Eliminating the Damage Roll

[Sabre]

A while back on a Star Wars message board far far away I came up with a method for eliminating the damage roll in combat situations. Although I never used it in the game because I felt it was too lethal, I've thought about it for a while because it would definitely speed up combat and cut down on making excuses for why a player's roll says they hit, yet they fail to do damage even against unarmored targets. It also takes into account hit location without adding an additional roll for that.
Warning, the following is VERY D6 system mechanical

The system works as follows:

Instead of comparing a damage roll to a damage resistance roll, compare the ‘to hit’ roll against the reaction roll (or difficulty to hit if no reaction is made) and use the following modified wound table:
Result, Character / Vehicle
0-2 Dazed/Shocked / Shields/maneuver -1D
3-5 Wounded / Lightly damaged
6-8 Wounded Twice / 2x Lightly Damaged
9-11 Incapacitated / Heavily Damaged
12-14 Mortally wounded/Maimed / Severely Damaged
15+ Killed/Maimed / Destroyed

The reasoning behind this is that, if you're hit with a weapon you're going to be hurt. In the real world, if a knife blade hits you, you get cut. If a bullet hits you, it will create a hole. In Star Wars, people hit with a blaster probably end up dead, unless they only got grazed on the arm or something. The more skilled you are at using your weapon, the more likely it is that you'll inflict a lethal wound. Restated, that would be 'a better shot causes more damage' By GM's discretion or in the case of called shots, a 'maimed' result (loss of a limb/eye/vital organ, etc.) may be applied regardless of damage, otherwise wounded, wounded twice or dazed results indicate a hit on a non-critical area, or a near miss.

Examples of wounds might include, having a blaster bolt graze your arm; getting stabbed in a non-vital area or taking a flesh wound from a bladed weapon; or taking burn damage, acquiring minor cuts and bruises or having your eardrums blown as a result of an explosion. All these things would give you the wounded penalty, but are the result of the weapon not hitting its target directly.

Without a doubt, this raises issues.

Issue 1: What's the point of carrying a blaster rifle as opposed to a blaster pistol? Rifles are supposed to do more damage.
I have two answers to this. First: Weapons with higher damage codes tend to also have better ranges. It’s still a problem when this isn’t the case, or with melee weapons which don’t really have range under the normal rules. For these cases, weapons with higher damage codes penetrate armor better in a method detailed under the armor issue (#4). The reasoning behind this is: In d6 the wound levels are an abstraction of the character’s physical state. Dead from a rifle is the same as dead from a pistol is the same as dead from a knife. A wound result from one weapon, while it might have a different appearance if you were to see it in the real world, has the same effect as a wound result from any other weapon.
The second answer I have for this question is in comparing damage codes of things like blasters against doors, walls, or other inanimate objects. Chances are, if you shoot something that isn't moving and you aren't blind or otherwise impaired, you're going to hit it eventually. In those cases, I'd ignore the skill roll and just use damage against the damage resistance of the object, unless both the shot and the damage to the object were time-critical and there was a possibility of failure. In that case, both a roll to hit and a damage/resistance roll would be required (but you’re still eliminating a lot of rolling).

Issue 2: What happens if a character is takes cover? Cover modifies the reaction roll, but you can shoot through cover which would lower the effectiveness of the weapon. How can you reflect this applying the ‘to hit’ roll to the reaction roll?
Treat cover as a direct modifier to the dodge roll +1 for next to no cover to +30 or more for cover that’s almost but not quite complete, in the case of full cover, a hit is still impossible except by destroying the cover. Note that these are points and not pips, so +5 adds 5 to the roll’s total, not 1D+2 to the roll. Now, ignore the cover and compare the roll to hit with the roll to dodge. If there is a hit, apply the cover. If it’s still a hit, the character takes full damage. If the character is hit before the cover modifier, but not after, the shot is considered to have hit the cover. In this case, it could go one of two ways. You could roll the damage against the cover’s resistance and apply the remainder to the character as you normally would, or in the interests of keeping the damage roll eliminated, you could reduce the weapon’s damage code by the cover’s body code and apply all remaining pips (1D = 3) to the damage table directly. So, shooting through a piece of cover with a body of 2D vs a blaster pistol with 4D damage would yield a result of 6 (wounded twice). With a blaster rifle of 5D damage, the result would be 9 (incapacitated). Note that this system, unlike the original, makes a distinction between a shot that would have hit if not for the cover and a shot that missed completely. The system maintains its aim of characters who take a hit being damaged as a result. Alternately, you could treat the cover as armor and refer to issue 4 below.

Issue 3: Doesn't this make a character's Strength code useless? What's the point of having a 6D strength code if you aren't going to be able to strap on a suit of armor and shrug off anything smaller than an E-Web?
That example is a bit extreme, but it has happened to me more than once that a player has tried to get away with that sort of thing. The reason eliminating the damage code works for me is that, the way I see it, if you're hit by a blaster bolt, a knife, a thermal detonator, or any form of weapon, you will suffer some ill-effects no matter how much time you spend at the gym or how naturally strong you are. Even so, some people are better at shrugging off hits than others, and Strength is meant to include that aspect. Some ideas for giving credit for high strength codes are:
1) High strength codes already have bonuses in terms of healing time and how many ‘dazed’ or wounded results you can take before passing out.
2) Treat 2D of strength as +1 (pip) of armor.
3) For every (1D-3D depending on how generous you feel) of strength, allow the player to reduce (or simply ignore penalties for if reducing is too effective) one level of injury once. This can be ‘healed’ at the same rate as a wounded result using the rules described in the book.
There may be other ways of handling strength. If you think of really good ones, post them!

Issue 4: What does armor do? A typical blast vest seems to offer no protection at all.
Stormtrooper armor doesn't help the average stormtrooper and actually makes them even easier to kill with this system since they can't dodge as well with that -1D penalty to dexterity.
I'm going to start by giving you the unsatisfying answer that stormtrooper armor didn't appear to save anyone at all even once in any of the movies. If you’re going for a cinematic feel that would carry over right? Or not…
There are a lot of possible ways to handle armor. The best way I’ve come up with so far starts by going back to weapons and damage. For weapons, after the first 3D of damage, each additional 2D grants a one wound level increase if the target is hit. So, a 5D weapon gains one wound level, a 7D gains two, 9D gains three, and so on to 15D for a gain of six wound levels. For reference, a cap-scale turbolaser from an Imperial Star Destroyer would cause 17D damage (Turbolaser damage 5D, cap scale vs character bonus 12D). Even stopping at six wound levels increased, which is not necessary if you prefer more dice in your games, there is still an advantage to damage beyond 15D. That advantage relates to the effect of armor. And that effect happens to be… *drumroll*
Okay, so it’s a little anticlimactic. Just deduct the armor rating from the weapon’s damage before figuring the weapon’s wound level bonus. If the weapon’s damage is reduced to 3D or less, the armor then provides one reduced wound level per 1D. This reflects the maximum amount of damage that can be inflicted in one hit; a killed result is still possible with multiple hits. By this system, a blast vest (+2 vs eng) negates the damage bonus from a rifle or carbine, offering a miniscule amount of protection. Stormtrooper armor (+1D vs eng) reduces the maximum wound level (from a single shot) from light weapons like pistols, sporting blasters, hold outs… pretty much anything legal, while rifles heavy pistols and bigger guns lose bonus wound levels.
In the case of partial armor that doesn’t cover the whole body, give the armor a modifier like with cover based on how much of the body the armor protects. Compare the hit roll and the reaction roll plain at first, and if the hit roll scores 2xWound or better, apply the armor cover modifier. If the modifier makes the reaction greater than the hit roll, the result is a hit on armor and the armor’s bonuses are applied. If the modifier is not sufficient, the result is a hit that bypassed the armor, hitting a weak point. Armor that has no weak points (like personal forcefields) will be treated like full cover; always apply the armor effect.

Issue 5: Because of the scale system, this means that character scale things are now far more powerful than death-star scale things.
Herein lies a serious downfall for this system. It works well in character vs character fights, but not vehicle vs vehicle fights, particularly not when the vehicles are different scale. You could restrict this system to character vs character conflicts, but the goal here was to eliminate the damage roll, so I’ll do my best at that. The best I can offer is, for every D of modifier that would be gained from a scale bonus, reduce the damage by one level. So, if, a character scale weapon scores a killed result against a death star, it reduces 24 levels of damage. Alternately, if a death star shoots at a character and manages to hit, the result would be 24 wound levels increased after applying bonuses for weapon damage. Since there are only six wound levels, you’d be dead four times over without taking armor and weapon damage into account! This seems appropriate since such weapons are meant to destroy entire planets. It might even be too low. Also since there are only 6 levels of damage it's impossible for a character scale weapon to kill a Death Star. Similarly, a character scale weapon can't damage a cap ship, and you aren't going to do much against Starfighters either without some very heavy weaponry. For example, using a thermal detonator against a starfighter, and scoring a killed result means that the Starfighter is 3 levels of damage increased due to the weapon bonus a thermal detonator gains, but 6 levels of damaged reduced for a final score of two bonus lightly damaged results before hull and shields (counted as armor at a rate of 2D hull/shields = 1D armor) are applied. So, with this system, it will take several thermal detonators at ‘killed’ result to take down a starfighter by throwing/launching them at the ship.
Obviously, it is possible for smaller ships to take down lager ones, or for characters to cause more damage to starfighters with thermal detonators under certain conditions. In order for lower scale things to kill larger ones (like fighters vs cap ships, or the Death Star), the lower scale things have to target portions similar in scale--like a power core, a gun emplacement, a shield projector, a particular hull segment or joint, etc. They cannot shoot once, barely making a ‘to hit’ roll, then getting a super damage roll and have the ship magically break; if it was a ‘lucky shot’ it will be reflected in the ‘to hit’ vs difficulty and damage will be appropriate to the degree of success. In the case of character vs starfighter with a thermal detonator in a situation where the character has the opportunity to use demolitions skill rather than throwing skill, the demolitions skill would allow the character to bypass hull and shields, or to target a character scale component (like the power system if they have access to the inside of the ship).

Issue 6: "My players have 15D blaster skill, 24D if you count the specialization." With this system, a player like this will almost always certainly kill their target.
I don't like seeing this and try to keep skill levels around 7D to 10D tops in my games, but I know it happens, particularly with Jedi and lightsabers, and I know some people like it that way. There may be characters like this who are so great that they can hit a weak point no matter how small. The table in the book puts people around 13D or so as 'among the best in a galaxy'. Well... in that case they'll probably kill you regardless. A blaster bolt through the eye, whether it's from a holdout or a heavy repeater, is at the very least going to leave you blind through one eye, but probably leave the fried remains of your brain several yards from the rest of you. There's not a lot you can do about that except get out of the way. This particular rules modification isn't meant to balance skills. If you need something to do that, I have it. But this isn't it.

So, it's a bit long and a little complex at first glance, and untested, but if you're tired of characters or stormtroopers surviving shots to the head or you're looking to speed up your combat by cutting out a few rolls, this might do the trick.

[jmanski]

Uhmmm, if you like it. Not to be picky or anything, but IMHO armor, weapon damage, and the character's strength are important. If you implement this, your characters will only need blaster and dodge.

I guess its just me, but a to hit roll, a dodge roll (if needed), a damage roll, and a resist roll aren't that much work. Besides, if your players need excuses as to why they hit and didn't deal damage, explain that it was a graze or scratch.
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[Kehlin Yew]

[Esjs]

If you ever design your own gaming system, these realism vs. "fun & fair" issues are the types of things you'll have to balance out. I understand Sabre's desire to make this game mechanic have a closer resemblance to reality. But as Sabre admitted, this would make combat much more lethal.

I would say that this system would be good for experienced players and maybe those more interested in dramatic, story-based roleplaying. If your players are novice or combat-oriented, then this isn't the system to use.

Then again, a big part of Star Wars is combat! I wouldn't be happy if my character died on the first day of gaming because some stormie got a lucky shot. I'd say all players would have to agree to using this system, knowing full well that their character might bite the dust within 5 minutes.

You might consider using this system on the final day of a campaign, in a climatic battle against the Big Bad Guy. Just make sure the NPCs' skills are balanced with the PCs'.
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"Esjs" == "Jess"

[Sabre]

I admit that this began in part as an experiment to standardize the damage (without resorting to something so crude as hit points and fixed damage numbers) and take out 'you hit but it causes no damage' excuses, but then it's not really about the excuses; it's just a perk of this system that you don't need them anymore. Something that irritated me before I started this was to say a character whose shot beat difficulty (or a reaction) by 10 points or more 'merely grazed' the target seems wrong. Similarly, if you were hit by a blaster, a vibroblade or a bullet, it wouldn't make logical sesne for it to have left just a slight burn mark, or a small cut or a slight bruise. Take the example of the punch and the drop kick... Where they punch their target will determine if it hurts a little or a lot, and also if there is a little damage or none at all. If you punch someone with your full strength in the right places, that force can be lethal, particularly if you're very strong. Technique plays a large role in this. Now, imagine the scenario where a character performs the running drop kick maneuver. They roll their brawl and it comes up 18. The target rolls brawl parry and it comes up 7 with a mishap; however, the strength rolls are then compared. The character that hit gets a 4 to damage while the character who got hit gets 8 to resist. It is established that the attack hit. You've said yourself that the attack should hurt. However, the dice have told us that no damage was suffered. Why not? Sure you can give the player a bonus to damage if they make a good shot, but then it becomes even more senseless when they still fail to inflict significant damage with a lethal weapon.

Another reason I made up something like this was, when the idea was sparked to take out the excuses, the next idea was to take out half the rolls in combat situations. Sure it's no trouble making the two extra rolls, and D6 combat runs great out of the box. I'd take D6 over any other system, which is what brought me to these boards. But imagine nearly halving the amount of checks you made. That would be faster, right?

I agree that the damage of the weapon, character strength, and armor are all important, which is why I tried to address those issues in a way that makes all of them relevant, but I disagree that decreasing their role in combat makes the blaster and dodge skills any more significant than they already are. For one thing, weapon damage and armor rating aren't skills, and strength is something that's very difficult to raise in comparison to dodge. Even in the unmodified system, you need blaster to hit just as much as you do in this one. If you don't hit your target, you won't inflict damage no matter what the damage rating of your weapon is. Similarly, you still need the dodge skill in the unmodified system because the best armor from the books that I know of, Boba Fett's armor, gives only around 3D energy protection, and armor like that is extremely rare. More commonly, you'll find armors protect only 1D against energy, and continually piling CPs into only strength isn't as efficient as raising dodge. This is in the unmodified system, remember. Furthermore, if you only raise blaster and dodge, you'll still be vulnerable to melee, lightsaber, and unarmed attacks unless your GM has ruled that the dodge skill can be applied to any of those. You'll also be at a severe disadvantage during ship to ship conflicts, or in any situation requiring skills other than blasting or avoiding being blasted.

Also, imagine the potential side benefits of this... If you're going for a certain character 'image' and that imagine involves a character who is very good in combat, but not one who carries around two heavy repeating blasters and a string of thermal detonators, using these rules you can still be effective in combat situations carrying only light arms (which are still quite lethal). I recall one player who made a character who wielded dual pistols and did a lot of acrobatic 'gun fu' movie style maneuvers. He roleplayed it quite well, but since the damage of pistols is only 4D, he frequently found his character had little effect in combat, even against normal stormtroopers.
This could also potentially reduce players looting corpses to acquire better gear as the role of gear isn't AS important as the role of their own skills.
It might also increase the number of cases where people take specializations for two reasons: You can get away with keeping your favorite gear, and specializing will help you increase your skill faster.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback so far. Doesn't seem like it's a very popular idea, but it was a lot of fun working out the details of this challenge.

[Ars_Fortuna]

You could borrow a fix from the new D6 products. In those games every 5 points over the difficulty to hit adds +1 damage. You can then adjust those numbers to hit the right amount of extra damage for your campaign.
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Found furry stowaway
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He likes cuddling and eating
He eats a LOT
He's getting big!
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Assigned crewer to pet him
He's attacking the crew
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I'm going to miss him

[Kehlin Yew]

One thing that does bother me... is the set # of damage points....
what if a character has like 4+2 str and 8d stamina... and all that goody goodness... and then you got this little computer nerd over here with 1d str and 2d stamina.... they have the exact same amount of damage before they die

[Endwyn]

What do you mean by set "damage points"? The only three I could see is wound levels, body points, or the method of additional damage Ars pointed out for exceptional hits.

If you meant any of these three, how do the Geek with low Str/ STM and the Uber-buff with high stats end up taking the same amount of damage before they die?

Are you talking about something else, and if so could you clarify?

[garhkal]

Rules of engagement does allow for ways to simulate better 'hits' on your target. Such as 1 pip to the damage roll for every 3 (or 5, or 10, etc) over the dodge you get on the to hit roll. This will make a great hit more likely to damage. Optionally, they have a harsher one, where the difference of the dodge/tohit, is applied to damage at 1/1 rate. So if i beat your dodge by 20, that means i add 20 into my damage roll.

Then you have die pooling, taking a die (or more) off your to hit pool, cause you KNOW you will hit, to increase your damage pool
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[Allst Beamem]

It's funny you know I've been contemplating a system almost identical to this one for the past several months. 8)

I only had a few differences like....

I wanted weapons to still mater so I gave them a + per their original die code, so a blaster pistol 4D would add +4 to the attackers blaster skill roll.

I also wanted armor to be useful. So the armor die is rolled and added to the difficulty to hit. Target is at med range difficulty 10, armor roll is 10, new difficulty is 20. Same is done for cover.

As far as the STR code being useless for absorbing damage, well...... yea Although I did like the add +1 per 2D of STR.

I really like the idea of this system and would love to see how it play tested.

I always hated “I rolled 25 points over the difficulty! What do you mean he is unhurt?!!"

And as far as characters with really high stats.... I like this rule.

Once a skill is equal to its stat it costs double the skill points to advance. IMO this shows how natural talent, i.e. stats, will only get you so far. So the character with 4D DEX would need 8 char points to advance his blaster skill to 4D+1.

[Soniv]

The problem with that skill rule, Allst, is that as far as I know, most skills (barring advanced skills and perhaps some house skills made by a GM) start above the attribute. Essentially, all skills would cost as much as an Advanced skill. And the skills that already are advanced, once reaching the attribute level, will cost four times that of a normal skill.

What will more than likely end up happening here is that a character will end up saying "Screw it, I'm just going to take a gamble and raise my attribute." And by standard rules, when an attribute is raised a pip, all skills in that attribute raise a pip. So, unless you have other rules that counter these fallacies, it seems heavily beneficial so simple attribute-raising.

[Kehlin Yew]

If you have the Big buff guy,
And a little computer Nerd,
Neither have armor.

they still go by the 0-3 stunned crap....

should the buff guy not be bumped up a bit..?

[Allst Beamem]

Kehlin Yew
That would be a cool way to say that STR does have some say in damage control. Only problem is it would be different for every char., because of differing STR.

[Soniv]

Second Edition R&E states:

[Sabre]

I think I can see what you're saying, Kehlin. To answer that concern, let's assume the big buff guy has 4D strength (human maximum) and the nerd has 1D strength (half human adult average). Under the 'what does high strength' issue (#3) I mentioned a rule where characters can take a number of dazed/wounded results greater than their strength dice before passing out. So, the nerd takes two dazed results and he goes down, unconscious. The buff guy takes five before he goes down. In any case, no matter how big/buff/fit you are, you aren't bulletproof, even if your odds of survival do increase.

Some other addendums for this system occurred to me. For example, there are many ways to make it less lethal. KageRyu had a thread a bit ago where he suggested an expanded wound result table which would also help to describe the nature of the injuries received. Something like that would make this system a lot less lethal, dampening the effect of bonus wound levels from weapons and scale. You could also tweak some numbers throughout the system, like making the armor bonus for the strength code 1D instead of +1 for every 2D or tweaking the numbers on armor so that it's more effective.

Also, you could easily add a system for 'called shots' when dealing with things of smaller scale vs things of larger scale whereby a fixed difficulty increase (say +5 per level) is applied to negate up to three levels of scale wound reduction. To illustrate that, imagine you have a PLEX launcher and you're shooting at a TIE fighter's engine in atmosphere (going for 3 levels of reduction). You roll to hit, and the TIE rolls to evade with a 15 point bonus (or more depending on how difficult you want it to be to negate these reductors). If the shot hits, the TIE only reduces three levels as a result of scale rather than the usual six for character vs starfighter attacks.

Allst, I kinda like the idea of weapons with higher damage getting a bonus to hit, especially when it's so modest like that and not overblown. Another advantage of bigger weapons I forgot to mention before is fire rate, which isn't often applied from what I've seen.
I considered a system by which the armor gives a bonus to avoid damage, but that raises some difficulties. For example, what about armors with a dexterity penalty? Stormtrooper armor, for example, gives a +1D bonus vs energy, but decreases DEX (and dodge) by 1D. A total wash vs energy weapons.
Having armor decrease your chances of being hit didn't make a lot of sense to me. Sure attacks hit the armor instead of the person, but they also make it more difficult for the person to move (but the overall effect seems to be that armor is a good idea). It makes me think if that was how the makers of DnD came to that very conclusion, though.