Open ended damage

[GeekySpaz]

I've been trying to come up with a way to model damage the way I would like it to work in HERO. My idea is based on a couple of thought experiments I've done over the years. Let me share those ideas and hopefully someone has ideas that will help me translate this into a house rule in HERO mechanics.

 

I've never been a big fan of explicit hit location systems. While a system that tries to differentiate between damage to different parts of the body seems realistic at first pass I generally find it more trouble than its worth. For one thing in a fantasy or sci-fi setting any hit location system has to try to represent a vast variety of forms. For another most hit location systems that aren't overly complex do not distinguish between various sub-locations. Most systems I've seen lump each limb into a location, the head into another and the torso into another. The HERO hit location system has better detail than that but still does not model how hit location affects damage they way I would like.

 

My thought on hit location is this: what hit location is really trying to model is the idea that an attack can be more or less effective depending on where it hits. I think a better way to represent this is similar to how systems like White Wolf's storyteller system (the older one) models it, where margin on the to-hit roll modifies damage. So that a well placed hit does more damage than one that barely hits.

 

The problem I've run into trying to model this is that attack rolls and damage rolls in many systems that use the sort rule I'm trying to describe are open ended.

 

Thought experiment 1:

An attacker drives a spear through his opponent. Damage in this case depends less on how far into the target the spear penetrates (I've already assumed that the spear runs him through) and more on exactly what it hits as its passing through the target. As far as depth of penetration goes the spear has inflicted the maximum damage it can once the spear head protrudes out the back of the target. As far as location of the strike goes the maximum damage is anything up to and including killing the target. If the spear does not strike any vital organs then the target will most likely survive for a while, but if a major enough organ is hit the target could be killed almost instantly.

 

I can't remember the other thought experiment I wanted to post was. I'll post it if I remember but for now I'll stick with what I got.

 

Thinking of the above experiment there really shouldn't be an upper limit on the damage the spear can do. The damage it does should be small enough that a target does not die if the attack roll barely hits, and it should be an almost immediate kill if the attack roll is good enough. Since the BODY a character can have can be up to much more than twice the average damage of the spear how do I make the damage roll A: depend on the attack roll such that better attack rolls do better damage and B: be open ended such that any attack has the potential to be lethal even if it is highly unlikely?

 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[dmjalund]

Re: Open ended damage

 

The other aspect of hit locations is limb disabling - how would you deal with that?

[Ternaugh]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Using your spear example, I would assume that "ran the person through" would be an effect of the damage done. That is, I would assume that it described what happened because of the damage rolled. In a Heroic game, I'd couple it with the Impairing rules on 6e2 111, which would allow a wound that did 1/2 total BODY to the torso to leave the person dead or dying. That would model a "ran the person through" attack very well, without needing open-ended damage.

 

Let's use for this example a medium spear (1 1/2d6 K, with STR and levels, can be doubled to 3d6 K). The player rolls a hit, and the hit location is the chest. We'll use average damage in this case, so let's call it 11 points. For an average opponent, that's more than 1/2 their BODY. The GM then describes the spear attack as "running the person through", and, since this was a low-level opponent, the victim grasps the spear, lets out a gasp, and promptly dies. If it were a major character or a PC, I'd probably rule that the attack put the character in the dying category, requiring some quick heroic action on the part of his comrades.

 

JoeG

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Using your spear example, I would assume that "ran the person through" would be an effect of the damage done. That is, I would assume that it described what happened because of the damage rolled. In a Heroic game, I'd couple it with the Impairing rules on 6e2 111, which would allow a wound that did 1/2 total BODY to the torso to leave the person dead or dying. That would model a "ran the person through" attack very well, without needing open-ended damage.

 

Let's use for this example a medium spear (1 1/2d6 K, with STR and levels, can be doubled to 3d6 K). The player rolls a hit, and the hit location is the chest. We'll use average damage in this case, so let's call it 11 points. For an average opponent, that's more than 1/2 their BODY. The GM then describes the spear attack as "running the person through", and, since this was a low-level opponent, the victim grasps the spear, lets out a gasp, and promptly dies. If it were a major character or a PC, I'd probably rule that the attack put the character in the dying category, requiring some quick heroic action on the part of his comrades.

 

JoeG

 

My only problem with that is that against a foe with greater than average body the maximum damage may not be enough to render a character dead or dying. Regardless of how tough a character is, i.e. how much BODY they have spear through the heart should leave them dead or dying. I don't see how to do that against the tougher characters without some form of open ended damage. Another example along the same lines would be a particularly weak attack, such as a 1/2d6 knife slitting the throat of someone with a body of 20 or 30. Against such a character a 1/2d6 attack would have to be multiplied significantly to have a prayer of causing a fatal wound but clearly a knife sliceing the throat open is within the realm of possibility and ideally the damage system should reflect that.

 

The current hit location table only increases damage up to x2 which just isn't sufficient to reflect some wounds. But I think its unreasonable to increase the multipliers without making the overall lethality of the system too great, and adding that level of granularity to the hit location table complicates matters too much. I think its simpler to treat a throat cutting wound as just a really-really good to hit roll that lands in the most vulnerable of spots. Many such vulnerable spots exist on most creatures. I don't see a need to identify which of these is hit other than for flavor but the fact that that good of a hit hits one such location should be reflected.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

The other aspect of hit locations is limb disabling - how would you deal with that?

 

Still working on that one.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Open ended damage

 

My only problem with that is that against a foe with greater than average body the maximum damage may not be enough to render a character dead or dying. Regardless of how tough a character is, i.e. how much BODY they have spear through the heart should leave them dead or dying. I don't see how to do that against the tougher characters without some form of open ended damage. Another example along the same lines would be a particularly weak attack, such as a 1/2d6 knife slitting the throat of someone with a body of 20 or 30. Against such a character a 1/2d6 attack would have to be multiplied significantly to have a prayer of causing a fatal wound but clearly a knife sliceing the throat open is within the realm of possibility and ideally the damage system should reflect that.

 

The current hit location table only increases damage up to x2 which just isn't sufficient to reflect some wounds. But I think its unreasonable to increase the multipliers without making the overall lethality of the system too great, and adding that level of granularity to the hit location table complicates matters too much. I think its simpler to treat a throat cutting wound as just a really-really good to hit roll that lands in the most vulnerable of spots. Many such vulnerable spots exist on most creatures. I don't see a need to identify which of these is hit other than for flavor but the fact that that good of a hit hits one such location should be reflected.

 

For the Impairing rules, if the character takes 1/2 of their total BODY (for a chest wound), then they are dead or dying. In my example above, 11 points of damage would affect characters with a BODY score of 22 -- well above what most Heroic characters have. Now, the thing is, nobody's going to grade you on how accurate you are with your characters if you're the GM. If it makes dramatic sense for the villain to be stabbed through the heart and die, let him.

 

As far as slitting throats, the assumption in the rules is that if you have your opponent incapacitated enough to slit their throat, then attack rolls and damage rolls aren't really required--it can just be done. For rogues and the like who sneak up behind unsuspecting opponents, you can either use Mook rules, or you could allow some way of increasing damage under certain circumstances. In 6e, there's Deadly Blow*, which I'd probably let said rogue have on top of the doubled damage for special attacks like this. There's also the FH 5e Deadly Blow, which was built as +DC to the base weapon damage (and therefore allowed to be doubled), if you want a really lethal special attack.

 

Now, everything that I mentioned above is based upon the assumption that you're playing a Heroic game. If you are, BODY scores much above 20 are usually extremely rare. If it's a Champions game, then we're really having the wrong conversation. In a Champions game, there are usually no caps on damage added to weapons, so long as the weapons are paid for with points. It's usually only real world weapons that suffer from that.

 

JoeG

*You can search for a few of the threads about this for some more ideas.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

For the Impairing rules, if the character takes 1/2 of their total BODY (for a chest wound), then they are dead or dying. In my example above, 11 points of damage would affect characters with a BODY score of 22 -- well above what most Heroic characters have. Now, the thing is, nobody's going to grade you on how accurate you are with your characters if you're the GM. If it makes dramatic sense for the villain to be stabbed through the heart and die, let him.

 

As far as slitting throats, the assumption in the rules is that if you have your opponent incapacitated enough to slit their throat, then attack rolls and damage rolls aren't really required--it can just be done. For rogues and the like who sneak up behind unsuspecting opponents, you can either use Mook rules, or you could allow some way of increasing damage under certain circumstances. In 6e, there's Deadly Blow*, which I'd probably let said rogue have on top of the doubled damage for special attacks like this. There's also the FH 5e Deadly Blow, which was built as +DC to the base weapon damage (and therefore allowed to be doubled), if you want a really lethal special attack.

 

Now, everything that I mentioned above is based upon the assumption that you're playing a Heroic game. If you are, BODY scores much above 20 are usually extremely rare. If it's a Champions game, then we're really having the wrong conversation. In a Champions game, there are usually no caps on damage added to weapons, so long as the weapons are paid for with points. It's usually only real world weapons that suffer from that.

 

JoeG

*You can search for a few of the threads about this for some more ideas.

 

The game I'm playing really splits the difference between a heroic and a superheroic one, its superhero power levels in a fantasy setting. I'll get that out of the way to hopefully clarify things.

 

Most characters in this campaign will have sub-superhuman levels of BODY, but according to 6E1 chapter 2 humans can have up to 30 BODY.

 

My point with the slit throat was not one of catching someone tied helpless, or sleeping, or whatnot. I agree that such a situation falls under the heading of a different rule and can be handled as such. What I'm getting at is that all creatures, be they human, or animals perhaps with much more than 30 BODY, have certain anatomical vulnerabilities (unless they are an elemental, undead, or some other type of creature that specifically lacks such vulnerabilities) and that during a normal attack in normal combat it is unlikely but not impossible for a weak attack to strike such a vulnerable spot. In which case there really should be no upper bound on the damage short of what is necessary to kill the unlucky recipient of the wound. My question here is is there a way to reflect the rare but not impossible event that a relatively weak attack strikes such a spot mechanically and I don't think a x2 BODY multiplier cuts it. I don't see a way to do it without somehow having the damage roll be open ended in some way but perhaps someone has a better idea.

 

Other examples might include a stray arrow to the throat, or to the eye, or a lucky strike with a long knife or short sword that slips between a target's helmet and their breastplate and opens their throat.

 

I realize I'm being a bit simulationist on this one but I'd like to see if there is a simple rules modification I can make that allows these outcomes to be possible on both sides of a fight, PC or NPC (I know people aren't going to like one). I usually prefer to have a slightly harsher rules set or at least a rules set that allows for the harsh possibilities. I can always prevent the rules from screwing the player over by being a somewhat nice GM keeping a PC from suffering dramatically inappropriate death. But if the rules don't allow for the harsh possibilities, even if they are very rare, then those things, which I consider to be very thematically appropriate to fantasy combat, won't ever happen unless I decide to be a jerk of GM and rule that they do happen in spite of what the rules say. I have no fear of a rule that says that a badass of a PC or an NPC can be killed by a lucky strike because I can always rule otherwise. But I hate it when the rules system says it can't happen when reality, even dramatic reality says it should be possible however unlikely.

[phookz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I played in a home-brew system years ago that used a damage multiplier lookup for rolling damage. Weapon damage was defined as a number that was then multiplied by a value determined by rolling 3d10 and looking up on a table for the results. The higher the roll, the better the results. If you rolled 3 10's, it was instant death regardless of the weapon used. We used to describe it to newcomers to the system that it was possible to kill someone with a wooden spoon.

 

Rolling max on 3d10 should only happen 1 in 1000 rolls or so, but I can tell you that I personally had a character die at least TWICE due to this roll, and it sucks to be brought down by a random roll. It's very un-heroic and doesn't really model fiction well. Perhaps it is more realistic, but it sucks to be in the middle of a fight with a mook and have the mook get a lucky roll off and kill your character.

 

I would suggest avoiding open ended damage systems for this reason. I do agree that the "slitting the throat" case needs some way to post a threat at the heroic level, but I wouldn't implement it as part of the random roll to hit or damage. For slitting the throat and whatnot you could double (or triple, or whatever feels appropriate) the body damage and/or assume the attack does maximum damage. You want to be careful with this though, and make sure you don't create an easy way for PCs/NPCs to get around the challenges in combat. I would use it for dramatic effect but make sure the PCs know the risks.

 

I'd probably rule that a coup de grace attack is a full phase action, and can only be taken against an opponent that is either unconcious or otherwise incapacitated. Alternately, if you character has taken the time to get the character grapped and held, with the weapon to the ready against the throat or otherwise vulnerable area, then they could use the coup de grace in that case as well.

 

Coup de grace could double the normal damage of the attack, and automatically does maximum damage. It still requires an attack roll, but I'd give some big bonuses to this, especially if the defender is incapacitated. This represents that you can still make mistakes. If the defender is being held, they can still attempt to wriggle free. You could fudge the numbers around a bit to get the right mix - you should playtest whatever you come up with rigorously. Perhaps there is a bonus to hit and if you make the hit by 3 or more you automatically do maximum damage?

 

Assuming the attack roll hits, the damage is doubled beyond what the hit location rules state. So a knife to the neck ends up at x4 (consider the neck the same as the head) at maximum damage will do 12 BODY, more if the attacker has STR beyond the minimum to apply. That's enough to kill most normals and impair all but the toughest opponents (6E2111), and should mean death to unimportant thugs and NPCs. You could also apply bleeding rules in case someone does survive the attack.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I played in a home-brew system years ago that used a damage multiplier lookup for rolling damage. Weapon damage was defined as a number that was then multiplied by a value determined by rolling 3d10 and looking up on a table for the results. The higher the roll, the better the results. If you rolled 3 10's, it was instant death regardless of the weapon used. We used to describe it to newcomers to the system that it was possible to kill someone with a wooden spoon.

 

Rolling max on 3d10 should only happen 1 in 1000 rolls or so, but I can tell you that I personally had a character die at least TWICE due to this roll, and it sucks to be brought down by a random roll. It's very un-heroic and doesn't really model fiction well. Perhaps it is more realistic, but it sucks to be in the middle of a fight with a mook and have the mook get a lucky roll off and kill your character.

 

I haven't lost too many characters when role-playing and only a couple of times has it been what I would call a cheap death. I remember once my character was killed because he failed a save against a Pit Fiends attack resulting in instant death, before we had even rolled initiative for the fight. A friend of mine had his character killed by an arrow when an orc rolled a critical hit and the DM was using a particularly nasty critical hit table. On both occasions the resultant death led to one of the best role-played scenes I had ever scene at a gaming table. So I would have to say that my overall experience with sudden character death was not as negative as some others' experiences may have been.

 

I will concede that in both cases the PCs ultimately survived through divine intervention, but the really awesome role-play that resulted from the death (albeit temporary) of the PC would not have taken place if sudden death was not possible in the rules system we were playing (3rd ed DnD in those cases).

 

In HERO, particularly 6th edition, we have a relatively easy way out of unwanted character demise even if the damage system allows for it. PCs and major NPCs often have heroic action points, and I for one would allow a character to dodge the bullet by spending some number of those action points. However without some house rule applied to the basic damage system to represent this sort of lethal wound I'm left with using the impairing and disabling rules as well as hit location (which I've already mentioned I'm not a fan of). Both of these systems I've found to be more trouble than they are worth.

 

What I would prefer is simple rule that allows the to-hit roll to modify damage and has an open ended damage roll where any result from a flesh wound to a lethal wound is within the realm of possible outcomes, with more extreme results being highly unlikely (possibly much less than 1/1000 for the most extreme results).

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I'm not a really big fan of the savage worlds system but their damage system at least covers the sort of thing I'm trying to get at here. For those not familiar with savage worlds when attacking rolling 4 or more above what is necessary to hit adds 1d6 to the damage roll. On any damage roll any die that rolls a maximum value on the die is rolled again and the result added to the total. If the die again comes up as a maximum value it is rolled again and keeps being rolled until something other than the maximum value results. Once the damage total is determined every 4 points by which the damage roll exceeds the target's toughness inflicts a wound. Any character who has suffered 4 wounds is incapacitated. An incapacitated character immediately makes a vigor roll. If the roll is a critical failure the character is dead. Against a weak attack this is all very unlikely but an instant kill is possible and the basic mechanic is pretty simple.

 

What I would like to do is come up with a simple house rule that incorporates the same basic idea into HERO. I don't want to go down the road of the impairing and disabling rules and hit location. I find those rules slow down combat too much. I think something that works as a simple modification to the damage roll would work better.

 

One added advantage to a system like the savage worlds one is that insta-death depends not only on a lucky roll on the part of the attacker but on an unlucky roll on the part of the PC. This provides two points of failure making the whole thing that much more extraordinary and unlikely while still remaining possible.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I'm not sure how well this would work for you, but try this:

 

For every attack roll that is a natural 3 (or an 18 for those of you who invert the attack rolls), you roll some kind of wild dice to determine your added damage. That's a 1 in 216 chance for the opportunity to do Über-damage, then tempered by the wild dice. Figure that the natural critical automatically maximizes damage, and then work out how many wild dice to throw.

 

For example, adding 1 more wild d6 and getting a 1 (or 6 as above) could multiply the hit by a certain value (say, x2), for odds of 1 in 1296. adding 2 wild dice could increase to a x3, for odds of 1 in 7776. Adding 3 wild dice could increase to a x4 damage, for odds of 1 in 46656.

 

Now, if you roll 3 wild dice at a time, your odds increase for the lower effects. The max damage would still be 1 in 46656, but the odds for the x3 would be a bit more frequent, 17 out of 46656 (if I did my math right), and the x2 would be 75 out of 46656.

So, the base critical dagger attack would be 7 Body (2 DC +2 DC), 1 wild die would make the attack 14 points, 2 would be 21 points, and 3 would be 28 points. For my earlier spear example, the numbers would be 19 Body (0 wild dice), 38 Body with 1 wild die, 57 Body with 2 wild dice, and 76 Body with 3 wild dice.

 

Randomly lethal enough for you?

 

JoeG

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I will throw out some house rules I have used to good effect for a while just in case they appeal to you.

 

First, any To-Hit roll made by under half lets the player roll twice for damage, taking the better of the two rolls. Players like this because a solid hit tends to have better damage. As GM I like it because it mostly affects low DCV mooks, which makes things more cinematic as the low-level thugs get cleared out more easily but the heroes and master villains are less affected. In a superheroic game, this tends to penalize low-DCV bricks though, so be warned.

 

Second, any natural roll of 3 is max damage. For what you are trying to model, you might make a roll of 3 an instant kill.

 

Third, any To-Hit roll made by +12 or more is max damage (or instant kill depending on the circumstances), the rationale being that a -12 penalty is what it would take to hit someone in the eye with a knife, not unlike your example of the throat-slitting. It doesn't happen very often so it isn't unbalancing, but it has added some nice color to the combats.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Thanks to everyone who's posted suggestions. The feedback is helping. While I like the couple of house rules that have been suggested none of them are quite what I'm looking for. But the suggestions did add a bit of inspiration and helped get the gears turning in my brain. Best idea I've come up with is this: The attack roll modifies damage. For every X by which the attack roll succeeds damage is increased by 1 DC. I have yet to determine the value of X. In addition when after rolling damage the damage roll can be made open ended by spending a heroic action point. When the damage roll is open ended 6's explode (are rerolled and added to the total).

 

I think this works particularly well when it comes to avoiding dramatically inappropriate character death. The way I usually work HAP is that every PC gets a small number of them, and every major named NPC gets a one or maybe more for REALLY important NPCs. But the GM also gets one for every player at the table that can be used by any NPC. So while no individual mook has any HAP I can, if I deem it appropriate, spend an HAP from the common GM pool on behalf of a mook.

 

I am also trying to work on a wound system whereby each character has a threshold that is a fraction of their BODY. Each time a character takes damage above this threshold they suffer a wound that imposes a penalty such as -1 to DEX rolls, -1 DCV, -1 OCV, -1 Perception, or -5m of running or something on that level. Still trying to hash out details on that but for me the key is keeping it simple. I don't think either of the rules in the first paragraph are overly complicated and I think they achieve what I am after.

 

What do people think?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Not particularly experienced with HERO are you GeekySpaz.

 

It's okay, don't fret. Most of us go through this phase.

 

It's the classic issue of HERO Body damage and how much Body humans are allowed to purchase. How much Body should characters reasonably purchase is a very tricky question to answer in HERO, but it is a question that is routinely answered throughout the books if one knows where to look.

 

When playing a Superheroic genre, characters with very high Body scores (20+) are and should be common based on the type of game you want to run (a D.C. style game where uber-powerful supers slug it out panel after panel after panel taking forever to go down) but for Very Powerful Heroic (what you called "Sub" Superheroic) and Heroic level games, Body scores should more modest.

 

Typically in a Heroic game, the classic "Fighter" should have a Body score near to or exceeding 15 for survivability purposes. Based on the damage of weapons in Heroic genres, a character with some Armor (say Resistant Defense of 5 or 6) and a Body score of 15 is relatively difficult to kill in 1 shot, which is as it should be, however it is not impossible, nor is it even "unlikely", just not particularly common.

 

It is however very possible. Utilizing Impairing and Disabling wounds coupled with the Hit Location chart makes Heroic Level games quite deadly when used properly. The example of the Knife or Dagger used to slit someone's throat is a good one. Even a 1pip knife which maxes out at 1/2D6k damage used to slit someone's throat will cause an impairing wound to someone with 12 Body (3 Body damage x2 for Head hit location for 6 Body) lets not forget that a combat knife or dagger is base 2DC (1/2D6k) which means with STR and Skill Levels, it can garner 1D6+1K damage, at which point it is capable of doing up to 7 Body in a single hit (against the throat/head location x2 Body for 14 body damage, a disabling wound and death to most characters!). Bigger weapons get much, much nastier and a whole lot deadlier when you add STR, Skill Levels and Martial Arts into the equation (something a lot of people forget to do)

 

A problem you may be having and not realizing it, is character Defenses may be too high in your games, and this maybe what is preventing characters from taking enough damage to be "hurt" seriously. If you want a gritty, deadly game, then armor is one of the issues you are going to have to look very, very hard at. Its a fine balancing act to get the Damage Class vs Armor vs Body/Stun right for the genre you want to emulate. It takes most of us years to hit the right balance.

 

Don't underestimate the value of changing the basic damage value of weapons in your game. Simply adding +1 or +2 Damage Classes to the base damage can go a long way toward increasing lethality.

 

One thing you should investigate are the concept of Critical Hits. It sounds to me like you want a mechanic in your game that rewards a "solid blow" and this is exactly what the Critical Hit optional rule was designed to simulate. Basically, if the attacker succeeds with the to-hit roll by rolling less than half of what was needed to hit, a Critical has been achieved and the attacker automatically gets to apply Maximum rollable damage as a result. For example if a character with OCV 8 attacks a character with DCV 6 giving him a 13 or less chance to hit, he has to roll a 6 or less on 3D6 to achieve a "Crit". Say he achieves the Crit, he is using a broadsword for a base of 1D6+1 Damage, with his STR he gets +1 DC and uses a Sacrifice Strike maneuver for another +2DC for a total of 2D6+1 Damage. Because the attack roll was a Critical success, he automatically does 13 Body damage with the attack! NOW roll for Hit Location. Head or Vitals will probably mean a dead opponent. Any other location will at the very least be Impaired, even when throwing armor into the equation (unless the opponent is wearing plate mail or has magical or special defenses active!) and the potential Stun damage will be devastating.

While it may sound like Critical Hits will be rare in your games, take note: the frequency of Crits is completely dependent of the Skill of the attackers vs the Defenders. A master swordsman with 8 Combat Skill Levels applicable to his weapons will Crit quite often against unskilled ruffians. The Grizzled Veteran fighter with 5 all Melee skill levels will be devastating against most Orcs and Goblins with DCV scores in the 3 o 5 range. You'll be surprised at how quickly unimportant NPC villains will go down when you start throwing these rules into the equation.

 

If the above advice doesn't quite satiate your desire for more damage granularity, your idea about increasing the damage based on a threshold of success is a very, very good one. I would recommend +1 DC for every 2pts by which the attack roll succeeded. I personally would not allow for more than +3 DC's this way, but those DC's would be over and above any DC restrictions such as the doubling optional rule generally used in Heroic Level genres.

[gojira]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I didn't read through every reply (most were long) but my thought is to have it based on the Damage roll, not the To-Hit.

 

For each 6 rolled, the attacker gets a roll on a "bonus damage" table. The center of this table, 9-11, is "nothing" but beyond that there are various bonus damage and temporary and permanent crippling injuries. Loosing hands and feet, permanent scaring, and loosing an eye should all be part of the table.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Thanks to everyone who's posted suggestions. The feedback is helping. While I like the couple of house rules that have been suggested none of them are quite what I'm looking for. But the suggestions did add a bit of inspiration and helped get the gears turning in my brain. Best idea I've come up with is this: The attack roll modifies damage. For every X by which the attack roll succeeds damage is increased by 1 DC. I have yet to determine the value of X. In addition when after rolling damage the damage roll can be made open ended by spending a heroic action point. When the damage roll is open ended 6's explode (are rerolled and added to the total).

 

I think this works particularly well when it comes to avoiding dramatically inappropriate character death. The way I usually work HAP is that every PC gets a small number of them, and every major named NPC gets a one or maybe more for REALLY important NPCs. But the GM also gets one for every player at the table that can be used by any NPC. So while no individual mook has any HAP I can, if I deem it appropriate, spend an HAP from the common GM pool on behalf of a mook.

 

First off, for reasons set out below, I'd be wary of "hit by X adds a DC".

 

Your comments above indicate how a PC or NPC can use HAP to enhance their own damage. I don't see how that avoids dramatically inappropriate character death. It just means mooks have to get a lucky roll to hit. The fact is, however, that the more volatile and unpredictable you make combat, the more likely a dramatically inappropriate death becomes. Someone just gets unlucky, and takes a big hit. He's stunned (half DCV) when a mook rolls a 3 or 4, so he gets lots of extra DC's, and rolls well.

 

Ultimately, more random combat ends up working against PC's because they have far more rolls made against them. A mook gets dropped for a lucky roll? There's lots more of them. A major baddie gets dropped? There will be another major baddie next story arc. But PC's have to get replaced when they die, and sooner or later a lucky roll gets made against the PC.

 

HAP as an equalizer sounds good, but the PC's need to spend theirs judiciously while the Big Bad will only fight one battle, so he can use them far more quickly to get more opportunities.

 

Finally, explosive damage seems a lot more useful with Normal Damage attacks than attacks which generate less dice per DC. For example, a 9d6 Normal attack is very likely to throw off at least one or 2 sixes, where a 2d6 Penetrating Killing Attack, also a 9 DC attack, is far less likely to benefit from explosive damage.

 

I am also trying to work on a wound system whereby each character has a threshold that is a fraction of their BODY. Each time a character takes damage above this threshold they suffer a wound that imposes a penalty such as -1 to DEX rolls' date=' -1 DCV, -1 OCV, -1 Perception, or -5m of running or something on that level. Still trying to hash out details on that but for me the key is keeping it simple. I don't think either of the rules in the first paragraph are overly complicated and I think they achieve what I am after.[/quote']

 

This is really an extrapolation of the impairing/disabling rules, with lesser effects, probably at a lower BOD fraction. This tends to work to the PC's disadvantage as well, as they typically have to keep going after taking a major hit. If they were competitive against the Big Bad before battling the mooks, but are now down an OCV and a DCV, they're not near as competitive now. Conversely, once the Big Bad takes a couple of solid hits, he's no longer able to retaliate effectively.

 

If the above advice doesn't quite satiate your desire for more damage granularity' date=' your idea about increasing the damage based on a threshold of success is a very, very good one. I would recommend +1 DC for every 2pts by which the attack roll succeeded. I personally would not allow for more than +3 DC's this way, but those DC's would be over and above any DC restrictions such as the doubling optional rule generally used in Heroic Level genres.[/quote']

 

At +1 DC for every two points I hit by, OCV and OCV bonuses become extremely valuable. +6 OCV with a single attack costs 12 points, and will add 1d6 to a killing attack. It also means I still hit (perhaps for some extra damage) with rolls that would otherwise have missed. 12 points for +3 DC's at 0 END and a better chance of hitting for lower DC's seems like a pretty good deal. Assuming hit locations, that adds an average of 3.5 BOD and about 9 STUN to a normal hit. +4 rDEF and +5 normal DEF costs 11 points, only one point less than bumping up my average damage.

 

DCV also becomes much more valuable, as it not only reduces the odds you are hit but also reduces the odds of taking extra damage.

 

Now, maybe you want a game where combat is best avoided because death could come at any time, each successive battle erodes your combat effectiveness, and skill - OCV and DCV - are the primary determinants of combat success (ie you don't want big, hulking low DCV tanks with relatively high defenses to be as effective as lithe, lightly armored agile swashbucklers). This approach will, I expect, generate that result, so if that's the goal, go for it.

 

For each 6 rolled' date=' the attacker gets a roll on a "bonus damage" table. The center of this table, 9-11, is "nothing" but beyond that there are various bonus damage and temporary and permanent crippling injuries. Loosing hands and feet, permanent scaring, and loosing an eye should all be part of the table.[/quote']

 

This potentially adds a lot of rolling, and also favours attacks with more dice per DC (ie normal attacks roll more 6's than killing attacks). I also dislike critical systems which result in lost limbs and sensory organs, but cannot result in impairment of the same limbs (eg. bad bruise; minor fracture; major fracture). That might lead to another set of rolls (ie we got "eye damage", now let's roll to see where on the continuum of a few seconds' impairment to permanent disability/loss of the eye this injury falls).

 

But, again, the long term result is PC's accumulating an array of long-term or permanent disabilities. If they don't die from the criticals, they get retired as they become less and less capable due to disabilities acquired. Again, this might be a feature rather than a flaw if you want a more rotating cast rather than the same characters played for months or years.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

First to clear up one misconception, and maybe its my own fault for the way I am coming across, I am not a newbie to HERO, except perhaps compared to those who have been playing it for the past few editions. I first played it a couple of times in high school around 95-96, and have been GMing with it on and off for the better part of a decade.

 

I've mentioned a few times here that I am not a fan of the hit location system or the impairing/disabling rules. My objection is not so much to the spirit of them but to the implementation. I understand them quite well. I simply don't like them. That is a major reason I am trying to make a house rule to replace them for my game, which is what my intention here is. So not to offend anyone but recapping how that system works doesn't really help.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Perhaps it would help to describe anther system that includes some of what I am trying to incorporate into my HERO campaign. One of my favorite systems is the old white-wolf world of darkness system (the previous edition, Mage the Ascension, not Mage the Awakening). There are many things that I like more about HERO than that system but one area where I have to give the advantage to the Storyteller system is in how it resolved the interaction between the attack roll, the damage roll, defense and armor. For those not familiar Storyteller uses a dice pool system. The attacker rolls his dice pool and the defender rolls his dice pool and they compare successes. If the attacker has more he hits and the extra successes are added to his damage dice pool. Then the attacker rolls his damage pool and the defender rolls his stamina and any armor dice. They again compare successes. If the attacker has more the extra successes each inflict one health level of damage. A target can survive 7 health levels of damage, an eighth kills them.

 

What I liked about this system is two things. One, we usually ruled that damage rolls are open ended. Any 10 rolled on the damage dice [storyteller uses all d10s] added a bonus dice to the damage pool. If the bonus dice also comes up a 10 another bonus dice is added. That way the average damage of an attack did not increase much but there was no theoretical limit to how much damage a single damage roll could inflict. In addition I liked how armor played into this. In HERO if you have armor stronger than the maximum value of damage that an attack can inflict (including bonus damage from maneuvers like haymaker and such) then the target is effectively invulnerable to the attack. In a system that aims to have no absolutes, and has few if any, this seems unnecessarily finite to me and it has never sat well with me. I don't feel that any normal defense should be completely invulnerable to any normal attack. In the Storyteller system if you have a weak attack then you just have to compensate for it with an exceptional attack roll in order to overcome the target's defenses, which could represent being able to find the chinks in the armor. Two, this system of damage had no explicit hit location mechanic. One could simply rationalize that a better to-hit roll translated into the attack striking in a more devastating location. Rather than tying wound penalties to a specific location wound penalties were generic. The more health levels you had lost the higher your penalties were.

 

These are the sorts of ideas I would like to incorporate into my HERO campaign. Now the ideas I've come up with thus far more or less try to directly translate Storyteller mechanics into HERO mechanics. People have pointed out flaws in the specifics I came up with. In particular Hugh brought up some good points on the pitfalls of the direction I was heading. So instead is there a way to incorporate the concepts of the Storyteller damage system into mechanics that work well with HERO? At the moment I'm not having any luck coming up with that one. But I'll keep thinking on it.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Based on the White-Wolf system (which I have never played but I get the gist from your post) here is an idea for you, more for inspiration than anything because I haven't thought through all the ramifications but maybe they will get you closer to the feel of the WW system without running into the problems of open-ended damage.

 

As pointed out, against an unarmored opponent even a relative small attack can be pretty vicious, but almost everyone has armor which can seriously blunt the effect of many attacks. In most of the games I have played in we assume armor covers everything, which is unrealistic except maybe for stone golems and such, but it makes life easier. For people who want the granularity of sectional armor, you can use hit locations, but you have already stated you don't like those.

 

So instead, mandate that all armor has an activation roll (run-of-the-mill infantry might only have it on 11-, while full plate mail might be 16- or whatever). But now let players use skill levels to drop the activation roll if they want instead of increasing their chance to hit directly. You can also rule that for every 2 or 3 points a To-Hit roll is made by, the armor activation drops by one. Then let players buy defensive skill levels to raise their own armor activation roll. This will mean PCs and master villains won't be getting one-shotted so much, but lower level grunts and some big bruisers can be eliminated with a good hit. It seems to me that DCV should somehow factor into this style of armor activation; maybe the activation is based on a DEX roll or a "DCV" roll - might need to give that some thought.

 

Alternatively (if you don't mind rolling more dice) you can make two attack rolls, one to see if the blow hit and a second as a To-Hit vs. Armor Activation roll, like a "Skill vs. Skill" roll; if the To-Hit roll wins then then armor doesn't activate (or maybe the attack becomes Armor Piercing and the armor isn't completely bypassed unless the To-Hit roll wins by 3 or more). The players can use skill levels for either hit roll, but not both at the same time.

 

Both of these methods are still going to end up placing a high value on OCV, DCV and combat skill levels but not in a way that will penalize the PCs too much. And if it becomes too unbalancing, you can just increase the base activation roll for most armor so that bypassing defenses becomes a less likely event.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I'm currently a player in two long-term games that use open-ended rolls. One is a Deadlands game, the other is an Earthdawn game. My main gripe with both systems is actually the wild variability of the rolls in both systems. I understand the concept of "lucky shots", but I find that combat ends up becoming a game of Yahtzee, as everyone hopes to get that extra roll of a die. In the Earthdawn game, it's just about required; some encounters can only be settled by achieving target numbers that are higher than we could roll straight on the dice. In Deadlands, it's not quite as bad, and for my PC has been effectively handled by first by spending chips and second by having Supernatural characteristic levels that add to the dice (he's a Harrowed character--and not one you'd want to go up against in a gunfight now).

 

Neither game is one that I'd be comfortable running, and I play in them because I like the group of people I'm with. I prefer games that are a little more predictable in their mechanics, and Hero certainly fits that description. I want to tell a story when I GM, and I find things like the open ended rolls tend to take the focus off of the story, and onto the dice. That's why, in my original post, I suggested looking at an attack and hit by interpreting what the damage dice rolled. I take what the damage dice produced and then use that to shape the story. From your description of what you want, I think that you're actually working a bit from the other direction, where you've decided that the story should go a certain way (from the attack roll), and are then requiring that the damage dice match it. That's okay, but, for me and my play style, it seems like an awful lot of work for something that can already be successfully handled in other ways using tools within the Hero system.

 

Now, all that said, here's a rough idea for varying the damage a bit:

 

If someone achieves a critical (or whatever other criteria you set), let them roll d8s instead of d6s for damage. Killing attacks would be figured as usual, and for normal damage, use something like this:

Roll BODY damage

1 0 BODY

2-5 1 BODY

6-7 2 BODY

8 3 BODY

 

You could include d10s, d12s and so on, based upon how hard you think the hit should be. A d10 could be 1 (0), 2-5(1), 6-7(2), 8-9 (3), 10 (4) for example (or some other pattern of your choosing).

 

JoeG

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I prefer games that are a little more predictable in their mechanics, and Hero certainly fits that description. I want to tell a story when I GM, and I find things like the open ended rolls tend to take the focus off of the story, and onto the dice.

 

I also like to tell a story when I GM. To me the biggest impediment to telling my story is when the mechanics of a system tell me that something absolutely can't happen. I prefer mechanics that allow for anything to happen but that achieve a measure of predictability by heavily weighting the probability towards the average.

 

Where this particularly bothers me when it comes to damage mechanics is that, in systems like hero, damage has such finite limits. If a character has a weak weapon someone with strong armor is invulnerable to that attack. This doesn't make sense to me on a philosophical level. Strong armor does not make you invulnerable, it makes you well protected. Every armor has chinks. It may take extraordinary skill and/or extraordinary luck to find the chinks but the are there, and I want my damage mechanic to reflect that. I also feel as a balancing factor that the more protection a suite of armor provides (represented by the rPD or rED of the armor) the harder it is to find those chinks. The HERO model seems based on the assumption that if the defense armor provides is greater than the maximum damage an attack can roll on the dice then the target is 100% protected from that attack. Its that 100% certainty that I'm objecting to.

 

Similarly if the maximum damage an attack can inflict is less than the BODY of a character then that character is 100% guaranteed to be able to survive at least the first hit from that attack. My contention is that unless you are beyond superhuman (BODY 31+), and possibly even if you are, any attack (at least any killing attack) has the potential to kill you if it hits in the right place. The tougher you are the less likely it is that a given attack will drop you, but the possibility is always there.

 

As a storyteller I can always rule in favor of the heroes. If anything is possible I can always give my PCs and my major NPCs a way out. I can include a mechanic (such as HAP) to allow a player to say "No! My character is not going out like that." But I prefer that the story, and the player save the character, rather than the mechanics simply define that the character absolutely cannot die under these circumstances.

 

From your description of what you want, I think that you're actually working a bit from the other direction, where you've decided that the story should go a certain way (from the attack roll), and are then requiring that the damage dice match it. That's okay, but, for me and my play style, it seems like an awful lot of work for something that can already be successfully handled in other ways using tools within the Hero system.

 

I generally work from the following assumptions. The skill of the attacker is represented more by his ability to hit a target, than by how much damage the attack normally does. An attack is more devastating depending on exactly where it strikes an opponent. The normal damage of an attack represents the power of the attack. An attacker can make that attack more effective through skill by being able to reliably strike in more devastating locations. Luck can achieve the same result as skill, as I've described here, but much less reliably. It seems to me that damage is not as representative of a character's skill as it is representative of the power behind the attack (the raw power of the weapon and the strength of the wielder). Any weapon is therefore more effective in the hands of a skilled wielder since, not only does it hit more often, but it also hits where it counts more often. Some of this can be represented by martial maneuvers and talents like weapon master. However I still think that a lucky enough attack can achieve the same result as an attack enhanced with weapon master or martial maneuvers but with much less reliability. That's why I tend to favor mechanics where the damage roll is tied to the attack roll.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

Let me expand on my feelings on hit location a bit. If I were to use a hit location system I would want it to represent all of the different locations that can be hit and the effects of them. I want to see not just locations for the head and the chest and the arms, etc. I want to see locations for the eyes, the throat, the jugular, the femoral artery, the kidney etc. I want to see stabs to the chest divided into the heart, the lungs, the aorta, the liver. And I want mechanics for the effect of each. Or instead of all that how bout just defining hit location as a special effect for the amount of damage done, and possibly for wound penalty determined as a secondary effect of the damage. Since it takes a better attack roll to hit a more devastating location, and a more devastating location is represented by more damage then, better attack roll = more damage. That's the paradigm I'm working from. Its an easy one to implement in a dice pool system but difficult in other systems. But I have to believe I can achieve something similar in HERO as a substitute for the standard hit location system.

 

To an extent what I'm discussing is present in the hit location system as it is in HERO. A character with a high OCV can make called shots more reliably. If you use the adjustable hit location system in the APG (which I always do if I'm using hit location) then high skill characters are definitely hitting the head and the vitals more often. To go more into why I don't like HERO's hit location system: One, the biggest increase in damage that can result is x2 to the BODY that gets through armor. I don't think that's sufficient. Much greater wounds are possible in my opinion. Two, the hit location system does not account for chinks in the armor, except when dealing with sectional armor. But if you are wearing a full suit of armor there are essentially no chinks. You could add an activation roll but I prefer a mechanic where finding the chinks is more a function of the attack roll than a fixed probability. Plus an activation roll is all or nothing. What about locations where the armor is a bit weaker but still offers some protection.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I also like to tell a story when I GM. To me the biggest impediment to telling my story is when the mechanics of a system tell me that something absolutely can't happen. I prefer mechanics that allow for anything to happen but that achieve a measure of predictability by heavily weighting the probability towards the average.

 

Where this particularly bothers me when it comes to damage mechanics is that, in systems like hero, damage has such finite limits. If a character has a weak weapon someone with strong armor is invulnerable to that attack. This doesn't make sense to me on a philosophical level. Strong armor does not make you invulnerable, it makes you well protected. Every armor has chinks. It may take extraordinary skill and/or extraordinary luck to find the chinks but the are there, and I want my damage mechanic to reflect that. I also feel as a balancing factor that the more protection a suite of armor provides (represented by the rPD or rED of the armor) the harder it is to find those chinks. The HERO model seems based on the assumption that if the defense armor provides is greater than the maximum damage an attack can roll on the dice then the target is 100% protected from that attack. Its that 100% certainty that I'm objecting to.

 

Similarly if the maximum damage an attack can inflict is less than the BODY of a character then that character is 100% guaranteed to be able to survive at least the first hit from that attack. My contention is that unless you are beyond superhuman (BODY 31+), and possibly even if you are, any attack (at least any killing attack) has the potential to kill you if it hits in the right place. The tougher you are the less likely it is that a given attack will drop you, but the possibility is always there.

 

As a storyteller I can always rule in favor of the heroes. If anything is possible I can always give my PCs and my major NPCs a way out. I can include a mechanic (such as HAP) to allow a player to say "No! My character is not going out like that." But I prefer that the story, and the player save the character, rather than the mechanics simply define that the character absolutely cannot die under these circumstances.

 

 

 

I generally work from the following assumptions. The skill of the attacker is represented more by his ability to hit a target, than by how much damage the attack normally does. An attack is more devastating depending on exactly where it strikes an opponent. The normal damage of an attack represents the power of the attack. An attacker can make that attack more effective through skill by being able to reliably strike in more devastating locations. Luck can achieve the same result as skill, as I've described here, but much less reliably. It seems to me that damage is not as representative of a character's skill as it is representative of the power behind the attack (the raw power of the weapon and the strength of the wielder). Any weapon is therefore more effective in the hands of a skilled wielder since, not only does it hit more often, but it also hits where it counts more often. Some of this can be represented by martial maneuvers and talents like weapon master. However I still think that a lucky enough attack can achieve the same result as an attack enhanced with weapon master or martial maneuvers but with much less reliability. That's why I tend to favor mechanics where the damage roll is tied to the attack roll.

 

I'm not criticizing your play style, just saying that it isn't mine.

 

Here's a few suggestions to look into.

 

You could ignore the max doubling rules. Just use the damage adding rules as written, and ignore the Real Weapon/STR Min limitations (which is where the double damage rules really come from).

 

Or you might want to make the "double damage max" rule modified so that it's only the raw STR added that hits a cap. Then, you can let damage added from combat skill levels/martial arts to add on top of that Base weapon + STR, either in a limited way (can add up to the base weapon damage again) or open ended (keep on adding DCs, limited only by total level).

 

So, someone with a dagger (1/2 d6K), applying maximum STR could double to 1 d6+1 K. Let's assume that the character has several combat skill levels (we'll say 10). They can either choose to add those levels to better the hit, or to increase the damage. We'll let the character add all the levels for damage, (adding 5 DC), bringing us to 3d6 K (average 10.5*, max 18). Let's add in a critical hit rule that says that armor is bypassed if you roll a natural 3 (or 18, if you reverse the to hit formula), or 1/2 value if you've rolled under half what you needed. Now, you have a situation where a really good to hit roll indicates an armor bypass (or reduction), and increased character skill has a high influence on increasing damage.

 

JoeG

*For my FH games, this would be in the Average BODY range.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Open ended damage

 

I also like to tell a story when I GM. To me the biggest impediment to telling my story is when the mechanics of a system tell me that something absolutely can't happen. I prefer mechanics that allow for anything to happen but that achieve a measure of predictability by heavily weighting the probability towards the average.

 

Where this particularly bothers me when it comes to damage mechanics is that, in systems like hero, damage has such finite limits. If a character has a weak weapon someone with strong armor is invulnerable to that attack. This doesn't make sense to me on a philosophical level. Strong armor does not make you invulnerable, it makes you well protected. Every armor has chinks. It may take extraordinary skill and/or extraordinary luck to find the chinks but the are there, and I want my damage mechanic to reflect that. I also feel as a balancing factor that the more protection a suite of armor provides (represented by the rPD or rED of the armor) the harder it is to find those chinks. The HERO model seems based on the assumption that if the defense armor provides is greater than the maximum damage an attack can roll on the dice then the target is 100% protected from that attack. Its that 100% certainty that I'm objecting to.

 

As others have stated, this is a question of play style. I recall a novel some years ago where the central character was a vampire in the days of the spanish inquisition. We got to watch an old soldier re-arm himself, and take a bow he had taken from a "heathen moor" in preference to his crossbow, because the bow fired wooden shafts, not metal bolts. He had it all figured out. Until the Vampire walked into view wearing a suit of plate armor. Sure, he can hit and penetrate the joints, but the chest is protected by a sheet of metal that the arrows can't penetrate.

 

One approach to adding volatility to the attack/defense mechanic, at the cost of extra die rolls, would be to treat 3 points of defenses as standard effect for 1d6 of defenses. That is, when Theo Thief attacks Wally Warrior with his 1d6 HKA, in the normal mechanic, all BOD damage is stopped by Wally's 8 rDEF plate armor. Under this model, Theo rolls his 1d6 damage, and Wally rolls 2 1/2d6 for his 8 DC's of rDEF armor. Wally's armor will typically block all BOD, but a good roll on the dagger and a bad roll on the armor will allow BOD to slip through.

 

Similarly if the maximum damage an attack can inflict is less than the BODY of a character then that character is 100% guaranteed to be able to survive at least the first hit from that attack. My contention is that unless you are beyond superhuman (BODY 31+)' date=' and possibly even if you are, [i']any[/i] attack (at least any killing attack) has the potential to kill you if it hits in the right place. The tougher you are the less likely it is that a given attack will drop you, but the possibility is always there.

 

The above approach will not provide 100% randomness. As noted previously, 100% randomness ultimately works to the detriment of the PC's, so many of us don't want it. I don't need that kind of realism in my game. Sure, any attack can kill you. You could slip on the sidewalk, hit your head and die. You might just pass on in your sleep, or you might catch a nasty bug and never recover. And don't get me started on the chances of a wound getting infected. Compromises to realism are needed for playability.

 

To me, removal of the very unlikely chances is a superior approach to "if the roll is unlikely enough, anything can happen" because, sooner or later, that highly unlikely result will come up, to the detriment of the game. Sooner or later, a lucky shot gets through. You can make the odds worse (he has to not only get hit with that unlikely shot, but already have used his HAP's, for example), but sooner or later, the odds come up.

 

I generally work from the following assumptions. The skill of the attacker is represented more by his ability to hit a target' date=' than by how much damage the attack normally does. An attack is more devastating depending on exactly where it strikes an opponent. The normal damage of an attack represents the power of the attack. An attacker can make that attack more effective through skill by being able to reliably strike in more devastating locations. Luck can achieve the same result as skill, as I've described here, but much less reliably. It seems to me that damage is not as representative of a character's skill as it is representative of the power behind the attack (the raw power of the weapon and the strength of the wielder). Any weapon is therefore more effective in the hands of a skilled wielder since, not only does it hit more often, but it also hits where it counts more often. Some of this can be represented by martial maneuvers and talents like weapon master. However I still think that a lucky enough attack can achieve the same result as an attack enhanced with weapon master or martial maneuvers but with much less reliability. That's why I tend to favor mechanics where the damage roll is tied to the attack roll.[/quote']

 

So, can a sufficiently skilled warrior, armed with a hatpin, slay a dragon in a single strike? If nothing should be impossible, the answer should be yes, right? Maybe you need to restructure the system to multiply all costs by 100, except for OCV and DCV, which remain at 5 points each and start at a base 300 (1 skill level adds 100). We roll 300d6 to hit, and you will hit on a 1100-. Every 1 point you hit by will increase the damage just slightly, so if the fighter can hit by 750, he will slay the dragon in a single strike.

 

Facetious, of course, but if we are to accept that any attack can kill the target on a sufficiently lucky roll, then this demands that a roll of 3 on the attack roll (assuming we don't change the attack roll) have a chance of killing the target. It can't be based on damage from the weapon, or the 1d6 Dagger may not be able to deliver a fatal blow. Basing it on rolling a 3 and getting max damage means a 1 in 6 chance the 1d6 dagger kills the target, and a 1 in 1,296 chance the 4d6 Greatsword modified by STR and skill delivers a fatal blow, and that makes no sense.

 

At some point, the least likely results need to be lopped off, or the possible rolls need to be increased to allow for greater variability.

 

But even if we decide that a killing stroke results only on a 3d6 roll and a 1 in 10,000 chance on a table, that 1 in 2.16 million chance will come up sooner or later. If it won't, what was the point in having that volatility in the first place?

[GeekySpaz]

Re: Open ended damage

 

You could ignore the max doubling rules. Just use the damage adding rules as written, and ignore the Real Weapon/STR Min limitations (which is where the double damage rules really come from).

 

Or you might want to make the "double damage max" rule modified so that it's only the raw STR added that hits a cap. Then, you can let damage added from combat skill levels/martial arts to add on top of that Base weapon + STR, either in a limited way (can add up to the base weapon damage again) or open ended (keep on adding DCs, limited only by total level).

 

That's generally what I like to do. Skill based increases in damage (Weapon Master, Martial DC's, Martial Maneuvers, CSLs, etc.) are not capped when adding damage. STR can only add enough to double the base damage of the weapon.

 

And this really brings up a point I hadn't considered as much as maybe I should have. With CSLs, and Weapon Master and such, a player can build a character who has enough skill to slip through the chinks of the armor, and to hit the vital spots. Its doesn't allow for luck to achieve the same result but I'm not thinking I'm going to be able to achieve the real open ended damage that I would ideally like.

 

I think I have to give up on that part for now, but just to complete the thought: Any time a roll is made with 3 or more dice the results fit a normal distribution rather nicely. However its a truncated normal distribution that chops off the tails (above boxcars or below snake eyes). Ideally there would be a way to add at least the high tail back on but without changing the mean or the variance. But I don't think its achievable, and all the ideas I've seen/thought about to make damage open ended either change the mean or changes the variance too much. A Poisson or Binomial distribution would be open ended in only one direction, and could maybe keep the mean and variance close to what they are. But I don't think there is a simple (and I do mean simple) way to model that with a handful of d6s.

 

But I'm still not ready to give up on the idea of replacing hit location with a more abstract system. See my most recent post for my thought process on that one. In fact I think I'll go back and edit that one a bit. I think I can articulate some of my ideas a bit better.