[Spellbound] Damage revised and other miscellanea

[merxa]

original thread here: https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=57825

My initial thread on damage had many problems and hopefully these revisions fixes some of them. Instead of the overly complex size damage table, instead a simpler table of weapon types, associated damage, then a size modifier is applied:

Damage | example weapon

1d3 fists
1d6-1 clubs, daggers
1d3+1 short swords
1d6 long sword
2d3 great club
1d6+1 great sword


Sizes A | B
Colossal -6 | 6
Gargantuan -4 | 4
Huge -2 | 3
Large -1 | 2
Medium 0 | 1
Small 1 | 0
Tiny 2 | -1
Diminutive 3 | -2
Fine 4 | -4
Minuscule 6 | -6

A: stealth, to hit, ac
B: athletics, damage, toughness

applying damage
when damage is to be reduced below 1, instead for every -1, reduce it by 1/2 so
1 - 1 = 1/2
1 - 2 = 1/4
1 - 3 = 1/8

and so on

If fractional damage adds up to at least 1/1 apply it normally, do not carry over any faction to the next wound. Otherwise fractional damage can be waived as moot if they are ruled insignificant or tracked normally. A simple rule of thumb could be to ignore any wounds 1/16 or smaller, but apply any riders such damage may have such as poison.
~~
Hit locations (demi-human) (2d6)
2 eye
3 nose
4 finger
5 hand
6 arm
7 torso
8 leg
9 foot
10 toe
11 ear
12 neck

Carry Capacity Chart (Medium Sized Creature)


Carry Capacity Chart (Size Multiple)


Quadrupedes gain an additional 2x (Large Quadrupedes would have a total 8x multiplier). Creatures with a similar advantage may also benefit as determined by the GM.

~

Example stat blocks, these are about as basic as I can get and are very likely to be revised later on, but mostly these exist to begin testing the coherence of the system

Medium Demihuman, Commoner
AC 10, Toughness 1
STR 0, DEX 0, SPR 0, MND 0
Speed 5m
Attack, Club +0 hit, damage 1d6
~~

Small Demihuman, Commoner
AC 11, Toughness 0
STR 0, DEX 0, SPR 0, MND 0
Speed 4m
Attack, Club +1 hit, damage 1d6-1

~
Medium Demihuman, Town Guard
AC 12, Toughness 1, Resist Slashing 1
STR 1, DEX 0, SPR 0, MND 0
Speed 5m, Skills, Athletics 1(+1), Perception 1(+1)
Attack, Longsword +1 hit, damage 1d6+2
Equipment, Leather Armor

~
Tiny cat, House
AC 14, Toughness 0, Resist Bludgeoning 1
STR 0, DEX 2, SPR 1, MND -3
Speed 7m, Skills, Athletics 1(+2), Stealth 1(+3), Perception 1(+1)
Attack, Claw +4 hit, damage 1d3-1
Bite +4 hit, damage 1d3

Rake (Ex), +4 hit, damage 1d6-2. Whenever a house cat hits the same creature with a claw twice on its turn, it may immediately perform a rake with its hind legs.
~

Diminutive Rat
AC 13, Toughness -2
STR -1, DEX 1, SPR 0, MND -3
Speed 6m, Climb 3m (13, +3), Skills, Stealth 1(+2)

Attack, Bite +4 hit, damage 1d6-4

Optional
Disease (Ex), Varies (see diseases). On successfully dealing bite damage the target must make a STR Save vs DC 8 or be affiliated with the disease.
~

Large Cat, Tiger
AC 11, Toughness +4
STR 3, DEX 2, SPR 2, MND -3; CB+1
Speed 9m, Skills, Athletics 1(+5), Stealth 1(+2), Perception 1(+3)

Attack, Claw +3 hit, damage 1d3+4
Bite +3 hit, 2d3+3

Rake (Ex), +3 hit, damage 1d6+3. Whenever a tiger hits the same creature with a claw twice on its turn, it may immediately perform a rake with its hind legs.

~~

So as an example, if a rat bit a medium sized demihuman, it would deal 1d6-4 and be applied against toughness 1 (so it would effectively be 1d6-5, or the range of -4 to 1 wound, translating the negatives into fractions gives the range of 1/64, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, applying the rule of thumb, 1/3 of the time the rat would deal no effective damage, but otherwise deal 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, or 1 wound (out of a total of 10 wounds).

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

So ah, whats up with this then?

Hit locations (demi-human) (2d6)
2 eye
3 nose
4 finger
5 hand
6 arm
7 torso
8 leg
9 foot
10 toe
11 ear
12 neck

In a few senses.

Maybe if I bothered reading other threads... what does it do?

But even just beginning to guess what it does.

Why is it arranged like it is?

Because I see potential problems.

1) 2d6 to do whaaat?
Clearly your idea is 2d6 clusters the results towards the center of the table.

But why? And I don't mean why would you want to favor some results, I mean why did you pick those specific results to favor or disfavor.

It makes sense (sort of) when you see leg and torso at the center, it makes sense (sort of) when you see eye and neck at the far ends. Sure, make the things which presumably are more valuable to damage specifically less likely to turn up. I guess.

But then what the hell is up with ear, toe and nose turning up in positions that suggest they are believed to be more valuable to hit than a torso or neck? Why is a hand more valuable than the arm it needs to function? Why is a foot more valuable than a leg? Why is an ear almost as valuable as a neck?

Or if it's instead placed to ensure the "undesirable" outcomes are more rare... is clustering "undesirable because not good enough" outcomes together with the "undesirable because too good" outcomes towards the ends of your range a good idea? Should eye and neck even be results you can get at all.

2) Faces, Hearts, Lungs, gut wounds whaaaat?
So. You take time to give us Neck, Eye, Ear, and NOSE. But, not Face or Head, even though we get Arm, Hand, Finger and Leg, Foot, Toe.

So. You have one of the iconic hit locations people care about, the Eye-shot. But your best hit location result you have for the other iconic hit location people ask for is... a Nose-shot? Seriously, the best 'Head-shot" you can offer that insufferable called shot player who refuses to engage with abstracted hit points responsibly is Nose-Shot? Or I guess if they attack from the side and that matters then an "Ear-Shot" is your "Head-Shot"?.

This is why sometimes its best when you see a player demanding hit locations you just don't engage with them. Or at least not with a randomized table that includes "Toe-Shot".

But also... so is the assumption here that Torso is just mostly where hit points live and the other hit locations "do stuff". So lets cluster results at a 7 for torso? (for a start, that isn't enough in that case, Torso should probably take up at least 3 results in the center of your table if you genuinely want it to be very common, you could lose your fingers and toes to make room just for a start).

But... what about the also relatively interesting called shot results like "Heart-shot", "Lung-damage" and "Slow-Gut-Wound". I mean... if you are doing this I hope you are doing it for interesting and diverse non-hit point outcomes. And those are diverse outcomes requiring responses of relatively equal importance but different types and different urgency, and they are in you table ALL "7) Torso".

I'm saying your division of a humanoid body is arbitrary, in a weird way that doesn't sound like fun. Certainly in a way that makes me strongly suspect you are giving out annoying narrow and incremental penalties for toe damage. Maybe even foot and leg damage too. And missing the exciting options, like coughing up blood until you receive magical first aid or die.

Wait a second, also, ear, eye and nose are on the chart, what have you got against mouths? Is bellow the nose a bellow the belt zone banned from honorable fights?

Player: "I punch him in the mouth"
GM: "Not possible even on a lucky result HAVE YOU CONSIDERED PUNCHING HIM IN THE TOE?"

3) A demi-human whaaat?
By demi human you seem to mean "just a human". Because, aside from missing a distinct head, or mouth, this is basically just a regular human.

Personally, I'd have demi-humans sometimes have oh, lets say, tails.

What? That's too OUT THERE, well, too bad, wings and an extra pair of limbs is still pretty "Demi" of the humanoid for me and for a lot of punters, so you could at least handle tails.

Only you can't. Because then you need a new table. And if it doesn't also play shenanigans with it's RNG and its "curve" your lizard girl with a whipping tail is going to have to give up her damn toes. I mean that or have more than one entry on a single result. Which as far as I can tell from the original table (again TOES) is for some reason anathema and immediately makes tables with more parts "the weird ones" with a potential new interaction that breaks... whatever this is supposed to do.

And what horrors will be unleashed once you start generating hit location tables for non-humanoids? I mean, unless the game is exclusively about humans fighting humans with pointier ears and more or less toes. Or if hit locations are for PCs only. And PCs cant even land a simple devilish tail out of your cold hard grip on flexibility.

Does a snake have to fit on a 2d6 table as well? Am I really going to have to roll "Ear-Shot" on a snake because you needed to include ears because it technically has them and it's table would look too bare if it was just "2) Head 4-11) Body 12) Eyebrow"

What is the plan for dragons, non-specific tentacled eye ball things, kraken and bad dogs going to be?

There are predictable answers for this and other questions the mere presence and odd labeling of this table raises, but are they good solutions?

Should you even make a table that puts you in a position to ask those kinds of questions at all?

[merxa]

you're pretty much right about that table being nonsense. It isn't really attached to any mechanics or anything, eventually I will need some method to determine hit locations for certain types of effects and I was unhappy with my previous table so made this one, which clearly isn't any better.

I have no plans on modeling a lost toe or finger (beyond the cosmetic reality and perhaps an in game npc reaction / joke or two. One of the design goals is for injuries and wounds to have a grittier feel, and being able to generate scars that go across the face or remove an ear, or lose a hand(which would have mechanical impact) is important to me. And yes, I'd likely build hit location tables for various creature types, once I get a usable table filling out more for 4 legged creatures and giant fish and whatnot seems easy enough, but ultimately if it becomes a hassle and doesn't add to play it'll get scrapped -- this is all pre-alpha afterall. Although, I think I am actually getting close(r) to having something that can be play tested.

For me to get to a play testing stage I need a bunch of class features, but as the underlying systems have become more clear, this should be an (easier?) job than it was prior. And if people have any interest in developing this with me, please let me know!

As for demi-humans, thats just the in game setting conceit, all 'humanoids' are referred to as demi-human and the stock setting is unlikely to have humans proper -- so imagine elves, dwarves, dragonoids, lupines, catfolk, gnomes, etc will be collectively referred to as demi human.

[deaddmwalking]

Why do you have negative values for Strength?

[merxa]

Why do you have negative values for Strength?

a STR of 0 would be equivalent to STR 10 in 3e,5e etc, ie it is a +0 in various ways. I haven't made a explicit decision, but a -6 in a core stat (STR,DEX,SPR,MND) might incapacitate someone, but stat damage and drain isn't necessarily a popular mechanic and could easily be skipped here.

One thing that pops out to me is size has an outsized influence, and in some ways STATS are somewhat relative to a creatures size, ie my current intuition of my system is that stats are to be determined by what I consider to be the relative advantage to the hypothetical commoner with 0's in all stats. For example, I have the sample stat blocks for small and medium commoners, but lets write out the colossal sized commoner:

Colossal Demihuman, Commoner
AC 4, Toughness 6
STR 0, DEX 0, SPR 0, MND 0
Speed 45m? (I need to reflect on this more)
Attack, Club -6 hit, damage 1d6+5
~~

-6 to hit is fairly punishing in a 3d6 system, lets see, to hit the medium sized commoner, the colossal one would need to roll a 16 (2.78% chance, and my current assumptions are action points, 3 AP, a standard attack is 1 AP, so 3 attempts per turn for a creature). I think in some ways this can be overcome with establishing a standard 'trample' action a monster can take which would be a more indiscriminate stomping motion that isn't reaching for accuracy just destruction and determined by size, str, mass etc. But otherwise, I think I might be OK with this probability outcome.

Lets do the smallest commoner

Miniscule Demihuman, Commoner
AC 16, Toughness -6
Speed 0.01m (I need to reflect on this more)
Attack, Club +6, Damage 1d6-7
~
Can this hurt a medium sized demihuman? sort of, rolling 6 would be -1, or 1/2 damage, 5 is 1/4, 4 is 1/8 and 3 is hand waived. This is about the size of a flea or ant (4 x 4 mm).

~~

Understanding the Damage Stack.

For my own clarity i'm explicitly laying out how I expect damage to be dealt and applied.

A does 12 Fire damage to B, this can be 'damage incoming'.

B, First applies any fire resistance, the remainder is 'damage dealt'. B, Second applies toughness, the remainder is 'damage taken'.

'fire penetration' would apply against any fire resistance, but any remainder would not otherwise carry over to be applied against toughness.

rewriting How fire damage would work:

Fire
Ignite
Burn
Melt

Every point of fire ‘damage incoming’ (applied before fire resistance) reduces chill by 3, and reduces freeze by 1.

Ignite
Whenever you take 1 or more fire damage (‘damage taken’) you may gain the burning condition. Roll a toughness save DC 10+fire ‘damage dealt’, on success you do not catch on fire. Otherwise gain burning 1,2,3,4 based on the amount of fire ‘damage taken’.

If you take 5 or more fire damage (‘damage taken’), you may gain the melt condition. Roll a toughness save DC 10+fire ‘damage dealt’ (If you are already burning, add burn amount to the save DC), on success you do not gain melt, but burning 4 instead. For every point above the success DC, reduce burning by 1, and at burning 0 or less you do not catch on fire. Otherwise subtract 4 from the total fire ‘damage taken’ and gain melt equal to the remaining amount.

Burn

While Burning, you shed orange light in a 1m radius for every point of burn, other colors may be appropriate depending on the material on fire, double this radius for Large creatures, triple for Huge, etc. For Tiny and smaller creatures, cut this range in half.

At the beginning of your turn, apply ‘damage incoming’ equal to burn (Apply any relevant fire resistance prior to the damage as well as toughness). Any objects that could reasonably act as an accelerant (such as lamp oil), must make a save vs DC 10+burn (see damaging objects) or catch on fire. If between fire resistance and toughness, burn deals -3 (1/16th) or less damage (‘damage taken’) reduce burn to 0 at end of turn as the flames smoulder out (unless other, worn objects have also caught on fire).
Some objects may notably degrade from being on fire, such as clothing, generally apply all burn damage outside in – apply damage to any outside layers first before the inside, see table 1-a, multiple items may burn at once such as a shield, armor, helmet and cloak, roll a 1d3+1 to determine how many items possibly ignite.

Anyone touching you or striking you with a non-reach melee weapon must make a Dex save at DC 10+Burn or take fire damage (‘damage incoming’) equal to your current burn.

You may spend 1 AP to put out any ongoing burn, but must have something that can extinguish flames such as water, and with a suitable flame retardant or enough water to submerge yourself, this is automatically successful. Otherwise (such as dousing yourself with a bucket of water) reduce burn by 1d3. Without a suitable means to extinguish flames, you can spend 3 AP to smother yourself by rolling along the ground or the like, make a DC 10+burn Dex save to reduce burn by 1.

Every point of cold damage reduces burn by 3.

If you are on fire, and there is no reasonable accelerant, reduce your burn condition by 1 at the end of your turn or reduce burn to ‘damage taken’ whichever is better. Otherwise assume any accelerant continues to burn until consumed (default to 1 minute or 6 rounds unless specified).

Melt

While melting, you shed a 1m radius blue light, other colors could be appropriate depending on the material melting.

At the beginning of your turn, take additional fire damage (‘damage taken’) equal to your melt plus fire penetration 4 and ignore any toughness, apply any relevant fire resistance prior to damage. accelerant (such as lamp oil), must make a save vs DC 14+melt (see damaging objects) or melt. Some objects may notably degrade from melting, such as armor, generally apply all melt damage outside in – apply damage to any outside layers first before the inside, see table 1-a for suggestions, multiple items may melt at once such as a shield, armor, helmet and cloak, roll 1d3+1 to determine how many objects are melting.

Anyone touching you or striking you with a non-reach melee weapon must make a Dex save at DC 14+Melt or take fire damage(‘damage incoming’) equal to your current melt plus fire penetration 4.

To reduce melt, you can apply cold damage which will reduce melt on a 1 to 1 basis until it becomes burn 4 at melt 0, otherwise you must be able to apply a large amount of fire retardant, such as jumping into a pool of water in which case reduce melt by 2 per round or burn by 4. Otherwise melting objects take time to cool off, reduce melt by 1 per pound per minute.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Why does the answer to the negative Strength question spend about a sentence on that.

Then drift into an extended set of size modifier examples.

Then say "For my own clarity i'm explicitly laying out how I expect damage to be dealt and applied."

But then instead spend nearly 830 words exclusively on how being on fire works.

Which itself is an oxymoron because anything with that many steps, references, states and endless fiddly little rolls for everything. Well. When how being on fire works looks like that... it doesn't work.

If that isn't just a wild tangent from your declared need for clarity on how your system handles damage more broadly, if all the damage types are 830 word monstrosities that might make you roll a god damn 1D3 of all abominations several times no less as just small parts of the elaborate process.

No. Just no. Pointing out the individual flaws isn't worth the effort. There is an overwhelming failure just in terms of what you are even attempting observable well before that.

[Thaluikhain]

While melting, you shed a 1m radius blue light, other colors could be appropriate depending on the material melting.

Erm, the colour you get from heating an material isn't dependent (normally) on what it's made of, but the temperature. To glow blue from heat, you need something like 2.5k-3k degrees C. To melt steel you need 1.2-1.4k (ish). Iron boils at a bit over 3k.

(As an aside, to get that nice orange glow from molten metal in movies, they tend to use aluminium, molten iron/steel glows much whiter)

[deaddmwalking]

Why do you have negative values for Strength?

a STR of 0 would be equivalent to STR 10 in 3e,5e etc, ie it is a +0 in various ways. I haven't made a explicit decision, but a -6 in a core stat (STR,DEX,SPR,MND) might incapacitate someone, but stat damage and drain isn't necessarily a popular mechanic and could easily be skipped here.

Creating negative numbers is a choice, and it is not obvious to me why you would do that? Why not set your -5 at 0, and your current 0 at 5? Why use negative numbers at all? It does not appear that you're applying the score as a bonus or penalty.

What difference do you envision if you numbered Strength from 0 to 15 instead of -5 to 10?

[Bigdy McKen]

Why do you have negative values for Strength?

a STR of 0 would be equivalent to STR 10 in 3e,5e etc, ie it is a +0 in various ways. I haven't made a explicit decision, but a -6 in a core stat (STR,DEX,SPR,MND) might incapacitate someone, but stat damage and drain isn't necessarily a popular mechanic and could easily be skipped here.

Creating negative numbers is a choice, and it is not obvious to me why you would do that? Why not set your -5 at 0, and your current 0 at 5? Why use negative numbers at all? It does not appear that you're applying the score as a bonus or penalty.

What difference do you envision if you numbered Strength from 0 to 15 instead of -5 to 10?

I mean - same reason anyone would have negative integers: when they want 0 to be a neutral value or baseline.

It’s easy to balance probability if you set your DC for an average task at 10, and your unremarkable commoner has a 50/50 shot of making it. Then you have a clearer idea what an appropriate challenge looks like for more skilled individuals.

You could probably make a good case for why this isn’t the best design decision, but I’d say the OP’s rationale is pretty clear.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

You could probably make a good case for why this isn’t the best design decision, but I’d say the OP’s rationale is pretty clear.

If better design decisions could clearly have been made...

That's a "wow" on the faint praise detector.

[deaddmwalking]

You could probably make a good case for why this isn’t the best design decision, but I’d say the OP’s rationale is pretty clear.

I don't think the rational is clear, and I also don't think it is the best design decision. If you presume that 0 was chosen as a 'baseline', it seems strange that we have the example of a cat with STR 0 (the same as a commoner) and a rat with STR -1. What does a STR of -2 even mean for a commoner who is wearing 'clothes'? Jeans weigh 1-2 pounds, but are we tracking that?

If Size modifies carrying capacity (and it explicitly does) what's the practical difference between giving a Fly a STR of 0 and a STR of -5? I mean, I know that dividing the maximum carrying capacity by 1024 yields different numbers, but do you know what 3/1024 is versus 45/1024? That's the difference between being able to carry 3 grams versus 44 grams (1 penny versus 20 pennies). Any if you're using kilograms, why divide by 1024? If you make the division by 1000 you don't have to divide - you just get to say '3 grams' instead of '3 kilograms'.

If a Cat and a Commoner have the same STR (and they do), but they're different sizes, that means they have different carrying capacities. But how about their odds of winning an arm-wrestling contest? It sounds like they're equal (because they have equal STR) but that's also crazy!!!

Now, I like Merxa, and I don't want to attack him or his ideas. So rather than starting with everything above, I wanted to start with the use of negative numbers. Because maybe if I understood whether there was any thought behind that choice and why it was made, some of the things that look crazy to me at first sight wouldn't seem crazy.

[merxa]

Creating negative numbers is a choice, and it is not obvious to me why you would do that? Why not set your -5 at 0, and your current 0 at 5? Why use negative numbers at all? It does not appear that you're applying the score as a bonus or penalty.

What difference do you envision if you numbered Strength from 0 to 15 instead of -5 to 10?

Where to put 0 has been a tricky decision. The core stats directly impact bonuses to hit, damage, skills, etc. So if i reset -6 to 0, to keep everything seamless as possible, I'd need to rework the commoner to be 6s, which would translate to +6 hit and an ac of 16. I'll just put together a new stat block

Medium Demihuman, Commoner (converting -6 to 0)
AC 16, Toughness 7
STR 6, DEX 6, SPR 6, MND 6
Speed 5m
Attack, Club +0 hit, damage 1d6+6
~

I was briefly deluded into thinking the damage system might be a little easier as 0,-1,-2 (1/2,1/4,1/8) might be less common, but everything shifts including toughness (toughness is currently being calculated as (STR+DEX+SPR)/3 + Size Modifier.

I have various opinions, but I think I am going to finish this build and get some playtest of it going, I need some experience to know how awful the introduction of fractions for damage will be. Intuition says not good, but the more I look at the math, the more I like it, it also gives me more room since I've decided on using a 10 wound box system.

Overall the system will likely have a strong positive skew, so PCs at level 3 or 4 are likely to have bonuses from +3 to +9 or so. I don't necessarily want to run off the rng immediately nor do i want people adding together two double digit numbers from level 1 or 2.

[merxa]

d&d has never been very good at modeling the ye-old arm-wrestling competition, and I haven't given too much thought to that myself. It certainly wouldn't be a straight 3d6+STR opposed check, at the very least size would be a modifier, but no human is every going to lose against a cat nor win against a gorilla, so sometimes systems just say, whomever is stronger wins (stronger would be defined as STR+SIZE), and for ties roll opposed.

I do appreciate the suggestion of converting 1024 to 1000, it does make the kg to g conversion very simple, 1024 was just the outcome of the 4x modifier. To make the table more available for on the fly human calculation the factor could be something like:

1x, 4x, 20x? 50x, 250x, 1000x, or i can just fix the top range and keep 1,4,16,64. so maybe 1,4,16,64,250,1000?

STATS so far are going to be relative to size (at least STR,DEX), so determining the strength of a cat is going to depend on whether its considered stronger or not than other things its size, which admittedly may all be a little difficult to adjudicate, but since we're playing make believe at some point these adjudications are needed somewhere -- I don't have access to some grand unified theory of biomechanical systems that I can transform into a table top system that accurately models fleas to blue whales, before we even get into what a chimera should or should not be capable of.

[deaddmwalking]

STATS so far are going to be relative to size (at least STR,DEX), so determining the strength of a cat is going to depend on whether its considered stronger or not than other things its size, which admittedly may all be a little difficult to adjudicate, but since we're playing make believe at some point these adjudications are needed somewhere -- I don't have access to some grand unified theory of biomechanical systems that I can transform into a table top system that accurately models fleas to blue whales, before we even get into what a chimera should or should not be capable of.

Why not just apply a size modifier to STR directly, rather than basing these things on STR + SIZE? That will reduce a lot of complexity right off the bat.

I understand the desire to make the STR score equal to the STR modifier - I do the same. But we also have 'normal human maximum' range from 1-6 (+1 to +6). There are a lot of creatures with a STR of 0 (no modifier), but we don't have to worry about a damage of 1d3-6 (impossible to do damage without buffs).

The damage values didn't appear to include STR values - for example, the rat was 1d6-4, but STR was -1.

In any case, if you used a multiplier based on size, 5x, 10x, 50x, 250x would closely approximate your increases (based on sizes over medium). If you worked that backward as 1/5, 1/10, 1/50, 1/250, 1/1000 that'd mostly work, but dividing small numbers by big numbers gives you VERY VERY small numbers that aren't very helpful. In a metric system a 10/100/1000 is most convenient (because you can change units without actually doing calculations). Since your system doesn't actually seem to 'peg to reality' you could probably make that work.

Your actual carrying capacity chart is not strictly linear. Ie, Light load increases by 3 pounds from -5 to 0; then by 15 pounds from 1-4, then 25 pounds, then 50 pounds, then doubling (150 to 300, 300 to 600). The chart isn't even consistent between what Light/Medium/Heavy is relative to each other. For example, at STR 3 Light is 1x, Medium is 2x, and Heavy is 3x. At STR 9 Light is 1x, Medium is 2x, but Heavy is 2.6x. At STR 10 it appears to reset. Maybe STR 9 is a mistake?

The thing is, you don't HAVE to use linear scaling. But if you do, you should make it consistent. But you probably don't want linear scaling. Do you know how much an Elephant can lift? Google sources that look reliable indicate that they can carry 9000 kg. That's off the chart! Now, is Godzilla stronger than an Elephant? You don't necessarily want Elephants to get +10 on damage, especially if you're giving them a weapon that does good base damage. Basically 1d8+10 is about equivalent to 2d8+5 - if you allow base weapon damage to scale with size, you don't ALSO have to scale bonuses at the same rate - if you did the elephant might do 2d8+10 and maybe that's too much...

Psychologically, people don't like penalties. If Raistlin is running around with a +1 STR and Caramon is running around with a +6 STR, there's still a difference - one is a lot weaker than the other. If you instead make it -1/+4 you still have the same range, but now Raistlin is doing 0 damage on some of his attacks and feeling bad. If your goal is to CONSTRAIN the bonus amount, you haven't really done it by having negative numbers - the spread is still 16 numbers. If your goal is to reduce the complexity by keeping additive numbers small, well, let's just say that adding negative numbers (which is just subtraction) is harder for a lot of people than adding small piles of numbers - especially if you have mixed bonuses and penalties. You should really consider how much damage bonus you WANT and then work back from there.

From a practical standpoint, assuming that all values are between 1 and 10 (instead of 0-20) and applying those across the board compared to D&D doesn't change ANYTHING. Yeah, AC goes from 11-20, and Attack bonus goes from +1-+10, but you're still hitting just as much on a d20 roll if your opponent had a -5 Defense and you had a -5 STR. If +10 is too much, just cut those ranges down - remember you're representing RELATIVE DIFFERENCE, and you get to choose what that means. So yes, STR 5 is less than STR 6, but it's up to you whether that's the difference between moving 100 pounds or 300 pounds.

[merxa]

didn’t spot check an elephant, but you’re missing the size again, at huge it would be at x16 and as a quadrupede another 2x for 32x. Looking at the chart, 300 corresponds (300X32 is 9600), which is a STR 5 at heavy load (6 for medium, 7 for light).

Theoretical stat block:

Huge Elephant
AC 8, Toughness 5
STR 5, DEX -1, SPR 2, MND -3
Speed 8m, Skills, Legerdemain (trunk) 1 (+0), Nature 1 (+1), Perception 1 (+1)

Attack, Trunk +5 Hit, Damage 1d3+6 plus grab.
Bite +3 Hit, Damage 1d3+9
Gore (2AP) +4 Hit, Damage 1d6+8, as part of the action move your speed, must move
at least 2m.

(Ex). Articulate Trunk. The Trunk is highly articulate and treated as medium sized instead of huge when used.

~
I would also include trample, but trample is a general ability and needs a generic write up.

STR 9 on the chart is incorrect, i’ll try to fix it (it should be 1200,2400,3600).

Google tells me elephants have biting force of 2200 PSI (google also says a tiger is 1050PSI). They tell me their trunk can lift about 300kg. Is this elephant ok? Would it give me the feeling of an elephant in a fight? What about that toughness 5?, commoners with a club will deal 1d6 (so that is -4 to 1, or ‘nothing, nothing, ⅛, ¼, ½, 1’, or ⅔ of the time a club deal an average of (i think? 3/8ths), so to deal 10 wounds, you would need to hit an elephant about 40 times, dealing no appreciable damage about 13 times and otherwise harming it 27 times to incapacitate it. (at AC 8, a commoner would roll at least 8 on 3d6 ~86% of the time, or 46 swings, 40 hits, 27 damage events).

I did not like how 3e handled size, and weapon damage sizes, and there being a size modifier and size changes also modifying your str, dex, sometimes con, it felt inconsistent, hard to get straight, and could make transformations painful at times.



Currently, dealing -2 damage would translate to 1/8 damage, i'll write a simple chart

dealing damage at 0 and below
Damage taken | conversion
1 | 1
0 | 1/2
-1 | 1/4
-2 | 1/8
-3 | 1/16*
*handwaived, ie dealing 1/16th damage is actually zero.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Size and negative modifiers are all good and valid things to ask questions about. There is some slightly messy stuff happening.

But people are seriously just going to walk past that specific implementation of catching on fire without comment. It's a fucking train wreck!

Worse, it's a train wreck ominously presented as the first and presumably best example of how damage will be applied in general. Implying additional train wrecks per damage type culminating presumably in a sort of mega train yard disaster wreck covering damage mechanics in general.

Do I need to go through it? Have any of you tried to? It's totally gonzo shit.

Do I have to point out it requires keeping working notes? It has a significant typo on having no upper cut off for Ignite+Burn? It includes references to no less than 4 different damage related special states each of which can have values and all of which interact differently to two different forms of damage type and imply that all damage types also have two special states each which also all can have values and interaction (I assume its the point of the system, but it's applied... like a train wreck).

And that's not even all I could point at but i WILL point at THIS because it is a hilarious mess and demonstrates what happens when you get one thing wrong as long as it needs to feed into an overly complex train wreck of a mechanic...

At the beginning of your turn, take additional fire damage (‘damage taken’) equal to your melt plus fire penetration 4 and ignore any toughness, apply any relevant fire resistance prior to damage.

Did NO ONE including Merxa, give the fire damage rules even a sufficiently cursory read to see that line and go "wait a minute, ooooh fuuuuuuck... that word salad just fucking EXPLODED..."

[Foxwarrior]

I'm just confused that the burning rules don't seem to mention a difference between your toe catching on fire and your head.

[merxa]

So, I do ultimately agree, The fire writeup is overly complex and it doesn't fully do what I want it to do. I have another revision below. Now, if you are burning you take a flat 1 point of 'damage taken', melt does 1+melt of damage taken.

Fire
Ignite
Burn
Melt

Every point of fire ‘damage incoming’ (applied before fire resistance) reduces chill by 3, and reduces freeze by 1.

Ignite
Whenever you take 1 or more fire damage (‘damage taken’) you may gain the burning condition. Roll a toughness save DC 10+fire ‘damage dealt’, on success you do not catch on fire. Otherwise gain burning 1,2,3,4 based on the amount of fire ‘damage taken’.

If you take 5 or more fire damage (‘damage taken’), you may gain the melt condition. Roll a toughness save DC 10+fire ‘damage dealt’ (If you are already burning, add burn amount to the save DC), on success you do not gain melt, but burning 4 instead. For every point above the success DC, reduce burning by 1, and at burning 0 or less you do not catch on fire. Otherwise gain melt equal to the fire damage taken minus 4.

Burn

While Burning, you shed orange light in a 1m radius for every point of burn, other colors may be appropriate depending on the material on fire, double this radius for Large creatures, triple for Huge, etc. For Tiny and smaller creatures, cut this range in half.

At the beginning of your turn, Take 1 fire damage, this damage bypasses any fire resistance or toughness you may have. Any objects that could reasonably act as an accelerant (such as lamp oil), must make a save vs DC 10+burn (see damaging objects) or catch on fire. Some objects may notably degrade from being on fire, such as clothing, generally apply all burn damage outside in – apply damage to any outside layers first before the inside, see table 1-a, multiple items may burn at once such as a shield, armor, helmet and cloak, roll a 1d3+1 to determine how many items possibly ignite.

Anyone touching you or striking you with a non-reach melee weapon must make a Dex save at DC 10+Burn or take fire damage (‘damage incoming’) equal to your current burn.

You may spend 1 AP to put out any ongoing burn, but must have something that can extinguish flames such as water, and with a suitable flame retardant or enough water to submerge yourself, this is automatically successful. Otherwise (such as dousing yourself with a bucket of water) reduce burn by 1d3. Without a suitable means to extinguish flames, you can spend 3 AP to smother yourself by rolling along the ground or the like, make a DC 10+burn Dex save to reduce burn by 1d3.

Every point of cold damage reduces burn by 3.

If you are on fire, and there is no reasonable accelerant, reduce your burn condition by 1 at the end of your turn. Otherwise assume any accelerant continues to burn until consumed (default to 1 minute or 6 rounds unless specified).

Melt

While melting, you shed a 1m radius blue light, other colors could be appropriate depending on the material melting.

At the beginning of your turn, take fire damage (‘damage taken’) equal to 1 plus melt, this damage bypasses any fire resistance or toughness you may have. Accelerant (such as lamp oil), must make a save vs DC 14+melt (see damaging objects) or melt. Some objects may notably degrade from melting, such as armor, generally apply all melt damage outside in – apply damage to any outside layers first before the inside, see table 1-a for suggestions, multiple items may melt at once such as a shield, armor, helmet and cloak, roll 1d3+1 to determine how many objects are melting.

Anyone touching you or striking you with a non-reach melee weapon must make a Dex save at DC 14+Melt or take fire damage(‘damage incoming’) equal to your current melt plus 4.

To reduce melt, you can apply cold damage which will reduce melt on a 1 to 1 basis until it becomes burn 4 at melt 0, otherwise you must be able to apply a large amount of fire retardant, such as jumping into a pool of water in which case reduce melt by 2 per round or burn by 4. Otherwise melting objects take time to cool off, reduce melt by 1 per pound per minute.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Now, if you are burning you take a flat 1 point of 'damage taken', melt does 1+melt of damage taken.

But it's still necessary to have Burn 1 to 4?

1 or more Fire damage causes Burn. Burn, causes 1 Fire damage.

So Burn Fire Damage causes (after additional rolling)... Burn. Right?

If you have 1 Burn and take another 1 Burn do you have 2 Burn or 1 Burn?

Melt also does fire damage, does melt fire damage cause Burn?

Melt could cause 5 or more fire damage. If it does does it cause Burn and Melt?

Burn still doesn't cap out at 4 because A) You might add Burn to Burn? and B) ignite still says "1 or more" instead of "1 to 4".

That also means that Burn ignition is still triggered when Melt ignition is triggered, because 5 fire damage is also still more than one fire damage and it doesn't say "instead".

Melt happens after burn in the sequence of resolution and Burn modifies the save DC for Melt, since I can (and probably will) Burn then Melt in the same instance of fire damage does that Burn modify my Melt save from the same damage event?

Have more, have to run, but this is before "but isn't all this still too many rolls?" question.

edit:I'm back from the thing I'm just tagging this all together.

For that matter have you put any thought into the turn when someone is hit with 5 fire damage events in one turn?

On that point. You realize that you have the potential for some pretty complex math behind this. Enough so that frankly, you should be drawing up a bunch of graphs to get an idea what this entire thing does. This thing has non-linear outcomes and potential tipping points where damage will suddenly unexpectedly spiral out of wildly out of control in either direction.

Why does Burn reduce by 3x incoming cold damage and melt only reduces by 1x? How much Burn CAN you have? Is it really uncapped, do you really expect to have like 9 Burn to reduce?

Why do you even have Burn and Melt separately? Couldn't you at least either drop the numeric value and just have 2 states, OR if you keep the state with a numeric value thing, then just make it Burn only and have melting just be a thing that happens when your Burn is at 5 or more?

You even have the reverse written in with Melt 0 becoming Burn 4, but... Burn 5 doesn't become Melt 1?

If Burn is uncapped and your keep Melt separate... you could end up with like 12 Burn and 0 Melt. Even aside from that you could end up with 0 Burn and 3 Melt.

Certainly there seems to be some hint that you have this idea in your head that Burn never stacks with new Burn and there are caps on Burn at 4 points, and maybe also a bunch of other numbers like Melt, Fire Resistance and Fire Penetration all could have similar low caps and non-stacking applications... but you never actually SAY any of that.

Your changes to Burn and Melt damage reduce complexity very slightly but... it feels like you didn't grasp what I was pointing out as disastrous in that line I quoted about your word salad exploding.

Instead you seem to have steered the swerving car in the direction of "Yes this bypasses normal damage reductions" but... that's a problem. This is STILL fire damage, it still triggers it's own mechanics. But, by using language that just skips to Damage Taken you are generating multiple null pointers when someone attempts to execute the whole fire damage taken mechanic with all it's fiddly references to Damage Incoming and Damage Dealt which no longer exist on that instance of fire damage.

Yes, you cleaned out (some) redundant references to Toughness, Fire resistance, and Fire Penetration that DID make that word salad much worse, but the single key point that was the worst thing in it was the language of skipping straight to Damage Taken terminology, which you retain. And you DO still have redundant language about Toughness and Resistance not applying which is useless/just a potential further screw up because the language skipping to Damage Taken means that Toughness and Resistance already cannot apply anyway.

And again. 1d3+1 Was it really a good idea to stop at that point in the process, easily 2, maybe more, saving throws in already, and bring it all to yet another halt for yet another roll and its a 1d3. Just pick whether you like 1 or 2 more and hard code it (hell go hog wild, pick 3 instead). A 1d3 is an open invitation to streamline the fuck out of anything it appears in. And then for that roll to give you the number of additional item save/attack/damage/whatever rolls you are now also going to make? Couldn't these melting items just melt/burn? The character already failed a save, cannot that be enough for their vast reserves of lamp oil they keep in their string bags to all catch alight WITHOUT giving the lamp oil it's own save?

Is this really the model for ALL your damage types. Are they all going to be like this?

But I think finally, I'm going to ask. Have you sat down and tried running through this yourself? Have you put these rules on a sheet of paper, picked a few fire damage/fire resistance/fire penetration scenarios down on another sheet of paper and just tried step by step running through your rules and doing all the rolls, and looking at the outcomes, since it's ongoing damage, rolling out a few more turns of it, maybe with more incoming damage during that. Making sure to consider things like "oh, what if like, 5 guys all hit one guy with fire damage in the same turn" or "what if 1 guy uses a fire ball and hits 5 guys in one turn" and other fairly basic and even conservatively low balled scenarios that rapidly multiple the number of times per turn you will need to go through this process.

I'm not talking about play testing, math hammering, modelling, or anything much advanced, just some relatively simple bare bones run throughs of intended use of the mechanic on it's own and seeing what that feels like to you personally. Do you get bogged down in all those rolls when you need to do it more than once, does the actual language parse when you try to follow it step by step as written, does it only raise further questions, do some of your seemingly harmless combinations of input values suddenly spiral wildly out of control compared to your expected outcomes?

[Thaluikhain]

At the beginning of your turn, Take 1 fire damage, this damage bypasses any fire resistance or toughness you may have. Any objects that could reasonably act as an accelerant (such as lamp oil), must make a save vs DC 10+burn (see damaging objects) or catch on fire. Some objects may notably degrade from being on fire, such as clothing, generally apply all burn damage outside in – apply damage to any outside layers first before the inside, see table 1-a, multiple items may burn at once such as a shield, armor, helmet and cloak, roll a 1d3+1 to determine how many items possibly ignite.

If I'm reading this correctly, if I'm carrying a precious scroll, for example, and am worried about that being destroyed if I am set on fire, I should cover myself in inflammable materials, because the more things that can burn on me, the less chance that a given item will be in the 1d3+1 that might be affected.

[deaddmwalking]

Doing fractional damage is bad. Adding fractions is bad.

The smallest amount of damage you care about should be '1'. If that corresponds to 1/4 today, you multiply ALL VALUES by 4, so clubs do 1 point of damage to Elephants and Elephants have 40 hit points.

Any simplicity you THINK you gain by having everything have '10 hit boxes' is COMPLETELY NEGATED by adding 1/16 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/2 + 2. To determine how much damage that represents I have to use lowest common denominator (16) and multiple each fraction (x4, x2, x8) to reset to 1 + 4 + 2 + 8 (sixteenths) to get total damage of 2 & 15/16ths. THAT IS NOT HOW YOU WANT TO USE YOUR TABLE TIME!!!!

I'm not worried about fire damage because the crazy starts WAY EARLIER.

[merxa]

once damage hits 1/16 it is handwaived, so the lowest denominator is 1/8th, and with a little teaching and practice, converting 1/2, 1/4 to a 1/8 denominator should be within reach of most people. Visually this can be done with a box that is evenly divided into 8 smaller pieces, something like this:



and 1/2 can be written as 4/8, 1/4 as 2/8. I believe presenting the information in a better way will greatly help actual play.

I'll agree again that my intuition tells me fractional damage is a 'bad idea', but I also think it has a number of promising properties and I will be using it for my initial playtests. The best advantage to me is it gives much more space to a '10 wound' system. The alternative might be to double wound boxes up to 20 and convert 1/8 to 1 point, although that isn't really the same thing, to keep the same ranges that 1/8 allows, I would need, I believe, 80 wound boxes, which is also terrible.

In terms of equipping more things that are flammable to protect an important item, I don't believe that will work out well as they will catch on fire and continue to burn, possibly catching other equipment on fire as well. I imagine the most effective storage would be placing it in a insulated scroll case and to wear equipment that will not catch on fire. I'll repaste the table 1-a as reference:

Table 1-a
Outside in Damage Table for Worn Objects

1st Shield
2nd Armor
3rd Helmet, hat, or headband
4th Cloak, belt, backpack
5th Item in hand (including weapon, wand, or the like)
6th Clothing
7th Stowed or sheathed weapon, belt pouch
8th bracers, bracelets, or necklaces
9th Rings
10th Undergarments, anything else

Skip irrelevant entries and use the next relevant one in the list.
~

Melt is intended as the more severe Burn, so it is either/or and not both. Burn will stack with itself up to burn 4, but melt will only be achievable if a single source of fire damage can trigger the condition (by having an opponent take 5 or more fire damage and failing a save).

PL, I believe you are miscounting the amount of saves, at the moment it is one save -- once damage is resolved, creatures that took fire damage make a save or catch on fire. I'll do another pass to cleanup the language some more and make it clear how I expect stacking to work or not work. And I'll look into refining how removing the burn condition works (at the moment you either have a means to easily extinguish yourself or will be making a save to remove some amount of burn during your turn, and if there is no accelerate present this will also reduce burn 1/turn).

[angelfromanotherpin]

Well, I don't know what more can be done here. If you reject 80 wound boxes as terrible, but not 10 wound boxes each with 8 subdivisions, you have left the land of reason.

[deaddmwalking]

Well, I don't know what more can be done here. If you reject 80 wound boxes as terrible, but not 10 wound boxes each with 8 subdivisions, you have left the land of reason.

THIS.

10 Wound boxes with 8 sub-units is 80 boxes.

But if you VISUALLY like 10 boxes with 8 subdivisions, you can make '1/8' = 1 and have them fill in one 'box slice'. '8 damage' would then fill in 8 slices (1 full box).

When you're designing a system, you get to set where the floor is. If you've set the floor to the point where you need negative numbers and/or fractions, you've really done a disservice to your players. If you're approaching this from a position that you're good at math, you should understand that a simple transformation doesn't change the underlying math. If .125 maps to 1, and 1 maps to 8, nothing has actually changed except you're counting by 1s instead of by 1/8ths.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

PL, I believe you are miscounting the amount of saves, at the moment it is one save -- once damage is resolved, creatures that took fire damage make a save or catch on fire.

Again as explicitly pointed out to you, because of the way you wrote the trigger for the Burn portion of ignite "1 or more damage" and the way you wrote the Melt portion of ignite "5 or more damage" every time you take 5 or more damage BOTH THOSE SAVES TRIGGER.

Also if you are Melting then you roll saves for all accelerant items.

Then 1d3+1 saves for other items.

And of course Burning and melting deals you Fire damage each turn. Which is MORE triggers for ignition you save for each turn.

Also everyone else might roll saves for touching you. Which if failed trigger fire damage, which triggers the ignition saves, which may trigger the ongoing Melt state saves, etc...

There isn't actually a clear upper limit for how many rolls even a single instance of fire damage may trigger. And if a single instance of fire damage occurs there is probably at least one source of fire damage trying to deal it all AGAIN every turn.

By the second turn of fire damage from just 1 source a single character might save 5 times for ignition alone, twice for the new instance of fire damage, once for the fire damage triggered by Burn and then separately twice for the fire damage triggered by Melt. Then they might roll 1d3+1+Accellerant items in Melt item damage saves as well, so the number of saves in one turn could conservatively reach say... ELEVEN, with no actual capped upper limit.

In anything resembling a real use scenario it escalates fast.