Ive been preparing to start up our Fantasy Age campaign for a couple weeks or so and ran through some practice battles to get a handle on the rules. Im brand new to the system and could be mistaken but Im seeing a real problem with weapon damage and armor. Ive already nerfed PC hit points as many have suggested and dropped all Adversary HP by about 25% as well but Im not sure that will address the problem Im seeing.
Getting a hit in Fantasy Age isnt always easy, with the 3d6 curve pressing you to the middle of the range and elevated Defense targets being pretty tough on usually low Attack modifiers. But when you do land a hit the issue appears. A great many weapons do 1 or 2 D6 damage and even when accounting for a couple of points of Strength that ends up landing less than 10 damage most of the time. Now drop 3 or 4 or even 6 or 7 of these due to armor and you might net a few damage points and again you might not. NOW... a beginning character and many easy adversaries have twenty or more HP.
Theres the problem. I took a couple beginning characters out after some bandits in rigid leather and it became this long winded slugfest to see who would get a stunt to allow them to actually tack on some real damage. (If your not familiar with Fantasy Age when rolling doubles on your attempt to hit 3D6 you get to "purchase" a special maneuver, a coupleof which allow another 1 or 2 D6 but they dont come around that often.) If what I experienced there happened in a real game I would have been mortified and probably adjusting defenses and armor ratings or something on the fly just to make a little progress.
Is this a common complaint with Fantasy Age, and if so... WTF? How could the designers miss it? If not and Im just not seeing it clearly, can somebody explain what Im missing? (I wont even bring up that the few HP a character actually loses are recovered pretty dang quickly - and I thought D&D5ed was alone in that)
Has anyone house ruled maybe an increase in damage dice? Switch from D6 to a D10 maybe or even D12? What about exploding damage dice or adding damage dice to every attack across the board?
Help?