Damage rules modifications

[Anadiel]

Hi everyone,

this time, I've decided to write a more practical contribution that you can apply right away in your games.

My players and I are big fans of really brutal combat so I made a couple of adjustments to the damage calculation in order to raise the lethality of fights in CE.

First, we calculate damage from a critical strike in this fashion : (weapon damage + strength adj.)x2 instead of (weapon dam. x 2) + str. adj.

So, for example, someone with a sword (1d8) and a strength of 15 would make between 12 and 26 EP of damage instead of 7-21. Considering that a regular strike from this Character would do between 6 and 13 EP, our house rule makes sure that a critical strike is really effective and fearsome.

Second, concerning missile weapons, my group was reluctant to use them because they didn't do much damage. Sure, you can't really parry/dodge and you get a couple of shots each turn, but if you take a look at the numbers, you'll see that it will take an awful lot of arrows to actually kill or incapacitate any character above level 2.

I'll begin with an example. Let's say you're using a light crossbow. Your average range is 20 meters, your base damage is 1d6+1 and you can fire twice per round. For simplicity, we'll pretend your opponent is exactly 30m away. This means that you have 10% less chance to hit and that you must substract 3 to the damage you do. (it's gonna be between -1 and 4 EP, now)
Basically, there's 33% chance that even though you hit, it won't have any effect and if your opponent is wearing armor, there's now at least 66% chance you won't harm him (given he succeds at his armor roll, of course)

Now, let's just change your crossbow for a heavy one. You get 1 shot and do 1d8+2. Your average range is 60m so now at least you got +30% chance of hitting your target. So you'll do 3-10 EP to your opponent minus any armor he might have.

What I'm trying to suggest here is that, there should be something added to damage so that a light crossbow would be a bit more lethal or at least have a better chance of doing damage at long range. I came up with this : Why not adding your Perception adj. to damage ?

I see it this way : an archer/crossbowman is not necessarily someone with great strength, but he's dangerous because he can hit the right spot. So, let's go back to first example and pretend our character as a Perception of 15. He still has -10% to hit, but he'll do 4-9 EP which stands a better chance of going through armor. With the heavy crossbow, he'll do 8-15 EP which is enough to seriously injure a lvl 1 opponent if you hit an arm or a leg.

As for throwing weapons, we could pick either Strength or Perception as damage modifier. Whichever is highest.

So, what do you think ?