Heavy Damage in Steampunk

[David C]

In my game it is important to differentiate between regular damage, a sword hitting a steel tank, and "heavy damage," an explosive or enchanted sword hitting a steel tank. I just can't think of a term that describes what I'm trying to do. For example, "The Auran creates a rust cloud 10' in diameter, the rust cloud deals 1d6 _____ damage to all metallic objects within." 

... and yes, I realize I could just call it "heavy damage" but that just doesn't seem right to me...
Thanks,
David C

[stevebarkeruk]

A couple of suggestions that spring to mind:

Severe damage
Grave damage

[Ken]

Hi-

This may not help much, but what I try to do is wrap rules and terminology around my game concept as much as possible. So, think about the characteristics of heavy damage as they relate to your rules and to the game world. In a steampulp game I was working on I was toying with toxic necrotic damage. I don't think these are good suggestions for you, but I hope you get my point. You can dig around for words that might be characteristic to the era your game is set in; 1800?

Another option (and my favorite, by the way) is to step back from your rules and reinvent the way your system deals damage, both mechanically and terminology-wise. For instance, Damage could be what you inflict when you punch a guy, shoot someone, or bean a villain over the head with a wrench; Destruction is what you inflict with a cannon, electro-telluric sword, grenade or whatever. Now, you may not have to change anything in your rules; you probably have special rules that make heavy damage work differently from normal damage. If not, it may be fun to give heavy damage totally new characteristics that make it a whole new entity in the game.

Hope that helps.

PS- Also, nothing wrong with using a thesaurus, despite what Stephen King says.

Take care,

Ken

[lighthouse]

Heavy Metal damage?

Old wargames differentiate between hard and soft targets and damage.

[Callan S.]

Perhaps you need to start by getting rid of the term 'regular' damage. The term 'regular' is a vague abstraction - heavy damage is an extension of a vague abstraction. No wonder it doesn't really say anything/seem right.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  You can go with different naming conventions:
Light/Heavy
Soft/Hard
Anti-personnel/Anti-armor
Punk/Steam
Hits/Kills
Tactical/Strategic
Unit/Squad
Damage/Critical Damage
Damage/Structural Damage
  It really matters how the "Heavy" damage interacts with "normal" damage targets. In other words, do they do the same damage against the lighter targets or is the damage supposed to represent big damage and gets multiplied or something similar? This will inform the final name I think.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi David,

Quite a few games use different scales for damage.  Palladium used "Megadamage", R. Talsorian games had "Kills" and Burning Wheel uses "Black/Grey/White Shade" damage.

But to really help you, the thing to focus on how do you want your game to work?  Apparently to you, there's a big difference between a sword vs. an enchanted sword hitting a tank and I'm assuming that you probably are thinking no matter how strong someone is, a normal sword just isn't going to do any damage, ever.

You could give it a completely different scale of damage, which many of the above games have done.  You could also use a simple number system ("Damage under X doesn't affect this at all"), which would be pretty much the same as D&D's Damage Reduction rules for monsters.

I guess the real question is, in your game, can a normal sword EVER cause damage to a tank?  (Wielded by a steampunk cyborg?  Enhanced with magic?  Jammed through the driver's view slit into his eyes?  Be creative).

And if so, how hard is it to make happen?

These kind of questions are super hard to field without context about the combat system as a whole.  It's like asking if the right color is "red" without knowing what is being spoken about.

Chris

[David C]

Thanks for all the suggestions! My favorites
Steve -
Severe Damage
Denver -
Punk/Steam
Structural Damage

Thanks for the info Lighthouse, and if my game had a very light tone, I'd totally use heavy metal damage.

Ken, I have thought about wrapping it around my genre. However, I just haven't come up with anything suitable, despite lots of brainstorming. Heck, this thread is filled with stuff I hadn't even thought of, and you guys just came up with this off the top of your head.

Chris, I sort of remember Rift's system, I'm not sure, but that might be partly where I got it from. To answer your questions, (I like your metaphor, well spoken) in my system *everything* has Damage Reduction. So first of all, a steel tank will have Resistance 20 (or something.) But on top of that, a tank is a badass, so if you're fighting that or some sort of clockwork monster, it is like a boss battle. Well, *most* things have 4 sides of armor HP (AHP) (some have special armor locations that are weaker or stronger...) and than regular HP. A regular attack gets reduced by resistance, than deals damage to AHP of the side they're hitting. After that is gone, they can do damage to the "core," which has  a lower resistance.  An attack that does "Structural Damage" gets reduced by resistance, than deals equal damage to AHP and the core.

It's very crunchy, but it's really reserved for epic battles.  For example, two airships fighting each other complete with boarding, some ground units fighting a clockwork monster or steam tank, some bandits ripping their way into a train car, etc. I could simplify it, but I think it loses its "feeling." 

[dindenver]

Hi!
  That's the question, what happens when a AHP weapon hits a soft target?
  Is the DMG treated like every other DMG or?

  In other words, in your mind how is the DMg effected by each of the following elements of this table:

              DMG effect
                Lt Target  Hvy Target
Lt DMG          x1             x??
Hvy DMG      x??             x1

  Maybe the DMG is not multiplied, but is there is a DMG priority? Or?

[David C]

              DMG effect
                Lt Target  Hvy Target
Lt DMG          x1             x??
Hvy DMG      x??             x1

Damage is constant, so heavy damage won't deal any extra damage to a light target. While initially it seems heavy damage should do more to a light target, let me give you a scenario where that isn't true. Bullets are made to mushroom when they hit a target, destroying the most flesh. Armor piercing bullets are *not* made to mushroom, so they actually deal "less" damage.  Of course, armor piercing bullets are usually a higher caliber (they deal more dice of damage), so they tend to still be quite lethal.

[Vulpinoid]

There's a differnce between the concepts of using "Manstopper", "Regular" and "Armour Piercing" bullets, versus the concept of using a sword on an unarmed human or a tank.

The types of bullets inflict different types of damage on their targets.
"Manstoppers" mushroom out more than regular ammo and are absorbed by armour far more, but if damage gets through they're vicious.
"Regular" ammo mushrooms out a bit, they are negated fairly effectively by armour, and do decent damage if they get through.
"Armour Piercing" rounds barely deform at all, armour hardly stops them and they shoot right through most flesh.
"Glazer" rounds are ceramic and don't deform, these are used by snipers for shooting through glass (even "bulletproof" glass, but with less success). These cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter.

On the other hand, when evaluating the sword versus flesh or tank scenario.
Versus flesh a sword is capable of significant damage, while on the tank it barely makes a dent or scratches the paint.

When evaluating "hard"/"soft", "light"/"heavy" or "big"/"small" damage you need to consider what you're trying to portray.

Is a lightly enchanted sword more like an "armour piercing" bullet, which partially ignores armour but does less damage when it hits flesh? Is a heavily enchanted sword like a "glazer" round which virtually ignores all armour but only does half the damage to it's victim? Is it possible to enchant the sword the other way to maximise damage on unarmoured opponents? Are there different types of enchantments for each? Is there a switch on the sword which lets it change between enchantment modes?

Instead of looking at types of damage, are you instead looking at magnitude of damage?

Is it the difference between putting a firecracker down someone's pants versus putting half a kilo of C4?
In this sort of case, the damage multiplier is the most common system and it seems to apply to most mechanics fairly well.

Just some ideas...

V

[David C]

Vulpinoid, thanks for going into greater detail for me, I didn't know all of that. You are sort of illustrating my point as to why I didn't get into the "gritty details" of things. Some things have armor you must penetrate, some things don't. Things that penetrate armor well deal damage to both armor and the "core." Things that don't penetrate armor well have to destroy the armor before they can damage the core. Things that penetrate armor well, when they hit "unarmored" targets, I leave at regular damage because they can do more, the same, or less damage to soft targets. I *could* have rules for each of those scenarios, but that isn't important to my game.  Also, since players tend to qualify as "soft" targets, and my game is a little more "epic," I don't want to put them at a disadvantage.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Looks like you are trying to do the following:
1) Give the little guy a chance - So, consequently Damage is just Damage regardless if its Hvy or not, cool
2) Give the big guy an Edge - So, they get an extra pool of HPs that represent their badassness
3) Give the big gun an Edge - So, the big gun ignores the extra pool of HPs, no?

So, to use my previous crappy table from before:
                        DMG effect
                Lt Target  Hvy Target
Lt DMG          x1       x1, must defeat Armor HPs
Hvy DMG       x1       x1, Ignores Armor HPs

  This seems to make sense, has a certain symmetry and is fairly realistic as far as mechanics go.
Based on this, I would just use Damage and AP (Armore piercing) Damage. The only drawback to this term is the anticipation that the AP DMG should do less damage versus a soft target. You can dismiss this by saying the AP munition is tumbling and therefore creates a severe trauma to soft targets.

  If that's really not going to work, try Damage and Overpressure. This is a real munitions term that refers to a means of defeating both armor and soft targets with extremely high air pressure generated by shaped charges. You could use Damage and OverDamage too. Guess it depends on the feel you are going for in your setting.
  Good luck man!

[Ken]

Hey-

Another possible issue here may be the perception of damage; when a tank is hit (no matter what the attack is) its efficiency is only effected if a vital mechanical part is damaged; if a person is hit their drop in efficiency is pretty much equal to how much they freak out. Maybe introducing a shock stat or factor may be worth looking in to; it could allow for manstopping ability that would not work on inanimate objects without raising the amount of damage you have to deal. How you apply this is up to you; either an attack that deals shock damage in addition to structural damage or characters have a stat that resists stats shock from incoming attacks.

Given the pros & cons, and what I know about your system, I think the way I would tackle it would be like this: have a trait that acts like a shock-o-meter (when you take so much shock from a single attack, you succumb temporarily to shock). Then have a shock modifier for attacks that have more stunning potential (blunt objects or whatever); this way you could make sharp cutting attacks less shocking than melee or explosive attacks. Just an idea.
ar. Keep it up.

Take care,

Ken

[David C]

Hey-

Another possible issue here may be the perception of damage; when a tank is hit (no matter what the attack is) its efficiency is only effected if a vital mechanical part is damaged; if a person is hit their drop in efficiency is pretty much equal to how much they freak out. Maybe introducing a shock stat or factor may be worth looking in to; it could allow for manstopping ability that would not work on inanimate objects without raising the amount of damage you have to deal. How you apply this is up to you; either an attack that deals shock damage in addition to structural damage or characters have a stat that resists stats shock from incoming attacks.

Given the pros & cons, and what I know about your system, I think the way I would tackle it would be like this: have a trait that acts like a shock-o-meter (when you take so much shock from a single attack, you succumb temporarily to shock). Then have a shock modifier for attacks that have more stunning potential (blunt objects or whatever); this way you could make sharp cutting attacks less shocking than melee or explosive attacks. Just an idea.
ar. Keep it up.

Take care,

Ken

I have thought about having a shock stat. This would work so that an amount of damage equal to or greater to your shock value causes you to succumb to shock or give a penalty. I go back and forth on the idea, in part, because I don't know how much more "crunchy" I want to be. My game started off in the realm of "5% of gamers crunchy" and I've cut it down to about "a little less crunchy than D&D." My goal is to be less Crunchy than D&D, but more crunchy than WoD.