How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points?

[AmericanBadass]

How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points?

I have been running a Delta Green D20 game and have been having a lot of problems with players not being afraid of gunplay.

Here is the situation that happened saturday:

Agent Yuri comes out of his house and has a bad guy waiting for him at the bottom of the walkway. "Hands up Jerky" says the bad guy. Yuri goes for his Berretta 98 without the fear of dying. The bad guy fires 3 times with buckshot damaging Yuri for 27 points of damage. The bad guy being 7th level is no match for Yuri who his 10th. Gunfighting with D20 Call of Cthulhu is very different for the old system....essentially the 2 guys just stood there and unloaded on each other until one was dead. The bad guy only had 38 hit points so he died first.

i am having a lot of stuff like this happen with the 3 guys I have been playing with. they have never played regular Call of Cthulhu and because of the way they are unstoppable it is hard to make them afraid of anything.

what would a 27 points of buckshot damage look like when the paramedics come? i had to say it was lots of superficial wounds.

even with the 10 point massive damage rule the players charge in with no fear at all. i guess i can make the game lower level, but this particular game started at 4th.

i had another incident where the "librarian" Lynda Chambers was supposed to be picked up by english police for questioning. she resisted and the bobbies had to club her. well she had 43 hit points and like 5 bobbies had to beat on her for like 10 rounds before she went down. i actually had to have more of them come to stop her because she put 3 of the first 5 out of action with various objects she picked up in the hallway. i mean it was getting kind of silly. there were people standing by cheering her on as she tussled with 2 carloads cops. this is where i learned never send 1st level police to pick up 7th level characters- even if they are mild mannered english librarians.


i am considering tripling firearm damage or just automatically giving the weapons their crit bonus without having to roll 20's.

i think the problem might be the players. they are die hard d20 D&D players and do not get the concept of call of cthulhu. i have not been able to scare them at all. they just charge right in.

what should i do?
any help?

[Jonny Nexus]

Well I haven't really got any advice, other than:

a) Use the original BRP Call or Cthulhu rules, or

b) Don't start the characters at 4th level.

...but I mainly just wanted to say that I loved the description of the mild-mannered librarian who needed a whole Ford Transit vanful of riot police to be subdued (I guess that the massive damage threshold of 10 points doesn't have much of an effect in brawls where the damage is something like D6+str bonus).

[Darren MacLennan]

(1) For everybody:

If you ever find that one of your posts has been deleted and replaced with one of my posts, that's because sometimes I click "edit" when I mean to click "respond". I just did that to American Badass's post, causing me to utter a panicked shriek of terror as soon as I realized what had happened. Fortunately, I was able to put it back.

(2) I think that this is a troll. I mean, this could easily become the mother of all d20 realism battles.

But anyways. In the next post, I'll point out how I like to run horror.

-Darren MacLennan

[Bradford C. Walker]

It's good to see you, Badass.

As for your problem, I suggest a couple of things:

Force more Massive Damage checks. These are saving throws, and saving throws (like attack rolls) automatically fail on a natural 1 (and succeed on a natural 20). Their luck runs out eventually.
They're D&D players? One of them has a DMG, right? If so, I recommend using two rules out of that book: Clobbered and Instant Kill. The former automatically stuns a character when they take half or more of their current HP in one blow, and the latter threatens instant death whenever an attacker rolls two natural 20s in a row--one to hit, one to confirm the crit--and then hits the target (as if to confirm a crit) on a third attack roll. If that last roll fails, then the target take a critical hit and may die anyway.
Set up Coup De Grace situations. You've seen your share of gunplay films, so you know how this goes: get one character to put his gun to the head of another; this is a CDG situation.
They're not using cover? Nail them with area attacks, like grenades, early and often. Make certain that the NPCs do use cover whenever they can.
NPCs with Damage Reduction are a good thing. Zombies are a good start, and you can do more from there. Most PCs won't be able to enchant their guns, and thus can't get around it.
Sanity Checks: Use them for anything that would rattle a man in the real world. This includes firefights. I point you to Heat and Enemy at the Gates, amongst others, as examples of this in action.
An overall increase in randomness will favor the NPCs over the PCs because the latter make far more die rolls than the former, so they're more vulnerable to the Law of Averages than NPCs are.

[AmericanBadass]

i also should have brought up an icident that happend with a d20 ctulhu viet nam game where a delta green squad was going to stop some Migo who were going to blow up a huge area for the enemy by using some sort of temporal bomb.

they were all experts special forces so we couldnt be 1st or second level, so the dm a guy named roman made it a 4th level game with the unit commander being 6th.

i was to play a heavy gunner with a m60 named Don McKlusky.

as we trecked throught underbrush we came under a VC attack. my character got hit 5 times with AK bullets for 15 points and survived. then to top it off i also survived a RPG rocket hit which the dm said did 4d6 points of damage. man, if our troops would have been this tough we could have won the war with just one division.

anyway the topper was when later on to save some captured villagers on of the other players dove on a grenade and lived. not only did he live he wasnt even that hurt. the dm rolled low and the grenade only did 6 points of damage. the character actually had over 20.
i argued that he would no way have survived that and the guy got really pissed at me saying i was trying to kill off his player.

the dm let it go and we eventually killed half of viet nam-the vc were all first level.

the game was not fun at all so i never went back.

[Cthulhu-chan]

Badass is a troll? Naw.

Anyway, I think my fix for this sort of situation would be to use levels as a measuring stick for what sort of game I wanted to play, but not allow advancement in the usual sense. I'd probably just reward players with skill points every now and then instead of XP, meaning HP and BAB will stay right where they began. I don't really think CoC is the sort of game that needs the advancement carrot on a stick, anyway.

All IMHO, of course.

[MggM]

I had something sort of similer.

D&D players for years meet GURPS.

"I shoot him in the face!"
"He dies."
"Oh...............Shit.......Really?"
"Sure. His nose comes flying out of the back of his head. Congrats."

"....I feel sick."

"Roll initiative with his friends...."

[Darren MacLennan]

The first problem is that d20's got a little bit of a problem when running gun battles. Tripling gun damage and making crits even worse is a good idea.

But you have to ask yourself if you're out to scare the players, or just run them through a Feng Shui game with the trappings of a Call of Cthulhu adventure. For example, anything by Lumley is basically a bad Hollywood flick with some Lovecraftian trappings; this is why he sucks.

If you want to scare them, if you want to unsettle them, there's one piece of advice that I have:

Violate them.

I don't mean the rules, I don't mean the characters; violate the players. Start playing on the stuff that they don't like. Don't push too hard, but make them uncomfortable. Make them aware that they are playing a game whose central purpose is to scare them. They are here to have a fun time, but that fun time will come at the expense of their characters.

Make them realize that their characters, for as many hitpoints as they have, are still composed of water and meat, and that when bullets go through them, stuff comes out. Bile is yellow, brain matter is gray, shit is black. When they mix together, it's the color of the extinction of the human race.

Blood smells like copper. So do pennies.

Have one of them scrabbling around to find one of their fingertips after somebody takes it off with a .22. There's lots of places where it can hide. Fingers are easy to misplace. So are tips of ears, eyes, chunks of body fat and muscle.

Go to rotten.com. Get any pictures you can of gunshot wounds. Leave them lying around the table when you play. Don't draw attention to them; just write the caliber of the weapon that was used to do the damge underneath the picture. Casually finger the pages when you think that they're not looking.

Rats are everywhere in New York. They don't mind cordite-flavored meat.

Start making them realize that it's a horror game. Take control of their characters at odd intervals, or casually mention that they've been all chanting the same ancient language at the same time while on a stakeout - they stop as soon as they realize they're doing it, but their low Sanities mean that they're losing control of their _own minds._

Hallucinations are fun, especially as Sanity decreases.

Somebody just threw blood on you. Why isn't anybody seeing it? Are they in on it? Did they throw it? Bastards! Fuckers! How dare they not see - where'd it go?

She just put something into your food. Quick - hop across the dessert counter, scream at her, throw the food on the floor. Why is everybody staring at you? Don't they know?

Sure. That cultist is dead. He's not over you, he's not drooling out the stale, slimy water of the lake that he fell into after you shot him, it's not hitting your face, there's not things living in it. He's not gently pawing your face with gelid flesh, and you can't feel the bones through the rotting meat. As a matter of fact, this whole thing will go away if you can just get back to sleep, but the knife that isn't in your belly hurts anyways.

It isn't about gaining power. Seventy-seven hit points just means that you can spend more time in pain before you die.

More later. I need my medication now.

-Darren MacLennan

[AmericanBadass]

bradford i used the massive damage rule on them, but they keep on saving all the time.

Do i do the massive damage everytime they take 10 or more or should i make them roll for every point over 10 points of damage?
that might work.

i was running delta green for a while using the chaosium system but nobody wanted to play. i can get players for d20 cthulhu.

a lot of gamers dont want the level of realism that the old system offers they much prefer the rambo style game.

i was trying to run an x files game, but found i cannot.

i have found at low levels (1 or 2) the characters have so little ability that they are mostly inefective. i usually start games out at 3rd or 4th.
i mean a doddering old professor by no means would be 1st level because he would know hardly anything being limited to 3 points of skill over his level.


and in one case i was running a child with psychic powers like the kid from 6th sense, but i had to be at least 3rd level to have the psychic feats i required. there were players in the game that were mad that i being a 11 year old kid was the same level as them and i made a joke sheet version where he had 17 str.

anyway the kid (Eamon Whately) is a very cool character and has been touched by the psychic emenations of some strange mythos force. he is the parties spirit guide. to be fair i am rolling only 1d3 for hit points and i am putting his stat increases into wisdom only.

he knows spells so he doesnt carry a gun.

i like the system i just have to be more creative in ways to scare the players. i may just increase weapon damage that would make things more realistic.

so a 9mm will do 30 points of damage instead of a measley 10 I will just have the crit bonus active all the time....easy fix.

[Gurgeh]

Originally posted by MggM
I had something sort of similer.

D&D players for years meet GURPS.

"I shoot him in the face!"
"He dies."
"Oh...............Shit.......Really?"
"Sure. His nose comes flying out of the back of his head. Congrats."

"....I feel sick."

"Roll initiative with his friends...."


Congrats on having posted the one thing, so far, that has made me literally laugh outloud while reading RPGnet.

In my youth, back in my college days, when I was just a rude, cruel spirited guy instead of the bitter, cynical bastard that I've become now, I found myself GMing a D&D game where the players were basically beating a pair of kobolds to death, without blinking an eye.

So, I sat there, and got to thinking of the scene in Casino where certain characters are taken out to the corn field to be whacked, and I start using that as the model for how the situation plays out.

Within two minutes, I have the entire group looking rather pale and disgusted where, moments before, they were gleefully beating two helpless dog-lizardboys to death.

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with the problems that AmericanBadass is having with d20 CoC, but your story reminded me of it.


__________________


As for the actual topic of conversation, my first thought is that d20, with its use of passive combat and the Bounty quality of soaking involved in hit points just isn't the system to be using to emulate the game that you're obviously wanting to run.

Perhaps, instead of having hit points build up level upon level, you could house-rule that CoC characters only have hit points equal to their Con score, no more. Granted, I guess that doesn't help if you've already have the game underway, but it's a solution in the future that makes combat much more deadly.

But, ultimately, if you want to scare them, it's going to be more of a matter of narration and finding out what just plain creeps them out, rather than any tinkering with the rules.

Fiddling with the rules until combat runs like a pinkie mouse being dropped into a tank filled with tokay geckoes is only going to increase the ick factor in the long run. While the ick factor is part of creeping the characters out, it's not the entirety.

In other words, while I'd agree that a combat system with a higher degree of attrition would help your situation, I think it's more to do with what you tell the characters.

In fact, look back up at my Casino example, which isn't so pointless now that I think of it. Nowhere did I have to make combat more dangerous for the players, and they could have continued on in their casual slaughter of the kobolds quite easily. However, having one of the creatures beg the rest of the party to just put his dying companion out of his misery instead of continuing to beat him is rather unsettling, isn't it?


(Obviously all the usage of "you" in this section is general and/or directed towards AmericanBadass, and not to MggM, as was the first section.)

[Bradford C. Walker]

Originally posted by American Badass:
Do i do the massive damage everytime they take 10 or more or should i make them roll for every point over 10 points of damage? that might work.

I recommend raising the DC for the saving throw. The floor is still 15, and you raise the DC by one for each point of damage past the 10 point threshold. (27 points = DC 32) This will raise the lethality of the game a great deal, so be certain to experiment before making a full adoption. To compensate don't kill a PC that fails the throw, but make them Disabled (as defined by the rules) instead. (i.e. drop them to 0 HP immediately and all that jazz)

I think that D20 Modern has options to deal with the former (the Massive Damage threshold, DCs, etc.) while the latter is how the rules actually work in the aforementioned rulebook. (Which is due on the stands by Thanksgiving in the U.S.)

[AmericanBadass]

Darren you have the right idea.

I have been trying to add atmos-'fear' to the game...they just aint biting.

i play scary soundtracks-have the lights down low and all that.
the sick pix might work.

i havent violated them- i will give that a spin :eek:

i am actually (egads!!) missing the chaosium system.

when i first started up this delta green game it actually was chaosium system-but i kept losing players to easy distractions like mage knight and high octane D&D.

i had to go to d20 to keep the game alive (on life support actually).
I actually had complaints that i was starting the game at 4th level.

One guy is a FBI Cult Crimes expert the best in his field. He had a very good arguement saying "How can I be the top of my field when I am only 4th level?"

Especially when the game goes up to 20th.
there is no way i can run a game over 10th level. i am not as good as my old gm "Mitch" who has really hit the skids and moved away to Pittsburgh with his family.
Mitch could run at really high levels and keep it challenging.
he would make the enemies go up in levels right along with you.

it is a real drag to roll up high level nps- all the feats and skills are hard to come up with on the fly.

I wish i could find some true lovecraftian gamers out there.
it would be impossible to have characters like in the stories with the D20 system.
Escape from Innsmouth with a 15th level character would be like a Rambo movie with Deep Ones dying as the town burned.

Having the enemies go up in level with the characters could work...but what would keep an 8th level Deep One from attacking the 1st level characters...it is the same world.

Any way thanks for the suggestions.

[MggM]

Congrats on having posted the one thing, so far, that has made me literally laugh outloud while reading RPGnet.

You're quite welcome...
:D

Wait...you mean there are levels above one in CoC now?

...I can't say I've ever heard of that.

[Bradford C. Walker]

BTW, "best in the field" is determined by your skill bonus and not your level. If you can consistently Take 10 and hit a DC of 25+, then you're one of the best in that field. Between high stats, the "+2 to two skills" feats, bonuses for equipment and other advantageous circumstances as well as the Skill Emphasis feat it's possible to do this and not be a high-level character.

Sample, from an old D&D game: 5th level character with 8 ranks in Craft: Weaponsmith (+8), a +4 stat bonus, masterwork tools (+2), Skill Focus (+2 in D&D) and a homebrewed "Master Guildsman" feat (+2 to one Craft and its associated Profession) resulted in a +18 bonus to all Craft skill checks. Making masterwork weapons was nothing but a matter of time and resource expenditure. That the PC was a cleric of a Moradin meant that he could also make his own magic weapons given enough time and resources.

[ced1106]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points? I have been running a Delta Green D20 game and have been having a lot of problems with players not being afraid of gunplay.

Maybe this is just 2e talking, but IIRC, hit points are an abstraction of a character's ability to avoid damage. Ye olde "10 hit points of damage to a 1st level character is death, while 10 hit points of damage to a 10th level character are scratches." So when a 10th level d20 character is taking damage, he's really dodging behind crates, running just before where the bullets hit the ground, etc.

i think the problem might be the players. they are die hard d20 D&D players and do not get the concept of call of cthulhu. i have not been able to scare them at all. they just charge right in.

Even in BRP CoC, I had two types of monsters: Cultists who were killed easily, and sanity-sucking monsters who'd take most of the party with them. Most of CoC was building up the suspense. Clues, visits to the library, investigating scenes of the crime, and interviews should take up most of the adventure. Information initially gained should tell the players that they are in Big Trouble. Information later gained should tell the players How To Stop This Thing.

Most everyday firearms have minimal effect on CoC monsters -- especially when you tweak the stats and withhold information from the players: "You hit it. There's a hole in it. It keeps coming." Steal ideas from Modern Day Cthulhu and the X-Files: How do you gun down an oilen or an alien manefestation created by magnetic fields?

You characters should not be afraid of gunplay. Most CoC creatures do not need guns.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

[Bodde]

The HP system is the mayor flaw with COC d20 IMO (I still like the game though) The HP system makes it easier for players to play D&D style. The HP system could work in a more Pulpier setting though..

In the CoC d20 game that Im currently running I use the following modifications on the HP rules.

-----------------------------------
* Constitution equals HP (Con 17 = HP 17) at 1st level
* Every 5 levels HP gain equal to con modifier
(with a minimum of 1) for example: a PC at lvl 5 with 17 con gains 4 HP)
* Only further HP gain when consitution increases
-----------------------------------

This works well in my group (most of them are D&D players) They do advance in level (Skills, saves, feats etc) but it keeps combat very deadly


Hope this helps.. :rolleyes:

greetzz
Bodde

[AmericanBadass]

Ok

How would you do a 1st level character who was the worlds top chess player like that crazy nazi Bobby Fischer when he was a kid?

can you take 10 if the other guy is taking 10 and he is a 17th level chessmaster. I don't see how the kid could ever have a chance unless he rolls a lot of 20's.

Ced...How would the police ever be able to arrest one of the agents if they are not afraid of guns?

they would have to have rotary cannons or .50 cals to stop them.
I mean if you cant scare a guy looking down the business end of a 12Ga. then a slimey monster aint going to scare them either.

I had the characters actually go to the resort town of Innsmouth to investigate a strange rash of underwater rapes.

they ran into some deep ones and just splattered the crap out of them. THe scenario was supposed to have one of them taken captive (and insemenated if a female) but it was impossible to do with regualar unarmed deep ones. The characters were armed with MP5's and a shotgun I had to increase the HD of the Deep Ones (Size Large as per rules-cool) to stop them.
Eventually they were all overwhelmed and taken to a ceremony where the 2 female characters were romanced by the Big Chief Deep One (not Dagon-but it turned out a lot like the movie of the same name).

I am having a lot of problems trying to do an x files type scenario with D20. The system seems to always steer the action towards blazing away....it could be the players and the GM....maybe I just suck as a GM??

[Godfather Punk]

My idea would be to avoid gun battles and concentrate on other ways to do damage. Concrete boots and a swimming pool? Fire damage with lasting effects on CON and CHA? Total Anihilation Situations like hydrolic press, propellor, shredder devices etc. that do instant kills.

In the example of your gunfight I would use a rule that enforces a CON-check with DC= damage sustained to avoid passing out. For 10th level characters I suppose this wouldn't be much of a problem either, but if the opponents fail a check the gunfight would be over faster.
Also check out the rules for gangrene in Avalanche's 'Black Flags'; even if the players survive the gunfight the subsequent slow recover and risk of losing a limb will make them think twice before entering a battle.

Just my 0.02€
GP

[AmericanBadass]

Good idea- but how would the English Bobbies get a shredder or hydraulic press up the stairs??:D

And I think the press would have a field day if the police started using rotating death propellers to apprehend crimminals....in a perfect world maybe.

"Alright Harry, start up the wood chipper we got us a speeder who may be trouble..."

How much damage would getting your legs mulched do?

Just having a bit of fun with you.


I am actually starting to think about ditching this D20 game I am running and going back to Chaosium based Call of Cthulhu just for the sake of game play. I have to admit that the Chaosium system is way less intrusive than D20.

Maybe Darren is right I am a troller...Maybe i really am Chaosiums tool???

Naw-I am just going through some sort of catharsis.
I have been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately and I find myself thinking how all this never could have happened with D20 characters and so on.

[ced1106]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Ced...How would the police ever be able to arrest one of the agents if they are not afraid of guns?

It depends on who controls the agents. The agents must follow policies and guidelines of those they work for. I mean, real-life police officers are armed with guns and pistols. They don't exactly have carte blanche in using them.

I mean if you cant scare a guy looking down the business end of a 12Ga. then a slimey monster aint going to scare them either.

Try the slimy monsters who take "minimal damage from firearms". (;

I had the characters actually go to the resort town of Innsmouth to investigate a strange rash of underwater rapes.

they ran into some deep ones and just splattered the crap out of them. The scenario was supposed to have one of them taken captive (and insemenated if a female) but it was impossible to do with regualar unarmed deep ones.

Won't work. Deep Ones fall into the category of "killable cultists". You have to make them unkillable. Instead of Innsmouth, use **your** town. Instead of Deep Ones, use **your** city government members. Before players start mowing down City Hall, they need proof. The Deep Ones only appear after the point where the players can come in and arrest the city government, or at times where proving the occurance is impossible.

I am having a lot of problems trying to do an x files type scenario with D20. The system seems to always steer the action towards blazing away....it could be the players and the GM....maybe I just suck as a GM??

Delta Green is CoC with high levels. And you know how difficult it is to create a challenge for high-level D&D games. If you can get your hands on Modern Ctuhlhu, it has a few adventures that can't be solved with guns. I've run the "Mystery of Loch Feinn", which revolves around an unkillable loch ness-like monster. Here's the plot breakdown which you can steal for a DG scenario:

* Unkillable alien monster with scary but weirdly limited power.
* Killable cultists, which alien monster uses to do its dirty work.
* Obscure thingie that monster or cultists use to do a dirty deed.
* Clues for the PCs to find so they know where to wipe out the cultists and wreck the obscure thingie which unsummons the monster.

So for the Mystery of Loch Feign, the Llogor were setting up menhirs on islands in the loch to form pentagons on lein lines, so they could absorb magical power to corrupt the countryside's inhabitants. But since the Llogor were loch nessies with big flippers, they couldn't move the menhirs themselves. So, starting a century ago, they started corrupting locals into cultists , who set up said menhirs. The limitation of the Llogor is that the only immediate direct attack they can do is a magical one if their victim is within a field near a lein line; otherwise, their effects are gradual. The PC research includes sightings of nessie, info about Llogor, family trees of the cultists, bizarre incidents (resulting from weird Llogor magic), and stuff.

And remember. While you're about to cook a PC from the inside out, give him enough time to run out of the lein lines.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

[Rivfader]

It doesn't sound like you suck AB. :) Imho the d20 system is pretty much unsuitable for Cthulhu unless you modify it extensively. Why bother? The "original" set of rules weren't terribly good but they are far better than d20 in a game like Call.

Cheers,

Rivfader

[Godfather Punk]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Good idea- but how would the English Bobbies get a shredder or hydraulic press up the stairs??:D

Easy: stick a few points in <i>Hobby : woodwork</i> and the player has a small workshop in his appt.
Moderate : adapt the situation like in Lethal Weapon, where there are maintenance works going on; any reason to have deadly appliances around.
Difficult : instead of planning the encounter close to the PCs home (but that may have been on purpose to endanger the PCs loved ones) lure them to a construction site/factory/wharf/whatever with lots of cool Tool of Death -> think Feng Shui Cool Sites but with a deadlier finish.

But maybe the gunfight should be about more than just firing shots. Describe the loss of hit points not as being hit a little bit but as situation modifiers. Whitch brings us back to the theory of HPs being abstractions of scratches and using up ones luck.

Cheers,
GP - back to work...

[Erik Sieurin]

American Badass questioning Cthulhu d20?

Soon Gleichman will become a GSN fanatic, Steve D will sneer at TMNT, and Magic Pink will becoms straight! When you can't trust forum clichés, what can you trust!;)

On topic: You're working against the system and the players. When the system is rather gung-ho, and the players don't want to play X-files, you're in deep trouble.

If you up the lethality of the system so that it equals BRP - well, your players DIDN'T WANT to play BRP, right?

Or can they be suckered up to by the system's other premises - they won't mind as long as it is D3D-ish?

(On lethal d20: In some homebrew that never came off the ground, I equaled HP= 8+Fortitude save bonus. People got a bonus to AC equal their Reflex save, tho'. This was in a swashbuckler game with little armor and magic. People were supposed to be hit less often but get smacked harder when theyr were hit.)

Nightowl

[Bodde]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

I am actually starting to think about ditching this D20 game I am running and going back to Chaosium based Call of Cthulhu just for the sake of game play. I have to admit that the Chaosium system is way less intrusive than D20.

Maybe Darren is right I am a troller...Maybe i really am Chaosiums tool???

Naw-I am just going through some sort of catharsis.
I have been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately and I find myself thinking how all this never could have happened with D20 characters and so on.

:eek: Could it be that RPG.net greatest promotor of CoC d20 is turning his back on the game? ;) :cool:

greetzz
Bodde

ps
Me thinks Chaosium's BRP is better suited for CoC too :D

[StormBringer]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
I had the characters actually go to the resort town of Innsmouth to investigate a strange rash of underwater rapes.

they ran into some deep ones and just splattered the crap out of them. THe scenario was supposed to have one of them taken captive (and insemenated if a female) but it was impossible to do with regualar unarmed deep ones. The characters were armed with MP5's and a shotgun I had to increase the HD of the Deep Ones (Size Large as per rules-cool) to stop them.
Eventually they were all overwhelmed and taken to a ceremony where the 2 female characters were romanced by the Big Chief Deep One (not Dagon-but it turned out a lot like the movie of the same name).

a) That is very inappropriate.

b) Use their full hit points for bludgeoning or melee damage, use their CON for firearms or weapons damage. Now, your high level characters can take on a squad of bobbies, until they pull out the riot guns.

[AmericanBadass]

Originally posted by Nightowl AAA
American Badass questioning Cthulhu d20?

Soon Gleichman will become a GSN fanatic, Steve D will sneer at TMNT, and Magic Pink will becoms straight! When you can't trust forum clichés, what can you trust!;)


Nightowl


Maybe I am just getting older and more fuddy duddy-ish??

I have started telling stories of the good old days to some of the younger gamers about the salad days, when there was a system for every game and a million little small print run games out there.

"Really" they say as I regail them from my rocking chair.

"Yes kids....there once was a time when Dungeons and Dragons used male pronouns and didn't have one bit of color interior art at all. And let me tell you about some other great old games like Morrow Project, Bureau 13, Top Secret, Gamma World and a thousand others..."

"Wow Grampa Badass...tell us more about the olden days...did they have 20 sided dice back then?"

"Yes kids they did....but we had to color in the numbers with a crayon because you couldn't see the numbers otherwise."


Yeah the badass is getting old.

Maybe I will just have to slow down.
Maybe I can find some old school gamers at the Old Folks Home?

[GB Steve]

How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points? I have been running a Delta Green D20 game and have been having a lot of problems with players not being afraid of gunplay.

The problem is that this kind of game is inevitable with d20 CoC and that you seem to be looking for a different kind of experience.

You can possibly do it with the same players, as long as they understand what they are getting into. They do seem to expect a Dungeon Bash game regardless of the setting and system.

Of course you could always introduce creatures that are immune to guns, now that would freak them out.

[Whollyrandom]

Good idea- but how would the English Bobbies get a shredder or hydraulic press up the stairs??

Clearly you have never lived in England ...

[AmericanBadass]

As far as fighting unkillable monsters I already have done that....it really didn't work.

In the Innsmouth scenario i described earlier they actually came across a Shoggoth but they killed it....cleverly I might add. They had to go to the docks area to investigate some rumors and some Deep one hybrids tipped a 55 gallon drum with a shoggoth inside. The Shoggoth absorbed and burst a NPC FBI junior agent and chased the characters around the dock. One of the characters Agent Rupert Holmgrum took a high low and pushed it into an industrial fish mulcher and made the Shoggoth into fish sticks....god bless the Gortons Fisherman I guess.

If anything my players are more resoursefull than the A-team.

Maybe I should try to run an A-team based game rather than trying for the Xfiles.

Even better Knightrider with a Mythos hating supercar.

Yeah nostalgia!

or an anit-mythos chick team ala Charlies Angels.

Or

The Dukes of Dunwich:D

I wish I could remember the themesong....the lyrics to the Dukes of Dunwich would be great...

[GB Steve]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
The Dukes of Dunwich:D

I wish I could remember the themesong....the lyrics to the Dukes of Dunwich would be great...

I'm no SteveD but what about this:

Just two good old cultists, they mean you harm
Summoning squamous creatures with a Southern charm
Since the day they was born
Calling up Cthulhu, it gives you the chills
Someday Yog-sothoth might get them but death never will
Makin' their way, the only way they know how...
That's just a little bit more than the law will allow.
Just two good ol cultists, could change if they like
Into a couple of night gaunts and give you a fright

[AmericanBadass]

Great tune, but I am making the Duke Boys good guys.

I actually started up its own post.

Nice Work though--thumbs up.

[Levekius]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
what should i do?
any help?



No need for help. CoC is about blowing shit up, remember? Just make them face bigger and bigger baddies, balls-out-style.

If that doesn't work, use Elminster, the Tarrasque, pumped up Mind Flayers with grenade launchers and shit. Just think big and you'll manage.

[AmericanBadass]

Oh Yeah...I forgot...

Mulder and Skully move over here comes Killsquad X!!!

Maybe they could go against some of the Men in Black like the movie....those guns gotta do a lot more damage.

D20 and reality don't mix...

since Mitch is in Pennsylvania no one is going to say I am stealing his idea to mix D&D and COC.

I just wanted to run a more X files based game....i guess its already too late to go back to basics.

Levi---your last post was the devils post!!! 666 the number of the beast and the amount of grams of sodium in a small order of McDonalds fries....is it coincidence or something else??? Grams not mg's.

[pawsplay]

[ even with the 10 point massive damage rule the players charge in with no fear at all. i guess i can make the game lower level, but this particular game started at 4th. ]

Eventually, their luck will run out. Massive damage can cause death in a hurry.

[AmericanBadass]

A lot of the time the weapons only do 8 or 9 points of damage a shot....so I don't get to call for massive damage.

The times I do call for them to roll with for it they have a +6 or 7 save so they only need to roll a 9 or better...thus far they have been very lucky...curses.

The billyclubbing was a prime example...a billyclub does 1D6 (if I recall right) so the Bobbies were swinging like mad with a +1 to hit on a AC14 character while she was pounding the snot out of them with a +3 to attack. There should be a way to avoid this with this system....I hate to make up house rules and change what the book says is law. but I may have to.

I mean if 10 cops can't take down a librarian then something has to be done.

just checked a billyclub does 1d4....no wonder it took 10 minutes of game time to subdue the 7th level librarian.

[James Hargrove]

With incorporeal horrors. Just a thought.

[Will]

First of all, if the players don't want to play the game, there's not much you can do.

Second, billyclubs don't work in D20, yep. They also don't work in BRP.
Billyclubs make you go 'ow ow, fu*, ow! Stop! Ow!'

In BRP, they kill you in a few blows. Yay! Er.
In D20, they might kill you at low levels, and do little at higher levels.

Either way, that's not the _point_. They are tools of subduing. Instead, you should have a successful blow require a Fortitude or Reflex save to avoid things like blind (from blocking the blow, briefly), blind long term (from being smacked all over the face), Stunning, and other similar effects.

Similarly, consider police with mace, grappling and wrist restraints, and so on.


Police (unless you're being snarky) aren't about threat of being killed. It's about subduing crazies.

[AmericanBadass]

Not trying to sound like a Chaosium Fanboy but when we played we used the Hit Location system. With that a billyclub commonly could knock somebody out.

I know I had a 1920's Detroit cop who was the master of knocking people out with Ole' Chauncy his billyclub...he had a nickname "K.O. Kowolsky"

with the hit location rules the average person had like 4 or 5 hit points to the head and a couple of quick submission damage whacks and you are out.

With D20 I would have to run the librarians head over with a truck to submission her in one hit....I see that as a problem.
Wizards needs to make a few rules changes. I know they are planning on making the game more like Pulp fine...but one of the most Pulp-like Noir Cliche's is to knock out the protagonist...to pistolwhip the Gumshoe with 50+ hit points you would have to club him for like 10 minutes. The mobsters would have to work in shifts because their arms would get tired.

[Judas]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

i had another incident where the "librarian" Lynda Chambers was supposed to be picked up by english police for questioning. she resisted and the bobbies had to club her. well she had 43 hit points and like 5 bobbies had to beat on her for like 10 rounds before she went down. i actually had to have more of them come to stop her because she put 3 of the first 5 out of action with various objects she picked up in the hallway. i mean it was getting kind of silly. there were people standing by cheering her on as she tussled with 2 carloads cops. this is where i learned never send 1st level police to pick up 7th level characters- even if they are mild mannered english librarians.


oh........god.........the tears..........

That is one of the funniest things I have EVER read in my life. Thanks man. :D

[Wolfspider]

If you want to use D20 rules that are more realistic for a modern setting, try the Godlike OGL rules. They're even <a href="http://www.godlikerpg.com/pdf/GodlikeOpenSource.pdf" target="_target">available for free</a> on the Godlike website.

These rules have worked fine with me in my own D20 Delta Green game. With some tinkering you can add D20 CoC spells and feats and other things to the mix rather easily.

[B. Miller]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

Having the enemies go up in level with the characters could work...but what would keep an 8th level Deep One from attacking the 1st level characters...it is the same world.


What, indeed. You just answered your own (topic) question, in my opinion.

[AmericanBadass]

Originally posted by B. Miller


What, indeed. You just answered your own (topic) question, in my opinion.


How so?

What would keep the 8th level cultists from just grinding the 1st level Investigators into mulch? If there are 8th level baddies in the same world as the 1st level guys they would never have a chance. If the guys running things are 8th level the 1st level cultists would be washing the dishes and taking out the trash. So essentially the 1st level characters are going against the wretched refuse of the Cult. In theory they would have to work their way through the layers...like the levels of a Dungeon as in D&D. But if the 1st level guys took out the 'dishwashing' cultists wouldn't the 8th level bosses get mad and just come down the stairs and thump the nuisance characters??

I don't know I am just confusing myself more.

[AmericanBadass]

Originally posted by Judas


oh........god.........the tears..........

That is one of the funniest things I have EVER read in my life. Thanks man. :D


believe me man it was even funnier than i described.
You had to be there.

[Will]

Uh. I think I've figured out the problem.

So AmericanBadass is making sure not to overpower the players by, say, sending 12th level characters against his 7th level characters.

Instead, 1st level policemen are showing up.

Why? Because he doesn't want the PCs to be stomped and overpowered.


...

But then, strangely, the PCs are not being stomped or overpowered. The system is broken!

Dude, just make targets tough enough to be dangerous. If police should beat their asses, make them much higher level. Create the effect you want.


Addendum:
Note that you start people off above 1st level so they are competant. Consider what a competant foe would be, too!

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Perhaps you should do what AD&D did. In 2nd Ed. most classes would stop getting new hit dice and constitution bonusses after level 10 or so and instead got a flat 1-3 hp (depending on class).
Of course you'd have to do this a bit earlier in CoC20. Perhaps allowing the normal 6+con mod hp at level one and after that a single hp per level. Guns can easily take a character out of a fight now, but won't necessarily kill if the medics get there in time (you only die when at -10, right?). You'll probably want to use the defense bonus variant to keep firefights interesting though.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Will
Dude, just make targets tough enough to be dangerous. If police should beat their asses, make them much higher level. Create the effect you want.

As a player this would annoy me because I would never be sure of my characters competency. One day my level 2 investigator can kick the police's ass, but the other day my level 4 investigator gets totally stomped by them.
To me at least this would break the suspension of disbelieve.

[Varkias]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
i had another incident where the "librarian" Lynda Chambers was supposed to be picked up by english police for questioning. she resisted and the bobbies had to club her. well she had 43 hit points and like 5 bobbies had to beat on her for like 10 rounds before she went down. i actually had to have more of them come to stop her because she put 3 of the first 5 out of action with various objects she picked up in the hallway. i mean it was getting kind of silly. there were people standing by cheering her on as she tussled with 2 carloads cops. this is where i learned never send 1st level police to pick up 7th level characters- even if they are mild mannered english librarians.

Hmm... for this example, shouldn't one or two bobbies have been able to hold her in place (grappling), and then have one do a subdual coup de grace to knock her out? :eek:

EDIT: My 100th post! *noisemakers and fireworks* :cool:

[MikeMarchi42]

This sounds remarkably like the problem that Dark Conspiracy had all those years ago. The players had a tremendous hit capacity and the potential to max out Initiative - far above the hits and init rating of NPCs and monsters.

The game focused (as many GDW games of the time did), on weaponry, providing pages and pages of bigger and badder guns to deal deadlier damage.

So the GMs kept finding themselves in a Catch-22. Keep throwing tougher monsters, or better equipped NPCs, who would ultimately die and their uber-weapons would fall into the PC's hands, making it still easier to kill monsters. Players started wading into combat without fear.

The worst offense of this came during one gaming session when a Player character was being held against a wall by two security guards. When the other PC's entered the room, and aimed their weapons ordering the guards to free their comrade, the character who was being subdued cried out, "Aim your shotgun for my chest! I can survive the hit, but the scattershot will kill them!"

For the second edition of DC hit points for characters were effectively halved, and the hit points for monsters and NPCs were doubled. Monster Initiatives were untouched, but PC initiatives were compressed down to the lower end of the band. This stop-gap solution tended to prolong combat. The players still waded into combat -- they would wade back out again a little sooner, but the encounters themselves took longer, because the monsters had more hitpoints to whittle away, and the players were getting fewer actions.

I wound up addressing the problem in a more insidious manner. The creatures the players started encountering had more special-effects associated with them. The ubiquitous Dark Elves were suddenly given a backstory that explained how they were extra-dimensional beings who had to be actively concentrating to remain in our world. So when you killed one, its body teleported back to its home dimension -- along with everything in the vicinity. Suddenly players were trying like hell to wade out of a swirling dimensional vortex before it either sucked them through, or winked out, leaving them embedded in the concrete up to their knees. Another rather misshapen creature that was normally little more than a nuisance was endowed with an infectious bite that slowly transformed the character into one of them -- every bite became a tainted section of skin -- enough bites, and your stats started normallizing down to their level.

The reason the last two examples worked, was because they played to the real-life fears of the players. One was the fear of becoming isolated from the group (or worse, sliced off at the waist), the other was the creepy feeling of being irrevocably changed into something else.

[EvanMoore]

Answering the question without reading the thread...

...Mac truck?

...steamroller?

...77tons of steel dropped from a crane?

In my opinion, if you're thinking in the numbers, you're thinking in the wrong place.

Cthulhu is not about numbers (which is why, IMHO, d20 is a BAD choice for the world).

Cthulhu is about *horror*. Stark, raving mad horror. The kind of horror that makes you go insane and start trying to hack invisible ropes off your wrists and bleeding out.

The kind of horror that has you run into the safety of a dark stairwell--where the tentacles grab you and rip you apart.

"Saving throw?"

Get real. Roll up a new character!

Cthulhu is not about numbers "Oh, gee, the shotgun only does 2D20 points, that means he could live through multiple blasts!"

No. NO. NO!

Shotguns are messy, horrible, vicious things that blow you into mist at close range--but, even winning that argument, THIS IS NOT CTHULHU.

Melting your heart because you looked at the image with an ingrained spell on it is Cthulhu.

A broken pipe jammed through your back just as you smiled and said, "Oh, man, I'm safe!" is Cthulhu.

Turning to the woman you saved and saying, "I'm glad you're okay..." only to see her gill slits flutter open for the first time and her skin ooze slime is Cthulhu.

"You wake up in the insane asylum. You remember nothing. But you have lost your left hand and have a pentagram carved into your chest above your heart..." is Cthulhu.

77 hit points? Bah!

We're playing for your MIND! We're playing for your SOUL.

Throw the dice all you want at what you can see--but what you can see is only there to distract you from what you can't see...

*drives a soul-blade into your neck from behind and siphons off half your sanity*

...see you soon.

Evan

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points?

With a gun... assuming that you're using the massive damage rules. (And if you're not, that's the first thing you need to start doing.)

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Tom B]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek


As a player this would annoy me because I would never be sure of my characters competency. One day my level 2 investigator can kick the police's ass, but the other day my level 4 investigator gets totally stomped by them.
To me at least this would break the suspension of disbelieve.

As a general rule, I always made "substantial" opponents at about the same level as the characters. As they got more powerful, they opposed more powerful opponents. That's kinda how things work. Sure, there were always the low-level mooks for them to occasionally mop up, but they almost always faced opponents of their own level or a bit higher. The leader of any given goon squad was always a couple of levels higher than them.

As to cops...sometimes you meet Barney Fife. Sometimes you meet Harry Callahan. The players shouldn't know until they're staring down the barrel of the .44.

[Tom B]

Originally posted by MikeMarchi42
This sounds remarkably like the problem that Dark Conspiracy had all those years ago. The players had a tremendous hit capacity and the potential to max out Initiative - far above the hits and init rating of NPCs and monsters.


We had the same problem with DC. I switched over to CORPS. I then re-ran the last gun battle as a "rules example". Over half the PCs died. In CORPS, when gunfire breaks out you run or dive for cover...fast. The flexible paranormal power system also gave me plenty of leeway to devise psionic and magic effects the characters couldn't identify. No yelling out the names of the spells the NPCs were casting...just a lot of "Oh, shit! What WAS that?!?"

[Gary N. Mengle]

There's nothing wrong with CoC d20, and no reason it can't be run in exactly the way you want.

But you're molly-coddling the players. They're not dying because you're not killing them.

Put your librarian up against 3 12th level veteran cops. Have the shoggoth re-form on its way out of the fish chipper.

And use horror, which goes beyond the rules, as others are suggesting. Sanity Checks are the GM's friend.

[braincraft]

Why would a player be afraid of 77 hit points?

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Tom B


As a general rule, I always made "substantial" opponents at about the same level as the characters. As they got more powerful, they opposed more powerful opponents. That's kinda how things work. Sure, there were always the low-level mooks for them to occasionally mop up, but they almost always faced opponents of their own level or a bit higher. The leader of any given goon squad was always a couple of levels higher than them.

As to cops...sometimes you meet Barney Fife. Sometimes you meet Harry Callahan. The players shouldn't know until they're staring down the barrel of the .44.

I agree, but goons should stay goons and if your 2nd level character can take them out, then so should your 4th level character.
Basically what I'm saying is: if the PCs can kick the fodder's ass and you want them to be afraid, then don't supercharge the fodder, but instead dont use fodder.

[Radical Authority]

In The Dying Earth RPG, all NPCs and monsters have characteristics expressed as multipliers applied to the average of the players' ability score. This means that opponents always stay a challenge no matter what the power level.

I think some NPCs (cops inparticular) should be treated in the same way: the average level of cops should be the same as the average level of characters. If you don't do something like this, you eventually have 20th level CoC investigators deposing the government and setting up a military junta. Additionally, as someone else pointed out, one of more of those cops should have been trying to hold the librarian down while the other got busy with his truncheon.

I agree with whoever first put forward the idea of modifying massive damage save DCs depending on amount of damage (maybe +1 per three points over ten). You could maybe extend to not just single shots but to all weapon damage taken in a round (so, if you've got three guys shooting at you with pistols and they all do 6 damage, you have to make a massive damage roll as if it had been 18 in one shot).

The shoggoth in the fish-processing machine was terrific. If this is an example of how your games fuck up, they must be AWESOME when they go according to plan!

RA

[B. Miller]

If your PC's at 1st level face an 8th level foe, then they should use their friggin heads in that situation and (gasp) maybe even NOT try to kill it, eh? That's how you answered the question.

I guess I just think that 'horror' doesn't ask permission or compare levels or make sure things are fair, because grisly death is rarely fair. It just is. So if I had PC's who were stupid enough to take a pot shot at Cthulhu with a 9mm, I hope they expect to meet an abbreviated end, post haste, because that's what they'll get.

[danzig138]

Why didn't the guy with the shotgun seek cover? That would give him a slight edge. Use the Improved Critical feat. Create newer and better Improved Critical feats. Give them to the important bad guys. Remember, city authorities frown on gun play. Use Surprise.
The English Police...Watch films like the Rodney King incident, or a similar recent incident here in OK. A lot of people remain active while cops are beating on them with nightsticks. Pull out some pepper spray. That seems to slow people faster than nightsticks. Grapple and contain. Use the variant rules on page 81. Give the occasional bad guy body armor, like those bank robbers in LA.
Don't let the characters have better weapons than the opponents. Don't let them fight opponents who are much weaker then they are. Don't give them opportunities for gunplay. Make them suffer like Tackleberry from Police Academy. If they get in a gunbattle, have a horde of cops show up. Look, strangers with guns who aren't responding to us. Open fire men. Don't start them at a higher level, they begin the game thinking they are tough. Let them suffer some 1st and 2nd level beat-downs first. Watch their rolls, especially massive damage saves. Situational modifiers...that guy 3 feet away shot you with a 12-G for 12 points of damage? That's a -2, -3, whatever to you Fortitude save. And if all else fails...
Lie.
Yep, that cultist scored a critical with his Barretts. What's that? 18 points of damage x 4...72 damage.

[Harbinger]

Do away with hit points altogether. and apply a variant of the massive damage rule to every hit. Make the DC of the fortitude save equal to the amount of damage taken.

If the damage is subdual a faild save results in unconciouisness and it the damage is lethal the failed save results in death. Characters should die on a regular basis from something like this.

This way going up in level gives you a better save, but you are still very fragile to high damage attacks.

The above is just an idea and not the way I play. I have found the way the rules are written to be deadly enough. Last time we played over half the party failed the first massive damage saves they took and they were 4th and 5th level characters

[Bradford C. Walker]

It helps to ensure that the PCs face the consequences of their actions. Gunning down the mayor is still murder in the eyes of the law, unless the PCs can convince whomever they answer to that the mayor was about to use deadly force against them. (In some countries, this may not be enough.)

[Gwydion]

Originally posted by Gary N. Mengle
There's nothing wrong with CoC d20, and no reason it can't be run in exactly the way you want.

[snip]

Put your librarian up against 3 12th level veteran cops.


There's something wrong if it takes three 12th level cops to frighten a librarian.
Kevin

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
bradford i used the massive damage rule on them, but they keep on saving all the time.

Then check their dice to make sure that (a) they're not loaded; (b) they actually have a "1" printed on them somewhere.

Statistically, you should have at least one failed save for every 20 saving throws made. In a game where you don't have a Raise Dead spell to bring you back, that should make the PCs nervous.

JB

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
How would you do a 1st level character who was the worlds top chess player like that crazy nazi Bobby Fischer when he was a kid?

Bobby Fischer wouldn't be a 1st level character. He'd probably be a 4th or 5th level character, with a high Int, his ranks in Profession (Chess) maxed out, a synergy bonus from Knowledge (Chess Strategy), and Skill Focus (Profession (Chess)).

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[CPXB]

I almost hate to say this but . . . your players are probably cheating.

They've played from 4th to 7th level. This is about 12 game sessions. Since you said they've made a "lot" of Fort saves against massive damage I'm going to assume that means once a game session, on average, per character. I'm going to assume that they've all got good Fort saves. I'm going to assume they have Con 18s. All of them. I'm going to assume you have four players. I'm going to assume that they've been 7th level all through the game, too.

Their total Fort save is a very respectable +11. This means that they have a 15% of failure on a Fort save vs. massive damage -- or, in short, an 85% chance of success. Given my assumptions, they've made 48 saving throws vs. massive damage. The odds of *all* those saving throws being made is something like 0.00347%. That's about a quarter million to one odds.

I suspect the real odds are far worse than this, too. I doubt they all have Con 18s, and I ignored levels 4 and 5 when their saves were lower.

Sure, it *could* happen. It happens in about . . . one in every quarter million to half a million games. So, maybe your friends aren't cheating -- but if you really want to put the fear of death into them, YOU roll their Fort saves vs. massive damage.

[Tom B]

Originally posted by CPXB
Sure, it *could* happen. It happens in about . . . one in every quarter million to half a million games. So, maybe your friends aren't cheating -- but if you really want to put the fear of death into them, YOU roll their Fort saves vs. massive damage.

Or even make sure that they do not roll before you tell them, and make sure they roll out in the open.

I've found it truly amazing how fortunes change when using these two little guidelines...

[NPC Jim]

Mr.badass I suggest giving Godlike a try they have a nice system that is lethal for all levels of play even their OGL rules are dangerous by D20 standards they make a good suggstion of only Constitution for HPs no increase.
Also it sounds like you aren't the problem on the fear and horror aspects but your players are it may just not be their cup of tea they may expect the game to be like D&D they way they play seems like it.
P.S. the Godlike website also has a Cthulhu conversion posted also.

[CPXB]

Calling a 7th level character "just" a librarian is quite disingenuous. The character stopped being a mild-mannered librarian a loooooooong time ago. Indeed, since the character started out at 4th level, they were *never* just a mild-mannered librarian. I, personally, would love to hear the justification of how a "mild-mannered librarian" ever got to be 4th level in the first place. In the vicious underworld of library politics? Were their gangs of Keats lovers fighting the John Donne lovers in the stacks that she needed to harden her mind and body to defeat? :D

The CoC d20 rules assume that you get about 1 character level for every adventure the character completes. Therefore, a 7th level character is *presumed* to have faced down Mythos baddies, aliens and/or demons plus their associated cultists 7 times -- and remained both alive and sane enough to function. Such a character is simply not normal, anymore. They've been hardened in mind and body to make most commandos look like nancy boys . . . even if their day job is "mild-mannered librarian."

The character's are, in fact, precisely the sorts of people that require two car loads full of cops to handle.

Now, in game, you can have that get around. Sure, the first time the cops try to pick up the librarian-aka-Mythos-commando they will be confused at her ferocity. The second time? <I>Definitely</i> expect the 12th level police bully to roll up in his prowler to put the beat down on.

[NPC Joe]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass



Maybe I am just getting older and more fuddy duddy-ish??


Nah. You're just understanding what CoC is all about.
What you described before wasn't really CoC. It was a first person shooter with Mythos Horrors. That's fine if you want to play it, but you're not really playing CoC. I suspect it has to do with what you read (Lumley, apparently. I've never read him). Now you're reading the main man's stuff and you're noticing the difference.
Mind you, I'm not saying you were wrong before and have found the way. I'm saying that you were playing something that had a CoC label stuck on it.
Joe.

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points?

Massive Damage.

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
even with the 10 point massive damage rule the players charge in with no fear at all.

Then you're out of luck.

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
i had another incident where the "librarian" Lynda Chambers was supposed to be picked up by english police for questioning. she resisted and the bobbies had to club her. well she had 43 hit points and like 5 bobbies had to beat on her for like 10 rounds before she went down. i actually had to have more of them come to stop her because she put 3 of the first 5 out of action with various objects she picked up in the hallway. i mean it was getting kind of silly. there were people standing by cheering her on as she tussled with 2 carloads cops. this is where i learned never send 1st level police to pick up 7th level characters- even if they are mild mannered english librarians.

Why didn't they grapple her?

Seanchai

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Ced...How would the police ever be able to arrest one of the agents if they are not afraid of guns?

The same way they arrest real suspects who aren't afraid of guns?

Seanchai

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by Will
In BRP, they kill you in a few blows. Yay! Er.

Naw, they just Dodge them.

Seanchai

[The Eye]

i say you make them lose more sanity. in the tone of lovecraft, the more direct exposure to the Creepy Beings, the crazier you become... no matter what your Saves are.
there was a character in my group once that encountered Cthulhu itself, and made ridiculouly good rolls, surviving long enough to be PHYSICALLY killed by the Elder God.

don't let this happen in your game. when they were being chased around the docks by a shoggoth, they should have lost a shitload of sanity. PC's in call of cthulhu dies or go insane. sorry, if you want something else, don't use CoC.

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by CPXB
Calling a 7th level character "just" a librarian is quite disingenuous.

Not to mention the difficulties in getting to 7th level - even just from 4th. We realized early on that the characters would never get beyond 3rd level if we didn't allow the new character to start at the level the old one died at. Now, after months of play and experience for monsters, the characters have reached 6th level.

And they're still dying. One died last Tuesday. Got hit with a laser gun that did 1d10 points of damage. I got a critical hit and did 12 points of damage. The character failed his Save and died without ever getting to act in that combat.

Seanchai

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by dyjoots
snip

there was a character in my group once that encountered Cthulhu itself, and made ridiculouly good rolls, surviving long enough to be PHYSICALLY killed by the Elder God.

don't let this happen in your game.

snip


Well, that's not all that bad. In The Call of Cthulhu 8 men see the big nasty. Two of them instantly die of fright, 3 are physically killed by the big C, one gets hurt in R'Lyeh while fleeing, one dies later of fright or at the hands of his comrade and the last one died months later at the hands of a cultist.
See, Great Cthulhu isn't all that dangerous :rolleyes:

[Phill Calle]

It seems to me that your players are playing Pulp CoC, which is fine, but it's not the game you want to run. On the other hand, a more hardline Call of Cthulhu game (BRP or d20) doesn't seem to be what they want to play either. The true horror is a GM and his group at odds.

By the way, for the Bobby Fishers of the world (or Shakespeare or any other genius who is clearly not 20th level) I created the following feat:

Genius
Prerequisite: None, but may only be taken at character creation
Choose a skill (which must be approved by the DM). Your maximum ranks in the skill are 23 (unless you ever reach epic levels, and then your max ranks go up by 1 for each level above 20th). Furthermore, for the purposes of this skill only, the ability score associated with this skill is treated as if it were the maximum starting score for your race plus five.

You'll note that characters quickly reach the maximum if they so choose--a 1st level expert would have enough skill points to reach max ranks at 1st level. A lot of geniuses are like that--great at one thing and lousy at life. I've never had a PC who wanted to take this feat because I don't allow it for "useful" skills. But if a PC ever wanted to be the best playwright in the world, more power to him.

[NPC]

Originally posted by CPXB
Calling a 7th level character "just" a librarian is quite disingenuous. The character stopped being a mild-mannered librarian a loooooooong time ago. Indeed, since the character started out at 4th level, they were *never* just a mild-mannered librarian. I, personally, would love to hear the justification of how a "mild-mannered librarian" ever got to be 4th level in the first place. In the vicious underworld of library politics? Were their gangs of Keats lovers fighting the John Donne lovers in the stacks that she needed to harden her mind and body to defeat? :D


How do you stat out the obsessed acedemic with no combat training, but expertise Occult Lore, Astronomy, Cryptography, Library Research, and lesser scores in a smattering of other skills. Don't tell me this is a first level character, yet they would have gained their levels through reading obscure tomes, careful observation of the stars, and writing their theories of various things. In fact, in the CoC games I've played, these things happen *in game*.

You are correct in saying that a 7th level character is probably not "just a librarian" -- they would be more than this is a number of ways. To suggest that they would be able to tackle an entire squad of rookie cops because of it is silly. But the system links the level of skill out of combat with the level of skill in combat very directly. And you seem to link advancement directly to physical confrontation. Both of these are problems with the system.

Kevin

[NPC Jeremy]

Someone starts a troll, and all the Chaosium fanboys start bashing d20.


I mean, sure d20 CoC isn't lethal. Never mind the statistical analysis that shows that d20 CoC is actually more lethal than regular CoC.


And I love the old canard in how that shooting someone in the face suddenly doesn't kill someone. There have always been coup de grace rules in D&D.

But, don't let facts get in the way of your bashing.

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by NPC
How do you stat out the obsessed acedemic with no combat training, but expertise Occult Lore, Astronomy, Cryptography, Library Research, and lesser scores in a smattering of other skills.

You follow the rules listed in rulebook. If you need more skill points than you can acquire with a good Intelligence and Feats, then create a higher level character.

Originally posted by NPC
To suggest that they would be able to tackle an entire squad of rookie cops because of it is silly.

It's quite rational. This same character has tackled squads of cultists and Mythos creatures.

Originally posted by NPC
But the system links the level of skill out of combat with the level of skill in combat very directly. And you seem to link advancement directly to physical confrontation. Both of these are problems with the system.


You're basically correct, but then investigators become more experienced via confrontations with the Mythos. And, to the best of my recall, the d20 CoC rules don't normally provide XP for fights.

Seanchai

[Gwydion]

Originally posted by Seanchai

You follow the rules listed in rulebook. If you need more skill points than you can acquire with a good Intelligence and Feats, then create a higher level character.


But I can't create a higher level character. He hasn't "tackled squads of cultists and Mythos creatures" yet -- and never intends to.

Kevin

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by Gwydion
But I can't create a higher level character. He hasn't "tackled squads of cultists and Mythos creatures" yet -- and never intends to.

D20 doesn't assume you need to get into combat situations in order to advance levels.

D20 is a cinematic system, in which main characters are less likely to die abruptly than secondary characters. The higher level a character is, the more of a "main" character they are.

That being said: D20 CoC is still more lethal than BRP CoC.

Also, it's important to note that the average person isn't going to be much higher than 2nd or 3rd level. In fact, at 3rd level you're a pretty amazing person. Only the truly extraordinary individuals in our own world (Einstein, Michelangelo, Michael Jordan) are higher than that -- and they top out around 5th or 6th. Once you get up around 10th you're larger than life.

If you don't want to play larger than life games, don't play 10th level D20 characters. This is, I'll note, easily accomplished.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[CPXB]

Originally posted by NPC


How do you stat out the obsessed acedemic with no combat training, but expertise Occult Lore, Astronomy, Cryptography, Library Research, and lesser scores in a smattering of other skills. Don't tell me this is a first level character, yet they would have gained their levels through reading obscure tomes, careful observation of the stars, and writing their theories of various things. In fact, in the CoC games I've played, these things happen *in game*.

You are correct in saying that a 7th level character is probably not "just a librarian" -- they would be more than this is a number of ways. To suggest that they would be able to tackle an entire squad of rookie cops because of it is silly. But the system links the level of skill out of combat with the level of skill in combat very directly. And you seem to link advancement directly to physical confrontation. Both of these are problems with the system.

Kevin

It's actually easy, in my experience and understanding of the d20 CoC rules.

I mean, a defensive option character with average physical stats and no weapons proficiencies, at 7th level, is pretty much -2 to hit in combat, most of the time. Additionally, with average physical stats, a 7th level character would have an average of 27 hp -- which is less than a *third* that this super-librarian had, BTW.

Furthermore, with an Intelligence of 15 and maxxing out a skill and then getting Skill Emphasis (which is +3 in CoC) you have a +9 in it. That's pretty damn good. Furthermore, it's often possible to get a second feat that'll add +2 to an skill -- which would total +11. It'd take the "average academic" about 7th level to get a +11. I figure that definitely qualifies the character as a budding genius in that field. Clearly, if they had a truly exceptional Intelligence (or whatever ability governing the skill they're obsessed with) they'll be even more remarkable.

Lastly, in my experience with BRP CoC, of which I've had a great deal, I've never had a character last any period of time without becoming at least *modestly* proficient at *some* fighting skills -- especially Dodge.

Granted, in d20 CoC you can't make the "best in the world" at something -- a definite possibility in BRP CoC. I like the d20 system better 'cause close ended systems annoy me, but that's personal preference. :)

[CPXB]

There's a 7th level CoC character with 77 hit points? *blink*

That's 11 hp per die. Even with Con 18, uh, that would require the player rolling a 5 or 6 for every hit die -- six times.

I think there are more issues with this game than are immediately evident. I'm starting to see a pattern.

<b>Edit:</b> Oh, cripes, I'm editing this 'cause I'm silly, sometimes. With a Con 18 it's impossible to get 77 hp at 7th level in d20 CoC 'cause the person would have to roll at least *7* hit points a level, which is just impossible. There's clearly something else going on with the game.

Sorry if I confused the issue. :p

[Ian ORourke]

Well, if I remember correctly, this could be the 'Balls Out CoC' that BadAss was talking about some months back.

Now he might be suffering the consequences, or it is all an elaborate story just to create 'debate' on these boards.

[Grant]

How do you stat out the obsessed acedemic with no combat training, but expertise Occult Lore, Astronomy, Cryptography, Library Research, and lesser scores in a smattering of other skills. Don't tell me this is a first level character, yet they would have gained their levels through reading obscure tomes, careful observation of the stars, and writing their theories of various things. In fact, in the CoC games I've played, these things happen *in game*.

Well, to be an expert in that many things I'm assuming that this person would have at least an 18 INT in game terms. All of the skills you mentioned are Knowledge ( ) skills in d20, so that is an automatic +4 to their roll to see if they know that item of information. Plus since the character is an expert in all of these skills they should be class skills. The character can easily have 4 ranks in each skill, so that's +8 to the skill check roll. Add in Skill emphasis for whichever skill they are most expert with and that's +11 right off the bat.

Look at the difficulties for a Knowledge skill. DC 10 for easy questions... well, this character will very rarely fail that. DC 15 for standard questions... the character will still very rarely fail to answer these questions. DC 20 or 30 for REALLY tough questions... well you've got me there. The character can't answer these questions OFF OF THE TOP OF HIS HEAD.

Remember, a skill check in d20 that uses a die roll means that the skill is being attempted in the same amount of time as a single turn. All of those skills above are best used with research, painful, time-consuming research.

So you take 20.

And now our 1st level character can use all of these skills to answer the REALLY tough questions pertaining to their field.

It really isn't that hard to do at 1st level. Now if you wanted to make a multi-talented, ass-beating, expert in all things character... well THAT requires something hire than 1st level.

Grant

[Azimer the Mad]

I would use some of the D20 firearms rules from Weird Wars. The simplest is the "Getting the Drop" rules. If someone with a gun gets the drop on someone without a gun, or from behind, or something similar, the target gets two choices.

One, he could try to run, in which case he has to beat the enemy in an opposed Dex check, where the gun firer gets a +5 bonus. If he succeeds, any shots are counted as a regular attack, and he gets to go first. If he fails, the firer can Coup de Grae (sp) the target.

Other choice? Surrender to the gun-wielder, in which case the firer can Coup de Grae the target at any time.

What it means is that, regardless of hit points, guns are lethal when a surprise shot at any time could trigger a DC:25 Fort save or die. Suddenly the librarian with 77 hit points should be scared of a 1st level cop with a gun.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Grant
snip

So you take 20.

And now our 1st level character can use all of these skills to answer the REALLY tough questions pertaining to their field.

snip

Except that you can't take 20 when using a knowledge skill because retries aren't allowed (taking 20 is actually trying over and over again until you succeed).
Now personally I'd allow taking 20 when researching (i.e. in non-hostile conditions with a good supply of books and other relevant materials) and with a duration of 1d6 days instead of 2 minutes, but of course that's a house rule.

[NPC Joe]

Originally posted by NPC Jeremy
Someone starts a troll, and all the Chaosium fanboys start bashing d20.


I mean, sure d20 CoC isn't lethal. Never mind the statistical analysis that shows that d20 CoC is actually more lethal than regular CoC.


And I love the old canard in how that shooting someone in the face suddenly doesn't kill someone. There have always been coup de grace rules in D&D.

But, don't let facts get in the way of your bashing.

I didn't actually notice any d20 bashing going on...
I noticed lots of people (myself included) saying that d20 isn't the best system to simulate CoC or Lovecraft's stories, though.
Joe.

[Chris Aylott]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

How do you threaten a Call of Cthulhu character with 77 hit points?


Easy. Take away 70 hit points. :)

My tongue's in my cheek but I'm not joking. What's going wrong is that you're not quite up to speed on how to run horror.

The absolute bestest thing you can do is go to the movie theaters and check out M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Signs. Pay attention to what he's doing to scare you because you can steal lots of it. You should also rent classic Hitchcock movies like Psycho and The Birds so you can see what great techniques Shyamalan is stealing.

(The essence of art is creative pilfering, really.)

There's some basic principles of suspense that the great writers and directors know all about. Here's some of them (or at least my poor understanding of them):

1. Wear the characters down.

Sure, the heroes will win almost any straight-up confrontation when they are strong and well-equipped. That's why most good suspense is about stripping away the characters' protections and resources.

You can do some of this with mooks, early bad guys who do a few points of damage and then are defeated or run away. Use traps, use feats of endurance, use whatever you can think of to burn up the characters resources and send them into a final confrontation with just a few bullets and hit points left.

That brings me to the second point . . .

2. Set the world against the characters.

I don't mean in the typical "police hunt PCs sense", though that's good too. What I mean is that the characters should be plagued with bad luck, with signs that the universe is really out to get them.

Get the characters in a car accident. It doesn't even have to be part of the plot -- it can be some fool drunk driver swerving at the wrong time. Let them avoid some damage with a Reflex save, but make them take damage either way. Car wrecks hurt.

Make them walk in a rainstorm and drop them into ditches. Send them places where they lose their cell phone reception. Make them sleep out in the woods in a blizzard and see how tough their characters are when they're so cold they can barely hold their guns.

The environment is your friend and their enemy. Use it.

3. The bad guy always has the edge.

Great bad guys don't have to have more levels or bigger bonuses. They just have to fight dirty.

If the PCs ever catch the critter out in the open where they can blast away at it, it should only be because the mate is sneaking up behind them. The bad guys should be experts at nailing PCs from behind, at dragging them into dark corners, or coming down from the ceiling and bursting up from the floor. Never give the PCs a fair fight -- and that's just for openers.

The real fun starts when the monsters follow the PCs home.

When the PCs go to bed and look up, the monster should be hanging on the ceiling looking down at them. When they go to the bathroom, it should come up through the toilet. Their lunches should be eating them.

Keep in mind, this isn't every monster or bad guy. There should be plenty of dumb cultists to kill and little critters to squash. But the real baddies know where the PCs are at all time. The real baddies know all the characters' weaknesses, and the real baddies always hit the heroes hardest when the heroes feel like they can't go another step.

The players will whimper. They will say you're not being fair. You should agree with them, because life -- or at least Call of Cthulhu -- isn't fair. Good horror is having every card in the deck stacked against you and still coming out in one piece. If you can supply the first part of that and they can supply the last part, they'll be screaming with pleasure.

yours,

[NPC PatP]

Funny you should mention 77 hit points.

I was in a D20 CoC demo game the other day. I had a 4th level character with 25 hit pts -- who proceeded to take 80 points of damage in one shot. It happened when we were using explosives to close a temporal gate being used by the horrific Mi-Go. Of course, the gate-closing operation was in the middle of a firefight...

That sure killed my ass pretty dead. The rest of the party, too. Except, of course, for the gibbering, crazy one who wasn't in on the final assault.

OTOH, we did close the gate, so it was a success if you discount the whole "survival" thing.

Afterwards, I told the GM, "Yep, its Call of Cthulhu all right".

[Grant]

Except that you can't take 20 when using a knowledge skill because retries aren't allowed (taking 20 is actually trying over and over again until you succeed).

Not according to the CoC d20 rule book I'm reading!

"Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take. " and "when the skill being attempted carries no penalty for failure" are the conditions allowing you to take 20. In other words if I a) have the time to do it, and b) won't be harmed in some way by failing my check I can take 20.

The section on Knowledge skills does not say anything about not being able to take 20. It does say you can't retry your check, but constantly rerolling until you scored 20 is only one way to look at taking 20. The section on retries does not even mention taking 10 or taking 20. And the section on Making Checks Without Rolls does not mention this rule either (it equates the reasoning behind the rule as being if you rolled long enough you would get 20, but that does not mean that it is the same thing as retrying).

The concept of not taking a long time to guarantee a success in something like a knowledge skill is ludicrous. We see it all the time in modern life - published findings have been carefully researched and tested, a process that can take a very long time.

(By the way, I don't think we disagree in that research rolls should be allowed to take 20. I just disagree that the rules state that you cannot take 20 with a Knowledge skill. If it does state it somewhere I would like to know because I have obviously overlooked that rule.)

Grant

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Taken from the D&D FAQ page 11 ( http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article1.asp?x=dnd/er/errata,3 )

Taking 20 represents using a skill over and over again until you succeed.


I admit it's not the CoC d20 FAQ, but the rules regarding skills are the same and this comes from a Sage Advice article written before CoC d20 was released, so I assume it applies to CoC d20 as well.

And we do indeed agree that taking 20 when researching should be allowed :)

[Grant]

but the rules regarding skills are the same and this comes from a Sage Advice article written before CoC d20 was released

Ok. Gotcha. I don't read Dragon so that explains why I'd never seen the ruling.

Oh well, I didn't know about it before and everything worked fine so I have no problem continuing to ignore it when I play :)

Grant

[AmericanBadass]

Hey Folks.

as a DM i am very picky on using the take 20 rule....i dont like it that much. something like learning some strange MIGO encoded message though it has no harmful consequences for failure is pretty darn hard. I would have to say because of the alien language, numeric system and any other mitigating factors it would be a DC in the 40+ range or higher. No way a low level character could ever crack it.

How could a 4th level linguist or mathematician figure something like this out?? This would be difficult for Einstein or John Nash.

I do not understand how combat seems to be the only way for characters to get levels. From what some people seem to think if a Physicist works 12 hours a day for 40 years on the subject he would only be able to eek out a couple of levels....that is screwy.

so far this current game has been anything but balls out...there have actually only been 3 missions where there was actually firefights. The characters being law enforcement have to use force by the very nature of things....the people they bring in often dont put up the fight...the characters do.

As far as high levels go....how come nobody likes them. Keeping your characters in the 3rd to 4th level range is like having a car but only driving it 1/5 the maximum speed (15MPH) you could never get on the freeway that way.

The rulebook itself even provides examples of characters being 20th level. So the game is designed for high level characters...just like all D20 products.

My characters have already been through like 8 or 9 scenarios...we have actually lost a couple of characters but 1 of them has managed to stay alive. So he made it to 10th level (thus the 77 hit points Agent Yuri has 18 Con for +4HP/Lvl)
To be fair when somebody needed to roll up a character I made them a level behind Yuri so you wouldn't have 1st or 4th level characters in with an 8th or 9th level one.

As far as the adventures go I used the one out of the book about the Sleep Clinic first to start the players off and then I have been adapting them with parts of some Cthulhu Now adventures...they did the entire Samson, Ca. series.

Now I am trying to make an Xfiles type Mythos...but am having some problems system wise. I can't really ask the characters to give up their levels, so I will have to make the game more lethal by altering it....I hate changing rules.

I am a stickler for playing by the book.
Even with the balls out games of old we played by the rules....we just used all the throttle this baby could handle before the wheels fall off.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by Ian ORourke
Now he might be suffering the consequences, or it is all an elaborate story just to create 'debate' on these boards.

I gave AB the benefit of the doubt for a long time.

But his almost total incomprehension of the way the d20 CoC rules actually _work_ makes me 99% sure he's just a troll with waaaay too much free time on his hands.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Hey Folks.
as a DM i am very picky on using the take 20 rule....i dont like it that much. something like learning some strange MIGO encoded message though it has no harmful consequences for failure is pretty darn hard. I would have to say because of the alien language, numeric system and any other mitigating factors it would be a DC in the 40+ range or higher. No way a low level character could ever crack it.

Not according to the rules.
DCs top out at 30, which qualifies as 'impossible' - like, say, deciphering an alien language. Higher skill-check difficulties than that aren't justified by the rules.

How could a 4th level linguist or mathematician figure something like this out?? This would be difficult for Einstein or John Nash.

Not according to the rules.
A low-level character that's focused on doing something well can tackle something like this - if they have the time and resources to do so.

I do not understand how combat seems to be the only way for characters to get levels. From what some people seem to think if a Physicist works 12 hours a day for 40 years on the subject he would only be able to eek out a couple of levels....that is screwy.

Not according to the rules.
Characters get no experience points from combat - they get them for surviving adventures, or optionally from reaching certain 'plot points' in adventures. You never have to get into a single fight.

As far as high levels go....how come nobody likes them. Keeping your characters in the 3rd to 4th level range is like having a car but only driving it 1/5 the maximum speed (15MPH) you could never get on the freeway that way.

Not according to the rules.
Level 3-4 characters in CoC are competant, seasoned professionals with many different abilities. Characters of higher levels are more cinematic and near-fictitious. Nothing - NOTHING - in the rules says that characters have to advance in 'power' and levels - in fact, it clearly states that GMs DON'T have to do that if they prefer.

The rulebook itself even provides examples of characters being 20th level. So the game is designed for high level characters...just like all D20 products.

Not according to the rules
The game is designed to allow the POSSIBILITY of playing high-level characters, in a very different style of game. That doesn't mean that the game MUST be played at those levels, or that characters created for a gritty, desperate horror campaign MUST become more powerful and competent with time. This is spelt out in the book (although not quite as clearly as I would have liked).

I am a stickler for playing by the book.

That's very surprising, since it's quite obvious that you DON'T play by the book, as the above examples show.

I don't think there can be any doubt, by now, that 'American Badass' is a troll. The whole point of his posts is the implication that only idiots, combat monsters and 'immature' players would use the d20 CoC system.

Well, I'm tired of the bullshit.

You want to refute this, Badass?

Well, try actually READING the goddamn rulebook and working out how the bloody system actually works. Because your trolling has become so transparently bullshit that it can no longer fool anyone. Study the game a bit and you might be able to inject a bit of credibility into your rubbish, and that might start fooling a few people again.

[AmericanBadass]

Patrick No I am not Trolling...sorry to disappoint you.

you ain't down with the 'badass'?

As far as being familiar with the rules I wouldn't say I was totally fluent in them-thats why i ask questions.

you try to capture a 7th level character without killing him or her with some 1st level characters. The reason why she had a AC14 is because I like to use the Defensive Option which allows you to increase AC with level....at 7th I think it is a +2 or +3.

A 7th level librarian has 1 attack at +3 vs. the cops who had one attack at +1. The grapple grabs were sometimes successful but Lynda was always able to get free before they could hold in the opposed checks. After while the cops just started clubbing her. It was funny but disturbing in a strange way...sort of like seeing your mother get attacked by 7 cops and knocked out after 5 minutes of clubbing...sort of a Rodney King seal clubbing on Grandma.

How am I doing it wrong?
I only have a 1% knowledge of the system...enlighten me.

[AmericanBadass]

Page 45 under psychic feats has several DC's over 35 and one at 40...look and see. Also open lock on pg.33 has a DC of 40...Methinks you should go and re-read the rulebook yourself my Aussie Homey.


The book has several references to 20th level characters or what their abilities are...If the players are saavy enough to take their characters to 20th more power to them.


I have read the rulebook I will read it again...I know it has a lot of erratta maybe I should find it online.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Page 45 under psychic feats has several DC's over 35 and one at 40...look and see. Also open lock on pg.33 has a DC of 40...Methinks you should go and re-read the rulebook yourself my Aussie Homey.

I can understand psychic abilities not conforming to the standard difficulties for mundane tasks.

As for the lock-picking - hmm. Okay, you got me there. That's a strange leap away from the range of DCs on page 19. My gut tells me it's an inappropriate cut-and-paste job from the D&D rules, but I could be wrong.

Hmm.

Okay, Badass - you've given me doubts. I'm now 90% sure you're a troll, but that's an improvement from the 99% surety I had before.

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Grant

The section on Knowledge skills does not say anything about not being able to take 20. It does say you can't retry your check, but constantly rerolling until you scored 20 is only one way to look at taking 20. The section on retries does not even mention taking 10 or taking 20. And the section on Making Checks Without Rolls does not mention this rule either (it equates the reasoning behind the rule as being if you rolled long enough you would get 20, but that does not mean that it is the same thing as retrying).

Actually, uh, in both the d20 CoC book and in the PHB it <i>does</i> specifically say that you can <i>not</i> retry knowledge skills. If you can't do a retry on it, you can't take 20. That's just straight d20 rules.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by CPXB
Actually, uh, in both the d20 CoC book and in the PHB it <i>does</i> specifically say that you can <i>not</i> retry knowledge skills. If you can't do a retry on it, you can't take 20. That's just straight d20 rules.

It's not quite that straightforward.

From d20 CoC, page 21 - the 'Take 20' rules.

"When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be used in 1 round), and when the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20."

(Emphasis added by me.)

Now there's a definite difference between "a skill that cannot be retried" and "a skill that carries no penalties for failure".

For example, Craft carries a penalty for failure - if you fail the roll by 5 or more, you ruin your raw materials and must start again. However, you can retry anyway.

The same holds for Climb, which is used as an example on page 19, which explicitly states that you can't take 20 on a Climb check because of the failure penalty. However, there's no problem retrying a Climb check.

You can't retry a failed Knowledge check, but you also don't cop a penalty for failing the roll - you don't forget something you once knew if you roll badly.

Take 20 does not mean you make 20 retries - it's just mathematically similar to doing so.

I'm not quite prepared to say that you can definitely take 20 on Knowledge skills - I can't find a definite ruling in the book - but the rules certainly _imply_ that you can, because Knowledge skills are not part of the "no taking 20" group.

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Patrick O'Duffy

I'm not quite prepared to say that you can definitely take 20 on Knowledge skills - I can't find a definite ruling in the book - but the rules certainly _imply_ that you can, because Knowledge skills are not part of the "no taking 20" group.

I'm certainly prepared to agree to disagree, but under the Knowledge section it says there is a specific penalty for failing a Knowledge check -- you can't try again. To me, that is a pretty explicit penalty. I guess it's all in the definitions we use, tho'. *shrugs*

[Grant]

I'm certainly prepared to agree to disagree, but under the Knowledge section it says there is a specific penalty for failing a Knowledge check -- you can't try again. To me, that is a pretty explicit penalty. I guess it's all in the definitions we use, tho'. *shrugs*

That was why I asked for the page where it specifically stated that you couldn't take 20 on a no retry roll.

Given the mini-debate forming on this board I'm not surprised that the question appeared in Sage Advice.

I like the idea of being able to create a 1st level character who can be an expert in the field, because that is how it is supposed to work. You should be able to make your character whatever you want at first level (though I noticed that converting starting BRP characters makes them something like 3rd level). The way I'll now house rule Knowledge skills will support my play style.

Hey, if you don't like it that's fine with me. Heck there are certain things I don't think a character should be able to "know" (like the Mi-go language. Human language is hard enough to learn from scratch. Completely alien language should not be possible).

Oh well, as long as we're all having fun playing.

Grant

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Grant


That was why I asked for the page where it specifically stated that you couldn't take 20 on a no retry roll.


It doesn't specifically say it, no. I thought it was obvious from the text; it appears there's considerable debate over it.

So much for the obvious being obvious. You'd think I'd know by now. :D

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by CPXB
I'm certainly prepared to agree to disagree, but under the Knowledge section it says there is a specific penalty for failing a Knowledge check -- you can't try again. To me, that is a pretty explicit penalty. I guess it's all in the definitions we use, tho'. *shrugs*

I think that d20 uses 'penalty' in a far stricter sense - that you pay a consequence for failing. You fall while climbing, you kill the patient while operating, you ruin your materials.

Not being able to simply try again isn't a penalty - it's just failure. It's not a drawback extended over and above simple failure. Note that the rulebook specifically lists cases where a major failure produces penalties - and that many of those skills can still be retried without problems. That strongly implies to my reading that the two cases - 'penalty' and 'no retry' - are definitely deemed different things.

Sure, I could be wrong on this. But one of d20's major features (at least, when used in Wizards products) is clarity of terms. If it uses 'penalty' as a term in one incident, it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) use it in a different sense in another incident.

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Patrick O'Duffy


I think that d20 uses 'penalty' in a far stricter sense - that you pay a consequence for failing. You fall while climbing, you kill the patient while operating, you ruin your materials.

Not being able to simply try again isn't a penalty - it's just failure. It's not a drawback extended over and above simple failure. Note that the rulebook specifically lists cases where a major failure produces penalties - and that many of those skills can still be retried without problems. That strongly implies to my reading that the two cases - 'penalty' and 'no retry' - are definitely deemed different things.

Sure, I could be wrong on this. But one of d20's major features (at least, when used in Wizards products) is clarity of terms. If it uses 'penalty' as a term in one incident, it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) use it in a different sense in another incident.

I could be wrong, myself, looking back at it.

It seemed to me that since the roll for Knowledge tests whether the character knows a particular bit of data that taking 20 is therefore absurd. Taking 20 is trying until you get it right. Since you can only try once to get it right . . . .

Whatever works for the game, though. Maybe I should hunt down that Dragon with the Sage Advice about the subject. :)

[Jonny Nexus]

Originally posted by CPXB
Taking 20 is trying until you get it right. Since you can only try once to get it right . . . .


That's it. I've just looked at my Players Handbook and it says that taking 20 assumes that the character makes sufficient retries to roll the maximum possible result. (i.e. you're going to keep on rolling until you get a 20, so let's just assume that you did that and skip the tedious dice-rolling).

So I'd say that it's implicit that if you're only allowed to roll once, then you can't take 20.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by Jonny Nexus

That's it. I've just looked at my Players Handbook and it says that taking 20 assumes that the character makes sufficient retries to roll the maximum possible result. (i.e. you're going to keep on rolling until you get a 20, so let's just assume that you did that and skip the tedious dice-rolling).

Actually, that's not quite what it says.

Player's Handbook, page 61:

"In other words, eventually you will get a 20 if you roll long enough. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20. Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right. Taking 20 takes about twenty times as long as making a single check would take."

What this passage doesn't say is that the character is making sufficient retries to get the maximum possible result. That's certainly a possible explanation of the effect, but it's not explicitly stated.

Another, equally valid interpretation would be that the character simply takes much greater care in performing the task, spending a lot more time, in order to maximize her chances of success.

Take the Appraise skill as an example. Making an Appraise check takes one minute, and you can't retry a check for a given item. But does it make sense to say that you can't take 20 on an Appraise check? That you can't spend 20 minutes going over the item, looking up records of its creation, weighing it, ransacking your memory for similar items, etc etc?

If you take an antique watch to a jeweller, would you assume that he could genuinely appraise the watch after a minute's perusal - or do you think he could do a better job if he took more time?

Can you spend 20 minutes pouring over a page of text before using your Decipher Script skill, or do you have to evaluate it in just a minute?

Since you can only retry a Disable Device check if you know the first check has failed, does that mean you set the device off 20 times when you take 20? Or that you just perform the task slowly and carefully?

Can you spend 20 minutes making a fake ID with Forgery, or do you have to dash it off in a minute?

Can you spend 200 minutes carefully making a summoning circle with Spellcraft, to use in casting dimensional anchor? Or is the version you nail down in 10 minutes the best that it gets?

Taking 20 doesn't necessarily mean performing the check multiple times - there are lots of ways in which a 'slow-and-steady' approach fits the same concept.

And under that rubric, taking 20 on a Knowledge check - thinking hard for a long period about the problem at hand - makes sense.

So I'd say that it's implicit that if you're only allowed to roll once, then you can't take 20.

Thing is, I'm really not sure that it is implicit - inferrable, certainly, but not necessarily implicit. If it was that obvious, we wouldn't need to argue it.

And if it's not explicit, I don't trust it.

[ced1106]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek
Well, that's not all that bad. In The Call of Cthulhu 8 men see the big nasty. Two of them instantly die of fright, 3 are physically killed by the big C, one gets hurt in R'Lyeh while fleeing, one dies later of fright or at the hands of his comrade and the last one died months later at the hands of a cultist.
See, Great Cthulhu isn't all that dangerous :rolleyes:

rotf -- The way I remember it, the remaining survivor takes a motorboat, aims directly for an interecepting cthulhu head rising from the water and **SPLORTCH** instant elder god pudding.

Okay, so it reforms a few moments later, but... (:


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

[ced1106]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
As far as fighting unkillable monsters I already have done that....it really didn't work.

In the Innsmouth scenario i described earlier they actually came across a Shoggoth but they killed it....cleverly I might add. They had to go to the docks area to investigate some rumors and some Deep one hybrids tipped a 55 gallon drum with a shoggoth inside. The Shoggoth absorbed and burst a NPC FBI junior agent and chased the characters around the dock. One of the characters Agent Rupert Holmgrum took a high low and pushed it into an industrial fish mulcher and made the Shoggoth into fish sticks....god bless the Gortons Fisherman I guess.

If anything my players are more resoursefull than the A-team.

Well, that **is** considerably better than the "I have more hit points than it" problem gaming. IIRC, This **is** Delta Green, not CoC, so the players should be competant enough in a direct fight.

The trick is not to have a direct fight!


Maybe I should try to run an A-team based game rather than trying for the Xfiles.

If the players like that sort of thing, there's nothing wrong with it. Heck, in my CoC games, players ran around with car trunks full of dynamite and shotguns. The main question is if you're still willing to run such a high-powered game. If you're not having fun, switch now because you're only going to switch later.

Hmm... Tried Paranoia? (:


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

[James Hargrove]

<b>Someone starts a troll, and all the Chaosium fanboys start bashing d20.</b>

Jesus H. Christ. Like you're any better... spewing forth more of that fantastic phantom evidence...

<b>statistical analysis that shows that d20 CoC is actually more lethal than regular CoC.</b>

Please. BRP fans are no more guilty of bashing the crap out of other game systems than d20 fans are (I've see <i>you</i> do it a number of times).

So save the high and mighty act for a crowd that might actually be stupid enough to buy it. Thanks.

[AmericanBadass]

I am not trying to stir the pot....I just want to get some answers on how to get my game on track.

I have already come to the conclusion that the only way to have an effective character is to make them (if a professional) at least 6th level.

Any lower is pretty much a useless character....

Here is a prime example of something happened in the second scenario that my group went through.

All level 4:
Agent Yuri AC12 HP23 BAB+3 Pistol Prof/PBR/Rapid SHot
Agent Yolanda AC13 HP 17 BAB+1 No Combat feats
Agent Yanni AC12 HP19 BAB+3 Pistol/Rapid Shot/???

Here is the situation they are sneaking through the offices of a fish plant. The Yuri and Yanni are armed with MP5's (both FBI agents) and Yolanda has a 9mm.

Well they are going down a long hall when a door 50feet away opens and out come 4 Deep Ones. All 3 of them raise their weapons and fire. All 3 players fire 2 full round bursts at the charging deep ones they fire a total of 52 bullets and not one hit!!

The players were mortified...What the Hell!!

I too found this very vexing...it just doesn't make a lot of sense that 2 FBI agents would be so crappy with submachine guns even if they were untrained. Especially when firing at a group coming down a hallway.

The players who are playing Agents Yuri and Yanni both took the Subguns because they didn't want to be outgunned even though they didn't have proficiency with the weapon, so they are started with a -4. They never thought that they would be so inept with them.

This and several other situations like this made it obvious that 4th level wasn't going to make for a believable agent.

If I had the choice I wouldn't start a game with players lower than 7th. Which leads me right back to my original premise...How do you get a character to comply who knows that a shotgun blast isn't likely to kill them?

[AmericanBadass]

As far as the taking 20 thing goes I have always believed there are some things that a character with low levels simply cannot do.

For instance the DC 40 lock. Even if a 5th level locksmith takes 20 he still cannot come close enough to even dream of opening it. A character with a +20 Skill of Locksmith would be barely able to do so and there is no way I would allow him to simply take 20.

To make a good breakfast or write a book report...that's the sort of thing I allow take 20's for. Anything serious I usually disallow.

[Will]

American Badass, you are complaining about problems but unwilling to believe the answers.

Main answer: 7th level is _very very high_. Everyone but you seems to think so. I don't care if the book goes up to 20. Take the fact things are weird as evidence that your logic is flawed.

You want them to be tough, so make them higher level... yet they then are tough. Can't have it both ways.

Realistically, guns frequently miss. A lot. Particularly in live combat situations. Your example was quite reasonable.

So you are ramping up power levels, and then getting high power results because you don't match the opponents.

You also must have missed the comments about grappling and subdual.

If you _really_ want skills to be more significant, I suggest simply increasing base skill points and raising caps. There.


So two answers. One, 7th level is awfully high for regular folk, no matter how long they've been studying. In core D&D, most people can go through entire lives at 1st level.
Second, combat isn't simply hitting/hurting things. There are plenty of maneuvers that can be used to take people down. Mace, grappling, trip, disarm, and so forth. Plenty of ways to handle people of _any_ HP amount.

Addendum:
Note that standard D&D is that a 'reasonable encounter' is scaled to the level of the party. 7th level characters are reasonably matched by 7th level characters (or CR 7 monsters)

[necron99]

Here's a thought for all those using D&D 3e or d20 SRD rules for d20 CoC GET A CLUE and use only the d20 CoC rules as written in that book! They are not exactly the same as the other d20 rules out there. Poof, half the problems are gone at a stroke. Porblems with too many guns? Try a little post 9-11 law enforcement on them. The cops and FBI etc tend to take a dim view of excessive gun play.

[AmericanBadass]

If most people in the world are 1st level then a 20th level person has to be a god.

The main problem with low levels is this.
A 4th level character has just 3 feats.

If you wanted to make a special forces character he would really suck. He could have a maximum amount of feats of 3.
So he would have-
-Rifle
-Point Blank Shot
-Handgun

where are the prerequisite
Demolitions
Knife
Martial Arts
Far Shot
Rapid Shot
Multi Shot
Dodge
ect.

All this stuff is just part of the most basic military training.

Wouldn't a Navy Seal know more than just 3 feats??
And wouldn't he be a decent shot with more than one weapon.
A Navy Seal is a pretty common Delta Green type Character with 3 feats and a +3 BAB hit would be crappy.

A first level soldier with 2 feats is equally crappy with his +1 BAB.


I had one person who wanted to make up a CIA sniper...he tried to see if it was plausible. It wasn't, not until much higher levels.
The feats and attack bonus was just too low to not seem like a total goof.

For instance a 4th level character wants to blaze away at some deep ones. He has the Rapid Shot and Rifle Feats .
So to fire away at the AC15 Deep Ones he would have to roll 19 or better to hit because he has -4 -4 -4 -4 with the weapon (I gave him a +1 because of Dex otherwise he would need 20's to hit).
I see a problem with this....surely a 4th level Navy Seal is not very proficient at all. I am not even going to comment on how automatic weapons make it harder to hit a target...why even have them if this were true.

Thus, if you want to make a professional grade combat character you have to be a decent level.

Is my logic flawed??
I don't know, all I have to go on is gaming experience.

[NPC Eric Carlson]

One method would be to use the vitality/wound point method from SWRPG D20. Critical hits go to straight to wounds which are equal to a pc's con (and it can only be increased by feats in amounts of 3 at a time, like toughness). When you take damage to wounds, you're actually hurt and bleeding (or broken, or burned...etc) instead of just losing some endurance, or combat staying power, which is what losing vitality points are.

Also, there are penalities once you've been wounded and you have to make a fort save whenever wounded to avoid being knocked out.

It makes it possible for a low to moderate con pc to be killed by a single critical hit.

[Will]

Your gaming instincts are to make powerful/credible characters.

And then, having tough characters, you then see them beating threats that aren't tough enough.

Don't you see the disconnect?

No, a seal doesn't need gobs of feats. He can still fight, even without 'far shot' or 'rapid shot'. Having _any_ experience with guns puts him ahead of those with no experience with guns.

You think 1st/4th level characters are crappy, then are startled with the power of 7th level characters. Why not _try_ 1st level characters?? If you want the PCs to be in danger, make them in danger.

You can't have it both ways.

In short, yes, your logic is flawed.

In addition, there are the other points i made about combat.

[Bodde]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
The main problem with low levels is this.
A 4th level character has just 3 feats.

Wouldn't a Navy Seal know more than just 3 feats??
And wouldn't he be a decent shot with more than one weapon.
A Navy Seal is a pretty common Delta Green type Character with 3 feats and a +3 BAB hit would be crappy.

Thus, if you want to make a professional grade combat character you have to be a decent level.

Is my logic flawed??
I don't know, all I have to go on is gaming experience.

No in this respect your logic isnt flawed ...The fact that most combat related skills are feats in CoC d20 makes it very awkward to play a combat profession at low level....a level 1 marine couldnt hit shit and is only proficient with one weapon.....

They should have included some sort of basic weapon feats like the ones for D&D classes. Classes have some basic feats (its embedded in the system of D&D) and they left that out of cthulhu d20 This is a flaw in CoC d20 IMO.

Sollution could be:
Defensive characters receive 2 non-combat feats at first level
Offensive characters are proficient in 2 weapons at first

greetzz
Bodde

[NPC Eric Carlson]

Or just have them fight cultists who are also military or ex-military based on the criteria in terms of levels and feats that you are using.

Of course special forces level characters, if you deem them to be 7th level, will shred cultists, if they are more normal/lower level people. Would probably work the same way in the real world. So to scare them, since they are power gamers, apparently, make them fight opponents that are just as skilled as they are, but that ended up on the evil side.

Power gamers respect and fear brute power. In gunfights, make them aware that they are fighting foes with elite military training, just like they have, and then outnumber and outgun them. Make them have to run away every few encounters on average and make it hard to figure out whether you're in one of the have to run vs. could stay and fight encounters and maybe they'll start to be more cautious and more afraid.

[Radical Authority]

Have you checked out mearls's alternative character templates here (http://mearls.com/cthulhu/coc_charactertemplates.html)? The soldier template may help with some of this.

Other than that I think this underlines the point that CoC d20 is not really so well designed for "balls out" gaming as you first expected. I think the sorts of game you want to play might be better served by Spycraft.

Otherwise, read Will's posts carefully: I think he's isolated your problem to within a millimetre or two.

RA

[edit: because I CAN!]

[Grant]

If most people in the world are 1st level then a 20th level person has to be a god.

Most people in the world aren't even 1st level... 1st level represents player characters. NPC classes typically are not on par with PC classes.

20th level people should be VERY rare in our world. They're also along the lines of action heroes in movies, not real people.


Thus, if you want to make a professional grade combat character you have to be a decent level.

Hmmm... but you're talking about CIA and FBI agents, right? These people are not normally centered around just combat.

They can't be.

Each department has routine tasks that require more than just fighting to get the job done. For example, just look at the FBI's name: Federal Bureau of Investigation. These agents are as much investigators as marksman. And in a game you HAVE to expect that they have devoted part of their training to investigation. The CIA, similarly, functions on gathering information.

From the sound of it you want you character to be more like cinematic action heroes (or at least that's what your players want). Higher level is appropriate for this, but you've also said that you don't feel comfortable running a game above 10th level.

So it sounds like you aren't comfortable running this type of a game in d20.

[AmericanBadass]

If there was a way to be able to get more feats at low levels I would be happy.
I personally (lets pretend I am a Call of Cthulhu character)
am proficient with:

a compond bow-very good in fact...
Rifle-plow hundreds of rounds through my SKS
Shotgun-shot skeet quite a bit back in the day.
Pistol-I go shooting every couple of months with my friends.
and am a great shot out to 300 yards with a 30.06 so Far shot.

That would make me at least 9th level!!
That is if I was a D20 character.
I know this is a stretch but I find it incomprehensible that I am more than a match for a Navy Seal....of any size or shape.


I am not startled with a 7th level characters power level I just have problems with keeping my players honest as far as fearing guns. It is a bit strange to imagine a 40 HP character being able to take 10 or 12 bullets and keep walking.
Maybe the Massive Damage DC15 needs to be upped but I hate changing the rules.

[Bodde]

Originally posted by Will


No, a seal doesn't need gobs of feats. He can still fight, even without 'far shot' or 'rapid shot'. Having _any_ experience with guns puts him ahead of those with no experience with guns.



How does a navy seal at level 1 fight /use weapons if he only has one feat or can be proficient in one weapon?

They didnt take into account that classes in D&D have basic feats (there are no weapon skills in D&D) and they didn't include these when they designed the level advancement (offensive/defensive) or profession rules in CoC d20.

greetzz
Bodde

[Radical Authority]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
If there was a way to be able to get more feats at low levels I would be happy.
I personally (lets pretend I am a Call of Cthulhu character)
an proficient with

a compond bow-very good in fact...
Rifle-plow hundreds of rounds through my SKS
Shotgun-shot skeet quite a bit back in the day.
Pistol-I go shooting every couple of months with my friends.
and am a great shot out to 300 yards with a 30.06 so Far shot.

That would make me at least 9th level!!
That is if I was a D20 character.
I know this is a stretch but I find it incomprehensible that I am more than a match for a Navy Seal....of any size or shape.


I am not startled with a 7th level characters power level I just have problems with keeping my players honest as far as fearing guns. It is a bit strange to imagine a 40 HP character being able to take 10 or 12 bullets and keep walking.
Maybe the Massive Damage DC15 needs to be upped but I hate changing the rules.

Yes, but CoC D20 is a GAME and not REAL LIFE, and is not designed to simulate real life.

CoC D20 is designed to simulate fictional parameters defined in stories by Lovecraft and his followers admirers. They did not write about action heroes who go in with guns blazing - they wrote about timid, bookish people, and CoC D20 is designed to create characters in this mold.

Honestly, your arguments make as much sense as complaining that Merchant Ivory films are shit action movies: they aren't action movies at all. You are using the wrong rules for the game you want to play.

RA

[Harbinger]

I think AB needs to look at the spycraft rules and classes and then add the mythos to a spycraft game. He will be much happier with the results.

[AmericanBadass]

Bodde My point exactly.

A 1st level Navy Seal would be a joke.
With a M16 he would be firing bursts at -7 -7 -7 -7 with the Rapid Shot feat.
So to hit a regular person with an AC13 he would need to roll a 20 to hit with a 12 shot burst....not really the top notch killing machine that the US government turns out.

My contention is that a Navy Seal would be one of the deadliest people in the world....if there are 20th level characters out there in the world then even a 20th level Nuclear Physicist (the greatest mind in the world) would mop the floor with a squad of 1st level Navy Seals having a BAB+10/+5 vs. their measley +1.

There is too a huge discrepency from a first level character to a 20th to justify having level one characters only.
So big of a difference that it is implausable to have characters with Doctorates or Medals of Honor at level 1 -4.

Either there are 20th level characters or there are not.

I think Wizards fully intended there to be characters of 10th level and above....why else would they have put them in the game....just to tease us???

Many of the examples in the book are of 10th level characters.

[gentrification]

Originally posted by Bodde
How does a navy seal at level 1 fight /use weapons if he only has one feat or can be proficient in one weapon?

They didnt take into account that classes in D&D have basic feats (there are no weapon skills in D&D) and they didn't include these when they designed the level advancement (offensive/defensive) or profession rules in CoC d20.

Wouldn't a Navy Seal be a prestiqe class, in any case?

AB, is there some reason why you can't simply lower or eliminate the hit point progression in your game?

[AmericanBadass]

Gentrification you aren't suggesting Epic Level Call of Cthulhu are you??
Wow That would be more balls out...than even anything I would try.

Prestige classes....yeah that makes sense. A soldier would have to go up in level to be able to become a Seal. The only problem with this is that you sign up for the Seals when you are a youngster....you don't go through years of training before you get there.

Maybe Wizards need to come up with Prestige Classes for this game.
So a 10th level or higher CIA agent would go to the Man in Black Prestige class.

I think I am never going to be able to scare my characters with guns....I am just going to have to go Rambo on them or just bring in the Big Monsters.

Fight High Levels with even higher levels....escalation is the only way.

Eventually a 77 point (10th Level-not 7th) Mongo will fall to bullets...it is going to just take like 10 or 15 shotgun blasts before he drops....I think I can live with that. It just seems like a strange concept to have a character surrounded by shotgunners blazing away and just nicking him while he spins and flips like Jackie Chan on Crystal Meth.

I think I got it finally....
Thanks for the commentary.

15th Level Rambo Librarians are a comin':cool:

[gentrification]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Gentrification you aren't suggesting Epic Level Call of Cthulhu are you??
Wow That would be more balls out...than even anything I would try.

No, I was suggesting lowering the hit point progression for PCs -- for example, you start out with your CON in HP and only gain 1-2 HPs per level. Or even 0 HPs per level. You can then have higher level characters who have more feats, and thus can do more stuff, but they're still just as physically fragile as a 1st level character.

For some reason I thought you were already doing epic-level CoC. I'm kind of surprised that hit point escalation has suddenly become an issue for you.

[CPXB]

Why not?

Madness is reasonably common in epic characters. Ajax went made and killed himself, and I think there's substantial reason to think that Odysseus was mad for much of the time he was on Calpyso's island (staring at the sea and crying for ten years sound pretty institutionally depressive to me).

:D

[CPXB]

Since it was sorta missed the first time, I'm gonna post Mearl's alternate templates for CoC, again:

http://mearls.com/cthulhu/coc_charactertemplates.html

Problem about military characters solved!

:D

Otherwise, it seems to me that AB is in a fix. He doesn't want to change the rules, but he's not happy with them. This presents something of a problem, I think.

Other than using the Mearl's templates, he might also think about picking up Spycraft or something like and use the Sanity and magic rules from CoC.

[James Hargrove]

<b>Main answer: 7th level is _very very high_. Everyone but you seems to think so. I don't care if the book goes up to 20. Take the fact things are weird as evidence that your logic is flawed.</b>

Actually, 7th level isn't "very very high". It's reletively low - it hasn't even brushed the median of recommended play levels. What 7th level <i>is</i> though, is incredibly unbalanced - any kind of suspension of disbelief begins to unravel here (by 10th level or so, it's usually gone).

While this isn't a tremendously huge problem in a lot of highe fantasy games (I meet few people who care about maintaining suspension of disbelief in these games), it is a much more noticable problem in games that are supposed to emulate real life on at least some basic level (like CoC is supposed to).

The answer is exactly what a lot of other people have been suggesting - play lower level characters or play BRP. Aside from house-ruling the crap out of d20 CoC, these are the best options available to you.

Or you could buy de Profundis (which is what I'm doing).

[Chris Aylott]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
I too found this very vexing...it just doesn't make a lot of sense that 2 FBI agents would be so crappy with submachine guns even if they were untrained. Especially when firing at a group coming down a hallway.


Sure it does. They're firing an unfamiliar weapon. It's dark. Something horrible is coming at them. What's "really" happening is that they're waving the guns around wildly and screaming and not hitting anything at all. That's exactly what you, I, or the average FBI agent would probably be doing in that situation.

Think about it. That -4 penalty you mention in the next paragraph means that the characters literally don't have a clue what they're doing with this weapon. They're having trouble finding the safety. Of course they're going to miss when they have to use the weapon for real under an incredibly stressful situation. If their characters wanted to actually hit something, they should stuck with the weapon they were trained on at Quantico.

The situation you describe isn't necessarily bad roleplaying. Good horror frequently involves bad choices made by characters who don't know as much as they think they do. Doing dumb things can be great for the game -- but doing something dumb and then whining because you don't like the results is just stupid.

(Oh, and the whole "I don't wanna be outgunned " thing? The correct answer to that is "Tough shit. This is the Cthulhu Mythos. Even if you have nukes, you're outgunned. Deal with it.")

AB, you and your crew really have to decide what game you're playing here. Do you want to do the Monster Mash? If so, that's cool. Delta Green is great for taking the fight to Cthulhu and showing him he made a mistake when decided to take that nap in R'lyeh. That is a perfectly valid and fun way to play Call of Cthulhu, and don't ever let anyone tell you different.

But it's not horror. If you want to run horror, then you and your players need to get used to the idea that the Mythos is a cold, cruel nasty place where even supercompetent characters get eaten like popcorn shrimp. If you want to run horror, then the characters should miss the Deep Ones -- and that's if the Deep ones come through the door at all.

If you really want to run horror, the situation described will never occur. The Deep Ones never come out of the door 50 feet away where they can be conveniently mowed down by gunfire. They come out the door right behind you. They lay an ambush behind the door 50 feet down the corridor.

Or, if you really want to get your players going, the PCs never even see the the Deep Ones in the fish plant. They don't see anything -- until they get back to their cars to find wet footprints around them, and the spark plugs removed from every car, and that's when the real fight starts...

Which is it, American Badass? Do you and your players want to play a horror game, or do you want to do the Monster Mash? You need to decide.

yours,

[James Hargrove]

I was just wondering if any other neutral parties posting on this thread have noticed something... there is a <i>lot</i> of justification going on.

I've seen some perfectly valid criticisms of both BRP and d20 systems on this thread, but the standard reply seems to be along the lines of "Well, it's not <i>really</i> broken - if you do this, this, and this it works just fine.".

I find this rather funny personally - if it ain't broken, then <i>why do you have to fix it</i>? Really, the answer is more obvious than you'd think. It <i>is</i> broken, people just seem to be unable to admit this when it comes to their favorite systems - they think that the damn things are perfect (I'll be the first to admit that I'm not immune to this trap).

So where does it go? Well, obviously, we'll just attack this guy's GMing skills or the quality of his players since there's nothing wrong with the game. Sheesh. There's something wrong with EVERY game and berating the guy who points it out by asking for help is sure as hell not going to fix anything.

So cut it out.

[contracycle]

As BA has already pointed out, it is extremely difficult to convince players that their characters should be fearful, when the cold hard numbers are telling them that they are not in any danger.

I do not belive that original CoC was accidentally written in a very different than D&D; the mechnics were chosen to support the setting. The system produced different kinds of events.

In a problems with d20 thread not long ago, the scenario of characters being arrested by city guards was offered; it was almost identical to the scenario here in which the librarian needed a vanload of cops to go down. I suggest that this is an artifact of the system - the system makes it quite explicit that no single shot from a d6 popgun can lay low the mighty ManWith No Name - because his hp are far, far too high. It is not a plausible threat to the player, even if it should be to the character. Becuase d20 links expertise to damage, a good shot is themselves hard to shoot. This made (some) sense when applied to melee, but sucks bigtime in modelling firefights.

What BadAss is describing is pretty much exactly what I would have expected from d20 CoC; this is a feature, not a bug. It is just, IMO, innnapropriate for such a setting.

Incidentally BA, and to challenge the assertion that all criticism of d20 is based on BRP fandom, why not check out Conspiracy X? It has a very fast, lethal system and is set in much the same environment (so you could probably port an existing campaign). It also has a kick ass build-your-secret-hideout type thing.

So, to look at your 3 agents with MP5's firing at target 50 feet away, Con-X's system would have produced a bit of a bloodbath. If these guys are competent (skills 3-4 in a 1-5 range), most of their rounds would have been on target at such a short distance (prob dif = 3, +1 for burst IIRC, they may not even need to roll to hit, but only for damage).

Different system, different results, different attitude to guns. More taking of cover. More FEAR.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
If there was a way to be able to get more feats at low levels I would be happy.

How about allowing characters to trade 4 skill points for a single feat and vice versa?
Combat characters can now get those extra weapon proficiencies and homo universalis types can get some extra skill points.
If you limit this to 2 feats at 2nd level and 1 every subsequent level it shouldn't be unbalancing, I think (if balance is even a thing to be worried about in a horror game).

[Bradford C. Walker]

I'm still wondering how any character under 10th level has 77 HP.

[Hyena]

Anybody unhappy whith d20 Hit points and firearms rules should look there :

http://www.sleepingimperium.rpghost.com/

They've got interesting alternative rules for hit points (Grim'n gritty hit poinst & combat rules) and firearms. I still have to try them but they look good.

[James Hargrove]

Originally posted by Bradford C. Walker
I'm still wondering how any character under 10th level has 77 HP.

Yeah, this struck me as a bit odd, too. Of course, with all of the house rules that people are suggesting, it wouldn't suprise me if AB had some of his own.

[The Eye]

i think part of the problem with talking about d20 and its ability to reflect realistic things is that d20 is far from realistic. no matter how you slice it, getting better at defense or offense merely because you gain a level is ridiculous.
that is why librarians can kick fbi ass. because through careful study of ancient tomes they instinctively become more powerful.

trying to represent realistic anything with a d20 game is shoehorning it into something it is not. that is for another game system.

so is getting more feats at lower levels.

[Bradford C. Walker]

A BAB of +5 at 10th level isn't that badass. It's less than badass after the -4 non-proficiency penalty. I wouldn't be so quick to bitch about non-combatants being better than combatants in a fight.

[Qusoor]

Ultimately, Badass, it sounds like you're having trouble balancing your balls-outiness. Is it perhaps true that your players are a bit too balls-out for you?

Not to gloat, but have you considered either the Unknown Armies system or Chaosium's BRP?

Unknown Armies points out that your 50% gun skill is not on the shooting range, but how well you do in a dark parking lot with a massive "I'm being shot at" adrenaline rush, some asshole actually popping caps in your direction, and half a dozen car alarms going off in your ear. There really is a big difference.

Skill based systems allow you to come up with a character that has a background, rather than someone who suddenly knows new stuff once he's accumulated enough gold pieces. You want realistic and frightening? Go for a more realistic game system.

[Bodde]

Originally posted by gentrification


Wouldn't a Navy Seal be a prestiqe class, in any case?

AB, is there some reason why you can't simply lower or eliminate the hit point progression in your game?

That would be true if CoC d20 would use classes but it uses professions instead (like the BRP CoC) and therefore I can play a navy seal at lvl one if I want ...

This is why certain professions, which would be prestige classes in D&D but are perfectly playable as starting characters in BRP CoC, are kinda strange (and the fact that there are no profession feats at level 1 offcourse)

They should have stuck with the class system of D&D IMO that would be much more logical. Then use the the skills to detail the profession that belongs to that class

Class-----> Class Feats ---->Profession---> Skills

Greetzz
Bodde

[CPXB]

Also, I was looking at critters from the CoC book and . . . .

Uh, it's pretty hard *not* to challenge a CoC character with critters out of the book. The monsters are pretty tough, particularly when the party doesn't have easy access to magic items.

Take a nightgaunt for instance. Sure, it's got 22 hp. Sure, it's only got an AC of 14. BUT, it has damage reduction 15/+2. It's got acid, cold, electricity and fire resistance of 20. It's <i>tough</i> when the PCs aren't hurling around fireballs and carrying a Hackmaster +12.

A nightgaunt is rather low on the scale of creatures, too.

Want to give the PCs a challenge and remind them that they're not immortal? Dholes. Hunting horrors. Gugs. Gnoph-keh. Colour Out of Space. If you've got a Monster Manual, bust out some of the fiends. Maybe after meeting a balor they won't feel <i>quite</i> so tough.

Against mortals, cultists, etc.? As has been noted, it's a feature of the d20 system that eventually the PCs don't fear people so much. Maybe it's time for the game to move past the beating up cultists and cops phase. Maybe it's time to start meeting a sorcerers -- people roughly their level with a gross indifference to their Sanity scores and spells like Wave of Oblivion, Shriveling, Fist of Yog-Sothoth and Red Sign of Shudde M'ell. Heck, let 'em meet a cabal of such sorcerers with a bunch of cultists.

Play on their weaknesses. Offensive option Cs only have 1 good save. If it's Fort, trying using stuff that requires Ref saves. Even defensive option Cs have one bad save. Again, given the nature of the game, I bet that most of the folks in the party have bad Ref saves. Play with that. Use it.

Looking through the CoC book, I think I'd find it reasonably simple to challenge even high level characters.

Bear in mind, too, that none of this involves bringing in cosmos shattering entities like the Big C or Azathoth -- but that's certainly possible, of course. None of this also bears in mind the debilitating psychological casualties of a ruthless use of SAN rules.

It's <i>easy</i> to fuck up CoC characters.

[Bodde]

My previous post got me thinking .... :D
Class-----> Class Feats ---->Profession---> Skills

For example:

Law Enforcement Class
Level 1: receives Weapon proficiency: Handguns
Follows Offensive character progression
Professions (with the template skills) : Police Officer, Detective, Federal Agent etc

Academic Class
Level 1: skill emphasis feat
Follows Defensive character progression
Professions (with the template skills) Professor, Archeologist, psychologist etc

I could imagine prestige classes like Special forces .....

Would this work?? :rolleyes:

greetzz
Bodde

[Jonny Nexus]

Originally posted by Patrick O'Duffy
Actually, that's not quite what it says.

Player's Handbook, page 61:

"In other words, eventually you will get a 20 if you roll long enough. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20. Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right. Taking 20 takes about twenty times as long as making a single check would take."

What this passage doesn't say is that the character is making sufficient retries to get the maximum possible result. That's certainly a possible explanation of the effect, but it's not explicitly stated.

Another, equally valid interpretation would be that the character simply takes much greater care in performing the task, spending a lot more time, in order to maximize her chances of success.

Well I was reading page 282 of the Players Handbook (general guidelines and glossary) where it says:

"Take 20: To greately reduce the chances of failure for certain skill checks by assuming that a character makes sufficient retries to obtain the maximum possible check result (as if a 20 were rolled on a 1d20 roll).

That seems to be a less ambiguous definition than the one from the main section of the rulebook.

[Varkias]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
A 7th level librarian has 1 attack at +3 vs. the cops who had one attack at +1. The grapple grabs were sometimes successful but Lynda was always able to get free before they could hold in the opposed checks. After while the cops just started clubbing her. It was funny but disturbing in a strange way...sort of like seeing your mother get attacked by 7 cops and knocked out after 5 minutes of clubbing...sort of a Rodney King seal clubbing on Grandma.

How am I doing it wrong?
I only have a 1% knowledge of the system...enlighten me.

There was more than one cop, right? For each additional cop, they get something like a +4 (probably not right - this is off the top of my head) to their grapple checks. It shouldn't be too hard for them to grapple her for at least a short time, and all it takes is one round to do a coup de grace to knock her out.

[Varkias]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
If there was a way to be able to get more feats at low levels I would be happy.
I personally (lets pretend I am a Call of Cthulhu character)
am proficient with:

a compond bow-very good in fact...
Rifle-plow hundreds of rounds through my SKS
Shotgun-shot skeet quite a bit back in the day.
Pistol-I go shooting every couple of months with my friends.
and am a great shot out to 300 yards with a 30.06 so Far shot.

That would make me at least 9th level!!
That is if I was a D20 character.
I know this is a stretch but I find it incomprehensible that I am more than a match for a Navy Seal....of any size or shape.


Okay, you're familiar with all of those weapons - but would you really be proficient in combat with them? There's a huge difference between target shooting, and shooting something while trying not to get hurt from return fire or rushing monsters. I'd guess you'd be lucky to actually be combat proficient with any of them.

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by contracycle
I do not belive that original CoC was accidentally written in a very different than D&D; the mechnics were chosen to support the setting.

No, it was not.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by contracycle
[B] What BadAss is describing is pretty much exactly what I would have expected from d20 CoC; this is a feature, not a bug. It is just, IMO, innnapropriate for such a setting.

It might be what you're expecting, but after months of actual gameplay with d20 CoC, I've found that it's not what you get.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by contracycle
[B] More FEAR.

We lost 6 characters in about three months of play. (Technically, we lost 8, but the last two happened in the very last session so I'm not counting them...)

The last death happened when a 6th level assassin type character failed his Fort Save after taking 12 points of damage. The weapon did 1d10, which is pretty standard for pistols in the game. I rolled a critical, then rolled about average damage for the weapon. Boom. Bye, bye character.

Did the characters fear combat in our d20 CoC game? Yes. Did they fear guns? Yes. Did they fear Mythos creatures? Oh, hell, yes!

Seanchai

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
As far as the taking 20 thing goes I have always believed there are some things that a character with low levels simply cannot do.

For instance the DC 40 lock. Even if a 5th level locksmith takes 20 he still cannot come close enough to even dream of opening it. A character with a +20 Skill of Locksmith would be barely able to do so and there is no way I would allow him to simply take 20.

To make a good breakfast or write a book report...that's the sort of thing I allow take 20's for. Anything serious I usually disallow.

But yet you claim you play by the rules. And you complain that low-level characters are incompetent.

Here's a clue for you. The take 10 and take 20 rules are there to make lower-level character effective. To allow them to operate at the best of their ability on a regular basis. Take 20 is not a 'do easy stuff' rule - it's a rule that allows characters to perform difficult tasks effectively. The take 10 rule is about doing the easy stuff.

For fuck's sake, you won't let the players take 20 on an Open Lock check - a skill that's 100% suitable for this in every single fucking way - and you complain they can't do anything?

If you actually try using the goddamn rules properly - you know, the way they're presented in the bloody rulebook - you might find things changing.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by James Hargrove
I find this rather funny personally - if it ain't broken, then <i>why do you have to fix it</i>? Really, the answer is more obvious than you'd think. It <i>is</i> broken, people just seem to be unable to admit this when it comes to their favorite systems - they think that the damn things are perfect (I'll be the first to admit that I'm not immune to this trap).

I'm certainly not suggesting any rules changes or 'fixes'.

All I'm saying is that if AB actually used the rules as they appear in the frigging rulebook, he wouldn't have these problems.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by Jonny Nexus
That seems to be a less ambiguous definition than the one from the main section of the rulebook.

Hmm. Interesting point.

I still think the 'try 20 times' analogy breaks down if you look at it hard - as I said, that would mean you set off a trap 20 times if you take 20 on a Disable Device check.

But there's certainly ambiguity in the rules text. Damnit.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Patrick O'Duffy
I still think the 'try 20 times' analogy breaks down if you look at it hard - as I said, that would mean you set off a trap 20 times if you take 20 on a Disable Device check.


Well, that's why you can't take 20 on such a check.

[AmericanBadass]

I have decided to stay with 10th level for the ideal Call of Cthulhu professional character level notion.

You may be right about me trying to make the game take place in a realistic world...I just have to let go of that notion. If I want to stick with D20 I will just have to turn my brain down a few notches and just go with the flow.

If you convert a typical Chaosium character they usually end up in the 6 or 7 level range. So this alone should give us a clue the comfort level of the game.

I will just have to live with the fact that a D20 librarian can take the amout of abuse a professional boxer can in the real world. No biggie.

I am going to look into the 77 hit point thing myself....I wish I had Neal's (the players) character sheet....I usually let the players start with maximum hit point up to the starting level with new characters getting the freebies from the original level (ie 4th)....so if he started at 4th he would have 36 (+3HP/16 con). So if he could get 9 per level at 10th he could max out at 90. I guess there is no way to prove he cheated though. It doesn't really matter because I ususally give all my creatures full hit points....it makes it easier to roll up.

I have found the low amount of feats sort of dictates that a higher level character is called for. 1st level characters would be adolescents in my opinion....but what kid has 17 str. I hope there isn't anybody out there that would not see fault with a kid having 17 str.

A 10th Level character has a +7 Fort save so eventually 'she' is going to roll under an 8 eventually and die. The biggest problem I have been having is actually gettin 10 points of damage in one shot on them. A 9mm does 1-10.

Maybe my bad guys should just upgrade to a .44 Magnun or a .45 ACP...the low lethality of the 9mm would become evident eventually. Maybe that has been the problem...the guns I have been using have just been too sucky....BIG GUNS GOOD!

Maybe is should live by my own Balls Out credo....a lot of folks on this site have made me question this.

I have an oldschool friend who has quit gaming with me and my crew because he hates Balls Out style I was trying to get him back with Delta Green-he used to run a Bureau 13 game back in the day. The last time I saw him he told me I was wasting a lot of creativity by playing all these Rambo games.
He is playing stuff like Pendragon and some LARP stuff....

Anyway thanks for all the chatter.
I have decided to just jump on the Balls Out Express and put the pedal to the metal. From here on out its Monster time and Cultists of equal level.

My next dilemma....What level is the typical Mallrat? Basically the scenario I have planned involves a Shopping Mall ala' Dawn of the Dead that a radical Islamic-Shub-tanic group has taken over and is holding hostage. There are 45+ Cultists (who now with my new ideal are like 7th level-with dynamite strapped to their chests) with a mall full of 1st level shoppers. It's gonna be nasty. The Characters are going to be brought in because there have been demons reported by terrified shoppers and a few mangled SWAT team members who tried to infiltrate and were turned back. The cult is planning on sacrificing several hundred people in the central foutain to summon a big nasty.

I just hope if they detonate their suicide bombs that the guy actually dies- I don't want a replay of the diving on a grenade and surviving with a few bruises replay.
A stick of dynamite does 4D6 how many sticks do you think a suicide bundle would entail? That would be really funny if these guys blew up the bombs and when the smoke cleared they were still alive. I guess it is possible...I saw a guy in a Faces of Death video who was still alive after a suicide bomb that he was wearing went off...he was a mess but still alive.

[ced1106]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Any lower is pretty much a useless character....

Here is a prime example of something happened in the second scenario that my group went through. ...

Well they are going down a long hall when a door 50feet away opens and out come 4 Deep Ones. All 3 of them raise their weapons and fire. All 3 players fire 2 full round bursts at the charging deep ones they fire a total of 52 bullets and not one hit!!


Depends on what you mean by useless.

In good ol' CoC, the only really useful skills were Library Search and Oratory. You found the clues, spoke to everyone, and hopefully had a solution before you went in.

How much of your game is combat vs. investigation? If you're just playing D&D "hack and slash" with modern day firearms, rather than fireballs, of course there will be little horror in it.

Although the Delta Green equivalent of Tomb of Horrors might be interesting! (:


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

[NPC Jeremy]

That's my only explanation.

Combat has been shown to be deadly. Mathematically proven. End of argument, so Shut the F___ up about d20 CoC not being deadly enough. If you're saying it's not deadly enough, you're simply lying or being a ____head.

As for things like 1st Level Navy Seals. Well, hello! A Navy Seal would not be a first level character. Of if he were, he wouldn't be much of a Seal. (Seals are basically the elite of the military. They'd be at least 15th level)

Shockingly enough, there is a reason for levels and why first level characters really can't be Navy Seals. Because d20 wants to make it easy for the GM to calculate how tough his PCs are, it uses levels.

A librarian would also almost certainly not be a "Offense Option" PC, but a "Defense Option", which has a lower attack bonus progression.

If you really want to add in military types, I suggest buying Pinnnacles Weird Wars: BOTR, and use military classes from it. It's 90% compatible with d20 CoC anyway.

I would also point out, it's not easy in BRP to make starting characters who are comparable to real life navy seals. You only get a limited among of skills at start. Edu X 10, I think. Plus a bonus if you're a geezer.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
I am going to look into the 77 hit point thing myself....I wish I had Neal's (the players) character sheet....I usually let the players start with maximum hit point up to the starting level with new characters getting the freebies from the original level (ie 4th)....so if he started at 4th he would have 36 (+3HP/16 con). So if he could get 9 per level at 10th he could max out at 90. I guess there is no way to prove he cheated though. It doesn't really matter because I ususally give all my creatures full hit points....it makes it easier to roll up.

Actually, this does matter as it makes weapons less deadly, which makes combats last longer. Exactly the kind of problem you were describing.

[BlackSheep]

Why on Earth would you roll damage for setting off a suicide bomb? Or jumping on a grenade? Or having a sniper bullet go through your head?

If you're going to throw around lethal force, make it lethal. As the GM, you can invoke Rule Zero. And in this it would include ignoring HP completely and just saying that dead is dead.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek


Well, that's why you can't take 20 on such a check.

Checks book...

Damn, you're right. There's a penalty for failure - you can set off the trap accidentally - but that's only pointed out in the main text, not in the 'Retry' line.

Okay, I admit my argument is looking shakier.

However, the cases I mentioned earlier - Appraise, Spellcraft and the others - are still, I think, legitimate examples of 'take more time' over 'do it 20 times'.

Man, we gotta find an official ruling on this one.

[NPC Jeremy]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

A 10th Level character has a +7 Fort save so eventually 'she' is going to roll under an 8 eventually and die. The biggest problem I have been having is actually gettin 10 points of damage in one shot on them. A 9mm does 1-10.

Maybe my bad guys should just upgrade to a .44 Magnun or a .45 ACP...the low lethality of the 9mm would become evident eventually. Maybe that has been the problem...the guns I have been using have just been too sucky....BIG GUNS GOOD!



Very good. You have now grasped why in real life, they make guns bigger than a 9mm. 9mms are not that lethal.

They're even worse in cinema. Ever see Lethal Weapon 2? Mel Gibson gets shot what, 20-30 times with a 9mm at the end, yet survives to make it LW3 & 4 (though I bet he wishes he hadn't)

Still, even so, 9mms have a 10% chance of doing enough damage to make someone roll a fort save (more actually, once you factor in criticals), so once again, it's pretty obvious you are clearly just trolling and lying through your teeth. I also suspect that in fact you are not an American, but are in fact European, probably French.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
I am going to look into the 77 hit point thing myself....I wish I had Neal's (the players) character sheet....I usually let the players start with maximum hit point up to the starting level with new characters getting the freebies from the original level (ie 4th)....so if he started at 4th he would have 36 (+3HP/16 con). So if he could get 9 per level at 10th he could max out at 90. I guess there is no way to prove he cheated though. It doesn't really matter because I ususally give all my creatures full hit points....it makes it easier to roll up.


So you're deliberately loading up characters and creatures with maximum hit points - and then complaining that combats take too long?

I give up.

[AmericanBadass]

Ced
As far as how much investigation vs. combat ratio in my game....I would say probably 40-60 with the 40% being combat.

The group has actually suprised me a few times by not blazing away when I thought they would. I actually did a red herring mission whos antagonists were just a bunch of kids who took Vampires the Masqurade far too seriously.
I would have thought they would have thought it was the work of vampires...they followed up the clues and did a fine investigation, instead of sharpening stakes, filling fire extinguishers full of Holy Water and buying crossbows.

I make some missions gun bunny-ish and some Xfiles...just to mix it up and keep things from bogging down. It is Delta Green after all...not Call of Cthulhu regular. The characters represent the Government, and to do that does often involve using force.


As far as the firing 52 bullets and missing....I will not have this problem with higher level characters, because they will have a much higher BAB and the proper weapon prof's.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Patrick O'Duffy


Checks book...

Damn, you're right. There's a penalty for failure - you can set off the trap accidentally - but that's only pointed out in the main text, not in the 'Retry' line.

Okay, I admit my argument is looking shakier.

However, the cases I mentioned earlier - Appraise, Spellcraft and the others - are still, I think, legitimate examples of 'take more time' over 'do it 20 times'.

Man, we gotta find an official ruling on this one.

This is actually a pretty common cause of confusion and has been answered in Dragon's Sage Advice. You can find a link to the text from that article at page 5 of this thread (I was having the same discussion with Grant).

Like I said there, I personally feel that taking 20 (or 10) should indeed be allowed when researching something (i.e. in non-hostile conditions, with the right books, etc.) though it will take a while (I'm thinking of 1d6 hours for taking 10 and 1d6 days for taking 20. Less if you've got access to modern information handling technology like computers).

[AmericanBadass]

Taking 20 is probably one of the rules I ignore the most.

A lot of situations can have possible negatives for failure that aren't actually thought of. I use "Take 20" for looking up phone numbers not under duress and such usually.

WuTang Man you brough up the point that picking a lock wouldn't have any negatives....I would have to disagree on that.
You could snap off a pick and really screw up the lock...thus alerting the person who you are breaking into's abode or office that somebody has been inside. If you screw up the lock and still want to get in you are left with the only option of kicking in the door....there goes your stealthy entry.

The same thing would also apply to the DC40 uber-lock. Something that complex would be easy to mess up....so this would support my no low level locksmith/theif would be able to crack this baby. He would have to have at least a +20 in Locksmith to even dream of getting past this lock.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Taking 20 is probably one of the rules I ignore the most.

And that's your problem right there. You ignore big chunks of the rules, pulling out vital checks and balances, and then complain that you can't make the tattered remnants of the system work for you.

WuTang Man you brough up the point that picking a lock wouldn't have any negatives....I would have to disagree on that.
You could snap off a pick and really screw up the lock...thus alerting the person who you are breaking into's abode or office that somebody has been inside. If you screw up the lock and still want to get in you are left with the only option of kicking in the door....there goes your stealthy entry.

You mentioned you 'played by the rules', right?

Well, Open Lock doesn't have that kind of 'critical fumble' rule attached to it. Disable Device does - you can set a trap off while trying to disarm it. But Open Lock doesn't.

(Is that realistic? Not 100%, sure. But having something catastrophic happen while picking a lock is so unlikely that it falls under the probability threshold of the d20 system, just as it does for most RPGs.)

So which is it, AB? Do you play by the rules, or do you pull new modifiers and obstacles out of your arse that fuck up the flow of the game?

The same thing would also apply to the DC40 uber-lock. Something that complex would be easy to mess up....so this would support my no low level locksmith/theif would be able to crack this baby. He would have to have at least a +20 in Locksmith to even dream of getting past this lock.

You're right, he would need a total bonus of +20 - and then he could take 20 and get the lock open, taking 2 minutes to pick it.

That's how the rule's meant to work, godfuckit. When you're that good, you don't fail if you have enough time to get things right.

Why do you insist on robbing the characters of all their non-combat advantages?
Why do you insist on pumping up everyone's in-combat advantages?
And why do you complain when this produces exactly the kind of effects one could predict?

[AmericanBadass]

Taking 20 and or not taking 20 never has really affected anything as far as gameplay goes. I always thought that to take 20 the task attempted had to have no negative consequences, that on a lot of occascions is a DM judgement call.

Even making Flapjacks could have negative consequences, if for instance a crazy cultist hallucinating will see something evil if the flapjack is not perfectly round. "THE PANCAKE COMMANDS ME TO KILL!!" if he sees a Mythos shape perchance in them or the side of the pancake looks like a mouth that speaks to him. So the frycook couldn't take 20 on this particular order of Flapjacky Yummy Goodness.

I know this is a stretch, but I think taking 20 is mostly a DM's tool to speed things up and avoid unnecessary snags with skill rolls.
I think this rule may have been a fix for low level low skill people.
If a 1st level frycook had to roll a DC13 to not burn the grilled cheese constantly. A Cook skill of +2 or +3 would lead to a hell of a lot of charred cheezy sammichs:) .



As far as the critical fumble thing...when I had my Renault a piece of plastic got caught in the trunk lock. I tried to get it out...and guess what....I totally ruined the damn thing.

Definately a negative consequence....and if I had a chainsaw locked in the trunk and some baddies were going to arrive at the cabin in a few hours...I'd say that was a non-Take 20 situation.

I think the DM should be in charge of when and if he allows a take 20 or not.

Most of the time I never require rolls for routine things anyway.
The Chaosium system was sort of the same way...you never had to roll unless it was something particular difficult.

Example- A janitor need not roll to clean a reqular toilet. A roll would be required for him to clean the left over sludge of a mythos beastie who died on the can....Ewwww Shoggoth Lord Poo Splatter:eek:

[braincraft]

Now, that's a double-flusher if ever I heard of one.

[ced1106]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

As far as how much investigation vs. combat ratio in my game....I would say probably 40-60 with the 40% being combat.

Gotcha. Good to hear it. I use a catharcic (sp) combat scene, and end with a climactic one, but that's just me. Are the players and yourself enjoying this ratio? That's what's most important.

As far as the firing 52 bullets and missing....I will not have this problem with higher level characters, because they will have a much higher BAB and the proper weapon prof's.

k -- From the rest of the post I deleted and your willingness to work out the mechanics, it looks like you're doing fine. It also looks like you're doing **many** different things, so, of course, you'll run into more problems (read: new situations) than a GM who sticks to a formula (like myself, lol).

So I'm thinking, rather than focusing on fixing problems, what works in your games? What part of it create satisfying adventures for the players? For yourself?


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

[contracycle]

Originally posted by NPC Jeremy

Very good. You have now grasped why in real life, they make guns bigger than a 9mm. 9mms are not that lethal.

Lol!!

[contracycle]

Just a point on the max-HP's thing: that used to be a fairly well known AD&D option IIRC, although I never used it myself. I knew of groups that did, tho, and so I don't think that BA is necessarily being totally absurd. I might, however, recommend that BA stop rolling for damage but just apply max damage in order to restore the balance, somewhat.

Lastly, I think it's rather odd to see people insisting that BA play strictly by the book - after all, on other threads people argued long and hard that those who did not like the system as writ were simply stupid for failing to modify it to their tastes. Now, someone has made some minor mods and is being pilloried for not going strictly by the orthodoxy.

[Will]

I think it's odd for someone to claim a system is broken when they altered it and ignore many the rules.

I think it's odd to lump people together as an amorphous 'pro this' or 'anti that'.

A number of posters heard 'combat isn't dangerous enough' and immediately started sounding the 'D20 CoC sucks' drum. To his credit, AmericanBadass may have thought the system wasn't working right, but did not strongly claim so (as far as I recall)

So, after many many posts, it turns out he's ignoring a few rules as inconvenient and house ruling factors that affect combat. Whether or not the system is one thing or another, these factors at the very least exacerbate the problem.

It is extremely disingenuous to claim these are 'minor mods'. Giving people effectively twice normal HP and then thinking they are too tough? Ignoring 'take 20' rules and then being dissatisfied with how successful skills can be, thus deciding people should be higher level... changing the sense of what 'normal' is from the base system?

I can understand AmericanBadass' decisions. This is one of the problems with house rules... they often have unintended effects.

In fact, given his house rules, I would simply increase factors to match. Everyone has max HP? Double weapon damage across the board, though I would also double massive damage level to 20. Levels are higher so PCs are credible? Increase levels of opponents to make them credible, too.

Simple and should probably preserve how he's changed things.

[BlackSheep]

Originally posted by contracycle
Lastly, I think it's rather odd to see people insisting that BA play strictly by the book - after all, on other threads people argued long and hard that those who did not like the system as writ were simply stupid for failing to modify it to their tastes. Now, someone has made some minor mods and is being pilloried for not going strictly by the orthodoxy.

Because the effects he's comlaining about have been caused by the modifications he has made.

For example, if I wanted to speed up combat in Aberrant, I could rule that instead of rolling X damage dice you just did X damage. But if I then complained that combat in Aberrant was too lethal, I would be totally unjustified.

Similarly, AB is using characters which are by the scale of the game extremely high level, and then complaining that they are too powerful. He is giving them max HP instead of rolling, and then complaining that they can take too much damage. He is requiring them to be combat experts in a variety of weapons, and then complaining that they win gunfights. He is disallowing the Take 20 rule in any but the most trivial instances, and then complaining that low-level characters are too incompetent.

What's a CoC character doing with an 18 CON anyway? That's the level of the toughest human being in the world. Walter from the Mask. Buffy Summers. David Dunne from Unbreakable. People that get rammed with cars or shot or half-drowned or beaten down and get back up again. Of course this character can soak up a ridiculous amount of punishment. That's what a CON 18 means, especially at tenth level. If you want 'realism', use averaged d6s (2-3-3-4-4-5) for rolling stats.

[contracycle]

Originally posted by BlackSheep


Because the effects he's comlaining about have been caused by the modifications he has made.


I don't think thats really the case - so instead of taking on a whole vanload of cops, the mild mannerd librarian is nailed by half a vanload of cops. Big deal.

It may be that BA has aggravated the situation with his house rules, but the problem is inherent to the system, and always has been. It doesn't matter HOW a character gets to 77hp - the problem is exactly as expressed byt hr subject line: how do you threaten them once they are there? They can fall of a significant height and KNOW, absolutely, that it poses no functional danger. They can charge into a hail of bullets and know, objectively, that they will be OK.

In order to make them susceptible to danger - having low HP - makes them crap attackers too and makes them whiff a lot. Now they can be threatened - but are necessarily not powerful. And here BA hits his dilemma: if he nominates a high level, so the characters can be plausibly effective, they have high HP and are hard to threaten. If he nominates a low level, they have low HP but can't shoot for shit. There is no satisfactory compromise in the system.

Yes I agree that upping the HP to max and so forth has made the situation worse, more pronounced - but the problem is inherently an artifact of the mechanical design. My own house-rule patch to address this issues was to give primary combat characters a +1 damage bonus per level, secondary combat characters the same every two levels, and tertiary combat characters every 3 levels. I applied the same to monsters: as a result, individual attacks resolved by the dice were more threatening, more dangerous. But eventually even this was not enough of a solution for me. Ultimately, IMO you have to detach Skill from Survivability to handle missile combat properly.

[CPXB]

I was actually converting one of my experienced BRP CoC characters to d20 CoC characters to see what a fight would actually look like when I found that by the BRP-to-d20 conversion rules a 99% in a skill is equal to 10 ranks in that skill. That would make the character a maximum of 7th level.

What this is apropos of? I dunno. But it feels important to the discussion. :)

[CPXB]

I sorta think it's a canard that combat in BRP is more lethal than d20 CoC, even at pretty high levels.

My oldest CoC had a Dodge score of 92% -- it started high, at 80%, I think. His highest skill is Occult at 93%. Let's call that 9 ranks of Occult, therefore making the C 6th level. He has 12 hp in BRP. He has 65% in Pistol in BRP. Very average physical abilities, otherwise.

In d20, he got lucky and has 32 hp. I made him as a defense option C, giving him good saves in Fort and Will. Due to his abilities, he has a Fort save of +7, a Will save of +10 and a Ref save of +2. I gave him Weapon Proficiency (pistol), so he has a +3 to hit. His AC is a mind blowing 10. Yep. AC 10. To represent his high Dodge ability in BRP, I gave him Expertise and Dodge.

So, let's figure the characters going into a "hail of bullets." We'll presume that there are 10 crooks with 12 gauge shotguns. In BRP they'll all have 11 hp and Shotgun 55% with a Dodge of 50%. In d20 they'll have 6 hp, offense option and the relative proficiency -- they'll have a +1 to hit, with their otherwise average abilities.

Let's give the thugs initiative in both systems.

As the ten open fire in BRP, uh, the odds are they'll all miss. Every last damn one of them. 92% dodge, woo woo. Statistically speaking, the shotgun does an average of 14 points in BRP per hit. The odds of the crooks hitting are 8% of 55% -- the odds of a hit are 4.4% -- or, looking at it another way, each shotgun will do 4.4% of 14 points of damage each round. So, on average, per round, my C will take .6 points of damage per person, per round, or 6 points of damage a round. Statistically, my C will last 2 rounds.

As the ten open fire in d20, on the first round alone my C will be hit with 55% of the shots. No dodge roll. The shotgun, in d20, does an average of 10.5 points of damage per hit. So my character will take, on average 55% of 10.5 points of damage per person on the first round -- or 5.8 points of damage per person, per round, for 58 points of damage on the first round. In short, my character lasts, on average, about 2/3rds a round.

Even if my C had, say, 77 hp and could theoretically survive the first round of combat he also has the trouble that about 3/5th of those shotgun hits would call for massive damage checks. The odds are my C would have to make 3 massive damage checks in one round -- with a +7 Fort save, my C has a 60% of success for each save, but to make three the odds drop to 21.6%.

So, again, the odds are I'm dead in the first around.

This is just one way to look at things. In BRP, what would probably happen is my character would either live unscathed or die in one hit. But he'd actually have a pretty good chance to live unscathed. The odds of my BRP C surviving one shotgun hit are about 40%. In d20, there's a good chance (about an 80% chance) of my C surviving any one shotgun hit. My BRP character has a really infinitesmial chance of surviving 2 shotgun hits, whereas my d20 C has a pretty good chance (around 50%) of surviving 2 shotgun hits.

The difference is the number of times the characters will be hit. In BRP, the odds of my C being hit with a shotgun at close range is extremely poor -- literally 4.4%. In d20, the odds of my C getting hit is pretty good -- about 55%. Even factoring in Dodge and Expertise, one person would have a 35% of hitting and the rest would have a 40%.

Furthermore, this is assuming first level thugs. Higher level thugs in d20 just hit more often. For instance, give them a Dex of 14 and make them fourth level and they have a +5 to hit. This means even with Dodge and Expertise the odds of them hitting me leapt to 55% and 60% per shot -- and they'd have a wicked 75% chance of hitting on that dreadful first round. (Furthermore, remember that using Expertise also screws my character if he ever survives to attack.)

In BRP, even cranking the skill of the thugs to 99% yields a 7.9% chance of actually shooting my C. In short, the best marksman in the world is very unlikely to hit my character at point-blank range.

Is BRP <i>really</i> any better to simulate realistic combat, given the best marksman in the world has a 7.9% chance of hitting my character at point-blank range?

In my opinion, d20 combat is ultimately more lethal than BRP combat. At least in CoC. It certainly has a different feel. The characters will get hit more often in d20 but the hits will mean less -- as opposed to just dodging everything that comes at you.

I know that this has a touch of the straw man. What if your C <i>doesn't</i> have a Dodge score of 92%? What if your C has a Dodge score of, say, 20%?

Well, to that I say that we're talking experienced characters. At low levels, d20 is <i>definitely</i> more lethal than BRP. The weapon damage is comparable and the Cs in d20 only have 6 freaking hit points! To about third level, hit point totals in BRP are somewhat higher or the same as in d20.

(And, by the by, assuming Dodge gets used successfully every other game session, a character with a Dodge of 20% would have it up to about 54%, statistically speaking, after 24 game sessions that it would take to get a C to 6th level. This is pretty normal in CoC, I think.)

To my eyes, it's a canard to say that BRP is either more realistic or less lethal than d20. The area of their cinema is different, certainly. In BRP, the Cs are in John Woo movies where they can dodge hails of bullets. In d20 they all become, eventually, John McClanes and can take a hundred hits.

To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to, to me.

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by CPXB
I was actually converting one of my experienced BRP CoC characters to d20 CoC characters to see what a fight would actually look like when I found that by the BRP-to-d20 conversion rules a 99% in a skill is equal to 10 ranks in that skill. That would make the character a maximum of 7th level.

What this is apropos of? I dunno. But it feels important to the discussion. :)

This is actually something that more people need to be aware of: At low levels, CoC D20 is far more deadly than CoC BRP. In the mid-levels (5th to 8th) you're looking at a comparable experience. At the high levels (10th+) you've slipped into pulp.

That's why the CoC rules discuss alternative XP schemes -- because the designers are cognizant that the play styles at 1st are radically different than the play styles at 20th, and many people who are interested in one will not be interested in the other.

This is one of the big advantages of the D20 system: It is extremely robust, and is capable of handling power levels both paltry (1st level) and superhuman (20th level).

(Of course, in CoC, even superhuman isn't enough to save you. <G>)

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon


This is actually something that more people need to be aware of: At low levels, CoC D20 is far more deadly than CoC BRP. In the mid-levels (5th to 8th) you're looking at a comparable experience. At the high levels (10th+) you've slipped into pulp.

Which brings to mind something one of my players said: BRP characters begin more advanced than d20 ones. He said that a 3rd level d20 character was about the same as a starting BRP character.

Seanchai

[BlackSheep]

Originally posted by CPXB
To my eyes, it's a canard to say that BRP is either more realistic or less lethal than d20. The area of their cinema is different, certainly. In BRP, the Cs are in John Woo movies where they can dodge hails of bullets. In d20 they all become, eventually, John McClanes and can take a hundred hits.

I thikn it's generally taken as less 'dodging bullets' than 'difficulty hitting a moving target in a stressful situation'. It's been frequently suggested that in real combat situations even experts miss a lot more often than you'd expect.

Likewise, it has been suggested that HP in d20 can represent dodging rather than taking faceful after faceful of lead. However, this has the problem of dodging 'running out' as the combat or session goes on. Could represent fatigue, I suppose. Is this what the Vitality/Health thing is supposed to reflect?

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by contracycle
It doesn't matter HOW a character gets to 77hp - the problem is exactly as expressed byt hr subject line: how do you threaten them once they are there?

This was answered over and over again: with guns, with sinister cultists, with Mythos creatures, etc..

Originally posted by contracycle
They can fall of a significant height and KNOW, absolutely, that it poses no functional danger. They can charge into a hail of bullets and know, objectively, that they will be OK.

No, they cannot - because there's a good chance that it won't be okay. Even a 20th level with the best Con possible can fail Fort Save checks a few times out of twenty.

Seanchai

[contracycle]

Originally posted by Seanchai


No, they cannot - because there's a good chance that it won't be okay. Even a 20th level with the best Con possible can fail Fort Save checks a few times out of twenty.


Sure. SO every now and then, while leaping over tall buildings, someone falls and dies. Shit happens. But do you then become afraid because it MIGHT happen? No, because you have confidence that it PROBABLY won't happen; it is surprising, not frightening. If the objective is to instill fear, then it must be threatening every time, not just occasionally.

I also think CPXB misses the point somewhat. Sure, at any flat level, you can construct such a model and to an extent calculate the probable lethality of any given exchange. But that is not really the problem IMO - the problem is the relationship between active competence and survivability; d20 links these inextricably together and it is THAT component which introduces the weirdness. You can/could balance the game as you wanted at any particular moment - but over time, your balancing will get steadily further and further out of kilter, in my experience, as characters develop.

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Seanchai


Which brings to mind something one of my players said: BRP characters begin more advanced than d20 ones. He said that a 3rd level d20 character was about the same as a starting BRP character.

Seanchai

I didn't actually say this. I said that a 3rd level d20 C has about as many hp as a beginning CoC C, hehe.

Mind you, it's <i>true</i> that a beginning BRP C is about a 3rd level d20 C, but I didn't specifically <i>say</i> that. :D

[CPXB]

Originally posted by BlackSheep


I thikn it's generally taken as less 'dodging bullets' than 'difficulty hitting a moving target in a stressful situation'. It's been frequently suggested that in real combat situations even experts miss a lot more often than you'd expect.

Likewise, it has been suggested that HP in d20 can represent dodging rather than taking faceful after faceful of lead. However, this has the problem of dodging 'running out' as the combat or session goes on. Could represent fatigue, I suppose. Is this what the Vitality/Health thing is supposed to reflect?

In AD&D, hit points have always represented "intangibles" such as luck and stuff. People with high hit points tend not to get as badly wounded, though toughness certainly plays a part.

[Chris Aylott]

You can/could balance the game as you wanted at any particular moment - but over time, your balancing will get steadily further and further out of kilter, in my experience, as characters develop.


Why? The system specifically encourages you to develop new challenges that are a good match for more powerful characters. There are new and more powerful challenges to introduce, and there are mechanics to scale up existing challenges.

What I'm having real trouble understanding here is why people find the following concepts so difficult:

a) Challenge levels go up to match the increasing abilities of the PCs. The game is built on the concept of encountering bigger and nastier problems over time.

b) You don't have to kill a high-powered character in one shot. If you want to mess up high-powered characters, you wear them down over time -- as the game goes on you make them use up resources, one of which is hit points, until they're going into the biggest challenge of the game with little more than their own wits to work with.

These are fundamental concepts in D&D. They're fundamental concepts in a lot of other entertainments. They may not be "realistic", but the last time I checked there was no such thing as Delta Green or Cthulhu either. So what's so hard to get about these two basic design principles?

yours,

[Gravity's Angel]

I haven't bothered to read all 10 pages of thread yet, but I'm sure someone has already suggested this: why not threaten the character with something that will make them indefinitely insane? Doesn't CoCd20 use sanity rules? All you need to do is lose 1/5 of your SAN at once, right?

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by contracycle


Sure. SO every now and then, while leaping over tall buildings, someone falls and dies. Shit happens.

Well, if you're leaping over a building, fall off a cliff, drop out of an airplane, etc., it's pretty damn likely that the falling damage would kill even a character with 180 hit points (the maximum possibly).

Originally posted by contracycle
But do you then become afraid because it MIGHT happen?

Every time. It might happen every time.

Originally posted by contracycle
No, because you have confidence that it PROBABLY won't happen; it is surprising, not frightening. If the objective is to instill fear, then it must be threatening every time, not just occasionally.

If you're talking about Mythos verus mundane, then the chances of it happening increase significantly.

Seanchai

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by CPXB


I didn't actually say this.

I know. I wrote: "Which brings to mind something one of my players said..."

Seanchai

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by Chris Aylott
b) You don't have to kill a high-powered character in one shot. If you want to mess up high-powered characters, you wear them down over time -- as the game goes on you make them use up resources, one of which is hit points, until they're going into the biggest challenge of the game with little more than their own wits to work with.

And I'd actually argue that this is a tried-and-true method of horror. Characters in horror stories very rarely die in a sudden, blinding flash. They are driven slowly and inexorably to the brink.

Scared is not perpetually having 5 hp and being on the brink of death. Scared is being reduced to 5 hp and on the brink of death.

I know sadistic GMs love the idea of Cthulhu appearing and wiping characters out with a snap of his fingers. But that doesn't make for effective horror. And if that's all your CoC games are, then your CoC games must be dreadfully boring.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Infinity Ranger]

NPC Jeremy said...

"As for things like 1st Level Navy Seals. Well, hello! A Navy Seal would not be a first level character. Of if he were, he wouldn't be much of a Seal. (Seals are basically the elite of the military. They'd be at least 15th level)"


Its quite possible to become a Navy SEAL without ever having been in combat. How do such individuals gain the points needed to become 15th level? Can d20 CoC PCs (without any combat experience) enter play at 15th level? How is this handled by the rules?

Infinity Ranger

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by Infinity Ranger
How is this handled by the rules?



The GM says, "Start at 15th level," then you create a character with all the benefits of a character at 15th level.

Seanchai

[CPXB]

Originally posted by contracycle

I also think CPXB misses the point somewhat. Sure, at any flat level, you can construct such a model and to an extent calculate the probable lethality of any given exchange. But that is not really the problem IMO - the problem is the relationship between active competence and survivability; d20 links these inextricably together and it is THAT component which introduces the weirdness. You can/could balance the game as you wanted at any particular moment - but over time, your balancing will get steadily further and further out of kilter, in my experience, as characters develop.

It's true that in d20, improved survivability is inextriably linked. I'm not sure that this produces weirdness, normally, however.

Sheesh, I've rewritten this response about five times, now, hehe.

I think I was just saying that BRP also has it's fair share of absurdity in it. When selecting which system to use, it is my opinion that you've got to choose between the regular, steady progression of hp and base attack bonus, on one hand, and dealing with the C with Dodge 95% and Luck 90% on the other.

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by contracycle
Just a point on the max-HP's thing: that used to be a fairly well known AD&D option IIRC, although I never used it myself. I knew of groups that did, tho, and so I don't think that BA is necessarily being totally absurd.

I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with what's being done. But if you take Option A (which makes your characters twice as likely to survive on average), then when your characters become twice as likely to survive you should not be scratching your head and wondering why.

Lastly, I think it's rather odd to see people insisting that BA play strictly by the book - after all, on other threads people argued long and hard that those who did not like the system as writ were simply stupid for failing to modify it to their tastes. Now, someone has made some minor mods and is being pilloried for not going strictly by the orthodoxy.

Except what he's actually saying is, "I changed A so that B happens. Now B is happening. Why is B happening? I don't understand. What can I do to stop B from happening?"

It doesn't matter HOW a character gets to 77hp - the problem is exactly as expressed byt hr subject line: how do you threaten them once they are there?

With threats that can do 77 hp of damage. (And, note, that the Massive Damage rule means that you should always feel threatened by an attack which can do more than 10 hp of damage -- because death is only two die rolls away.)

Realize that to realistically have 77 hp (with the modifications) you need to be at least 10th level. (Con of 18 with average hit points.) At 10th level, you're entering a pulp level of play -- so threats will be less credible.

If you don't want to play at a pulp level, that's fine. But if that's the case, then you don't need to worry about characters with 77 hp.

They can fall of a significant height and KNOW, absolutely, that it poses no functional danger.

Any fall of more than 10' can result in instant death in CoC -- no matter how many hit points you have. I don't think the fact that 3rd level characters are "immune" from 10' falls killing them is a major flaw.

In order to make them susceptible to danger - having low HP - makes them crap attackers too and makes them whiff a lot. Now they can be threatened - but are necessarily not powerful. And here BA hits his dilemma: if he nominates a high level, so the characters can be plausibly effective,

I don't agree with your premise. A character with:

Dex 14
Weapon Focus (gun)
2nd Level Offensive Option

Has a +5 to their attack rolls. Far from being unable to "shoot for shit", such a character is performing at a level comparable to trained marksman (such as police officers, soldiers, etc.) in the real world.

Sure. SO every now and then, while leaping over tall buildings, someone falls and dies. Shit happens. But do you then become afraid because it MIGHT happen?

Here's an interesting question: Does anyone know what the probability of getting hit by a bullet and not dying is? IE, out of X people who are shot once, how many die?

I know that of cases which reach the hospital successfully, the number who actually die is surprisingly low to many (10-15% according to statistics I've seen), but I don't know how that compares to the field.

Frankly, I don't think D20 CoC is that far off of reality in the probability of a gunshot being lethal.

JB

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Seanchai
Well, if you're leaping over a building, fall off a cliff, drop out of an airplane, etc., it's pretty damn likely that the falling damage would kill even a character with 180 hit points (the maximum possibly).


I haven't actually read everything in my CoC20 book yet and this is definately a nitpick, but unless I'm mistaken you can have a CON score of 23 at 20th level which means you can theoretically have 240 hp (more if you use magic).
A more relevant issue is the fact that falling damage caps out at 10d6 points. This of course means that strictly by the rules a level 10+ character has a definite chance of suviving extreme falls (even with the massive damage rule).
Of course a level 10+ character is truly exceptional and humans can potentially survive extreme falls (Vesna Vulovic, a Yugoslavian air hostess, survived a fall of 33330 feet after the DC-9 she flew in exploded. Just look it up at http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/ if you don't believe me.)

Originally posted by Infinity Ranger
NPC Jeremy said...

"As for things like 1st Level Navy Seals. Well, hello! A Navy Seal would not be a first level character. Of if he were, he wouldn't be much of a Seal. (Seals are basically the elite of the military. They'd be at least 15th level)"


Its quite possible to become a Navy SEAL without ever having been in combat. How do such individuals gain the points needed to become 15th level? Can d20 CoC PCs (without any combat experience) enter play at 15th level? How is this handled by the rules?

IMO 15th level is way too high even for a truly exceptional SEAL. Such levels should be reserved for pulp games.

[NPC]

<b>Combat has been shown to be deadly. Mathematically proven. End of argument</b>

Again, please <i>post a link</i> to this proof that you keep talking about, but fail to produce.

<b>If you're saying it's not deadly enough, you're simply lying or being a ____head.</b>

Or perhaps its not deadly enough.... for American Badass. In case you haven't realized, you complete fucktard, "deadly enough" is a completely subjective criteria. What may be deadly enough for you might not be deadly enough for AB. Simple truth.

<b>As for things like 1st Level Navy Seals. Well, hello! A Navy Seal would not be a first level character. Of if he were, he wouldn't be much of a Seal. (Seals are basically the elite of the military. They'd be at least 15th level)</b>

I know some incredibly inept Navy Seals that I wouldn't hire to mow my lawn, let alone save my country. Not all Navy Seals are elite - hell, not all special forces troops are elite - there are a lot of flunkies that fall through the cracks.

<b>Shockingly enough, there is a reason for levels and why first level characters really can't be Navy Seals. Because d20 wants to make it easy for the GM to calculate how tough his PCs are, it uses levels.</b>

So how exactly does disallowing 1st level Navy Seals make it easier for a GM to calculate power levels of characters? News flash, genius - <i>it doesn't</i>. That is just the worst strawman argument that I've ever seen.

<b>A librarian would also almost certainly not be a "Offense Option" PC, but a "Defense Option", which has a lower attack bonus progression.</b>

Perhaps you have a librarian that is a retired MP (Military Police, not Magic Pink)? That might qualify for an "Offense Option". And if this was an FBI librarian, I'd like to point out that all FBI agents (reguardless of job position) must undergo combat training at Quantico.

<b>If you really want to add in military types, I suggest buying Pinnnacles Weird Wars: BOTR, and use military classes from it. It's 90% compatible with d20 CoC anyway.</b>

And after spending a whole post berating somebody, you want to offer them a suggestion? I'm dumbfounded.

</b>I would also point out, it's not easy in BRP to make starting characters who are comparable to real life navy seals. You only get a limited among of skills at start. Edu X 10, I think. Plus a bonus if you're a geezer.</b>

It's no harder than d20. If you'd actually tried to do it, you'd know this.

[James Hargrove]

<b>Combat has been shown to be deadly. Mathematically proven. End of argument.</b>

Again, please post a link to this proof that you keep talking about, but fail to produce.

<b>If you're saying it's not deadly enough, you're simply lying or being a ____head.</b>

Or perhaps its not deadly enough.... for American Badass. In case you haven't realized, you complete fucktard, "deadly enough" is a completely subjective criteria. What may be deadly enough for you might not be deadly enough for AB. Simple truth.

<b>As for things like 1st Level Navy Seals. Well, hello! A Navy Seal would not be a first level character. Of if he were, he wouldn't be much of a Seal. (Seals are basically the elite of the military. They'd be at least 15th level)</b>

I know some incredibly inept Navy Seals that I wouldn't hire to mow my lawn, let alone save my country. Not all Navy Seals are elite - hell, not all special forces troops are elite - there are a lot of flunkies that fall through the cracks.

<b>Shockingly enough, there is a reason for levels and why first level characters really can't be Navy Seals. Because d20 wants to make it easy for the GM to calculate how tough his PCs are, it uses levels.</b>

So how exactly does disallowing 1st level Navy Seals make it easier for a GM to calculate power levels of characters? News flash, genius - it doesn't. That is just the worst strawman argument that I've ever seen.

<b>A librarian would also almost certainly not be a "Offense Option" PC, but a "Defense Option", which has a lower attack bonus progression.</b>

Perhaps you have a librarian that is a retired MP (Military Police, not Magic Pink)? That might qualify for an "Offense Option". And if this was an FBI librarian, I'd like to point out that all FBI agents (reguardless of job position) must undergo combat training at Quantico.

<b>If you really want to add in military types, I suggest buying Pinnnacles Weird Wars: BOTR, and use military classes from it. It's 90% compatible with d20 CoC anyway.</b>

And after spending a whole post berating somebody, you want to offer them a suggestion? I'm dumbfounded.

<b>I would also point out, it's not easy in BRP to make starting characters who are comparable to real life navy seals. You only get a limited among of skills at start. Edu X 10, I think. Plus a bonus if you're a geezer.</b>

It's no harder than designing a Navy Seal character in d20. If you'd actually tried to do it, you'd know this.

<I>NOTE:</I> The above NPC post was mine as well, but the damn board timed-out on me again. Blech.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by James Hargrove
<b>Shockingly enough, there is a reason for levels and why first level characters really can't be Navy Seals. Because d20 wants to make it easy for the GM to calculate how tough his PCs are, it uses levels.</b>

So how exactly does disallowing 1st level Navy Seals make it easier for a GM to calculate power levels of characters? News flash, genius - it doesn't. That is just the worst strawman argument that I've ever seen.

I think he was trying to say that all level 1 characters should be about equally threatening (I don't necessarily agree with this, by the way) and a stereotypical(!) SEAL should be more challenging than any baseline investigator. Hence, he should be of a higher level.

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek
I haven't actually read everything in my CoC20 book yet and this is definately a nitpick, but unless I'm mistaken you can have a CON score of 23 at 20th level which means you can theoretically have 240 hp (more if you use magic).


6 x 20 is 120.
7 x 4 is 28
8 x 5 is 40
5 x 6 is 30

That's 218.

So I'm definitely off...

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek
A more relevant issue is the fact that falling damage caps out at 10d6 points.

I'll have to look at that when I get home.

Seanchai

[Bruce Ballon]

I bet you all can't wait for this product to come out.....

Includes:

Prestidge Class Tribal Fisherfolk

20-30 Level Rules for PULPED PULP UBERSAGA (TM) Classes

Epic Cthulhoid Feats such as Destroy Adjacent Higher Dimension

New spells including The Yellow Puddle of Hamstur

Templates for Epic Sand Dwellers an Epic Dholes

Artifacts like Cthulhu's Alarm Clock and the Fork and Knife of the Old Ones

REALLY REALLY MONGO MONDO DAMAGE RULES! (Excerpt: When a character takes 666 HP damage, they need to roll over a 1 on a d20 to shrug of the damage. If they roll a 1, they must roll again - anything but a 1 result results in 1d10 of being stunned. If a 1, reroll again - if anything but a 1 they are STUNNED and have an itch.....)



77 HP characters? Bah!

ELd20COC Handbook coming soon!

(OK OK... I could not resist!)


BTW - when does WOTC publish the UBEREPIC LEVEL HANDBOOK where the PCs get to fight the DM and other Players?

[morgue]

Umm, what's the point of this thread?

I think the real discussion isn't 'how to threaten characters with lotsa hit points' - that's obvious, innit, you put them up against bigger threats - but that CoC d20 doesn't give a clear indication on how to model characters.

You model the skillfulness of a person with skill points and skill focus feats, unless its combat prowess you're talking about, in which case you model it with levels. Except you can only take skill points so far unless you're talking levels, and if you're talking levels you get all these non-combat skill points that you have to put somewhere.

It's a profoundly messed system. I've said it a dozen times, I'll say it again - Monte really dropped the ball on this. I was expecting something that didn't have this problem and I was disappointed.

What would happen if levels became *purely* combat-kick-ass-ness, and skill maximums and skill point acquisition were not part of levels at all. Would the level system break? What is the point of the level system anyway?

*sigh* It sucks that no-one, still, has done a d20 version that avoids these problems [edit - except Godlik's OGL part], which are the same problems everyone's bitched about since D&D was created in the 70s. It just *sucks*.

~`morgue (actually, what would happen if hit points were disposed of entirely, and damage worked as massive damage save vs. the damage inflicted by that wound - would it change the play of the game overmuch? Apart from making people more vulnerable than the present system, which is the design goal...)

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Seanchai
6 x 20 is 120.
7 x 4 is 28
8 x 5 is 40
5 x 6 is 30

That's 218.

So I'm definitely off...

You do know that when your CON is modified your hitpoints are recalculated (so in D&D a barbarian's rage will increase his hp total and dropping out of it may kill him if he was wounded)? This will give you 20 x (6+6) = 240 hp.

I'm not sure they even tell you this in the CoC20 book, but they accidentily left out quite a few of these things (you can find a (probably incomplete) list in the messageboards at Monte Cook's website at www.montecook.com).
Anyways, CoC20 was designed to use the rules in the SRD unless told otherwise, so you can always fall back on that document if something is unclear.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by morgue
*sigh* It sucks that no-one, still, has done a d20 version that avoids these problems [edit - except Godlik's OGL part], which are the same problems everyone's bitched about since D&D was created in the 70s. It just *sucks*.


Well, Monte feels that this is actually one of D&D's greatest strengths (having everything increase with levels). If you want to take a look at it, it's over here: http://www.montecook.com/arch_lineos46.html

Originally posted by morgue
~`morgue (actually, what would happen if hit points were disposed of entirely, and damage worked as massive damage save vs. the damage inflicted by that wound - would it change the play of the game overmuch? Apart from making people more vulnerable than the present system, which is the design goal...)

For one thing, it would make the Fort save and the CON stat absolutely critical for offensive characters (and defensive characters too, but to a lesser degree).

Edit: Spelling

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek


You do know that when your CON is modified your hitpoints are recalculated (so in D&D a barbarian's rage will increase his hp total and dropping out of it may kill him if he was wounded)? This will give you 20 x (6+6) = 240 hp.


You're right. I found this in the SRD: If a character's Constitution changes enough to alter his or her Constitution modifier, his or her hit points also increase or decrease accordingly at the same time."

Wow.

Seanchai

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Yup, turns CON into a very potent stat. Incidentally, it also makes the poisons that do CON damage very hot items in my D&D game.

[The Eye]

i like the idea of a massive damage-style save against any damage (with some obvious reworking of some rules... perhaps counting AC as an attribute that makes a save vs damage?)

makes the game (esp. CoC) as deadly as it ought to be, until you get to a higher level...

you almost convinced me to run a game just to see how it works.

[AmericanBadass]

Hey Folks-

I think there may be some misunderstanding as my maxing out hit points goes. I usually only start with 2nd level characters when I start a game from scratch...I have find you have to roll up too many mages if they have 2HP's. So to remedy this I just give the characters Max HP's.

When I started Call of Cthulhu I was planning on starting out at 2nd, we did and saw this made for characters that basically only had 2 feats and were not believable as FBI agents so I tacked on 2 more levels (which gave them another feat). I just rolled the max hit point thing over with it....thinking ...hey were not dealing with swords and daggers we are dealing with shotguns and pistols...we are probably going to need the hit points. We did actually-one player has lost 3 characters (one to insanity) and the other guy has lost 2. The game is plenty lethal at low levels but the characters are just not competant.

I basically have decided to stick with the idea that 6th level to 8th is a professional character....and I will just have to live with the fact that the player is not going to be afraid of guns or falling off buildings or getting run over by trucks.

I don't know whose fault this is...the players, mine, the system or all of us.
I guess if I knew I could take a couple of shotgun blasts and live I would be a little cocky myself. The characters might get this way too after taking 6 bullet hits and still show up for work the next day.




:D 20th level character with 218 HP...my god....so in theory he could take 218 1HP bullet hits. I am sure he would have tales to tell his grandchildren.


I can see it....
Retired Delta Green Agent showing his grandkids his scars....

"Well here is where 30 pieces of buckshot grazed me...and all through here are 40 or 50 nicks from various firefights I was in....the little scar on my shoulder here is from a shotgun slug that did me for like 15HP's when I just turned 18th level..."

[Gwydion]

Originally posted by CPXB

As the ten open fire in BRP, uh, the odds are they'll all miss. Every last damn one of them. 92% dodge, woo woo. Statistically speaking, the shotgun does an average of 14 points in BRP per hit. The odds of the crooks hitting are 8% of 55% -- the odds of a hit are 4.4% -- or, looking at it another way, each shotgun will do 4.4% of 14 points of damage each round. So, on average, per round, my C will take .6 points of damage per person, per round, or 6 points of damage a round. Statistically, my C will last 2 rounds.


From page 63 CoC edition 5.6.1:
"A character attempting a dodge in a combat round may also parry, but not attack... Against guns, a defender can try to dodge only the first bullet fired at him in a round." It is strongly implied elsewhere, but not explicitly stated, that dodge can only be used on one attack in a round.

So your character not only gives up any possibility of offensive action, but will also certainly be hit multiple times. And if you do take 14 points of damage you are almost certainly. Unless you have 17 HP (18 is human max and it is STRONGLY bell curved toward the average) you are unconsious or dead. If you do have 17 or 18 HP you need to make a CON check to avoid being incapacitated from shock (granted with that many HP you have at least an 80% chance of making it).

So if you actually play by the rules, things turn out very differently.
Kevin

[Gwydion]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek

Well, Monte feels that this is actually one of D&D's greatest strengths (having everything increase with levels). If you want to take a look at it, it's over here: http://www.montecook.comarch_lineos46.html


He's right. It is on of D&D's greatest strengths. It's a pity that he was writing Call of Cthulhu.


For one thing, it would make the Fort save and the CON stat absolutely critical for offensive characters (and defensive characters too, but to a lesser degree).


It's not already? CON gives both HP and a Fort Save bonus. As it is survivablity varies an incredible amount based on CON and nearly as much on Fort Save progression. My numbers indicate that at the high end survivability is much better in d20 than BRP (through levels 5-8), but I don't believe that this is the case on average. There is also a big difference between weapons. Pistol and knives are far less deadly than bigger weapons. You are far better off getting hit by 3 or 4 d10 bullets than one 2d10 bullet. The 10 point causes some oddities in the numbers.

Kevin

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Gwydion
He's right. It is on of D&D's greatest strengths. It's a pity that he was writing Call of Cthulhu.

Ah, but you've taken my comment out of context. I posted this in response to a criticism of D&D. But regardless, Monte Cook wasn't designing Call of Cthulhu, but rather a d20 adaptation of Cal of Cthulhu. Personally, I think he succeeded fairly well (I would have prefered the vitality/wound point system, though).

Originally posted by Gwydion
It's not already? CON gives both HP and a Fort Save bonus. As it is survivablity varies an incredible amount based on CON and nearly as much on Fort Save progression.

Granted, but at lower levels (the levels I personally think CoC should be played at) the CON modifier will often double your fort save, while it will do (relatively) less for your hp. Thus if you do away with hp and make the fort save more important, you will increase the importance of the CON stat.

Originally posted by Gwydion
Pistol and knives are far less deadly than bigger weapons.

I do think melee weapons should do far more damage. Really, I'd rather be shot at with a 9mm pistol than be on the receiving end of a longsword (or even a long knife).
As for pistols: I recently saw a documentary that pointed out that these aren't quite as deadly as is generally assumed. They interviewed one guy who was shot 14 times in his belly and who survived with no lasting damage done.

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Gwydion


From page 63 CoC edition 5.6.1:
"A character attempting a dodge in a combat round may also parry, but not attack... Against guns, a defender can try to dodge only the first bullet fired at him in a round." It is strongly implied elsewhere, but not explicitly stated, that dodge can only be used on one attack in a round.

So your character not only gives up any possibility of offensive action, but will also certainly be hit multiple times. And if you do take 14 points of damage you are almost certainly. Unless you have 17 HP (18 is human max and it is STRONGLY bell curved toward the average) you are unconsious or dead. If you do have 17 or 18 HP you need to make a CON check to avoid being incapacitated from shock (granted with that many HP you have at least an 80% chance of making it).

So if you actually play by the rules, things turn out very differently.
Kevin

It is nice to see that on version 5.6.1 they did this.

On my vers (that'd be 5.5) it says on page 63:

"Allows an investigator instinctively to evade blows, thrown missiles, attacks from ambush, and so forth. A character attempting Dodge in a combat round may also parry, but not attack. Dodge can be increased through experience, like other skills.

"So long as something can be seen first, a character can try to dodge it."

Now, I'll concede that my book isn't up to date and it's nice that as recently as version 5.6.1 they bothered to change it. I'll concede that according to the more modern rules I'm wrong. But by the rules I have, I'm certainly right.

But, uh, I honestly do know how to play the game. Or, at least, the game I have. But after ten years of playing CoC with Cs being able to dodge 100 things a round, my lack of up-to-date knowledge can, perhaps, be forgiven.

Edit: I removed a snippy attack. ;p

[CPXB]

<b>Edit:</b> Messed up and sent a weird post. Ignore this message. :D

[Seanchai]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek


A more relevant issue is the fact that falling damage caps out at 10d6 points.

I checked it out. I didn't find anything in the d20 CoC rulebook about it, but the DMG caps the damage at 20d6.

Seanchai

[morgue]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek
Ah, but you've taken my comment out of context. I posted this in response to a criticism of D&D. But regardless, Monte Cook wasn't designing Call of Cthulhu, but rather a d20 adaptation of Cal of Cthulhu. Personally, I think he succeeded fairly well (I would have prefered the vitality/wound point system, though).

Um, not that much out of context. I said people have always bitched about the levels/hitpoints/skills thing in D&D - which they have - and you correctly pointed out that Monte likes the levels/skills/hitpoints thing in D&D, with the implication of 'that's why he did it in CoC as well'.

Yes, so far as it goes. Now, when Gwydion said 'it's one of D&D's greatest strengths, its a pity he's writing CoC', that means in Gwydion's eyes (and mine) the system is not nearly as appropriate for CoC as it is for D&D, and that Monte in our eyes made the wrong design decision.

so you see? We're actually all agreeing to disagree, methinks.

For the record, I don't think CoC d20 is a failure - I'm sure its great (don't actually have a copy, just have read intently all the immense discussion on these boards) for what it is - but it doesn't leverage the d20 system to recreate the feel of CoC nearly as much as I would like. Instead it tries to implement the d20 system in the same way as D&D, and the result is problems like those in this thread - the same problems, that is, that people have bitched about since D&D was created.

These problems are not hardwired into d20 - it is perfectly possible to do d20 without these problems and have it still be d20 - but no-one has yet done this! *That* is what sucks. And thus this thread, which could, via search-and-replace for genre trappings, could be verbatim from a 'D&D sucks' thread in 1982.

Anyway. Maybe they're right, those people who say the d20 audience wouldn't support a product that dispenses with such staples as escalating hit points. Maybe. I don't think that's the case, but I guess I won't know until someone makes one and sees. Maybe it'll have to be me that does that. One day.

~`morgue (thinks more about publishing d20 game... *sigh*)

[Gwydion]

Originally posted by CPXB

Now, I'll concede that my book isn't up to date and it's nice that as recently as version 5.6.1 they bothered to change it. I'll concede that according to the more modern rules I'm wrong. But by the rules I have, I'm certainly right.

But, uh, I honestly do know how to play the game. Or, at least, the game I have. But after ten years of playing CoC with Cs being able to dodge 100 things a round, my lack of up-to-date knowledge can, perhaps, be forgiven.


I'll apologize for the tone of my initial post then. I will note that I recall this rule being in place when I played in college (7 years or so ago) and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't 5.6.1 then... perhaps they've flip flopped?
Kevin

[Grant]

I will note that I recall this rule being in place when I played in college (7 years or so ago) and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't 5.6.1 then... perhaps they've flip flopped?

I just checked my 5.2 edition rulebook... and I can't find mention of the rule anywhere in either the skills or the combat section. I CAN find it in the 5.6 edition.

Can anyone with an edition of the book older than 5.0 tell us if it is in there? It would be interesting to see when BRP introduced this rule.

Grant

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by NPC
Again, please <i>post a link</i> to this proof that you keep talking about, but fail to produce.

http://www.rpg.net/rf08/read.php?f=289&i=18&t=16

There are several other discussions of this nature attached to the early D20 CoC reviews.

It's important to note that the claim only applies to low levels. As D20 CoC reaches the pulp levels it, naturally, becomes less deadly. This is because D20 CoC is more flexible and supports a wider range of play styles than BRP CoC.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by morgue
You model the skillfulness of a person with skill points and skill focus feats, unless its combat prowess you're talking about, in which case you model it with levels. Except you can only take skill points so far unless you're talking levels, and if you're talking levels you get all these non-combat skill points that you have to put somewhere.

There is this common misunderstanding of the D20 system that, in order to "competent", one must be 10th level.

Let's get one thing straight: If you're a 10th level character, you're a creation of fiction. You don't exist in the real world. You've entered the realm of pulp. And if you're 20th level? Fuhgeddaboutit: You're superhuman.

Don't believe me?

Let's map actual skill levels to real world ability.

The physical skills -- Climb and Jump -- provide good baselines for DCs. You can extrapolate from that.

For example, the long jump record is around 30 feet. A Running jump goes 5 ft. + 1 ft./1 point above 10 on a skill check. So you'd need a skill check of 25 to reach 30 feet. So, let's assume a roll of 15 (a little high, but not maxxed out). With that we'd need a +10 bonus to our check. I get:

A 5th level character:
+8 ranks of Jump
+2 Strength of 15

For the high jump, the record sits around 7 feet, IIRC. That's 2 ft. + 1 ft./4 points above 10. So you'd need a check of 30 to reach 8 feet. So, let's assume a roll of 15, again. With that we'd +15 to our check. I get:

An 6th level character:
+9 ranks of Jump
+2 Skill Focus (Jump)
+4 Strength of 18

Play around with those figures, but I find a human maximum can be modeled around 5th or 6th level.

If we define a typical professional as someone capable of accomplishing DC 20 tasks on a take 10 (i.e., someone capable of accomplishing any typical task in their chosen profession on a routine basis), then we get:

A 2nd level character:
+6 ranks of skill
+2 Skill Focus (skill)
+2 attribute associated with skill

If we define a master as someone capable of accomplishing DC 25 tasks on a take 10 (i.e., someone capable of accomplishing any exceptional task in their chosen profession on a routine basis), then we get:

A 6th level character:
+9 ranks of skill
+2 Skill Focus (skill)
+4 attribute associated with skill

(The DC 20 and DC 25 are determined by looking at the Craft DCs, among other things.)

So, IOW, if you're "competent" you're a 1st or 2nd level character. Note that, if you've chosen the Defense option in CoC, such a character only has a BAB of +0 or +1.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek
Ah, but you've taken my comment out of context. I posted this in response to a criticism of D&D. But regardless, Monte Cook wasn't designing Call of Cthulhu, but rather a d20 adaptation of Cal of Cthulhu. Personally, I think he succeeded fairly well (I would have prefered the vitality/wound point system, though).

I wouldn't. Monte Cook's elegant design of CoC shows why the VP/WP system was never necessary in the first place. I consider the VP/WP system to be a major blight on the D20 system. It's an inelegant system that boosts bookkeeping for no noticeable gain in accuracy or playability.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[CPXB]

Originally posted by Gwydion


I'll apologize for the tone of my initial post then. I will note that I recall this rule being in place when I played in college (7 years or so ago) and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't 5.6.1 then... perhaps they've flip flopped?
Kevin

Not a problem. I know how things get online. You were probably thinking, "The twit! How could he get something so simple so wrong?!" :D

As chance has it, I have another CoC book. Vers 5.1.2. That one agrees with vers 5.5. The CoC book I owned before these books was, uh, like, vers 2 or something, hehe. Back in the Day. In the vers 2 CoC I believe it agrees with what is in 5.5 but . . . I could <i>definitely</I> be wrong about that. I don't vouch for my memory that far back.

Maybe they flip-flopped. I dunno. It *is* nice that the more modern books have the far more rational "dodge only one bullet a round" in it, tho'. I have very John Woo-esque memories of characters at point blank range shooting at each other to no effect.

[Will]

Originally posted by morgue

For the record, I don't think CoC d20 is a failure - I'm sure its great (don't actually have a copy, just have read intently all the immense discussion on these boards) for what it is - but it doesn't leverage the d20 system to recreate the feel of CoC nearly as much as I would like. Instead it tries to implement the d20 system in the same way as D&D, and the result is problems like those in this thread - the same problems, that is, that people have bitched about since D&D was created.


My perspective is that I _agree_ with much of what you say. I think d20 could be adapted in several interesting new ways to capture the Mythos.

The problem is that all the complaints seem focused on the wrong things, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Combat is fine. Justin Bacon's last few posts explain it pretty succinctly. The game postulates three 'stripes' of play, much like GURPS and Hero shift a bit when point levels are higher.

Where I would really have liked to see dramatic changes are doing things _much_ differently than BRP did, particularly in magic, research, and sanity. Not that I don't like what they did, I just would have enjoyed a completely new take on things.

I would have liked something different. But worrying about the combat modeling in a Lovecraftian game is like wondering what race the hearse driver will be at your funeral. Rather missing the point.

Addendum:
As it turns out, I also have a copy of CoC 2nd ed and 5.2. I'll give them a look over tomorrow.

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Justin has the right of it.

Levels in d20 CoC provide breadth of ability, not depth.

If your character is competant or better in a few areas, she only needs a low level.

If she's competant in a great many areas, then she needs to be of a higher level.

And given the number of skill points all CoC characters get, you can be highly, professionally proficient in a great many things even by level 4. Above that, you're verging on fictional levels of ability.

[Tom B]

Originally posted by Grant

Can anyone with an edition of the book older than 5.0 tell us if it is in there? It would be interesting to see when BRP introduced this rule.


From the 4th edition:

"Dodge: Allows a character to evade seen blows, missiles, etc.; a function of DEX. It may be increased by experience. A character attempting to dodge may perform no other actions in that combat round, including making no attacks."

I think the key word in this definition and in the later one is that it specifies "seen" missiles. Last time I checked, people didn't usually see bullets. By this rule, I wouldn't allow dodging gunfire. As a house rule, I would probably allow half-dodge, as the target tries to predict when and where the gunman intends to fire.

[James Hargrove]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon


http://www.rpg.net/rf08/read.php?f=289&i=18&t=16

There are several other discussions of this nature attached to the early D20 CoC reviews.

It's important to note that the claim only applies to low levels. As D20 CoC reaches the pulp levels it, naturally, becomes less deadly. This is because D20 CoC is more flexible and supports a wider range of play styles than BRP CoC.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

Thank you Justin. I appreciate the link. NPC Jeremy seemed to be suggesting that d20 CoC was more deadly across the board than BRP CoC (which I really don't think it is).

Yes, d20 CoC is much more deadly at lower levels than BRP CoC was/is. Across the board, however, I find BRP CoC to be more deadly.

You do bring up a good point, though. At the cost of realism in terms of damage at higher levels, d20 CoC does accomodate many different styles of play that BRP CoC handled clunkily (at best) and horribly (at worst).

On the other side of that token, since most of these other styles of play emulate situations that were never a part of the Cthulhu Mythos until d20 CoC appeared on the shelves, a lot of BRP fans don't like it so much.

I personally like BRP CoC for emulating Lovecraftian fiction and d20 CoC for emulating horror films of a more generic nature and horrific fantasy (until some wanker stole my d20 CoC book, it was getting heavy use as the core for a Hyborean fantasy campaign and a nice zombie blastin' Return of The Living Dead campaign).

Damn I miss that book.

D20 CoC was the one d20 product that I felt embodied d20's universal nature more than any other (I replaced the PHB with it for fantasy, at low levels it worked well for gritty horror, and at high levels it worked well for cinematic action horror).

[contracycle]

Originally posted by morgue

Anyway. Maybe they're right, those people who say the d20 audience wouldn't support a product that dispenses with such staples as escalating hit points.

Yup. If the hit point range were radically compressed - max 30 say - it would have been much more Cthulhuesque. And it could easily have been justified on the basis that, hey this is call of fricken cthulhu, you didn't expect to LIVE, did you?

[contracycle]

Originally posted by Patrick O'Duffy

And given the number of skill points all CoC characters get, you can be highly, professionally proficient in a great many things even by level 4. Above that, you're verging on fictional levels of ability.

OK so just for baseline, how many hits would a level 4 combat specialist be ex[ected to score with a 9mil pistol on the Quantico range at say 30 yards?

Out of a 15 round clip, how many will hit? What is the damage range inflicted by this character firing the whole clip? How much game time (rounds) does this take?

Also, I'd like the same analysis for a an H&K MP5 (9mil no options).

[AmericanBadass]

Well if a target is base AC10 and a 4th level character has a +1BAB and a total Pistil Attack Bonus of +3 (-1 due to range) (16DEX) I rolled around 50% consistanly...3 rounds of rolling D20's 15 times.


That really aint all that great.

Maybe one of the statistical geniuses on this site can correct me??

I am no scientist by far.

[Will]

AC for inanimate/unmoving things is 5, I believe. There is probably also a reasonably hefty circumstance bonus for not firing in actual live combat.

The difficulty of hitting a target is significant easier than hitting a target while expecting/fearing getting shot.

Maybe a +2 circumstance bonus? That BAB for the 4th level combat specialist sounds low...

The math would be (20 - AC + attack bonus + modifiers)/20 as the 'value' of a shot. AC of 10 and attack bonus of 0 gives, for example, .5, or about 'half a shot'. Multiply by however many shots and it gives you the average.

[contracycle]

Good point... I'm perfectly happy with a +10 (aka 50%) for shooting a paper target and taking your time and all, but there may be an existing canon modifier.

I still want to know what the odds are, but I also want the in-combat results. I'm just trying to assess how competent these characters are in-world.

So I make Wils shot value using AB's figures about 0.7 without applying the "not being shot at" bonus".

This would mean that the shooter puts about 10 of the 15 shots on target, right? Which produces a damage range of about 10-100?

Does this take 3 rounds, and are rounds still a minute long?

[Will]

Double checked, a 4th level character with offensive option is at +3 BAB, not +1.

So 16 Dex and one rank of range gets +5 attack bonus.

Against an unmoving target (AC 5) with a +2 bonus for noncombat: Pretty much every shot hits. If looking at actual shots, .95, since 1 auto fails. If looking at damage, value is 1, since fails almost balances with critical hit.

Against a regular target (AC 10) in combat conditions: .75 (.8 when considering damage).

That is, d10 damage is average of 5.5. Shots do, effectively, 4.4 on average, counting miss chance and criticals.

[BlackSheep]

Originally posted by Will
Against a regular target (AC 10) in combat conditions: .75 (.8 when considering damage).

And as I'm sure I won't be the only one to point out, the ability to hit a target with three out of every four shots in a combat situation is exceptional, far above most armed police or soldiers.

And this is 'only' level four. So no, low level characters are not incompetents. By the standards of the real world, they are very highly skilled. If you want to play with characters of levels seven or ten or higher, go ahead, but don't be surprised when they end up larger than life. They're supposed to be.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Seanchai


I checked it out. I didn't find anything in the d20 CoC rulebook about it, but the DMG caps the damage at 20d6.

Seanchai

Woops, you're right. Still, it won't necessarily kill a level 20 character.

[AmericanBadass]

I wouldnt say 4th is competant....If you read earlier you would know that i had characters fire 52 bullets at 4 targets and get no hits.

Hitting a can is far different than a moving person.

A soldier 4th level with a +1 due to Dex needs a 19 to hit a deep one with a M16 firing full auto-I wouldn't call him Rambo by any means.

[Harbinger]

professional soldiers rarely hit anything firing on full auto.

Full auto is for area denial, not for accuracy.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by morgue
Um, not that much out of context. I said people have always bitched about the levels/hitpoints/skills thing in D&D - which they have - and you correctly pointed out that Monte likes the levels/skills/hitpoints thing in D&D, with the implication of 'that's why he did it in CoC as well'.

Ah, I can see why you thought I was implying that. I was however just pointing out that not quite "everyone" dislikes this in D&D. Still, I should have been clearer. My bad.

Originally posted by morgue
Yes, so far as it goes. Now, when Gwydion said 'it's one of D&D's greatest strengths, its a pity he's writing CoC', that means in Gwydion's eyes (and mine) the system is not nearly as appropriate for CoC as it is for D&D, and that Monte in our eyes made the wrong design decision.

so you see? We're actually all agreeing to disagree, methinks.

You're right. But I do agree with you that it would have been better if they had taken the system a bit further away from D&D (I would have liked to see the Vitality/Wound point system, myself).

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon
I wouldn't. Monte Cook's elegant design of CoC shows why the VP/WP system was never necessary in the first place. I consider the VP/WP system to be a major blight on the D20 system. It's an inelegant system that boosts bookkeeping for no noticeable gain in accuracy or playability.

I agree that it's not necessary to keep combat deadly, but it's not that much bookkeeping (a subjective statement, I know) and I find that it helps players realize that hp =/= wound levels.

[BlackSheep]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
Hitting a can is far different than a moving person.

And that's why different stats were provided for each situation. 0.95 to hit a stationary target, 0.75 to hit a normal AC10 person in combat.

A soldier 4th level with a +1 due to Dex needs a 19 to hit a deep one with a M16 firing full auto

Can I have the AC of a Deep One to compare? Unless it's extremely good (in which case it obviously isn't supposed to be hit very often) I don't see how this statistic can tally with those given above. Not having the books on me I can't check myself, but it sounds like one of you has it wrong. Or at least, is making different assumptions.

[AmericanBadass]

My friend Joe who was in the Marines was a Squad Machine gunner who had to lug an M60 around.

He told me about how Full Auto works...It is frikken deadly, and anything but ineffective. With tracers you simply walk the fire right at the target. He was trained to fire from the hip wearing on one hand what he called the Oven Mit so he could change barrels and hot the red hot barrel.

He was one of the players involved in the 52 shots no hits incident. He was really pissed. His contention is that autofire actually increased the chances of hitting. Not for a single shot, the burst will hit something eventually.

I have only fired a fully auto weapon once, though i wasted many shots i did always hit the skunky beer cans that we were using at a rock quarry. It was a really weird gun I have never seen before...the guy who let me fire it was a gun dealer and a cop.

as far as soldiers rarely hitting anything on full auto-how do you explain WWI?? With your logic charging a machine gun nest wouldn't be that much of a danger.

[AmericanBadass]

Deep One AC 15.

[Jan-Willem van den Broek]

Originally posted by Will
Double checked, a 4th level character with offensive option is at +3 BAB, not +1.

So 16 Dex and one rank of range gets +5 attack bonus.

Against an unmoving target (AC 5) with a +2 bonus for noncombat: Pretty much every shot hits. If looking at actual shots, .95, since 1 auto fails. If looking at damage, value is 1, since fails almost balances with critical hit.

You get a +5 bonus if you take a full round to line up a shot against a non-moving object.

[Radical Authority]

A Deep One's AC is 15. A fourth level solider (Offensive Option character, I assume) with a +1 dex bonus should have an attack bonus of +4. He needs to roll an 11, before taking range and other factors into account.

A character with +3 BAB (eg, a 4th level Off Option character)using autofire would be at -3 for each shot, meaning they need to roll a 14. The same character using the Rapid Shot feat would get four shots at -5, needing a 16 to hit. All this before taking range into account (actually, Rapid Shot requires Point Blank Shot, so if you were within 30 feet you'd get +1).

I haven't actually played CoC D20 yet (soon... soon...); did I read this wrong?

Boy, I really should try and get some work done today.

RA

[AmericanBadass]

Sorry I should have looked at my book...4th level BAB is +3-sorry.

I am actually interested how many times a Multishot (semi auto, as in pistol) would hit. Nobody in a stressfull situation will simply fire one shot per round.

A 4th level character with Rapid Shot feat can fire 3 times at -3.
So 'she' will have an even +0 chance to hit. A +1 with the 16 Dex.

So a 14 or better is needed to hit a Deep One within 20 feet of range.

[Will]

That's a 1 in 3 chance, which is _very good_.

Would you agree 4th level characters are competant in combat, now?

As for autofire rules... I have no idea. It's not the sort of thing I expect to come up in my games, to be honest.

[Radical Authority]

It's 13 - plus one for Point Blank Shot, prerequisite for Rapid Shot feat.

RA

[contracycle]

We should also mention that HP abstractions apply to monsters too, so when shooting at a human target, presumably all rounds but the last few are considered "misses", even if they do HP damage.

[contracycle]

Originally posted by Will

Would you agree 4th level characters are competant in combat, now?


I'll concede competent; such a character would indeed be combat effective. I'm not so convinced that this is the level that implicitly appears in AB's game, inasmuch as the 4th level characters effectiveness does not feel to me equivalent to an elite combatant (although it does feel like a trained, competent combatant).

[AmericanBadass]

That is why I start at 4th level....I played around with the numbers and skill attempts a bit and found a good believable level to start at.


Having enough feats is a problem at low levels. A 4th level character gets another feat, so a soldier can actually have a weapon proficiency, Point Blank Shot and Rapid Fire.

Before that he is just a Stormtrooper ready to be destroyed by raging Ewoks. How much damage does a handful of bark or a sharp stick do vs. Imperial blast armor??

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by James Hargrove
On the other side of that token, since most of these other styles of play emulate situations that were never a part of the Cthulhu Mythos until d20 CoC appeared on the shelves, a lot of BRP fans don't like it so much.

I hate to break it to these pseudo-purists, but using Cthulhu-oid monstrosities in pulp hackfests dates back to the earliest days of the Cthulhu Mythos. Sure, Lovecraft used the Mythos as a horror of the modern day. But Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft's close friend, had Conan hacking them up.

In more recent, times a number of pulp Mythos movies have been prevalent. Take the EVIL DEAD movies, for example.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by contracycle
Yup. If the hit point range were radically compressed - max 30 say - it would have been much more Cthulhuesque. And it could easily have been justified on the basis that, hey this is call of fricken cthulhu, you didn't expect to LIVE, did you?

Nothing prevents you from limiting game play to 1st through 5th level -- the gritty, deadly level of play you seem to prefer. That would put a practical cap of 30 hp into effect (although, technically, totals of up to 50 hp would be statistically possible).

JB

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by contracycle


OK so just for baseline, how many hits would a level 4 combat specialist be ex[ected to score with a 9mil pistol on the Quantico range at say 30 yards?

Out of a 15 round clip, how many will hit? What is the damage range inflicted by this character firing the whole clip? How much game time (rounds) does this take?

Also, I'd like the same analysis for a an H&K MP5 (9mil no options).

Well, with the offensive option I believe this character will have a BAB of +4 (I don't have the books in front of me). Let's assume a +3 ability bonus. And Weapon Focus (9mm).

That give us a +8.

I'm pretty sure 30 yards is under 1 range increment for a 9mm (again, I don't have the books in front of me). The target is stationary, unmoving, and unarmored -- so we give it an AC 10.

The character has all the time in the world to aim, so we could argue that the character can Take 10 and always hit. But, for the sake of argument, we won't do that. Instead, we'll roll.

So:

Attack Bonus +8
AC 10 (Human-sized target)

The character would need to roll a 1 or a 2 in order to miss. So 90% of their shots will hit. So, out of 15 bullets, 13.5 will hit on average.

To extend:

Attack Bonus +8
AC 11 (Small target)

The character is now hitting 85% of the time. So, out of 15 bullets, 12.75 will hit on average.

Attack Bonus +8
AC 12 (Tiny target)

The character is now hitting 80% of the time. So, out of 15 bullets, 12 will hit on average.

Someone else will need to do the game time analysis, because I don't have the books in front of me.

In an actual combat scenario, you'd typically be looking at targets ranging from 8 (no armor, low Dex) to 14 (Dex, some armor).

At the low end of that range, a character as described above is hitting 95% of the time. At the other end the character would be hitting 70% of the time.

Cover plays a significant roll in CoC. 9/10ths cover, for example, grants a +10 bonus to AC -- significantly reducing the chance that you'll be hit.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by Jan-Willem van den Broek
Woops, you're right. Still, it won't necessarily kill a level 20 character.

It won't even necessarily kill a 2nd level character. So what? ;)

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[contracycle]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon

Nothing prevents you from limiting game play to 1st through 5th level -- the gritty, deadly level of play you seem to prefer.


Oh sure you could - if you did not want those characters to be able, say, to snipe like an army marksman. My only argument is that sometimes you might want to separeta these two axes, of competence and survivability.

[Powergamer]

Originally posted by AmericanBadass
they are die hard d20 D&D players and do not get the concept of call of cthulhu. i have not been able to scare them at all. they just charge right in.

what should i do?
any help? Well, first of all, I think that you should enforce the massive damage rule <i>very </i> strictly -- ensure that you <i>see</i> all Fort rolls, etc. If that doesn't do it, you may even consider changing the DC to (10+damage inflicted).

But most importantly, you should inflict massive SAN losses upon them constantly -- it is the one attack in CoCd20 against which there is no defense. One good way to do this is by letting some cultist keep a video diary, complete with horrible rituals and alien sex fiends.

Your intrepid investigators will unfortunately be forced to watch all of his little home video to get clued in, thus insuring that at least one of them goes bonkers.

This is where you point out to them that their poor blabbering buddy really got off lucky; he only witnessed the atrocities second-hand -- when the team go in for a little gun-to-tentacle, that's when the <i>real</i> SAN losses will occur... ;^)

In short, hound them mercilessly with SAN-destroying monsters, situations, books, DVD's, and so forth.

On a more mundane level, don't forget that cultists can set ambushes too, and surely some cops have levels too? Hell, for all I know, half of those degenerate rednecks up in Vermont are badass 'Nam vets...

Take back the initiative! You are the original AmericanBadass!!! Get some!!! Get some!!!

Edit: They probably have all sorts of nightvision equipment too -- in other words, now the darkness won't hide the monsters: More SAN loss! Buzzing voices interferes with their comm-equipment: More SAN loss. You get the drift...