Quote from: theemrysOne thing I like in Hackmaster is the idea of penetration rules... It's setup so if you role max on your die, you get to roll again subtracting one and add it on... and it continues.  What that means is if you have a weapon with a 1d4 or 1d6 damage, you're more likely to penetrate than one with 1d8+1.  Also, a 2d4 penetrates more than 1d8 (it works per die rolled), even though on average you'll do less damage without penetration.  What this does is makes weapons work a bit different from each other.

I'll leave it to the mathematicians who designed the rule, but the end result of Hackmaster's penetration damage is that the average for the die is one higher. So a d4 weapon averages 3.5 damage instead of 2.5, and a d6 weapon averages 4.5 instead of 3.5. I love the rule, but it's not much of a balancing factor.

Quote from: RPGPunditThat's why I love solutions like WFRP's "hand weapons" rule, where it doesn't matter what kind of one-handed medium weapon you use, its stats are the same.

I'm a huge fan of that rule too. What I'd really like to see is a grouping of weapons vs. crit ranges like in D&D, but set up so that every weapon's average damage evened out. 3.x kinda came close with the threat ranges, but there are still weapons that are clear favorites.

I'd also like to see a penalty to two-handed weapons beyond "your AC is one lower because you don't have a shield."

Here's a rule which seriously irritates me in Ars Magica 5th Edition. It's not quite bad enough to spoil the game for me - it's the best version of AM I've seen - but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So, wizards in Ars Magica have a thing called the Parma Magica, a sort of ritual defence they set up every day which protects them against magic. Demons, angels, and other supernatural creatures have similar defences. To penetrate these defences, you need to get sufficient Penetration on a spellcasting roll.

But here's the thing: the Penetration of your spell is equal to number you roll on the spellcasting roll, minus the difficulty level of the spell you are casting - so if you want to banish a powerful demon, or fight a powerful wizard, you have to use the least powerful spell in your arsenal. Which is unbelievably ass-backwards.

The upshot of this, in the long-running AM5 campaign I played in, was that all the players (including me) cooked up the most low-level banishing spells we could devise, because we were fed up of all the demons we encountered getting away - initially we went the intuitive route and used the more powerful spells, before we realised that that didn't work.

IIRC we considered houseruling things so that the penetration of spells would be based on the spell difficulty, but the extent of the effects would depend on the difference between the roll and the spell difficulty, but the campaign folded before we got around to sorting that out.

Quote from: RPGPunditThat's why I love solutions like WFRP's "hand weapons" rule, where it doesn't matter what kind of one-handed medium weapon you use, its stats are the same.

Isn't the ultimate expression of this HeroQuest, where all abilities are mechanically identical?

Quote from: NicephorusOn a related note, sometimes a gun is just the best option.  Some games, like D20 modern, nerf guns and automatic fire a bit so that martial artists, melee types, pyschics, etc. can compete.  This is reasonable from a play perspective as long as you realize that's it's not realistic.

The two problems with guns in the real world that could be adapted to give martial artists, melee types, psychics, etc. a chance are (A) shooting without aiming greatly reduces your chance of hitting (which is at least one reason why there is automatic fire) and (B) the damage bullets do when they hit varies from flesh wounds to fatal shots.  So my suggestion (the first one I've used in my own games) would be to include significant to-hit penalties for shooting when either the shooter or target is moving (and a bigger penalty if both are moving) and to use bigger dice rather than multiple dice to represent the damage (e.g., rolling a d20 for damage) so that a bullet might do 20 points of damage but also might do only 1.  The downside is that this replaces the certain level of predictability and control that whittling down provides with a crap-shoot approach where luck plays a huge role in when a character drops.

ADDED:  I've also been a fan of the 1d6 hand weapons in Warhammer FRP since I started playing 1st Edition years ago.  It was nice to see players picking axes, maces, or whatever fit their character's style rather than min-maxing their weapon choices.

Quote from: John MorrowThe two problems with guns in the real world that could be adapted to give martial artists, melee types, psychics, etc. a chance are (A) shooting without aiming greatly reduces your chance of hitting (which is at least one reason why there is automatic fire) and (B) the damage bullets do when they hit varies from flesh wounds to fatal shots.  So my suggestion (the first one I've used in my own games) would be to include significant to-hit penalties for shooting when either the shooter or target is moving (and a bigger penalty if both are moving) and to use bigger dice rather than multiple dice to represent the damage (e.g., rolling a d20 for damage) so that a bullet might do 20 points of damage but also might do only 1.  The downside is that this replaces the certain level of predictability and control that whittling down provides with a crap-shoot approach where luck plays a huge role in when a character drops.

ADDED:  I've also been a fan of the 1d6 hand weapons in Warhammer FRP since I started playing 1st Edition years ago.  It was nice to see players picking axes, maces, or whatever fit their character's style rather than min-maxing their weapon choices.

The StarCluster System (percentile version) uses percentile dice as damage for all weapons, and a modifier is added which varies with the deadliness of the weapon. The reason is the enormous variance in damage a weapon can cause. As an illustration, the other day here in Boston, a woman stabbed her ex-boyfriend seven times with a Buck knife, yet he not only lived, he stayed concious and managed to phone 911. Yet other times, one hit is all it takes.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceThe StarCluster System (percentile version) uses percentile dice as damage for all weapons, and a modifier is added which varies with the deadliness of the weapon. The reason is the enormous variance in damage a weapon can cause. As an illustration, the other day here in Boston, a woman stabbed her ex-boyfriend seven times with a Buck knife, yet he not only lived, he stayed concious and managed to phone 911. Yet other times, one hit is all it takes.

Sure, and there was a case in New York a few years back of a guy chasing people who had stabbed him in the aorta up several sets of stairs out of a subway station before collapsing and dying from blood loss.  On the other side, I've seen quite a few anecdotal cases of people dying from a single gunshot wound to the leg because it opened up the major artery that runs through the leg (you can find a dramatization of a wound like that in the movie Black Hawk Down).  One thing that many role-playing games model poorly is how bleeding and shock can disable or kill a person after some period during which they are impaired to some degree or, in some cases, not really impaired that much at all.

Quote from: John MorrowSo my suggestion (the first one I've used in my own games) would be to include significant to-hit penalties for shooting when either the shooter or target is moving (and a bigger penalty if both are moving) and to use bigger dice rather than multiple dice to represent the damage (e.g., rolling a d20 for damage) so that a bullet might do 20 points of damage but also might do only 1.

I like that idea, but I'd be tempted to combine the two such that a well aimed shot can increase the amount of damage done. Working out a way to allow aiming to influence the accuracy and damage of the shot eithout making it the only obvious tactic might be problematic. Perhaps if the damage including aiming bonus could not exceed the natural damage of the gun (i.e. if gun damage unaimed is d20 then the most damage you can do regardless of aiming bonus is 20) there will still be an incentive to fire off a few quick shots and hope for the best rather than waste time aiming?

I definitely think that the skill of the shooter should have some bearing on damage; people who aren't trained at fighting with a particular weapon are simply more likely to cause minimal amounts of damage when they hit people - with firearms they forget to brace themselves for the recoil, with knives they hold them wrong, that kind of thing.

Quote from: J ArcaneAnd sometimes, the bigger gun really is just going to kill the guy better.  Despite all the vagaries and unpredictabilities of ballistics, generally speaking, a .22 pistol is still a hell of a lot less likely to kill a man than a .44 magnum.

Yes, fair enough. And obviously a huge 2-handed sword should do more damage than a dagger.

But what I'm talking about is things like weapons of comparable sizes.  A .44 S&W shouldn't do more damage than a .44 Glock just because of the game designers whim, because he likes S&W more, or fancies himself a gun "expert", or whatever.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot WilenTrue, but then you ask why .22s haven't been driven from the market by the existence of the magnum, and that should give ideas for elements you might want to have in a game.

E.g.: cost, concealability, cost of ammo, legal restrictions on access.

Very good point!

RPGPundit

Quote from: James McMurrayI'd also like to see a penalty to two-handed weapons beyond "your AC is one lower because you don't have a shield."

In BD&D, characters with two-handed weapons automatically lost initiative (if you used individual initiative).

Quote from: jgantsIn BD&D, characters with two-handed weapons automatically lost initiative (if you used individual initiative).

It's stuff like this that keeps re-affirming to me how elegant and smart a design BD&D is.

And reminding me how old I am and how crappy my memory is.

Quote from: HaffrungAgreed.

But keep in mind that in OD&D all weapons do 1d6, so this wasn't an innovation of WFRP.

Thank you for saying that.

Also in OD&D, a combat round was ONE MINUTE.  It didn't represent one blow, it represented "After one minute, have you done anything useful to your enemy?"

This is one of the reasons I still use OD&D.

Quote from: RPGPunditYes, fair enough. And obviously a huge 2-handed sword should do more damage than a dagger.

But what I'm talking about is things like weapons of comparable sizes.  A .44 S&W shouldn't do more damage than a .44 Glock just because of the game designers whim, because he likes S&W more, or fancies himself a gun "expert", or whatever.

RPGPundit

Well, certainly, but your comparison to the D&D weapons tables in the OP would seem to conflict with this one here.  

I know in AD&D there were often far fewer options to focus, but there are ways of making just about any weapon badass enough as to be a moot point in 3.x, it's just a matter of the right feats and the right class.  And I'm just talking base, not all that fruity "let's design a whole prestige class around a single weapon" shit they do in so many sourcebooks.

The one exception I think is the mace.  It's not an awful weapon, just a mediocre one.  Low damage, low crit threshhold, and low crit multiplier.  Most all the other weapons are good at trading one thing for another for the most part, except those just seem to trade off everything and get nothing in return.  

That and shuriken.  They fucking blow.