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.

 

[Stormonu]

d20 Modern used Hardness, somewhat similar to a Damage Threshold, but the hardness was subtracted from the damage, rather than Damage Threshold applying all the damage if you exceed the threshold (I prefer the former).

As an example, in the core rulebook they gave a M1 Abrams tank Hardness 20 and 64.
Conversely, a Colt Python (.357 Magnum) did 2d6, so on a crit, it could hurt the tank...

If you wanted to replicate SDC in a 5E Rifts style game, I'd use Hardness instead of Damage Threshold and set it about 25.