bycrom
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 90 
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Post by bycrom on Sept 1, 2013 19:26:18 GMT -6
ByCrom! This idea seeped in my drunken noggin from the GURPS system damage bonus.
1 'attack' per round. A claw/claw/bite attack you may see listed in other editions could be described as the slavering fangs and rending talons of the troll but would still constitute an 'attack'.
Base damage is 1d6.
For every HD a monster has greater than 1, add +1 damage bonus to the roll. If bonus adds to a +3, add a die instead.
Frex:
Goblin (less than 1 hd = childlike strong), 1d6-1
Orc, (full grown man strong) 1d6
Lizard man, (big and strong) 1d6+1.
Bugbear, (strong like bull) 1d6+2
Ogre, (crush bones with a punch strong) 2d6 (not 1d6+3)
Troll, ( push over oak trees strong ) 2d6+2
Hill Giant, (crush bones with a backhanded slap strong) 3d6+1
Red Dragon, (pullup oak trees from their roots strong) 4d6
Storm Giant (Pull down castle walls strong) 5d6+2
Vision from Mitra or delusion implanted by Thoth-Amon??
By Crom, you decide, dog-brothers!
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Post by Fearghus on Sept 1, 2013 20:04:40 GMT -6
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Post by Red Baron on Sept 1, 2013 20:41:10 GMT -6
Don't mess with damage. All that adding is to much work and overcomplicates things. Instead just give higher hit dice creatures more 1d6 damage attacks.
Add them at the rate that characters increase thac0 in ad&d:
Fighting man: 2/2
Cleric: 2/3
Magic user: 2/5
Elfs, hobbits, and other classes gain attacks as a cleric, as do monsters
This lends its self to a system where a fighting man who rolls and scores 4 hits and could stab a four hit die ogre to death or dispatch four orcs, but a dragon who scores four hits could swallow the same ogre in one bite, or breathe flames over four orcs and roast them to a crisp.
I roll a handful of dice for hits, and just grab the dice that hit and reroll those ones for damage. This makes combat quick, easy, and lethal. It works smoothly in big combat situations where I can just roll a handful of dice and figure out how many skeletons the party hit and killed. Easiest system in the world.
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Post by oakesspalding on Sept 2, 2013 1:00:05 GMT -6
Don't mess with damage. All that adding is to much work and overcomplicates things. Instead just give higher hit dice creatures more 1d6 damage attacks. I agree. Someone (was it WaysoftheEarth?) proposed that BIG monsters (not necessarily higher hit dice monsters, per se) should get one damage die for every four hit dice or fraction thereof. This is consistent with the brief discussion of "Large Animals" in M&T as well as with the multiple dice of damage that is described for Giants, Sea Monsters, etc. So a Troll or a Vampire only do one die of damage but a T-Rex would do 4, or something like that. I find that satisfying and consistent. I'm still going to push for the option to sacrifice 5 or so points of one's target "to hit" number for an extra die of damage. At the margin you keep the same expected value while simply adjusting the possible range (at least within one round) within that expected value. Before you get to the margin however you are making powerful creatures a bit more powerful. |
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Post by Porphyre on Sept 2, 2013 2:39:19 GMT -6
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bycrom
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 90
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Post by bycrom on Sept 2, 2013 6:54:25 GMT -6
Someone (was it WaysoftheEarth?) proposed that BIG monsters (not necessarily higher hit dice monsters, per se) should get one damage die for every four hit dice or fraction thereof. This is consistent with the brief discussion of "Large Animals" in M&T as well as with the multiple dice of damage that is described for Giants, Sea Monsters, etc. So a Troll or a Vampire only do one die of damage but a T-Rex would do 4, or something like that. I find that satisfying and consistent.
By Crom, this! This fits the power-curve of OD&D closely and is the most direct and simple way to dish out damage methinks. When damage must be dealt out, I prefer direct and simple  I exalt you, great druid of the Spalding Oakes and your 'Ways of the Earth'! Edit - but a troll should be considered a large creature (7+ feet tall?) My monster manual shows them size L as well.
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Post by Porphyre on Sept 2, 2013 13:42:11 GMT -6
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Post by Red Baron on Sept 2, 2013 15:14:05 GMT -6
One sheet worth a thousand monster manuals. |
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Post by talysman on Sept 3, 2013 12:54:38 GMT -6
One sheet worth a thousand monster manuals. Thanks! There's at least one error in the tables, though. The damage for creatures between 4+1 and 6+ hit dice should be 1+2, not 1+3. It's based on the damage of an ogre in M&T, and on that TFT idea of 4 points of damage being equivalent to 1d6. In TFT, and also to some extent in M&T, 3 points of damage is converted to 4 points - 1 point and then into 1 die -1. So, djinn (7+1 HD) do 2-1 instead of 1+3 damage. |
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Post by Red Baron on Sept 4, 2013 21:19:30 GMT -6
What did you make those charts in? (...And is that your blog?)
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Post by talysman on Sept 5, 2013 10:12:28 GMT -6
Yep, that's my blog. However, I can't remember what I did those charts in, it was so long ago... may have been Open Office, may have been as HTML via Pandoc with some CSS, may even have been in InDesign, although I rarely do tables in that. And then I turned it into an image. What I think my process was: Open Office to PDF, then a tool that turns PDFs into images (don't recall the name of the tool, but it was intended for people who had "MP3 players" that supported viewing images but not PDFs.)
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Post by Porphyre on Sept 5, 2013 10:52:17 GMT -6
Speaking of ... (and with due apoplogies to Bycrom! and the moderation staff for the thread derailing)
How is Liber Zero advancing?
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Post by talysman on Sept 5, 2013 19:15:32 GMT -6
Speaking of ... (and with due apoplogies to Bycrom! and the moderation staff for the thread derailing)How is Liber Zero advancing? Slowly but surely. Actually, I have a couple technical issues to take care of in the next couple weeks or so, after which I should be able to jump back into the gruntwork part of getting some stuff written up. But there's been some changes to the targeted niche. The monster building stuff is definitely going to be in the final version, though. |
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Post by Red Baron on Sept 5, 2013 21:03:00 GMT -6
I like those grey and white bands. I'll have to figure that out
Maybe just highlight a whole row in light grey?
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Post by talysman on Sept 5, 2013 23:27:57 GMT -6
It'a been a while since I've used Open Office to set up a table, but as I recall, there was an Alternating Rows setting in the Table options. You can choose different background colors for every other row, every third row, etc.
When I use Pandoc to make an HTML table, it automatically adds CLASS="Even" and CLASS="Odd" to appropriate rows, so all you have to do is add some in-line CSS to say what you want even and odd rows to look like.
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