Multiplicative vs Additive damage

[Eric Kimball]

Well the combat system of our little color game is broken.  The whole vitality bar thing is far to complicated for the relatively simple game. So we are redoing it in a simpler manner.

For those of you who have not downloaded the game from www.arrogantgames.com/spectra here are the basics.  The player role on average 3 dice and can get a success or failure on each die.  In the normal game all you need is one success to do most anything.

Now in unarmed combat that is fine.  If you get a success you do a point of damage.  The problem comes with weapons that are supposed to amplify a persons killing potential.  How to represent this amplification is a problem. I wanted to get opinions on the strategies we have so far:

Additive stratagem
This is the simplest way to do it.  Basically a weapon would give the player an automatic success.  For example:

Sword (+1 success)
Player roles FFF  Sword adds S; total successes 1
Player roles SFF  Sword adds S; total successes 2
Player roles SSF  Sword adds S; total successes 3
Player roles SSS Sword adds S; total successes 4

Multiplicative stratagem
Here any time a player rolled a success and number of more success defined by the weapon are added to it.  For example:

Sword (*2 success)
Player roles FFF  Sword adds F; total successes 0
Player roles SFF  Sword adds S; total successes 2
Player roles SSF  Sword adds SS; total successes 4
Player roles SSS Sword adds SSS; total successes 6

Now multiplication gives a larger spread but addition is simpler and faster to think about.  What are people opinions?

[Mike Holmes]

This is a classic problem.

The multiplication thing really turns some people off, and, if you want to have lots of levels of power for weapons, then that means multiplying large numbers as some point.

OTOH, the real problem with addition is that you get the problem that TROS has with large weapons/creatures. Which is that at some point there'll be some creature that can only either miss the opponent, or kill him. The addition means that you can never get the scratch results that we all like to see.

So, what level of granularity are you considering for weapon damages? Fist does zero, dagger one, sword two, big sword three, and so on up to dragon breath 10? And successes less than 10 at a time? That wouldn't be too bad, I'd think (stays on the early elementary school multiplication tables).

Mike

[Lxndr]

Instead of adding automatic successes, why not have it add extra dice?  Thus, you can still miss/scratch, but your max damage is greater, and your potential for GETTING even a single success is greater...

[Mike Holmes]

Means that a heavier weapon is easier to hit with. In TROS, heavier weeapons tend to be harder to hit with, but do more damage (some exceptions). This is a pretty standard in games, and, as such, it's considered bad form to allow for the weapon damage capacity to add to the ability to hit.

OTOH, if you combine the soak abilities in the defense, then it just becomes one big organic combat party.

Mike

[Thomas Tamblyn]

Persoanlly I'm a fan of weapons adding to the attack roll rather than there being a sepperate weapon-based damage step.  The reasoning being that weapon X is still just as good, it just means the player doesn't have to think hard to work out how good it is (though you do lose quite a bit of mechanics-based flavour) and it forces decisions such as "Are an animal's claws weapons?  is a kick a weapon?  Is a fist?"

But as for the question you actually asked...

I dislike damage multipliers not only because they feel a little inelegant, but because of the regular jumps of damage betwen success levels.  A guy with 9 hp is exactly as tough as a guy with 10 hp when being attacked by a x2 weapon for example.  This shouldn't bother me, but it does.

A(n imperfect) fix I've used for the "big damage adds mean no scratches" problem that has been mentioned is that marginal successes (tied rolls or whatever the equivalent is in your system) do only basic damage (1 point only, base strength only, degree of success only or whatever works in the system at hand).  Thus there's a specific level of success reserved for scratches with a sudden jump to a 'real' hit afterward and then a steady increase as the quality of hit improves.

However this needds the system to have exactly the right size of grain.  Too large and scratches are common - and since the concept of a scratch here is some default or unmodified amount of damage, it frustrates players that their character ability has little effect on the result.

Too fine a grain and scratches might as well not exist, unless you say that success by less than X points is a scratch.  At that point you just have a different step to check for and a whole  new inelegant system.

I'm afraid I'm not sure how to specifically relate this to your system, but I though that some of these thoughts might be useful to you.

[Jeph]

There's always the "all things relative" approach. IE, the guy with the more appropriate weapon gets a bonus die or two, and that's that. So, you've got...

Unarmed Dude vs. Dagger Dude: Dagger Dude gets the bonus
Dagger Dude vs. Sword Dude: Sword Dude gets the bonus
Sword Dude vs. Sword and Shield Dude: Sword and Shield Dude gets it.
Sword and Shield Dude vs. Shotgun Dude: Guess. :-D

[chikoppi]

It isn't clear what dice you use for the suuccess roll. If, for instance, you use D6 with 5 or 6 resulting in a success you could allow some weapons to substitute one or more D8 into the mix. Results of 7 or 8 not only indicate success, but add +1 to damage.

For instance, unarmed combat uses 3D6. Small weapons use 2D6 and 1D8. Medium weapons use 1D6 and 2D8. Large weapons use3D8.

Another alternative is to count max values as damage bonuses for some weapons. For instance a result of 5 on D6 indictes 1 success while a result of 6 indicates 1 success and +1 to damage.

Magic weapons could even use D10 as a substitution die, but that seems to provide too much of a bonus, especially if results of 9 or 10 indicate +2 to damage.

[Mike Holmes]

That's complicated to read, but not terrible.

The other standard option to retain the additive method, of course, is the WW system: take the success margin, add it to the strength and damage, and make this a roll against the defenders soak value.

It's a second roll, but it takes everything into account "appropriately", and the full range of damage is avialable.

Mike

[M. J. Young]

Multiverser uses damage categories, and a single-roll hit and damage system, which combined provide something of this sort.

The damage categories are:
Annoying 0-1
Damaging 1-5
Dangerous 1-10
Lethal 1-20
Fatal 1-50
Annihilating 1-100
Obliterative damage not measured.

These damages are derived from the roll of the same d100 that determines whether the hit is successful.  Thus if you're using a damaging weapon and you roll 40, and that is a successful hit, you do 2 points of damage.  Since all fractions are rounded up, if you roll 41, you do three points. If 60 is a successful roll, you still do three points. If the weapon were lethal, 40 would indicate eight points and 60 twelve points.

Now there are three ways a weapon's damage can be bonused or penalized.

The first is perhaps the big bonus or penalty: move it up or down one damage category. We do that for characters with higher ability in a weapon, for better weapons, for particular kinds of defenses, and for other things. It roughly doubles or halves the weapons potential.

The second is much more commonly used: increase the chance of a successful attack. This means that the range of possible damage results increases. A character using a dangerous weapon who has a 57% chance of success cannot do more than six points of damage with it; if he had a 61% chance of success, he could do seven. He is now hitting slightly more often, but he's also got the ability to do a bit more damage.

Note that both of these options normally will preserve the minimal damage possiblility; it just becomes less and less likely. (Only a roll of fifty or lower at annoying will result in no damage from a hit; only a weapon pushed into the obliterative damage category cannot score a mere point if it hits.)

The third option is to bonus the die roll after the success or failure has been determined. Thus if a character has a 60% chance to hit with a dangerous weapon and a +10 damage modifier, and he rolls a 55, it is treated as a success for success purposes but then treated as a roll of 65 for damage purposes, giving it seven instead of six points of damage. Such a weapon would escape the scratch outcome to some degree, as it could not roll low enough to get only one point; however, the range is still broad enough that relatively low outcomes are possible.

I know this doesn't fit well with what you've got, but it might spark some other thoughts on how to handle it.

--M. J. Young