Quote from: jibbajibba;688339Now having said all that if 'kit' isn't important in your game it works fine. If you want 'kit' to matter, which is fairly common in spy games, then you may want to introduce a damage modifier for some weapons still based on that d10 premise. Say a .223 gets -2 damage at medium range and -4 at long range minimum 1, for example.

I'd have a hard time with a spy game where weapons were all completely interchangeable.

In real life, people carry different weapons for different jobs -- when you get to a level of abstraction where that's unimportant, you lose a lot of what would get me into the game in the first place.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;696730I'd have a hard time with a spy game where weapons were all completely interchangeable.

In real life, people carry different weapons for different jobs -- when you get to a level of abstraction where that's unimportant, you lose a lot of what would get me into the game in the first place.

Cheers,
-E.

But you can still have those differences. A smaller weapon is going to be easier to conceal than a larger one; a longer barrel is going to mean longer effective range; a bigger clip is going to mean more shots before you have to reload; an all-plastic gun would be fragile, but get through metal detectors. None of which necessarily need to interact with the combat rules, but would certainly make them more or less useful, depending on circumstance.

Obviously this won't work for every game, but nothing will.

An interesting pdf on handgun wounding from the FBI -

http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf

Quote from: The Traveller;696661No need, and see what you're doing, you're introducing unneccessary complications to satisfy your preferred combat system. The skilled shot is just the killer rolling much higher than the target, which they will probably do since their skills are that much higher. It scales beautifully as well.

Not quite sure I understand what you're saying here. Skills generally factor in as adds to the basic roll, or increased range of success (+5 to Hit or 75% to Hit) So if I roll 12 on a D20 my Hit roll is 17 and I must compare against a difficulty factor. If I roll 62 on D100, I'm under the 75 -- which is generally a common difficulty level measurement but there may be other circs. that mitigate the roll.

If I rolled a 19 or a 20 on that D20, I get a critical hit, as I probably would on rolling less than 5 on the D100. But other than that there is no advantage in rolling any number between 6 and 74 (I'm sticking to the D100 now because it's my preferred mechanism). I see what your saying that a To Hit roll based system would give me a graduation on that scale -- the lower I rolled the more lethal the damage I deal. But that's random -- a factor of the dice. I don't see how it's affected by the character's skill level.

You could say that  if I make my roll by a factor of better than 1/3 (ie. 25%) I do more lethal damage -- but this is basically what I was suggesting, that there be another quantum level for calculating extra/lethal damage. And then if someone says, "I'm going to shoot him in the head," you factor in the increased difficulty of the shot and give the player a target of 30%, but if they make that roll, they do lethal damage. (I won't play games of saying if I rolled 35, did I still hit him because my basic chance of a hit was 75% and I'm well within that limit!)

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just don't see how applying increased damage based on how well the to hit roll went has anything to do with the skill of the character. I do agree that its a valid way of determining basic hit location, thus lethality. The better you roll, the worse the damage.

I think we may be talking past one another to a minor extent - I'm referring to systems like CP2020, skill+stat+1d10, so for example:

Skill 5 + stat 5 + 1d10 roll of 5 (all average) attacking a similar opponent, contested rolls,
Skill 5 + stat 5 + 1d10 roll of 5 = blocked or missed

Skill 7 + stat 7 + 1d10 roll of 7 (all above average) attacking an average opponent, contested rolls,
Skill 5 + stat 5 + 1d10 roll of 5 = hit by 6
so the damage done is 6 + base weapon damage

if the base weapon was a .22 pistol, that might be 2, for a total of 8
if the base weapon was an AK47, that might be 6 for a total of 12.

If hit points are worked along the same lines, the maximum HP would be 10 so I wouldn't want to be either of these individuals.

To give a more nuanced view and allow even heavy weapons to do grazing damage we build a table as below:

Hit by 1-2: one quarter base weapon damage
Hit by 3-4: one half base weapon damage
Hit by 5-6: base weapon damage
Hit by 7: base weapon damage +1
Hit by 8: base weapon damage +2
Hit by 9: base weapon damage +3

and so on, adjust to taste. So the highly skilled assassin stands an excellent chance of killing their target at point blank range (+4 to hit), and with surprise (+4 to hit) using a .22 pen gun or pen knife, while Johnny Pickuptruck can still blast away wildly doing little damage to anything but his own ammo supplies. Everything revolves around the skills and the modifiers the character is able to apply by cunning and craft.

Hopefully that's a bit clearer?

Quote from: The Traveller;697648Hopefully that's a bit clearer?

Thanks. I've not used systems that provide for the skill level to increase the damage done so directly, so I was missing your point. I'll have to noodle on that one for a while before commenting.

On a tangent, have you used any of the one roll engines? They seem to be trying to do something similar but with a different take of how the dice are read for each stage of the strike/hit/damage sequence.

Quote from: teagan;698440On a tangent, have you used any of the one roll engines? They seem to be trying to do something similar but with a different take of how the dice are read for each stage of the strike/hit/damage sequence.

It's an interesting system, albeit something of a misnomer since the "one roll" is actually a pool of dice being thrown. The system I described above could be turned into a literal one roll combat engine very easily by replacing the opposing roll with a target number, and some systems do that.

Indeed most other rolls in the game are against a set target number, trying to shimmy up a wall is climb+str+1d10 versus target number, modified by the difficulty and height of the climb, whether or not it's raining, availability of rope and so on. I choose not to do that in battle because it feels less like the cut and thrust of combat to me.

There's been some discussion about the time it takes to roll dice versus working out a target number but I don't see any differences large enough to impact on the game experience for players. Even the argument about offloading some of the work onto the players to save time doesn't really hold water - each individual roll still has to be processed serially.

Of course ORE merges everything into that one roll, but they made a few decisions I personally might have avoided - for example hit locations work great as long as you're only fighting humanoids, so I just don't use them. Also folding in initiative to the roll still ties combat to an artificial turn based simulation, I use an Exalted style battle wheel where "initiative" is based on the last action that was taken. Complex elaborate actions mean the character will be unable to act for longer, a knife wielder can attack more often than a broadsword wielder, modified by skill with the weapon.

In terms of speed there's probably not a lot to choose from between the two approaches though.