Simulating melee combat damage

[Kelandon]

I'm trying to figure out how to make a PC attack himself, or at least how to simulate it. I talked with TM, and he had some good ideas, and then I went to put it into practice, and I realized I'd forgot something.

 

Assassination, Anatomy, and Lethal Blow: I have no idea how these skills affect damage. I was wandering through Walker White's Advanced NPC, because he did some work with this, and he says that accuracy is determined by:

 

Dex + Melee/Pole + Blademaster

 

Percent chance to hit is 30 + 5 * (Accuracy - Total Defense), where Total Defense is presumably Defense + Gymnastics.

 

I think I've established that pretty well, unless someone else knows otherwise. But damage has me stumped.

 

I know that Strength, Melee/Pole, Blademaster, Anatomy, Assassination, and Lethal Blow play into it, but I don't know exact specifics. Does anyone know specifics or a way to estimate damage done?

[Lilith]

Assassination seems to randomly cause double damage (5% per level of Assassination, plus/minus 5% per XP level difference between attacker and defender? That's a pure guess but seems consistent with the way Jeff does things). Lethal Blow seems to randomly cause triple damage. It may or may not be possible for the two to act cumulatively on one attack.

 

I believe Strength, Blademaster, and Melee/Pole Weapons (or whatever stat the weapon is linked to; remember, in theory, it can be any stat) all add one die of damage per level of the respective stat (I'm sure about Strength and Melee/Pole; I'm making an educated guess that Blademaster works the same way). Anatomy may or may not work the same way; I suspect it doesn't, though. On the other hand, if you make it so that it does, I doubt it'll create horribly unrealistic damage values.

[Donald Hebb]

Anatomy (or so I suspect) adds a die of damage against humanoids. Based on the situation, this may-or-may-not be a wise thing to include.

 

Assassination working as Thuryl described it seems accurate; I would imagine that Lethal Blow works in a similar fashion.

 

Like I said earlier- the best way is to measure which stat (melee/pole) is greater, and assume that it's the weapon type being used. If it isn't, so be it. (And heck, there's still the possibility that somebody is wielding something bizarre like the Illusory Spear from Canopy- but that's a whimpy weapon anyway.) Bruisers should have higher-damage weapons, something arond 1-10/level, whereas magi should have weaker ones, somewhere around 1-5/level. Though it's a judgement call, and there is obviously no fail-safe solution, unless you want to check to see if any of the items that the party is armed with come directly from your scenario.

[Fort]

Don't forget that dexterity has an effect on defense. Blademaster doesn't seem to affect damage very much.

 

It will be very hard to simulate exactly how damage a PC could do to itself, but I don't think anyone would care. Just make the effect of the self-attack proportional to how hard you want the process to be for the player.

[Isaac]

Quote:

Originally written by Garrison:
It will be very hard to simulate exactly how damage a PC could do to itself, but I don't think anyone would care.

I agree -- in fact, I would go further than that. How would one go about attacking oneself in a normal manner? It seems like it would be different, and therefore do a different amount of damage ... unless there is some kind of recursive portal involved that allows one to attack forward and the weapon is reflected or teleported back to that character, or some equally weird situation.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally written by General Leon:
Bruisers should have higher-damage weapons, something arond 1-10/level, whereas magi should have weaker ones, somewhere around 1-5/level.

Normal weapons never do more than 1-8/level (which are e.g. Blessed Greatswords).
Sometimes I equip my mages with greatswords because I have extra ones and why not.
I don't think that is a good sort of assumption to make if you care much about correctness.