Health and Endurance

[Cloud]

Hello. Its been awhile. I was hoping to ask a question about the new edition. Any thoughts on having harsher penalties for heros out of health? I would think having no health would be worse physically than being out of endurance.

[R-90-2]

Well, you'd think that, but it doesn't always seem to work that way on-screen, especially in the case of fighting anime. The Rei vs. Yuda fight in Hokuto No Ken is a good example, as Rei had almost internally bled to death at that point, but was still able to single-handedly kill one of his peers in the Nanto Rokusei Ken.

"Exceeding the limits of your own body" is a fairly popular motif with the exception of the really gritty stuff like Angel Cop, but I think that the Mekton Zeta version of the Interlock system might be better suited for that, in some ways.

[Clay]

I've actually been pondering on and off increasing the "Out of Health/Out of Endurance" Penalty to -2. So far, I've stuck to the old -1 we're all familiar with, but it might at least make an appearance in the new "Making a game grittier" sidebar I plan to include in the Revised Edition

That said, I don't think I'll ever differentiate between being out of Health and being out of Endurance. As R-90-2 says, it's sort of the nature of the beast. That, and giving two differing penalties is just more stuff to remember, which is the kind of thing I really try to avoid when making OVA design decisions.

But certainly, by all means feel free to house rule it in your own games. I think pretty much every Game Master has their own tweaks to an RPG, and it's certainly not a bad idea if you feel it fits the kind of game you want to play.

[Cloud]

Dont get me wrong, one of the things that I like most about OVA is the fact that someone who is out of health can keep going. What I would like to see is the penalty for being out of health be a bit steeper. Maybe characters are at a -2 to all actions or maybe they start loosing endurance at a rate of 2 per round.

One more question. Do you have plans for status effects? That would make witchcraft more robust.

[Erinak]

Dont get me wrong, one of the things that I like most about OVA is the fact that someone who is out of health can keep going. What I would like to see is the penalty for being out of health be a bit steeper. Maybe characters are at a -2 to all actions or maybe they start loosing endurance at a rate of 2 per round.

One more question. Do you have plans for status effects? That would make witchcraft more robust.

We were toying with an idea of making health going to 0 more distressing than endurance going to 0 - like -2 dice to all actions and the endurance lost per round if your character did anything - maybe it could be kept simple that it would cost an extra 5 endurance to any action character takes while health is 0, instead of trying to keep track per round with an automatic hit to endurance.

Using this rule we also ignored any ill effects if endurance went to 0 (you know unless health and endurance were both 0 then that would be really bad) - having 0 endurance was bad enough alone and it made health and endurance each more uniquely valuable to characters. In the original rules we often put endurance and raising endurance first as being a more valuable commodity (cause of drama dice, power attack, backup health pool, etc.)

[Clay]

In the Revised Game, Health has become a more valuable commodity simply because it's quite a bit more difficult to regain. While Endurance pops back after a short rest, once Health is gone, it will remain so for a large portion of any adventure.

So, to continue that logic: More Health means a lessened likelihood that you're running around with a semi-permanent -1 Penalty from your non-recovering zero Health.

But certainly any of these takes are fine. But for the time being I prefer the easy-to-understand-and-remember "-1 Penalty no matter what" rule for this sort of thing. Still debating buffing the penalty, though. We'll see.