Combat Rework - Less damage dice pls?

A

ASILiara

First Post

• Jan 6, 2018

• #1

Upon thinking about the combat system, and specifically about rolling for damage, I realised that it doesn't particularly make that much sense. In the real world, a firearm that has a range of damage as wide as something from most RPGs would be considered an awful firearm. The much more important factor here is one's aim, and that wouldn't have nearly as big an impact on damage.

I do have some thoughts to remedy this, though. Rather than give weapons such big rolls, they instead get given a system similar to Shadowrun's. Each gun has a set amount of damage - pistols have a set damage of 3, for instance, while an assault rifle has a set damage of, say, 10. If you want a bit more variability, make it (1d6/2)+10 or something along those lines.

Now, granted, these are just numbers and ideas that I pulled from nothing in a few minutes, to demonstrate my point. If anybody has any better suggestions, please feel free to contribute.

 

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M

M3woods

Explorer

• Jan 6, 2018

• #2

I've always seen the range of damage for weapons of any sort to be appropriate in RPGs. In my mind, it represents the randomness of combat and suits the narrative structure of gameplay. If a handgun does, let's say, 1d6 damage and I manage to roll a hit on an assailant in the heat of battle - another random roll to express the confusion of combat - then the damage rolled represents how severe the shot was. Even without hit locations, my imagination fills in the blanks. If I roll 1 point of damage, I imagine the opponent has a nice bloody furrow along the side of his thigh; roll a 6, he's got a hole punched clear through a shoulder. The same could be said for melee weapons.

Now, on the other hand, I feel like the damage could be set when aiming or making called shots. It seems fair enough, in those cases, that a gun does a specific amount of damage, considering there's generally concentration, time expenditure, and/or penalties involved before making the shot. I'd allow my players to do the average value of a damage dice roll on attacks made with the effort to secure the hit.

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Jan 7, 2018

• #3

I feel like that would mean you could never have a grazing hit or a flesh wound, only perfectly identical shots.

 

A

ASILiara

First Post

• Jan 7, 2018

• #4

In response to that, I'm almost tempted to say that a mechanic like Margins of Success/Failure might be a decent addition as well - so for instance, if you roll a fail on the shooty test, but it's within a certain margin, then you still get, say... half damage? A quarter damage? But I'm not sure how well margins of failure and success would work with the rest of the system.

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Jan 7, 2018

• #5

A damage roll *is* a margin of success mechanic, though, isn't it?

 

A

ASILiara

First Post

• Jan 7, 2018

• #6

In my opinion, not really. Well, sort of, but my point is that it doesn't make sense. The gun itself shouldn't have variable damage, grazing hits and all that should be a function of the attack roll, rather than the weapon itself.

There's the possibility that I'm overcomplicating stuff, though.

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Jan 8, 2018

• #7

I'd suggest that they already are a function of the attack roll - or of the size of the attacking dice pool, more specifically. You exchange attack dice for damage dice, so the more accurate you are, the more damage you can potentially do. It just makes it a player choice rather than a system mandate.

 

A

ASILiara

First Post

• Jan 8, 2018

• #8

The thing is, that still involves rolling for damage, which I'm trying to avoid. I want to get the maximum amount of information possible from as few separate rolls as possible, with regards to combat.

 

D

daniiren

Explorer

• Jan 8, 2018

• #9

In my experience, most players want to roll dice, and want to see dice rolled. In one of my sessions last month I had all the enemies do average damage rather than roll each time, and my players got rather upset with me.

I can see the points everyone's making, and while I personally side with Morrus (I love me some dice), the beauty of what we do is that if you don't like a rule or want to try something else out, you can do it. So maybe for a session or few try eliminating damage rolls in favor of something related to how much above their DEF you roll (you'll have to add SOAK into this somehow), and see how it plays.

 

T

Tormyr

Adventurer

• Jan 8, 2018

• #10

And historically, many systems, especially d20, have had the attack roll be whether you hit at all, and the damage roll is how bad it was. W.O.i.N. has the interesting mechanic of trading attack certainty for damage, but it still fits with the historical context.

The nice thing is that if you want it to work differently, you could write up a homebrew mod for this and post it to the new store that has been set up on OneBookShelf.