A few little bits for today:
- I don't remember seeing this rule on grazes before. I like the idea, but the execution is a bit much for me.
Grazes
I'll have to play around with something simpler, but not right now. It's probably better to say it does minimum damage before DR on a hit by 0. There, done. I guess I did it right now after all.
- I don't need these, but Doug always puts out quality products. Always.
Solo Scenarios for OSE
That's all for today!
To me a 'graze' is just rolling low on the damage (it's a graze, or the armor deflection took place, or there wasn't enough follow through, or whatever).
ReplyDeleteOtherwise shouldn't success by greater amounts also increase damage? And I don't just mean on a crit, we already have that.
The more dice you roll, the less and less likely low damage is. A strike doing 1d does minimum damage 1 in 6 times; a gun rolling 3d 1 in 218 times. It does 6 or less damage only 10 in 216 times.
DeleteAs a result, a higher-damage strike is very unlikely to roll damage. A 10 HP guy has a limb crippled from 6 injury - that third gun (or club blow, or whatever) does that 211 in 216 times. That's just annoying. We had that issue with low-tech firearms pretty often - either the musket hit you and generally hit you pretty damn hard (or crippled your limb) - or you were missed or Dodged it. You couldn't get a light wound to the arm or leg with a sufficiently hard strike, or get clipped with the tip of the sword. Not even with a minimum damage roll in some cases.
And no, just adding a rule for minimum damage strikes shouldn't mean you need to make a rule on the other end for higher damage strikes, especially if you *also* have critical hits which can do damage over and above the listed damage of the weapon. That's double-dipping and false consistency as well. It's Dodge or Die now, I don't need to up the "die" to allow for some middle ground. IMO.
"The more dice you roll, the less and less likely low damage is."
DeleteAnd does max damage just as infrequently. We have hit, we have miss, we have both sides of the Crit coin. By RAW any hit is just a hit, so if a "hit by 0" suddenly does something different, should not other hits "by X, X+1, etc" also do something different, as well as misses?
"especially if you *also* have critical hits"
Critical Success is 'balanced' by Critical Failure. Now yes, in //your// game, Critical Successes are probably far, far more likely as skill has ratcheted up, however in the game I'm running Critical Failure actually has a much higher chance of occurring as skills are often in the 5-13 range rather than the 16+ range (with about half the Players having one or two skills in the 14-16 range).
It just feels to me like your adding a Critical "Not-Miss" result. "It's a hit buuuuuuuut" type thing and as a Player I'd be voting against it (I know your Players don't really vote, and this will go both ways with NPCs being just as impacted).
But it would cause me (if I played in your games) to simply make sure my combat skill was always at least a 16 or 17 before rolling.
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Having read T Bone's write up... it's way too complicated and he's ignoring the simple setting switch that's literally written to cover the "hit but only grazed" //cinematic// result: Flesh Wounds.
Why add an additional complication when those rules are right there and can always have an impact rather than a very low probability die result*.
* For your game, for mine the likelihood of rolling an 8-12 is pretty high, where hitting a 14-16 (or worse, their effective skill is 17+ and thus //never// going to affected by the ruling) is much lower. I mean, what is the chance of rolling exactly a 16 anyway? Somewhere around 6 in 216 rolls?
How often do your Players roll against a 12 for instance? (I mean I can see it with Deceptive Called Shots or casters with lots of "Spells On" or long range ranged attacks, but I doubt it happens all that often.)
Max damage is just as rare, but rarely necessary to cause debilitating issues for PCs given sufficient damage. Having a "just barely hit" rule to allow for grazes allows for marginal hits that damage rolls just won't provide except on rare occasions. Certainly not to the extent that minimal damage on a hit by 0 would.
DeleteI understand that not everyone would like this, but it's not a rule for all situations and all campaigns. Simply put, I think I'd allow a rule as I wrote or a rule quite like it without hesitation in most games where I wanted to reduce PC crippling and deaths but still have crippling and death that has some real believability overall.