The #1 system has a problem with modifiers since everything has its own table, so a +1 to damage means different results for different weapons.
That may be OK with firearms if you don't care about range modifiers say, but even adding a Strength bonus to a damage roll is awkward and would give different results with different weapons. Potentially you could design the system so that is actually a feature and not a bug, but it looks like a difficult task.

Tangent - System-wise this reminds me a bit of the damage system in Forgotten Futures (a freerpg about Victorian space travel). That has a damage value which you roll against getting either an A result (roll under 1/2 rating), B result (roll under rating) or a C result (rolled over); However what an A, B, or C represents depends on the weapon - an A result with an unarmed attack might be a point of lethal damage instead of non-lethal, while an A from a martian heat ray is automatic disintegration.  It is interesting in that Str bonuses aren't automatically applied - a high Str (Body) gives an increase in chance of a higher damage result but no automatic benefit. FFs system looks to be in some ways good - compare it to some systems where a + to damage from Strength makes someone's punch more lethal than someone else's sword blow.

#2 has some of the same problems as #1 - modifiers would mean different things from roll to roll, so are hard to apply.
You could expand the idea to a die pool system (roll multiple d4s or d6s or whatever) with each success being a 'Wound' (or whatever) rather than death and then you'd be able to modify the # of dice rolled, though its a bit different to the original idea.

That is a possible issue. One solution to the str modifier is to only have it modify the attack roll, not the damage roll. Or high Strength could also let you reroll damage when you just graze someone on melee attack. Or maybe more simple: strength could double or triple the number of grazes (maybe even wounds). It all depends on the strength increments, but I lean toward small increments generally. The only other thing I can think of is for the damage (at least on option 2) to bump you to the next best die (but you would have to set the melee weapon damage dice on the lower end (d8-d12) to leave room for the muscle bump.

I havent played ff. I will have to check it out.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;573904I havent played ff. I will have to check it out.

heh, I haven't actually played it - its pretty obscure.

On the other options you listed : having Str modify the attack roll seems in line with your earlier method for handling armour (as in D&D, if armour makes you harder to hit, Str can be helping cut through it) although getting rid of damage modifier entirely is a bit abstract. Perhaps combine with having a good roll (X over what you need to hit) giving a re-roll/extra damage, so that Str is still giving an indirect boost to damage.

The other methods work though as you rightly point out, it works best with small increments, or perhaps if only very exceptional Str gets a damage bonus/dice bump.

If you go with 1 or something like it, you could notate damage with x/y. Personally I'd put it on a D20 and make x or under a miss instead of a graze, and y or up death. One roll is nice, IMO.

Then factors could shift x and y. Accuracy could downshift everything, while armor might upshift y only.

Quote from: beejazz;573960If you go with 1 or something like it, you could notate damage with x/y. Personally I'd put it on a D20 and make x or under a miss instead of a graze, and y or up death. One roll is nice, IMO.

Then factors could shift x and y. Accuracy could downshift everything, while armor might upshift y only.

I have worked with a single roll for damage and attack, but I find that limits my options down the line (it can be very sleak and its totally workable, I just had a bad experience once where I was stuck with the one roll for both because me and the other writers had agreed on it, and it ended up driving us all nuts by the end...though people that played the game loved it).

It could certainly be on a d20. I was hoping for a bit more detail in the wounding than miss or kill though ( the ability to kill in one shot is super important). I was even thinking of adding in a knock out as a possibility (but that can sometimes break down under scrutiny and it complicates the damage ranges further). The d20 would give me more room to work with using option 1 if I wanted to add in stuff like DR and strength modifiers. A d20 also handles a wide range of weapons nicely. The weakest weapon might only kill on a roll of twenty for example.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;573999I have worked with a single roll for damage and attack, but I find that limits my options down the line (it can be very sleak and its totally workable, I just had a bad experience once where I was stuck with the one roll for both because me and the other writers had agreed on it, and it ended up driving us all nuts by the end...though people that played the game loved it).

I think you should do whatever gives you the results you want. If you can cram everything onto one die, that can make the game a little easier to play, but it's not too important.

QuoteIt could certainly be on a d20. I was hoping for a bit more detail in the wounding than miss or kill though ( the ability to kill in one shot is super important). I was even thinking of adding in a knock out as a possibility (but that can sometimes break down under scrutiny and it complicates the damage ranges further). The d20 would give me more room to work with using option 1 if I wanted to add in stuff like DR and strength modifiers. A d20 also handles a wide range of weapons nicely. The weakest weapon might only kill on a roll of twenty for example.

I was thinking more miss/wound/kill (miss under x, wound between x and y, and kill over y) instead of scratch/wound/kill. With scratches acting as tiny wounds, I'm not seeing a huge difference, though I may just have missed something.

But yeah, the granularity of the D20 can allow you some wiggle room if you're going to mess with the thresholds, whatever they inflict.

I understand that you're looking for high lethality, but this might be excessive.

That said, since you've suggested a couple different versions I see a couple of areas to be concerned.

First off, let's say all weapons use a d10 for lethality, with the range (graze, wound, kill).  Let's say this weapon kills on a 10, only.  For the sake of convenience, I'm going to call this weapon a rifle.  

Now, if I shoot a mouse with my rifle, I only kill the mouse on a 10 (unless it has only 1 wound).  If I shoot an elephant, I only kill it on a 10.  If I shoot an elder red dragon, it is just as likley to die as the elephant...  

If you're constantly modifying the result of the roll based on the defenses of the creature, you're going to cause confusion to the player with the gun.  If that's the case, you're better off making the defender roll a 'don't die' roll - because they're going to have the same modifier with everything that hits them.

For example, let's say a mouse has a +5 lethality, an elephant has a -2, and a dragon has a -9.  

That would mean that a roll of 5 would kill the mouse (5+5=10), a roll of 10 would still only wound the elephant (10-2=8) and rifles can only graze a elder dragon, and probably not even then.  

To maintain the CHANCE of a one-shot kill, you could use an exploding die.  

In general, a higher die seems to equate to more lethality.  If Sherman Tanks do a d4 but a human fist does a d12, that'll tend to be counterintuitive.  

So this is a guess at a system that MIGHT work for what you're doing.

Every weapon is given a damage roll of 1-10.  On 1-5 the opponent gets a graze, 6-8 is a wound, 9-10 is death.  Certain weapons modify that roll.  For example, a fist might normally be -5 (ie, it normally can't kill someone with a single hit).  The Death Star has a +30 (ie, everything it hits dies).  

Then creatures apply a modifier to that roll as well (either positive or negative).  Weaker creatures add to the die roll (like the mouse) and strong creatures subtract from it (like a dragon).  

So, you take a Rifle, which is significantly better than the 'default' weapon, so you call it a +5.  If you shoot an unarmored normal person with a rifle and you hit, they always take a wound, and they have a decent chance of dying.  

If you shoot someone with body armor (-3) with a rifle, your net roll is 1d10+2.  There's still a good chance you kill them, but now there's a chance that you only graze them.  

If the numbers are always consistent (ie, rifle is always +5 and my character with a particular armor always applies a -3 to the roll) it's really easy for everyone to decide exactly what happens each time a hit is rolled.

Thanks for the feedback deadDM. You raise some good points. Let me explain where I am coming from though.

I should say I am picturing this for more human-centric setting, like modern crime or pulp than say D&D. Fighting animals would present a potential issue. But as you point out the wounds can help manage that (giving a mouse two scratches, so a wound or a couple of grazes kills it). For something like the elephant you can just establish that only certain weapons are able to kill them in a shot, and on  weapon like a rifle, a kill becomes a wound (giving them more wounds also works). For this to work, a pistol to the head at relatively close range needs to have a chance of offing someone.

I am picturing a gory, shoot-em up game, with lots of interplayer paranoia and conflict. So I want one hit kills very much on the table. This is not going to have broad appeal because most players, in my experience, want less lethality. This is basically designed with my crime network players in mind who felt CN didn't go far enough. Its the kind of game where you are constantly worried aobut someone coming up behind your character and taking him out. So this is excessive, but very much by design.

While lower die are counter intuitive, that has never been much of a concern for me personally. I like the math of the 4 being more likely to get a high end or low end result more often. Some players will not like this. But I don't think it is all that terrible if the core system is simple enough to note that smaller dice are better in this game. That is if I were to go with that option.

While some modicum of believaility is important, realism is not a major design goal. I want ultra violence and player character death, but am not going to fret over intricate gun rules or anything like that. This will be rules light.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;573509I am toying with a damage mechanic, one that I may not get a chance to use in anything to be honest. But want some feedback on it either way. Right now I have two different approaches that are kind of the same concept.

1) damage is always the same die (for simplicity lets say d10, but i may go with a d8 or d6 in the end). Every weapon is is given a lethality rating within that range, a wound rating and a graze rating. So you might have shot gun- lethality 9-10, wound 6-8 and graze 1-5. Basically when you succe ed on a shot gun blast you roll d10, if you get 9-10, oppoent dies, if you get 6-8 opnent takes a wound and if you get 1-5 the opponent gets a scrape or bruise. Picturing about four wounds and each wound being comprised of two to three scratches.

Been giving this one a bit of thought this week while lying on my death bed (read: a dose of man flu). Am I correct in assuming you're thinking of a separate 'to hit' and 'damage' roll Brendan? If so, and with the provisos that , DeadDm has already done a fair bit of thinking about it, and that I'm no game designer so don't really know what I'm talking about...

I had visualised option 1 as something like this (I'm also using a 10 pt scale and crappy Excel graphics but hopefully you get the point):

- Weapon 1 (say some large calibre automatic rifle). Scratch (S) 1-3, Wound (W) 4-7, Kill (K) 8-10. As you only need to list the S and W thresholds, stats would be S3/W7



- Weapon 2 (small handgun). S5/W9



So you make your roll to hit (mechanic TBA), then roll your D10, consulting the appropriate chart per weapon. Into the red zone and it's lights out, whereas the others are 'medium' and 'light' wounds respectively.

So, questions raised by yourself and others:

- Armour? How would having a simple armour rating which is then subtracted from your roll work. For example, Joe Schmo is wearing a Flak Vest (Armour Rating) AR1. He's hit by Big Fred who is firing weapon 1 and rolls a 10. Tough shit, he's dead; in fact, if you get hit by a 10 then unless it is effectively a W9 weapon (only lethal on a 10) you're pretty much screwed unless you are thinking about space marine armour. However, if Fred had rolled an 8, Joe's flak vest means he only takes 4W instead of being killed outright. This may or may not kill him anyway depending on how wounds are figured - if it's based on some 'CON' stat, a smaller person might only have a limited number of 'boxes' in each of the Scratch and Wound tracks, with bleed over when the track fills up, so if you have only 3W and take a 4W hit, you're toast anyway?

I guess cover might come into this as well - maybe not only subtract from chance to hit, but for 'hard' cover, also provides so many points of effective AR?

It may be that some of the nastier weapons have either a) much bigger chances of lethality (Lighting Gun S1/W6) and/or b) ignore some or all armour (Bolter S4/W9/P1 - Penetration rating (P))

- User skill? A bonus damage modifier for beating the target number. Single level (ie there is only 1 type of 'crit') or multiple levels of success? Each success adds 1 to the damage roll. With multiple levels, even a 'poor' weapon could do some serious damage in the hands of a skilled user.

- Brute force? Likely hand to hand weapons only, which might not figure much if you are aiming at a more modern setting. What about a STR minimum for each weapon, then if you have an appropriate level above that, gain a damage mod. So a Greatsword might be S3/W8/SM (STR Min) X, while a dagger is S5/W9/SM Y. A bit of playing with numbers required to see how a high STR character using a large weapon stacks up against a small weapon with potentially a lot of extra damage 'shifts' for exceeding the STR Min.

- Dodging? Depends whether you want opposed rolls vs firing skill, or, as you said you fancy this being a rather brutal affair, just say if you're hit you're hit! Failing that, every success on the Dodge to reduce the damage track by 1? My immediate worry is that it then becomes effectively a mandatory skill (like Footwork in 7th Sea) and almost everyone is going to jack this as high as they can at char gen so maybe cap it, or don't have it.

Interested to hear if you do anything with it in future.

Derabar, will give more thoughts later as am in middle of getting the wife from work, but in terms of armor and DR i am thinking more and more that something like D&D style ac would be easier using this damage system (and a bit more fun for me as I have made all games that take the DR approach and I want to do something different).

Not going to feed skill into damage really. Will probably have simple miss, hit and crit.