Seeking some feedback on a possible ED4 change
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:52 am
So for those who care to think about and contribute to such things, here's a situation that I'm looking for some feedback on with regard to Fourth Edition; specifically, death/unconsciousness ratings, and possibly a new way of handling them.
There are a couple of aspects of this. One is looking at simplifying the dual-stat situation of DR/UR and the other is the possible inclusion of a stamina pool for strain.
One of the first ideas was to split damage into two pools; physical and stun, with strain (and attacks to stun, and probably most illusionary damage). Hitting your health rating on the stun track meant you were unconscious, hitting it on the physical track meant you were dead.
Testing found that didn't work -- there are too few sources of stun type damage, and it eliminated the buffer that was in place that allowed characters to be taken out of combat but not killed, and added another resource to keep track of without adding anything really significant or interesting to game play. So that has been scrapped.
Something we're looking at now is dropping the two ratings, and just going with a single damage track. When your current damage reaches or exceeds this new health rating (currently set around the same level as Unconsciousness) you are down. If you aren't suffering any wounds, you are simply unconscious and will recover normally. If you have wounds, you are dying, in danger of death; a successful Toughness test against a DN of 5 times the number of wounds will keep you alive. The Physician skill, if administered in time, can provide a bonus to this test, or possibly an additional test. Healing aids and talents that interact with this (like Life Check) would be looked at in terms of how they interact with this new approach to damage.
One of the goals here is to try and reduce how much damage needs to be thrown around to take down an opponent -- especially as we get into higher circles and are looking at adepts and tougher creatures. Combat can be a bit of a slog, taking people down through death by a thousand paper cuts, scaling back on these numbers to some extent can speed things up in that regard.
The other idea is to create a "stamina pool" (that's what we've been calling it) that strain damage is applied to first. There are players out there who are, in general, reluctant to use talents that cause strain because if gets them closer to being taken out of the fight. If you use up this pool, then Strain starts going on as normal damage. The pool would refresh after each combat. This is one that I am less sold on. It also adds another resource to keep track of, and I'm not sure it adds enough to make it worthwhile. Testing has come back with some positive feedback (especially from high-strain characters like Swordsmasters and the like), so I'm putting it out there. The pool would be based on Toughness, the working number being equal to the Toughness score, but that would be flexible based on how that balances in relation to the amount of Strain Disciplines use.
And that, in a sense, is my problem with it. Some Disciplines use a lot more strain than others, and so this is a mechanic that would, largely, only be applicable to a portion of the characters. Is it worth adding on another mechanic/resource? I'm not really sure.
So I turn to you -- I like the current direction of the single health rating (as opposed to DR/UR), but am looking for some additional feedback and thoughts on this issue to make sure there isn't anything obvious that we're missing.
Thanks for your help -- and please try to make your opinions and such constructive.
There are a couple of aspects of this. One is looking at simplifying the dual-stat situation of DR/UR and the other is the possible inclusion of a stamina pool for strain.
One of the first ideas was to split damage into two pools; physical and stun, with strain (and attacks to stun, and probably most illusionary damage). Hitting your health rating on the stun track meant you were unconscious, hitting it on the physical track meant you were dead.
Testing found that didn't work -- there are too few sources of stun type damage, and it eliminated the buffer that was in place that allowed characters to be taken out of combat but not killed, and added another resource to keep track of without adding anything really significant or interesting to game play. So that has been scrapped.
Something we're looking at now is dropping the two ratings, and just going with a single damage track. When your current damage reaches or exceeds this new health rating (currently set around the same level as Unconsciousness) you are down. If you aren't suffering any wounds, you are simply unconscious and will recover normally. If you have wounds, you are dying, in danger of death; a successful Toughness test against a DN of 5 times the number of wounds will keep you alive. The Physician skill, if administered in time, can provide a bonus to this test, or possibly an additional test. Healing aids and talents that interact with this (like Life Check) would be looked at in terms of how they interact with this new approach to damage.
One of the goals here is to try and reduce how much damage needs to be thrown around to take down an opponent -- especially as we get into higher circles and are looking at adepts and tougher creatures. Combat can be a bit of a slog, taking people down through death by a thousand paper cuts, scaling back on these numbers to some extent can speed things up in that regard.
The other idea is to create a "stamina pool" (that's what we've been calling it) that strain damage is applied to first. There are players out there who are, in general, reluctant to use talents that cause strain because if gets them closer to being taken out of the fight. If you use up this pool, then Strain starts going on as normal damage. The pool would refresh after each combat. This is one that I am less sold on. It also adds another resource to keep track of, and I'm not sure it adds enough to make it worthwhile. Testing has come back with some positive feedback (especially from high-strain characters like Swordsmasters and the like), so I'm putting it out there. The pool would be based on Toughness, the working number being equal to the Toughness score, but that would be flexible based on how that balances in relation to the amount of Strain Disciplines use.
And that, in a sense, is my problem with it. Some Disciplines use a lot more strain than others, and so this is a mechanic that would, largely, only be applicable to a portion of the characters. Is it worth adding on another mechanic/resource? I'm not really sure.
So I turn to you -- I like the current direction of the single health rating (as opposed to DR/UR), but am looking for some additional feedback and thoughts on this issue to make sure there isn't anything obvious that we're missing.
Thanks for your help -- and please try to make your opinions and such constructive.