Quote:If you take a look at most battle systems, they list the damage for a typical sword as, for instance, 2-8 damage. It appears that this is a result of how it used to be in the P&P versions where you had to roll 2d4 to get your damage. It just doesnt seem realistic to me.

You could have a base damage and then modify it by how the character dodges. For example if a sword does a base damage of 10 and the dodge roll succeeded then you would reduce the damage (say by half for 5 damage), or even reduce the damage based on the degree of success of the doge roll (so if a doge roll exceeded the target by X amount then you reduce the damge done by X amount - which could lead to a 0 damage dealt). This could also be applied to a failed dodge roll and it increases the amount of damage done.

If you jumped out of the way of a sword strok and only just made it, then you mmight have strained something or in the dive out of the way you might sustain a minor injury. A failed dodge could mean that you steped the wrong way and increased the impact of the weapon, or that you sustained a serious injury in your attempt to get out of the way of the weapon (or you got hit by the weapon but still suffered a strain or other injury in the attempt to get out of the way).

This give a variable damage system with the constant damage value of the weapon (the best of both worlds).

Quote:Original post by Omegavolt

Quote:Original post by wildhalcyon
If you think about it, an attack like a sword slash can have a variety of outcomes, which is reflected in a variable damage number.

If you take a look at most battle systems, they list the damage for a typical sword as, for instance, 2-8 damage. It appears that this is a result of how it used to be in the P&P versions where you had to roll 2d4 to get your damage. It just doesnt seem realistic to me.

How can a player hit a monster with a sword, with the hit being unblocked and on unarmored flesh, and only do 2 damage? Thats little more than a scratch. That may work if the monster dodged somewhat, but the dodge just gets rolled into the attack roll and becomes invisible. That may be OK for some games, but I plan on using dodge as a skill and a viable option for avoiding damage and setting up for the next attack. If a sword gets swung and a player receives only 2 damage, then it will be because the player chose to dodge at that moment. It just adds depth to the tactical side of my battle system. :P

Swords sometimes only make light cuts. It happens. I don't see it as a flaw in the system. Dodging as a skill can still be employed, it will just reduce the inherently random damage even more. I'm employing evade as a stat, but that doesn't mean that someone who fails to dodge is always going to get the full brunt of the damage.

I'm definitely moving away from PnP "dice" rolls, which some games do retain as a slightly outdated system. One thing I liked about some of the console RPGs is greater HP and damage ranges - in the hundreds and thousands. Not because bigger numbers are better, but because they allow finer granularity in the damage. If you have 5 max HP, 2 and 3 damage is significantly different. With 50 HP, you get a broader range which might be better represesnted by 16-27. Higher damage ranges aren't popular because they require interesting rolls of dice to get adequate variation.

As far as damage goes, you can have it scale based, not only on if you hit, but by how much you hit by. For the sake of simplicity lets say that a certain character has a 50% chance to hit. The possible outcomes of a random number could include...

< 10: Critical Miss, Lose next Turn
> 10 < 40: Miss
>40 < 60: Light Hit (1/2 dmg)
>60 < 90: Hit (Normal Damage)
> 90: Critical Hit (Double Damage)

These would of course scale based on your chance to hit your opponent.

Another system could involve a greater range of damage modifiers. using the same 100 based scale you could use the following style (-10 == missed target by 10: 10 means got 10 more then you needed to hit the target)

-10 == Miss
-7 == Hit (Damage -= 14)
-5 == Hit (Damage -= 10)
-2 == Hit (Damage -= 4)
0 == Hit (Damage)
2 == Hit (Damage += 4)
4 == Hit (Damage += 8)
8 == Hit (Damage += 16)
10 == Hit (Damage += 20)

etc, etc

Then, not only does the quality of weapon effect damage, your skill does as well. You could have low strength but good attack doing decent damage.

Quote:Original post by Omegavolt
Why not? Except for an all-out miss, if a player swings their sword and their target fails to dodge, theyre going to get all the damage the sword is able to dish out.

Not necessarily. A hit to the head, for example, would do more damage then a strike to the foot. Hence variable damage.