The Shrine of Hamaskis. Damage and Armour Contact the High Priest.

This page is not yet complete. See the Recent Developments room for details of completed areas of the shrine. Below is a provisional draft for the rules governing the amount of damage done by various weapons in AFF. and the protection afforded by armour.

The damage done by different weapons is usually given in the form of a table, so you roll a die and compare with the table to see how many points of stamina damage is done. Below are two overhalls of that system which generally give the same results as that, but can be expanded more easily to allow differences in armour and weapon effectiveness. If you don't want to know how the systems works at a mechanical level, skip the next two paragraphs and read on from the Modifiers section.

Method 1: In principal, a weapon has a "standard damage" level (sd). This is not the exact statistical average, but rather a gross reflection of how dangerous a weapon is. For instance, man sized weapons (e.g. longsword, spear, arrow) have sd=2, smaller weapons sd=1 (e.g. leech bites, needles, sprites' fists) and larger ones (e.g. giants' fists and two-handed swords) have sd=3, whilst a few (e.g. earth elementals' fists, dragons' claws) have sd=4. When you roll for damage you apply the appropriate modifiers for the victim's armour and compare the result with the two range numbers for the weapon. If the roll lies within the range, you do the standard damage, if you score under the lesser of the two range numbers, you do one less point, over the higher and you score one more point.

Method 2: Weapons have a strength and predictability rating. The strength acts like the standard damage in method 1 and the predictability replaces the range. Note that in many cases we only need to list the different families of weapons and then apply strength modifiers for those of different sizes such as two handed types, those used by large creatures, and so on.

Modifiers

A particalarly sharp/strong/well made weapon may add one to the damage roll or in exceptional circumstances, two. Likewise, a badly made or maintained weapon may be modified by -1 or -2. However modifiers which add to/subtract from overall damage (rather than the roll) or affect Attack Strength should only occur as the result of magic, even though such affects are sometimes attributed to mundane causes in the books.

Similarly, non-magical armour should generally only affect the roll for damage, although it can also have a negative effect upon skills requiring ease of movement, which can include combat skills. Below is a system for assigning damage roll and skill modifiers based upon standard non-magical armour types. Of course, there are many different types of armour and any specific type (e.g. dragonskin) must be assigned modifier values by the Director.

Notes:
Creatures with natural armour may have any amount of roll modifiers (e.g. gold dragons and elementals have about -6) and some may combine it with normal armour (e.g. orcs -1 skin, -1 light torso). In any case, there are never any negative modifiers for natural armour (or rather, these have already been taken into account in the creature's profile).
Ag. mod is the modifier to agility skills like Climb. Mov. mod is the modifier to skills involving movement or stealth like Hide, Ride and any personal combat skills ("Sword", etc.). Any headgear (including non-armoured kinds like hats) gives -1 to Awareness.
*a Light head armour gives -1 if all of the rest of the body is at least partially armoured (maybe natural armour) and nothing otherwise.
*b At least two thirds of the limbs (however many there are!) must be covered to gain these effects.
*c At least one third of the limbs must be covered to receive these effects.
*d A shield takes up the use of one arm. Tiny shields like bucklers are not counted here, but are considered part of the limb armour. Creatures may carry as many shields as they have arms and gain the benefit of all of them, but lose one attack for each shield after the first, even if they still have lots of arms free, but not if the shields themselves contain some sort of weapon, like a big spike sticking out of the front. Optionally, directors may decide that shields do not cause negative modifiers in combat.
*e Sizes are for human size fighters. Of course, what counts as large for a sprite may not be for a frost giant, for example.

Weapons and Damage

It is assumed that most beings on average have about two points of armour, so damage tables are usually set up with this modifier in mind. Therefore a knight or dragon with -6 will actually subtract four from any roll against them on the following table, whereas an unarmoured human would add two. The first table also contains the average and range numbers mentioned above in method 1 and the second table contains the size, strength and variability modifiers as in method 2. If you skipped this, then just ignore this part of the table.

Method 1

Method 2

The first table below gives damage tables for each of the levels of predictability. To work out the damage, add the roll of one die to the weapon strength and subtract the opponent's armour value, along with any modifiers, then cross reference with the table. e.g. a human size sword (str 6 predict 4) against an opponent with average armour 2 will do one point on a roll of 1, two on a roll of 2-5 and three on a 6.

To a large extent, the strength of a weapon is determined by its size. Weapons such as swords and axes used by humans typically have strength values of six or seven, whilst short swords are four or five, daggers and fists two or three, bastard swords eight or nine and two handed weapons ten or eleven. For smaller creatures, the strength of standard sized weapons is reduced (by one for goblins, two for halflings, three for sprites, etc.) and for larger creatures such as ogres, trolls, giants and monsters, increased similarly. Due to the difficulty of using weapons which are unusually large or small, creatures usually receive a penalty of one point from AS for every two points of strength they are away from the average, although this can be waived if the weapon is particularly well made. e.g. bastard weapons take a -1 AS penalty and unarmed combat with fists, -2. Strength Skill is needed to wield weapons large enough to have a modifier of -2 or more and Sleight of Hand to wield those small enough to have a penalty of -3 or more (although why you would want to is anyone's guess). The following table gives some examples for human size users.

Note that some weapons are also able to deliver a "lucky strike". This is represented by allocating a particular roll of the die to a particular level of damage, regardless of modifiers. For instance on a roll of six a giant scorpion does 4-6 points of damage, regardless of the opponent's armour. A huge monster does 5 points on a 5 and 6 on a six in the same way (very large bite). There may also be other effects, such as strangulation whilst using a garotte, or even negative results should the damage die come up a one.

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