Here's a game philosophy question: What does an extra damage, critical damage, increased damage skill mean?
More accurately, what are the game mechanics justifications for such skills? One fo the central issues that the Tellings revision faces is to push what seems to be proprietary to Tellings and to soften, retool, or remove mechanics reminiscent of other game systems. The whole mechanic of doing extra damage or critical damage is common to many games, of course. It is a perk, a special effect, a game changer. For example, backstab in most games is about striking an opponent from behind, from surprise, ignoring most defenses, and inflicting double or more damage. This makes sense for games like D&D when a character's wound level is measured (generally) by how many hit points they have. Therefore, an attack that does a lot of HP damage is a "big deal" and can be overlaid with additional rules about incapacitation.
However, for Tellings, this kind of thing is covered by hit location, Trauma Point, and Trauma% rolls. In other words, the measure of whether a strike is a "big deal" or not is different than a big hit to a HP pool. In fact, most Tellings characters never really gain additional BODYpts. Wounds and critical wounds work differently.
Therefore, does it make sense to have skills like Killing Strike, Charge, or Crushing Blow (which can do up to 4 x damage)? Wouldn't buying Weapon Skill Levels: Damage and increasing Attack Score to make called shots more effective fit the game philosophy more? Or is there a place for some critical damage skills modified and tailored for the Tellings system of damage?
Would something like changing Find Weakness to allow the character to change their weapon/attack damage to PEN damage make more sense?
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2 comments:
I like the idea of playing on the trauma and trauma % and PEN angle. I think this will strengthen one of the most enjoyable and unique aspects of Tellings combat. Doing double damage just isn't as exciting and there ialready a mechanic for it (natural 2).
Backstab-type maneuvers, where the object is to inflict what might in other circumstances be a relatively light wound to a particularly vulnerable area on an unsuspecting opponent, might be worth thinking of potentially as the chance at an instant kill or instant trauma? I don't know... just kind of mulling as I put off writing seminar papers.
I think also that some of what you're thinking on with regards to charge/crushing blow/etc might be addressed simply by increasing the as/ds values of weapons and/or implementing damage modifiers as a third category in that binary, i.e. a weapon's length bonus could be applied to either as, ds, or damage, to reflect choices of tactics. This might also allow some more tactically-based differentiation between characters?
Regarding the 'find weakness' skill, which is one my character has but hasn't really made much use of... it might be interesting to have that as a modifier to attacks on a particular body part, reflecting a 'found weakness' in technique or in armor on the analyzed opponent.
Just a couple of things I've been thinking on, apropos of nothing.
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