Post by geoffrey on Apr 15, 2008 17:07:50 GMT -6
In Gamma World a player character's hit points are determined by rolling a number of six-sided dice equal to his constitution. Since a GW character has an average constitution of 12, he will have an average of 42 hp (12 multiplied by 3.5).
While I think this system works wonderfully for adventurers, I think it would be misapplied to use it for every human on Gamma World. In Gary's Legion of Gold module there is a 10-year-old girl with 30 hp! That's silly. A pair of such ten-year-old girls could kill a PSH adventurer in a fair fight.
Since GW was explicitly made to be compatible with AD&D, I think it makes sense that non-adventuring humans should have around 1-8 hp (as do 0-level humans in AD&D). But I still want to tie hp to constitution. Here is my solution:
For a non-adventuring human, hp equals half his constitution (rounding fractions down). This yields a hp range of 1-9. Thus little girls can have 1 hp, while big, burly men can have 9 hp. Here's a chart:
CON 3: 1 hp
CON 4 or 5: 2 hp
CON 6 or 7: 3 hp
CON 8 or 9: 4 hp
CON 10 or 11: 5 hp
CON 12 or 13: 6 hp
CON 14 or 15: 7 hp
CON 16 or 17: 8 hp
CON 18: 9 hp
Thus an average non-adventurer will have 5 hp, while an average adventurer will have 42 hp, making the adventurer about eight times tougher than the stay-at-homes. But (this being GW), it still wouldn't be wise to push-around the single-digit-hit-point people. After all, that little girl might have a nasty mutation that could take you out in a single round...
While I think this system works wonderfully for adventurers, I think it would be misapplied to use it for every human on Gamma World. In Gary's Legion of Gold module there is a 10-year-old girl with 30 hp! That's silly. A pair of such ten-year-old girls could kill a PSH adventurer in a fair fight.
Since GW was explicitly made to be compatible with AD&D, I think it makes sense that non-adventuring humans should have around 1-8 hp (as do 0-level humans in AD&D). But I still want to tie hp to constitution. Here is my solution:
For a non-adventuring human, hp equals half his constitution (rounding fractions down). This yields a hp range of 1-9. Thus little girls can have 1 hp, while big, burly men can have 9 hp. Here's a chart:
CON 3: 1 hp
CON 4 or 5: 2 hp
CON 6 or 7: 3 hp
CON 8 or 9: 4 hp
CON 10 or 11: 5 hp
CON 12 or 13: 6 hp
CON 14 or 15: 7 hp
CON 16 or 17: 8 hp
CON 18: 9 hp
Thus an average non-adventurer will have 5 hp, while an average adventurer will have 42 hp, making the adventurer about eight times tougher than the stay-at-homes. But (this being GW), it still wouldn't be wise to push-around the single-digit-hit-point people. After all, that little girl might have a nasty mutation that could take you out in a single round...
