Damage [Spellbound]

[merxa]

I wanted to present my development notes on damage, the initial draft and edits have been rough but I actually haven't really made many changes to the original document, and I will be presenting the current document as is without many changes. I will also be including an excerpt of the current universal damage table.

I am looking for initial responses, general feedback, and any other insights or criticisms. Given the nature of the draft, style is of lesser concern unless people cannot finish the document below. Along with damage, I'll be creating a separate thread on 'combat' that shouldn't be as rough but arguably less complete.

I'll be editing the words below to incorporate changes.


~
Damage

10 wound boxes

‘Toughness’ or damage reduction, subtracts from total damage before being applied. If damage is 0 or less then nothing happens.

‘Damage Piercing’, ignores X amount of toughness before being applied.

‘Damage Resistance’
Ignore X amount of Damage before applying toughness


Damage sources

Fire
Electricity
Cold
Acid
Piercing
Slashing
Bludgeoning
Force?
Psychic? Has chance to introduce madness?
Holy/Light/Positive
Unholy/Dark/Negative (Corrupting?)
Chaos (also radiation damage?)
Axiomatic? (should i even bother?)

Generic wounds table:
1 more winded than anything, a light scratch, stubbed toe, heals in 5 minutes rest; lvl 0 healing
2 an ache, tweaked knee, a temporary pain; heals in 1 hour rest; lvl 0 healing
3 light bruising, small puncture; heals 8 hour rest; lvl 1 healing
4 major bruising, moderate laceration; heals 1d6 days rest; -1 penalty; lvl 1 healing
5 torn muscle, minor fracture or sprain; heals 1d6 weeks; -2 penalty; lvl 2 healing
6 multiple fractures, severe laceration; heals 1d6+3 weeks; -2 penalty; lvl 2 healing
7 broken limb*; heals 1d6 months; -3 penalty; lvl 3 healing
8 multiple broken bones; heals 1d6+3 months; -3 penalty; lvl 3 healing
9 severed limb*; never heals or 2d6+3 months; -4 penalty; lvl 4 healing
10 unconscious, possibly dying

These Penalty modifiers do not stack, take the worse one that applies. Special conditions may apply from some damage sources on certain wounds.

All but the most disabling wounds heal with enough time. Magical healing of the appropriate lvl quickly heals even the worst wounds, higher lvl healing spells also heals everything up to it, ie a lvl 3 healing spell heals all wounds up to 8.

Wounds heal sequentially over time, for example someone with 4 wounds who rests for 8 hours first heals 1 wound after 5 minutes of rest, then a second wound after an hour, and finally their third wound after 8 hours of rest. Their 4th wound won’t heal until they complete 1d6 days of rest, but the initial 8 hours can often be counted as the first day of rest, otherwise assume a day of rest is 24 hours of light activity or convalescence.

Rest can include light activity. Rest is also cumulative, so if it takes 5 days for that 4th wound to heal, the person could rest for 3 days, perform strenuous activity, then rest for 2 more days to remove their 4th wound. If a character receives a more severe wound, reset any previous rest clock, ie if during those 2 days of strenuous activity you receive wound 5 or greater, discount the previous 3 days of rest and restart any new rest anew.

The listing of wounds in the table above is descriptive, and different sources of damage would be expected to cause different sorts of wounds.

*Broken/Severed Limbs

Again, the table above is illustrative of the sort of wounds a character has suffered. However whenever a character suffers a wound threshold of 7, 8, or 9, they must make a stress test or suffer an additional devastating loss such as a broken or severed limb.

STRESS TEST
Toughness save?
Dc 10+damage?

You only ever make one stress test per damage done, so if an attack would make you mark off wounds 7,8, and 9, you would only be making a stress test for wound 9.

Typically an arm or leg is affected, for multiple limbs roll 1d3+1, but at the GM discretion other conditions could include a shattered wrist or ankle, a heart attack, severe concussion, spinal injury, ruptured kidney, etc.

A broken limb can still be used, such as to swing a sword, hold a shield, cast a spell, but at an additional -3 penalty (added to whatever current wound penalty they may have) to any relevant checks. An additional stress test must be made or fall unconscious for 1 round.

A severed or broken limb, if it is a leg or foot, reduces movement speed by ½, both legs or feet (for a bipedal) causes character to be prone and crawl at 1 speed. (speed is measured in units of 1 meter) An additional stress test must be made or fall unconscious for 1 round.

Some damage types, such as non-lethal damage, bypasses stress tests. (often at the discretion of the one doing damage)

Less-Lethal (Non-Lethal Damage)

The usual assumption is damage is lethal, however some people may prefer to attempt to deal non-lethal damage.

Whenever less-lethal damage is dealt, never apply stress tests to those wounds, you still fall unconscious at 10 wounds. Less lethal damage beyond 10 wounds will still kill a creature.

The most recent wounds always apply, but less lethal wounds (so mark such wounds to differentiate it) always heal at the rate of 1 per day of rest or less if it applies.

If a character doesn’t possess this ability they may still attempt to deal less-lethal damage at the GMs discretion and with a -1 to -3 penalty to hit.

Occasionally a GM may declare a given combat or damage defacto less-lethal, such as a combat tournament or barroom brawl, but isn’t recommended to be used retroactively or to save a character after an untimely death unless well understood and desired.


Dying

Once a character reaches 10 or more wounds they are unconscious and cannot act. For each additional wound over 10 apply it against their toughness, if it exceeds their toughness the character dies. A negative toughness defaults to 0 for these considerations.

At the beginning of the dying characters turn they take 1 wound. Then take a stress test (DC is total wounds), on success regain consciousness.

If a character takes additional damage besides the automatic gain of 1 wound at the beginning of their turn they must make an additional stress test or fall unconscious if not already.

A dying creature who is conscious may act but is staggered


Toughness

Toughness subtracts from damage before applying the remainder as wounds. Toughness is your total resilience to damage and is determined by a number of factors.

Your base toughness is calculated by adding together your Health Bonus plus your Size Bonus.
Health is calculated by adding together your Str and Spi and dividing by two. Add an additional bonus according to your size from the table below.

Size

Minuscule -6
Fine -4
Diminutive -2
Tiny -1
Small +0
Medium +1
Large +2
Huge +4
Gigantic +6
Colossus +8


Universal Damage Table (excerpt)

[deaddmwalking]

You probably want to stay away from 'madness' as a condition.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a single track for damage. The main advantage is that it gets everyone playing the same game (ie, it's clear how you defeat your enemy), but the disadvantage is that you lose design space for some potentially cool things.

For example, you could have two tracks (non-lethal and lethal). Whenever you take lethal damage you ALSO take non-lethal damage. But then it would be easier to figure out what happens if you have taken 5 lethal wounds, then take 5 non-lethal wounds, then heal 1 wound.

If Damage Reduction approaches 3, it looks like you'll have a hard time reliably dealing damage to your opponents. Is there anything beyond base weapon damage that applies?

If you make every creature have 10 boxes, the only way to make a creature tougher is to give it larger and larger amounts of damage reduction. If you go too far, some creatures cannot be hurt. Allowing for more (or fewer) boxes may be helpful. If a creature is supposed to be 'fragile' you could give it 5 boxes instead of 10 for example.

If the system is rigid, you may find that you can't model opponents as well as you would like.

[merxa]

You probably want to stay away from 'madness' as a condition.

In general I agree, that was mostly an idea / note to myself -- It's more interesting to me if damage has possibly other additional riders depending on the damage type, besides just 'fluff'.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a single track for damage. The main advantage is that it gets everyone playing the same game (ie, it's clear how you defeat your enemy), but the disadvantage is that you lose design space for some potentially cool things.

For example, you could have two tracks (non-lethal and lethal). Whenever you take lethal damage you ALSO take non-lethal damage. But then it would be easier to figure out what happens if you have taken 5 lethal wounds, then take 5 non-lethal wounds, then heal 1 wound.

Damage here is replacing the more traditional hitpoints, so i'm not sure what you are comparing single damage track to? At the moment, healing will heal both non-lethal and lethal damage equally, I guess I might want to consider changing that to make non-lethal damage easier to heal.

If Damage Reduction approaches 3, it looks like you'll have a hard time reliably dealing damage to your opponents. Is there anything beyond base weapon damage that applies?

So yes, there are more things that add to damage. I've gone back and forth on whether to incorporate size as an additional bonus to damage besides the better damage dice. But beyond that, raw attributes will increase damage (STR or DEX), then PCs especially will have various abilities to deal additional damage. Currently the plan is to have the 'Combat Bonus' attribute or CB also increase damage -- CB would range from 1 to 10 and essentially track level, there is the equivalent 'spell bonus' or SB that would also track level. These two attributes CB and SB would gatekeep special abilities / spells -- ie an SB of 3 would be needed to cast level 3 spells. Beyond those, there would be magic of course as well, be it magical weapons, or spells that enhance or debuff. The same goes for CB abilities, a CB of 3 would be needed for 'third level' combat abilities.

The overall goal is for 2 or 3 solid hits to be ruinous for most creatures, and for especially tough creatures, specialized tactics would be encouraged, either by PCs working together to increase their damage output, or using alternative damage sources.

In turn PCs will be granted abilities that allow them to reduce damage, avoid it, or regenerate it quickly. Armor will also provide some small amount of damage resistance to various damage types.

If you make every creature have 10 boxes, the only way to make a creature tougher is to give it larger and larger amounts of damage reduction. If you go too far, some creatures cannot be hurt. Allowing for more (or fewer) boxes may be helpful. If a creature is supposed to be 'fragile' you could give it 5 boxes instead of 10 for example.

If the system is rigid, you may find that you can't model opponents as well as you would like.

Certainly no opposition to playing around with total boxes, but I probably would like to keep that limited, the expectation and default would be 10 boxes. Very fragile creatures will have low or even negative toughness.

I agree there is something of a narrow band in play here, I would like the average hit to deal 2-4 wound boxes, and since I am controlling all the inputs that should be possible.

[deaddmwalking]

I think designing around the average (mean) is smart, but you want to consider the variance as well.

Is it possible that a single hit will take out an enemy? If my damage roll is 1d6 then 1/36 times I'd be expected to roll max damage on two rolls in a row; what does that look like and it is a problem if I crush my enemies so easily 3% of the time? What about if I roll min damage 2x in a row and deal NO DAMAGE.

[merxa]

Is it possible that a single hit will take out an enemy? If my damage roll is 1d6 then 1/36 times I'd be expected to roll max damage on two rolls in a row; what does that look like and it is a problem if I crush my enemies so easily 3% of the time? What about if I roll min damage 2x in a row and deal NO DAMAGE.

i guess i think both of those events are ok to me. I have a little more concern with PCs being on the other side, taking a bunch of damage because of a series of unlikely dice.

In general I want to provide PCs with powers that will protect them from taking massive damage, and likely those powers will have some cool down, so pushing forward without those powers becomes increasingly risky. And on the other side I'm more ok with PCs being able to consistently output good damage, with maybe some NOVA like abilities having a cooldown.

In terms of damage output, I will cater to both people who want consistent damage output and to people who are ok with more swingy output if it means they can sometimes put out larger numbers. I've graphed the variance in the universal damage table -- it's main function is to increase damage by 0.5 per step, but the variance is a bit of a jagged staircase that rises and falls, so people may pick damage outputs that are .5 off their maximum if it more likely produces either a more consistent or variant output. Same can go for abilities. Since there will be a threshold where you either deal no damage, or begin to deal 1 or more damage, for enemies that have a higher threshold then usual, characters will be inclined towards higher variance or abilities that may sacrifice chance to hit (or ac or a second attack or etc) for additional damage, and the opposite will be true for weaker enemies, where someone may want to try to harm many enemies at once if they are relatively weak. I think I have enough of a framework here to introduce plenty of 'interesting' options, so PCs aren't defaulting to their usual combo every round.

These details of course are where the system lives or dies, and will require play testing.

[Harshax]

You had some question marks in your damage type and so, I’ll focus on that for the moment.

I’ve read some arguments that thunder, force and bludgeon should all be treated as the same damage type.

I’m a fan of psychic damage and I’ve seen them used to simulate psionics in warlock builds, which is neat if you don’t want to create a brand new resource management and effects system.

Postive/Holy and Necrotic/Unholy associations are fall into morality trap arguments. You could for example, kill someone with life giving energy by targeting cancer cells in someone’s body or infusing their liver or other organ to produce enough hormones that they become toxic. I guess I’m pointing out that damage types should be dangerous effects and whether they’re sourced from holy, unholy, Cthulhu or the Farside is the flavor text.

In the same vein, fire and electricity are almost considered the same damage type by what they do to a human body. They might differ in terms of secondary effects, but that’s a different topic.

I have to admit that when I read the topic, “Spellbound,” I somehow associated it with recent WFRP IP and I don’t know why.

[merxa]

I’ve read some arguments that thunder, force and bludgeon should all be treated as the same damage type.

This doesn't seem viable or interesting to me? Of course I don't list thunder or sonic as a damage source, and maybe I should?

I’m a fan of psychic damage and I’ve seen them used to simulate psionics in warlock builds, which is neat if you don’t want to create a brand new resource management and effects system.

Yes, I would like to incorporate, or possibly incorporate, such considerations in the rules day one. The general idea of the wound system is to be able to say, if you suffer wound N from X damage source, make a stress test or suffer from Y effect. My vague conception is I could write up a monster stat block and include this note. The default guidelines are if you take wound 7 from a a S(lashing) source make a stress test or have your hand severed. While that sounds extreme, the system currently says regeneration is a level 4 healing effect -- it was always odd to me that 'regeneration' came online well after raise dead, so instead i'm saying regeneration is a level earlier then raise dead.

Postive/Holy and Necrotic/Unholy associations are fall into morality trap arguments. You could for example, kill someone with life giving energy by targeting cancer cells in someone’s body or infusing their liver or other organ to produce enough hormones that they become toxic. I guess I’m pointing out that damage types should be dangerous effects and whether they’re sourced from holy, unholy, Cthulhu or the Farside is the flavor text.

Yes, I don't really have a clear naming convention for 'alignment' based damage, and I don't even plan on including alignment in the game. In particular 'axiomatic' damage, I don't even have much of an interest in supporting, it exists simply to fill out the symmetry. But, as a jrpg fan, I still am partial to including 'light' or whatever as a damage source. 5e calls it radiant, is that better?

I think this returns to my view that damage sources seem largely like fluff, the fluff is tagged so you might be resistant or immune to the given fluff tag, but it doesn't have any other mechanical impacts. I would greatly prefer to be able to model damage sources and extend their impact beyond whatever fluff is associated to the damage source. So maybe fire burns things, cold freezes things, electricity -- shocks or ignites things, 'acid' could disintegrate things or 'earth' damage could 'petrify' things.

In the same vein, fire and electricity are almost considered the same damage type by what they do to a human body. They might differ in terms of secondary effects, but that’s a different topic.

I have to admit that when I read the topic, “Spellbound,” I somehow associated it with recent WFRP IP and I don’t know why.

Spellbound is just the name I have for the rpg I am writing that might never be published, and if it ever is published it'll be under a permissive and open license. In terms of fire vs electricity, the damage sources are clearly modeled off d&d, and those four damage sources -- fire, cold, electricity, acid -- seem just like place holders for the 4 classic elements (fire,water,wind,earth), and maybe it would be better to just label them as such? I could instead use our current scientific understanding of basic forces and label damage sources as gravity, electro-magnetic, heat/pressure, strong atomic force, etc. but that feels far afield of the fantasy flavor I would prefer to have in the game.

[OgreBattle]

Light / Holy damage tends to be tied to purification rites in stories and religious practice. So salt, oils, maybe a bleaching effect. Michael Moorcock has it as totally bleaching all life until you have dead white rock, which Final Fantasy has been going with in XiV.

I think it's neat that D&D's radiant damage is also used by cosmic horrors, so Angels and bible angels and cthulhu's lasers can deal the same damage type, maybe it can be radiation.

Does your game have weapon reach difference between a dagger and longsword? It can be more exciting to move away from D&Disms and look at it from what we know now, like "I can kill with a dagger and a sword in one blow, but the latter has longer reach for a straight up fight"

[Harshax]

I’ve always found Acid damage anachronistic when viewing the classic elements from the view point of Greek philosophy and have always preferred fire (flame+lightning), bludgeon (air, sonic, thunder), cold (water+darkness), and poison (earth)

Radiant/Necrotic being polarities of positive and negative.

Holy/Unholy/Primal - being any tag that originates beyond the ken of mortals.

Darkness is a water damage type, because of years playing Glorantha.

4 elemental damage types + piercing and slashing. Either could be radiant or necrotic. And any of those 12 being otherworldly and that’s 36 different damage tags, depending on how many otherworldly damage sources are distinctive in a particular campaign.

Or, if you prefer Metal to replace slashing/piercing, then you end up with 30.

[Harshax]

Oh, and psychic. For a total of 40+ damage types.

[deaddmwalking]

Since Aliens, it's hard not to have a highly corrosive acidic element that can burn through metal like it isn't there.

[merxa]

Does your game have weapon reach difference between a dagger and longsword? It can be more exciting to move away from D&Disms and look at it from what we know now, like "I can kill with a dagger and a sword in one blow, but the latter has longer reach for a straight up fight"

Weapon properties are largely undefined at the moment, but I wasn't planning on modeling the reach difference between a dagger and longsword -- but had planned on modeling the standard 'reach' weapons like polearms. How would you recommend modeling the reach difference between them? Currently the standard square is 1 meter. I certainly don't want to resurrect weapon speeds.

Oh, and psychic. For a total of 40+ damage types.

I am not sure how you are getting to 40+ damage types, could you enumerate the full list? I currently have 13 listed, so that would be an additional 27 that are unlisted?

[Harshax]

My math might have been off or I was kind of riffing it and not really thinking through the idea.

My proposal was that damage types on the prime-material plane were: fire, bludgeon, cold, poison and psychic.

These could be infused with positive or negative energy, so you could have radiant-fire or necrotic-poison.

And furthermore can be infused with energy by a divine or unworldly power, so you could have divine-radiant-fire or cthulhu-necrotic-psychic energy.

Since Aliens, it's hard not to have a highly corrosive acidic element that can burn through metal like it isn't there.

I get that. But, would a Greek philosopher consider acid to be a poison? I don't know, really. I'm just riffing. Maybe acid breaks my elemental chart. Is acid necrotic water (it is simultaneously wet and dry). Maybe acid is necrotic-cold or poison? Or, especially radiant-poison?

[deaddmwalking]

Maybe it's radiant poison, but you call it acid because that's easily grokked.

[Harshax]

Goofing some more, I find I'm at a loss to describe a possible type of radiant/necrotic cold damage.

Code: Select all

Base Element  Necrotic    Radiant
Fire          Lightning   Plasma
Cold		
Poison        Bases       Acids
Bludgeon      Vacuum      Thunder
Psychic       Madness     Aether

Might be fun to start a new topic, so I'm not thread jacking. But, conceptually this has run its course. And as merxa pointed out early, this is not specifically what they want to talk about.

I just brought it up, because you can tweak rules for resistances or immunities if you have an idea about what types of damage or compound-damage are in the game.

[merxa]

It's interesting, and it's not like my threads are generating much feedback as it is. Let's see, Cold-Necrotic could be 'viral'? hehe or 'disease'? Cold-Radiant would be bacteria? maybe Radiation?

But this still goes back to my view that just tagging damage as [type] feels like fluff until it hooks into the system in some other, more crunchy way. Take Genshin Impact as an example, their 7(well 6 really at the moment) elements all have different elemental reactions that have, to various degrees, different game impacts. Another name for cold-nectroic and cold-radiant could be 'gravity' and 'magnetic'.

But by additional mechnical impacts, what I mean is [fire] type damage should do fire like things, like cause burning, light stuff on fire, provide a light source, heat up materials, get put out by lack of oxygen or by being cooled down. Cold damage in turn could cause things to cool down, slow down, and even freeze.

I don't necessarily want to design an entire physics engine, but just saying you take [acid] damage feels somewhat pointless if it really is just cross referencing their damage resistance types. Acid damage should at a base level cause things it impacts to corrode / dissolve. Being damaged by acid should cause rashes, scars, and loss of limbs.

[deaddmwalking]

All damage should cause rashes, scars and loss of limbs.

Most players have an expectation of 'action-movie physics' whether they realize it or not. It's hard to play a heroic fantasy when you have a very real chance of dying from falling off an 8' ladder.

Cross-referencing damage resistance types and/or vulnerabilities isn't pointless. It's been the subject of a lot of discussion in the Rock/Scissors/Paper thread. When we're talking about challenge, adjusting those gives you a slider to make a challenge either more- or less-challenging than it otherwise would be.

In a FPS, one element of the fun is having and using a variety of weapons. Elements like rate-of-fire, damage per hit, availability of ammunition, etc, all tend to factor into which weapon gets used. Part of that is a tactical puzzle; using a chainsaw is fun/uses no ammunition, but you have to get close. Resistances can act in a similar role. However, in order for that to be true, they have to be somewhat obvious. DMs that like to hide that a troll isn't taking damage from fire (due to a ring of fire resistance) aren't making the game better; but describing that a troll isn't taking damage from fire can create a tactical puzzle.

Cold Radiant could be 'disruption' and cold-necrotic could be 'implosion'.

[merxa]

I find it pointless as in 'fire' might as well be 'purple' if it doesn't actually light things on fire sometimes or cause things to heat up. And, I think I would prefer to bake that in as standard / formalize it, instead of expecting the description of fireball or meteor swarm to have a line or two about it.

Descriptively, a burn wound will be different from a cut, and the scarring it leaves will be different. While these descriptions are 'fluff', getting them right is an important part of immersion -- telling people they take 'purple' damage feels like nonsense to me.

I agree people play games to have fun, and breaking an ankle and convalescing in bed for 3 weeks because you took a bad fall off a short ladder is not likely to be the sort of 'power fantasy' people signed up to play. I however am also not so interested in playing 'rubber heroes', especially if I am designing the system. I'm looking for 'damage' to be grittier and more intense.

Magical healing will be, I believe, generous, in the sense that level '4' spells will work like regenerate, and heal anything besides death, and possibly severe magical curses, magical diseases. But this does allow the system to have 'lower' level tier play where a bad slide down an icy mountain resulting in a broken limb could be a significant source of tension and a non-trivial survival challenge. Hit points also make it difficult to conduct 'attrition' challenges, where the PCs get slowly ground down after weeks of being away from civilization. And if people don't want to play these survival challenges out, they can just move on to level 3, level 4 play where magic makes much of it a handwave -- perhaps in the heat of round by round combat a terrible blow severing someones hand could call for in combat healing, a round or two of a PC changing tactics to deal with the loss of the hand.

Going back over the way healing is laid out, level 1 healing will heal the first 4 wound boxes, so if someone in a level 1 group ends up getting damaged enough to tick off wound box 5, they can still heal the first 4 wound boxes, but wound 5 will linger until they can access higher level healing or recover. I should also consider adding in a spell that can reduce or remove wound penalties, so they can have access to lower level mitigation strategies.

[Harshax]

I’d just use damage types to tag attack effects. Nothing’s more boring than learning you took 7 points of damage.

And, if you tag damage. You can grant characters resistance to certain types. And maybe the degree of resistance let’s you pick necrotic/radiant. And, the next level divine or the one you didn’t pick before. Now you have a reason to use Lore skills to help you make tactical decisions on your adventures.

Also here is metal (piercing/slashing):
Metal, Cold Iron (necrotic), Silver (radiant). I might have those backwards. Metal is Dry, Demons are Wet, Demons are especially affected by cold-iron … I don’t remember how that argument goes.

There was a great post by someone here who explained all the alignments of monsters by their relationships to Greek elements.

[phlapjackage]

Unholy/Dark/Negative (Corrupting?)
Chaos (also radiation damage?)

I'd say chaos damage IS radiation, which is corrupting (unless you mean unholy damage is like ethically corrupting or something).

[merxa]

I’d just use damage types to tag attack effects. Nothing’s more boring than learning you took 7 points of damage.

And, if you tag damage. You can grant characters resistance to certain types. And maybe the degree of resistance let’s you pick necrotic/radiant. And, the next level divine or the one you didn’t pick before. Now you have a reason to use Lore skills to help you make tactical decisions on your adventures.

To clarify, I am planning on tagging damage of course -- this is why I'm trying to list all damage tags I plan on using. What I am trying to say is that if you only tag damage, it feels a little empty, you're just cross referencing your spreadsheet of [tag] damage to [tag] resistance, and players stop really caring what the tag is called, and me engaging with tags is a little inane then, I should just decide how many 'tags' to have, and then I can call them whatever I want, I could just number them -- creature deals type '2' damage, or type '10' damage, etc. If I am going to bother listing damage sources and say damage is [fire], I may as well try to model fire, at least a little bit, give it a 'catch on fire' threshold, have standard method of determining how much damage burning does per round.

I don't want damage tags to just be a checklist players fill out, and when it comes to deciding between tag 1 and tag 2 for adding a resistance, I'd like the PCs to be able to make some informed choice independent of what they may or may not know is coming their way, ie they might take [acid] resistance over [cold] because they are wearing expensive metal armor and don't want to risk damaging it, or they know the environment has lots of water so are worried [electricity] could be more easily conductive, or they are climbing mountains or walking along precarious ledges so maybe they will take [wind] or [force] resistance because those damage tags tend to include forced movement riders.

[Harshax]

I don't want damage tags to just be a checklist players fill out, and when it comes to deciding between tag 1 and tag 2 for adding a resistance, I'd like the PCs to be able to make some informed choice independent of what they may or may not know is coming their way, ie they might take [acid] resistance over [cold] because they are wearing expensive metal armor and don't want to risk damaging it, or they know the environment has lots of water so are worried [electricity] could be more easily conductive, or they are climbing mountains or walking along precarious ledges so maybe they will take [wind] or [force] resistance because those damage tags tend to include forced movement riders.

That's a lofty goal. One that I've never seen executed beyond one or two conditions in an RPG. I've seen shock and wounds. I've seen stability and armor damage. When it comes to humans, and I think deaddmwalking said this too, all damage is rashes and scars and loss of limbs.

I can only image that a hefty math engine; eg: CRPG; could give you enough real-world data to tell the difference between being cut by a machete, punched in the face or electrocuted.

HarnMaster had a pretty extensive armor system. Layers of leather, cuirbolli, chain and plate provided different levels of protection from slashing, bludgeon and piercing damage. The most expensive kits would take a year or more to make and would bankrupt a small town to produce. And while you could generate a pretty interesting simulation of economic-effort and medically documented wound types to make choices interesting that design decision doesn't really give you enough information to figure out what otherworldly black tendrils, summoned from the far reaches of space, do to a person when it starts leaching air and heat out of the surrounding area when someone sits down and play the game.

So, I guess you could go down the route of describing vacuums as bludgeon damage to your lungs: the lack of atmosphere actually sucks the cilia out of their organic moorings. And, then create vac suits that have bludgeoning armor against atmosphere. But, then you have to consider whether players who sit down to crack jokes, roll dice and get killed by an elf really care about physics as we know it.

[MGuy]

I have been leaning towards doing what Divinity does with damage tags and I think that's what's being described. You don't need to specifically know what cuts and scrapes do to a human body. You don't need to do anything special to understand what cold space tentacles do. You just need to decide that [cut] attacks allow you to break [tethers] and that [cold] attacks induce [slow] on [wet] targets and turns [wet] terrain into slippery terrain. Once you have your tags and their interactions set up you get all the decision making and emergent gameplay that goes along with it. Which is a good thing I think.

[merxa]

That's a lofty goal. One that I've never seen executed beyond one or two conditions in an RPG. I've seen shock and wounds. I've seen stability and armor damage. When it comes to humans, and I think deaddmwalking said this too, all damage is rashes and scars and loss of limbs.

I can only image that a hefty math engine; eg: CRPG; could give you enough real-world data to tell the difference between being cut by a machete, punched in the face or electrocuted.

Since I haven't built this system I'm not sure how hefty it will be, certainly if it is too cumbersome for humans to process in a reasonable amount of time then I will need to abandon it, but I'm not sure if I understand your view or criticism exactly. I am emphatically not trying to state with any authority that a longsword cutting across your chest is $y damage and the equivalent amount of electricity watts deals the same $y equivalent of damage -- the system in this sense is tautological, if a longsword deals 3 wound boxes, and the shocking grasp also dealt 3 wound boxes, then they did the same amount of injury. I was just saying something a little simpler (i hope?), that I can describe these wounds differently, and potentially describe any lasting injuries differently as well. Take lightning -- have you ever seen images of people who survive lightning strikes? Their scarring is pretty wild actually:

So, I guess you could go down the route of describing vacuums as bludgeon damage to your lungs: the lack of atmosphere actually sucks the cilia out of their organic moorings. And, then create vac suits that have bludgeoning armor against atmosphere. But, then you have to consider whether players who sit down to crack jokes, roll dice and get killed by an elf really care about physics as we know it.

Even hollywood physics treats death and injury in a vacuum differently then a car crash -- who doesn't want to hear separate descriptions of injuries either inflicted or suffered?

I have been leaning towards doing what Divinity does with damage tags and I think that's what's being described. You don't need to specifically know what cuts and scrapes do to a human body. You don't need to do anything special to understand what cold space tentacles do. You just need to decide that [cut] attacks allow you to break [tethers] and that [cold] attacks induce [slow] on [wet] targets and turns [wet] terrain into slippery terrain. Once you have your tags and their interactions set up you get all the decision making and emergent gameplay that goes along with it. Which is a good thing I think.

So yes, I think even a little bit of detail could go a long way in giving each damage tag its own flavor and crunch. I haven't designed this, so I'm just throwing out ideas, but each damage type could have two severity levels (Minor / Major) for example:

Fire: Burn / Melt
Cold: Slow / Freeze
Slashing: Cut / Sever
Bludgeoning: Break(Bruise?) / Crush
Piercing: Puncture / Impale
Electricity: Jolt / Shock
Acid: Corrode / Dissolve
Psychic: Perturb / Dement
Force: Push? / Explode?
Light: Radiate / Disintegrate
Dark: Collapse? / Implode (using these descriptors 'Dark' also becomes a stand in for a 'Gravity' like force)
Chaos: Disrupt / Corrupt

(here I am dropping axiomatic -- it was added originally for symmetry, but 'ordered' damage always seemed like an oxymoron to me, but if anyone has any suggestions or arguments for keeping this as a damage source let me know)
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These would need mechanical impacts so we aren't just playing endless rounds of word games. And the verbiage probably needs some adjustments -- So I may say something like [fire] can cause things to catch on fire (roll save DC), resulting in either Burning or Melting, and that would mostly be defined by either (or both) the amount of fire damage taken, or which wound boxes the fire damage injures.

Another example -- Electricity damage 'conducts' along available surfaces (mostly metal and water), and will conduct distance as defined by the amount of electricity damage incoming, then someone is 'jolted' or 'shocked' depending on electricity damage sustained. Jolt might be defined as a penalty to actions (ie -1 to hit, skill checks), and shock might be loss of actions.

If I were to go a little further and take more inspiration from genshin impact, I could begin defining what happens if someone who has the Burning status takes electricity damage and gains jolt or shock, perhaps there's a small AOE explosion that happens, similarly if someone takes cold damage perhaps that removes the burning condition, and in the opposite if someone were frozen and takes fire maybe they suffer some other special interaction. Detailing these combinations gets complicated quickly, and explodes the number of status conditions / interactions, so it's hard to justify this additional complexity beyond the most self evident ones (cold putting out fires), but if the initial stage of having basic damage tags cause some status effect, if that is clear and simple, then this second order complexity of having a given status condition from damage interact with a new damage tag condition seems plausible, and can also encourage PCs to combo with one another.

[Harshax]

@merxa - I didn’t have a specific criticism and you should interpret my previous post as trying to throw the widest net around the idea of damage tags for/or against.

I’m a big fan of Divinity 2. I even brought up the topic when the board game kickstarter was live.

But here’s the rub: fire damage persists over time in that game, so does poison (earth) damage. I misinterpreted your desire to avoid tags and not wanting X damage and Y damage to just be tagged injuries with no mechanical differences. And, having Divinity 2 and my own preferences in the back of my mind, I couldn’t think of a meaningful mechanical difference between fire and poison.

And, when I said “that’s a lofty goal,” I was thinking about that wide net and trying to envision what a damage-type focused game might look like. I think it looks a lot like Divinity. Elemental damage and environmental effects are a primary design element there.

But I don’t know anything about, ‘Spellbound.’ Wide-nets aren’t always the best position to have meaningful discussions. And, if there is any criticism this is where it happens: what’s your design goal and what are the thematic elements you want to encourage?

You listed damage and sizes in a chart and also mentioned injury tracks and damage types and I’m not sure what’s important to you. And, I kind of think you’re asking the same question too.