Archiving a thread started by Pedro...
If there’s one thing that pisses me off, it’s people saying that d20 is as good a set of rules for Call of Cthulhu as Chaosium’s BRP system is. Still, rpg.net is littered with morons repeating this rubbish again and again. The very fact that the characters’ hit points raise as they advance in levels makes the system complete inadequate for a lovecraftian setting. Some people seem to believe that a character with high Dodge skill under the BRP rules is as unrealistically tough to kill as a high-level d20 character. Again, that’s complete non-sense, and here is why...
Let’s say a character with very high Dodge skill (90%) is trying to escape from a warehouse while fired upon with a .9mm gun. Let’s assume point-blank fire rules don’t apply here as the victim is further away from the attacker than the attacker’s DEX in feet. The victim will probably be able to dodge the first bullet due to his high skill level in dodging. However, as rules are very clear that characters may only dodge one attack per round. Now what happens? The bad guy smiles, as has still has one (or two – depending on his skill with the gun) attack left this round and the victim is too of balance to dodge his bullet again. The damage of a .9mm gun is 1d10. Let’s remember that BRP characters usually have 9-13 hit-points and that a loss of half a character’s hit-points is very likely to rend that character unconscious, which in this case would be a good as dead. The fleeing character is in real danger here, and if the attacker has a high skill with the gun, chances are he won’t be getting out alive.
Now let’s look at the same situation under the d20 rules. The damage for a .9mm gun under d20 is still 1d10. Our high-level character trying to escape from the warehouse doesn’t have much to fear when you bear in mind that he probably has over 100 hit-points, meaning he could take an average 20 shots from a .9mm before going down. Oh, what do you say? No, I haven’t forgotten about the much talked about Massive Damage Rule that states that a character taking 10 hit-points of damage should save against fortitude or die. The thing is, you see, that the save improves with levels, so our high level character would probably only die on a roll of 1 on a d20. That is a 5% chance of dying out of the shots that make 10 points of damage, what is a 10% chance to begin with. That makes out a pretty slim chance of a high-level character ever dying of massive damage, I’d say. I don’t think that character needs to run out of the warehouse, he can simply walk out in no hurry. Hell, the attacker will most likely even run out of bullets before he can kill him. This is as realistic as your typical D&D game, where characters can walk around with so many arrows sticking out of their backs that they look more like a hedgehog than anything else. While that is fine for a high-fantasy epic game, it’s not ok for CoC. Is that the sort of atmosphere for a lovecraftian game? Certainly not.
So, there you have it. A character with high Dodge skill under the BRP rules would most likely die during the first two rounds of a fight against a highly-skilled enemy armed with a gun. That sounds pretty realistic to me.
Taking twenty gun shots before you die in a CoC game? That can only be a joke.
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteWhile I can't fault your example, there are easy fixes to deal with the problem you describe:
1) Reduce the maximum damage threshold, or increase the damage caused by firearms. The values used in d20 Modern seem better - 2d6 for a 9mm pistol. In fact, the firearms rules from d20 Modern are generally better. Better still, do both - if you want the average hit from a 9mm to have a chance of killing any character outright, the massive damage threshold should be lower than or equal to the average damage of the weapon. (That said, I'm not convinced that the average hit from a firearm should be potentially fatal to any character, but that's another rant.)
2) Increase the DC of the Fortitude save required to survive massive damage. I agree that it's far too low, and recommend that it be changed to DC 10 + damage caused. That way, the more devastating the shot, the harder it is to survive.
3) Introduce shock effects to the game. Perhaps declare that massive damage occurs in two stages. If a character suffers 10 or more points of damage in a single hit, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage caused) or immediately die. However, once combat is ended, and the effects of adrenaline subside, such a character must make a second Fortitude save (DC 25), or suffer 2d6 points of Constitution damage. This damage is healed normally, at a rate of 1 point per day (assuming it doesn't kill the character outright.).
That way, a character can survive being hit a dozen times with a 9mm pistol (although it's not tremendously likely), and walk away. At the end of the combat, though, it is entirely likely that the character will suffer from shock (the best Fort save a 20th level character can possibly have is +18 - +12 for 20th level "good" save, +6 for Con 23). Such a character fails the shock save 35% of the time, and a failed save is going to cost the character an average of 60 additional hit points of damage. That hardly seems unreasonable.
Note also that the situation I've just described is apparently not as unrealistic as it sounds - there are many many tales of soldiers who have suffered horrific wounds and fought on almost unhindered, only to collapse dead at the end of combat.
Two other things:
a) The first thing I think of when considering Lovecraftian horror is not "Ooh, I might get shot and killed." That strikes me as being awfully mundane.
b) There's no fun whatsoever in losing a cherished character to a random goon armed with a gun and a freak set of dice rolls. None whatsoever. And high-level characters, almost by definition, are cherished, since you have necessarily been using them for months to reach that level. (If you haven't, if you're running a one-off, simply play at lower levels where the issues you've described simply don't apply.)
All of the above said, I must agree that d20 is not the first system I would choose for any non-heroic setting. It does D&D very well, it does Star Wars very well, and it can do Die Hard very well. It doesn't do horror, gritty survival, or realism well.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteOn the CoC d20 issue, you know where I stand, ninja grannies forever!