Whenever I'm faced with a powerful amount of stress, I tend to start stressing and fussing over things that neither need it nor matter. Really just start poking at things that work fine enough. Anyway, that led to this:
I'm Probably Gonna Make Everything One Damage
One thing that always struck me as odd during play was the fact that you have to roll under to succeed in an attack, but then roll over to "succeed" in damage. Tradition, probably. But what to do? Convert to Roll Over like a normal person? God, no. Gross. Other ideas involve:
- Subtraction This clearly won't work. I can hardly get players to add. Having them work out something like "7-1d6" every other roll would really grind things to a halt.
- Damage Array While I still like the idea, it seems like a step in the wrong direction. Also, it would generate a bunch of work. Though, as I write this, I realize so would...
- Making Everything One Damage One of the design philosophies behind the original GLoG was making things more simple, namely in reducing rolls. From two rolls to one, from one to none. This one largely gets ignored (from what I've seen), but here's a place to actually do that.
An attack roll is basically just two rolls to determine one value: the amount of damage you do. Ranging from "none" to "max" it's a tradition that held on and hasn't, from what I've seen (not that I've really looked), been challenged.
But it's also two rolls for one result. I like rolling the dice as much as anyone, but in holding with the simplification design principle, them rolls gotta get squished together. I suppose I could go the Into the Odd route and make all attacks automatically hit, thus making every character's turn automatic damage to someone. That seems too far to me, however.
Basically, I've got the notion in my head that every attack is some form of gambit and should come with a risk. One that should pay off immediately. If you're gonna stand out in the open and/or foolishly fight fair, you should run the risk of failure (Attack roll), but receive a significant payout immediately (1 damage).
Alright, but why 1 damage?
That value is coming from 2 seconds of intoxicated math applied to averages. Allow me to reproduce my hard to read scrawling:
Given 4d4 as the dice used to generate Constitution, and therefore HP, the average of the roll is 10 HP.
Light weapons did roughly 1d6 of damage, making the "average" 3.5 damage.Medium weapons did 1d8 for 4.5 damage "average."Heavy weapons came in a 1d10 for 5.5
With these values, to take a 10 HP "average" character down to zero, light weapons would require roughly 3 hits, as would medium weapons. Heavy weapons came in for only 2 hits. These hit amounts look good to me. Perfectly fine. Armor is important for a reason.
In moving the damage range down to 1, HP will also need to be adjusted. Namely instead of the noble 4d4, the value becomes (4d4)/4, which drags the range down to 1 to 4, usually 2. Modified by templates and augments, this also seems fine. Don't get shot.
On one hand, while this will speed up combat and standardize weapon damage (let's be honest, I was obviously making the damage values up out of thin air. And I clearly had favorites.), it also means I'm gonna have to rewrite the gear list to make them stand out via special qualities. Which I probably should have been doing anyway. Also rewrite the combat section, damage section, augment section...
But it seems worth it. It feels better to me. When the time arises, I'll have to do a one shot to test it out. Might take a minute, but I should definitely do a play test before the rewrite. For once.
Also, it seems like someone has done this before, but I can't place it. I'm sure that won't cause problems.
