[HOE] HtH damage [Shane]

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

Question about str. when doing HtH damage:

My group has always played that you roll your strength plus any dice for
the weapon you're using and add them ALL together.
Ex. Str 3d6 with a sword (2d8) rolls: 4, 5, 3 and 2, 7 (for the sword).
So by our system that's: 4+5+3+2+7= 21 pts. of damage.

But... I've gotten the notion from reading webpages and summaries and this
and that that when making HtH damage rolls you treat the strenght portion
like a skill/stat roll (roll all dice, take the highest) and then add in
the weapon damage. So in the example above you'd have:
5 (the highest roll on the str. dice) +2+7 = 14 pts. of damage.

My group's discussed this and we see arguments both ways:

Con Adding ALL the dice:
HtH damage is insanely powerful. You get someone with a decent str. (3d8)
and a sword and they're doing more damage than an assault rifle (5d8
damage total).

Con Taking THE HIGHEST str. die:
Two people punching each other do NOTHING. An average str. (3d6) punches
an average vigor (3d6). On average the vigor roll (to subtract from wind)
will cancel out str. roll (to do damage) and no wind is done from a good
hit.

There's other things to consider too:
Under the all dice system martial artists can do some serious damage (1d6
+ str REAL damage), but then if you're hit by a black belt it really does
hurt that bad in the real world.

Under the highest die system HtH combat, which already takes forever
because of the much higher target numbers to hit, will take even longer.

So what do other people think?
Shane, what's the official rule?

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab


"Are we going to push it to the edge of the envelope, and beyond Brain?"
"No Pinky, we may however reach the sticky part."