I believe there should be at least some sort of subtle difference between daggers, spears, sling stones, battle axes and long swords. Yet I do not want to use multiple dice types (ROGUISH is d6 only) nor have everyone running around with the same weapon because it does X damage.
So how to make them interesting and different while using d6 only? I decided to create damage classes.
(L) Light damage = roll 2d6 keep the lowest number rolled
(M) Medium damage = roll 1d6 use number rolled
(V) Heavy damage = roll 1d6 and use highest number
(X) Extra Heavy damage= roll 1d6 and add +2
Weapons, monster attacks, and spells all use this simple short hand notation (L, M, V, or X). So if you like the idea of d6 weapon damage but want to keep a bit of difference between weapon types, this might work for you.
if you look at the average damage done by each of these classes
ReplyDeletelight does 2.5277777 damage ≈d4
medium does 3.5 damage = d6
heavy does 4.47222222 damage ≈d8
but extra heavy does 7 damage =d13
so there is a very consistent progression of power between the first three classes and then a huge jump for the last one.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there should probably be a reason beyond the elegance of purely d6 damage
especially if one of your design goals is not to have "everyone running around with the same weapon because it does d13 damage."
ReplyDeletegood point! Perhaps X hvy should do 1d6+2 damage
ReplyDeleteI use d6+2 for 2-handed weapons. The trade off being that they can't use a shield. Shields grant the +1 to AC and I use the "Shields will be splintered" rule as well.
ReplyDelete