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Avianmosquito
2016-07-07, 05:12 AM
My game has rather a lot of damage types. I'm going to list them here. I'm presenting these for one reason: I want feedback on their presentation. I want to be sure what they do and why you would use them is clear to the players from the stat blocks and text below.

A quick glossary:
Critical grade: What this damage type does when it's scoring a critical hit.
Regular grade: What this damage type does on a regular hit.
Minor grade: What this damage type does when downgraded by an opponent's armour rating.
Strength bonus: Whether your strength adds more damage or allows you to penetrate damage reduction.
Weak to: The apparel type that provides double protection against this form of damage.
External bleeding: Health damaged X/Round until target is inactive 100 rounds. Treated easily.
Internal bleeding: Vitality damaged X/minute until target is inactive 100 rounds. Head and body shots only.
Body damage: Damage to the integrity of your body. Obviously.
Health damage: Damage to your health. All health loss also damages poise, allowing it to stagger.
Vitality damage: Damage to your vitality. Does not impact poise.
Stamina damage: Damage to your stamina. Does not impact poise.
Infection: Health is damaged on each heal increment by the damage done for 10 increments (days by default).
Necrosis: Infection that damages body integrity. Easily maims and can be fatal, but is not difficult to treat.
Sepsis: Infection that causes more damage and damages vitality. Likely to result in a fatality and hard to treat.
Integrity: When a body part's integrity runs out, it is disabled and crippled, preventing use and impeding healing.
Health: When this reaches half, stamina does not regenerate. When it reaches 0, you lose consciousness.
Vitality: When this reaches half, health does not regenerate. When it reaches zero, you die.
Stamina: Used by actions, regenerates quickly. When it runs out, use health instead.
Poise: Full regen each round. When it runs out, you stagger. When it runs lower, you are knocked down or out.
Heat stroke: When this reaches 10*Constitution, further build-up becomes health damage. Cancels out hypothermia.
Hypothermia: Works identically to heat stroke, but cancels out heat stroke.

Slash:
Critical grade: External bleeding, body damage, health damage, infection, necrosis.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection.
Minor grade: Health damage.
Strength bonus: Damage
Weak to: Metal apparel

Slash is the only damage type that both gets a damage bonus from the user's strength (when applicable) and causes external bleeding, making it life threatening in a good hit anywhere on the body. Its ability to cause necrosis assists this further, as necrosis is the most rapidly debilitating form of infection. However, slash damage is fairly easy to treat effectively as both external bleeding and necrosis can be treated much easier than internal bleeding and sepsis.

Pierce:
Critical grade: Internal bleeding, external bleeding, body damage, health damage, infection, sepsis.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection.
Minor grade: Health damage.
Strength bonus: Penetration.
Weak to: Metal.

Pierce is an extremely common damage type. Used by everything from spears to axes to knives and arrows, it exists for thrust, swing and projectile attacks (though only axes, and not all axes, deal piercing swings), and leaves wounds that are often both hard to treat and are likely fatal anywhere on the body as piercing injury causes both internal and external bleeding, but it does have its best effects striking the head or torso.

Puncture:
Critical grade: Internal bleeding, external bleeding, body damage, health damage, infection, sepsis.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection.
Minor grade: Health damage.
Strength bonus: Penetration.
Weak to: Textile.

Puncture works much like pierce damage, except for having a different weakness and being much less common. Still, when facing metal armour and needing to leave a wound that is both hard to treat and quickly fatal, nothing beats a puncturing weapon, like a bodkin arrow or a sling bullet.

Bludgeon:
Critical grade: Internal bleeding, body damage, health damage, infection, sepsis, direct poise damage.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection, direct poise damage.
Minor grade: Health damage, direct poise damage.
Strength bonus: Damage.
Weak to: Padded.

Bludgeon damage can be a very hard damage type to treat, as the bleeding it causes is always internal and septic infections are both deadly and hard to disinfect. It is also a damage type that receives extra damage from strength, allowing it to make up for its relative lack of lethality by being difficult to treat and often dealing rather a lot of damage. However, you need to remember that internal bleeding does not occur on wounds to the arms and legs, and blunt wounds in these locations are almost never lethal as a result. You also need to remember that while internal bleeding is difficult to treat, it CAN be treated and is not extended by activity the way external bleeding is.

Heat:
Critical grade: Vitality damage, body damage, health damage, necrosis, sepsis, heat stroke.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection, heat stroke.
Minor grade: Health damage, heat stroke.
Weak to: Metal.

Heat damage is the most available and most practical energy damage type, any species that can make fire can use it. It causes extremely severe infections, and can damage vitality directly when critical hits are scored. Many enemies are additionally weak to heat and take increased (usually double, after DR) damage.

Cold:
Critical grade: Vitality damage, body damage, health damage, necrosis, hypothermia.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection, hypothermia.
Minor grade: Health damage, hypothermia.
Weak to: Padded.

A common environmental damage type, cold is hard to deal to somebody on purpose but is very exploitable in the environment when it is present. Cold isn't as deadly as heat, but it doesn't really have to be in order to be useful.

Electric:
Critical grade: Vitality damage, body damage, health damage, infection, sepsis, direct poise damage.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection, direct poise damage.
Minor grade: Health damage, direct poise damage.
Weak to: Metal.

Electric damage is both very hard to inflict on purpose and very unlikely to be inflicted on accident, while being overall the least likely energy damage type to actually kill. This damage type is largely irrelevant to combat at the current tech level, but it's here anyway.

Chemical:
Critical grade: Vitality damage, body damage, health damage, infection, necrosis, sepsis.
Regular grade: Body damage, health damage, infection.
Minor grade: Health damage.
Special: Deals extra equipment damage and cannot be resisted, but only damages the target itself if it eats through their apparel (not items) or hits flesh directly. Especially effective at destroying metal.
Weak to: Nothing, and immune to damage reduction.

Chemical damage is a go-to in many later settings for destroying an enemy's items, and is terrible at actually harming them. Largely absent in the current setting. Immune to all damage reduction.

Force:
Critical grade: Internal bleeding, external bleeding, vitality damage, body damage, health damage.
Regular grade: Vitality damage, body damage, health damage.
Minor grade: Health damage.
Special: All supernatural, divine, magical or other "special" DR and AR is completely ignored.
Weak to: Nothing.

Force damage is a very sophisticated damage type, designed in higher-tech realms to destroy matter as thoroughly as possible and be able to kill anything. Force damage is weak to nothing, penetrates very easily and is extremely lethal. Force damage is dealt by a ray of highly complex energy that crushes, pulls, strikes, twists, turns, cuts, tears, shakes, heats, cools, electrifies, irradiates and corrodes everything it comes into contact with, quickly reducing any material in its path to warm ash that briefly gives off a fading violet glow. However, while it is highly destructive and completely immune to other magic, it is inefficient to destroy matter so thoroughly and it can still only penetrate so much before it runs out of energy, not to mention that at the end of the day it's just a very sophisticated way to put a hole in something. Does not exist in the current setting.

And that's it. That's all the damage types, including a few that don't even appear (or barely appear) in this setting. If you can understand what each of these does and have some inkling how they relate to eachother, then my job has been done right.