Weapon Damage

[Catavarie]

So I was just thinking, is there a reason why weapon damage is variable? After all if you are shot with 9mm hand gun it will cause the same amount of damage every time, it really depends on where the round hits you as to how life threatening it is. So wouldn't you be able to reflect this better with a range of "to hit" instead? Say a Nat 20 is always a head shot, DC = abdomen, DC+1 = Torso, DC-1 = Extremity?

Perhaps I'm just over thinking this, But it seems like it would make more sense that way.

 

[Delta]

Well, let's say this. First, a hit in a given location may still do quite variable amounts of damage. Say you're shot in the arm with the 9mm. Is it just a grazing shot, a tiny scratch? Or did it go clean through, losing a lot of blood? Or did it strike a bone and rattle around inside for a horrible traumatic injury? There would still be a need to randomize that particular variable.

But probably more important is this: Hit locations have definitely been tried in the past by D&D and other RPG's and generally rejected as a horrible complicated mess. D&D first tried it in OD&D Supplement II, Blackmoor (1975; p. 7-12), and therein it goes on for 6 very dense and unplayable pages. First you need to decide if the attack is firing from the front, back, left, or right (separate tables for each). Also, in D&D you're not just fighting humans, consider the different body shape distributions: now you need tables for Humanoid, Reptile, Insectoid, Snake, Fish, and Avian. Considering the last two, now add attacker locations including "top" and "bottom". Now you have to have big blocks of text describing the different effects of amounts of damage on each body part of the different creature body types. Also, consider there's a lot of melee between creatures of radically different sizes (halflings vs. giants), which skews where people might hit -- now you need a giant 20x20 table for the "Weapon/Height Adjustment Matrix" which alters the percentages to hit each body type by relative size (halflings hit legs more often, heads more rarely, etc.)

Whew!

Executive summary is this: It's been tried lots of times over the past 30 years, and it's always been rejected by players as too complicated and unworkable. Who knows, you can get a free copy of Blackmoor as a PDF on Dave Arneson's website ( http://www.jovianclouds.com/blackmoor/bmc.html ), maybe you'll like it in your gaming.

 

[Umbran]

Perhaps I'm just over thinking this, But it seems like it would make more sense that way.

Well, that's part of it right there - the system is more designed and dedicated to being fun than making sense.

For other parts - even if we were to accept your assertion about 9mm guns (I don't agree with it), I would have to question whether it is applicable. Modern handguns are not part of the D&D game, and the muscle-powered weapons that are in the game have a whole lot of variability in how they hit. You can do shallow cuts, deep impaling thrusts, grazing blows...

Plus, D&D hit points of damage do not correlate to gross damage to the human body. It also represents fatigue, strains, muscle pulls, and a general wearing-down of energy and the epic luck that keeps an action-adventure character rolling.

Note that there is no "death spiral" in D&D. Characters in the game are like movie-heroes and heroines. They get the stuffing beaten out of them, but somehow continue on just as good as always until the one massive last blow which downs them. It would not be inappropriate to say, then, that any blow may kill a normal human. Hit points then don't measure damage, so much as they measure how much of their epic je ne sais quoi it costs the character to get out of the way so he or she isn't killed.

 

[argo]

So I was just thinking, is there a reason why weapon damage is variable? After all if you are shot with 9mm hand gun it will cause the same amount of damage every time, it really depends on where the round hits you as to how life threatening it is. So wouldn't you be able to reflect this better with a range of "to hit" instead? Say a Nat 20 is always a head shot, DC = abdomen, DC+1 = Torso, DC-1 = Extremity?

Perhaps I'm just over thinking this, But it seems like it would make more sense that way.

I think you just answered your own question right there buddy... :\

To expand on things a bit further. d20 abstracts out details like "hit locations" in order to speed up gameplay. The to hit roll is a simple hit/miss roll and the variable damage tells you how bad the hit was (ie: did it hit something vital or was it a "grazing blow").

Later.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hit locations....yeah, bad idea.

But there seems to be a bit more than hit locations here. More that damage should be based on how "well" you hit. So that a hit right on the AC might only deal 1d6 points of damage, a hit of AC+5 could deal 1d8 points of damage, AC+10 dealing 1d10 points of damage (or something similar to that).

Not about determining exact hit location, but about abstractly measuring the "severity" of the blow. Something that hits the AC hits the arm, something that hits AC+5 hits the torso, something that hits AC+10 hits the head...

I could certainly see that. It's similar to taking "raises" to increase damage, a la Iron Heroes or somesuch, so there's precedence.

I like it. It would wonkify the core system a bit, but perhaps not too much. Mostly, it runs into an issue with creatures with high AC's becoming very powerful, and creatures with low AC's becoming much weaker.

 

[Darklone]

Perhaps I'm just over thinking this, But it seems like it would make more sense that way.

Well, that's part of it right there - the system is more designed and dedicated to being fun than making sense.

Not meant to be offending, but a lot of things in D&D actually make much more sense than people who want to have their game different to be "more realistic" think it should be. AC (NOT as DR) for example.

Does anyone have a link to that page that details shot wounds and the unlikely survivors? Like that SWAT team officer who accidently fired his submachinegun in his armored vehicle and had about 40 shotwounds and still survived?

 

[Kmart Kommando]

So I was just thinking, is there a reason why weapon damage is variable? After all if you are shot with 9mm hand gun it will cause the same amount of damage every time, it really depends on where the round hits you as to how life threatening it is.

Tell that to this guy:

Migraine

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Hit locations....yeah, bad idea.

But there seems to be a bit more than hit locations here. More that damage should be based on how "well" you hit. So that a hit right on the AC might only deal 1d6 points of damage, a hit of AC+5 could deal 1d8 points of damage, AC+10 dealing 1d10 points of damage (or something similar to that).

the FUDGE system does this. The number of levels by which Offense beats Defense determines how many wounds you get. Adding this to D&D though I think you would have to get rid of some things.... Like power attack, and strength to damage.

 

[Umbran]

Hit locations....yeah, bad idea.

Hit locations are not, imho, a categorically bad idea for games in general. They just don't mesh well with the hit point mechanic. There are games that use forms of hit location that work well (say, the original Deadlands or Godlike), but the abstract hit points make hit locations problematic.

 

[Woas]

I've had a similar thought about weapons and damage too. But instead of hit location/variable damage I've always had this nag about why certain weapons should naturally be more deadly than any other given weapon and thus have different damage dice.

I mean if you run a person through with a longsword or a bastard sword, why should one weapon do 1d8+X and the other do 1d10+X? They both are going to kill a person the same. One could argue that that particular instance is represented in the moment a character is reduced to 0 or less HP. But still, why should a bastardsword, or greataxe be more 'deadlier' than a longsword, rapier or even a dagger?
Thus instead of assigning each weapon a specific die type how about weapons starts at a base of d4 (or whatever... I just made that up for sake of discussion). Then through Weapon Focus type feats a character could expand the max damage of the weapons they 'train' in higher and get higher die types for weapons.