

Unless you're referring to d20 Modern or in the case of T20, Stamina/Lifeblood.

Originally posted by Laryssa:

I kind of like characters to have separate defense and armor class statistics. The armor class include the defense within, but the defense is listed separatly and does not include armor bonuses. So armor class is always greater or equal to defense. When the attack role comes inbetween defense and Armor class, the difference between the attack roll and armor class is damage reduction subtracted from the damage rolled and applied to the opponents hit points.

That way armor is more effective vs primitive weapons that do less damage than against advanced weapons that do more.

Wait. If the attack roll result is greater than Defense but less than AC, you get a DR value?

If the attack roll result is greater than your AC, then weapon damage apply fully, regardless if weapon is primitive or advanced?

 

[Qstor2]

This might be opening a can of worms but Maybe now that's Hunter's back discussion might be done about doing an official D20 Modern/OGL reworking of T20.

I think that might be something that would take a long time. But it was what was done with B5. They made a 2e version of the game using the basics from D20 modern.

Mike

 

[mike wightman]

I think a d20M/F based revised edition could be good, but there are other options.
A fully OGL version could use the best of the ideas that have appeared over the last few years, and yet innovations like the armour damage reduction and lifeblood/stamina could remain.

First thing I'd consider is a PDF release of the T20 rulebook to generate some cashflow, I'd buy it on sight.

Now that T20 has been out for a while and played, people have found the parts of the rules that need either clarification, revision, or replacing with something better.

 

[tjoneslo]

Originally posted by Qstor2:
This might be opening a can of worms but Maybe now that's Hunter's back discussion might be done about doing an official D20 Modern/OGL reworking of T20.

It's not a can of worms at all. I also would like the idea, have done significant work in this regard, and still have all my notes. Part of the "hit the wall" problem is I require some incentive to continue to work on a project. In some cases this incentive can be money. In others it is another person or two who is as excited about the project as I am and who will push me along and get me out of some rut or antother.

I think Hunter's goal at this point is to publish a few smaller things, to get QLI back in to the public eye again before tacking a huge project like a core rules update.

I've got one smaller thing to send Hunter and I'll mention to him about the idea of the T20M project.