Rejiggering Muscle-Powered Weapon Damage

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

This is precisely the standard. Even if you don't agree, if you don't use this method you will have consistency and verisimilitude issues with whatever system you come up with.
...

It is worth noting that, because of the larger number of dice associated with fire-arms, setting proof at 50% lets a whole lot more damage through with guns than it will with (non-ogre) muscle-powered weapons.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

It is worth noting that, because of the larger number of dice associated with fire-arms, setting proof at 50% lets a whole lot more damage through with guns than it will with (non-ogre) muscle-powered weapons.

True. Since most melee attacks are 1d or 2d, there's much greater variability in the typical results than from, say, 6d or 8d firearms.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

It is worth noting that, because of the larger number of dice associated with fire-arms, setting proof at 50% lets a whole lot more damage through with guns than it will with (non-ogre) muscle-powered weapons.

Normal humans (well, heroic normal humans) can easily out-do pistols and even equal some SMGs and carbines.

Consider: ST 14 is sw 2d

Weapon Master is +2 per die: 2d+4

Nab a fine broadsword or something, you're at 2d+6 or so . . . basically 4d-1.

You can invoke edge protection for swords to bring that down to about 2d, but for other swung weapons with higher basic damage adds (like heavy maces) you can get a sw+2 or sw+3, which gets you to 4d-1 to 4d crush.

Granted even an M4 delivers 4d+1 or so, and a battle rifle is 7d, and a Barrett is 6dx2 . . . so at the upper end you're quite correct (but the reason I don't worry about that much was recorded in the Armor as Dice article). But there is significant overlap in potential damage with RAW for pistols, SMGs, light carbines . . . and swung melee weapons with Weapon Master . . . with I don't think is cinematic, unlike TBaM.

There are some suggestions floating around that one needs to reduce damages by a certain amount, and then have skill boost damage for ALL weapon skills, just like Wrestling gets a ST boost, and Karate gets the damage boost for skill.

The muscle-powered damage issue is pretty insidious . . . but there are a lot of interesting suggestions floating around, but the considerations are fairly far-reaching, and touch a lot of the game assumptions.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

The description of fine mail never limits it to "resisting all but the heaviest one-handed spear thrusts." But more important, at least to the assumptions I've made, is that I don't consider a ST-10 user to be regularly capable of "the heaviest sword cuts and spear thrusts." Setting proof at 50% (which doesn't really seem very proofed to me) means that a full half of Average Joe's stabs with a spear fall into the "heaviest spear thrust" category. And that just doesn't seem believable to me.

We've had some pretty in-depth discussions on the subject of armor proof being set at 50%, I don't particularly appreciate that fact myself, but it is what it is, not just for low-scale melee armors, but also for ballistic and vehicle armor.

Again though, the issue is the damage variability, the game assumption is that a good solid hit does damage at 3.5 per die, the whole 1-6 variability is more cinematic.

If you want to reduce that variability, and make damage more realistic, then the best bet would be playing with MoS, the chart I posted was rather harsher than I'd use myself, but it's an example of a discussion starting point.

[zoncxs]

on a related note, I thought about the damage table, and the optional one that was in pyramid 3-34. in there they reworked ST over 22.

I then started thinking about slams for some reason, a slam is HPxvelocity/100, and basic lift is STxST/5.

so I thought of using the two: STxST/100 = swing damage.

with that, some one with ST 10 has a swing damage of 1d (still)

at 14 it is 2d (1.96 rounds up using slams rule.)

18 is 3d (3.24 which is like 3d+1d-3 or 4d-3, which isn't on the normal table so we can call it just 3d)

ST 20 becomes 4d

and damage keeps going up from there.

for thrust you use STxST/200.

ST 10 thr is 1d-2

14 is 1d

18 = 1d+2

20 becomes 2d

so at the high end you get high damage, and at low end it is, well normal-ish.

so what do you think?


EDIT:: this is the link to a google doc that I just made for it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...NJNlE&hl=en_US

[Joel]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Weapon Master . . . with I don't think is cinematic, unlike TBaM.

"This trait is best suited to a "cinematic" swashbuckling game. The GM may wish to forbid it in a realistic campaign."

From the description of WM, so I'm pretty sure it's meant to be cinematic.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

on a related note, I thought about the damage table, and the optional one that was in pyramid 3-34. in there they reworked ST over 22.

I then started thinking about slams for some reason, a slam is HPxvelocity/100, and basic lift is STxST/5.

so I thought of using the two: STxST/100 = swing damage.

with that, some one with ST 10 has a swing damage of 1d (still)

at 14 it is 2d (1.96 rounds up using slams rule.)

18 is 3d (3.24 which is like 3d+1d-3 or 4d-3, which isn't on the normal table so we can call it just 3d)

ST 20 becomes 4d

and damage keeps going up from there.

for thrust you use STxST/200.

ST 10 thr is 1d-2

14 is 1d

18 = 1d+2

20 becomes 2d

so at the high end you get high damage, and at low end it is, well normal-ish.

so what do you think?


EDIT:: this is the link to a google doc that I just made for it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...NJNlE&hl=en_US

Then you compare it to innate attacks and open another can of worms.

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

on a related note, I thought about the damage table, and the optional one that was in pyramid 3-34. in there they reworked ST over 22.

I then started thinking about slams for some reason, a slam is HPxvelocity/100, and basic lift is STxST/5.

so I thought of using the two: STxST/100 = swing damage.

with that, some one with ST 10 has a swing damage of 1d (still)

at 14 it is 2d (1.96 rounds up using slams rule.)

18 is 3d (3.24 which is like 3d+1d-3 or 4d-3, which isn't on the normal table so we can call it just 3d)

ST 20 becomes 4d

and damage keeps going up from there.

for thrust you use STxST/200.

ST 10 thr is 1d-2

14 is 1d

18 = 1d+2

20 becomes 2d

so at the high end you get high damage, and at low end it is, well normal-ish.

so what do you think?


EDIT:: this is the link to a google doc that I just made for it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...NJNlE&hl=en_US

Swing of 1d at ST10, 2d at ST14 and 3d at ST18 is exactly what it is now as well as Thrust of 1d-2 at ST10, 1d at ST14 and 1d+2 at ST18, and this is broken.

Just changes after ST21, but then, whats the point in realistic games?

[Landwalker]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

"[Make ST-based damage work like Basic Lift]"

Before I decided on the "simple solution is simple" approach, this was one of the things I tooled around with. But it still didn't solve the "Average Joe deals Too Much Damage" problem, so after about three solid days of tinkering, I gave up on the whole thing in favor of a much more straight-forward adjustment (the 70% adjustment presented here and based on Douglas Cole's bow damage formulae).

It might be worth tossing out a bit of information regarding the game I'm working on this for: It's currently slated as a solo campaign (only one PC), but it's DF-inspired. That doesn't mean stupid amounts of damage (at least, in my mind), but it does mean that the PC is pretty much guaranteed (1) to have Weapon Master [in this PC's case, Weapon Master (Axe)], and (2) to have Axe/Mace at DX+2 or greater. So any alternative that hinges on adding a skill-based damage bonus is pretty much redundant, as that's already going to happen regardless.

But, by the same token, I'm okay with the PC doing a lot of damage (assuming a ST 14 Dwarven Axe-Master, which is about what I'm anticipating, that'll be about 2d+2 [9.1] cut), mostly because it's in the nature of the genre and because he's the only PC. But also because he's the only PC, I don't want want him to absorb a lot of damage—and considering the budget that he's starting out on and the armor he's likely to be able to afford, that means he has to be able to trust that his armor will perform as historically advertised, rather than letting practically every other goblin who comes along penetrate it.

But, on the third side of that token (this is an unusual token), I would like the solution to still be broadly applicable so that I can carry it into other games that don't necessarily have dwarven axe-master PCs and dozens of goblins with pointy sticks. I'm just okay with the PC performing a bit outside my preferred boundaries in this instance.

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In any case, at this point, it doesn't look like anyone has raised any really serious problems with the 70% method from a game-ability standpoint. A perfect parallel of reality? No. Good enough for what my goal is? Seems that way. Additional modifications to what it means for a weapon to be Fine or Very Fine may be added to the mix, but if so, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Outside of the viability of that one specific option, I do like the idea of reducing variability of damage. As Ze'Manel Cunha pointed out, that does seem to be the big problem—the range of damage is just too high, and that's producing wonky results. I don't know if a Margin of Success ST-related roll is the solution, but the notion of rolling against ST does have intuitive appeal.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

Swing->Thrust-2
Thrust->Thrust-3
+1 damage/die at DX+1, +2 damage at DX+2 with a reduced-price Weapon Master.

That's fine, except for the Weapon Master bit, that extra damage due to skill should be the standard, like for boxing, karate or throwing.

Originally Posted by Kraydak

I tend to feel that "armor X is proof against weapon Y" means, at a minimum, that armor X's DR is equal to the average AOA-strong damage from weapon Y, because, if the armor is near-proof, people know they need to swing hard.

That's not the way GURPS does it, "armor X is proof against weapon Y" means that, at most, that armor X's DR is equal to the average dmg from weapon Y, that's it, not AoA strong proof, just normal dmg proof.

Originally Posted by Kraydak

So, here I am assuming that AOA or Committed attacks form the majority of actually damaging hits, and that Crits aren't an uncommon sub-population of damaging hits (which, given that they bypass active defenses, turns out to be somewhat true).

That'd really screw things up, AoA and Committed attacks are meant to do more damage, not be the base damage.