Best way to do damage in a system?

If you were so inclined to make your own system that used a nice ol d20 which way would you do damage?

>Roll against opponent if you succeed you deal X weapon damage
> Roll against opponents AC you deal X weapon damage
> Roll against opponent and deal 1dX Weapon damage?
>Roll against opponent deal X damage minus armor
> Other?

Which do you like? which is most pleasing? which is easy on everyone to keep combat paced?

Don't roll, deal YdX damage.

>throw dice at players
>the stronger the character and the bigger the weapon, the more dice you can throw
>when the player gives in they must flee
>if they leave the table or fall out of their chair their character dies

>Roll against AC, then bitch about bonuses you get from poorly worded rules for an entire hour

Depends on the setting.

>Roll against opponent deal X damage minus armor
That's how mine works, players seem to like it better

currently tesing most ways and im currently on
>roll to hit vs evade, if hit roll armor save then roll xd6 for damage if armor save failed.

im not happy with it, im unsure how to do damage i want to keep it at lover numbers as xd6 can be tons of damage

Everyone declares actions and rolls initiative. Attacks are guaranteed to hit, and are reduced by armor.

All weapons have a lethality modifier. All characters have a toughness modifier. On a successful hit, roll d20+lethality vs d20+toughness, worn armor gives a bonus to the defense roll. If the attacker wins, the defender gains a wound. When someone gets X wounds, X changes according to campaign, they are incapacitated and may die.

i like the sound of this

literally a faggot

hmm interesting

Kult system:
>scratches
>light wounds
>serious wounds
>fatal wounds
Every weapon or attack has a d20 table for caused effect.

I generally like the idea of grit and meat points.
Characters will take damages to their grit by blocking, being scrached or destabiliazed.
When grit points run out, you take meat damage. Grit points recharge pretty quickly by resting. Meat points are much more serious injuries.

I'm like 90% sure that's how hitpoints work in most retroclones, without separating it into two different pools.

Doesn't Palladium Fantasy do something like this?

Bump

Attacks cause really low damage (1-5), and after threshold X you roll d20 against that damage. Rolling under means you get one strike, two-three strikes and your character is out of combat.

This is good because it works independently of a health system, so it can be used in social combat or even mental competition.

Roll two dices. One is area that you hit, the other is level of success. Tecnically there is no "miss" (except at a distance, which will require one additional 'aim' dice), so your opponent needs to roll (and spend points) to avoid attacks. Armor works by blocking level of success on the area it hits; if an attack only gets 1 or 2, an armor of 2 completely blocks the damage.

Damage will just be success+weapon damage. No additional rolls required.

Player rolls to attack, target rolls to defend. If player rolls higher than target, target takes the difference as damage. Otherwise it's a miss.

Everyone has AP that refreshes on the beginning of your turn

You use1 or more AP to power attack or dodge

if your dodge used more AP then the attack you take 0 damage.

you get 1d20+skill AP every turn and it doesn't stack

Whats the difference in damage between a greatsword and a dagger, do you only take the difference UP TO the weapons damage. Or do they always take difference?

Better weapons let you use larger dice to attack, for instance if you tried to prick them with a sewing needle you would use, say, 1d4, while a huge chainsaw that can somehow ignite its blades would use, for instance, 3d20. Same goes for armor and defense rolls.

None of those. I'd use SR's system
>roll tohit diepool
>defender rolls defense pool if applicable
>if attacker wins, add the difference to damage
>defender rolls armor to reduce the damage

I like it because anything is possible, but the more ridiculous outcomes are quite unlikely. Also muh bell-shaped probability distributions.

Weapons have 2 stats:
Penetration and damage.
Unlike gurps they arent the same thing, unless the weapon requires that.
Damage is variable, penetration is a static value.

Armor.... have DR - damage reduction.

Each body part of each race (or just the entire body of each race for simplification) has two stats:
Penetration modifier and damage modifier.

If (penetration - DR) higher than 0 :
Damage = (Pen - DR - Pen modifier) * (Damage - Damage modifier)
Damage must be higher than 0 or will be 0.

If (penetration - DR) is smaller or equal to 0 :
Your own blunt trauma rules here.

>No damage, just ask the player if his attack is intended to kill the target
>Success if he rolls below his skill on d20
>He's put 24 points into Small Firearms

>Throw dice at player
>Their reaction determines how much damage they take.
>Use beer bottles and knives for stronger/surprise attacks.

This will make every attack take ten hours to resolve.

self bump

>the game is actually an excuse for the GM to physically harm his players

>single dice pool representing concentration on offense and defense modified by stats, armor, terrain, and tactics

TORG style. Roll versus a static defense. If you beat it, damage is equal to spillover.

Combat maneuvers and the like don't reduce your chances of success, they simply cut down on the amount of spillover damage you do. Many weapons and effects don't need spillover, just need to match, i.e. a hit with 0 spillover still accomplishes its effects, but spillover causes bonuses.

Take a page from Shadowrun and its damage code system.

Relative success equals damage, a 20 is a crit which allows you to tag on a status effect.

an explanation for those that don't play shadowrun?

It's literally Warhammer, with less rolls

makes me not want to play warhammer

Currently testing:
Roll to hit. Roll to damage. Hp is kept small. When reduced to 0, refill back up to max and apply wound effect. X number of wounds = dead/dying/unconscious.

in testing it doesnt take long to just attack its the damage part that is shit in my opinion.

i know nothing of the warhammer system but i would like to check it out as it gets much praise

well different strokes for different folks, can't design a thing with every one in mind.

but i'm interested how do you like it to be resolved?

>Other?
A combination of Mutants & Masterminds' Toughness save system and Fantasy Craft's Wounds system.

If you get hit, you roll against the damage to resist it. Depending on how well or poorly you resist you might take a certain number of wounds, which run the gamut from bruised/injured(multiple of each), to dying. When you run out of Wounds, or fail a save too badly, you're dead.