Nerfing triple damage

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Shostak

I've always considered 2x and 3x damage to be fun features of the game. Who doesn't love having their character rolling double or triple damage? However, it's not quite as much fun when the damage is coming at you. So, one question is: do you want to nerf it globally or just for the GM's rolls? Either way, one solution that provides both tactical and narrative possibilities would be for rolls of 4 to knock the victim down, and rolls of 3 knock them unconscious.

I actually do find it fun that there is a chance of getting (my own PC) hit for triple damage.

I recently had great fun getting nailed by triple damage: A wizard cast a 3-die lightning bolt at my injured pikeaxe character, who chose to dodge and barely escaped. Next turn I charged that wizard with the pikeaxe, but my attack missed, and he cast a 2-die lightning bolt that hit me for triple damage and took me out. I found that extremely fun and exciting and a great way to die. (What I found much less fun was Legacy death rules letting me not really be dead yet, and though it was hilarious, getting saved by the party dumping every unidentified potion in sight down my throat.)

I also don't much care for different rules for NPCs versus PCs. I like playing "the actual situation" with actual fairly assessed risks.

I would however welcome more varied results of critical hits. As you say, knocking someone down regardless of damage, causing crippling injuries (there's already an optional rule in ITL for this), bypassing armor, etc, could be interesting. Maybe what the result is could be somehow tied to a skill roll.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by Skarg

It also seems to me that removing the possibility of double and triple damage would cause several problems and make combat more predictable and less interesting. To me, rare unexpected high-damage results are a good thing, and one of the few things that poses a threat to stacked high-armor targets.

Exactly so.

Originally Posted by Skarg

I do agree more with this line of thinking. It would be good if double and triple damage (and auto hits) had more to do with skill and ability, and less just unmodified luck.

GURPS provides that--and a whole lot more to make melee combat tactically rich. For TFT, perhaps a wholesale change to Weapon Expertise/Mastery, allowing criticals on higher rolls? But, if one is interested in nerfing critical hits, you are still left with the problem of the just what crit's effects are.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Skarg

It also seems to me that removing the possibility of double and triple damage would cause several problems and make combat more predictable and less interesting. To me, rare unexpected high-damage results are a good thing, and one of the few things that poses a threat to stacked high-armor targets.

I dunno... double damage plus losing a hand sounds plenty interesting. ;)

In my experience, triple damage just means 'dead' most of the time.

[hcobb]

Replace triple damage on 3 with:

The attack does double damage ignoring armor and roll for a crippling hit as per ITL 122. A limb is crippled if it takes a third of the figure's base ST and any further damage above this blows through and is ignored.

[zot]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Triple ones = x2 damage plus a critical effect.

Critical effects may include results such as...

• Temporarily stunned
• Loss of limb
• Blinded
• Split shield
• etc.

That's a cool idea and it's a lot more interesting than just "more damage"! Qualitatively superior...

[zot]

Originally Posted by Skarg

I actually do find it fun that there is a chance of getting (my own PC) hit for triple damage.

I recently had great fun getting nailed by triple damage: A wizard cast a 3-die lightning bolt at my injured pikeaxe character, who chose to dodge and barely escaped. Next turn I charged that wizard with the pikeaxe, but my attack missed, and he cast a 2-die lightning bolt that hit me for triple damage and took me out. I found that extremely fun and exciting and a great way to die. (What I found much less fun was Legacy death rules letting me not really be dead yet, and though it was hilarious, getting saved by the party dumping every unidentified potion in sight down my throat.)

I guess it depends on how much work players put into making their PCs. More frequent deaths should provide a negative economic incentive to put work into a PC, taking the focus off of story and social interaction and putting it more onto combat. In a group with very frequent deaths, the players would probably have a backup PC (or even several) prepared so they could keep playing without having to take time to make another one.

I've never played with a group where players had backup PCs. I'd say that would indicate that PCs are commodities, more like playing pieces you push around on a board than characters in a story.

Miniature games are where RPGs originally came from and I realize a lot of people like to play that way but it's a lot more towards the war game / board game end of the spectrum than I prefer. Actually, I first played D&D in junior high in "SIM Club", for "simulation games" (run by the history teacher, of course).

I've played Gloomhaven, Myth, and Descent (Mansions of Madness, etc.), and these strike me as closer to that style of play. Actually, while I was playing those games, I wished we were using TFT for the combat instead of the (somewhat lame) mechanics of the games. So I'm not against the war game style of play at all -- but when I'm role playing or GMing, I prefer thought-out stories to "reactive simulations".

Originally Posted by Skarg

I also don't much care for different rules for NPCs versus PCs. I like playing "the actual situation" with actual fairly assessed risks.

This is consistent with more of a war game focus, where simulation is the goal. Makes sense if that's what you want. If you have a story focus, different rules for NPCs and PCs make a lot of sense.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by zot

I guess it depends on how much work players put into making their PCs.

It doesn't in my experience.

I can't remember the last time I saw anyone lose a PC to triple damage before the time I just experienced. And my character was half-way to death at that point anyway. (And I got saved by a cocktail of unknown potions... so much for my memorable death.)

In most of the games I've played in, the bar for making a TFT character with less effort has mainly been about whether the game is intended as a throw-away game or not, or what the intended focus of play is. I don't think I have ever seen it be directly about how likely the chance of death is.

Not unless you're talking about NPC cannon fodder, anyway. Redshirt NPCs yes, some of those were just like:
Gloob ST 11 DX 11 IQ 10 MA 10 Spear dagger Swimming $43.

On the other hand, if someone's PC did get killed or badly injured, then Gloob was available and often played with great glee and fun, and usually an infusion of personality, regardless of how likely Gloob was to die or not.

Originally Posted by zot

More frequent deaths should provide a negative economic incentive to put work into a PC, taking the focus off of story and social interaction and putting it more onto combat. In a group with very frequent deaths, the players would probably have a backup PC (or even several) prepared so they could keep playing without having to take time to make another one.

I have never experienced double and triple damage results actually resulting in frequent deaths. Double and Triple damage are infrequent. If they're frequent then either you're luck is cursed, your dice are loaded, or you're being attacked so frequently that the situation was hopeless anyway, and/or your tactics involve charging into the middle of groups of foes.

Originally Posted by zot

I've never played with a group where players had backup PCs. I'd say that would indicate that PCs are commodities, more like playing pieces you push around on a board than characters in a story.

I haven't either except when playing arena combats, war scenarios and MicroQuests, though I've talked to several who have played campaigns that way and enjoyed it. And I think I would enjoy it, because I do like wargames etc and often I enjoy trying to keep the troops alive and noticing their careers and so on.

But I don't make the connection between that at double & triple damage results.

Instead what I notice is that there seem to be players and GMs who are very PC-death-averse, who are willing to sacrifice straight playing out of game situations in order to eliminate PC deaths. Often it seems to me they'll say they aren't removing PC deaths, but in practice it seems to me they are. At which point, I wonder why even play out the combat?

Especially in contrast to my experience of playing as straight as I can and seeing lots of combat... and ending up usually only extremely rarely having anyone lose a PC except in exceptional cases (and again, almost never due to double or triple damage results), or when playing very dangerous situations and/or with weak parties and/or players who haven't learned TFT tactics.

I guess my perspective is somewhat skewed by playing with experienced players and/or by what I do do as a GM to help, which is tend to provide chances of opportunities to notice and respond to danger before someone ends up actually being swarmed and slaughtered.

Originally Posted by zot

This is consistent with more of a war game focus, where simulation is the goal. Makes sense if that's what you want. If you have a story focus, different rules for NPCs and PCs make a lot of sense.

Well I certainly do prize "simulation" and enjoy wargames and lots of combat, and playing out situations logically. And I do tend to have a vampire-meets-sun reaction when people talk about games as stories (rather than tell stories later about what happened in their games).

I also very much enjoy roleplaying... but I think of simulation, and the actual logical risk of danger, as foundations for great roleplaying. They get players to take the game situation as if it's real and serious, because it is. They need to think about the situation and choose actions that will tend to keep them alive, or they'll risk real logical consequences. That's what seems really interesting to me about RPGs. And it's what I've seen generate really engaged and pro-active and clever players really interacting with the game situation.

In contrast, special rules or GM intervention to keep PCs alive, or to make them follow planned stories, seem to me to have the opposite sorts of effects, where players seem to often just kinda show up, wait to find out what the GM's story is, say they do it, don't take it seriously or engage it in unpredictable ways, expect to survive all combat expecting it to be planned for them to win, expect to get revived if they die, expect to get healed up safely if they get seriously wounded, etc.

[larsdangly]

I'm happy with the rules as-is. I always use the 'crippling hit' rule for rolls of 6 or below, and have always interpreted those rules as applying to rolls of 3 and 4 as well. As for the dangerousness of a standard 'triple damage' result, I think of it as TFT's version of the warning that 'if you keep doing that someone will put an eye out!'. You can be as tough and as tricksy as you want, but every now and then things just go pear-shaped and there isn't much you can do about it.

[hcobb]

Of course if you character has an Iron Flesh ring, a self-powered Reverse Missiles ring, a silver dagger Staff-V and Dagger Mastery and she simply does a six die parry every turn then it's going to take her many many lifetimes on average before she's hit for triple damage.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Of course if you character has an Iron Flesh ring, a self-powered Reverse Missiles ring, a silver dagger Staff-V and Dagger Mastery and she simply does a six die parry every turn then it's going to take her many many lifetimes on average before she's hit for triple damage.

That practically proves the case for nerfing Weapon Mastery.