Making OVA grittier: Take Two

Eisenmann · Post by **Eisenmann** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:39 pm

In my OVA game this past weekend, I used the critical hits chart from Rolemaster and the PCs really dished out the destruction.

It was a lot of fun but it fit the genre of big mecha smashing things. I'm seriously thinking about running a darker, grittier fantasy game but characters with 40 Health and 40 Endurance are just too danged durable to get the feel that I'm going for.

So, my thought is to halve Health Endurance down to 20 each. My question is, Has anyone done this? If so, did it work? Did it change something unseen in the rule set and the game itself was knocked out of wack?

Joe_Mello · Post by **Joe_Mello** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:19 pm

There are weaknesses for that. Also, try making tougher enemies.

My personal house rule is that you pass out at 0 Health, become useless (but awake) at 0 Endurance, and dead at both.

Eisenmann · Post by **Eisenmann** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:24 pm

Yea, I saw the weakness to reduce Health/Endurance though I don't really want to use that to model a more "savage" world. Not sure what I'm gonna do... still pondering.

Post by **Clay** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:30 pm

Originally, there were rules for a "grittier" OVA, but they were canned.

To simplify them somewhat, the two major changes were that Health/Endurance totals (and bonuses/penalties) were halved, and that the default dice roll included only one die, not two.

Hope that's useful to you!

Eisenmann · Post by **Eisenmann** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 10:35 pm

Thanks, Clay! That works perfectly for me.