When it comes to large blows, it's fine as is.
When it comes to small ones, it's not.
Part of it is simple aesthetics:
Players very often gloat about how "harmless" foes are when they get hit. "It bites you with its diseased fangs for 7 cutting damage!" "I take 0 and laugh it off." Amusing once, not as amusing 15-20 times in a combat, say, as someone drops nearly nude into a mass of giant rats, snakes, spiders, etc. confident that their high HT and Fit will shrug off any lingering effects and knowing they'll take 0 HP of injury.
So it's clear it's optically and descriptively "injured, but it doesn't affect you" it's seen as "uninjured completely." People say things like "It just bounces off!" and forget to do things like roll against poison, or disease, and don't think they're bleeding.
Another part is mechanics:
It's actually very hard to kill a barbarian without corrosion or high-damage attacks. They ignore fire, as it really can't hurt them even if they're engulfed in flames. And although they should be taking damage from spells like Fire Cloud or Rain of Stones and just not being seriously hurt, instead they're totally unharmed. (And yes, will gripe about how their clothes burned off but won't suffer injury.) The slow effect of corrosion - it's less effective on a barbarian dipped in acid than on a stone golem dipped in the same - is odd.
Here is one way I might fix it in the future in Felltower:
- minimum damage of 1. For any damage type that has a minimum damage of 1 from a die roll (corrosion, cutting, impaling, etc. - basically not crushing), a barbarian with Savage Warrior DR will still take 1 injury from the attack if other DR is not sufficient to completely absorb the attack.
For example, Mild Bruce has 7 DR - DR 2 with Tough Skin, DR 5 with Savage Warrior DR. He walked into a Fire Cloud cast at 3 HP of damage per turn. He takes 7 - 3 = 0, but he only has 2 completely protective DR. He takes 3-2=1 injury. A cloud at 5 HP would inflict 5 - 7 - 0, but 5 - 2 = 3 so he'd take his minimum of 1 HP of injury. Against a 1-2 point cloud, he'd be unharmed.
- cost would drop. Right now, the DR has -60% in limitations. One that allows damage to bleed through automatically with a maximum of 1 HP, against most damage types, is probably -10% or -20%. I'll have to see what Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch says about it, but I'm leaning to -10%. It's a big limitation on DR, as it can take you from "invulnerable" to "takes harm" even when you have sufficient DR. It does feel generous if it's -20%. A -70% total it's 1.5 points per, so 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 for 1-5 points. If I made it -20%, it would be -80% total and 1-5 points for 1-5 DR. Even with this limitation that feels very cheap. I think people would still max it out right away for 8 points, and not blink an eye. Perhaps such a limition on its own would be -20%, but only -10% when combined with Tough Skin (-20%), which covers some similar limitations.
In a retro-active case like this, I would just refund the points and allow them to be spent right away without any in-game justication or cost. So 2 points back on each barbarian to do . . . something . . . or just save, would work.
I'm not yet 100% commmitted to this, but I'm getting close. We'll see how my players feel about this implementation. It's a "nerfing" of barbarian DR, to be sure, because they got a lot for those extra 2 character points . . . but it'll better reflect an appropriate feel of what's happening. They'll be tough as nails, and barely hurt after a nasty scrape, but won't be swimming with the pirhannas and standing in alchemist's fire totally unharmed. They'll stop ignoring attacks entirely just because they know they can't really get hurt. It'll still hurt, 1 HP of injury at a time.
One 'compromise' might be to change all physical blows to being able to deal Blunt Trauma. So when (frex) Mild Bruce walks naked into the cloud 6 points of physical damage, he'll still take 1, even if it was a Needle or a Blade Storm, instead of just the 6 point Rain of Stones dealing it's 1.
ReplyDeleteI've been contemplating this for my own games, where it's been far, far less of issue... but I play a Shirtless Savage Ogress out on the extreme end of the spectrum, DR 10/12 (Everything/Crushing, Thick Skin, 5 points Doesn't Stack With Armor). Luckily at SM +2, she can't afford armor... yet. But I have been eyeballing a nice invisibly visored helm to protect her one main weak point.
So I've seen the ludicrous results of ignoring things that deal crippling amounts of damage for anyone else, and she just ignores the hit like it never happened.
I considered that, but for damage that doesn't have a roll (swarms, cloud spells, and some fixed effects) you can't roll a "6" and thus can't do any. Plus I'd rather not have barbarians ignore, say, 5/6s of dogs tearing at them, 5/6s of rat swarms, 5/6s of alchemist's fire damage seconds, etc.
DeleteI don't mind them shrugging off blows, exactly, so much as treating the eventually-lethal like it's literally ineffective. A shirtless savage condemned by some hostile foe to being strapped over a fire ant colony shouldn't be thinking, well, I'll shut my eyes and just wait a couple of days for my friends to find me, because I literally cannot be eaten alive by anything inflicting less than 1d+4 cutting . . .
Another consideration--not necessarily for Felltower, but for people who want to tinker with and playtest the rules in DFD:Barbarians--is to perhaps make it semi-ablative, so that really horrible wounds actually start to knock down the DR on that area. There's only so many chest slashes one can shrug off, for example, before they take their toll. But that is a lot of record keeping and more complicated.
DeleteOf course, knowing Bruce's player quite well, and knowing that he has seven points saved, if he gets two more points, mu guess is--those nine points are going immediately to raise ST to 21...
DeleteThis issue with semi-ablative DR is that it will wear off over multiple encounters. You can still shrug off the swarms and goblin arrows and rat bites, but then later you have less DR versus an a giant's punch, an orc's spears, and a dragon's bite. You're potentially just shifting when the damage occurs, and if you allow healing spells to replenish lost ablative DR, it's unlikely it'll really matter fight to fight.
DeleteI should have noted that in the post.
Probably you can round all Blunt Trauma up?
ReplyDeleteHow would that be different? Besides making it literally 1 injury, not 1 damage, that penetrates?
DeleteI mean all Blunt Trauma caused by all damage stopped by all flexible armor, not only the Savage Warrior DR. Because in my experience the discount for flexibility is a bit to high, especially when you have less then 5 flexible DR.
DeleteOh, I see. I'll have to decide which is more complicated - splitting off "Tough Skin" DR and "Shirtless Savage" DR and applying a minimum of 1 injury for cutting, piercing, etc., or just saying any hit causes at least 1 damage, even if your non-"Shirtless Savage" DR would apply . . . since rounding all blunt trauma up means even a single point would cause that.
DeleteThe "injury" versus "damage" is the big change here. As Vic points out below, 1 damage past DR is 1-4 injury. 1 injury is just 1 injury.
It is interesting and probably something that needs to be fixed, because as straight DR 7, it does kind of mean that barbarians often cannot be killed by relatively weak enemies (those who cannot do more than 7 damage) without stabbing them in the eye repeatedly. That is a little weird. I don't know about the exact percentage discount if it is nerfed and am curious to see how that math should work out...not sure what "minimum damage 1 for non-crushing" is as a limitation. It's not a minor nerf at all, but it still provides a good deal of protection.
ReplyDeleteI think what this may encourage--which I think is a good thing--is shirtless savages armoring up a bit more. I think, in particular, plate (or heavy plate) helmets would be a good thing. Because without them, your DR 7 Shirtless Savage (2 DR Tough Skin, 5 Levels of Shirtless Savage) is now more at risk of getting hacked to death with relatively low damage foes targeting the head. If they do 5 damage, that's 1 HP of injury pre-multiplier, which goes to 4 HP. Not particularly threatening for one or two shots, but it is a way where a helpless guy could (and appropriately should) be in real fear of death. The vitals as well--going for the vitals merely needs 3 damage to inflict 3 injury (1x3). That's a lot different than a knight with a DR 5 helmet having shots doing 7 bouncing off and doing no damage. Stated a bit differently, a bunch of dinomen with hatchets, for example, need to take off the DR 7 knight's helmet to really damage him with their axes, but they more quickly take out the Shirtless Savage by hacking him in the head. To be clear: That seems right from a verisimilitude aspect.
Having said that, it still provides pretty good benefits, since anything less than 9 damage is only doing 1 injury, then multiplied by hit location. So that is pretty damn good. Arrow to the vitals for 3-8 damage? OK, I take 1 injury, multiplied to 3. Axe to the skull for 5-10 damage (which has DR 9, so anything over 4 does minimum 1 injury)? OK, I take 1 injury, multiplied to 4. Your standard 22 HP barbarian who has Shirtless Savage 5 is now at 15 hp after both of those shots and standing pretty strong!
They are probably unlikely to wear a significant amount of armor, but a helmet? Yeah, that would make sense. And thematically appropriate if that helmet had horns where they could gore folks! Like "Brother Mo" once had. :)
And while I don't run "Mild" Bruce, if I did and got 2 or 3 or 4 points back, seems like it's worth sinking 2 points into the DR 2 vs crushing only (p. 16 of DFD:Barbarians), getting a horned helmet to give him some really good no-limitation skull DR, and investing anything else into combat skills.
The issue of what effects high DR characters like Evileyore's ogress in my game has been interesting, as we found with wights, that FP drain quickly can become HP drain!
ReplyDelete