Under a Reddit post concerning damage reduction in OSR systems a commenter proposed the idea that maximum damage rolls could bypass armour, ensuring that even low damage weapons (such as daggers) wouldn't be rendered completely inefficient against armoured foes. The nerd I am, I made a spreadsheet to calculate the modified average damage outputs (a perfect pastime for a lazy holiday): column A shows the die size, columns B-M the reduced damage output corresponding to the roll, and column N the average. The first sheet assumes armour may completely negata a hit (cf. zero damage), while on the second a single point of damage always goes through. These rules are summarised in column P on both sheets.
This is a cool idea. Tunnels & Trolls has a similar concept. Normally damage is determined by opposed rolls, where the difference between the rolls determines who takes how much damage. However, the dice are d6s, and any 6 on a d6 counts as 1 point of spite damage, which you deal even if you lose the opposed roll. Ranged weapons can also potentially bypass the opposed roll, but generally deal less damage than melee weapons. It's a cool way of making it so that even weaker characters / weapons / enemies can still be dangerous under the right circumstances, and also I think a cool way of distinguishing the tactical utility of ranged vs. melee weapons
ReplyDeleteThat sounds intriguing. Which edition of T&T do you recommend for someone who has virtually no experience with the system?
DeleteI recently made a blog post where I link to the version of T&T I'm using, discuss my impressions of the system, put together a little rules cheatsheet, and also include some house rules based on my own personal preferences / game style:
Deletehttps://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/2019/04/tunnels-trolls-softmax-hack-cheatsheet.html