He don't know me very well, do he?
I'm pretty adamant about keeping damage dice under control. That's why I use the "all weapons do 1d6 damage" approach. Sure, I do allow 2d6 or 3d6 for spears and pole arms receiving a charge, and two or more dice for stuff like siege weapons or cannon. But the martial arts monk got only half a point of damage per level... for one weapon! Why on Earth would I give a full die of damage per level to anyone?
Now, I might not be too averse to one change in the combat rules for fighters. You may remember that I regularized the way I handle monster damage: creatures of more than 4 dice do the same damage as an ogre (1+2) and larger creatures do 1 die of damage per 4 hit dice. That's another reason not to let Heroes do the same amount of damage as a Purple Worm... but, conversely, it might not be too bad to make the benefit go both ways: Heroes would do the same damage as ogres, and Superheroes would do the same damage as giants.
I only mentioned this option over the multiple attack rolls of OD&D vs the wimpy monsters (0 or 1 HD depending on rules). 8d6 rolled after a single hit roll is a lot faster than say 8 hit rolls followed by up to 8 damage rolls.
ReplyDeleteYes, but "You do standard damage to one and killed the rest" is even faster. Plus, if you *do* wind up with a means of doing more damage, you don't have to reconcile the two damage systems.
DeleteYours is certainly more efficient. Maybe a little boring though. This isn't a skill check; it's an attack roll! Players love rolling those
DeleteAs long as we're throwing around ideas, here's one that just popped into my head: forget the attack roll and only roll damage. If you drop a foe, you can attack another. Don't stop till you fail to drop
After thinking about it for more than two seconds, I'm thinking my suggestion might not be the best idea. The whole confirmation stage would slow things down to much
DeleteAre the extra dice really a problem if you're throwing them all out at once? I think it'd be pretty fun for a fighter to chuck, say, 5d6 on the table (no attack roll) and just apply each die as damage to one opponent, done so as to maximize the number of foes killed. So if five orcs have 3, 5, 1, 3 and 4 hit points, and the player rolls 5, 1, 2, 5 and 1 for damage, he'd kill three orcs and the remaining two would have 1 and 2 hp
Alternatively, roll for attacks but not damage, assuming each hit is a kill. Again, you're rolling these all at once, so it takes no extra time, and there's less math which makes it even faster while still giving players the fun of rolling lots o' dice!
DeleteTSR's Warriors of Mars works like this. There's a chart where you compare the attackers and defenders hit dice and get two numbers, one to wound your opponent and another, higher number, to kill him outright.
DeleteI believe Dave Arneson had it right. Characters do more damage as they level up (to everything!) and damage spills over from one monster to another. Do 30 points of damage to kobolds with 3 hit points each? Kill 10 kobolds. Against bugbears with 10 hit points each? Kill 3 bugbears. Easy and scales well unlike the cumbersome (and illogical) "vs creatures with 1 hit die" nonsense.
ReplyDeleteI'm torn; I want to prevent bonus inflation to attacks, and I also don't much care for multiple attacks at this point in my gaming. So increasing damage die seems the way to go. I really like the idea of Fighters and Monsters sharing the same 'damage schedule' and fighters getting 2d6 at 8th level with any weapon (3d6 at 12th, etc.), and I think I'm going to try that out in my own game.
ReplyDeletelet me know how it works out. I think it should be pretty smooth and satisfying. And, if you decided to extend the advantage to all classes, the fighters still have the advantage, since clerics wouldn't do 2 dice damage until 12th level and M-Us at 11th level.
DeleteI've been playing with extra damage for a few months now. I give out 2 dice at 4 HD, 3 at 8 HD etc. Unfortunately, the highest level character is 3rd and he's a magic-user so no ones done extra damage so far.
DeleteI do like Dave's spreading damage rule. It makes large numbers of weak opponents (20 or so) a playable challenge for the party. Plus a critical doing double damage matters even against the little guys. In D&D, doing double damage to a kobold is pointless but this way, even a first level character can get lucky and take out three with one blow.