Hi all,
Recently I've been playing a lot of Mage Wars and I really like how armour is handled in that game. It has special dice you roll, some are 1 or 2 damage, whilst other sides are 1 or 2 penetrating damage. You roll all your dice from a pool, add up the regular damage and penetrating damage separately. Penetrating damage hits the opponent directly from their HP total whilst the regular damage is first subtracted by their armour value. This makes it so that even if a target has a very high armour value, someone that does has a low damage pool can still have a chance to do some damage to them.
I'm a fan of damage reduction systems for armour. Some of you all may remember my posts on here in the past when I was working on what type of armour mechanic to use in my game.
If I were to implement a system for armour penetration/damage similar to Mage Wars, what are some ways that could be done just by using standard d6s?
Either the d6s could have a standard result (e.g. 5=1 damage, 5=1 penetrating) or each weapon in game could have their own unique d6 results. But is there another way to do this I'm not considering is what I'm wondering?
Also keep in mind I am aiming for their to be a "to hit" roll first and then after that is a roll to see how much damage you do, so it'd be different from mage wars considering there is only one roll for that game in combat.
Dice Pool damage system, penetrating values
There is another mechanic you could use:
Take a look at a regular D6 with pips.
Now look at the 6-face.
Seeing 6 pips there?
Good.
Because you are also seeing 5+1 pips, 4+2 pips and 3+3 pips, don't you?
What I'm trying to explain is:
You could give each weapon a weapon profile with the faces of a D6 depicted. Then you could go ahead and color-code the pips, turning soandso many pips into regular damage plus soandsomany pips into penetrating damage.
This way, a dagger for example could get 1 regular damage pip per face as well as 1 additional penetrating pip on any number of faces depending on how reliable you want the penetrating damage to be.
This system might require you to revamp your combat system, though, since higher damage is less reliable (yet high), while lower damage comes more reliable (yet low).
Kind regards,
Kai
Take a look at this Image:
http://www.bgdf.com/image/example-weapons
Three example weaponprofiles are depicted:
The dagger, the halberd and the mace.
The dagger is a small but fast weapon. Thrusted hard enough, it does penetrate armor quite good.
The dagger hits on 2-6, delivering 1 damage upon hitting plus 2 penetrating damage when rolling a 5 or a 6.
The halberd is a large, clumsy weapon. It does not hit as often as the dagger does, but when it does, it can deliver huge amounts of damage as well as a little penetrating damage.
The mace is a medium weapon with a fair chance to hit and delivering fair damage output. Being a blunt weapon it is unable to penetrate armour.
As you can see in this example:
Little damage is reliable, since a D6 comes with 6 faces featuring 1 pip (or more).
High damage is unreliable, since a D6 only has got 2 faces featuring 5 pips (or more).
As mentioned before: You might need to redesign your whole combat system when using this kind of mechanic...
Kind regards,
Kai
You just game me an idea with your pips. Allocating shield of a space ship in various directions.
The number of pips on a side determine where you can allocate your shields. Front, back, etc. The pip in the center can be allocated anywhere.
Dice could be rotated.
THat's an interesting mechanic and examplel you showed schattentanz, I like the idea of some of it being normal damage and others penetrating through a visual diagram!
My only issue with it is that it combines "to hit" and "damage" into one step. Now, I realize Mage Wars does just that, but I was considering keeping it two separate steps. Also another I have with it is that it limits itself to 6 total damage, though that's only provided if it's a single d6 roll rather than the possibility of more than 1 die.
If I do a custom table/picture like what you had though I could have it so weapons could be different and show their regular and penetrating damage simply as: "Regular (R)/Penetrating (P)"
So take a standard sword for example, which does medium damage could read like:
Sword dmg: Roll= 1 2 3 4 5 6
Dmg= 3R 3R 4R 3R/1P 4r/1p 3r/2p
A dagger could read like: Roll= 1 2 3 4 5 6
Dmg= 1r 2r 3r 4r 3r/2p 3r/2p
Heavy weapons could go above 6 damage perhaps...
All those are considering that it is only one dice rolled to see damage.
If it's going to be a dice pool, then I'd like what each side of a d6 means to be standardized/universal between all weapons, like how in Mage Wars a d6 in that reads like:
1=0 2=0 3=1r 4=2r 5=1p 6=2p
So I guess that's what I"m really asking on this thread is:
If I have a standardized damage for a d6 damage roll, what would be a good idea to have the results for the d6 as if I have "to hit" and "damage" two separate steps? That is, I don't want the damage dice in that case to have any sides meaning 0 damage, it always has to be at least 1 damage.
I think I may keep with a visual graphic to show that on the cards themselves rather than a numbered chart, it makes it easier and cooler looking.
The reason why I want "to hit" and "damage" to be two separate steps is because I prefer Damage Reduction systems over Armour Class systems in games and I'd like there to be a balance/trade off between being agile vs being heavily armoured.
http://www.bgdf.com/image/example-weapons
Three example weaponprofiles are depicted:
The dagger, the halberd and the mace.
The dagger is a small but fast weapon. Thrusted hard enough, it does penetrate armor quite good.
The dagger hits on 2-6, delivering 1 damage upon hitting plus 2 penetrating damage when rolling a 5 or a 6.
The halberd is a large, clumsy weapon. It does not hit as often as the dagger does, but when it does, it can deliver huge amounts of damage as well as a little penetrating damage.
The mace is a medium weapon with a fair chance to hit and delivering fair damage output. Being a blunt weapon it is unable to penetrate armour.
As you can see in this example:
Little damage is reliable, since a D6 comes with 6 faces featuring 1 pip (or more).
High damage is unreliable, since a D6 only has got 2 faces featuring 5 pips (or more).
As mentioned before: You might need to redesign your whole combat system when using this kind of mechanic...
Kind regards,
Kai
Another thought just occured to me:
To make it simpler for the players, a "damage die" always uses the same profile, such as:
1-3: 1 Regular
4-5: 2 Regular
6: 2 Regular, 1 Penetrating
Depending on the kind of weapon you would roll different amounts of dice with armour reducing the amount of dice rolled (or the overall result).
Just a thought.
Kind regards,
Kai
To make it simpler for the players, a "damage die" always uses the same profile, such as:
1-3: 1 Regular
4-5: 2 Regular
6: 2 Regular, 1 Penetrating
Depending on the kind of weapon you would roll different amounts of dice with armour reducing the amount of dice rolled (or the overall result).
Just a thought.
Kind regards,
Kai
Good idea Kai, I like it. It would felt well with a standard dice result for weapons/damage in the game.
I don't think I'd have armour reduce the amount of dice rolled (although, perhaps some special magical armour could have that effect as a special ability!).
Building upon your idea, I have a few further ideas:
1. Perhaps all dice could read as 1-3=1 regular damage 4-5=2 regular damage, but 6=depends upon the particular weapon.
and
2. If I use your idea, I'd change the 6 result to 1 regular damage+1piercing damage. That way, it's still only 2 damage most for each dice.
I'll experiment around and playtest various variations of that idea and see which one works best for my game (if i end up keeping with a dice pool system like that for the damage roll).
Also, as mention, before the damage roll there is also a roll to hit. When you roll to hit the enemy can either dodge or block. I'll explain about that part of it in another post in the next few days so be sure to check it out, I'd appreciate your help on that part too.
If you do very well during the "to hit" roll you can score critical hit, which would either double or triple your damage pool or roll (depending upon the weapon).
To abstrahize dodging and damage reducing armour a bit:
Both are means of denying damage.
"Dodging" usually means, denying the complete damage of one source, no matter the actual value of the damage. Usually you dodge just so and so many times per combat.
"Armour" usually means, you are taking the hit, but reduce the damage by so and so many points.
The question you should ask yourself is: where is the difference? And why should I prefer the one over the other.
I'm curious about your new thread :)
Kind regards,
Kai
So schattentanz, what you basically mean is to have each gear card have its own specialized table/profile printed on it that shows what each result of a d6 means for that particular weapon?
"This system might require you to revamp your combat system, though, since higher damage is less reliable (yet high), while lower damage comes more reliable (yet low)."
How so?
Perhaps you could attach a quick drawing/picture of a sample profile?