Alternative Damage Roll system - call for feedback

[Ambrosia]

Greetings!

In this thread I would like to present, and get feedback on a simple alternative rule that revolves around a core mechanic - Damage Rolls.

This idea ironically evolved out of this thread, from a discussion about the rather random and not in-world explainable ability of damage rolls being able to turn a full-blown, large calibre, 6-extra-successes bullseye-hit modern firearm shot into a low-to-zero-damage affair...before even checking armor and soak.
And while it was mentioned in the discussion that it could explained by the bullet missing anything vital in the body, the WoD system does not reflect this, as no/low damage equals barely a day of healing time.

It's not even limited to firearms. Who doesn't know the situation of landing an absolutely amazing 'oh man did you see that??' hit with your favorite pimped-out sword that has you cheer and hi-5 around the table, just to not even get to the point where the enemy has to soak. Despite an amazing hit?

Yeah. That.

The premises of this alternative rule as presented here are as follows:

1) Do not, in any way, increase the possible total damage from the vanilla system. It is not the goal, and increasing the maximum damage really is not something WoD needs, with its rather narrow range of HP.
2) Reduce the range of randomness of damage, in the context of good to-hit roll results. The better the hit, the more definite a good damage result should be.
3) Keep it simple


So, without further ado, the rule changes and familiars:

EDIT: Original proposal, too complicated:

*) The to-hit roll remains unchanged. 1 success to hit, each on top counting as an 'Extras success'
*) The dodge/parry rolls are unchanged and take away from the to-hit roll results as usual.
1) Each Extra Success (post-dodge) up to the weapon's damage rating (excluding strength) becomes an automatic damage success, instead of being rolled.
2) Each Extra Success that exceeds the above part of the weapon's damage rating gets rolled as usual.
3) Strength always gets rolled as usual, if applicable to the weapon.

There you go. This shall be the whole of the change.

Examples:

* Weapon: Sword, strength +2.
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 3 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 2 fixed (part of sword damage rating, covered by first two extra successes) + a roll of strength+1 (leftover extra success)

* Weapon: Great Axe, strength +6.
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 3 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 3 fixed (Part of axe damage rating, covered by first three extra successes) + a roll of strength+3 (leftover 3 axe damage rating points)

* Weapon: Glock 17, 4 damage.
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 5 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 4 fixed (Glock damage rating, covered by first 4 extra successes) + a roll of 1 dice (last extra success)

* Weapon: Shotgun, 8 damage.
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 2 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 2 fixed (Part of shotgun damage rating, covered by first 2 extra successes) + a roll of 6 dice (leftover shotgun damage rating points)

Revised proposal, thanks to Heavy Arms:

*) The to-hit roll remains unchanged. 1 success to hit, each on top counting as an 'Extras success'
*) The dodge/parry rolls are unchanged and take away from the to-hit roll results as usual.
1) Weapons damage ratings get halved (rounded up)
2) The ratings are applied as automatic damage successes
3) Strength in case of melee weapons gets rolled as usual.

Examples:

* Weapon: Sword, strength +1. (Normal system: +2)
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 3 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 1 fixed (weapon rating) + a roll of 2 dice (extra successes) + strength

* Weapon: Great Axe, strength +3. (Normal system: +6)
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 3 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 3 fixed (weapon rating) + a roll of 2 dice (extra successes) + strength

* Weapon: Glock 17, 2 damage. (Normal system: 4)
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 5 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 2 fixed (weapon rating) + a roll of 4 (extra successes)

* Weapon: Shotgun, 4 damage. (Normal system: 8)
To-hit roll post-dodge result: 2 extra successes.
Pre-soak damage: 4 fixed (weapon rating) + a roll of 1 (extra success)

In all cases, the average damage remains the same as in the normal system, but you do not run into the problem of causing zero pre-soak damage despite a good hit anymore. You hit, you are guaranteed to do pre-soak damage.

I hope these examples are formulated simply enough.

More feedback is still welcome - especially some real play hands-on results of this idea.

[Cadmiumcadamium]

One could also just go with fixed weapons dmg and extra successes are rolled. But that might be too much.

Personally i would prefer if one could come up with a system that basicly comes down to one resisted roll (Hit&Dmg vs Evade&Soak). Something like fixed weapons dmg and fixed soak.

[Ambrosia]

One could also just go with fixed weapons dmg and extra successes are rolled. But that might be too much.

Yeah. An old GM of mine played it like that years back, and it was...evil. Really really evil. Hence why I still made it largely dependant on the to-hit success.

[Heavy Arms]

I think the problem with the idea presented is the capping by weapon part gets away from keeping it simple. It also oddly kind of gets away from some of the points we raised in the thread that spawned this, as low damage weapons have extremely low variance in damage output - which is mostly based on hit vs. defense - while high damage weapons retain a significant variance in comparison.

It will probably take some math to get right, but Cadmiumcadamium's idea is probably better. If you start with, say, halving the current damage tags on weapons, and just add them as automatic successes to damage rolls, you get something very simple, and achieves the desired results.

So with your examples:

Sword would roll Strength + 3 dice with 1 bonus success.

Great Axe would roll Strength + 3 dice with 3 bonus successes.

Glock would roll 5 dice with 2 bonus successes.

Shotgun would roll 2 dice with 4 bonus successes.

This pretty much ensures that big weapons are going to hit pretty hard on something without soak, and even lighter weapons are going to cut into HLs pretty quickly.

[Ambrosia]

So with your examples:

Sword would roll Strength + 3 dice with 1 bonus success.

Great Axe would roll Strength + 3 dice with 3 bonus successes.

Glock would roll 5 dice with 2 bonus successes.

Shotgun would roll 2 dice with 4 bonus successes.

This pretty much ensures that big weapons are going to hit pretty hard on something without soak, and even lighter weapons are going to cut into HLs pretty quickly.

I think it could be simplified even further: 'Half of a weapon's damage rating are automatic damage successes'. Contrary to 'weapon damage ratings are halved, and are automatic' I wonder if that would make things too powerful or not...

[Cadmiumcadamium]

Can you run some simulations to see if "Half of a weapons dmg rating is considered automatic successes (rounded down, minimum 1), the rest is rolled along with extra successes from the Hit roll as normal" is to powerful if you leave evade and soak rules unchanged? This sounded really interesting all of a sudden. I'm at work now so i can't really toss dice at my desk :P

[Ambrosia]

I'm at work now so i can't really toss dice at my desk :P

*coughcough*

I'll try some things later when I'm at home.

[Heavy Arms]

I think it could be simplified even further: 'Half of a weapon's damage rating are automatic damage successes'. Contrary to 'weapon damage ratings are halved, and are automatic' I wonder if that would make things too powerful or not...

I'm not really sure that simplifies things. Simply halving all the current damage tags is one simple step to avoid the automatic damage part being way too powerful.

Having a 8 damage gun be 4 automatic damage and 4 dice + extra successes goes back to being complicated. And pretty powerful.

[Ambrosia]

I'm not really sure that simplifies things. Simply halving all the current damage tags is one simple step to avoid the automatic damage part being way too powerful.

Having a 8 damage gun be 4 automatic damage and 4 dice + extra successes goes back to being complicated. And pretty powerful.

I just did a quick averages calculation, and you're right - simply reducing weapons to half their rating and making it auto seems to work.

Or, as per our sniper example in the other thread:

vanilla system
---------------------
4dex /4 firearms (spec) +3 (aiming) +2 scope -> 13 vs 6 (spec) = 7 average successess
8 (rifle) + 6 -> 14 vs 6 = average of 6 damage


vs

Weapons rating halved, auto
-----------------------------------------
4dex /4 firearms (spec) +3 (aiming) +2 scope -> 13 vs 6 (spec) = 7 average successess
4 automatic + 6 vs 6 = average of 7 damage


And that is an example of extreme preparation, so with your system, there is at most a 1 success average difference.

[Ambrosia]

Okay, I adjusted the original post, putting the first proposed system behind spoiler tags and updating it with the simpler but seemingly fair system proposed by Heavy Arms.

[Barbelith]

So if I'm understanding you right, you just skip rolling weapon damage and assume it's average successes- but you still roll the extra dice due to attack successes. I'm not sure that's simpler? You're still rolling damage, just some of it instead of all of it.
What about if you make the attack successes half in the same way, so all the damage is fixed rather than rolled? So there's one less roll in combat, but there's still the soak roll- so to take your glock example, the gun does 2, the extra attack successes do another 2 (instead of rolling 4 dice) so the victim has to soak 4?
Or the sword example, it would be 2 fixed plus half your strength- so e.g. strength 2 the target would soak 3?

[Ambrosia]

So if I'm understanding you right, you just skip rolling weapon damage and assume it's average successes- but you still roll the extra dice due to attack successes. I'm not sure that's simpler? You're still rolling damage, just some of it instead of all of it.

The primary point is not to simpify the whole system - the point is to avoid unrealistic pre-soak 'zero damage' scenarios with many weapons, despite good hits -and- keeping that change simple.

If you fix the -whole- attack, then I think too much randomness and variety is taken away.

[monteparnas]

As a rule of thumb, halving a dice-pool and declaring it automatic success is the same as rolling the original pool. I think that anyone can make this with any fraction of the dice whenever this person wants to reduce the dice-pool without loosing effect. I hardly even consider such as a house-rule, just a simple use of probability. This principle can be applied to both damage and soak, rolls where the chance-per-die is precisely 50%.

Instead, I would stick to something similar to the first idea. The damage rating of the WoD in general is already too much. All characters have 7 HL, almost any damage beyond the first starts to seriously cripple any capacity for continual survival, and filling those HL with fatal injures is simply too easy. Making extra successes turn dice damage into automatic damage is mathematically similar to dealing extra damage (couple the extra damage die and the original damage die, and you have the 1 average success damage), but at least caps the damage to a more manageable level.

For this, I would use the first idea without limiting it to weapon rating and without making more damage for even more successes. So a Strength 2 character with a Str + 2 weapon can use up to 4 Extra Successes to deal automatic damage. Less than 4 ES implies into the remaining damage being rolled. More implies into ES beyond 4 being wasted. But that's it. Soak will rarely be relevant in the WoD. Mortals can't soak Lethal, very few can soak Aggravated, Lethal and Aggravated are too easy to deal compared to their benefits.

[Heavy Arms]

While I know not everyone interprets it this way, even though damage and soak rolls can't botch, the books don't say that the rule of 1 doesn't apply in general. So the average success rate is below 50% due to 1s coming up in the roll; it's a slight increase in effectiveness.