damage in a success level system (Action Dice)

[DWeird]

Yah, so.

How is the "characters should get 1 AD every turn, or 1d6 every few turns or something" thing supposed to work, then?

I'm sure there's a way - and as you've noted, the thingy I proposed is rather cumbersome - I just have no idea what it'd be like.

Which sort of matters... How you get ADs -> how many/how strong attacks a char can give out -> the damage dealt.

[Vulpinoid]

You wouldn't even have to do damage to get some effect in. Lessay Joe has a knife, and Jack has "Titanium Alloy Reinforced Assault Armour". Well, Joe probably can't really hurt the guy, but he CAN jam that knife of his into one of that thing's joints, making it hop helplessly on one foot, which is not only funny as hell, but also maybe gives Joe enough time to run away or some such.

This is where I'd consider the option that rolling doubles, triples, or more of a kind has a result chosen by the attacker.

Rather than automatically doing extra damage, the attacker can shift the damage to a location where the armour isn't quite as strong...or maybe they can do other funky stuff, like pinning the foot to reduce movement or sliding the knife in an arm joint to prevent attacks from that limb.

I've always thought that good combat tactics are about improvising, and even facing insurmountable odds, a tactician should be able to MacGyver a solution to the situation.

A system doesn't need to explicitly state that these sorts of things are possible, but for less imaginative players it always helps to have a couple of description for how this sort of thing can be included.

I realise that this is getting a bit away from the concept of damage, but succeeding in a conflict doesn't necessarily rely on taking down an opponent through excess physical force.

V

[I've got a few more thoughts on this, but I'll be taking them back over to the other thread where they make more sense in context.]

[John Blaz]

Yah, so.

How is the "characters should get 1 AD every turn, or 1d6 every few turns or something" thing supposed to work, then?

I'm sure there's a way - and as you've noted, the thingy I proposed is rather cumbersome - I just have no idea what it'd be like.

Which sort of matters... How you get ADs -> how many/how strong attacks a char can give out -> the damage dealt.

That's what I'm working on now. The idea I mentioned earlier was pretty much every time a character acts, they get refresh 1 AD. That's what I meant by "turns", I'll have to stop using that term now

In the other thread about this system, Vulpinoid suggested rerolling all of the spent AD for that action, and any that come up 6 or higher get put back in the AD pool. I like the idea, but I'm thinking only allow characters to reroll X amount of dice based on their Endurance or Fatigue stat. Something like 1-5 AD could be regained during every action. Slow but strong characters would probably regain them more slowly than say an assassin with lightning reflexes.

[Vulpinoid]

The game "Chill" from Mayfair [circa 1990] had a system where weapon's dealt two types of damage. Vaguely it was divided into stamina and wounds.

Characters had fatigue points and wound points, if you took enough stamina damage you passed out. If you took enough wound damage you died.

When a weapon hit, it did a substantial amount of stamina damage, and a little bit of wound damage unless a critical was scored.

In this way, a character had a good chance of passing out before they were killed. Certain types of creature were immune to wound damage unless certain weapons were used...For example, werewolves only took stamina damage unless the weapon was silver [meaning that you could stun them with regular weapons but never kill them].

Conversely, it was possible to get killed with serious wounds without taking too much fatigue or injury if the victim suffered a whole heap of wound points, but not much stamina damage....[a shot with a silver bullet doesn't look like it should kill, but it does double wound damage to a werewolf].

This type of concept could be applied to a damage system like the one being worked through here.

Let's assume that a character has a chance of regenerating their action dice after every action (if the natural result of the die is even it returns to the player's pool, if it's odd the die is lost). A maximum number of dice may be returned to the pool equal to the character's current Endurance/Fatigue stat. Taking hits over time may reduce this endurance/fatigue stat, causing the maximum number of replenished dice to drop. The character is just suffering the effects of a battering. This effect is completely separate to damage actually sustained by the victim. In this way Endurance/Fatigue covers the battering effect on the whole body, while you can still have specific hit points for different body parts representing physical wounds.

[Note: I've refined the regeneration of dice into a single die roll with the attack result, by looking at whether the dice are odd or even, rather than making a separate check later...this should reduce the amount of die rolling and streamline things a bit more.]

Maybe every roll of a 10 on the attack roll automatically saps a point from the opponents Endurance/Fatigue stat (regardless of whether hit point damage is actually scored). This would be separate from the [weapon damage]/[armour absorption] calculation, to provide characters with a new strategic option in combat.

Again just throwing another idea into the mix...

V

[John Blaz]

That idea seems pretty solid, V. So far, I'm going with this:

whenever a die comes up Even, 1 AD is replenished
Endurance stat = max number of AD that can be replenished at one time
weapons deal damage to the defender's AD and their hit locations (head, torso, legs, arms)
(the following is still under consideration:)
doubles = 1 Endurance damage
triples = 2 Endurance damage
quadruples + = 3 Endurance damage

For the doubles, triples, and quads, I think it would be neat to allow the attacker to "spread the dice" so to speak. So on a double, he may choose to forgo the 1 Endurance damage to instead deal extra Wounding(HP) damage or maybe change the hit location (like Vulpinoid suggested earlier). And expand these options for triples:       2 End damage     -or-     2 extra Wounds   -or-     1 End and 1 extra Wound     - or-      1 End and change hit location  etc.

For random hit location, the lowest (or highest) die would be used to check a chart: head 1, chest 2-5, legs 7-8, arms 9-10
I suppose weapons could deal different dice of AD damage (dagger d3, sword d6, bullet d10) and then deal a static amount of Wounding damage, too.

[charles]

Heya

I know I'm coming in late, but a couple ideas:

1) Maybe stats could give you the number of dice you get to roll, and skills the TN? Kind of differentiates them so stats are not just "back-up skills" (altho you might want them to be that)

2) you could break combat into arbitrary chunks of time (call them "bursts" or "turns" or whatever you will) separated by "lulls". A Lull occurs organically, ie maybe whenever ANYONE reaches 0 action dice, OR when EVERYONE reaches 0 AD? I'd adopt either one or the other--depending on how you build the support mechanics around it, to give the kind of feel you want to combat.

Initiative here goes to the char with the most dice left. They spend, their target has the option to retaliate, then look again at who's got the most dice. Don't worry about order except to determine who acts right now (ie, has the most dice). Ties can be resolved as simultaneous actions (or you can throw a dice or look at stat scores or whatever). To avoid the guy with the most AD just spending 1-2 AD at a time to always keep the initiative, how about giving the target a right of reply: if the attacker just 1 or 2 successes, the defender has the chance to cream them.

The lull is when AD refreshes happen: everyone gets a full refresh of AD: maybe equal to whatever stat they nominate they'll be using for the next "burst"? This has a few implications, namely a) you are doing actions that relate to one kind of stat per burst, and b) that you can mix-max different action types in a combat (ie magic users use "magic" stat, shooters use "prowess" stat,  close combat uses "might" stat and so on. Plus, no reason you can't have someone using "intelligence" stat to try and cajole or negotiate or verbal their way out of a combat (I like this kind of concept of "omni- combat" myself). Of course you can just rule that only certain (even 1) stat is useable in "combat" if you want to retain the narrow focus.

A lull could (if you want) offer some different options (taken from Donjon's "free and clear" concept) such as, I dunno, trying to get away or negotiate or whatever, or you could say certain actions need to wait for a lull like reloading or what. You can put any "end of turn" housekeeping stuff in here if you want it.

The thinking behind the "lull" concept is that it's a kind of mix between the dynamic, flowing "turnless" combat and the simplicity of having an break in  combat for housekeeping. An advantage of the latter is that it can obviate the need for ongoing housekeeping after each action.

For damage, I'm kind of in the camp of seperate damage from AD. That is, AD are lost by performing actions, not by taking damage. In the scenarios I've posited above, dmg = AD loss would create a serious death spiral.

[John Blaz]

2) you could break combat into arbitrary chunks of time (call them "bursts" or "turns" or whatever you will) separated by "lulls". A Lull occurs organically, ie maybe whenever ANYONE reaches 0 action dice, OR when EVERYONE reaches 0 AD? I'd adopt either one or the other--depending on how you build the support mechanics around it, to give the kind of feel you want to combat.

I like your your thought on breaking combat into arbitrary rounds, that might prove useful, not sure though. And the way I'm doing damage now, is that only matching dice will affect AD at all. And only the amount that you can regain by damaging the Endurance stat. If I find that doubles come up too often, I might have to only let triples and better damage Endurance.