Hows D20 modern stack up?

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Bitom
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Hows D20 modern stack up?

Post by Bitom » Wed Jul 09, 2008 2:45 am

Recently, I asked BrokenWire2086 to stat himself using the D20 Modern system. I didn't give him chargen rules... I let him take as many levels as he thought he'd have, and whatever attributes he thought he had.

He ended up at CL5 with 84 points of attributes (all 8's + 35 points... similar to the weak Vgen that tet and I have used)

we found only one glaring problem: Armor seemed very broken. It requires lots of feats for the US military's standard-issue, and the penalties for not being proficient were severe. I think it's a fair estimate that most of the soldiers in the field can be said to have not taken 3 feats in wearing their armor, and if this is true, then our army is out there walking around with less protection than a cop with a light vest, and with a -8 penalty to almost everything. Armor's speed penalties also did not seem to add up to what happened in the real world.

That's the bad stuff.

On the other hand, in terms of encumbrance by weight, modern seems to have done a very good job. D20's "Hustle" speed was about what BW can do in RL, and would cause fatigue at about the right time.

Other penalties seemed about right to him, and all seemed to make logical sense.

All told, they did a pretty good job, although armor needs a re-think. I was impressed.


of course, there was always this:
BrokenWire2086 wrote:combats always interesting because it never accounts for the human desire to not get shot
The sheet we made can be seen at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pUXo4yh2IuDo0A1xPog4jTQ

The only major rules deviation in this sheet is that I allowed him to gain full benefits of his armor without proficiency.

od
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Re: Hows D20 modern stack up?

Post by od » Wed Jul 09, 2008 5:34 pm

I don't think AC/HP will ever work out realistically in d20. The two mechanics just don't equate well int he real world. The system is base don't he idea that at equal levels a person will have 50-25% chance of hitting another person.

HP is set up so you can take a certain number of average hits from a same level character before dieing.

This sliding scale just doesn't make sense in the real world, where no matter how cool you are you can't take ten bullets just because you have more experience than the other guy. And vitality is just an attempt to make HP make sense, but as near as I can tell it still doesn't. It basically amounts to a luck pool int he end, since no other explanation makes any sense.

AC makes more sense, but it leads to "ninja master" scenarios where a person can't possible miss or can't possibly hit regardless of circumstance or stupidity.

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