You are almost always better reducing the damage by your Fate Score than bumping your Fortitude for the purposes of Massive Damage. That way you're taking less damage and it has the same
net effect.

John

A BI is not a great barometer of the impact of this rule, since it would feature as many fights as a complete year of Hard Points. Also, this BI was designed to be rough (things are getting serious in the Blessed Lands) so it generated more Wounds than normal.

That said, 1 PC out of 62 was slain during the battle, and at the last possible moment in the battle in the toughest fight. Players have not had an opportunity to adapt play style nor hero build to the new reality of needing Fortitude.

Also, average damage should not be used for bosses, it is intended to speed up the use of Minions, and in their case you should be looking at no wounds on average.

Until it actually hits the Campaign Guide (when/if it gets updated), non-convention games aren't going to be using it very often.

It would also help if the final Errata/FAQ was officially released, as several adjustments in that doc have a direct effect upon damage stacking.


Overall, the Gritty rules benefit the players a lot more than the NPCs (especially after T.1). It T.1, the average PC has a minimum of 2 wounds (3 Gritty rules) due to a 4 or 5 Vigor (the opportunity cost of an 8 is pretty high) and in theory, most of the threats are doing around d8/d8* damage vs a Fort of 17-19. Even your average Mighty Swing Neirite Flamberge at d10/d8+5* won't be doing any wounds if the PC has medium or better armour (don't get me started on Smite Heretic/Smite Infidel "kill the PCs in one hit" threats with d12 stats...)

By a couple of levels into T.2, PCs should have a Fort around 22-23 plus AR2-4 from armour, runes or spells. Unless the threat is built to "one-shot" the damage, wounds should still be infrequent. As has been stated as well, unless they are 'named', threats only get 1-2 wounds, making it possible to take them out with Wound damage instead of chewing through their 50-80 stamina.


The threshold for wounds was probably a lot more noticeable in the BI, as for quite a while writers have been 'overstatting' their Threats with d10 and d12 attributes (which feeds into both their ability to hit and the damage, especially when they explode).

Anothing thing, even after Massive Damage is in effect, calling this "gritty" is a significant overstatement.

We have been using the Gritty rules in our Home Game. I can say it speeds up combat, but have never almost killed the players. They usually cut a swath with the gritty rules right to the end villian.

Just played a mod with the Gritty Rules, and I only inflicted a single wound. Of course, I think the slowest weapon on the table was a Gladius and nobody could smite or was using Mighty Swing so that skews things against Massive damage (from either side).

That's the term used in the Book.

Also maybe I misunderstood, but I assumed *all* creatures got an extra wound, including 'bad guys' of all types (minions, elites, and adversaries). If only PC's get the Extra Wound, then yeah it will likely in most games benefit the hard hitting PC's more.

John

I also have to admit I have some hard hitting players.

Massive Damage rules being in effect, makes some older mods completely deadly at the tier they came out at. Cardakkx Rising is going to be a hand full for any 1.1 fighting the crossbow men. And Desecration might be nigh in-survivable with those speed 4 hook horror attacks.