The revised Savage Worlds rules are coming very soon. Most of the revisions are easily adapted (grappling being fixed for example.) There is however one new rule that bears discussion. The new rule is for damage and raises. Now, if on an attack roll, if you get at least one raise, you get to add an extra D6 to your damage. No more do you add up the raises and get a +2 to damage for each raise. The D6 is completly extra to the damage roll, and can ace.
For example:
Baron blood swings at a pirate with his sword. He hits with a raise. His normal damage is D8 (strength) + D6 (wild die) + 2 (for the short sword.) He gets a 7 damage. Now he can roll an extra D6 and add that to the 7. This D6 can ace.
Let me know what you think of this rule. It's tempting for me as a GM because it just takes one more calcuation away from my workload. However, you might all feel cheated not getting your extra damage from raises. What do you think?
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6 comments:
Wait, so are you saying that you only get an extra d6 damage no matter how many raises you get? If you get an extra d6 PER raise, that seems excessive, but if you only get 1d6 even if you get 9 raises, that seems very lame.
I hate wasted raises, especially when dealing with something that is very tough, like let's say a dragon. A dragon is relatively easy to hit, being huge, but is incredibly hard to damage, even if you have a d12 strength and a greatsword. If you use the original rule, I have two different ways I have a chance to hurt this thing: I can ace on my to hit roll, or I can ace on my damage roll. With the new rule (assuming I'm reading it correctly), you have to ace out on your damage roll only...acing on your to hit roll won't help you that much.
I guess I'm saying that I like the +2 damage thing better because it makes your skill matter almost as much as the weapon you use. Now, if you were to give an extra d6 damage for the first raise and every other raise after that, I might think that was okay.
OR how about every raise after the first allows you a free re-roll of the damage, and you can take the best one? IE: Baron Blood rolls and hits with TWO raises this time. Now he gets a d8 (or d6 Wild die) + d6 extra damage + 2. But after he rolls the damage, he can pick up his dice and roll it again, and take the best result.
Well, again this involves some extra calculation I guess. How about the GM can just roll the extra d6 no matter how many raises he gets, but the PCs can use a more complicated method if they feel like doing the math? :)
Well I'm definately not making it MORE complicated that's for sure. :) I might consider using the D6 for GM characters.
I think it does solve some of the complicated problems with damage exploding on just a regular hit. In our first run I ran into several instances of really awful when a mook nailed me with a nornal hit & just anilated me in one blow. It was a good thing I had great luck & the power to make him re-roll a dice roll that day. Jeffs Brick character if I recall died in a similar fasion. A mook characters damage exploded & he ended up dying because of it.
This would also encourage me to buy my fighting up. Right now as the rules stand I have in most cases even odds with Boze for hurting my opponent. If I have to get a raise to get the possibility of exploding my damage it will make me want to have a have a higher fighting rating so that I may explode.
To be clear: Your damage does still explode on a regular hit. What this rule does is, eliminates the "+2" for each raise on your attack roll. You just get one extra D6 if you get any raises. Your other dice still explode on damage also. The advantage is, it's quicker, just stop after you get the first raise.
This seems to make the damage system more deadly on average. I am a little concerned about that.
Baron Blood example again assuming 1 raise and average dice luck:
Old Version New proposed version
d8+d6+2+2=12 d8+d6+2+d6=13.5
and this does not properly consider the math for acing dice, which is increased in the New version because there is another die to possibly explode (I will leave the hard math to Nigel in this)
That 1.5 doesn't make a huge difference to people with a real parry, but to characters without it... it is noticable.
I don't think that this makes the math easier or not... on the back end. Adding 2 to the die roll is just as easy as adding another variable number in front of you.
And then lets talk realisticly about the additional damage from raises. I think we have seen 1 case of a +6 from raises. And that might have been the El Tigre situation. Remember that is only possible with a +12 above the target number.
Now, since I think you are talking about the math on the front end of damage, there might be another solution which is pretty simple and meets the middle ground between these 2 rules.
Old system = Target number, then figuring +4 above that for each additional +2 (clunky)
New proposed system = Target number + 4 = d6 additional. (no more no less)
Possible compromise = (Total attack rolled - Target number)/2 = additional points of damage (round down & no lower than 2 allowed[thus keeping the 'threshold' for extra damage still @ +4 on the attack roll.])
Using Baron Blood again:
Old System New System Possible comp
Parry=5 d8+d6+2+2 d8+d6+2+d6 d8+d6+2+3
Attack=12
Average damage=12 13.5 13
Thus dumbs down the additional potential for exploding dice crazyness on the "bonus" from hitting with a raise, but still allows some flexibility for raises which is more in line with the skill bonus (the 4 points for a raise always seemed arbitrary to me.)
I only bring this up since we are talking about modifications to this version... feel free to ignore it as you will. I know that you are trying to make things easier for you Tim... in which case I am willing to let YOU use the d6 system for raises for your characters... we can use the other one. I am just worried that it increases the possibility of damage totals being wacked. (again, defering to Nigel for the math here.)
Yeah, I haven't done any hard math on it either. We should let Nigel examine it. Knowing PEG, they didn't do any math on it either, it's just something they started using in minatures play to speed things up, and they liked it.
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