Randomly Generated Constant Damage

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A bit of a mouthful!

I had the thought: why not give each instance of a weapon constant damage, but roll to determine that constant amount? For example, a D6 weapon can deal somewhere from 1 to 6 damage, and one you buy from town might just deal 3 damage. However, if you go adventuring, you might come across special ones that deal even more (or less). Besides reducing the complexity of combat, this also introduces Diablo-style loot where you get just a little meaningful granularity.

Plus, check this: on a roll of 1, you increase the rarity of the item and reroll the weapon die. Each point of rarity could map to +1 of some special type of damage if you want to be basic, or it could be an actually special power that triggers on some condition (like rolling a crit or something).

You would probably want either a D20 master table of weapons or a smaller D6 table specialized for a specific faction or type of opponent (to make it a general loot table, probably use entries 1–3 for weapons and entries 4–6 for random things, so you can halve the die when determining what opps are holding), as well as a D6 table for potential special powers.

I made a master table but I don't really like it because it imposes itself as general while the individual items are, by virtue of that, relatively specific and boring. Have a scarecrow instead:

  1. Spade (D4, piercing, melee) / 1 silver
  2. Scythe (D6, slashing, slashing)  / 1 silver
  3. Sling (D4, bludgeoning, ranged) / 1 silver
  4. N/A
  5. N/A
  6. N/A

Probably, when rolling loot, roll D6 again: if it's the weapon they were wielding, then it survived and it's up for grabs; otherwise, you just get the loot listed.

Might go well with my previous post, though not necessarily.

Comments

  1. niosisApril 10, 2024 at 6:08 AM

    this is really nice! the addition of rolls of 1 introducing special features is particularly good. for weapons of d8 and higher it may make sense to even reroll on 2s for some more mundane bonus. ive been thinking a bit about that diablo style loot recently, you could maybe do like your previous post like you said, but roll the to-hit bonus when the loot is generated too? damage on miss is the only other interesting variable that comes to mind... apart from maybe treasure value? like a gilded sword thats completely blunt? that would only really make sense as a rare chance, compared to tying it to the damage value or plain old item type

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