D&D Damage Houserule

[SowZ]

So, this is pretty simple. If you hit double the targets AC with your hit, you do max damage on your damage roll. If you hit triple the targets AC, you roll your damage dice again, (after applying critical bonus to damage.) If you hit quadruple the target's AC, you bring the target to 0HP or whatever you would normally bring them to, whichever is lower.

I always hate how the accuracy with which you hit does not affect damage, it only affects if you do damage. This rule gives martial classes a slight boost but doesn't typically affect boss fights. It does serve to make killing mooks easier. Any extra time to calculate simple division should be counterbalanced by less die rolling.

Any thoughts?

[Fruchtkracher]

Gives melee a definite boost in battle, though comes with one necessary clarification.

Does this work against anyone? This way any comoner can one-shot most oozes or puddings.

Besides this, nice idea.

[Yitzi]

Sounds good.

I've been toying with an option that alone is even simpler (the amount by which you beat the AC is added to damage), but allows a lot of other stuff which makes it more complicated. Basically:

-Everyone adds DEX to their attack roll instead of STR, but STR bonuses to damage with melee non-light weapons are doubled.
-Armor does not boost the DC of the attack roll (sort of silly to call it AC if armor doesn't affect it) but rather gives a special type of DR/-: It's applied before precision damage, and if it reduces damage to 0 no precision damage is applied.
-Weapon Finesse now acts by letting you take a penalty to your attack bonus to reduce the target's armor protection by the same amount. Ranged weapons allow the same option. You can't add more than 1X your STR bonus to damage when using weapon finesse.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Does this work against anyone? This way any comoner can one-shot most oozes or puddings.

Make the bonus damage precision?

[Absol197]

Make the bonus damage precision?

That's basically what I was going to say. Things that are immune to critical hits don't take the extra damage. Essentially, the extra damage comes from being incredibly accurate (because it comes from hitting over the target's AC), so it's basically being able to target weak spots. An ooze doesn't have weak spots, and so is immune.

This is pretty similar to an idea I had for re-working critical hits: my idea was that, for every 10 you beat the target's AC by, you get crit damage. So if you're using a 20/x2 weapon, you deal x1 damage at AC +0 to +9, x2 damage at AC +10 to +19, and you deal x3 damage at AC +20 to +29, etc.

If your weapon has a high crit multiplier or threat range, that increases the extra damage or decreases the necessary amount over the target's AC: so a warhammer is x1 (AC +0 to +9); x3 (AC +10 to +19); and x5 (AC +20 to +29). A longsword would be x1 (AC +0 to +8); x2 (AC +9 to +17); and x3 (AC +18 to +26).

A keen rapier would be incredibly deadly: x1 (+0 to +4); x2 (+5 to +9); x3 (+10 to +14); etc. :smalleek:

I chose +10 because it's easy to do in your head (just see how many times you have to increase the first number of the AC until it the attack doesn't hit anymore), and because, unlike doubling, small ACs aren't super-easy to crit, and high ACs aren't impossible to crit. I also use the rule that a nat 20 counts as a 30, and a nat 1 counts as a -10, which I think go well with this.

EDIT: The way weapon's crit stats are represented needs to be changed, though:

THREAT RANGE:
20 becomes +10
19-20 becomes +9
18-20 becomes +8
17-20 becomes +7
15-20 becomes +5

CRIT MULTIPLIER:
x2 becomes x1
x3 becomes x2
x4 becomes x3

So a quarterstaff is a +10/x1 weapon, a dagger, short sword, or longsword becomes a +9/x1 weapon, a rapier or kukri becomes a +8/x1 weapon, a warhammer becomes a +10/x2 weapon, etc.

[Cipher Stars]

CRIT MULTIPLIER:
x2 becomes x1
So a quarterstaff is a +10/x1 weapon, a dagger, short sword, or longsword becomes a +9/x1 weapon, a rapier or kukri becomes a +8/x1 weapon, a warhammer becomes a +10/x2 weapon, etc.



They become a No-Boost weapon :smallconfused: "Yay a critical!" ... "...Oh..."

[Absol197]

They become a No-Boost weapon :smallconfused: "Yay a critical!" ... "...Oh..."

No, the idea is that the "Critical Multiplier" is how many EXTRA times you do damage per +10. So a x1 crit weapon deals the base damage again per +10 (so x2 total at +10, x3 at +20, x4 at +30), while a x2 crit weapon deals twice the base damage per +10 (so x3 at +10, x5 at +20, x7 at +30), and a x3 crit weaopns deals 3 times the base damage per +10.

It makes sense to me, but I guess other people might interpret the numbers differently...

[The Underlord]

How does this interact with NADs?
you didn't say which edition, presumably it should work with 4e because it is DnD and this is a DnD houserule.

[Absol197]

How does this interact with NADs?
you didn't say which edition, presumably it should work with 4e because it is DnD and this is a DnD houserule.

What is an NAD, if I may ask?

[The Underlord]

NAD=non-armor defense. 4e changed fortitude, reflex, and will to work like AC does.

[Absol197]

NAD=non-armor defense. 4e changed fortitude, reflex, and will to work like AC does.

Oh! I've never heard that acronym before. Well, if I remember correctly, in 4e, most of the damage rolls, regardless of the source, are of similar scale to weapon damage rolls in 3.5, so you could likely use all of the proposed variants in this thread for any sort of Defense (AC, Ref, Fort, and Will) equally well.

As long as you're not rolling xd6 as the base damage for attack, I think it should be perfectly fine.

[erikun]

I would hope this doesn't apply to attacks that use touch AC. It is far too easy to apply a single attack to touch AC: Deep Impact in psionics, Emerald Razor is ToB, and Brilliant Energy weapons against most targets with armor. Even worse, this would mean wizards and sorcerers could cut through most opponents with even the easiest spells - Ray of Frost only needs to hit 40 AC to instantly drop most opponents, including Ancient Red Dragons.

Even ignoring that, spellcasters still win. True Strike is +20 to a single attack, which is basically max damage right there. If they happen to have a good attack roll above that, they could easily hit 3x damage or the insta-kill level.

[SowZ]

NAD=non-armor defense. 4e changed fortitude, reflex, and will to work like AC does.

Someone more learned in the ways of 4e would have to balance that out. I've played maybe four sessions of 4e.

As for touch attacks or attacks that target will/reflex saves? I don't apply them to this rule. Martial attacks only.