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Old 01-16-2008, 11:49 AM   #21
LemmingLord
 
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth
In GURPS (and most other systems), the attack and damage rolls are totally unrelated. I'm wondering why.
My colleague noticed this too and is implementing a system wherby instead of rolling for damage you determine the amount of damage you do by comparing your margin of success to a little table he has to determine what you roll for each die..

Something like this
0 Margin = 1 on each die
1 Margin = 1.5 on each die.
2 = 2
3 = 2.5
4 = 3
5 = 3.5
6 = 4
7 = 4.5
8 = 5
9 = 5.5
10 = 6

Example: your character shoots his pistol for 3d6 damage. If the roll beats her effective skill by 3, she does 3[dice]x2.5[margin result] = 7.5 (7) points of damage.

I like the idea alot. It means one less roll you have to do.. Speeds things up if you've got your little table memorized. :)

Of course this makes critical successes extra powerful since they are likely to bypass defense AND do amazing damage. My colleague doesn't have to worry about this since he gives people a defense factor which acts as a penalty when you attack them instead of rolling on defenses..

His method will alow for a much faster paced game.. Since you only need to roll once for an attack rather than roll to attack, roll to defend and roll for damage.

Another solution the crit success power of making damage based on margin of success is to make critical hits special from a story point of view rather than from a damage point of view... If there is a critical success, perhaps you get what I like to call the roleplay "cut scene." Against Darth Vader, for example, Luke might roll his critical hit, bypassing Vader's defenses, but instead of just saying max damage, the gm would "cut scene" describing that Luke knocks Darth to the floor and hammers away again and again and again until Darth cannot defend anymore and his arm gets chopped off.

Another problem with this method is that unskilled people are going to end up doing very little damage (typically) with very damaging weapons (such as guns). In the example I gave up above, if you are an untrained person who manages to shoot someone, you are likely going to be doing minimum damage (3 points with a big pistol). To curb this problem, you could consider rolling randomly (or giving the player the choice between random or margin based damage). I should also note that 3 points from a big gun to the body is likely to be multipled to 9, be a major wound for most, that will lead to blood loss and death if not immediately treated by major medical personnel...

Last edited by LemmingLord; 01-16-2008 at 11:57 AM.
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Old 01-16-2008, 11:53 AM   #22
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

Quote:
Originally Posted by LemmingLord
My colleague noticed this too and is implementing a system wherby instead of rolling for damage you determine the amount of damage you do by comparing your margin of success to a little table he has to determine what you roll for each die..
[...]
His method will alow for a much faster paced game.. Since you only need to roll once for an attack rather than roll to attack, roll to defend and roll for damage.
Do you also cap effective skill? It would seem that high skill would be even more important if you implement a system like that, and if you have a 20 skill (after adjustments), you'll pretty much always get maximum damage, which sounds kind of boring. In the current system, somebody with high skill would have to sacrifice some for hit locations and some for deceptive attacks in order to be so effective, which seems a lot more interesting than just attacking the torso for maximum damage every turn.
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Old 01-16-2008, 12:06 PM   #23
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

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Originally Posted by Extrarius
That seems a really odd rule. Would you round up if the target has 1-9 HP (and what about 11-19, etc)? Why not just do half damage instead, or something else based on the original damage value?
Minimum 1. As for why not half damage, what I'm simulating here is grazing blows, and there's really a limit to how much damage that kind of blow can do, because any excess just blows through.
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Old 01-16-2008, 12:06 PM   #24
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

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Originally Posted by LazarusDarkeyes
2 minor cents...

I've only ever practiced with the SCA once ever...

...but from what I did learn there very quickly. There was one fellow who was sort of in charge and had been doing this for a long time. He was amazing to watch. And ST did NOT matter on how hard he hit 'cause he wasn't really a big guy. He was trying to impress upon me that a good fighter maximizes body movement and momentum to hit hard. If you are using your (arm) muscles to hit, you're going to tire out fast.

Only because he then demonstrated his point repeatedly for me did I give this very much weight.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying the SCA is the fount of all fighting knowledge or one practice defines it all.
Not to demean the SCA, but they are practicing a Sport version of combat, rather than combat skills. They do not intend to harm each other, and the tally of actual injuries is quite small. Compare this to early melee fighters in tournaments, who fought with unsharpened steel blades and full armor, and deaths and injuries were commonplace. What is considered a "hard" or "good" hitby SCA standards very well may not even be a decent hit by GURPS standards.

When you consider that GURPs works on the premise that one hit can and will stop a fight(not an inaccurate belief, imho), then it makes sense not to tie damage (directly) to skill. Shadowrun(a game where skill determines damage) works on the same premise, due to the description of it's melee combat, where a tie represents trading blows for no damage, while success represents a hit.

There are a number of unarmed techniques that increase damage, at the expense of risking injury and a lower-skill. With MA, it should be possible to create weapons techniques that do the same.
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Old 01-16-2008, 12:11 PM   #25
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

Quote:
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.
"Brilliantly sapping" someone "in" the head would be a critical hit with a good roll on top of it, or a high damage roll. As Bruto mentions, there is no "barely hitting" and "brilliantly hitting" with to-hit rolls. If you want to show off your skill, you make attacks targeting vital and fragile locations, you make a committed attack with a penalty to your defenses, you make an all-out attack (which demonstrates more stupidity than skill if used unnecessarily), or you put everything into it through a Mighty Blow.

Really, the whole point of a skill roll enhancing damage is to simulate, through abstraction, what GURPS already demonstrates through less abstract terms.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vorjigorm
Not to demean the SCA, but they are practicing a Sport version of combat, rather than combat skills. They do not intend to harm each other, and the tally of actual injuries is quite small. Compare this to early melee fighters in tournaments, who fought with unsharpened steel blades and full armor, and deaths and injuries were commonplace. What is considered a "hard" or "good" hitby SCA standards very well may not even be a decent hit by GURPS standards.
Not to say that you don't have a point here, but I still do agree with the momentum bit. However, I would translate that as less as "being able to hit harder", and more of translating to more "successes" (where a failure in your to-hit could be something that's easy to dodge or glances harmlessly off your guard/shield/armor, as opposed to something that misses completely).
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Last edited by Lonewulf; 01-16-2008 at 12:15 PM.
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Old 01-16-2008, 12:16 PM   #26
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

I find funny to see a thread on something I was just thinking about this week. To me, to have less die rolls during combat and maybe speed up combat at the same time, I would handle damage this way (for melee weapons that is) :

- The weapon gives a certain (fixed) amount of basic damage
- ST of the character a certain (fixed) amount of basic damage
- And instead of rolling for damage, the margin of success (or a portion of it) would then add to the basic damage, the higher the level of success, the more damaging the blow is because of it's accuracy

And to make combat even speedier, maybe remove the defense roll completely. Your defense score would be a modifier to the attacker's skill. This is where rolling against 3d6 might be a problem to handle attack rolls using this method as a single +/-1 to a skill makes a big change for middle range scores.

Maybe SJ Games should create a GURPS 5th (or even better, a 4.5 edition) edition ;)




KIDDING !!! :)
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Old 01-16-2008, 12:34 PM   #27
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint
I find funny to see a thread on something I was just thinking about this week. To me, to have less die rolls during combat and maybe speed up combat at the same time, I would handle damage this way (for melee weapons that is) :

- The weapon gives a certain (fixed) amount of basic damage
- ST of the character a certain (fixed) amount of basic damage
- And instead of rolling for damage, the margin of success (or a portion of it) would then add to the basic damage, the higher the level of success, the more damaging the blow is because of it's accuracy

And to make combat even speedier, maybe remove the defense roll completely. Your defense score would be a modifier to the attacker's skill. This is where rolling against 3d6 might be a problem to handle attack rolls using this method as a single +/-1 to a skill makes a big change for middle range scores.
IF you really want faster combat you would remove all the multiple turns, just have a total combat stat and have a quick contest between them and the winner lives.
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Old 01-16-2008, 12:44 PM   #28
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

My experience is that in real life, it's heavy, potentially damaging blows that are the hardest to control and thus the most likely to go off-target . . . but that doesn't make them less damaging if they don't go off-target. Well-aimed blows are generally lighter, faster strikes . . . but being right on target doesn't make them more damaging. Thus, the connection between precision and hurt is at best tenuous, at worst false. Such a connection might ring true if you read a good attack roll as good because it's a telling hit, and a bad attack roll as bad because it's an anemic graze, but the system's assumptions are that hits are essentially binary -- you get them or you don't -- and if you want to make skill count, you have to hit things that hurt more when hit. So I think that the people talking about hit locations are on topic . . .
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Old 01-16-2008, 02:07 PM   #29
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

Quote:
Originally Posted by blacksmith
IF you really want faster combat you would remove all the multiple turns, just have a total combat stat and have a quick contest between them and the winner lives.
LOL, this is where Luck would be worth even more points ;)
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Old 01-16-2008, 02:12 PM   #30
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Default Re: Why aren't attack and damage related?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm
My experience is that in real life, it's heavy, potentially damaging blows that are the hardest to control and thus the most likely to go off-target . . . but that doesn't make them less damaging if they don't go off-target.
Huh. That makes me think of a house rule:

Trading ST and Skill
  • You may reduce your ST by 1-4 to increase effective skill by the same amount. You may not reduce ST below the minimum for the weapon.
  • You may reduce your skill by 1 to increase effective ST by 1. You may not more than double your ST.
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