The Blog Glatisant

Month: January 2016

Variable d6 weapon damage

Delilah by Barry Moser

Delilah by Barry Moser

I’m not a huge fan of the highly differentiated weapon damage in DnD. All weapons are deadly in the right situations, so the 2d6 of a longsword and the d4 of a dagger don’t make that much sense to me. On the other hand, OD&D, with its flat d6 for all weapons, doesn’t sit right either.

I’m working on a 2d6 system that’s a bit more robust than my previous Maze Rats, but still simple and fast to play. One of its conceits is that I’d like to use 2d6 for everything, including damage, and this ended up evolving into a very satisfying system that both differentiates weapons and prevents the swingyness of rolling a single damage die.

There are two types of weapons, heavy and light. Heavy weapons use two hands (so this includes bows) and light weapons use one. The advantage to using a light weapon is you can also hold a shield (dual wielding weapons strikes me as a bit silly). Shields can be splintered to negate all damage from 1 attack, as per Trollsmyth’s excellent idea.

When you hit with a heavy weapon, roll 2d6 and use the greater die. When you hit with a light weapon, use the lesser one. When you make a critical hit, add them together. Simple.

This results in much lower damage output than DnD, especially since armor absorbs damage (max 2), but that just means that HP totals are lower, which reduces bookkeeping. All weapons have the same max damage, but larger weapons are tilted towards the higher end, which fits with my ethos of “All weapons can be deadly.” Looking forward to how it work in play this Tuesday.

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