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Incarna Side Talk: Synthesize Damage Notation
Right now, its a measure of a portion of what is needed for the best outcome/success. It is not a base multiplier (BM); BM feels mathematical and more of a notation than qualitative label. Notation for weapons can be BM (ex: Short Sword i20=3 | icore=4). This is problematic when you have d6+1 for i20 (never happens under iCore?) – so would notation be 3(+1)? What about 2d6 where average is 7 but max is 12? Would it be base on # dice then? So 3+4? But that could presume d6+d8!? 3d6 is 3+4+3? Trying to force i20 to be as straight forward as iCore has issues.
Explanation
So, 3d6 is 18. If we just say 9, is losing the 1 significant? So it’s 9/18. No one has to know the dice. 2d6 would be 6/12. The 1 is significant at the lowest levels. Alternatively, to increase lethality, the notation could be 6(+1) for 2d6, reading it as 6×2=12+1=13 for full. And 25 for a critical. 3d6 would be 9(+1) for 10/19/37. This slightly addresses the issue raised in the past with a small gain in Health removing the feeling of vulnerability and how Health/HP in i20 scale rapidly, leading to more “run in and kill it all” mentality, tactical laziness, etc. Of course the issue here is that it’s universal and really screws low HP in a way iCore does not. A better approach may be to just have base damage increase with skill in something like we offer the Fighter class for attack bonus instead of critical range. So, increasing the base damage, attack bonus, or critical range. That would keep any after dice bonuses – 2d6+1 = 6(+1) and let the skill of kinetic/warriors pick up the slack. Perhaps make this a passive to Action Surge – then the non spell casting Paladin and Ranger classes could get access to it as well. Monks, barbarians using heavy weapons, rogue sneak attack – all would suffer under this imposed notation. Unfettered qualifier? 5d6 = 17 avg vs. 3×5=15. What if i used BMx #dice + #dice: so with 5d6, it would be 20, 30 on a full? 8d6 would be 32, 48 on a full? 12d6 would be 48, 60 on a full? This is not scalable at an appropriate ratio.
Conclusions
Its not worth it, trying to force the notation into a single BM.