Scaling damage bonuses in the Martial Arts Technique Design System

This springs from a question posed over on the SJG Forums about technique design in GURPS Martial Arts.



It's totally unofficial, it's not errata. I just want to get that out of the way since I know some people regard "you could do X instead of Y" from an author as "X is the correct way to do this and Y is not." It's more like, if I wanted to do this, how would I do it consistently?

Basically, can you make the damage bonuses for techniques scale?

Yes.

The options for damage bonuses built into techniques are:

+1 damage
and
+2 damage or +1 per die, whichever is higher.

If you want all of these to scale, treat the first one as this instead:

+1 damage or +1 damage per two full dice of base damage, whichever is higher.

That matches how Committed Attack does it.

Or if you really want people to gain a second point of damage at the 3d mark, instead make it +0.5 damage per die, rounded up. That would turn, say, Uppercut, which is a punch (thrust-1) with +1 damage into thrust-1 damage, plus 1 damage for ST up to 26, and +2 for ST 27-44, and so on. That's more generous, and if you do this, I'd suggest changing Committed Attack's +1 damage bonus to work the same way. +1 per two full dice is more consistent with the existing rules, but it means you need ST 35 before it matters for thrust-based techniques.