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Newbie question: non-killing damage is normal?


knasser2

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Welcome!

 

So this thread basically is an exact replica of a conversation with my buddy a couple of weeks ago. We have a combined gaming experience of decades, beginning with D&D. He drank the KookAid on Pathfinder, which I never got into, and he is very deeply conversant with all the intricacies of gaming, skill trees, and all that kind of stuff.

 

But he just couldn't understand the damage in Fantasy Hero Complete​. It took me at least an hour of continuous examples and explanations just like in this thread. He finally got it, and looked back on it and realized it wasn't all that hard. It is just a very different way of looking at combat. AC and HP are all you need in D&D, but he could't wrap his head around different kinds of damage, the role of PD and rPD, etc. This thread should be a tutorial for anyone learning the system!

 

With that being said, I'm going to start a new thread about problems for newbies learning the system. I'd love your input on this. It should be coming in a day or two, and I'd love to get everyone's feedback on this, especially people who are new to the system.

 

*Edit: Here's the thread: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/94641-problems-with-fantasy-hero-complete-and-newbies/  Please give me some ideas of what it's like to look at the book for the first time, and what could help ease the learning curve.

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The advantage of hero is that if you don't like a fireball spell being normal damage, you make a fireball spell with killing damage.

 

The disadvantage is the same.

 

I guess the thread can be summed up in nutshell as "but which one is right?" ;)

 

What do people do? What is normal usual? If I make fireballs Killing Damage will my game become very lethal?

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Normal damage is more likely to knock people unconscious. Killing damage is more likely to kill them. Neither is "right" or "wrong" because we don't know what you're going for in your game.

 

For a D&D type world, most attacks should probably be killing. "Normal" damage is what a person can normally do with their body. Killing damage is what you do with a weapon.

 

Lethality is going to be determined more by Damage Classes, and less by killing vs normal. A 1D6 killing attack isn't that lethal as long as the characters have some sort of armor. A 12D6 normal attack, on the other hand, will blow the crap out of a fantasy character. He probably won't die, but he's likely to be quite unconscious. Remember that 1D6 killing attack is considered equal to 3D6 normal damage. Scale from there.

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I guess the thread can be summed up in nutshell as "but which one is right?" ;)

 

What do people do? What is normal usual? If I make fireballs Killing Damage will my game become very lethal?

 

I think the basic gist of what everyone is saying is that, if you match the Damage Classes, damage will be similar. It just depends on what you want to emphasize in the campaign (gritty realism or golden age of comics?). The other consideration is what kind of defenses do you see being used in your game. Lots of armor? Killing damage is more important. Street clothes? Normal damage is less lethal. The game is built to use both, but you can choose one or the other if you want for simplicity's sake. I always use both (so you don't have someone trying to stab a door open: see below).

 

One other intuitive example that may help: A knife works great on a person, but it's lousy for busting through a door. My impression has always been that the game is trying to simulate these two kinds of situations with its two kinds of damage. They are both integrated to work together in a game through the use of Damage Classes. This keeps everything (mostly) balanced.

 

 

I don't know whether I have a preference per se for whether I want the game to be more or less lethal. I certainly want a reasonable chance for people to die, I don't want them having to all roll up new characters because I misjudged how many goblins to put in an encounter by two. I like the idea of having stun damage, I'm just wary of the complexity and some of the examples don't make sense to me - e.g. a fireball example someone gave earlier of being Normal Damage when I would think being burnt is far more likely to do physical damage than to knock someone out. So I'm keeping both options on the table for now, I guess.

 

As far as this goes, think of the fireball as an explosion (although there are a lot of different ways to build it). It's the impact and the knock back (another game element) that does the damage. You can make it a killing blast if you'd like, or you can add advantages to make the damage continue through burning, but those are all different considerations regarding the basic attack: a blast. Remember that the special effects are a description of the blast, so a lightning bolt, fireball, or gale-force wind all do the same kind of "Normal" Damage. You can fiddle with the finer effects to suit your need.

 

​As for the goblins, it's a really useful aspect of this game that with a points-build approach you can always generally balance the players with their foes. A party with 600 total points would do well against a single 600 point monster, a group of 10 100-point normal humans, or whatever. This is the reason why I love the Hero System. Game balance is always one of the prime considerations! Players may try to find a way to min-max the rules, but you have a whole group of active forums here where really good and creative rule-hawks can help you figure out particular answers!

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I guess the thread can be summed up in nutshell as "but which one is right?" ;)

 

What do people do? What is normal usual? If I make fireballs Killing Damage will my game become very lethal?

 

Depends on the size of the fireballs.

 

A 1d6 Killing Attack fireball is not that lethal, although it could severely burn an unarmored person.

A 3d6 Normal Attack fireball is theoretically equivalent but is less likely to do lasting damage to a reasonably tough person.

 

A 12d6 Normal Attack fireball is far more dangerous than the 1d6 Killing Attack.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Is one head of the palindromedary more "right" than the other?

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I guess the thread can be summed up in nutshell as "but which one is right?" ;)

 

What do people do? What is normal usual? If I make fireballs Killing Damage will my game become very lethal?

 

"Which one is right?" is the question that gets asked the most often on the Hero forum about how to model a power or effect.

 

You have to think about what kind of campaign you want to have.

 

If I were running a campaign where most people didn't wear armor (light leather) or had one level of combat luck (3 rPD/rED) and most of the fighters were using things like sabers and rapiers, then a 3d6 killing attack with an area of effect of say 8 meters would be very deadly.  An average damage roll would be ~11 points of Body and 22 Stun.  A lot of characters would be down half their body and probably be Stunned as well.  The 2nd 3d6 killing attack w/ area effect would kill them or put them so far down that someone would just walk around and slit their throats.

 

If I were running a campaign where most people are wearing chain mail or better or had a lot of combat luck (6 rPD/rED), and the fighters were using things like long swords, maces, and two handed swords with the potential of doing 3d6 killing attacks then a 3d6 killing attack w/ an 8 m radius area of effect spell isn't nearly as deadly.

 

Here are some resources to look at:

  • KillerShrike's site has a wealth of information concerning converting from Pathfinder/D&D to Hero.  His work is all associated with 5th edition Hero (which is easy to translate into 6th edition)
  • Valdorian Age Rising Power on the Frontier is my old campaign.  I used the Hero product Valdorian Age as a starting point and built from there.  If you go to the link there is a bunch of information about how I set up the game mechanics for that particular campaign.  VA is a very low magic world.
  • Nyonia is my current campaign and is a world created from scratch.  This is a much more magical world. 

Hope that helps

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Now if we look at the same situation with a dagger that does 1d6 killing damage (and for the moment we will ignore if Strength gives any bonuses).  The average roll for Body will be 3 Body and if we are using hit locations to calculate Stun then most likely the hit location will be the chest so that would result in 9 Stun.  Because our normal person isn't wearing any resistant clothing/armor (t-shirt and jeans), their 2 Physical Defense will not protect the character.  They will take 9 Stun and 3 Body directly.  If they were wearing a leather jacket and it gave 1 resistant physical defense then they would only take 6 Stun (2 PD + 1 resistant PD) and 2 Body (1 resistant PD applies).

 

This is a great summary, but there is one thing to correct (I think): PD still applies to Stun, even in Killing Attacks. The character would take 3 Body and 7 Stun in this example. There is a long explanation with examples on HS6e2 page 103.

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Hey everyone,

 

How about using different terms for new players? Specifically, use Knockout Damage for "Normal Damage" and Killing (or Lethal) Damage for "Killing Damage". That way, there's no confusing "Normal Damage" that may not be...normal. It's really more about the intent of the damage.

 

Lee

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I suppose that would work fine, but refering to it that way in play won't change the fact that the book will still be contradicting you; leading to confusion along the lines of "Where to I find the rules for "Knockout Damage"?". Moreover, it might lead to trouble if you ever have to explain why the Peasant (An Average Person) died outright from the 18d6 of "Knockout Damage" they suffered from falling 36m down an empty well.

 

I prefer to explain to players that it is called Normal Damage because is the type of damage that any "normal character" can do with their strength, or that "normal circumstances" such as falling or being crushed by heavy objects causes. Then I further explain that Adventurers are not "normal" people, so while it may be common for them to get shanked with a dagger or singed by fire magic, that doesn't make the damage they are suffering "Normal" (just common from their perspective).

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The question has been asked before and will no doubt be asked again:

 

Do we really NEED two separate mechanics for rolling damage?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary quotes Shakespeare: "Oh question not the need! Our merest beggar is in the poorest thing superfluous."

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There's actually quite a lot of normal attacks in fantasy.  Yes, most weapons do killing, but not all: quarterstaves and clubs for example.  Many animals attack with fists or hooves, tail lashes, etc.  All of that is normal attacks.  Many spells do normal damage, blast attacks with various special effects (fire, lightning, etc).

 

Do we really NEED two separate mechanics for rolling damage?

 

 

There has been some proposal and thought put into turning killing into normal damage with an AVAD variant (only for body damage).  That changes the dice into straight damage class, so both are rolled the same.  Its roughly equivalent in damage output, without the stun lotto, but requires some other work such as changing how increased stun multiple works and how hit locations behave.  Its an interesting concept I'm very close to implementing but what I'll probably do is slip a chapter into the GM book for my fantasy campaign on how to do it.

 

Its a pretty huge change for the system and I'm not willing to pull the trigger on it, although I do like it in a lot of ways.  For one thing, it makes your d6+1 sword roll 4d6 instead, which is far more satisfying and gives a better spread.

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It just occurred to me that "normalizing" damage has a benefit for the Game Operations Director: It makes damage more predictable and therefor makes encounters easier to balance.

 

If your player characters and the Orc band are all swinging swords for 1d6+1 Killing, max damage is 7 BOD and that will be rolled one time in six. If neither side has much in the way of Resistant Defense, a few lucky (or unlucky) rolls on one side or the other could make the difference between the heroes coming through  unbloodied or getting a Total Party Kill.

 

If those swords are rolling 4d6 normal, the max BOD damage is now 8 but the odds of rolling that are less than one in a thousand by my calculations. BOD damage will usually be 4. You are much less likely to get a surprise result like "NONE of you took any lasting injury?" or "OOPS, you're all dead now."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Abnormalizing a palindromedary

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Out of curiosity, what are the SETAC discussions?

 

SETAC stood for Sixth Edition Technical Advisory Committee.  It was a small private discussion group set up by Steve Long after the public comment period for 6e had ended, for further in-depth technical discussion exactly how the changes from 5e to 6e would happen.  A lot of what we did was number crunching; for instance, Hugh Neilson did many, many spreadsheets and comparisons on Advantage values vs. benefit gained or raw damage lost on Attack Powers.  I suggested using a single damage rolling mechanic, and out of the thirteen of us, there were twelve nays.  The nays had it.

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It just occurred to me that "normalizing" damage has a benefit for the Game Operations Director: It makes damage more predictable and therefor makes encounters easier to balance.

 

 

Yeah, by giving killing attacks more of a bell curve, you not only make them more satisfying (my sword only does 2d6??) but makes their results more smooth and predictable (woo 6d6!!).  I honestly think its really the best way to go, its just such a major change from Hero since it was created in the early 80s that I'm uncomfortable with a huge rule shift like that in my work.

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The separation between killing and normal damage is one of my favorite parts of the system. However, if you want to run a game where lethality is the typical form of damage (such as D&D style fantasy, for instance), then it can be a bit awkward. The thing to keep in mind with the Hero System however, is that it is a universal toolkit system intended to be used for a variety of genres and tones and it is intended that the GM will dial in options to suit whatever particular feeling they are going for. When it comes to the area of lethality of damage, the system is especially dense with options both official and unofficial to dial in a wide variety of lethality levels from Nerf to instagib.

 

As it happens, I have a set of pages on my site that go into lethality options, and it may be helpful. 

 

http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/HighFantasyHERO/shrikeLethalityOptions.aspx

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SETAC stood for Sixth Edition Technical Advisory Committee.  It was a small private discussion group set up by Steve Long after the public comment period for 6e had ended, for further in-depth technical discussion exactly how the changes from 5e to 6e would happen.  A lot of what we did was number crunching; for instance, Hugh Neilson did many, many spreadsheets and comparisons on Advantage values vs. benefit gained or raw damage lost on Attack Powers.  I suggested using a single damage rolling mechanic, and out of the thirteen of us, there were twelve nays.  The nays had it.

Chris, I am sure we discussed making KAs 1d6 per 5 points, with a slightly higher BOD (such as 1-5 = 1 BOD, 6 = 2) and some subtraction from the total STUN rolled, to maintain the averages of the pre-6e KA without the volatility of fewer dice and a multiplier. The problem was making the Stun work, although we ended up markedly dropping KA stun anyway, so maybe "1s are 0" or "drop every 6 to a 5", or just "add the total and subtract 1 per die" would have done the trick.

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Chris, I am sure we discussed making KAs 1d6 per 5 points, with a slightly higher BOD (such as 1-5 = 1 BOD, 6 = 2) and some subtraction from the total STUN rolled, to maintain the averages of the pre-6e KA without the volatility of fewer dice and a multiplier. The problem was making the Stun work, although we ended up markedly dropping KA stun anyway, so maybe "1s are 0" or "drop every 6 to a 5", or just "add the total and subtract 1 per die" would have done the trick.

 

*twitch*

 

*drool*

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I am hoping this is not a derail but I do like to keep damage systems consistent.

 

The question that SETAC seems to have considered is what the attacks are supposed to be for.

 

I think Blast should indeed be the core damage mechanism for fighting. I think what is needed is to find stuff that bring out the elements we need from that core damage.

 

Blast - normal damage - STUN and BODY that is defended by all of the relevant physical or energy defence.

 

If we want to provide attacks with more potential to kill then we add an advantage that means the BODY, or both STUN and BODY, are not defended by relevant defences unless those defences are resistant. You can also look at doubling the BODY (or adding armour piercing) for vicious attacks.

 

In all of these it means the attack mechanic remains the same but you get Blast, Killing Blast, Heavy Killing Blast, Vicious Killing Blast and AP Killing Blast (ran out of decent adjectives and too lazy to check thesaurus...)

 

Games have worked hard to pare down their systems to elegant core mechanics, I think HERO could do something similar, we have so many legacy mechanisms that are kinda same-y but different and that adds to complexity.

 

Doc

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