Zero Damage Result

[Original_Carl]

Dear Fantasy Trip Forums,

I never thought this would happen to me.

It started out as a typical ITL session running through The Death Test. Then in the heat of combat, one of the players rolled three 1s on a javelin throw at a bear and did...no damage.

How could this happen? According to this forum's strict interpretation of the rules (New Pole Weapon Rules thread), and relying only on the text contained within ITLs pages, one can roll a Triple Damage Result (3 ones) and score no damage with any of several weapons.

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the game table. Questions included,

"WHAT?"
"Come ON! Are you serious?!"
"Why cant we roll three different damage dice if it's x3?"
"How does a critical hit with any weapon do NO DAMAGE?!"
"Come ON! What is your problem?"
"Does that mean we can get negative damage results?"
"Your game sucks!"

We got through it. In the interest of fairness I let her roll three damage results and add them together.

This brought up the possibility of any zero-damage result. With a number of weapons, it's possible to hit (even automatically hit with a 5) and get no damage or even negative damage. Personally, I don't like this. I think armor does a fine job of representing the case of a hit that does no damage and doesn't make the player feel like he/she is getting a bad deal.

I feel like this would have been discussed already and in some depth, but I did some forum searches (not my strongest skill, admittedly) and didn't find anything relevant aside from the Pole Weapon discussion I cited, above.

I'd like to hear if there's an official position on this from SJG and if so, what it is. I appreciate the thoughtful replies of the forum.

Thanks!

-Carl