Like what magic? Nearly all damaging spells use the non-combat damage mechanism.
The invisible sling of vilano is the most obvious canon example, but the principles and guidelines are clear enough to invent more.
Invisible Sling of Vilano also does "non-combat" damage.
2 Likes
In my view, it's mostly about consistency.
I find it weird to apply wound penalties for Sling of Vilano, but not for the Crystal Dart. Of course, YMMV.
EDIT: I remember it was discussed before if aimed spells are meant to be rolled against the target's Defense Total, and I think the outcome was that the intent is that no, it wasn't meant for the Finesse roll to replace an Attack (Vilano should indeed cause "non-combat" damage).
So we are back to the original question: should wound penalties add to spell damage (equating them to combat) or not.
2 Likes
That is not clear. Core:86 has about the aiming roll:
Treat the total as an attack total (see “Combat” on page 171).
If we do not add the attack advantage to the damage, the aiming roll does not look like an attack roll. Maybe this is another erratum/clarification for @David_Chart to consider.
It is perfectly consistent, because it is the finesse of the attack which exploits the wound penalties, in the same way as you can exploit weaknesses to do more damage with a club, but not when you push the opponent off a cliff. (Wounds do of course increase the probability of falling but not the magnitude of the damage.)
But it seems clear that once we start fiddling with the mechanics, we run into different underlying narratives and rationale. We need to resolve those underlying issues to make meaningful errata and avoid further confusion.
2 Likes
He did chime in on a similar discussion a long time ago
Building Finesse in to spells/devices - #39 by David_Chart?
Thanks for the link. It still should go into the new errata if it is still an official position. It is not at all obvious from RAW.
Agreed, we are running into different rationales. There aren't really wrong points, per se.
Trying to contribute a bit more with the discussion, it seems to me that neither the combat rules nor environmental damage rules were designed with anything larger than +1 in mind, so I don't think a +20 behemot should be the defining factor for anything.
(For another environmental damage example, falling from 200 ft is going to kill a regular human, but shouldn't be even close to that for a size +20 creature, 800ft tall... And however, by the rules, both die.)
If when we go past Size +4 things start to break, one way or another, the initial example in this thread (a knight wearing armor) is probably the most relevant case to be examined.
1 Like
The first rather than the second. It's actually a little different than Increasing Soak by Size, but that would be similar. The difference is subtle.
But it would solve a lot. Those +1 Damage things, green grogs, etc. would take a long time to mount up instead of doing so explosively because you'd have a lot of 0 penalties instead of a lot of -1 penalties.
Then let's just throw out all the complaints above about really big creatures being a problem and necessitating applying Wound Penalty where it isn't applied. That has been one of the biggest complaints, but if we're saying we don't need to worry about huge stuff, that that complaint is invalid.
Did you see what he wrote and I responded too??? He was asking if it's realistic that +20 Damage each round would let "a person to just sit in a bonfire for hours on end without dying, just taking medium or heavy wounds one after another" as a specific counter-argument to not applying Wound Penalty being realistic. That's utter BS. Do you really disagree with this being utter BS? As far as realism, the ArM5 rules without Wound Penalty kill noticeably too quickly for sitting in a fire.
Artificially beefing up an elephant's Soak way beyond what it is doesn't help your argument, but the Size is usually +5. But, yes, you do need a big roll: 29 to get a mortal wound, 39 to kill instantly, unless someone saves him. I agree that this will be too long, but it's not the BS math I was disagreeing with.
I gave several examples of magical ways to kill the huge dragon above. Magic is meaningful, just not every single combat spell will serve every single purpose.
I'm not increasing Soak by size. You need to dispense 21 damage to the first creature to give it a light wound. You need to dispense 21 damage to the second creature (of which 20 will be soaked) to inflict a light wound. The net effect of one more wound category is the same as giving every creature a soak bonus equal to 5+Size.
EDIT: To be clear: a "Minimal Wound" has the same effect as saying "let's just give more soak to every creature". This doesn't solve the problem because I can increase the leader's leadership, find more grogs, and/or find other ways to compensate the soak boost.
A bunch of 0 penalty wounds are the same thing as no wound at all, since it has no practical impact on anything. It's the same as saying that the creature wasn't wounded.
But this is what I suggested. Here:
Yes. You just seemed to suggest nobody but you understood maths, and have done so more than once, so I presented some maths to show I can do arithmetic and basic probability.
Page 192 core rules. size example elephant +4. Page 179 core rules damage table +4 size dead 37+. As my example soak was of an elephant sized giant,not an elephant, 20, which is 5 less than your good knight's soak earlier, seems fair.
As the soak is 8 more than the damage bonus, the damage needs to be +8 before we think about wounds. My statement about needing to roll a 45 is accurate.
I'm also not disagreeing with your BS math, however, I am frustrated about your repeated attempts to portray people who disagree with you as just not as smart as you.
And I've answered that point. I'll quote it again here.
I think you missed a lot of what I wrote.
First, you are increases Soak by Size when you're converting my extra Wound Level (which includes Size) over to Soak, even if you didn't realize you were doing it.
Minimal Wound would not quite be the same as increasing Soak. There are a few points on this. The first is that you're generalizing based on big Size and ignoring that little Size works differently. Second, it ignores my point about it being a region where things like certain toxins could apply.
Same thing about this wound having no impact: this tells you when you've done enough to trigger many things. That's not nothing, and the current rules have you go back through and do recalculation to figure it out.
Read it again! I quoted one person and replied "you." I wasn't saying no one understood my math. I was saying that a person taking +20 damage/round surviving so easily is "totally [made] up random stuff." If you read that to imply "nobody but you understood maths..." that's your reading error entirely.
Not really. Toxins, at least from beasts (well, one example of beast) are already applied as long as the Attack Advantage is higher than the armor protection. It requires some math? Yes. A lot? No. It only seems like rework because it's not a standard procedure. And the current rules for toxins make sense as they are. So I don't really think that Minimal Wounds bring any significant improvement to this.
As for how Minimal Wound is the same as an increase to Soak, I present the more complete example below:
Consider an attacker with AT +7 and Damage +5. Take the following creatures as his adversaries:
The Hunter, p.21.
Defense +6
Wound Penalties: –1 (1–5), –3 (6–10), –5 (11–15), Incapacitated (16–20)
Soak: +3
Averaging the rolls, he takes one light wound.
The Hunter with Minimal Wound
Defense +6
Wound Penalties: –0 (1–5), –1 (6–10), –3 (11–15), –5 (16–20), Incapacitated (21–25)
Soak: +3
Being attacked, he takes one minimum wound, for a 0 penalty that has no impact on any action the hunter might take.
The Hunter with a Bonus to Soak accounting for whatever buffer the Minimum Wound gives
Defense +6
Wound Penalties: –1 (1–5), –3 (6–10), –5 (11–15), Incapacitated (16–20)
Soak: +3 +5 = +8
After being attacked, he takes no wound.
An attack capable of causing a medium wound to this Hunter would cause a light wound on THWMW. It would also cause a light wound to THWBSAWBMWG.
29 damage instakills THWMW. 29 damage also instakills THWBSAWBMWG.
Meaning, an extra wound category is the same as arbitrarily increasing the soak by 5 + size.
Even if there was a lot of other rules that could ride on Minimal Wounds (there aren't) we wouldn't be talking about errata, but a significant change to the rules themselves. If you think Minimal Wounds solve the issue (I disagree), a bonus to soak is simpler and more elegant, IMO.
My point is that the longer you are in a hostile environment the more real damage it does to you, and inevitably can accumulate to lethal damage in a way that just waiting on statistics to kill doesn't really capture as the body breaks down from constant punishment. Cumulative wound modifiers models this as an improvement on hit points, but only works if the wound modifiers actually mean something.
4 Likes
But it is not only time spent or the accumulation of damage and wounds modifiers which kills you when it comes to exposure or whatever sustained damage source: I think there is an elephant in the room that everybody is quietly avoiding pointing at, and that is the very nature of stress rolls and exploding dice.
I love this roll mechanic and I think it is core in Ars Magica because it allows the inclusion of exceptional, unexpected and way over the top roll results, but when it comes to using it in a really long set of rolls, it is just way too much of an statistical bomb. If you as a SG model any situation as a way of exposure, no matter how low you set the threshold damage, it becomes deadly in the long run just because somewhere along the rolling procedure enough 1's will pile up. And there is also the opposite problem of SGs designing big monsters in a way that for them to die the "exposure" of being smacked with PoFs and grogs' axes is just too low for it to feel natural or not boring for the table, which might well end frustrated because they just have to keep rolling until a stress roll explodes high enough.
Think on The Sulfurous Membrane in HP p.84 (or a spell similar to it, let's say adjusted to deal with a creature of big size): a sun effect that delivers +1 damage per round. If you cast that on someone with let's say an average of 6 hours until sunrise or sunset, then it is a death sentence if the target doesn't get to dispell the effect somehow, because 6 hours are 3600 rounds, and the highest damage roll you after these 3600 rolls averages over 80 (hey, I do maths too!).
The model is build how it is build and it works fine and is fun when you use it that way. But whenever you involve too many rolls (as in exposure) or require too many rolls to achieve something (like killing a being with big size), then it derails. We can debate on how to fix it to cover all the marginal cases we can think about, or admit that it is just a consequence of the very basic mechanics and rule these cases with our charming and cunning SG ruling privileges.
4 Likes
I am very much leaning in that direction. The problems appear to be consequences of basic assumptions in the rules, without an easy fix. Too messy for errata. Given how simplified even Ars Magica's rules are, it is hardly surprising that this sort of problem arises.
4 Likes
Very much so.
Contrary to you, I don't like it at all 
I'd much prefer there be a limit on the explodey side, maybe something like "+10 or the sum total of the bonuses added to the roll, whichever is greatest". Or twice that if you really prefer, whatever.