[Hi There] FC with no/very limited vitality points.

[Drifter]

First post, so this may have been done to death, but I'm wondering if anyone has any first hand experience of FC with either limited or no vitality points used. I mean below the campaign quality that halves them. I ask as I'm poking about at a Gloranthan FC homebrew and wondered if the effects of essentially static hit points had been considered. I'm thinking maybe a stretch to 1 or 2 VP a level...but I thought I'd seek more experienced viewpoints.

[Psion]

Hey.

Don't know how much help it is, but I've run my campaign for 11 levels now. I don't use large nasty creatures; the nature of my game features primarily humanoids opposition (mainly cultists with the occasional horror from beyond sort of thing.) I found that for my purposes the default vitality load is too much. PCs are rarely threatened by route of vitality damage, most having well over half at the end of a fight. Further, I find that after action dice run short, they have real problems dealing with special NPCs.

I recently turned on the "fragile heroes" quality (page 324), and am finding it plays much better. Players are actually plough through their vitality more often, and it's quicker dealing with special NPCs when you can't rely on criticals.

[Nova]

1-2 per level? This actually makes things a lot easier for standard characters than PCs, and PCs than special NPCs

Standard characters: Never having any vitality themselves, they benefit the most here, from everyone around them not getting much tougher. A grade IV/V health standard takes roughly 2 more damage per 2 threat levels to take down as reliably as before.

PCs: This can hit a bit hard. Consider the classes that get 12 vit and 4 skill points per level: if everyone's dragged down to 1-2, you need to give them something in exchange. You can divide vit gains by 4, adding the con bonus only on attribute-gain levels or the like, and then its okay, but if you flat out kill their vitality gain to the same level as, say, a mage? you OWE them those skill points per level right back.

You should also keep in mind what this does to several 'builds'. A character focusing on critical strikes had best reconsider everything he's giving up, as his advantage is mostly out the window. Better 6d6 normal damage than 3d6 to wounds 1/3 of the time (or better for some, but they're really paying for it heavily). Someone that deals in subdual or stress damage sees a similar issue, where the main reason to take it falls short of everyone just being able to kill specials that much faster. Why stress or subdual feats when just one 'merciful/humiliating' strike trick does the same job just as fast now?  You'll want to keep this in mind and make sure the players understand the implications.

Special NPCs are hit the hardest. With a pool of 5xHealthxTL, a simple, standard grade III folk special has 15vit at level 1 (comparable with the party soldier if he's got great Con), and a staggering 300 at level 20.  That's the aveage guy. a special that's more along the vit-gain line of the party soldier is probably more Health IV/V, enough to add up to 2-3 party members in the endgame!

Now he's got 40? OW?  ... but what if he doesn't? then unless you have crithappy PCs and didn't touch Tough with a 10-ft pole, mr 500 vitality, 15 wounds is going to chew through a party with a total combined vitality of about 1/5th his own, using a couple of fireballs and his normal attacks. He also has every reason to keep a retinue of standards around; they're as tough as you are!

I'm not trying to discourage you, just putting out a few of the things that this will do. Whether that's good or bad for your campaign is up to you to decide.

(and thanks to login page wierdness, I'd ended up saying this on the other vit question page...)

[Crafty_Alex]

Fantasy Craft's vitality scale is set to "Heroic" so the heroes can get in there hacking, slashing and getting pretty beat up without worrying endlesly about the need for magical healing. But we know full well in more tame campaigns it can be overkill. I might hesitate to strictly limit vitality to 1-2 VP a level outside of games where you simply don't want combat to happen, but halving it certainly is within reason. Just be certain you halve the damage save of standard NPCs as well.

The other option is to cut it back from adventure to adventure or even session to session as befits your game.For example, all of our Spycraft 3 demos thus far have been run with half or even 1/4 normal vitality, as we felt it was more to the needs of the stories - our default suggestion in SC3 will probably be 1/2 vitality as "standard", because we found that encouraged a greater degree of caution from the players and made them consider a little more when and how they fought. In the demo with 1/4 vitality, combat was essentially non-existent, and gunplay ended up with one party or the other dead in a matter of 1-2 bullets.

[aegis]

The other option is to cut it back from adventure to adventure or even session to session as befits your game.For example, all of our Spycraft 3 demos thus far have been run with half or even 1/4 normal vitality, as we felt it was more to the needs of the stories - our default suggestion in SC3 will probably be 1/2 vitality as "standard", because we found that encouraged a greater degree of caution from the players and made them consider a little more when and how they fought. In the demo with 1/4 vitality, combat was essentially non-existent, and gunplay ended up with one party or the other dead in a matter of 1-2 bullets.

Hum, I couldn't agree more. This is clearly more in the feel of the espionage genre. I was kind of afraid that the Fantasy Craft vitality scale would transpose badly in Spycraft. Glad to see it's not going to be a problem.