Damage as SFX

[Shieldhaven]

Keeping the necessary rules difference between light, one-handed, and two-handed weapons in the rules system is one problem. The other is that every character, no matter what his main character class is, should pick up a level of barbarian to set his damage die as high as possible.

This also doesn't accomodate damage increases/decreases based on the size of the attacker. This is easy enough to implement, but once you're willing to do that, I feel like you're more or less back to your starting point with nothing gained.

Haven

 

[Quartz]

I wonder how this would work in play:

D20 Combat made simple.

Basic precept: weapons are a special effect for doing damage in combat; the weapons themselves may have special qualities which affect the damage and the rate of damage.

Basic Damage
All weapons do damage according to the HD of the current class of the wielder. Thus a mage does 1d4 no matter the weapon and a barbarian 1d12 no matter the weapon. Observation: the base damage of the weapon, no matter the weapon, quickly becomes secondary to the various additions from feats, magic etc. Rationalisation: a fighter multiclassing to wizard is concentrating on spellcasting, not combat; classes like Eldritch Knight make up for this with BAB which can be converted to damage with Power Attack.

All classes of weapons are abolished except for exotic weapons, each of which requires a feat as before. Non-proficiency is represented by the reduced die of damage.

All manoeuver feats (e.g. Cleave, Improved Sunder, Improved Trip, Manyshot, the TWF tree) remain the same.

The feats Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialisation, Melee Weapon Mastery, Greater Weapon Focus, and Greater Weapon Mastery, and other similar feats are replaced by a single feat, Combat Improvement, which grants +1 to hit and +1 to damage. This feat stacks with itself.

Damage is increased by modifiers from Strength, magic, etc. A weapon wielded in both hands gets 2x Strength bonus. There is no 'secondary' hand: a character wielding two weapons gets his full Str bonus on each. Note that TWF penalties apply unless the appropriate feats are taken.

All special weapon properties (e.g. Shocking Burst, Holy) remain specific to the weapon and affect damage as before. (Design note: people enjoy special qualities and rolling dice.)

Criticals
All weapons threaten critical on a roll of 20. Criticals are confirmed as before. Magic weapons have a critical range equal to the Plus of the weapon. Note: This makes the Greater Magic Weapon spell much more viable

The Improved Critical feat increases the critical range by 1. It can be taken multiple times and it stacks with itself. It has the prerequisite that Combat Improvement must have been taken twice.

Power Attack
Prerequisite: Str 13.
Benefit: On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all attack rolls and add the same number to all damage rolls. (But see Ranged Weapons below). This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn. There is no special bonus or penalty for the size or handling of the weapon.

Ranged Weapons
Ranged weapons that are thrown (e.g. Spear, Javelin, Hand Axe) benefit from all the above feats.
Ranged weapons that directly use muscle-power to launch projectiles (e.g. Atlatl, Slings) benefit from all the above feats.
Ranged weapons that indirectly use muscle-power to launch projectiles (e.g. Longbow, Crossbow) must make a Fort save as if unattended vs DC15+extra damage unless specifically constructed (q.v. Strength bows).

How's that for a start?

 

[Fifth Element]

So how about if all weapons did the same damage? Don't laugh, there's precedent in Warhammer FRP.

And Mazes & Minotaurs...

 

[sirwmholder]

...Basic Damage
All weapons do damage according to the HD of the current class of the wielder. Thus a mage does 1d4 no matter the weapon and a barbarian 1d12 no matter the weapon. Observation: the base damage of the weapon, no matter the weapon, quickly becomes secondary to the various additions from feats, magic etc. Rationalisation: a fighter multiclassing to wizard is concentrating on spellcasting, not combat; classes like Eldritch Knight make up for this with BAB which can be converted to damage with Power Attack.

One problem I see right off the bat is a barbarian dealing 1d12 damage at level one and no other Core Class can match him... that means a Barbarian has a chance to drop any 1 HD creature even without making a critical hit... and most 2 HD creatures with a critical hit... the Fighter and the Paladin come close... but the Ranger is knocked down to the Cleric, Druid, Monk level without the spells to back him up... the Rogue gets hosed as a combat class again... and the Wizard and Sorcerer deal even poorer damage even if they do manage to hit. But to be fair it's equal to giving the stereotype weapon as the base damage for each class... Barbarian = Great Sword, Fighter/Paladin = Bastard Sword, Ranger/Cleric/Druid/Monk = Long Sword/Morning Star (Druid & Monk get bumped up in average damage), Rogue = Short Sword, Wizard/Sorcerer = Dagger/Sling... if this is what you are going for then I think this system might accomplish it quite well. Though it does feed the stereotype and doesn't support truly unique characters or very cinematic combat... i.e. Gandolf fighting with a Staff and Long Sword in LotR.

EDIT: On a side note: I like rolling multiple dice instead of adding up a lot of +1's from various feats and the like. Maybe change the feats to be a progression... based on number of HD and adding +1 dice. Something to the effect every 4 levels add +1 dice.

Thank you for your time,
William Holder

 

[Quartz]

One problem I see right off the bat is a barbarian dealing 1d12 damage at level one and no other Core Class can match him...

But that's the case right now.

but the Ranger is knocked down to the Cleric, Druid, Monk level without the spells to back him up...

But does have the abilities and skill points.

the Rogue gets hosed as a combat class again...

Sneak Attack.

Though it does feed the stereotype and doesn't support truly unique characters or very cinematic combat... i.e. Gandolf fighting with a Staff and Long Sword in LotR.

Gandalf is an Outsider and does d8 damage.

EDIT: On a side note: I like rolling multiple dice instead of adding up a lot of +1's from various feats and the like.

Part of the point of making it all +1s was to mitigate the effect of multiclassing, so the high-level fighter taking a dip into Rogue or Sorceror doesn't get hosed. Plus all those +1s work better with feats like Power Attack and Combat Expertise and critical hits.

Interesting comments, thank you.

 

[Pyrex]

It seems odd that a Sor1/Bbn10 doesn't do the same base damage as a Bbn10/Sor1.

To account for multiclassing, creatures with racial HD, etc, you need to find a way to rationalize that.

How about one of the following (sorted in rough-order of power):
->You use the largest die-type of any you have. (i.e., Sor1/Bbn1/Rgr4 uses d12)
->You use whichever die-type you have the most of. (i.e., Sor3/Bbn4 uses d12, Sor3/Wiz2/Bbn4 uses d4)
->Average your die-types to determine damage (Sor3/Rgr4/Bbn4 uses (3*4+4*8+4*12)/11 = 8.72 ~= d8)

 

[Quartz]

It seems odd that a Sor1/Bbn10 doesn't do the same base damage as a Bbn10/Sor1.

How so? In the latter example, for his current level (Sor 1) he's concentrating on magic, not being a barbarian. Besides, at that level, the loss in base damage (2.5 HP vs 6.5 HP) would be small compared to the bonuses from Str, Rage, Power Attack, magic, etc.

To account for multiclassing, creatures with racial HD, etc, you need to find a way to rationalize that.

I believe I have.

 

[Pyrex]

How about I rephrase.

Why does a Bbn19/Sor1 suddenly get as much base damage out of his greataxe as a Sor1?

Generally speaking, it's weird when characters suddenly get worse at something by levelling.

Also, it's bad design to have the same levels in different order* producing different effects.

*The two glaring examples of this in the RAW being Lvl1 and Epic levels.

 

[Quartz]

How about I rephrase.

Why does a Bbn19/Sor1 suddenly get as much base damage out of his greataxe as a Sor1?

Good question.

The in-character reason is that the character is currently letting his combat skills slip and giving preference to practicing his magical ones. He's not practicing with it so often. That said, he has much greater ability to improve the base damage of his weapon.

This thread is looking at abstracting the damage somewhat, but maintaining and reflecting the combat abilities of both the class and the character. Equating it to the HD of the class that the character is currently taking is a reasonable abstraction IMHO which reflects the combat ability of the class, whereas the BAB, feats etc reflect the combat ability of the character. If you're going to make it too complex (averaging the HD??), you might as well not bother. Equally, there are game balance issues at the lower levels to allow simply taking the highest HD - too many characters would take a level of Barbarian or fighter. Compare Bbn 1 / Wiz 1 and Wiz 1 / Bbn 1. We could abstract further by saying that all weapons do 1d8 damage no matter the class, with extra damage coming from the character's combat abilities, but that stops us modelling the poor skills of commonners etc.

 

[SSquirrel]

Maybe instead of just going straight to the hit die of whatever class they have chosen most recently you look and see if their new HD is lower. If it is, drop their damage die one class. So a Barbarian works on his innate magical abilities and picks up his first level of sorcerer. He uses a d10 for damage for this next level. If he continues as a sorcerer, he stays at d10. If he goes back to his barbarian ways, he goes back to a d12.