Going through recent adventures in the OSR space, it is very common to see an attempt at generic or system neutral statistics. This is done a lot, with armor as chain, saves as Fighter 1, etc. This is very useful if say, you are running your game for B/X but then change for Swords&Wizardy (different saves), or LotFP (different AC baseline).
An exhibit from the Dust Elemental in the remastered Stygian Library
BUT very often monster descriptions use original die size. D8 in the picture above. Why? Why not take instead an equivalent damage as sword, or damage as polearm? Main reason I can think for this vestigial limb to persist is that some monsters inflict greater (or different) damage than what standard weaponry allows, surpassing damage dice.
*End rant*
My solution would be to have extended weaponry values in the equipment section (grenades, bombs, pistols, muskets), or use damage from spells (which are meant to surpass mundane weapons).
Don't have a solution to this trend. Just my observation. What do you think?
It makes sense for armor because every game does armor somewhat differently.
ReplyDeleteBut damage is always pretty much the same. d4 for daggers, d6 for short swords, spears, and shortbows, and d8 for longswords, battleaxes, and longbow.
I don't recall seeing any games that fiddled with that in any meaningful way.
What I wrote above is a bit nit-picky, and really only applies when a designer makes an effort towards system neutrality as a whole.
ReplyDeleteYour point is fairly valid, but I'd bring up 0e with d6s only, or Knave (uses d6 for daggers and up) and other NOSR systems.
My point is, why does a designer go into the trouble of writing monsters in a generic fashion, and we often see damage still being represented by dice?
There's also the mental search factor to consider.
ReplyDeleteIn a hypothetical mental time-and-motion study, the GM
1. Reads "damage as sword"
2. Has to convert "damage as sword" to a d# value
3. Rolls that d#.
If a straight d# value is given, the conversion is eliminated.
Second, "as sword" implies damage types that the author might not want to imply.
Third, a symbolic non-word form (d8, HD, etc.) is parsed separately from descriptive word forms, which can be handy for complex blocks. If you're in a hurry, you don't need to read the whole damage sentence, you can just skip to the end of the line or scan the text for the glyph you know you need.
Fourth, it's more compact. "Damage as a dagger" might break a line, and line breaks are the bedrock of statblock design.
Hadn't even considered points #2 and #4, and they seem very good and valid reasons. Thanks!
ReplyDeletePoints #1 and #3 seem related to me. And I think the same argument can be said for any abstraction in this direction (armor as chain, save as fighter 5, fly double normal, etc).
I suppose at the end of the day it doesn't matter that much, just found it interesting that damage seems to be left with the dice in these quasi system-neutral stat blocks.