A Doubling Die For Damage?

[Diamond Cross]

In the Palladium FRPG there is a special magical short sword. It has no bonuses to hit or damage. It has no other special attacks such as being flammable.

It's only special thing is that it uses a doubling die for damage.

For those who might not know what doubling die is, it is a d6, but instead of having 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 on its sides, it has 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64. That means it does this amount of damage. While that's all that it does, just think, 16 or 32 points of damage is a lot of damage on one roll, not to mention the damage is doubled on a critical hit.

So, would you allow such a weapon in your games? Is it overpowered?

Personally, I'd love for my character to have this kind of weapon.

 

[frankthedm]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...mon-die-aka-doubling-cube-table-top-play.html

 

[Morrus]

I'd say that a weapon which can do ten times the damage of a regular weapon is overpowered, yes. A short sword that has a 1-in-6 chance of doing 64 damage, as opposed to the 6 max it can normally do?

Damage wise, it's a short-sword + 58.

 

[Huw]

In the computer game Ultima 8 there was a mace, forget its name, that 5% of the time would kill the foes outright. It was the most powerful weapon in the game since that 5% was enough of an edge to defeat any foe you care to mention.

Now take your doubling die. The average damage is (2+4+8+16+32+64)/6 = 21, which is higher than a +5 flaming two-handed sword (2d6+1d6+5) = 15.5. So already you have something better than a +7 equivalent weapon. But once again, the killer is that peak damage, 64, 16.667% of the time. In 1e and 2e, it would be unacceptable, since even name-level characters might not have that many hit points. In 3e, it will at least cause a save against death for massive damage. In both cases, still better than a vorpal sword. 4e: don't know.

I think there was a god in 1e Deities and Demigods who used one for his attack. Wouldn't let a PC near one, powergamer or not.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I once gave that weapon to a player of mine in a palladium campaign many years ago and in several years of play he never rolled above 16 with it.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Honestly, it doesn't sound terribly interesting to me; it just deals a LOT of damage.

I might be inclined to (briefly) include it in a game if it had a caveat of some sort. Maybe if "unused" damage got reflected back on the wielder? Then the player has to carefully pick and choose which battles he uses it in. Versus goblins? Not a good idea. Versus giants? Could be useful up to the last hit. And versus a mirror image? Hehe...

That would be a niftier weapon, imho. And still one that probably wouldn't last very long before it was deus ex machina'ed out of the PCs' possession.