Tuesday, June 28, 2011

No armor AC adjustment and Hit Point Hades

I'll be adding to this post as I have time. 
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I have been laboring away in an effort to create a Sword and Sorcery feel to a game I am supposed to run Thursday. With the deadline near, so far I have only managed to hang a rope from a tree and get the horse. Today I am climbing atop the horse and positioning myself beneath the noose.

I have come up with nothing that works. Last night was funny. Here was my great 'rule insight'.

All weapons do four die of damage. Either 4d2, 4d4, 4d6, 4d8 or 4d10. Damage die higher than d10 are relegated to monster of great strength. I also plan to order some weird dice (d14, d16, d18).Then, armors are broken down into four categories each with a damage reduction value; none -0, light-1, medium-2 and heavy-3. When damage is rolled,the number of die rolled is adjusted by the damage reduction value.

Looking at the average damages against an unarmored opponent we have the following means:
4d2 - 6 (dagger type)
4d4 - 10 (short sword)
4d6 -14 (longsword)
4d8 - 18 (two handed types)
4d10 - 22 (lance and similar)

That is some staggering damage.

So my first thought was to dispense with hit points and assign wound points. The character would receive a low number of wound points perhaps equal to there starting hit points. Then, when damage is rolled, a '1'on any die indicates a wound. But, then I would have to manage percentages on the die as wound delivery vehicles (ie. the d10 has a 10% chance of delivering a wound whereas the d2 has a 50% chance).

At first I thought, this is great, now I can give weapons a basic wound percentage value instead of a numeric value. I could also have armor do variable damage reduction based upon the type of weapon being used. Actually, it opens up to a lot of possibilities.

Now as for armor class, that is a whole new ball game as are attack and defense rolls. I have this funny feeling I am no longer playing CnC.

So, my hit point/wound idea did not settle well. It 'feels' incomplete. Perhaps this is because I have played high hp or progressive hp games for so long, I just want more wounding or hit points. So I decided to up the hps - dramatically. A normal human would use 2d10 for their hps while a warrior type would get 3d10. You can see where this is going. And one might ask WHY?

Then I had the idea of two sets of hit points; one for wounds and one reflecting fatigue and small cuts scratches.

I'm shaking my head.

Now, armor will add no ac value just DR value. Defense is to depend upon the shield and skills.

So this is how a weapon would appear.

weapon       damage     wound     type
Mace           4d6          1             bludgeoning
long sword   4d8          1             hacking

and armor would look something like this (attack type to the right)
armor           B     H
chain            1      3
leather          1      1


or something like that

1 comment:

Gaming Ronin said...

What about when any die rolls max it counts as a wound. Like a 6 on a d6. Or 8 on a d8 that die counts as a wound. Every weapon would have capability of doing up to 4 wounds.

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