A crazy way to handle damage?

[azato]

I was listening to an interview on a podcast (non-Hero related) where a person did not like the fact that with bigger weapons (or the use of more dice) created a bell shaped curve (or more of one) than smaller weapons. Thus the chances of hitting min/max/average changed. He created a game where the the damage for each weapon was charted out..probably not too much unlike Rolemaster, except armor did not reduce damage.

 

I think or fantasy hero or heroic level damages...I am mostly good with this. I don't care about changes or the creation of a curve when comparing 1d6 with 2d6. But with Champions....the difference can be huge ESPECIALLY when doling out normal damage. Here is what I was wondering...

 

Suppose a person purchases a 10d6 energy Blast. We know that the max body is 20 and maximum stun is 60. What if when it comes to roll damage instead the player rolls 3d6 and uses the % ranking for that roll to as a multiplier to the maximum damage for determine actual delivered damage (i.e. in this case a roll of a 12 would give a .74 multiplier)? The could be used damage of any size and all attacks would deliver on the same bell-shaped curve?

 

I am not sure if I am making sense since it is late and I am trying to wrap this up. Perhaps this has been tried before. I suspect it would make Supers games very deadly.

[Beast]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

you could have a base 40% damage and then add 5% per point you hit by

so you hit exactly you do 40% of max damage

you hit by 5 over, you do 65% of max damage

this makes hitting walls and non moving targets doing near max damage

[Utech]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

You could substitute 12-sided dice for two 6-sided dice.

You could roll half as many dice and multiply by 2.

You could slap Standard Effect on 1/2 the dice and only roll the remaining dice.

You could do all of these things at once.

[dmjalund]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

I though have all but 3 of them be standard effect

 

so 12DC is 27 + 3d6

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

You could use average rolls rather than standard effect to create a similar result with slightly higher amounts. 12d6 becomes 9 x 3.5 = 31 + 3d6 STUN.

 

There are two broad approaches. One would use the full range of all the dice (eg. % of maximum based on 3d6 roll; roll half the dice and diouble the result). This would make damage, especially for larger numbers of dice, much more volatile. The second is to take standard/average damage for some of the dice and only roll the rest, which will create a less volatile result.

[dmjalund]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

You could use average rolls rather than standard effect to create a similar result with slightly higher amounts. 12d6 becomes 9 x 3.5 = 31 + 3d6 STUN.

 

There are two broad approaches. One would use the full range of all the dice (eg. % of maximum based on 3d6 roll; roll half the dice and diouble the result). This would make damage, especially for larger numbers of dice, much more volatile. The second is to take standard/average damage for some of the dice and only roll the rest, which will create a less volatile result.

Gets slightly messy when dealing with an odd value of DCs

[Netzilla]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

Suppose a person purchases a 10d6 energy Blast. We know that the max body is 20 and maximum stun is 60. What if when it comes to roll damage instead the player rolls 3d6 and uses the % ranking for that roll to as a multiplier to the maximum damage for determine actual delivered damage (i.e. in this case a roll of a 12 would give a .74 multiplier)? The could be used damage of any size and all attacks would deliver on the same bell-shaped curve?

 

I assume you're thinking of something along the lines of this:

[ATTACH]36326[/ATTACH]

 

I've not tried using this, but I do suspect that you would probably want to up your DEF to DC ratio or a lot of characters will be adding Damage Reduction/Negation to their builds as the odds of getting higher damage values are much better.

 

OTOH, this would make Normal and Killing attacks nearly equally volatile (handy if you're using the pre-6e Stun Lotto). Of course, any time you increase volatility, I find that it tends to penalize the PCs more than the NPCs.

[prestidigitator]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

This one has been discussed a bit before. If you switch to a roll-high attack roll, you can double up the function of the dice for damage purposes. Then a better hit also corresponds with more damage. Use colored dice so you know what order to count them in (e.g. if you have red, blue, white you might count red, then blue, then white, then red, then blue...). So if you had a 5d6 attack and rolled 5, 2, 4 on your attack/damage roll, that'd be a 11 to hit and 5+2+4+5+2=18 on effect (and 5 for the Normal Body Count if it applies to the Power being used).

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

This one has been discussed a bit before. If you switch to a roll-high attack roll' date=' you can double up the function of the dice for damage purposes. Then a better hit also corresponds with more damage.[/quote']

 

This would penalize characters with a high DCV but low defenses. When they got hit, it would always be for high damage.

[prestidigitator]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

This would penalize characters with a high DCV but low defenses. When they got hit' date=' it would always be for high damage.[/quote']

True, but it helps players who otherwise might be frustrated that they, "hit with a freaking 17 (or a 4 using standard rolls) but only did 2 points of damage!" You could also re-roll damage but do the same thing with the three dice: simply re-use them on a rotating schedule.

[Markdoc]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

A simple approach would be to use standard effect on all attacks - and then use the hit location table for damage multipliers. This would give you somewhat more volatility - especially for large attacks - but this would be countered by the fact that Defences would be more efficient: attacks would do slightly less damage on average, but would have the potential to do much more (edit: or much less).

 

This would also speed combat significantly, especially for games with large attacks. Instead of counting the dice, you'd know your 14d6 negablast does 14/42 BOD/STUN - all you'd need to do is roll location. The DM could simply multiply whatever went through DEF by the location multiplier - which in most cases would be 1.

 

Edit: This would change game balance however - high OCV characters would have the option to swap accuracy for significant increases in damage output, and low DEF/high DCV characters could very easily get pasted by a single good shot. I don't think those are necessarily bad changes, but combat would play differently from standard Champions: it'd be far easier to one-shot a character, especially if you got the drop on them. It might, on reflection, give a slightly more comic-book-y feel to combat. A lot of hits would do no significant damage and a few would do lots. Small attacks would do no damage at all to high DEF characters and killing attacks would only really be useful against targets with little resistant DEF.

 

cheers, Mark

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

This one has been discussed a bit before. If you switch to a roll-high attack roll' date=' you can double up the function of the dice for damage purposes. Then a better hit also corresponds with more damage. Use colored dice so you know what order to count them in (e.g. if you have red, blue, white you might count red, then blue, then white, then red, then blue...). So if you had a 5d6 attack and rolled 5, 2, 4 on your attack/damage roll, that'd be a 11 to hit and 5+2+4+5+2=18 on effect (and 5 for the Normal Body Count if it applies to the Power being used).[/quote']

 

What prevents you doing this under the current model? You rolled a 4 to hit and you add the other two dice for damage. Now, very low rolls to hit tend to be glancing blows, benefiting the high DCV target instead of penalizing him.

[prestidigitator]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

What prevents you doing this under the current model? You rolled a 4 to hit and you add the other two dice for damage. Now' date=' very low rolls to hit tend to be glancing blows, benefiting the high DCV target instead of penalizing him.[/quote']

 

Because it seems unfair to clip the high end of damage when characters have paid for a large attack. I'd rather clip the low end than see players NEVER roll anywhere close to their maximum damage (without somehow seeking out a billion OCV bonuses and circumstances to decrease the target's DCV to do it). But YMMV I guess.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

Because it seems unfair to clip the high end of damage when characters have paid for a large attack. I'd rather clip the low end than see players NEVER roll anywhere close to their maximum damage (without somehow seeking out a billion OCV bonuses and circumstances to decrease the target's DCV to do it). But YMMV I guess.

 

It seems at least equally unfair to me that the high DCV target always takes high damage when a lucky shot gets through.

 

It seems like this would simply have the effect of increasing average damage, which would then be offset by buying higher defenses to get back to where we started. Basically, a "character tax".

[Matt Holck]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

I was listening to an interview on a podcast (non-Hero related) where a person did not like the fact that with bigger weapons (or the use of more dice) created a bell shaped curve (or more of one) than smaller weapons. Thus the chances of hitting min/max/average changed. He created a game where the the damage for each weapon was charted out..probably not too much unlike Rolemaster, except armor did not reduce damage.

 

I think or fantasy hero or heroic level damages...I am mostly good with this. I don't care about changes or the creation of a curve when comparing 1d6 with 2d6. But with Champions....the difference can be huge ESPECIALLY when doling out normal damage. Here is what I was wondering...

 

Suppose a person purchases a 10d6 energy Blast. We know that the max body is 20 and maximum stun is 60. What if when it comes to roll damage instead the player rolls 3d6 and uses the % ranking for that roll to as a multiplier to the maximum damage for determine actual delivered damage (i.e. in this case a roll of a 12 would give a .74 multiplier)? The could be used damage of any size and all attacks would deliver on the same bell-shaped curve?

 

I am not sure if I am making sense since it is late and I am trying to wrap this up. Perhaps this has been tried before. I suspect it would make Supers games very deadly.

 

sounds good

maybe just roll 3d6 and multiply the results by the number of dice in an attack divided by three

[prestidigitator]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

It seems at least equally unfair to me that the high DCV target always takes high damage when a lucky shot gets through.

 

Oh, I don't know. That's not the way I'd look at it. Attacker rolls a 15 and hits both the guy with the 3 DCV and the guy with the 5 DCV, doing the same amount of damage to each. Attacker rolls a 12 and hits the guy with the 3 DCV doing a certain amount of damage, but misses the guy with the 5 DCV. The guy with the 5 DCV avoided damage, and is obviously better off. How did this penalize him again?

 

I understand you're saying that putting points into DCV wouldn't make quite as much difference as it does with standard rolling (only with the assumption that points were put into DCV at the cost of not putting them into defenses). But one could also say that it penalizes characters with high OCV because they'll do less damage per hit (because they hit more often but but with lower rolls of the dice, so they'll tend to do less damage per hit even if they do more damage overall), so they'd be better off putting the points into more damage than higher OCV. Both are somewhat the straw man argument; they may carry some small element of truth to them, but they also miss the mark a bit.

[Matt Holck]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

I was listening to an interview on a podcast (non-Hero related) where a person did not like the fact that with bigger weapons (or the use of more dice) created a bell shaped curve (or more of one) than smaller weapons. Thus the chances of hitting min/max/average changed. He created a game where the the damage for each weapon was charted out..probably not too much unlike Rolemaster, except armor did not reduce damage.

 

I think or fantasy hero or heroic level damages...I am mostly good with this. I don't care about changes or the creation of a curve when comparing 1d6 with 2d6. But with Champions....the difference can be huge ESPECIALLY when doling out normal damage. Here is what I was wondering...

 

Suppose a person purchases a 10d6 energy Blast. We know that the max body is 20 and maximum stun is 60. What if when it comes to roll damage instead the player rolls 3d6 and uses the % ranking for that roll to as a multiplier to the maximum damage for determine actual delivered damage (i.e. in this case a roll of a 12 would give a .74 multiplier)? The could be used damage of any size and all attacks would deliver on the same bell-shaped curve?

 

I am not sure if I am making sense since it is late and I am trying to wrap this up. Perhaps this has been tried before. I suspect it would make Supers games very deadly.

 

one would loss the variance between body and stun

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

Oh' date=' I don't know. That's not the way I'd look at it. Attacker rolls a 15 and hits both the guy with the 3 DCV and the guy with the 5 DCV, doing the same amount of damage to each. Attacker rolls a 12 and hits the guy with the 3 DCV doing a certain amount of damage, but misses the guy with the 5 DCV. The guy with the 5 DCV avoided damage, and is obviously better off. How did this penalize him again?[/quote']

 

I think I see the disagreement now. You're looking at damage taken. I'm looking at damage taken through defenses. 3 DCV guy has 10 more points to spend on defenses than 5 DCV guy (and, from personal experience, that's where he'll put them). Now, 3 DCV guy gets hit a lot, but under your proposal, most of those hits will be less substantial and not penetrate his defenses. When an attacker does roll well, 3 DCV guy still gets the benefits of his extra defenses. 5 DCV guy gets missed by attacks that don't penetrate 3 DCV guy's defenses, but takes more damage from attacks that would hit both of them.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

Oh, I don't know. That's not the way I'd look at it. Attacker rolls a 15 and hits both the guy with the 3 DCV and the guy with the 5 DCV, doing the same amount of damage to each. Attacker rolls a 12 and hits the guy with the 3 DCV doing a certain amount of damage, but misses the guy with the 5 DCV. The guy with the 5 DCV avoided damage, and is obviously better off. How did this penalize him again?

 

I understand you're saying that putting points into DCV wouldn't make quite as much difference as it does with standard rolling (only with the assumption that points were put into DCV at the cost of not putting them into defenses). But one could also say that it penalizes characters with high OCV because they'll do less damage per hit (because they hit more often but but with lower rolls of the dice, so they'll tend to do less damage per hit even if they do more damage overall), so they'd be better off putting the points into more damage than higher OCV. Both are somewhat the straw man argument; they may carry some small element of truth to them, but they also miss the mark a bit.

 

So how is having the "roll low" mechanic, and those low dice always included in damage, in any way different from a "roll high" mechanic where the to hit dice always form part of the damage dice?

 

If it's not all that penalizing for the defender to have every attack which connects with the very high DCV opponent get 3d6 of damage that total 18, then it can't be all that penalizing for the attacker to have every attack which connects with the very high DCV opponent get 3d6 of damage that total 3. The level of penalty to one character and bonus to the other are the same.

 

It's probably better to buy A0E's and Accurate attacks, though. Then most rolls will hit, even the high ones.

[Matt Holck]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

hit locations is at issue

is that an attack aimed at the head over the lower DCV character will do more damage

[prestidigitator]

Re: A crazy way to handle damage?

 

So how is having the "roll low" mechanic, and those low dice always included in damage, in any way different from a "roll high" mechanic where the to hit dice always form part of the damage dice?

 

If it's not all that penalizing for the defender to have every attack which connects with the very high DCV opponent get 3d6 of damage that total 18, then it can't be all that penalizing for the attacker to have every attack which connects with the very high DCV opponent get 3d6 of damage that total 3. The level of penalty to one character and bonus to the other are the same.

 

It's not all that different, I suppose, but I like the idea of a better hit generating more damage (and it already makes a "critical" 18 max damage), and it also makes a player feel like he's getting the damage he paid for, as opposed to never (or very, very, rarely) being able to do close to max damage. So, as I said in post #13, YMMV.