Alternative Damage Systems

[imported_Witchking20k]

Here it is.  Maybe Tim can move my post from the Mushroom Kingdom thread into here so I don't have to re-type it....?

Firstly, this is amazing material.  I hope Tim is negotiating furiously for you to publish it with/through him! LOL

On the Damage Systems note...

Tim and I had a discussion some months ago about that sort of thing.  I introduced a Wound Threshold into my game.  Basically- if you take your wound threshold in Hits from a single attack you start to suffer incremental penalties.  I play a lot of d6 currently- so, the penalty structure is based off of that.  I was tweaking how to calculate the threshold as we went.  But here is a sample based off of a Threshold of 5.

26+     Critical Injury -5 * Save vs. Con or Death
21-25   Severely Injured -3 ** Must Make Save vs. Will or Flee Battle
16-20   Injured -2 ** Must make Save vs. Will or Flee Battle
11-15   Hurt -1
6-10     Dazed -1 until next action
1-5       No Effect

The real success of this is that I introduced scaled enemies into the game.  Tim will recognise it from some of my previous writing:  But you scale the threshold based on the Challenge Rating of the Enemy: Vermin, Minion, Average, Tough, Strong, Mighty.  Then if they have a CON bonus it adds to the Threshold.

Example: Vermin Threshold 3, Minion 5, Average 7, Tough 9, Strong 11, Mighty 13

The end result was quicker battles as weaker foes would flee or perish due to the threshold.  It is a huge departure from core Novus rules- but, the BEST aspect of Novus is that it is customizable (as we have mentioned elsewhere).  I only play tested from levels 1-3.  The characters used the Threshold of Average 7+their CON bonus.

Another neat aspect is that to adjust the scale of the game you can simple adjust the Threshold up 1 degree for the players.  So, to run a higher-end, epic scale, game you can use the Tough 9+ Threshold for players.

Oh, and you can run a game without Hits using it if you want.  But, I haven't tried that.

[imported_Rasyr]

How is that? I quoted your previous post, and then edited this one and posted the quote into it...

[imported_Witchking20k]

Excellent- thanks.  Hopefully that starts some discussion!

[Fidoric]

26+     Critical Injury -5 * Save vs. Con or Death
21-25   Severely Injured -3 ** Must Make Save vs. Will or Flee Battle
16-20   Injured -2 ** Must make Save vs. Will or Flee Battle
11-15   Hurt -1
6-10     Dazed -1 until next action
1-5       No Effect

I understand that the maluses are given to general activity. I think such a system would work well with a called shot system. To make it simple I propose something like that where the first digit is for general malus and the second for using the wounded body part. For example, taking an injury (-2/-5) in the sword arm would give a -2 to all activities due to the pain but a -5 to all activity using that arm specifically.

26+     Critical Injury -5/disabled * Save vs. Con or Death
21-25   Severely Injured -3/-10 ** Must Make Save vs. Will or Flee Battle
16-20   Injured -2/-5 ** Must make Save vs. Will or Flee Battle
11-15   Hurt -1/-2
6-10     Dazed -1 until next action
1-5       No Effect

[imported_Witchking20k]

Cool.  Could be fun paired with a random hit location based off of a naked 2d10 roll.

20          Neck 
19          Head 
17-18     Hand
15-16    Arms
13-14    Shoulder
9-12      Torso
6-8        Leg
4-5        Foot
2-3        Da'Junk 

[Dorchadas]

I've been considering something similar just reading the attack roll to avoid having to roll more dice, but I keep running into the problem that since degree of damage is also determined by the same roll, all hits to certain body parts are serious and all hits to other body parts are glancing. Which makes sense in case of something like the neck (which you probably never want to be hit), but would make attacks lower on the chart do less damage, so if I put hands at the bottom all hits to the hand would be grazing hits.

Also, without body-part-specific HP or critical hit charts, tracking hit location isn't super important to me. And I do love critical hits, but they're a problem just due to probability because attacks coming towards the players greatly outnumber attacks going out to any single adversary, so eventually, one of the PCs is going to lose a limb or get their head cleaved on the first blow, barring some other way to mitigate the damage.

It'd also probably be better to integrate Boon points with the critical hit charts, replacing the damage multipliers. Instead of "double damage," it'd be, "roll 2d10 and consult this chart," and then triple damage would be "roll 2d10+5" or whatever, and so on up the list.

[imported_Witchking20k]

Hero System uses a damage multiplier.  .5x for torso, 1x for shoulders, thighs 2x for head and vitals for example

[Dorchadas]

Hero System uses a damage multiplier.  .5x for torso, 1x for shoulders, thighs 2x for head and vitals for example

I'm hoping to avoid multiplication if I can, since some of my players have dyscalculia. Also the reason I'd like to replace the "do 2X/3X/YX more damage" results with a chart, since that makes it easier than multiplying. 

[imported_Witchking20k]

Just add a static amount of Hits based on location then.  It could be a neat way to introduce weak points in tough foes too

20          Neck  +10
19          Head   +8
17-18     Hand   +6
15-16    Arms    +4
13-14    Shoulder +0
9-12      Torso      -4
6-8        Leg        +0
4-5        Foot      +4
2-3        Da'Junk   +10000000000000000000

[Trentin Bergeron]

I have found hit location tables to be tedious in play. I think the Boon system handles critical hits well. They actually come up often enough in my experience to make them viable and fun.

I would LOVE to see more combat boons and ESPECIALLY snag options.  I personally would like some quasi-randomness to abstract things out in some of these options; so it would be great to be able to spend a boon point and get +1d10 damage or take a page out of Master Book and make a Novus Roll and consult a table for a damage bonus. I would leave out the actual "location" so the GM/Player can describe what happens, fitting it to the situation. So, a really awesome chance roll of +10 damage could be described as a serious wallop to the face or a groin shot, etc.

[imported_Rasyr]

Witchking20k -- a question.... (well, a couple actually)

For some reason, I had not understood how your Damage Threshold system was working (hence my not commenting on it), likely in part because of my concentrating on other things as well.

But I get it now (I think), so let me paraphrase to see I understand it properly, and then I will ask my question...

Foe has a Damage Threshold (DT) so, for an Orc who has a Con bonus of 2, the DT would be 9., He has a DEF of 19 and AR 8 (from armor)

You attack foe with a Mace (Base Damage 10 (DR 8 + 2 Strength Bonus)).  You have an Attack Bonus of 14, you roll a 9 and a 7, for a total of 30. This is 11 points above DEF, so it earns a Boon Point... The attack also does 21 points of damage (before AR).

After AR, the attack only does 13 points of Damage.

Both 21 and 13 are above the DT, but which is used? As with one, he is only Hurt (-1), while with the other he is Severely Injured (-3; Will Save or Flee).

I would presume that he is only Hurt (-1), or else that just completely nerfs armor.

However, how would the Boon Point figure into this?

Do you still track hit points? As some boons include bleeders (continuing damage), and others can multiply the base damage (which would be applied prior to subtracting for armor?

Why not add armor in as part of the Damage Threshold? If you did that, that could simplify things slightly, as you would not be subtracting armor from the hits damage every time then...

Adding AR to the DT, would give our Orc a DT of 9+8= 17. So, that 21 points of damage, would be 4 points over the DT, which would result in no effect to the Orc... And then perhaps have Boon Points shift the Damage up 1 track? (from None to Dazed)

However, if we are including AR into the DT, you could actually step down that base (shifting to the next lower number or get rid of it altogether, or make it a combo of Spd+Con+AR, any minus would be treated as 0 for this)

[imported_Rasyr]

Had a quick idea about damage -- based partly on what Witchking20k has done, and on the questions I asked above....

This is what I came up with (this might make for a cool article in an issue of Libram Novus, who knows...)

Basically, there are 7 levels..... As shown below

Thoughts? Comments?

[imported_Rasyr]

Practical Example Time

Taking Raglin Stonedrake (1st level fighter from the Downloads Area), he has the following converted Stats:

Raglin
DEF 24
DT 13
AB +11 BroadSword (11 BD)

Kobold
DEF 19
DT 7
AB +7 Short Spear (9 BD)

So, in round 1, Raglin gets the initiative. He rolls 9+8 for an 17, for a total attack roll of 28. His damage is 11 + 9 (28-19 (Kobold's DEF)=9) for a total damage of of 18 (9 BD + 9 over DEF), giving us a 11 on the DT table (18 - 7 DT = 9). Which means that the Kobold is Stunned (and gets a -3 starting the next round)

In the Kobold's turn, he rolls 10 + 2 +10 +1; a total of 23 + 7 AB = 30. 30 -  Raglin's DEF of 24 = 6. So (6 + 9 BD

[Fidoric]

I am not sure I understand.
I believe the DT system should work with multipliers rather than subtraction. Besides, AR would better be left out of DT I think lest the system does not work for poisons for example.

As I see it, in your example :
First round Raglin deal 20 damage. The Kobold has AR 6 so he gets 14 damage. If the Kobold is considered to be a minion with +0 constitution he has DT5. If I understand correctly, it should be hurt -1 under Witchking table or stunned under yours. In your table, how many boxes should the Kobold fill?

[imported_Rasyr]

I am not sure I understand.
I believe the DT system should work with multipliers rather than subtraction. Besides, AR would better be left out of DT I think lest the system does not work for poisons for example.

As I see it, in your example :
First round Raglin deal 20 damage. The Kobold has AR 6 so he gets 14 damage. If the Kobold is considered to be a minion with +0 constitution he has DT5. If I understand correctly, it should be hurt -1 under Witchking table or stunned under yours. In your table, how many boxes should the Kobold fill?

Under my suggested version, There is no static Damage Threshold as Witchking20k has. Instead, the DT is set by the sum of Speed Stat Bonus (ability to roll with blows), Con Stat Bonus (ability to tough it out), and Armor Rating (the better your armor, the less damage you take, or the more damage required to get past defenses) -- this means that more lightly armored foes will get hurt worse, but they should also have higher DEF, so should be getting hit less often (as opposed to heavy armor, getting hit more often, but hurt less often) -- at least that is the general idea...)

And only 1 box gets ticked per injury. The Kobold would mark off a single box. If he got stunned a second time, he would mark off a second box (since the Kobold has a zero mod for Con, he would only have the 2 boxes in each row (so, once he got a second Stun, he would be at -4 instead of -3 since the row is filled in.