The low end of damage

[Matt_H]

If those + points of damage are such a big deal (and I admit I've never liked them myself and tried to keep damage to whole dice values where possible), has no one considered converting them to an armour reduction value, either vs specific or all armour types.

The stiletto at d3+2 could then be reduced to d3 damage, but reduce any metal armours value by 2 points to reflect its piercing nature, but remain at just d3 for leather and cloth armour.
The war gauntlet or knuckle duster at d4+1 become d4 and any light, flexible armour (cloth/leather) is reduced by 1.
Heavy mace reduces all armour values by 1
etc etc.

If you further want to complicate matters then adjust the crit value of the weapon by each + (now converted to armour reduction) by 5% in line with its specific combat manoeuvre(s), making the stiletto a very good off hand impaling weapon against armoured types.
Or just play it RAW - you're only one good crit away from death anyway.

Just my 2 pennies as this debate seems to be continuing too long.

 

[soltakss]

Yes, perhaps it would be more 'realistic' to always have a potential of only 1 point of damage on an unmodified damage roll. However this leads to several system consequences. Firstly, since there are only a limited number of dice variants, it leads to very little mechanical variation between similar types of weapons. Which is fine if for example, you want every single handed weapon to be 1d6 or 1d8.

Honestly, this is all I've been trying to get anyone to admit to.

Oh, we admit it but most of us don't see it as being a problem.

a) yes, all attacks should probably, for realism, be able to do only one point of damage against an unarmored target.

Why? Personally, I don't really care about this.

b) the reason we don't do this is, in no small part, due to the tools we choose to use - the granularity of the dice in the traditional polyhedral set

Sure.

c) the easiest response (use only single dice without adds)
i) leads to a weird uniformity between weapons and
ii) becomes difficult to model between the range of 1d12 and 1d20 and then 1d30 and 1d100

You can use a variety of dice to model various rolls - use one die for odd/even and the other for high/low. Want a D16 - use a D2/D8, want a D40 - use a D2/D20 and so on. With a bit of maths you could use D3/D20 for rolls between 1 and 60, for example.

Take a page out of Savage Worlds, maybe, and use decks of cards. If everyone accepts that clubs are unmodified, diamonds +13, hearts +26 and spades +39, you've got a d52.

Or, roll a D60 and ignore 53-60.

I dunno, anyone else?

How about - accept that you might get rolls that do more than a point of damage?

 

[Olaus Petrus]

How about - accept that you might get rolls that do more than a point of damage?

We all have our pet peeves and there's no perfect system, but like Pete said if someone doesn't like the system he should feel free to modify it. There has been several suggestions how it could be done.

When we started Elric campaign one of my players was unhappy about the fact that there's no total hit points and how you can freely use your improvement rolls, instead of developing only skills which you used in last session. Personally I think that CMs like bleed compensate lack of total hit points, because even minor wounds can make you go down and I said to him that he can use his improvement rolls only to skills which he used in last session, but I have noticed that he doesn't actually do that and uses his freedom to choose which skills he wants to improve. My own view is that free use of experience is better, because you can use downtime to improve skills in which you suck. In original RuneQuest and Stormbringer it was difficult to improve low skills. Luckily he has stopped complaining, but to be honest I had plenty of similar pet peeves when he was hosting Dark Heresy campaign to me.

 

[tneva82]

I forgot to comment on this when he posted it before. All I would say is that there is still the chance that this fat middle aged guy could *almost* evade your hit, and instead of hitting my arm, you catch me in the flabby part of my belly as I pass. You leave me with an abrasion and a nasty bruise, but I'd argue that I'd probably not taken at least four points of damage in the process. Maybe one - or two, because I'm a big ol' pussy.

And maybe that would in game terms be modeled as a miss or succesfull parry that reduces damage to low amounts?

Too little abstraction and combats drag on. They are already pretty long so hardly in need of further detailing with more tables.

 

[LegendaryJWP]

I forgot to comment on this when he posted it before. All I would say is that there is still the chance that this fat middle aged guy could *almost* evade your hit, and instead of hitting my arm, you catch me in the flabby part of my belly as I pass. You leave me with an abrasion and a nasty bruise, but I'd argue that I'd probably not taken at least four points of damage in the process. Maybe one - or two, because I'm a big ol' pussy.

And maybe that would in game terms be modeled as a miss or succesfull parry that reduces damage to low amounts?

My only concern is that there is no middle ground there. If I'm unarmed, unarmored, and evade an attack, it should lead to either taking damage, or taking no damage at all. And if I take damage, there's no way to model, using the existing dice+adds system, a hit that only does a tiny amount of damage.

I know, most folks don't seem to care, but it's something that bugs me, so I'll keep trying to find the right answer to the problem.

Too little abstraction and combats drag on. They are already pretty long so hardly in need of further detailing with more tables.

Again, it's just me, but I'm willing to sacrifice a bit more time, and effort, if the result more accurately models what I want out of a game.

 

[strega]

Use Rolemaster hit tables to deal with damage. You'll get all the crunch you want. Hope you find players that will put up with the excess crunch though.

The current trend is for simpler systems that are easy to play and run. Legend fits that style and the wishes of many, many gamers vis the high numbers of people buying the PDF and hard copies. There are some people who will quote the maxim "if it isn't broken" but your Legend is obviously at variance to that so go ahead and fix what you think is broken. I don't believe that you're getting much support for your view here though.

 

[LegendaryJWP]

Use Rolemaster hit tables to deal with damage. You'll get all the crunch you want. Hope you find players that will put up with the excess crunch though.

They, too, would need to be adapted to work with the lower HP associated with Legend, but I'd not mind something like that, bolted onto a better base system than Rolemaster uses.

The current trend is for simpler systems that are easy to play and run. Legend fits that style and the wishes of many, many gamers vis the high numbers of people buying the PDF and hard copies. There are some people who will quote the maxim "if it isn't broken" but your Legend is obviously at variance to that so go ahead and fix what you think is broken. I don't believe that you're getting much support for your view here though.

That's what I've discovered. All I had hoped for was some interesting thought-experiments, maybe some folks to talk about potential house rules. Instead I felt like I had farted in church.

 

[DamonJynx]

That's what I've discovered. All I had hoped for was some interesting thought-experiments, maybe some folks to talk about potential house rules. Instead I felt like I had farted in church.

I guess the reason for that is that most of us hadn't given low damage much thought as it wasn't a concern for many of us.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

That's what I've discovered. All I had hoped for was some interesting thought-experiments, maybe some folks to talk about potential house rules. Instead I felt like I had farted in church.

The fact is that most people who have played BRP variants for a long time (Personally I started my BRP career with RuneQuest III) are happy how things are and don't see any problem with how weapon damage is handled, but despite that people have tried to help you. You got some suggestions how to modify the weapon damage rolls and you even got explanation from Pete (who wrote MRQII/Legend rules together with Loz) why the damage rolls are the way they are.

 

[soltakss]

There are some people who will quote the maxim "if it isn't broken" but your Legend is obviously at variance to that so go ahead and fix what you think is broken.

That's the beauty of Legend, and other similar games (RQ, BRP, OpenQuest etc) - they can be tweaked and adjusted until you have a ruleset that really suits you personally.

The beauty of Legend under the OGL is that you can then publish your tweaked rules for everyone to enjoy.

I don't believe that you're getting much support for your view here though.

Apart from suggestions as to how to achieve it.

Many people, myself included, don't agree that the problem is particularly important or impacts the game, but we have suggested ways and means around the problem.

I hope the OP finds a good way to solve this issue and lets us know about it once it has been playtested and works well.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I forgot to comment on this when he posted it before. All I would say is that there is still the chance that this fat middle aged guy could *almost* evade your hit, and instead of hitting my arm, you catch me in the flabby part of my belly as I pass. You leave me with an abrasion and a nasty bruise, but I'd argue that I'd probably not taken at least four points of damage in the process. Maybe one - or two, because I'm a big ol' pussy.

And maybe that would in game terms be modeled as a miss or succesfull parry that reduces damage to low amounts?

My only concern is that there is no middle ground there. If I'm unarmed, unarmored, and evade an attack, it should lead to either taking damage, or taking no damage at all. And if I take damage, there's no way to model, using the existing dice+adds system, a hit that only does a tiny amount of damage.

Again, it's just me, but I'm willing to sacrifice a bit more time, and effort, if the result more accurately models what I want out of a game.[/quote]

Couldn't you simulate this using Hero Points - perhaps it should be possible to spend one or more Hero Points to downgrade the injury inflicted by an attack to a mere "flesh wound" unless the attack caused a Major Injury. This might change the survivability of combat in Legend substantially, giving it a more cinematic feel - at least until the Hero Points run out!