So I got a lot of complaints about how damage in DW is terrible. This is a way I thought of to be a bigger fan of my players. I don’t know what they think about it yet, because I just shared it with them, but if anyone wants to use it, feel free.
So I got a lot of complaints about how damage in DW is terrible.
So I got a lot of complaints about how damage in DW is terrible.
So, flat damage then?
flat-ish. you still roll a dice, just a smaller one with an add.
If I did flat damage, I’d probably say half+1
I don’t think my players want outright flat damage though, which is sad, because I honestly prefer it. Since I wrote Visual Novel World, from what I’ve seen it works better.
D&D also has this problem, and DW was intended to emulate that
I’m aware.
Visual Novel World? Did you remove that dropbox link to it on your blog on purpose? I’d love to give it a read if you’re still handing it out.
I don’t remember, I put it in some other post I think. and if that other post got deleted, I probably did. I send people to my discord anyway: discordapp.com – Discord – Free voice and text chat for gamers
Not in the least, no… ok, that’s not entirely true, I did write a slasher horror game, but DW isn’t advertised like that very much, and I don’t want to run it like that.
Honestly, I like this idea as well, and have wanted to do exactly this many times before. It doesn’t make sense to me that the stronger something is intended to be, the wider its range of damage. It makes more sense to me that it should do more damage in general, so I’ve often wanted to make everything a d6 with plusses and minuses.
I don’t think we’re in the majority though. I haven’t met many players who are in favor of that. Partially, I think players like having their die for damage, or even having multiple dice. It’s almost like gambling.
But to me, it doesn’t make as much sense as using a d6 in general. Also, it’s incredibly anti-climactic when the barbarian rolls a 12 on his Hack & Slash, only to roll a 1 for damage. It just doesn’t make sense to me. 4 damage should be his lowest amount of damage, that’s why he’s up there risking his life: because he’s also a very real threat. If he is capable of rolling 1 damage, he loses a feeling of threat. I also think dealing 1 damage is a great way to add extra insult when someone rolls a 6-. “Yea, you hit the guy, he barely feels it taking 1 damage, and shoves you across the room.”
I thinks this is a nice compromise to balance the damage, while still giving the players the tension of rolling. Another option is to use a 2d damage system. There is still the possibility of rolling minimum damage, but it is much rarer, especially as th die type increases.
Option 1: Roll 2d, divide by 2, round up – requires a little bit of extra calculation
Option 2: Roll 2x 1/2d and just add together – d4 = 2d2, d6=2d3, d8=2d4, d10=2d5 – you will need an app or will need to buy specialist dice (d2, d3, d5), which are available (gamers love to get more dice)
The other thing not to forget is translating the damage in the fiction especially with weapon tags involved. What does 1 damage with a messy and/or forceful weapon look like? How can one damage feel like a success?
Your blows do not penetrate his armor, but the force of your attacks knock him to the ground (or back toward the ledge).
He parries most of your blows, but your sword catches him on the right hand, taking several fingers with it.
The vain Baroness cries in anguish as your rapier leaves a gash across her once beautiful cheek.
Ron Shier It wouldn’t be difficult to add the line “roll your regular dice on 6-“
Given how low most monsters’ HP are in DW, won’t this just result in many creatures being killed in a single blow? Additionally, on a 10-12 what’s stopping the character from just attacking again right after?Sure they only did 1 damage the first time, but the successful roll means there’s no negative consequence so they can just hit them again.
I also agree with Robert Finamore that a low damage roll might feel mechanically unsatisfying, but narratively it can still be great.
“Given how low most monsters’ HP are in DW, won’t this just result in many creatures being killed in a single blow?” I don’t know how a thing that doesn’t change maximum damage would alter the status quo for anything but nuisance monsters anyway, which I honestly don’t really care either way about.
“Additionally, on a 10-12 what’s stopping the character from just attacking again right after?Sure they only did 1 damage the first time, but the successful roll means there’s no negative consequence so they can just hit them again. “
Nothing in that statement reflects any existing aspect of how DW works in any way. Hack and Slash and Volley already say what happens on a 10 or 11, and a couple moves here and there make very minor changes to what happens on 12, I’m not modifying any of the core assumptions except what minimum damage can occur.
But with this damage system, the least damage a character with a d10 damage die would do is 7, which would take quite a few creatures in the rule book out in a single swipe, including some which are ‘heavily’ armored.
What do you mean by: “Nothing in that statement reflects any existing aspect of how DW works in any way?”
5 if it’s a d6. There are two options presented. I was thinking d4 was a bit obnoxious after I wrote it, but I did include the d6 option for some variability. I have no problem just taking out most things that have 5 HP.
As to the other, I will never understand how people can find ambiguity in an exact statement.
Alright, fine, I’ll clarify further, there aren’t moves (at least not in core) that say anything about a player just going again. Those things are up to the GM, and nothing I have written changes anything except minimum damage.
Fair enough. I wasn’t implying that the GM should just let a single character wail on a single target at the expense of everyone else. That’s not good GMing. But, if it makes sense fictionally, they could certainly have another swing.
As for the minimum damage aspect, it feels mechanically overpowered as 1 or 2 successful rolls with a minimum damage of 5 or 7 would dispense with most creatures pretty quickly. And as Robert Finamore correctly pointed out, 1 ‘damage’ can still mean a creature loses a hand or gets knocked into a piranha infested river.
Regardless, this is just my opinion, and it ain’t my game. If it works for your group, it pleases the DW gods.
You know, it’s a little mechanically heavy, but you could stagger this… every two levels, drop damage die one stage, but add +2 to the roll. At d4, it doesn’t drop any lower. So at 6th level a d10 base damage would drop three steps to a d6+4.
I think we have different definitions of “most” I’ve already found around 2 dozen creatures at a glance that aren’t dispensed especially quickly, but minimum damage for anything that doesn’t swing d10s wouldn’t be 5 anyway, it’d be either 3 or 1. And I ain’t got all fighters. Even if I expect fighters to hit for 9 on average, there’s still creatures where that’s going to turn into 4-5, and at every single turn, those creatures are likely to die 6-7 hits from the fighter later (Maybe 4-5 with other good solid hits in).
I’m ok with single creatures dying at those rates (and also with the caveat that certain circumstances may prevent hack and slash or volley from being relevant, as makes sense with any suitably large or epic monster), but I don’t typically populate group or horde battles with single creatures. There’s even a hand full of creatures that my 1 damage-er and my 3 damage-er are guaranteed not to kill on a roll of 1
So if it takes 3-6 hits to take down a group because you have to one shot them, one at a time, it certainly beats having to go 15-20 because you got a bunch of consecutive shit rolls.
And no, 1 damage doesn’t mean jack if the creature has 1 armor, as a lot of nuisance creatures do. I explicitly made a creature that was supposed to be a cakewalk with 3 HP and 1 armor let the party outnumber them by 1, and they nearly got their asses wiped because of a series of garbage rolls, before the end of the first scenario.
I get that the base damage of 1 minimum accurately reflects on some dumb shit the previous game had in it. I get that some people have a problem with horde and group monsters sometimes being a cakewalk. I also get that if my party dies in the first scenario well, then I may as well put up my dice bag.
Brennan OBrien THat’s under consideration with the table as well 😀 We already thought of something of the sort.
Why not add them as advanced moves they can purchase instead of giving them automatically to everyone. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a warrior with a 2-5 advanced move of ‘change damage to 1d8+2’, and a 6+ advanced move of ‘change damage to 1d6+4’? And other classes with lower damage dice would have fewer options.
Huey Simon no, it wouldn’t when taken in consideration with advanced moves already existing that grant whole additional dice. If I went that route I’d just give it to them at the 2-5 and 6+ thresholds without requiring anything extra.