Alternative Damage System - with equivalent results

[Baduin]

Edited 26.06.2007, changing to final version.

The pdf version can be found at:

http://rapidshare.com/files/98325747/Tr ... system.pdf
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/true20/
or
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/blo ... ing/files/

Alternative Damage System - with equivalent results

This system is designed to yield identical results as the original True20 damage system. I simulated the probabilities of disabling characters with different ratios of Toughness and Damage under both systems and they proved remarkably similar. I hope that the followning systems will prove easier to use.

First variant uses the Toughness Save, but with no penalties

The Damage Track levels remain as in original - Hurt, Wounded, Disabled and Dying. There are NO penalties to Toughness for any injury.
There are 3 Hurt boxes, 2 Wounded boxes, 1 Disabled Box and 1 Dying Box. If a target suffers a result for which all boxes are already checked off, check off the next highest result.

The second variant uses Damage roll instead of Toughness save. Note that here are 3 wound boxes. It is so because the difficulties of Damage roll are not perfectly equivalent to Toughness save difficulties.

The Damage Track levels remain as in original - Hurt, Wounded, Disabled and Dying. There are NO penalties to Toughness for any injury.
There are 3 Hurt boxes, 3 Wounded boxes, 1 Disabled Box and 1 Dying Box. If a target suffers a result for which all boxes are already checked off, check off the next highest result.

There is no Toughness save. Instead, the attacker rolls for damage. Damage equals d20+Weapon Damage+Strength Bonus+Other Bonuses.

The target compares the damage with their Toughness.

If Damage equals Toughness+5 target is Hurt
If Damage equals Toughness+10 target is Wounded
If Damage If Damage equals Toughness+15 target is Disabled.

Conviction:
The attacker cannot re-roll the damage roll. The target can expend a Conviction point to force the attacker to re-roll the damage roll. On a result of 11 through 20 on the second roll, deduct 10 from the result; a 10 or lower remains as-is (so the second roll is always a result of 1-10). Take the lower of both rolls.

The following part is common for both systems:

Non-lethal Damage

Non-lethal damage uses the same damage track, but with different results - Bruised, Dazed, Staggered and Unconscious. The lethal damage causes always the results of the corresponding results of the non-lethal damage. In practice, this means that Disabled characters are also Staggered, and therefore lose one full-round action after suffering a disabled result. They can take no actions, lose their dodge and parry bonuses to Defense, and have a –2 penalty to Defense. In the following rounds, disabled characters can only take a standard or a move action. If a disabled character takes a standard action, he falls unconscious and begins
dying on the following round. (For other damage levels, results of non-lethal damage are subsumed into lethal damage).

If the target suffers non-lethal damage, mark it on the damage track with eg "/" (and lethal damage as "X"). Non-lethal damage comes always on top of lethal damage, and can overflow to the next damage level. Eg if you have 2 Hurt marks, and suffer 2 Bruise results, mark 1 Bruise. The second Bruise overflows into the next level - mark 1 Daze.

When you suffer additional lethal damage, put it into the free boxes. If there are no free boxes on a given level, convert the non-lethal damage marks into the lethal. In the above example you have 2 Hurt marks, 1 Bruise mark and 1 Daze mark. If you suffer 3 Hurt results, 2 of them overflow into wounded level. You will have additionately 1 remaining Daze mark. The Bruise mark was converted into Hurt.

You don't have to erase and re-draw every mark on your Damage track. A non-lethal mark can be transformed into a lethal one by drawing an crisscrossing line to create an X.

Healing

Healing transforms lethal damage into non-lethal damage, and removes non-lethal damage. Remember that you have to heal the lowest mark first - if there is any non-lethal damage at lower level, it must be healed or recovered from before attempting to recover from lethal damage.

Benefits of the Damage roll system:

You can note the numbers at which you become hurt, wounded or disabled on your character sheet. They change only when you take off your armor or are attacked using Finesse. When the attacker rolls Damage, you can simply check off the corresponding box, without the need for any mathematical operations at all.

[Father of Dragons]

This is very similar to Kuni's toughness threshold variant. The big differences are the way conviction is used and your system's lack of toughness penalties.

[Baduin]

1. There is one small fault with the previous system - as someone noted, according to general rules the threshold should be 7+Con + armor +other, not 6 - usually you roll to equal the target number, not to exceed it. On the other hand, in that case there would be problems with the thresholds for Wounded etc.

2. The whole point of my system is to eliminate the penalty to Toughness. That way the target numbers are static and can be recorded pre-game. I think it should speed up the play a bit.

3. I didn't see the need to change the way Conviction operates. This is exactly the present system, merely applied to the other side. The probabilistic results are equal.

[emb]

Hey, I think I like it.

I like that the probabilities are exactly the same (I'm new, and too many people like the way it currently works for me to want to overhaul it).

And.. it does seem simpler.. good work.

[Ulorian]

Nice work.

[The Shadow]

Overall, this seems very nice. The one odd part is Conviction - can't the attacker also reroll? What if they both do?

Is Hurt nothing but a place-holder in this system?

[Baduin]

Attacker cannot reroll - as I said, I think the current use of Conviction to avoid damage works perfectly, so I didn't want to change this. As for Hurt - if you cause enough hurts, they overflow into wounds, and then into disabled and dying. Their function at present is not very different.

[Turanil]

Me too I do like this houserule. Indeed seems easier than regular system which is the only part I do not like with True20 (I find it somewhat complicated and requiring too much book-keeping).

[Baduin]

I performed some additional calculations, and it appeared that in my original system the probabilties of the Disabled result were mostly correct, but the probability of getting Wounded was too low. Therefore, I changed the number of Hurt and Wounded boxes to 3 each - this way the probabilities are mostly correct. (there are some unavoidable differences - in my system it is a bit easier to disable and wound an opponent with very high toughness compared to damage).

(The final system removed and transferred to the first post.)

[Kuni]

Interesting, interesting!

I may try this out in my games and see how it plays. (I'm currently using, well, my house rules, and they work well, but the slowly ticking down Threshold can be somewhat irritating to deal with.) One thing I do not like with your current system is that it violates the principle that a player can always spend Conviction to reroll -any- d20 roll -- perhaps there's some sort of small tweak that could come into play, like "spend a Conviction to reduce damage to a Hurt condition"?

I wonder, perhaps, if a system like this would open up the possibility of feats/abilities that work like this:

"When you make this attack, the defender is considered to have one fewer empty Hurt box."

or vice versa:

"Even when you have full Hurt boxes, additional Hurt conditions do not cause you to become Wounded."

etc, etc.

[jonrog1]

I understand the limitation on Conviction. In True20, the attacker can boost the attack, but the defender can control the effect of the damage. If the attacker can control both attack and damage, that skews the system a bit I don't think this exception is crippling.

Of the numbers indeed work, I like this a LOT. I've been playtesting my chase system, and maybe it's just that I'm grinding out a bunch of combats in a row, but I've never noticed how annoying tracking those Toughness mods were before.

Now, on to harder issues -- inanimate object damage and size. I do not like the escalating Toughness solution to bigger objects -- I prefer some sort of standard hardness, with maybe the number of wounds before being disabled a result fo size(Spycraft 2.0 kind of plays with this obliquely)[/i]

[Sean-Khan]

Sounds quite promising but I haven't had a chance to think of this thoroughly yet.

For now I have just a minor gripe - Healing is a bit clumsy, as you will have to erase lethal marking and then add non-lethal. Just a small annoyance.

Another minor idea - if you're afraid of Hurt's adding complexity to calculating, wouldn't it be easier to add it to the damage? Just say 'Ok, you hit, roll damage at +2' and tell players to add their hurt levels to the damage they get.

[emb]

I did a quick calculation and I may have found a small error, but it is an important one.

In the normal system, a +0 attack against a +0 toughness minion puts a flat d20 roll against a DC 15. That means the results 15,16,17,18,19,20 allow him to survive, while the rest means that he's out of the fight. That's a 30% chance of survival.

In your system, a +0 attack against a +0 toughness minion puts a flat d20 roll against a DC 5. The results 1,2,3,4 means the minion is still up, while the rest mean he is down. That is a 20% change of survival.

Did I calculate that right? For non-minion situations this wouldn't be a big deal, but Minions already drop really fast, and cutting their survival chances by 33% would be a bad idea.

Let me know.. I'm hoping i just did the calculation wrong somehow. If not, how could you change it to be accurate for minions?

[jonrog1]

I think that's actually incorrect -- and now observe as I shame the professors who taught me stats for my physics degreee alllll sooo loooong agoooo ...

The new attack roll system has to BEAT the static toughness, not just equal it. So d20 flat vs. Toughness +0 keeps a minion standing on a 1,2, 3, 4, 5 for a 25% chance of survival. 25% vs. 30%.

So out of 100 minion combats with the old system, 30 are still standing after the first hit.

Out of 100 minion combats with the new system, 25 are still standing after the first hit.

Or at least that's how it SHOULD work, unless I'm misreading the system. A clarification should be in order. However, even if that nudge was why the Hurt/Wounded were changed to three boxes each because it's just "equals" and not "exceeds", I can live with that relative percentage difference. That's why you never look at absolute percentages, btw. Sort of like the constant "sexual diseases jumped 20%" headline you constantly see, as the percentages of the general population hover between 5% and 6%.

[emb]

Why not just add 2 to all toughness values? That would make them equal.

::: 30% chance with old system, and 1,2,3,4,5,6 = 30% with new.

So, the author of this damage system made it 25% instead of 30% on purpose? Why?

And having to BEAT the toughness instead of equaling it seems lame: the rest of True20 doesn't work that way.