D&D General DnD 5E, Damage Threshold, and Rifts

[SkidAce]

So, if you used a damage threshold in dnd 5e to simulate RIFTS mega damage armor and weapons, what would you set the damage threshold at?

Sailing ships in 5e normally have a damage threshold of 15 to 20, so maybe 15-30 for biggest MD robots and armor?

Ramifications?*






*I know MD doesn't work exactly like Damage Thresholds in 5e.

 

[NotAYakk]

I don't think I'd use a damage threshold to simulate RIFTS mega damage armor and weapons?

If I wanted to mimic RIFTS with a bit less "automatic death outside of armor", I might use 10x damage for "mega damage". Find some nice name for "upscaled" - Kaiju? So you'd have KP or KHP etc and KDamage.

10x is easy to do math. A "level appropriate" foe with 10x damage and 10x HP is not quite instant death, but close enough that you'd want to run; if you wanted to be cruel, you could also render them immune to crits (from smaller scale foes) and +10 AC (again, from smaller scale foes) or even just +5 AC (and maybe saving throws).

A "cute" thing to do might be to use 4e D&D for mega scale; PCs would get into Kaiju-scale fantasy mecha that use 4e-style rules (where HP/damage is all 10x upscaled). You could down-scale AC/ATK scaling (remove the level/2 bonus) or similar to keep things on an even mathematical footing.

It would ensure that the game felt very different at that scale.

I might also substitute feet for meters at Kaiju scale, so each square is 5 meters x 5 meters (or yards), a roughly 3x scaleup.

 

[SkidAce]

@NotAYakk How would you simulate the "baseball bat hitting a tank (MD) would never do any damage" effect from Rifts?

 

[NotAYakk]

@NotAYakk How would you simulate the "baseball bat hitting a tank (MD) would never do any damage" effect from Rifts?

I mean, 10x damage is enough? Just ... round down.

Suppose you have a 25 strength level 20 fighter using a +3 club and duelist style. They do 1d4+12 damage; they'll do a single point of KHP. The same fighter with 29 strength, GWF, using a flametongue greatsword does 4d6B+19, or 2-4 KHP; a scratch.

But those are legendary scale mortals. Having them able to scratch Kaiju-scale foes isn't implausible.

A less heroic human with 12 strength will do 1d4+1; 0 KHP. Low-heroic monsters (like a Knight) deal ~1 KHP per attack. Making a non-heroic character capable of dealing even a single KHP of damage will be tough. In 5e parlance, every non-Kaiju acts like a "CR 0" foe.

The 100x factor I think isn't fully needed. It means that a single point of Kaiju-scale damage is instant death; in RIFTS this translates to every human-scale figure miraculously having MDC armor or whatever, and makes "I'm a human running around a Kaiju-scale battle" less interesting. With only 10x a mid-high level PC might actually survive a minor damage effect.

Like, a level 11 foe might do 5 damage to everyone within 1 square when they teleport; a minor amount of KHP, but scaled to human size that is a 50 point insane damage blast. At 500 (100x) it just means "you die"; at 50 (10x) it means "holy crap you are almost dead".

If you did use 4e style monsters for Kaiju-scale battles, a level 11 Kaiju has (3+11) * 8 = 112 KHP, roughly 1120 normal HP. They are doing about 13 KHP per attack, or 130 normal damage. If we remove +1/2 level scaling from 4e AC/ATK/etc, they have about 18 AC and +8 to hit. A balanced encounter is 4 of those (!); a solo L 11 foe does ~260 damage and has ~4480 normal HP.

The scale is pretty much there. And a tweak on AC/saves from lower-scale foes would make them near immune.

Sure, world simulation it might not be perfect. But I think it would make a good gameplay simulation; nobody would want to fight Kaiju-scale foes without their Kaiju-scale gear.

 

[SkidAce]

Thanks, I will take a close look at this idea.

 

[el-remmen]

I don’t know what number to suggest to emulate RIFTS but I do use a damage threshold ability for some huge, gargantuan (and I’ve added colossal as a size) monsters that ranges from 5 to 15.