help with an Armor/ Damage system

[John Blaz]

Hey all, I've recently started going over what I began months ago for a Post-apocalypse RPG system. The setting is ideally somewhere between Fallout and Mad Max. Anyway, my armor/ damage system is this:

Armor has an Armor Value (AV) between 1 and 10, higher is better.
Weapons deal damage by throwing multiples of different dice (either d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, or occasionally d20). Each die that rolls over the opponent's AV deals 1 damage.

For example, a baseball bat deals 5d4 damage. The d4 is indicative of the bat's weak ability to penetrate armor. A .45 caliber handgun however, deals 10d10 damage. The d10 means that the .45 can penetrate most armor. If Jim the wastelander is wearing a leather biker jacket (AV 3) and a bandit shoots at him with a .45 (10d10 damage) and rolls 1,1,2,3,3,5,6,6,7,8, 4 of his d10s rolled over the AV of 3, so Jim suffers 4 damage. I think this system is fairly realistic in terms of weapon penetration/ wounding potential and all, but I want to make it simpler. Really, I don't want people to have to roll (or even find!) 12 d12s whenever they fire a sniper rifle. I know it's cumbersome.

Now the question is this: Is there any way to model this more efficiently (using less dice)?
Should I just use the Cyberpunk 2020 method? (Armor counts as damage reduction, weapons roll damage in the standard DnD fashion)

[tleeuwenburg@gmail.com]

One option would be to start having some weapons deal 2 damage/success or 3 damage/success, thus restricting the number of required dice...

[Ken]

I think this is a very elegant way of handling the multitude of post-apoc weapons and armor. Before deciding whether you're rolling too many dice, decide how many dice you need to get the effect you want. Maybe your characters have too many hit points.

One good hit from a bat could be lethal, if the attacker is strong, skilled, lucky, and not going up against great armor. You may want to keep that in mind when calibrating your system.

Another thing that came to mind when thinking about your idea (specifically how it relates to Mad Max) was that there are two types of dead: There is dead, and left for dead. Maybe you can do something with that.

Hope that helps.

Ken

[John Blaz]

tleeguy: I think your suggestion may just be the easiest route to take. After dwelling on it for a while, I'm also considering using at most maybe 6 damage dice and then give certain weapons a damage multiplier die. So a weapon might do 4d6 x d4. And to the other fellow: I've been constantly tweaking HP so that it makes sense with the amount of damage weapons deal. And the "left for dead idea" is interesting, I'l consider it.

[Catelf]

Hi.
I use a mechanism in my own game, that might, or might not, be of value to you:
If a die rolled is more than double the Armor, then 2 Damage is dealt, and if more than 3 times: 3 Damage!

That means, that if one rolls D10's against someone with Armor 3, then any 4-6 deal 1 Damage, 7-9 gives 2 Damage, and any 10 gives 3 Damage!
That may help you reduce the Dice needed, and still get the intended result(s).

Cat.

[Quizoid]

This is a cool way to do damage and Armor, I like it.  I'll second what's been said:

It would be easiest to lower the number of HP characters have.  Then, you can lower the number of dice that would need to be rolled. 

Multipliers would work too, but I'd recommend lowering everything to something closest to the lowest common denominator.  Also, if you do multipliers, stick to easy stuff like x2 or x5.

Of course, this is assuming quickness of mechanics is a concern of yours.  I guess a good question would be, what are your overall design goals?  How deadly do you want the world?  All of this could effect the best answer.

[John Blaz]

After thinking about it, I decided to try something completely different: the attack (2d10 + stat + skill) vs. target number 20. The attack's margin of success is multiplied by the weapon's damage multiplier (d2, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12).

[Quizoid]

Glad you figured it out.  Where does armor come in here, though?

[John Blaz]

In this case, armor simply prevents x damage per attack. I may have every shot that penetrates degrade the armor, due in part to my research for the game. I discovered that the Army's Interceptor armor can withstand 2 hits from an AK 47's 7.62mm round on each of it's ballistic plate inserts, so it only makes sense that no single piece of armor can withstand a torrent of bullets.