So I am thinking about my own homebrewed system, and am wondering how to implement damage. I am considering two types of system here:
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Damage is rolled separately (base on weapon), and success of the hit roll plays little or no part in determining damage (Most versions of D&D, Savage Worlds etc.)
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Damage is dependent on how much you exceed your opponent's Defense (Fate, Chimera, Shadows of Esteren). In Shadows of Esteren, damage is your attack's roll + weapon damage – opponent's defense.
My questions are:
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From a game design perspective, is there a reason to favour one over the other?
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While basing damage on degree of success "feels" realistic, are there any pitfalls associated with it? Generalizations based on existing games which use this type of mechanic are welcomed.
Assumptions
Hit Points and Damage are abstract, as in D&D. Though I do not see the difference if Hit Points really represent bodily wound or just a combination of luck, skill and toughness. Specifically, I am interested in how the number is generated, not what it means.
What I am looking for
This is some analysis I haven't verified, and I am putting here as an example of what am I looking for.
Using "damage as another roll", two opponents with vastly different to-hit can still hit each other for the same amount of damage – the chance to hit, and the probability for high or low damage is decoupled. Say A has only 10% chance of hitting B, but do 2d10 damage. B may have 50% chance to hit A, but only still do 2d10 damage. Hence perhaps I could say that A has a ghost of a chance to kill B because each hit – if he does hit – he does 2d10 damage.
The second case, say A has only 10% chance to hit – and for simplicity sake, say for every 1 percentile he succeeded by (say roll d100 under chance to hit), he does 1 damage. Hence A cannot do as much damage to B as B will be to do A, so A is less likely to be a threat, even if he does hit. Unless the system has some sort of exploding dice roll. And B, going by the system, could hit with more damage,making the to-hit chance even more important.
Stuff like this.
Best Answer
There's really a wide range of options here. For example:
Does the "Degree of Success" Approach Require More Arithmetic?
Not inherently.
In particular, if you use roll-and-count dice pools rather than roll-and-add math, then players can find the degree of success just by sorting dice side-by-side. This still takes time but isn't as sensitive to players' math skills or level of fatigue.
Does Using "Degrees of Success" Over "Hit, Then Damage" Restrict Tactical Options or Character Variety?
Not inherently.
For instance, if you want to create a niche for a big-damage weapon, it's as easy as "If you win the attack, +2s to damage." This weapon has a very different feel from a more "balanced" weapon with "+1d to attack and defense rolls." Ditto you can create a niche for a big-damage character by just writing something like "Add your Strength to damage when you hit." (Or how about "Margin of success add damage to your hit, up to your Strength number?")
One notable way that "degrees of success" changes back-and-forth damage math is that defense still benefits you even if it falls short of stopping the attack. Consider a system where we roll attack vs. parry — I roll 5 on my attack, you get 4 on your defense: in a "to hit, then damage" system, that's a straight-up failure for you and I get to roll my damage just as if we had 5 vs. 1; in a "degrees of success" system, you've turned a potential killing blow into a glancing one.
The "Realism" Question
Defining what's "realistic" is incredibly tricky here.
Smaller weapons aren't inherently more "agile," because you don't fight with a longsword by just sweeping it back and forth in wide arcs.
Real armor both deflects blows and dissipates some of the their energy. Weapons designed to defeat armor act very differently than those which aren't.
Realistically, a cunning thief with a dagger isn't going to be able to hurt an enemy in gothic plate with "fast" or even "precise" attacks. She needs to straight-up wrestle him into a position where that blade can actually do its job.
If you've chosen to use abstract hit points, your system is already privileging gameplay or genre considerations over "realism." Embrace that! Figure out how you want combat to feel and that'll drive whether you use separate or combined damage, static defense or opposed checks, &c. Just remember that a lot of what seems "realistic" based on other media is just a set of narrative conventions.
I Want Fast Resolution, What Should I Do?
I don't think there's a major difference between separate damage rolls or degree of success, at least compared to other factors like how many modifiers are involved or the size of a dice pool.
Really, though, if you want the fastest resolution of combat, decrease the number of actions involved overall (one opposed die roll with ten situational modifiers is still going to be faster than an entire combat encounter in D&D3/D&D4), and reduce decision points that are exceedingly opaque or offer only trivial benefits.