Faster weapon damage

[dustin]

I have hit upon a way to speed up the gameplay by eliminating some die rolling. This is actually inspired by a post on the Valinor website that I have tweaked, a little. To who ever the original post belongs, thanks for the inspiration.

The first thing to do is to eliminate the 2d6 part of the weapon damage. For example, a longsword does 2d6+5 damage. With this system, it does +5 damage. With weapons that have 3d6 or more, eliminate 2d6 and max the rest out. For example, the great ax does 3d6+2. With this, it does +8 (3d6+2 minus 2d6 = 1d6+2 = +8), the trample by oliphaunts does 6d6, this is now +24 (maximum of 4d6). For 1d6 weapons, such as knives, daggers, and bashing with the shield, their is no damage modifier. But don't get angry, there is more.

After making a successful attack, the degree of success is scaled out into a hit bonus:
= to TN - +2
+1-5 above +5
+6-10 above +7
+11-15 above +9
+16 or more +12

This hit bonus is added to your weapon's damage along with your Strength modifier.

Combat example: Menelcar is armed with a Longsword (+5) and has a Str Mod of +2 for a total damage modifier of +7. He attacks an orc with a Defence of 10, Health of 9, and Armor of 3. He rolls 2d6+ AC(6) for a 7+6 =13. This is 3 above the orc's defence for a bonus of +5. The total damage he inflicts is 12(7 for the sword +5 for the bonus). Subtract the orc's armor of 3 for a total of 9 hits, killing the orc.

If Menelcar had attacked with a shield bash, the total damage inflicted is:
+2 for Strength, +5 for hit bonus, -3 for orc's armor = 4 hits.

I have also added extra bonuses for particularly hard hits, like anything above 16 is double damage and a free action. But these are entirely up to each individual narrator.

I have used this in my newest chronicle, and it does speed things up quite a bit. So far all of my players seem to like it.

Questions and comments are welcome.

dustin

[Scottomir]

I agree, this definitely reduces dice rolling, but I'm not sure it really makes combat all that much faster. Honestly, how much time is actually spent calculating a damage roll? It takes a couple seconds to pick up the dice and throw them, a few seconds to read the result and add the modifiers, and a few seconds to tell the Narrator and have him mark it down. An entire damage sequence takes maybe 10 seconds. Repeat that a couple dozen times, even, and you're still looking at only a few minutes tops. To my mind, the real issue is not that rolling damage makes combat take too long but that combat lasts too many rounds because maximum possible damage is fairly low and it can take a great deal of time to hack through six health levels.

My chief concern with a system like the one proposed here is that it flattens out variability of results. This does eliminate botched damage rolls which waste time and slow down combat, but at the same time it gets rid of the upper-end variance that delivers heavier blows which speed up combat. In this proposed system, you have to score a superior success (6-10 over TN) to get +7 damage, which is the median result on a 2d6 roll anyway. For most weapons, then, a system like this would not inflict any more damage typically and thus would not accelerate combat. (I suppose this system would increase the typical damage for something like a 1d6+1 dagger or a 4d6 trample, but probably not for attacks in between.) I have found that what really accelerates combat is to provide ways for attacks to inflict significantly higher possible damage: I have found that adding in +1d6 for a superior success, +2d6 for an extraordinary success, and extra dice for certain attack maneuvers (like Power Attack), increases the upper-end variance and typically speeds up a fight (though it is never a sure thing).

[dustin]

I understand where you are coming from. This will slow down combat when you have to cut through six wound levels. This was designed as an alternative to the one-hit, two-hit, three-hit system in the core book. The orcs, uruks, and such do not get all six of their wound levels, but only their hale. The only characters that get all of their wound levels are the PCs and major NPCs. Everyone else is just reduced to the number of hale levels given in the FB&WM.

We've played like this a couple of times now. It may look deceiving, but, in the last battle, my orcs were doing some damage to the PCs. Enough to get them a little worried. Note that the orcs didn't dare go one on one, but more like three or four on one, which is their tactic.

Also, I do award extra bonuses to extraordinary hits. The PCs get a choice of breaking a weapon or shield, an extra action for that combat round, or doing double damage, based on how hard they hit, of course.

For major enemy NPCs, I do still use the standard rules and dice.

dustin