The Damage System

At DunDraCon, especially after spending so much time making my BESM 3rd Edition characters, I told myself that I really needed to finalize the rpg system I've been tooling with for years. But I quickly got stuck where I always get stuck: damage.

Understand that I'm a fairly traditional roleplayer. I do not like narrative games or storytelling games. I want a system in which the success or failure of character's actions are determined by their traits and the dice. Otherwise, I'd just play a freeform, diceless game (which I have done, but I find too exhausting to do it on a regular basis). My primary goal is to have a simple, straight-forward system that I can feel comfortable running. I am very comfortable running BESM, for example, but the headaches of character creation are more than I want to deal with. I like Savage Worlds, but there are enough little things I don't like or don't want to deal with (like making powers) that I still want something else.

So imagine a character skill/trait/ability system not unlike Castle Falkenstein (or Savage Worlds, minus Edges). A typical task roll would be stat + roll (like 2d6) or NxY (where N and/or Y is based on the level of stat) or any number of permutations along similar lines. This part is easy. Where it gets tricky is combat, not least of all because combat tends to be a common and critical component of rpgs, including the ones I run. As much as I do not like hack-n-slash games, combat is still very prevalent in the games I run. It is important for combat to feel right.

For most character tasks, all you need is a simple skill roll. A degree of success helps the description, but is easy to interpret from the results, and is not critical. With combat, how well you hit (how much damage you do) is very important. There are genre conventions to consider (fantasy combat can be deadly or cinematic and feels very different from science fiction, western, or super-heroic combat). That I do not have a fixed genre in mind for this system is part of the problem I am having.

The damage of a successful attack should depend on a number of factors:

• The level of success of the attack: a glancing blow is less dangerous than a solid hit.
• The type of weapon: all weapons are dangerous, but some are more so than others.
• The strength of the attacker: at least for hand-to-hand attacks.
• The toughness of the defender: size can be a major factor here, for example.
• The armor of the defender: armor can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Many different rpgs have approached this problem many different ways with various degrees of success and various advantages and disadvantages. Ideally, I want all five of these factors to have a distinguishable effect on combat with some tactical variability in the choices of what type of fighter someone chooses to play. For example, in Savage Worlds, armor and toughness are the same; an average person in plate mail has the same toughness as a brawny, healthy guy (high Vigor) yet naked person. This is workable as a game, but I would prefer if it wasn't the case. In an hit point-based system, for example, the plate may provide damage reduction while personal toughness determines total hit points. To me, this feels better.

Anyway, it's late and I'll discuss this more in my next post.