As long as you use the actual D20 rules instead of some vague misunderstanding of them, there’s no such problem. If you simply use the Take 10 rule that’s been in D20 since D&D 3E came out as a standard rule, then a character not under stress can choose not to roll the die and get an automatic 10 instead. It’s quite easy for someone moderately skilled to successfully complete basic tasks when no one is shooting at them, and the D20 roll takes away the scaling problem with 3d6 systems, where bonuses and penalties don’t linearly scale. (For example, if I need an 11 to succeed normally but get a -5 penalty so I need a 16, in D20 that’s a change from a 50% to 35% chance of success, while in 3D6 it’s a change from about 50% to about 1%. It’s a whole lot easier to add lots of modifiers without unintentionally making the task near impossible or almost automatic in D20).
Except that CoC doesn’t use the cumbersome, kludged in, and unneccesary wounds/vitality system. CoC handles deadly weapons quite simply - if you take 10HP or more from a single attack, you have to make a DC15 fortitude save or die. It’s certainly better IMO than GURPS, where IIRC (been a long time since I’ve played it) it’s pretty difficult to have someone take a shot or two and live, even though it happens quite a bit IRL, and it’s almost impossible for someone to take several marginal hits and fight effectively, even though there are numerous documented instances of it happening (The much-studied Miami shootout, Phillipine insurgents at the turn of the century, and numerous others). Rather critically for my tastes, it requires a whole lot fewer rules shifts to adapt D20 to another ‘gritiness level’ than GURPS.
If you switch between D&D, Traveller D20, D20 Modern, or D20 CoC is not that difficult for a player to adjust to the rules differences(D20 Star Wars is hard to switch to, but it’s poorly designed), while moving between (for example) a GURPS fantasy campaign and a GURPS Traveller campaign requires a lot of rules changes (technically invovation and revocation of optional rules, but it amounts to the same thing). Oh, and the biggest one IMO: building a 10th level character from scratch and working one up from 1st level give the same result in D20, building a 400 pt character from scratch and working a 100pt character up to 450pts provides very different results in GURPS.
So, a first-level character being killed outright by 1 or 2 arrows (Not incapacitated, not bleeding profusely and in need of medical attention, but out-right irecoverably dead), and a high-level but unarmored character taking 30 equally solid hits while fighting without any negative effect, while being dropped by the 31st (Again, completely stone dead), is reasonable? Don’t kid yourself
And even some newbie that’s never handled a gun (Or bow) before can still land a blind lucky shot right into some 30-year combat veteran’s head and kill them dead in a single shot. D&D? Nope. What’s the critical multiplier for a .45? Bows are x3, right? Which wouldn’t be nearly enough. Even a x5 wouldn’t be enough to simulate this, unless the basic damage is incredibly high (Which also rather nastily eliminates the possibility of grazing wounds for newbie characters). And if the “solution” is to use feats like D&D uses, that doesn’t quite cut it. You don’t have to have a certain amount of experience before you can aim for the head (Though of course, it will help the chances of hitting the head)
D&D does some things fine. Heroic high-fantasy, for example. But don’t even pretend these results are realistic.
D20 makes luck much more of a factor than many other dice-using games, though. There’s an online magazine called Critical Miss that, while usually just being about funny stuff, has a rather good article that pretty much sums up my opinion. Basically, using a single D20 and “target” total makes luck much more of a factor than using, say 3d6. GURPS is actually my favorite about that; Not only does it do that, but it also modifies the chances of a critical success/failure by the user’s skill level. Someone of high skill almost never bombs a skill use, while some novice trying to do something is much more likely to critically fail, and almost never pulls off the exceptionally good results a skilled profesional much more frequently can pull off.
I do like the new take-10 rule they added in, though, that cuts down on some of the stupid stuff.
Man… I keep hearing people complain about GURPS being too lethal. I have to wonder where they have been whenever I’m running a campaign. If anything, it’s about the opposite here. For example, Sampson (Who, granted, was a somewhat big guy), who without any form of armor took 2 .40 JHPs and 10 5.56mm FMJ rounds, and was still concious and fighting back (Though very, very poorly by this point). Or numerous characters that were pounded nearly to pulp but didn’t die. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve added in “home rules” to deal with extreme injuries (Though to counter it, I also added in home rules to deal with other things GURPS didn’t have… Like CPR and other life-saving techniques).
It’s also been my experience that you’re much more likely to have a character incapacitated than killed outright (Though without first aid, they may just die soon, anyway…)
Though usually, the results are fairly reasonable in my games. A good torso shot or two will usually stop someone, though usually survivable, but the only reliable way to take someone down (Appart from using weapons powerfull enough to chunkify them) is a brain shot. Vitals shots are also quite good, but a little more survivable. Start shooting someone with a .32 ACP or .22 LR, though, and an average person would have a fairly good chance of taking several and still going (A single shot would probably do little to someone except hurt like hell… Enough for someone not terribly inclined to fight, but you’ll just piss off someone who wants to kill you). At the same time, one to the vitals could be very troubling, even fatal, and one to the brain will almost certainly take you out of the action.
Of course, if people complaing too much about realism or the lack thereof in games, I’m going to have to pull out my stack of Phoenix Command books. That usually shuts them up
I hear this a lot, too, but I’ve never seen it. I just switched from a medieval dark-fantasy campaign to a rather hard-realism sci-fi campaign, and the only changes I had were story-line changes (Races, culture, etc), availible types of advantages (Which really, changed very little… Mostly restrictions for what shouldn’t be in a hard-realism campaign), what type of skills are most usefull, equipment and the rules for their use, and which optional books get the most use. There were no basic rule changes, though. What kinds of rule changes were you thinking of? And we’re starting up a victorian-era campaign soon, too, which also requires no rule changes… What do you mean?
The only difference I’ve seen is that people tend to both give much more thought into where they put their character points. How do the results differ so much? The only thing I can think of are the advantages listed as ones you can’t spend character points to purchase after character generation (Magery, for example). But that doesn’t mean that they can’t gain them durring play (And to the GM, such an idea can be a very convenient launching-point for a long but rewarding adventure…)
Sigh. If you prefer GURPS, play GURPS. I don’t believe I ever claimed in this thread that d20 was the superior system. I personally don’t care for GURPS, but if it’s working for you, I see no reason to change.
Ravenloft has something called an outcast rating for nonhuman characters. The OR numbered 1+ acts as a negative modifer to diplomacy, bluff, and other social skills. They can act as a positive modifer to skills like intimidation. Something like that might work for you.
It’s pretty hard to kill a first level character outright with 2 arrows, most likely they are going to be bleeding and in need of medical care, since you don’t die until you hit -10 HP and arrows do d8 (crits or bonuses would make it easier). And, as I pointed out but you ignored, the high level character has to keep making fort saves for each hit that does 10 HP or more (so, only for crits or people with bonuses) if you’re using the realistic damage rules. Also, as you’d know if you read the PHB’s description of hit points, hits on a high-level character do not represent ‘equally solid hits’, and that’s been true since at least 1980.
We were talking about D20, not “D&D 3E with no optional rules”. If you’re using the realistic massive damage instead of one of the cinematic massive damage rules (standard for CoC, optional for modern) then it certainly can happen. Shoot a gun at someone, roll a 10 for damage (doesn’t even require a crit), and they’ve got to make a fort save or die on the spot.
FYI, it depends on the system; in CoC a .45 does 2d8 with a x3 crit multiplier, while in D20 modern (where the firearms rules go for action movie feel, not realism) it does 2d6 with a x2 like all ‘normal size’ pistols.
We’re talking about D20, not D&D.
Not on routine tasks (take 10) or tasks where you can take longer to do it throuroughly (take 20), and the narrow variance on 3d6 means that a -5 penalty easily takes you from ‘can do it most of the time’ to ‘about a 1% chance’. There’s more variance in D20 when you roll, but it also follows a linear scale allowing for easier situational modifications.
Sigh so does D20, when there’s a possability of critical success/failure.
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Man… I keep hearing people complain about GURPS being too lethal. I have to wonder where they have been whenever I’m running a campaign. If anything, it’s about the opposite here. For example, Sampson (Who, granted, was a somewhat big guy), who without any form of armor took 2 .40 JHPs and 10 5.56mm FMJ rounds, and was still concious and fighting back (Though very, very poorly by this point). Or numerous characters that were pounded nearly to pulp but didn’t die. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve added in “home rules” to deal with extreme injuries (Though to counter it, I also added in home rules to deal with other things GURPS didn’t have… Like CPR and other life-saving techniques).
Same with D20, since most attacks end up just taking the target to a negative HP total, not killing them outright.
Ugh, half a dozen rolls to resolve a single shot. Not for me, I want to get combat out of the way in a reasonable amount of time. I’ve found that systems with incremental incapacitation tend to either result in too rapid incapacitation or result in way too much bookeeping for minor game effects.
Different skills available, different advantages (feats) available, equipment and the rules for its use, and switching to different optional rules.
Buying attributes and buying skills both cost different amounts of points if they’re done at character creation. It’s relatively cheap to ‘max out’ attributes at character creation, and much more difficult later on. Similarly, the cost of skills depend on attributes, so a character starting off with high attributes will get more skills. A character built fresh on 450 pts will be much more capable than one built on 100 pts and advanced to 450 points.
Interestingly, and oddly, I’m really looking forward to playing d20 Modern, yet I don’t like the idea of Star Wars d20.
I have always, and will always, like Star Wars d6 (WEG) better.
As for rules and problems with characters living too long or whatever … well, that’s what DMs are for.
Once, I had a problem with a powerful character who was just amazing at everything. I needed to lose him to give the game some depth, so when he was EV (to make an emergency repair) during a space battle, he got smeared between his ship and another that bumped together.
Even as a GURPS fan, well actually I like the supplements more than the system because the supplements are amazingly complete and useful information on the topic, I can’t stand the increased cost of attributes after character creation. A character point should not vary in value. I also dislike a few of the directions they’ve taken with the basic rules. I think that it would have been smarter to use very generic component advantages/disadvantages and relevent generic enchancements/limitations. Then you string them together to form more complicated advantages/disadvantages. My home brew GURPS mods does that.
But anyway I’m going to flip through d20 modern in the local gaming store today. I’ve been looking for a more pliant, less cluttered generic system and I’ve always had a soft spot for class based games even though classes make no sense usually.
As a player in a couple games, I wasn’t really struck by anything truly horrible about the Star Wars d20 rules, but then again I hadn’t seen the previous versions before. My eyes did sort of cross on seeing the rather large blaster-autofire chart. That’s also not a gameworld I have any strong emotional vesting in, so that probably further softened any downside-seeing.
My local gaming group is going to play some d20 Modern tonight; I’ll post any notable impressions.
Ehh… I was going to write a huge reply, but it’s turning into a bit much of a hijack.
Anyway, it’s good to find out a few more things about D20, though I didn’t see them in my brief flip-through of the D&D rules (And I’m somewhat annoyed by that “ignored” comment, Ribo. I didn’t ignore it, the particular rule was mentioned as a part of CoC, not D20 as a whole…). In any case, I’ve never been much of one for classed systems, and even less so for the hitpoint-tank systems (For which the “explanations” usually are even worse than ignoring it in the first place).
But I do have to comment on one thing. For complaining about other systems requiring a lot of rule changes to switch campaigns (Which were really only a list of changes that any system would need to change campaigns… Unless you make a habit of having starship piloting skill availible in a fantasy campaign, etc), you’ve sure been throwing around a whole lot of optional rules that some campaigns do or do not use (Heck, the .45 doesn’t even do the same damage across campaigns…).
I’ve been flipping through the book for the past few days. I gotta say, it looks good.
For the record, D20 Modern has its own massive damage rule. Each character has a damage threshold, usually equal to his Constitution score (there is a feat that increases a character’s damage threshold by 3 for each time it is taken). If the character takes more damage from a single attack than his damage threshold, he must make a fort save DC 15 or be reduced to -1 hitpoint.
It’s a good rule. It means that virtually every character can be mortally wounded by a single gunshot, even he’s at full HP to begin with. Exception: A Tough Hero with a high Con and a feat-elevated damage threshold.
The talent system is a really good idea; generally better than pre-arranged class features. I also like how you can qualify for an advanced class after only about 3 character levels, if you really go for it. In general, multiclassing looks really easy.
I’m a little concerned about how guns are handled, though. The selection of pistols, for example, doesn’t look as balanced as the various weapons in D&D are. For example, if one wants to make a Fast Hero/Gunslinger who uses paired pistols (as I want to when I get a chance to play), there’s little reason to use any gun other than the Glock 20 (provided that Glock 20s are available). I blame the softer criticals; if there were some guns with a 19-20 threat range and some with a x3 multiplier, the selection wouldn’t seem so redundant.
I flipped through it, talked to someone who had it and then cashed in a late birthday gift coupon with a friend to have them get to it for me.
The parts I’ve read are clear and well written, it models the upper end fairly well and despite low resolution of skills it doesn’t bother me all that much (it wouldn’t be that hard to graft specialities onto skills if you were so inclined).
My biggest gripe is with the magic system. The d20 Spell system descends from the D&D instant amnesia system which has always bugged me. However it is easily slotted out and can be replaced with another magic system.
All in all I like it if only for the fact it looks like a solid one-shot and intro system, which I haven’t seen in a modern game before.
After the session I played this week, a lot of my skepticism of d20’s ability to be functionally generic has been eased. Pretty good distillation of it.
