D100 Taking Damage

Overview of Damage and Damage Avoidance

A character never gains hit points. A player can improve their ability to survive in two ways: skills and armor. Armor provides a direct reduction in damage. Skills allow the player to avoid a blow all together, or deflect a blow to a non deadly or more heavily armored part of the body. Both skill and armor vastly improve the survivability of the character. As the characters skills improve the reliance on heavy armor decreases.

Damage Reduction from Armor

Each armor type has a fixed damage reduction value. The reduction value is a direct 1:1 deduct in the damage received by the character. For example if an armor has a damage reduction of 4 (DR=4) and the character takes 6 points of damage, that damage is reduced by 4. The character takes 2 points of damage. That is all there is to damage reduction from armor. It gets no more complicated then that!

Simple Damage Avoidance from Skill(s)

In the simplest terms D100 melee is similar to a D20 opposed skill check. If the attacker makes a successful skill check, the defender makes their skill check. If the defender succeeds the attack is blocked, if the defender fails the blow lands and armor’s damage reduction is applied.

Damage and Body Zones

“But what about the 10 zones on the body?” you say. Say no more for here it is explained. Each body part in the 10 zones has the same amount of points for damage, based on the Constitution. However each body part may not be equally protected. For example the character may have a chain hood, breast plate, and hide covering the arms and legs. Each of those armor types has its own damage reduction, and so those body zones have different damage reduction values. On the surface this may sound complicated but in practice with the zone chart (See Below) it is easy to record and track.

Bumping Damage with Skill

Bumping allows the character to move damage from one zone to another zone. So a blow to zone 3 (stomach) could be moved to a non lethal zone or to a better armored zone. Bumping only comes into play if the defender fails to block the blow.

Bumping is a double edged sword, the attacker can bump a successful blow to a less armored and/or more lethal zone. Bumping still favors the defender as the attacker bumps first. The number of bumps is determined by the skill level.

In Conclusion

The combination of damage zones, armor, skill and skill bump combine to improve the survivability of the character through both armor and skill with increasing the amount of damage the player can absorb. This damage model is easy to apply, easy to explain and follows common sense. The damage zone chart facilitates the allocation of damage and damage reduction in an easy to manage visual way.