I've been investigating a few combat systems as of late to figure out how to develop my own for a personal project.
One of the combat systems I've been focussing on has been the one in the KOTOR games. To my understanding behind the scenes it uses what is essentially the d20 system – which I have yet to really learn, mind you. So far I've made sense of attack rolls and saving throws but the damage roll is something I'm still not sure about. I spent some time looking around on the internet and got a lot of information about what the damage roll is but not how damage is actually calculated, which is what I care about.
How exactly does rolling for damage work in KOTOR? More specifically, if a weapon has a damage of "5-12", how is that damage applied during combat?
Best Answer
For more general information with respect to the D20 system as a whole, you'll want to look at the D20 SRD, and if you have any further questions about it as a system, RPG.Se is the place to go for all your tabletop RPG Q&A needs.
That said, with respect to the specific implementation of the D20 system seen in the KOTOR games, what happens with damage rolls is that the game is abstracting the 'dice' away from the information displayed to you. A weapon with a displayed damage range of 5-12, is probably rolling 1D8+4. During combat, a hit with that weapon will deal 5-12 damage, before any other combat modifiers, whether from the characters stats, buffs, skills, or other equipment are factored in.