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Nanoblack
2015-05-07, 07:00 PM
Hey everybody,

I'm working on a new scifi system and I'd like to see if you guys could help me differentiate the different damage types some more. I'm working on melee weapons today, though I'll take suggestions for other types as well. We're using the standard blade/blunt and I'm leaning toward piercing being a subtype that can be added to either. At the moment I'm having trouble thinking of traits that would differentiate the two.

After a little discussion with my roommate, we've currently got blunt weapons being more effective against armor, and are undecided as to whether slashing or piercing would have more effective critical hits. Currently fire gains more damage with more consecutive hits, cold will likely provide stacking penalties depending on the body part hit, and electricity would partially ignore armor.

Now as far as the discussion is concerned, this is system-independent so I'd like to avoid specific questions about the system itself. That said, all damage types currently under consideration are below.

Thanks in advance.

Blunt, bladed, piercing, fire, cold, electricity, laser, radiation, poison, and explosive.

NichG
2015-05-07, 07:16 PM
Here are some numerically scaling rider effects you could attach to things. I'm assuming the existence of various things in these, so you'll have to modify to suit what your system actually has.

- Reduces damage resistance by a fraction of damage dealt
- Applies a penalty to dice rolls based on fraction of total health dealt in a single attack for the near future
- Reduces damage output of the target by a fraction of damage dealt, for the near future
- Applies a flat penalty of some form, with duration proportional to damage dealt
- Moves the target a distance based on damage dealt (fraction of total health?)
- A fraction of the damage spills over to adjacent targets at time of impact
- A fraction of the damage spreads to everyone near the target (infection) for the near future
- Target's action is delayed till later in the round based on damage dealt
- Some specific action/set of actions taken by the target causes a fraction of the damage to recur

Red Fel
2015-05-07, 07:30 PM
Blunt, bladed, piercing, fire, cold, electricity, laser, radiation, poison, and explosive.

The thing people don't often realize about blunt weapons is that the damage they deal is often less visible. A solid blunt implement can cause torn muscles, shattered bones, all sorts of mess below the surface, and often all that's visible is the bruising and swelling, and bleeding into the skin. You might consider the following: On a critical hit (you mentioned them, so I assume your system uses them) a blunt weapon can cause some form of crippling damage, like reducing max HP or damaging physical ability scores or reducing the effectiveness of the limb.

I'd suggest combining bladed and piercing, or alternatively changing the name of "piercing" to "precision." The problem is that many "bladed" weapons can do "bladed" damage or "piercing" damage, and many weapons designed for "piercing" are nonetheless "bladed." The Chinese Jian comes to mind; it's a straight sword designed for quick, lethal thrusts, but amateurs in its use see a sword with a cutting edge. I'd suggest letting "bladed" weapons cause a Bleed effect, an easily remedied damage-over-time effect. Any hit with a blade has a chance to draw blood, with more severe ones can cause serious bleeding, but most can at least receive improvised dressing fairly quickly. By contrast, I'd give "piercing" weapons an improved critical damage multiplier, as they have the chance to really mess up the squishy bits beneath the surface. A long gash can bleed a lot, but a precise stab to the lungs can cause asphyxia. (Or maybe aspiration. I don't know the particular terminology. Point is that you drown in your own blood.)

I'll move past your fire, cold, and electricity ones. I think "laser" is a poor choice for a damage type; let's be honest, lasers burn things. They are concentrated beams of light that burn things. You'll be hard-pressed to tell me that it isn't simply another type of "burning" damage.

"Radiation" and "poison" should be blended together, because they both have the same ultimate effect - low immediate damage, but a subtle and corrosive damage-over-time effect. Radiation is simply a more severe, harder-to-prevent form of poison damage, in that respect.

"Explosive," really, is impact-based. The big damage from an explosion comes from one of three sources - the impact from the shockwave, the shredding effect of any debris, and the burning effect of any incendiary compounds if they are used. That third one barely even counts, since a big enough explosion will snuff the flames fairly quickly. Really, most explosions, in my mind, would simply deal "blunt" damage - it's like being hit with a truck made out of air.

Nanoblack
2015-05-07, 07:48 PM
Brilliant feedback from both of you.

NichG: The rider effects are great and will help once I get around to actually customizing weaponry.

Red Fel: As far as the reason for the separation from blade and piercing, in my head I see that there are bladed weapons that can't be used for thrusting (ex: cleavers, as rarely used as they may be) and there are "blunt" weapons that could carry piercing traits (like the spike jutting from the rear of a warhammer, or a pickaxe), so I wanted to make sure that I was leaving room for weapons with and without according to player tastes. The bleed on slashing is definitely a property I hadn't considered despite how obvious and seems like something players will really enjoy executing on enemies.

Fair point on lasers and explosives, you have humbled me here.

For radiation and poisons: I suppose you're correct here as well, with poisons having additional rider effects depending on the particular variation you use.

When considering a scifi type setting, would there be any additional damage types that could be added that aren't covered here? I fall victim to my D&D mindset and have trouble thinking outside these lines sometimes.

Jay R
2015-05-07, 08:25 PM
... and are undecided as to whether slashing or piercing would have more effective critical hits.

A thrust through the heart, or a slash to the jugular, are both immediately deadly. Trying to make a difference between them is meaningless.

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-07, 08:33 PM
Amusingly enough, Exalted's rules used the rules for disease for radiation poisoning; the people of Creation knew it by the name of Green Sun Wasting. :smallamused:

erikun
2015-05-08, 12:15 AM
fire, cold, electricity
I would recommend just condensing this into "heat" and "cold" damage, with heat causing burning and/or dehydration. Perhaps there could be separate burn, cold, and dehydration "damage", although at that point, dehydration isn't really "damage" as much as a status that you acquire and which causes bad things over time.

Electricity isn't really a "damage" type. Electricity causing damage is due to it burning muscles in the body. The biggest thing that electricity does is mess around with the muscles in your body, causing them to spasm uncontrollably. Most electricity attacks are going to cause heat/burn damage along with some sort of spasm status effect, if we are talking realistically.


radiation
What would cause "radiation" damage? I mean, what kind of substance or attack - outside the fantasy "getting bit by the radioactive zombie" situation - would cause radiation damage? Any source of radiation which is significant enough to cause direct damage is going to be in the form of heat, through burning. The bigger problem with radiation are the long-term effects of radiation sickness or overexposure to radiation, which are (much like dehydration) better modeled as a negative status than some sort of HP damage.


poison
There are three major types of toxins that I can think of. There are toxins which shut down the body, and can be anything from something causing paralysis to "sleeping gas" - which can include things like carbon monoxide. There are toxins which begin to break down the muscles and tissue in the body - and this can include something like sulfuric acid. And there are ones which interfere with neurotransmitters, anything from drugs to causing seizures. Each one is a very different way of being "poisoned" and should probably be modeled under different systems, although stuff in the same group can probably be modeled together.


laser, explosive
Red Fel covered everything I might say.


Blunt, bladed, piercing
Not really sure how I would separate these up. I would probably just put them into a "bleeding" category and a "breaking" category, depending on what they did to the body. Bladed and piercing weapons (and firearms) would deal "bleeding" damage, something that leaves gashes and holes in a person that continue to do damage. Some of the damage would be harder to patch up than others - most firearms could leave internal organs bleeding - but they mostly all involve putting a hole in something. Blunt weapons would deal "breaking" damage, with the worst damage being what is done under the skin. This has the advantage of modeling damage from stuff that isn't weapons, as well. Having a slab of concrete dropped on you, or getting hit by a moving vehicle, would sensibly do "breaking" damage as well.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-09, 11:19 AM
When considering a scifi type setting, would there be any additional damage types that could be added that aren't covered here? I fall victim to my D&D mindset and have trouble thinking outside these lines sometimes.

What type of scifi are you talking about? Will it include psionics, cybernetics, AI's, tesseracts, and/or alien species?

You could get into some exotic damage types with psionics and hyper-space. Also, your damage types might not necessarily apply to non-humans if you're including aliens and/or robots.

If this scifi if going to include space travel -- what about vacuum damage? What about acids and matter-consuming nanites -- corrosive damage?

Maglubiyet
2015-05-09, 12:13 PM
Electrical damage. The real problem on humans is with internal burns, but it can also disrupt neural impulses, seize muscles, and cause fatal heart fibrillations.

Suffocation and smoke inhalation.

Can't think of the term right now, but acceleration/deceleration trauma. You see this type from a fall or vehicle collision when your internal organs rupture or tear. Blunt trauma damage probably models this fine, but it's slightly different. When your body suddenly stops, all your internal organs continue moving (can I just say "inertia"?) and may tear loose, ripping tissue and causing internal bleeding, across multiple body systems. Might be relevant for high-G spaceship maneuvering.

Nanoblack
2015-05-09, 01:15 PM
The plan is to start out the with most common scifi tropes and the build out modules to cover whatever we're missing. The reason I specifically separated electricity and radiation from the remainder isn't because of how they cause their damage, but due to how they interact with standard defenses. For instance, electricity and radiation have the capacity to bypass armor and may have secondary rider effects like the muscle spasms or longer term poisoning. Corrosive is another good example.

IZ42
2015-05-09, 01:40 PM
Fun Fact for Red Fel: The Jian, while also being a primarily thrust based weapon, is also used quite a bit for sweeping slashes and cuts, but only with the 3 or so inches at the end of the blade. It was also a primarily anti-spear weapon, IIRC from my little bit of training. I'm pretty sure, from watching at least, I've never practiced it at least, that the katana is the complete opposite.


As for damage types, I think Red is pretty spot on in his analysis. I also think electricity should deal extra damage based on your armor type (Fabric? Regular. Metal? 1.5 or 2x damage and easier to hit. Rubber or something non-conductive? opposite of metal). Someone also mentioned void damage, which should really be a combo of suffocating/radiation instead of a separate thing.

erikun
2015-05-09, 10:09 PM
The plan is to start out the with most common scifi tropes and the build out modules to cover whatever we're missing. The reason I specifically separated electricity and radiation from the remainder isn't because of how they cause their damage, but due to how they interact with standard defenses. For instance, electricity and radiation have the capacity to bypass armor and may have secondary rider effects like the muscle spasms or longer term poisoning. Corrosive is another good example.
Fire bypasses armor as well, unless the armor is specifically designed to resist fire. Cold also, although most armors involve padded clothing which can resist cold. Poisons also bypass armor, such as toxic smoke. In fact, the only time that poison would be "affected" by armor is if it is delivered through some sort of attack.

Explosive is perhaps the only one which would make sense as being stopped or affected by armor, although some negative effects of an explosion (such as damage to hearing) would not be affected.

NichG
2015-05-10, 03:26 AM
Differentiating by what type of armor a given type of damage goes through doesn't really scale well to a large number of damage types. Basically, if you have so many damage types that it takes more than three separate encounters to run into all of them, then trying to plan out resistances/bypasses ahead of time tends to fall back to 'can I recognize what the DM's defaults are when he didn't think to make damage types relevant this encounter?', and then occasionally notice a thematic weakness (this set of enemies all use energy shields and no armor, etc).

Basically its a form of rock-paper-scissors, which works best with only three or so options.

So if you want armor-vs-damage to be a major discriminating factor, I'd first try to narrow down the list of damage types into a smaller number of broad classes, and then make the rock-paper-scissors dynamics between the broad classes. Within each class, then you can further differentiate based on rider effects and the like.

For example, maybe you have two broad classes Energetics and Kinetics. Armor works well against Energetics and Shields work well against Kinetic. Then within Energetics, you have Heat (which is cumulative across multiple subsequent applications as the heat is not easily radiated away), Shock (which causes partial shutdown of technological systems and muscle groups), etc. And within Kinetics you have other, similarly differentiated types. Then maybe you have a few outliers that have a weird relationship with the major defenses but otherwise have major limits, like biological agents which ignore armor and shields but can be cured/innoculated against and things of that nature.

Sith_Happens
2015-05-10, 03:58 AM
Don't forget plot damage, which bypasses any and all possible forms of reduction and indicates that the GM is pissed at you.:smallwink:

Ashtagon
2015-05-10, 04:39 AM
Blunt/Bladed/Piercing: This corresponds to 3e Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing, and gurps Crushing/Cutting/Piercing. Personally, I prefer the 3e names, since it means single letter abbnreviationsbecome practical.

Rather than think it terms of damage type X stacks and damage type Y bypasses armour, and damage type Z causes status effect Q, I'd work it in terms of a rock-paper-scissors minigame. Then stacking, bypassing, status effects and so on can be riders addedto individual weapons or groups or weapons, rather than riders on the damage types themselves.

fire, cold, electricity, laser,

Electricity damage in a realistic sense is mostly about muscular spasms causing unintentional self-injury and/or heart failure. Personally, I prefer the D&D take on it, whereby it bypasses metal armour. Realistically, a sealed suit of armour (equivalent to field plate or full plate in old armour, or a sealed carapace of conductive metal for modern armours) should 99% fully protect against this.

Realistic modern lasers are blinding weapons. Realistic futue tech lasers based on current theories cause very intense localised burn damage, and may cause flesh to explode if deep tissues can be flash-boiled.



but a precise stab to the lungs can cause asphyxia. (Or maybe aspiration. I don't know the particular terminology. Point is that you drown in your own blood.)

The word you are looking for is "expiration" :smalltongue:

radiation, poison, and explosive

As others have noted, radiation and poison often use identical rules for how they work in games systems. I'd saythe differentlabels are useful though, because of teh different ways in which they can be prevented and treated.

"Explosive" damage varies a lot. "concussion" grenades are essentially bursts of air, and would be purely bludgeoning damage in 3e terms. Frag grenades would be a combo of B/S/P damage (similar to bite atatcks, actually). "Hollywood explosions" would be a combo if airburst and fire damage. Incendiary/white phosphorus grenades are fire damage only

GURPS has one of the best detailed systems for modelling damage types. You should consider the core rules tobe required reading for your project.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-10, 06:37 AM
GURPS has one of the best detailed systems for modelling damage types. You should consider the core rules to be required reading for your project.

Yes, the OP could definitely benefit from this. No use reinventing the wheel.

I like it for its lethality; one hit from a hatchet and the fight could be over. As opposed to D&D where a 12-level fighter could take 8 or 9 unarmored whacks from a greataxe before he would start to falter -- fun, but oh so silly!

Xuc Xac
2015-05-10, 10:37 AM
The Chinese Jian comes to mind; it's a straight sword designed for quick, lethal thrusts, but amateurs in its use see a sword with a cutting edge.

In my experience, it's the amateurs who tend to think it's a thrusting weapon. They think it's long and straight so it must be for stabbing. The earliest jian may have been used that way but they were not the same design as the ones you typically see in wuxia movies. Strange that nobody ever seems to think that about European swords like the "longsword" in most fantasy rpgs.


Fun Fact for Red Fel: The Jian, while also being a primarily thrust based weapon, is also used quite a bit for sweeping slashes and cuts, but only with the 3 or so inches at the end of the blade.

It varies by style and region but the jian is usually a cutting sword. The single edged dao had more chopping power but the jian has more versatility in how to cut. It trades cutting force and depth for a greater number of angles of attack. You can make long slices at short range with the length of the blade, flick the tip for short cuts at long range, change direction to quickly cut with the other side of the blade, and so on. There are several cutting techniques that are employed while changing range too. The thrust is primarily a finishing move against an opponent who's tiring or a surprise opening move to an extremity like to give an early advantage.

This is a bit of a tangent, but maybe it will spark some ideas for distinguishing between weapons.

erikun
2015-05-10, 10:59 PM
Don't forget plot damage, which bypasses any and all possible forms of reduction and indicates that the GM is pissed at you.:smallwink:This would be Black Hole damage. You know you've done something wrong when the GM is firing Black Holes as your character. :smallwink:

NichG
2015-05-11, 02:08 AM
I'm not sure what it says that I've been in a game where that in fact was a perfectly legitimate challenge completely within our abilities that the GM threw at us, not just once but twice.

IZ42
2015-05-11, 06:34 AM
I'm not sure what it says that I've been in a game where that in fact was a perfectly legitimate challenge completely within our abilities that the GM threw at us, not just once but twice.

Huh :smallconfused:? Are you talking about black hole damage?

NichG
2015-05-11, 06:51 AM
Huh :smallconfused:? Are you talking about black hole damage?

No, actual black holes. One PC had an unfortunately-amped-up version of the Deck of Many Things which was, essentially, a deck of possible forms of the apocalypse (manifested in a way to grant the one who drew from it some possibility of advantage, or at least of taking one's enemies with them). One of the cards was 'nearest star becomes a black hole'. It came up... a few times.

Komatik
2015-05-11, 09:04 AM
Commenting on the thread as I go:

I like most of what Red Fel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19222261&postcount=3) and erikun (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19223353&postcount=7) put forth in their first posts. However:
I'd separate blunt, slashing and precision damage - not all blades are that good at both cut and thrust, and as you said spiky blunt instruments are a thing.

I'd maybe model weapon attack types so that there's trained attacks and novice attacks - say, with a sword the novice attack would be a cut (1d6, low crit mod, for example), with trained attacks allowing a thrust (precision damage) and a more proficient cut (higher chance of a crit, say, or if you go with a Riddle of Steel-esque defense pool system, leaving you less open) - perhaps also being usable as a lever when wrestling.

I concur with radiation and poisoning being negative status effects rather than HP damage, per se (though I'm not that fond of HP damage - again, Riddle does well where attacks inflict shock, pain and blood loss, for example, all with different effects and which are dealt with different attacks even with the same weapon allowing for different attacks and resistances quite easily. You could model a Dwarf as having some resistance to shock and pain from sheer stubbornness and sturdy build, so you'd have to play it safe and bleed him out or try to land a deathblow straight up. Conversely, an undead presumably doesn't bleed to death, so you have to overcome it quickly - shock, on shock so it becomes helpless and go for the kill.)


Differentiating by what type of armor a given type of damage goes through doesn't really scale well to a large number of damage types. Basically, if you have so many damage types that it takes more than three separate encounters to run into all of them, then trying to plan out resistances/bypasses ahead of time tends to fall back to 'can I recognize what the DM's defaults are when he didn't think to make damage types relevant this encounter?', and then occasionally notice a thematic weakness (this set of enemies all use energy shields and no armor, etc).

Basically its a form of rock-paper-scissors, which works best with only three or so options.

So if you want armor-vs-damage to be a major discriminating factor, I'd first try to narrow down the list of damage types into a smaller number of broad classes, and then make the rock-paper-scissors dynamics between the broad classes. Within each class, then you can further differentiate based on rider effects and the like.

If weapons can primarily attack in only one way, I agree with this. I'd prefer to have the ability to attack differently with weapons, ie. bleed dry, cause pain, immediate trauma to force the opponent to shut down, etc.


For example, maybe you have two broad classes Energetics and Kinetics. Armor works well against Energetics and Shields work well against Kinetic. Then within Energetics, you have Heat (which is cumulative across multiple subsequent applications as the heat is not easily radiated away), Shock (which causes partial shutdown of technological systems and muscle groups), etc. And within Kinetics you have other, similarly differentiated types. Then maybe you have a few outliers that have a weird relationship with the major defenses but otherwise have major limits, like biological agents which ignore armor and shields but can be cured/innoculated against and things of that nature.

This is Good Stuff.

LibraryOgre
2015-05-11, 04:57 PM
Somewhat depends on how you're doing criticals, but you might go with "slashing is more likely to cause a critical, but piercing is more likely to cause a bad one." So, if someone is using a scimitar, they're going to cause some structural damage... but the person using a rapier, when they critical, is going to do things like pierce lungs or organs.

It's somewhat analogous to 3e's crit range v. crit multiplier.

Nanoblack
2015-05-11, 05:06 PM
Once I've got this more fleshed out, I'll definitely come back to the playground. I've posted a few threads asking for help with the system before and this one is by far the most helpful. Thanks everyone, I got the inspiration I needed! :smallbiggrin:

JNAProductions
2015-05-11, 05:13 PM
Make sure you do post back-I'm always interested in new RPGs.

IZ42
2015-05-11, 05:25 PM
No, actual black holes. One PC had an unfortunately-amped-up version of the Deck of Many Things which was, essentially, a deck of possible forms of the apocalypse (manifested in a way to grant the one who drew from it some possibility of advantage, or at least of taking one's enemies with them). One of the cards was 'nearest star becomes a black hole'. It came up... a few times.

:D
White text is a bore
Something to fill characters
This should be enough

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-11, 06:19 PM
:DA snow-white haiku
To keep minimums at bay
It fills me with joy.