Rolling for damage?

[Leonides]

Hey guys.

I recently started up a BW game, and though my players mostly love the system, they say they feel the damage is a little flat. Why? Because They always know how much an Incidental, Mark, or Superb will do with their weapons. It's the same every time. They told me they feel it'd be more cinematic to roll for the damage instead, using the IMS as a basis for the # of dice you get to roll. Basically, they say they feel a little cheated out of the "awesome hit!" experience.

What do you guys think?

[Viper]

Hey Leonides,

Thing is, your strike roll is basically your "to hit" roll AND your damage roll, condensed into one. To show how this would work in D&D terms, lets say that instead of rolling damage on a seperate die, you do it all on the roll of one d20.

Lets go with a longsword that in D&D terms does 1d8 damage- that's eight levels of potential damage. So, lets say you're fighting an orc, and the DM says you need a 13 to hit it. If you roll a 13, you do 1 point of damage. If you roll a 14, you do 2, at 15, you do 3, so on and so forth all the way up to 8 points of damage for rolling a 20.

Burning wheel works pretty much the same way, except that there are three levels of damage for each weapon, as opposed to variable levels per weapon type (the variation in BW comes as much from the strength of the wielder as from weapon type)

Since wound tolerances in BW are quite low (excepting the horrors that populate the monster burner), a superb strike with most weapons is so deadly it negates the need for any kind of "critical hit" effect.

However, if I might make a suggestion, you can experiment with allowing extra strike successes to increase damage by one pip (for every success over what's required to do a superb hit) For example, let's say you get 6 successes on a sword strike- you need 5 to get to superb, leaving you 1 left over. Let's say you'd normally do a B10 with your sword, but the extra success allows you to bump it up to a B11.

Never tried it, so it might be unbalancing... it might not, though, only way to know is to playtest it.

[luke]

Hi Leonides,

try using the missile weapon DOF damage mechanics for all weapons.

hope that helps,
-L

[Drozdal]

Hi Leonides,

try using the missile weapon DOF damage mechanics for all weapons.

hope that helps,
-L

If You want even more randomness, make quality of the weapon affect it's DOF (for example Primitive -1 , ROM as is, Superior +1 to DOF)

[Viper]

:P

[Leonides]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

I'll see which ones my players perfer. Nothing should be too unbalancing, since the NPCs will be fighting the same way. ;)

[luke]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

I'll see which ones my players perfer. Nothing should be too unbalancing, since the NPCs will be fighting the same way. ;)

actually, extra success=extra damage pip will change the game to a much more splatterpunk feel. In other words, the punks that are your players will be splattered all over by lucky shots from goblins.

but try it out, let me know how it goes.
-L

[Viper]

ditto for the DOF, though- a goblin could get 1 success on a strike and still score a superb hit.

[luke]

ditto for the DOF, though- a goblin could get 1 success on a strike and still score a superb hit.

yeah, but at least it'd only be a B7 or B8. Last thing I need is a goblin with a small sword giving me B10s.

-L

[Viper]

As a Night Seeker par excellence, I fully support goblins inflicting B10s!

[Pheel]

...you can experiment with allowing extra strike successes to increase damage by one pip (for every success over what's required to do a superb hit) For example, let's say you get 6 successes on a sword strike- you need 5 to get to superb, leaving you 1 left over. Let's say you'd normally do a B10 with your sword, but the extra success allows you to bump it up to a B11...

One way to tone down the extra successes is to increase damage pips based on the ADD of the weapon, instead of increasing 1 pip/success over superb...

And with my limited experience, if a player gets hit with a superb shot from just about anything, they're down (if not out), so it shouldn't impact character mortality that much, but might give the players a chance to do a little more against some of the gems in the Monster Burner...