Post originally by Stephen Colhoun at 2003-12-02 02:05:51
Converted from Phorums BB System

Do I still care and is anyone listening at this point?
>>Butting in where I am not wanted, but not having played the d20 version, how would you narrate a character being injured?<<

>Same as BRP.
Um no. Not if CoCd20 is anything like D&D 3rd edition. For example: A BRP character with 13 HP takes 2 hits of 6 points each. That character is now in a bad way, probably in hospital. A similar thing would happen to a 3rd level d20 character. Now a few months later, the more experienced BRP character takes 2 hits of 6 points each and goes back to hospital. The 7th level d20 character is mildly annoyed with the damage and continues on his way. That means you are not narrating the damage the same way. Ok. Maybe the BRP character can dodge the damage. Fair enough, at least I know what has happened: the character dodged. How is the 7th level character avoiding the damage? How much damage (better: how much of an injury) has the character sustained? 12 points? Should be in hospital. If the extra HP per level represents damage avoidance, how many HP are avoidance points and how much are injury points?

Having dealt with that: at the opposite end of the spectrum is a character that has taken 1 point of cutting damage. In BRP that character is bleeding and knows that he better bind the wound quickly because there are flesh eating scarab beetles around that track the scent of blood. Will a single point of cutting damage make a 3rd level character bleed? What about a 7th? If the answer to both is yes, then what is reason a character increases HP per level? High protein diet?

>>With BRP (well, 3rd edition anyway, I never saw the need to upgrade), I could tell a character with 12 HP who has been shot 3 times for 3 each would be seriously wounded (actually shot #2 would reduce him to 6 HP and the 3rd would force the character to roll for shock. Hardly my definition of still standing).<<

>You can tell he's seriously wounded because he current Hit Points are a fraction of of their normal total. I don't understand what's different about d20 CoC...

It is different because in BRP: 12 points of damage means 12 points of damage. In d20 the loss of 12 HP means a different thing to a 3rd level character that it does to a 7th level character.

On another note, sounds like 5th edition is not an improvement on 3rd if they have removed the shock ruling.

>>Not to mention that I also have a copy of Cthulu Now which allows the option of hit locations, making those 3 bullets even more dangerous.<<

>You could add an optional hit location system to d20 too.
d20 has an optional rule for hit locations? I didn't know that. How does it work?

>>But with d20 if most of the high HP are considered avoiding major damage, when you get to the point of injury (low HP I guess) you are considered strangely unable to dodge anymore. How is this explained away?<<

>Limited human capacity? I'm not exactly sure what you're objecting to, so a vague answer is the best I can provide at this point.

See the difference between the 3rd level and the 7th level character. The standard explanation is that you have improve ability to avoid or limit the damage in some way. But it only works until you run out of points and then the damage is actual 'wounds'. If it is some kind of fatigue issue, it doesn't effect your other abilities and it must also be 'healed'. Seems a little odd that fatigue heals at the same rate as an injury.

You can argue that loss of HP in BRP also has no effect on your abilities, but at least it makes the consistant assumption that if you can attack at full ability, then you can also dodge at full ability. d20 cannot make that claim unless you assume the extra HP per level are extra points of physical ability to absorb injury (and therefore your CON and STR should also increase to represent it).

>>BTW, if a player told me he wasn't trying to dodge bullets, but instead was dodging the action of someone pointing a gun, I would be more than happy to allow it. <<

> They're equally unrealistic from where I sit.

I look to great b&w detective movies for my atmosphere for CoC. Diving behind the desk when the cultist points the gun at you is quite acceptable. Besides realism is not high on my list in a game with sanity blasting critters. My arguments are purely in regards to the system giving me good guidelines on representing the character and I don't find that d20 works as well as BRP in regards to wounding of characters.

Cheers
src