Finesse damage

By Friend of the Dork, in Dark Heresy House Rules

Posted at

Gregorius21778 said:

Hi!

Talking "Effect of extra succes & house rule"

I made up something similiar in notion, but different in effect:

"If the damage dice shows a number that is equal or lower then (level of success x2), then use (level of success x2) instead of the dice role"
This is for 1d10+x weapons. If the weapon uses w5, it is "level of success" instead of " "x2". It the damage has more then one dice, the rule is applied to the lowest dice.

I do not simply "add" levels of success since it raises the max. damage output of char & I do not where his could unbalance somethint somewhere really hard.
This way, it is puts a "skilled" fighter a little more into the higher end of the damage output scale, instead of changing the max. damage.

The rule isn´t "fine tuned" (especially when comes to weapons with more dice/ d5 weapons) but more about "staying simple".

I see how that could work, but IMO requires a bit more calculation than my own rule. Also, I don't mind a slightly higher damage output in this game, as with default damage in too hard to damage a typical guardsman with a normal weapon. During playtesting however I capped the damage at 3 because Otherwise it would be better than Righteous Fury, and would make aim actions and sighting aids too good. Not to mention that unarmed attacks suddenly became very deadly.

As I've asked before in this thread, is it unbalanced? And no one has managed to find anything of the sort. If you find it unbalances certain talents or weapons, let me know. The only gripe I can think of is that daemonic toughness becomes less tough, but then again it was a fairly bad mechanic already as a really tough feral guardsman with heavy carapace armor is equally resistant to damage, and alot more to primitive weapons.

To counter it I could always give daemons etc. +3 natural armor, or rule that creatures without a discernable anatomy (can't remember the name of that trait) are immune to precision (finesse) damage. Hmm, just got the house rule a new name :) I can't see how shooting daemonic creatures in the eye etc. wouldn't help (double negative), so precision damage should apply.

Posted at

Cardinalsin said:

Gregorius21778 said:

"If the damage dice shows a number that is equal or lower then (level of success x2), then use (level of success x2) instead of the dice role"

I like this rule. However, I'm not so sure about the x2. That means even someone with a fairly poor BS and no bonuses, will quite often be automatically rolling well above minimum damage.

Also: this will be much better with low-damage weapons than with high-damage weapons (which will rarely roll low enough for the rule to take effect). So what about saying that every individual die roll that comes in under the #successes (or #successes x 2) benefits from the effect.

Example: Dude Mcdudeson rolls three degrees of success with an inferno pistol. He rolls damage - a 6 and a 1, for 11 points of damage. But with the house rule, the 1 gets increased to a 3 (or 6 if you use the x2) so his net damage is 13 (or 16).

That's exactly how his rule works... not sure what your objection is. It's fairly decent IMO, but doesen't really suit my purposes (which is to allow common wepons do more damage)

Posted at

Friend of the Dork said:

That's exactly how his rule works... not sure what your objection is. It's fairly decent IMO, but doesen't really suit my purposes (which is to allow common wepons do more damage)

Two things - the x2 multiplier, and setting the minimum damage overall rather than by die. I may have misunderstood in the case of the latter - if we're saying the same thing, so much the better!

Posted at

Cardinalsin said:

Friend of the Dork said:

That's exactly how his rule works... not sure what your objection is. It's fairly decent IMO, but doesen't really suit my purposes (which is to allow common wepons do more damage)

Two things - the x2 multiplier, and setting the minimum damage overall rather than by die. I may have misunderstood in the case of the latter - if we're saying the same thing, so much the better!

I see where you go with your example for a two dice weapon. And I forgot about the amount of bonus one can get. I think, I will transfer it to "Success levels in place of damge dice if SL are higher then DD", changing "highest dice in case of multi-dice" and capping "SL cap at maximum number a DD could achieve". This will take some time till it thinks into my players head, but I think it is worth a try.

Thanks for pointing out!