Why aren't attack and damage related?

[khorboth]

If this one has been discussed before, my search-fu is too weak to find it.

In GURPS (and most other systems), the attack and damage rolls are totally unrelated. I'm wondering why.

There are plenty of examples in the system where margin of success matters. Why isn't attacking one of them? It seems to me that if I hit by 8, that's a "brilliant hit" which then can do 1 point of damage. Why is it possible to brilliantly graze someone? Or to brilliantly not penetrate their leather jacket? Similarly, if I roll exactaly my skill, I could then do 14 points of damage. Why is it possible to barely gut someone like a trout?

It seems to me that a more skilled person should be able to more reliably score a solid blow to the torso than an unskilled person. Setting aside directed attacks, critical hits, and the like, I think the skilled person should still do more damage. They will know better how to get past someone's guard and score a decisive hit. A person using a weapon at default should be less likely to deal max damage because they aren't familiar with the weapon.

Am I missing something?

[Lonewulf]

"Doing more damage" based on success in your skill really breaks down... well... around anywhere. You're essentially saying that an ST 14 guy with an 8 skill should do crap with his blows almost all the time, whereas the ST 8 guy with a 16 skill should be able to penetrate platemail with his fist.

Okay, maybe that can be "tweaked out", but why bother when you have the system that you got?

Maybe you could argue that the person "bypasses the armor" through sheer skill, but then the question remains... what about armor that don't have any such obvious gaps?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by khorboth

It seems to me that a more skilled person should be able to more reliably score a solid blow to the torso than an unskilled person. Setting aside directed attacks, critical hits, and the like, I think the skilled person should still do more damage. They will know better how to get past someone's guard and score a decisive hit. A person using a weapon at default should be less likely to deal max damage because they aren't familiar with the weapon.

Am I missing something?

It's not "margin of success" based like you want, but:

Skilled people get damage bonuses when they focus on unarmed combat skills. This doesn't carry over to weapons (a good question would be "why not," and "what could we do about it?"), but if you have Karate at DX you get +1 damage, and DX+1 you get +2. So you do get a more solid blow with more skill.

Second, more skill, through the use of deceptive attack, DOES have a significantly improved chance of landing an effective blow, by virtue of reducing the target's defenses.

Third, high skill does allow things like striking more vulnerable targets, like vitals, chinks in armor, the head, veins and arteries. The damage multipliers and extra effects you get from these target locations are exactly how skilled practitioners do more damage - they hit you where it hurts most.

High skill people can also, now that Martial Arts is out, perform Committed Attacks, multiple strikes, and other goodies that low-skill people can't, increasing the damage per exchange effectively, while retaining a good defense level.

So, as the spaghetti sauce commercial says, "It's in there," but not in the way you say.

I don't know if it would hugely break the system to say that MoS of, say, 3 or 4 would give you +1/die damage, and MoS of 6 or 8 gives you +2/die, but levelling off there, and you'd need to strip away the existing skill-based damage bonuses.

This would mean that vs an average roll on the Torso, someone with Skill-14 and Skill 18 would get +1 and +2/die; targeting the Vitals (for example) you'd need Skill 17 and 21 to get the bonus on a typical roll.

Don't think it would break anything, but I may be missing something; it's also not necessary, since there are plenty of ways currently to trade skill for damage multipiers and extra hit efficiency.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by khorboth

There are plenty of examples in the system where margin of success matters. Why isn't attacking one of them?

To turn the question around, why should it be? One might argue that they're unrelated: hitting someone requires finesse, but hitting someone hard requires force. Is there any particular evidence indicating that a skilled fighter hits harder as a direct result of his skill (rather than as a result of higher ST which might come from physical conditioning while practicing his skill)?

I think you're just seeing a philosophical difference here. Statistically, people with superior skill definitely do more damage. They hit more often in general. They have a greater chance of getting critical hits. They're better at hitting vulnerable spots. Absent specific evidence to the contrary, I'm satisfied to accept skillful fighters not necessarily doing more damage on a hit-by-hit basis but doing more damage over the course of a fight. But if you'd like to add margin of success (or something based on it) to damage, feel free. It sounds like an interesting house rule.

[Dagger of Lath]

Originally Posted by khorboth

Am I missing something?

Active Defences, targeting body locations and the feint system.

[Lonewulf]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

But if you'd like to add margin of success (or something based on it) to damage, feel free. It sounds like an interesting house rule.

The only complaint I'd have about such a house rule is that you'd do LESS damage if you targeted a vital area.

However, if you want to really abstract it, you could make combat much more... I dunno... Shadowrun 3rd edition-esque. Opposed melee combat skills, whoever "wins" deals damage, the higher their success the more damage they do. Critical hits might inflict "vitals" injuries (or if you succeed by, say, 3 or so, count that as a "vital" injury)

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by Dagger of Lath

Active Defences, targeting body locations and the feint system.

Active defenses and feinting don't affect damage; they affect the attack roll only. Directed attacks have the same problem as torso attacks. Brilliantly sapping someone in the head, but not getting through the skull or barely hitting the leg and crippling it.

[Dagger of Lath]

Originally Posted by khorboth

Active defenses and feinting don't affect damage; they affect the attack roll only. Directed attacks have the same problem as torso attacks. Brilliantly sapping someone in the head, but not getting through the skull or barely hitting the leg and crippling it.

Oh sorry, I rushed to write that (I'm at work right now) and didn't really make my point clearly. I meant to say that there's so much going on with combat rolls already that they probably didn't want to complicate it any further and risk the systems clashing.

[ed_209a]

To better link accuracy to damage, you might try letting players declare called shots after the fact, and see if that breaks the game.

I have considered a house rule where the players make called shots against a target the size of a playing card, placed wherever they want on a target diagram (a la Milennium's end). On a center of mass aim point, they could miss by a lot and still hit the target somewhere. That is the point of CoM shooting.

If it comes down to the dice rolls, well, human beings are both ridiculously fragile, and ridiculously hardy, depending on a lot of stuff that are smaller than the resolution of GURPS rules.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by khorboth

Active defenses and feinting don't affect damage; they affect the attack roll only. Directed attacks have the same problem as torso attacks. Brilliantly sapping someone in the head, but not getting through the skull or barely hitting the leg and crippling it.

There's no such thing as "barely hitting" on your skill roll to hit. You hit, or you don't hit and that's the only thing determined.

You "barely hit" if you get 1 damage, you hit with maximum possible effect when your dice come up all 6s on damage.

You're looking at the wrong part of the sequence for your interpretations.