Does a Great Axe do 2.5x the Damage of a Dagger?

[GMMichael]

When you make a judgment on how lethal a weapon is, and then express that judgment in terms of dice, something interesting happens: you can compare how lethal a weapon is in terms of how lethal another weapon is.

In the titular example, chopping someone with a great axe is just as damaging to the human body (psyche?) as stabbing that someone 2.5 times with a dagger. (These particular numbers are based on my system of tiny weapons using a d4, and two-handed weapons using a d10).

According to the Gallagher test, a watermelon agrees with the above findings. But is it fair to treat humans and watermelons the same? What about a steel-backed dire turtle?

In my games, the 2.5x difference only applies in combat (mode), and relies on the logic that says a machine gun will kill someone much faster than a pistol will. It's a sort of life-expectancy statement, but it's also a nod toward Damage-as-Meat; just ask the watermelon.

How many dagger stabs equal a great axe chop in your game? Do you treat humans and watermelons the same?

 

[DammitVictor]

Millennium's End, a modern counter-terror RPG, had a go at simulating that (as did I think Phoenix Command), where it would have hit locations and depending on penetration you could shatter bones, cause bleeding or injure organs. I guess it all depends on what you want genre conventions you game to reflect.

Exactly. I'm 100% supportive of people designing their games to reflect whatever kind of gameplay they desire-- it's the motivation to make deliberately unrealistic things more realistic while not understanding what that entails that bothers me. Even something as simple as saying that they want gunshots to look like Westerns or knife fights to look like The Raid or The Hunted, instead of looking like D&D is enough to make me want to help someone make their game do that, instead of trying to make them answer what they really want their game to look like.

 

[Tonguez]

Yes. Because in my world, humans are made of watermelon

Soylent Green is Watermelon!!

 

[aramis erak]

I actually like a d8 to be the default weapon damage, but then I assume that five die-types are available for differentiation (4, 6, 8, 10, 12).

Not a bad choice, either.

It's confusing, in D&D terms, that a hit and damage are different things. Because if you swing and miss (or your opponent parries your attack) you've clearly done no damage, or the worst possible hit. If you chop your opponent in half, you've done 100% damage, or the best possible hit. There are miles of gray area in-between. So another answer to the post question is, "that depends on which weapon hits," or from aramis, "that depends on which user has more skill."

Which relies upon a misinterpretation of D&D hitpoints, at least until the introduction of the "bloodied" rule.
D&D hitpoints aren't traumatic damage to the body; they really represent fatigue; it's the telling hit at the end which does a lethal trauma. Very, very, exceedingly very much TV/Radio serial story, especially Zorro.

My parting answer (for now) is:

The great axe does 2.5x the dagger's damage if skill, armor, and mobility aren't really factors in the measurement. So, you're basically just dropping a blade on a watermelon.

So what if you have opponents of equal skill fighting each other...?

Should they hit, base damage each.
I like the Pendragon solution: base damage is a factor derived from attributes: ((Size+Strength)/6)d6. Unarmed and daggers are -2d (to minimum 1d, or as I houserule, 1d3), shortswords -1d, greatswords and greataxes +1d,
Note that pendragon armors reduce damage per hit (rigid leather 6, chainmail 9 to 12 points, partial plate 12-14, gothic plate 16, winter weight wool clothing 1-2)...
I'm fine with a die roll for damage separate from one to hit. It's nice if an exceptional hit does extra damage or does special effects... such as is done in Savage Worlds (increases damage) or in MegaTraveller (multiplies damage before armor effect)
'll note that I do like, but it's slow to use, MegaTraveller's penetration to armor ratio as a multiplier of damage to the target.

I mean, yeah, I took a .25 ACP to the chest in my CAP issue field jacket (the older Fatigues patern one, in the 1980s). It hit my pocket flap, penetrated that, but not the jacket shell, and the bullet dropped into the pocket, and I had a bruise on my left pectoral area.

The point of weapons is to concentrate force in a manner to cause trauma. Not all hits will cause significant trauma. The point of body armor is to spread the force out over a larger area such that trauma does not occur or is of lower threat. Just ask an SCA Heavy fighter about the day they forgot their greaves or vambraces...

 

[Bluenose]

It depends where the blow lands, what protection the target has there, and what "important bits" are beneath the flesh. There's a reason why daggers were commonly used for the coup de gras on downed enemies and sometimes friends, after all.

What a dagger won't do is batter someone's shield aside, knock them off balance, and make it harder for them to defend themselves against your follow-up strike. If you want to talk about it in terms of Hit Point damage, the first strike did no physical injury but removed enough of your the target's ability to avoid being dropped that the follow-up reduced them to 0hp. This has implications for hit point recovery, of course, in that once you've regained your balance you shouldn't really be as vulnerable any more. You can start talking about psychological impact, in which case something like Fate or SW Saga with their Wound tracks might be more useful than simple hit points.

Although I'm also a fan of the (mis)quote, "There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people". In which case it could be more about who is using the dagger or the great-axe (which sort of great-axe also matters) rather than the weapon itself.