Rethinking Damage Multipliers

As promised - more combat mechanics for Dying Sun.  As long-time readers will doubtless recall, Dr. Samsara thought he was damn clever in figuring out how to handle differently-sized weapons in his One-Roll Combat system.  I had initially thought to have a simple addition or subtraction to the base damage for Large or Small weapons respectively.  In the comments, the estimable Mark Krawec reminded me of Over the Edge, where weapons had a type of damage multiplier instead.  I really liked that and came up with a simple table:

Tiny Weapons multiply base damage by 1/2
Small Weapons multiply base damage by 1 (i.e. no change)
Medium Weapons multiply base damage by 2
Large Weapons multiply base damage by 3
Huge Weapons multiply base damage by 4

I was really pleased with the simplicity of that.  I carried over from the earlier (separate damage roll) version that Large weapons imposed a -1 to the Combat Roll from unwieldiness.  And done was done.

Except when it isn't.  I'm finding Large weapons to be a bit frustrating in practice.  Let's do one of my famous long and drawn out analyses.  The analysis involves one guy with a Medium weapon (let's say a sword) and one with a Large (let's say a battle-axe)

Both guys get a Combat Roll of 11.  The sword-guy does base damage of 1 x 2=2 points of damage.  It's was a weak hit.  The axe-man in this case misses, because his roll is penalized by 1.  OK, fair enough so far, I guess.

Now they each roll a 12.  Mr. Sword does base 2 x 2 = 4 points of damage.  Capt. Axe is modified down to an 11 and so does base 1 x 3 = 3 points of damage.

When they roll a 13, things finally even out.  The swordsman does base 3 x 2 = 6.  The axe-dude modified down to 12, does base 2 x 3 = 6.

From this point on, the axe-guy is doing more damage.  On a 14, the sword does 8, while the axe does 9.  On 15, the sword does 10 and the axe does 12, and on a 16, the sword does 12 and the axe does 15.

The key here is that it is very difficult to roll a 15 on 2D6.  You have to have some substantial modifiers, which would basically come from pretty high levels.  During low- and mid-levels, you would be lucky to get a 12.  Which, when add in the penalty for not being able to use a shield, makes using a Large weapon pretty much a losing bet at those levels.  The central question:

Is that a problem?

The answer: I'm not sure.  It feels somewhat problematic.  Maybe just because I've been staring at it for too long.  But the germ of this actually came up in a sideways manner when a player asked if he could do Large-weapon damage using a Medium-weapon in both hands.  I was stumped. 

If "yes", then why ever bother to have a Large weapon, if a Medium one gives you the flexibility?  Furthermore, my rationale for levying the penalty to the Combat Roll (unwieldiness) seems weird if using a nice, balanced, not awkward medium-sized weapon in two hands.   But eliminating that penalty would only exacerbate the uselessness of the Large weapon. 

If I say "no" instead (which is what I did in this case to keep the game moving), that feels strange.  The guy tossing aside his battered shield and gripping his sword in both hands to cleave his foe from stem to stern is a part of the genre.

What to do (if something actually needs doing)?

I have thought about falling back to some version my original idea: Large weapons give a bonus to damage.  I had proposed a +2, which, when you factor in the -1 to damage from the penalty to the Combat Roll, is effectively a +1 to damage.  I'm thinking now that maybe that should be upped to +3, for an effective +2.  Why?  Well, that balanced better with the loss of 2 to Defense from not having a shield and means that I could say you get an effective +1 if you use a Medium-weapon in both hands (i.e. if using a two-handed weapon, it makes more sense to use a weapon designed for it, but there is still a benefit to be had).

That's okay.  But I still don't like where that takes me with Small weapons.  Since they don't affect the Combat Roll, to make things symmetrical I would have to give them a -2.  I guess that fairly captures the d4 damage range they have in most versions of YAG, but it shifts the odds way off-kilter so that they basically always do 1 point of damage (i.e. you have to get a roll above 13 to do more than 1).  I really don't like the sound of that.  I could stick with halving on Small and addition on Large, but - dammit - that's so inelegant.

Then I started thinking more (as aside, this usually happens when I wake up at 3.00 am and can't sleep).  I could steer away from the damage aspects altogether and find another way of differentiating weapons of different sizes.  Reach, for example.  Maybe Large weapons all strike first, followed by Medium, and then Small.  That doesn't suck, but I really, really like the simultaneous nature of melee in the game as written so far (and totally stolen from the estimable Calithena, with acknowledgment).

I started coming up with some rules about relative lengths interacting.  That Large weapons get an advantage against Small weapons until the Small weapon guy gets in close, in which case the penalty flips and now the Small weapon gets an advantage.  That's attractive in that I have often wanted to have a system show the advantage of using a dagger in close quarters, but it really goes against the abstract nature of YAG's combat; for RuneQuest, it's fine.

And that's where I am.  Maybe I should forget this entire line of thought?

An Idea for One-Roll Combat for Percentile Systems

I mentioned previously that I have recently gotten ahold of the new Runequest II and have been quite favourably impressed.  The most notable "wow factor" is probably the Combat Maneuvers; I was impressed enough to be inspired to do something along those lines for Under the Dying Sun.   I reread the book again over the holiday weekend (note for non-Yanks: we celebrated our Thanksgiving holiday last Thursday, making it a four-day weekend for most) and found subtleties to the system that I hadn't see before.

But that never stops me from changing things up.  It's what I do.  The idea that popped into my head was to do a One-Roll Combat System, along the lines of the one I came up with for Dying Sun.  I call it one-roll in that "to hit" and "damage" are both factored into the same roll; there are frequently several rolls required in RQ so this term isn't completely accurate.  But good enough.  Oh yes, I do know that there is the thing called the One-Roll Engine.  It doesn't work for me.  It just doesn't, so don't suggest that I check that out. 

Before I present the idea, I think a bit of background maybe in order.  RQ's percentile system is a type of black-jack system, where you want to roll under your skill number, but still roll higher than the other guy.  It's only implemented sometimes, but it's what the core of the system is (or should be).  Thus, in an opposed contest of whatever sort, if both actors make their roll, whoever rolled the higher wins.  This means that having a higher skill value not only gives you a better chance of success (one is more likely to roll on or under 70% than 35%), but also a better chance to make the higher roll (a roll of 60 is a success for the guy with 70%; the guy with 35% can't beat that roll at all except in the slight chance of a critical hit).

Unfortunately for me, RQ has never implemented that core idea as elegantly as I would like.  This particularly irks me in the cases of critical successes, which are achieved not by rolling high, but by rolling low (10% or less or your base chance).  Is that a bad mechanic?  No.  But it's so aesthetically unpleasing and we all know how important that is to me.  So, in addition to making a one-roll, I also want to drop that "roll high except when you want to roll low" business.

That all said, here's the basic idea:

The tens-die tells you how much base damage you have done.

Our first guy from above has "Sword & Shield" at 70% and roll a 27; his base damage is 2.  Had it been 57, his base damage would be 5.

What I like about this idea is that it plays on the blackjack system: you want to roll under your skill, but as high as you can under that.  It also continues the hidden benefits of having a high skill as the more skilled guy can get better base damage than someone less skilled; if you only have a 35% in "Sword & Shield", you can never get more than 3 base damage.

In this system, each weapon would have some sort of damage modifier that works off of the base damage.  I don't know exactly how I would set-up the modifier: whether it is a multiple (as Dying Sun is for now (hint, hint)) or just a straight plus/minus.  Whatever it is, is doesn't involve rolling dice (since that would defeat the point of the whole exercise).

With this idea, the quality of the roll effects the quality of the success.  And frankly, you could leave it at that, but RQ has always had the idea of critical successes.  I have two thoughts on this, one simpler and one that does plays better with the RQII system.  The first idea is a simple critical hit/miss system:

A success that is a doubles, doubles the damage.  A failure that is doubles is a fumble.

So, back to our two foe men.  The guy with 35%, can get a critical success on rolls of 11, 22, and 33, with the resultant base damages of 2, 4, and 6 respectively.  His opponent with the 70% skill, gets a critical on rolls of 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, and 66.  On that later roll, he would do base damage of 12, which is pretty hot.    But if he had rolled 77, 88, or 99, he would have fumbled (and RQ has always had fun with fumbling).

I have to be honest, I find calculating 10% of a skill on the fly somewhat difficult.  Yes, that may be pathetic, but it is what it is.  So this idea makes me happier.  Plus, what we get again is that the higher the skill, the better the chance of getting a critical success, the better the quality of the critical successes, and the less chance of getting a fumble.  That later one pleases me as I have also never cared for RQ's fumble calculations either which is roll low, but not too low, but not too high either".

What we don't get here is a clear blackjack mechanic.  Does that matter?  I don't know; I kinda like this doubles thing.   But we also don't have Combat Maneuvers here, so one might change the idea so as to say that rolling doubles makes critical success and drop the doubling of damage thing as that is folded into the Maneuvers system.

Maybe once we finish this DC Adventures game, I'll try out RQII with these rules.

Stuff Still Happening

Despite my quietness here, stuff still happens.  Like a phoenix from its ashes, my real-world gaming group has been resurrected.  It was small before (3 guys) and losing one seemed fatal, but we have added three new fellas and look to be getting back on track.  We're playing through what I guess you might call an "adventure path" for Labyrinth Lord in a setting heavily-influenced by Vance's Lyonesse books.  We're reaching the end of that now and might be playing DC Adventures next.  While I can't claim to be thrilled with that choice, I feel it's fair enough to let somebody else choose the game and give it try.

I've also been running another Dying Sun play-test and again finding out that there are a bunch of stupid things still in the there.  For instance, my missile weapon ranges are buggered to hell and back.  More importantly, I'm finding that my rules for Large weapons may not work as well as I wanted.  Which means - that's right - expect more posts about Combat Mechanics in the near-future.

Finally, there is a potentially very exciting thing (well, exciting to me) going on that I can't talk about.  So why bring it up?  Because it's eating up a lot of my mental resources right now.  I should be ignoring it and getting back to work on UtDS, but I keep thinking of stuff for this other thing that I can't talk about.  Ah well.