Question about Health and Battle Points

[lordbubyan]

Hi guys i have read the Chapter 3 Blood of the Battlefield from Tome of Sorrows vol I. I like the idea of health and battle points but how do you handle it with high level monsters and player characters? I mean, at high level you only need one critical, sneak or flank attack to kill somebody. A barbarian can dish 50 hp on a single hit with a crit, or a sneak attack with a 2 handed weapon and Str 22 can dish 20+ dmg easily (without the sneak dice). An epic character or npc only have 10-20 CON normally, there is no way to survive the first hit. In the other hand statistically player characters will be dead with the first critical hit, an ogre with an axe can dish 40+ hp on a critical hit, enough to kill you.

The damage increases proportionally as you level up, but not health points, i think  this creates a problem when characters and enemies grow up. Weapons with high critical range like rapiers/ scimitars/ crossbows or weapons with high critical damage (x3 or x4) are much more powerful than normal ones. Feats like Power Attack, Improved Critical Hit, Weapon Specialization etc are devastating under this rules.

[Chaotix]

Honestly, that type of system, of battle/health points or defense/life points or however you want to call it, ends up being a more realistic but brutal system. If there's a way to bypass the larger portion of defenses (battle points) and actually do damage to your character/NPC (health points), then there are going to be times when someone is going to go from "still got gas in the tank" to "I'm dying" in a single round.

If you implement this in your games, you have to acknowledge and accept this as a possibility, you are fighting an Ogre with an axe the same size as you after all. If it sounds too brutal for you, the classic hit point system is the way to go.