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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Damage reduction revisited

I have been thinking about a damage reduction. With most forms of damage reduction a rating is assigned and reduced from any damage a character may take. For example is a character has a damage reduction of two. And would normally take five damage, that damage would be reduced to three as the two would be subtracted from the damage assigned.

While I think this is a simple and easy to track mechanic. I find it troublesome. At low levels and lower damage dice, damage rating is powerful. A high damage reduction at lower levels is very powerful. So damage rating has to be watched or it can unbalance a game quickly.

At higher levels lower damage ratings is very underpowered. If damage rating scales with level than the character becomes a Juggernaut and ignores all weaker attacks.

My proposal for an alternate damage reduction is that any natural roll equal or less than the rating is ignored. On a damage reduction of 1 any natural roll of one on a damage die is read as 0, all bonuses to damage are ignored and no damage is taken.

This applies to all damage dice individually. If 3d6 is rolled for damage. And the target has a damage reduction of 2 all die rolled 2 or less is ignored and only the remaining dice are added up. For example:

3D6 damage is rolled, the dice come up 2, 4, and 6. Since the target has a damage reduction of 2, the die that rolled a 2 is removed and only the 4 and 6 are counted resulting in a damage roll of 10.

This does make damage reduction powerful. so each point of damage reduction should really be thought of as x1.5 to x2 as powerful as the last and given very sparingly. But even at low levels damage reduction is still a benefit to higher level characters. And a 4-6 damage reduction is equally super human to low and high level characters.

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