Fixing weapon basics

[dman11235]

In my long, long road to fixing the whole game, it is now time to work out weapons!  More specifically, damage.  So to that end, I am proposing a simple alternative to the complex damage calculations.  All damages will be listed for the medium sized weapon, unless already stated that the adjustment has been made, such as in monster entries.  There is one track of weapon damage, rather than a bunch of different potential paths for damage increase.  So when creating a weapon, the damage it uses will fall one one part of the damage increase, rather than needing a new entry.  I will post a table this weekend sometime, a table of new damage values for every weapon....every single weapon in the game.....yeah.....not this weekend, but sometime soon....but for now, enjoy the new weapon damage progression.  Every weapon will have a damage listed on this table, and will not deviate, aside from special abilities and such.  It is intended to give a relatively smooth, slow pseudo-quadratic increase.

1/1d2/1d3/1d4/1d6/1d8/1d10/2d6/2d8/2d10/4d6/4d8/4d10/6d8/8d8/12d8/16d8/22d8/28d8/36d8/44d8/54d8/64d8  And so on.

Observant members will note that I'm using the progression that I originally created for use with my record-setting monk damage.  You can easily use the other progression, I just chose this one because I liked how it had a flatter progression towards the end.

In fact, here's the other progression, starting at the 2d10:

2d10/4d6/4d8/4d10/6d8/8d8/12d8/16d8/24d8/32d8/48d8/64d8/96d8/128d8

So how does this look for a replacement to the damage system as is?

[EjoThims]

Much simpler, though much slower through the medium size range as well.

I'd just make sure to note that anything that does deviate, for whatever reason, has to specify how it progresses or it simply falls back into using this table.

So even if someone did use something that did 3d6, making it bigger would drop it back into the table at probably 4d6, but you'd want to make that clear.

[dman11235]

There's going to be a rule that you can't deviate from the progression.  That way, no one ever has to fuss with that.  If a weapon would do more damage, it has a higher base damage.  You can add +x static damage if it REALLY needs it, and then there's crits as well.

As for the slow progression through Medium, I based it off of my monk damage.  And it's like that so that there's a bunch of different potential values.  You can probably have between 9 and 10 damage values for medium, and moving up one step, to large, you'll have the same number of values, but the difference between the average damage would be either 3 or 4 depending on where the medium damage stops.  For reference, the top change from small to medium would be either 2 or 3.

And actually, talking about it (and what you brought up) convinced me to use the first progression for damage increase.  That way going from G to C can't increase the average by 60 or whatever.

[EjoThims]

While this does reign in higher range scaling, it causes weapon size boosts to be entirely non-competitive because of the slow scaling through medium range. While convention weapons always scaled poorly with size, this is a huge nerf to natural weapon scaling.

Even with a d8 start (hard to get for medium, but a few bites start that large), you need 5 size increases to even be doing 4d6 damage. That means you need to be C+ to do the same amount of damage as a 4 CL fireball... WHEN starting from a good position. 1d3 claws are useless entirely...

I'd say drop off the different die progressions after 1d8... Just go straight from 1d8 to 2d8, 4d8, 6d8, etc... d10 isn't even part of the standard progression anyway, just one of the oddball starting points.

With this quicker rev up, it still takes the average claw (1d3 start) 4 steps to get to 2d8 and the average bite 4 steps to get to 6d8. 2d8 and 6d8 seem to be perfectly fine base damage ranges for Colossal creatures to me...

[dman11235]

Ah, so your argument is that it doesn't scale fast enough.  I was going under the assumption that a size increase wouldn't be a common means of increasing damage.

But you know what?  You're right, this is too slow.  I think yours would be too fast (for those who do get tons of size increases), but probably meeting somewhere in the middle.  I can get rid of another die (I already got rid of the d12), so the progression will end up being 1d8/2d6/2d8/4d6/4d8/ or something like that.  I'm very tired nad have class, so I'll figure it out then.  It'll end up being an average of +2/increase at the small weapon level, I believe, and then +3 or 4 at medium, and +6 or 8 at large.  Maybe.  Probably smaller, I don't know.

[dman11235]

Not modifying the original post because I want to keep it for reference.  Here's a modified weapon damage progression.

1/1d2/1d3/1d4/1d6/1d8/1d10/2d6/3d6/4d6/6d6/8d6/12d6/16d6/22d6/28d6/36d6/44d6/54d6/64d6

The goal will be to have all the most powerful weapons of Medium size be 2d6.  That way, you can get up to C damage and deal 8d6.  Monks will deal even more.  I will reign in potential size increases for them because they are starting beyond the breakaway point (4d8 in base, or 2 sizes up, 4d6 here, no levels up).  So hopefully, actually, the end result will be that the maximum possible base damage is about 22d6 or so.  That's only a +7 increase above Medium, so I don't think it should be too big, but let me know what you think.

As I was making this, I had a thought, and it might make weapons even simpler to deal with, at least base damage wise.  The key to this is base damage, and size does not matter.  This one does require a rebuild of the HP system, however.  Every weapon would have a base damage, and that's the damage that the weapon does at Fine size.  For every size category you go up, you double the base damage (keeping in mind the double a double is a triple rule).  So a weapon doing 1d6 would deal 1d6 at Fine, 2d6/3d6/4d6/5d6 at medium/6d6/7d6/8d6/and 9d6 at colossal.  A weapon dealing 2d6 would be 2d6/4d6/6d6/8d6/10d6/12d6/14d6/16d6/18d6.  This makes it insanely easy to figure out how much damage you need to deal at base and makes base weapon damage very important, but has the side effect of making base weapon damage insane at low levels.  The most powerful weapon (2d6) would be dealing 10d6 at medium.  It would take until level 5 or so before that becomes as dangerous as it was at level 1 in the original system.  So obviously that needs to change, but I don't want to worry about it.  I just felt like I should share this system, as I thought it was kind of cool.  Not going to use it for this, maybe something else.

[Tarkisflux]

I worked up a change to weapon damage sizes a while back, figured I'd toss it up in brief and see if it helped you with anything.

Instead of worrying about the initial size of a weapon, you can fix weapon damage based on how it's wielded regardless of size and then apply modifiers based on size differences between targets. So a light weapon would deal 1d6 damage whether it's in the hands of a storm giant or a halfling, but only to equal sized creatures. If the storm giant swings it against the halfling, he gets a big damage bonus and might squash him outright. And if the halfling swings it against the giant, he might deal regular or take a damage penalty (depending on how you wanted to model things). It allows you to scale sizes however far you want in either direction, because the dice are manageable within a size category and only get larger or smaller when you start attacking out of that category. It also allows you to make 1 HD giants who don't auto-die when hit with a giant sword. It's not quite as applicable to monk damage as your system, though I guess you could just make them hit like they were bigger creatures.

[dman11235]

No, see, a larger sword should do more damage, and a smaller sword should do less.  I mean, a dagger does less damage than a shortsword, right?  So if a halfling has a certain sized sword, and a human has a larger one (because they are larger, irl you have a larger sword sized for you), the larger one does more damage because it's heavier.  The fact that the human has more strength, and thus does more damage, is represented by a higher strength score.

[Tarkisflux]

No, see, a larger sword should do more damage, and a smaller sword should do less.  I mean, a dagger does less damage than a shortsword, right?  So if a halfling has a certain sized sword, and a human has a larger one (because they are larger, irl you have a larger sword sized for you), the larger one does more damage because it's heavier.  The fact that the human has more strength, and thus does more damage, is represented by a higher strength score.

I wasn't actually disagreeing with any of that, but I may have been explaining myself poorly. So let me ask a framing question - if a giant swings a sword against another giant of the same type, and that sword is as big for them as a longsword would be for a human, how much damage should it do? Should it do the same amount of relative damage? Should giants be more resistant to giant longswords than humans are to human longswords? Something else?

I'd propose that the answer should be that it does the same amount of relative damage, subject to any specialness for being a giant or a human or whatever. With absolute weapon damage, you need to boost hit points of big things to keep the ratio approximately equal, and that means you can't have any low hit dice giants in your game. It also means that you have a smallness floor that you can't go under, because you can't subdivide 1 damage into smaller parts. With relative weapon damage, you don't have that problem because you're breaking the damage up into two parts: the base weapon part and the size difference part. The base part can be the same for every size category, so a giant dagger does 1d4 against a giant, their shortswords do 1d6 against each other, and so on. But when they use those weapons against something of a different size, like a halfling, they get a bonus to that damage because it's a bigger weapon against a weaker creature. So their dagger might do 1d4 + 4d6 for being 3 sizes larger (numbers chosen for explanatory purposes only, not a serious recommendation yet). So yes, big weapons would deal more damage, but only when used against smaller targets. Which is what you would expect if you were modeling it in a relative way instead of an absolute one.

If you want to model smaller weapons doing less to larger targets in this setup, you'd need to add in DR of some sort. The halfling might do 1d8-4 back, or the penalty might be large enough to remove any chance to deal any damage at all without bonus sources like sneak attack or special combat maneuvers (possibly including climbing up the giant to stab his eye / heart out, if you wanted that in your game). In an absolute weapon game you would model that with the bonus hit points they had from having to withstand the larger base weapon damage, but in a relative game you can just stack some damage penalties on the attacker to reach a similar effect.

Hopefully that's more clear. I'm not suggesting that it's a better method than absolute weapon damage, just something I thought might be helpful as an alternate viewpoint in sorting what you wanted to do with your own sets.

[dman11235]

Oh, I see.  But yeah, I don't think that will work as well as you think.  There's a few things you need to keep track off when talking damage.  1: mass of weapon (greater mass=greater damage).  2: str (greater str=more damage).  3: damage resistance of target (higher resistance=less damage).  So three things.  I can't think of anything else that would apply.  Anyways, while that system does number 2 well and number 3 isn't necessarily affected (though see later), but it actively ignores number 1.  In that system, the only weapons a creature is capable of wielding are weapons sized for them.  In order to wield smaller or larger weapons, you need to make stats for those sizes as well and...well, that defeats the purpose of the system.

On damage reduction: you have that covered so that everyone has effective DR, based on relative size.  This is supposed to be taken care of by increased weapon damage and increased str with size, but either way works well.

So yes, you did help me figure some stuff out, but no, I can't use any of that.

[Tarkisflux]

I think you're wrong about point 1. You actually could map larger weapons to smaller ones fairly easily. A halfling light weapon (shortsword) could be a human close weapon (dagger). The human would deal a smaller base damage with it, but since they'd be bigger and putting more mass into it they'd deal more damage with it than a halfling would against other small creatures. Set up a few such conversions and you could do different sized weapons for people without making new weapons at all.

And this next part may actually be on topic and helpful ;-). If you want to let people wield weapons made for a different size category, and I think you probably should, I would consider adding an attack penalty on there based on how many size differences the weapon was made for. There's all sorts of balance and haft size and other differences in making a weapon for a different sized creature that would throw off other people. A large creature has a hand that is about twice as large as a human hand, and the circumference of the grips of their weapons would reflect that. Get a big enough difference in size and you probably couldn't wrap your hands around a grip well enough to swing it decently, even if you could lift it after factoring up the weight differences.

[dman11235]

Oh, there will be one.  There is normally a -4 penalty for using an oddly sized weapon, but I think I'll change that to a -1 or -2/size category.  And no more treating a small shortsword as a dagger, because they are indeed balanced differently.

For the first part, I'll let you know I am thinking on it, because it seems like it should work, but I have a feeling it doesn't.  There's something wrong with that and I can't quite place it.  See, you're mapping the size increase extra damage to the weapon, rather than the creature, and that's not the way you should do it, but I don't know if that's quite right.  So your system is close to working as intended, just not as it should, and it's not all the way to where you intended.

[Tarkisflux]

It's actually mapping weapon base damage to the size of the weapon relative to the wielder, and then applying damage bonuses or penalties based on the difference in sizes between combatants. I don't see where the size increase extra damage is mapped to the weapon at all. But that's getting off topic again. If it helped you figure things out for your own plan that's plenty for me. We can discuss it more if you want, but it's unlikely to help more I think.

[dman11235]

It's mapped to the weapon because a larger weapon will do more damage.  It doesn't matter how big you are, your weapon does the same damage.  You do more damage based on your size, which should be taken care of by strength.  I think you're right about it not doing the job correctly though.

And no, this is not off topic.  This is what this thread is for.  I'm trying to make the weapons do what they should do, and one thing that needs to be done is figure out what they should be doing.  Then how best to do that.  More later.

[Tarkisflux]

Well then, onward we go.

I didn't say and didn't mean to suggest that it's not doing the job correctly. I don't really know where you're getting that from. And I think you meant to say that a larger weapon 'should' deal more damage than a smaller one. Which is basically true in both setups. It's really not something the relative system I'm discussing fails to do. It's true that when a larger creature attacks a larger creature, they deal less damage than in the absolute system, but it's also true that the amount that they do is greater than what would be done to them with a smaller weapon or even the same size weapon in the hands of a smaller creature. And even when a larger creature picks up a smaller weapon and the base die drops, they get a pile of bonus size damage when they strike a smaller creature that makes up for it.

So bigger creatures hit harder than smaller ones and bigger weapons hit harder than smaller ones. And bigger creatures hit harder than a smaller creature with the same sized weapon, despite having a smaller base weapon die. And creatures of the same size hit each other as if they were medium creatures. None of that looks problematic to me.

It does work independent of strength though, which is something you seem to have a problem with. So let's detour into strength for a bit. We should probably get on the same page about size modifiers to strength first though. Which ones do you want to use? The enlarge person ones? The creature size change from hit dice advancement ones? Something else?

[EjoThims]

Ah, so your argument is that it doesn't scale fast enough.  I was going under the assumption that a size increase wouldn't be a common means of increasing damage.

But you know what?  You're right, this is too slow.  I think yours would be too fast (for those who do get tons of size increases), but probably meeting somewhere in the middle.

Meeting in the middle means someone with 5 size increases (to C+ from M) and a good start at 1d8 still only does as much damage as a 6 CL fireball. And still only once a round without other shenanigans on top of their size boosts... Your middle is still too slow, especially since you've already taken down the speed of the scaling at the top end.

And I know the arguments can still be made for spells being too strong in general, but what level maneuvers are doing 6d6 damage?

[dman11235]

Huh?  Where are you getting the 1/round thing from?  This would apply to all attacks.  So this would be the base damage for the attack.  Strictly the base damage, not total damage or anything.  So that +5 adjustment to M damage from a 1d8 would be 6d6+str+maneuver+whatever enhancements you have.  On each attack.  So a full attack at BAB 16+ would be 24d6+4xstr+4xenhancements beyond that, assuming everything hit.

[dman11235]

Moving on a little further (I'm going to go with the damage progression I originally used, but with the modified values, because I think it's the simplest method of doing this), I'm going to lay down a simple rule for weapon types.  This rule is heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress's weapon system, as all swords use the Swordsman skill, all hammers use the Hammerman skill, etc.

There will be three weapon categories: light, one-handed, and two-handed.  There will be three weapon damage types: bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing.  Each weapon category will have exactly one weapon for each combination of the damage types.  So for Light, there's a B, a S, a P, a PS, a BS, a BP, and a BPS.  They will have generic names, and deal an average amount of damage, require no investment beyond the weapon proficiency to use, and are basic in every way.  Ones that deal one damage type will deal more damage and cost more than those with two which do more and cost more than those with all three.  Martial, Simple, and Exotic no longer exist.

Now for exceptions.

Unique weapons include things like whips, spiked chains, that sort of thing.  These types of weapons will have a special ability tied to them (such as Disarm bonus, Tripping, shield bonus, whatever).  I'm on the fence about saying that every weapon has a special ability, but I don't think that will happen.  The special ability weapons will cost more and do less damage than those without a special ability, and the amount they differ depends on what the ability is.  I'm expecting a single special ability will deal around two to three steps lower damage than those with no special ability.  Two abilities will deal an additional two steps lower or so, but it will be exponentially lower of a drop (so it'll be like 4 steps for the first, 2 for the second, and 1 for the third or something).  Actually, I think I might have a customization thing going on.  You start with a weapon of one size category.  This weapon gets two free abilities, and then you have to start reducing damage and increasing cost per ability.  Choosing no abilities gives a bonus to damage, and choosing one ability gives a smaller bonus to damage.  Or rather, one of the abilities is "bonus damage".  The other option is creating a bunch of weapons that act as exceptions, and then present every weapon in a chart, much like vanilla has.  Thoughts?

[veekie]

Actually, I think pretty much all weapons should have special features, unlocked through proficiency + BAB. The weapon's statistical attributes(especially damage) are ultimately rather trivial in the end, and past the first three levels, hardly worth consideration.

[dman11235]

In that case I think I'll do the customization thing.  I think that would be the best way to ensure every weapon gets the proper amount of power.

So things to consider when determining weapon stats: weapon size, weapon class, damage type(s), special abilities.  One of the abilities will be the Trip ability a la Spiked Chain, another will be Disarm, another will be bonus damage, on the order of +1 or 2 per dice rolled.  This way the damage will multiply on a crit.  Crits will also be special abilities, a 20x2 is no ability, and adding a range increase is an ability, and adding a multiplier increase is either one or two abilities.  I don't know yet, but that's the gist of what this will be.

The alternative is still to do the set weapons, but have a set of rules by which the weapons are created.  That way I can avoid complex rules for weapon creation (making the game more accessible) while still allowing for incredibly complex weapons.  The final goal will be to make weapon choice matter significantly, but not in power-way.  More of a "weapon choice determines fighting style and vice verse" way.  I do not like how weapon base damage currently doesn't matter, so that will change, meaning your concern will be addressed veekie.