PUCS Logo

Well the hard work of re-work has begun in earnest. I have done my small bit by making a new logo. I stuck with the shield design but went with orange instead of blue. I am not all that enthusiastic about it but it is complete.

What's in a name?

Apparently quite a bit if you consider copyrights and legal trade marks. That said the system has found itself a new name. No longer shall be referred to as The Dee One Hundred, hence forth is officially know as: Percentile Universal Combat System or PUCS.

So what's changed?
Really nothing other then the name.

When is the next release?
The name change has caused some delays as a new website and lots of editing needs to be review, so the next release aka DRAFT 2, is slated for March 2008.

How do you pronounce it?
Here in lies a quandary well described on the roll damage forum. Either puck (hockey puck) or puke (rhymes with nuke) is acceptable.

I'll post more details about the new website and firm DRAFT 2 date when they become known to me.

Damage Bonus in Melee - Part III

The damage bonus from in melee is resolved although the word-smiths continue to play with how exactly to describe them.

Summary
The Damage Bonus From Strength will be 10% of the strength attribute. Each 10 points of strength bonus is rolled on its own 1d10. Rolling at or below the bonus, give the bonus of the dice roll. Rolling above the bonus gives no bonus. This is unchanged from previous blog posts. See Damage Bonus in Melee - Part II for details of how it works and see Damage Bonus in Melee for why we thought it needed to be changed.

Strengths Greater then 100
The Damage Bonus From Strength greater then 100 was problematic. We wanted to continue the variable nature of the bonus but we wanted to keep the calculation simple. So we ended up doing was giving each 10 points of the damage bonus from strength its own roll.

Example
For example take something hugely strong, Strength 250. The Damage Bonus From Strength is 10% of 250 or 25 points. You would break that down into three d10 rolls. The first two rolls 2d10 do that amount in bonus damage. The third d10 would only do damage if you rolled at or below 5. So you have a minimum damage of 2 and a maximum damage of 25. A likely damage of around 12 (statistics is not my strength.)

Damage Bonus from Strength 25
Bonus	Roll	Potential	Average
10	1d10	1 to 10 points	5.5
10	1d10	1 to 10 points	5.5
5	1d10	0 to 5 points	1.5

Unexpected Consequences
The damage bonus in melee has given rise to some new skills. These skills afford those with them to better leverage their strength. The only new skill whose defintion has settled down is this Power Attack.

Power Attack
Power Attack helps the character maximize their strength bonus on damage rolls in melee. The skill level in Power Attack is the minimum damage bonus the character can roll, after a successful attack. The Power Attack can not exceed the character's Damage Bonus from Strength .

A character has a Damage Bonus from Strength of 6 and Power Attack of level 2. The character hits in melee, rolls the weapons damage and then a 1d10 for the Bonus Damage from Strength. With the Power Attack skill, the character will always get 2 points of Damage Bonus from Strength even if they roll a 1,2,7,8,9 or 10. Rolls of 3,4,5 or 6 are not effected. Without this skill, rolls of 7,8,9 or 10 do no bonus damage.

Damage Bonus in Melee - Part II

Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows!

Strength Bonus has found its resolution for the soon to be published D100 Draft 2. As I described in a previous entry, in the current system strength bonus was a straight adder to any damage roll in melee. While it worked just fine as play testing continued it was revealed that super strong creatures pretty much squashed any human they hit, every time they hit. In practice we have no problem with this effect. We none the less considered that even the very powerful do not always connect a blow with all the power behind it and how might we model that in the system.

What we have been play testing is this.

Damage Bonus from Strength

In melee using a hand held weapon each character gets a damage bonus from Strength. This bonus is based on 10% of the Strength Attribute. The 10% represents the maximum bonus. The effect of the bonus is determined by rolling 1d10. If that roll is equal to or below 10% of the Strength attribute then that roll is added to the weapon's damage roll. To determine the total damage of a hit you roll two times, first for the weapon, second for the strength bonus.
For example a character has:

• Strength of 55
• Strength Damage Bonus is 6 (10% of 55 is 6 because of rounding)
• Rolls a 45 for a successful hit
• Rolls a 1d6 for weapon damage
• Rolls a 1d10 for strength bonus damage
  
• Rolls of 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 are added to the weapon damage.
• Rolls of 7,8,9 or 10 are ignored.

Remaining issues:
We are still toying with how to handle a strength bonus greater then 10. There are a couple competing concepts. I will post about the winning one next time. This has also brought up some interesting possibilities for new skills.

Damage Bonus in Melee

In the current draft of the D100 Melee System, we add 5% of the strength as a damage bonus for hand help weapons. This is similar to the d20 model and It works well. A problem that has been realized is that damage is skewed towards always heavy damage. D100 has a radically different hit point model compared with D20 and so this skew causes a break down in the system against something monstrously strong, like a troll. A troll's strength of 200 has 1o point damage bonus. This means even if the troll were to make a hit with a club (1d4). When you combine that with the damage bonus for strength, the troll can do a minimum of 11 points and a maximum of 15 points. No one has an issue with the maximum, but the minimum seems unfair. Does the troll always get his full strength into the swing?

More Detailed Example of Issue
Take Opponent X, who is quite strong and has a 6 point damage bonus for strength. The weapon of choice is a club with 1d4.

If Opponent X connects and gets all their power behind the blow, they do 10 points of damage. SPLAT! Now lets say Opponent X falters some and connects. In the current system, any hit does a minimum of 7 points of damage.

Opponent X is strong, but do even the very strong always get all their power behind each blow. Rather, the very strong have tremendous potential for power behind each blow. Much the same as each weapon has its own potential for damage. Melee is a dance, some blows miss (we got that covered), some blows are blocked (we got that covered), some blows are shifted (we got that covered too) and some blows hit without full force and there in lies the problem.

Solution(s)
This is a little tricky to resolve because we want the system to be kept simple. We do not want to reference a chart each time in melee. We do not want a complicated formula, but we don't want a straight adder bonus either. What we are experimenting with is rather then having a straight bump to the damage roll, we have a second damage roll for the strength bonus. We are also trying out a combined damage roll that accounts for the damage potential of both the strength and the weapon.

For example:
Currently
- Short Sword 1d6
- 60 Strength: +3 on damage
- Hits do 1d6+3, or 4-9 points per hit
Idea #1 - 2 rolls for damage
- Short Sword 1d6
- 60 Strength: +3 on damage
- Hits do 1d6+1d3, or 2-9 points per hit
Idea #2 - 1 roll for damage
- Short Sword 1d6
- 60 Strength: +3 on damage
- Hits do 1d9, or 1-9 points per hit

This example shows a bonus roll that is not an easy dice roll. You would have to roll a d6 divided by 2. What do you do when the bonus is 7 or 9? Obviously this introduces some complexity that we do not really want to deal with. But at this point its just a concept. I'm partial to the single roll (Idea #2) but the debate and testing continues.

Monsters, Humans and the Scale of things.

D100 is a simplistic system and this fact affords it some interesting advantages in developing monsters and defining what there capabilities are. Firstly what is a typical human is easily understood. When creating a monster relative to normal human it is quite easy to see how deadly the monster might be.

Human
A normal human has all attributes of 40 and so a movement (Strength + Reflex) of 80. Presuming this person has no martial training, they can pick up a club or a knife or a sword and have a 10% chance of hitting in melee.

Goblin
Let us consider a fairly common and low power monster the goblin. A goblin is smaller then a normal human, weaker, and none to bright. However they have some martial skills and they are much faster (Movement 120) then a normal human. In a straight up fight between a goblin and human, the goblin's 35% verses the human's 10% is a clear advantage. It is not hard to imagine a small set of goblins easily destroying/routing a much larger group of humans. After all if it goes badly for the goblins they can run 50% faster and easily get away.

Minimally Trained Human
If a human has basic martial training (Basic Melee) there attack score doubles to 20%. It is not hard to imagine that some proportion of the general population would have this training, either from life experience or perhaps from being pressed into military service sometime in the past.

In this scenario the a straight up fight between the two still favors the goblin with 35% verses 20%. However it is more difficult to invision a small set of goblins destroying/routing a much larger group of humans. Due to the goblin advantage being reduced by half.

Moderately Trained Human
If a human has some specialized training in a weapon (Simple Weapons) for example a club, they have a 45% of hitting in melee. This human has likely spent sometime in either the watch or repeated pressing into military service and probably has even had a some melee under their belt.

In this scenario a straight up fight between the two slightly favors the human with 45% verses 35%. This makes it difficult to envision a small group of goblins destroying/routing a larger group of humans. Even if only a few humans are at this level among many humans it may be enough to turn the tide.

The Man at Arms
If a human has specialized training in a weapon (Blades 2, Light Armor & Shield) for example a short sword, they have a 50% of hitting in melee. This human has likely been a man at arms or a professional soldier.

In this scenario a straight up fight between the two strongly favors the human with 50% verses 35%. The human gets as many as two attacks and as many as 3 defense rolls. This makes it difficult to envision a small group of goblins even attacking a larger group of humans. Even if only a few humans are at this level among many humans it would be enough to turn the tide.

The Scale
The point of all these examples is that goblin, would be absolutely terrifying and deadly to a normal human even if there were large numbers of humans relative to the number of goblins. With even a little skill this quickly reverses.

If you consider larger creatures, say a werewolf or a troll. The human could never match the speed of a werewolf (250) or the strength of troll (200). Tangling with either of these beasts even if you are highly skilled is a dance with death. A single blow (+10 on damage) from the troll is lethal to even a heavily armored human. The werewolf is so fast, you would be hard pressed to even attack it as it can attack and move away from you in most cases.

Conclusion
To me this scale is just one more thing that makes D100 so good. It highlight what is wrong with D20 and the like. A creature that is 12' tall and weighs 500# and hits you... is lethal. You can tangle with the creature in melee but you will have to focus all your energy on not getting hit in order to survive. In D20 at high enough level you could take on this creature without fear. This would never be the case in D100, you would always need companions or better yet attack it with ranged weapons.