Damage Types: Pierce, Slash, and Crush

[Saber Cherry]

Dominions has a lot of unit types, a lot of weapon types, and several armor types. This yields a large variety of armies to be fielded... and yet... so many of them can be so similar! Take the 2 barbarian classes, for example - greatsword and maul. The greatsword has slightly higher defense and attack, thus is universally better. But is that realistic? Could there be no situation where a maul is better than a greatsword?

In certain D&D games (like Baldur's Gate) and some strategy games (like Warlords: Battlecry) this is handled by assigning a damage type to each weapon. For example, pierce for bows, spears, pikes, and rapiers; slash for swords, daggers, and claws; and crush for hammers, flails, maces, axes, and fists. These would be especially nice to differentiate units of nations like Vanheim, which has a bunch of similar-seeming human infantry, varying only slightly in stats despite their different types of weapons.

To make these damage types relevant, of course, there would need to be different armor types or armor bonuses. The simplest would be similar to the AD&D style: each armor has a base protection, and gets a bonus to each of the three damage types. So full leather might have a base protection of 3, with +1 versus crush and +3 versus slash. The final protection would be 3 versus piercing, 4 versus crushing, and 6 versus slashing. Plate armor, on the other hand, would be relatively flat, with maybe a base 12 and no bonuses.

Furthermore, certain creature types could be assigned bonuses - skeletons (longdead) could inherently have a +5 pierce and +2 slash protection, soulless a +3 pierce protection, and things with no bones like vine ogres might have a +4 crush protection.

That's just one possibility, a simple one, which would make choosing armor types and weapon types a much more interesting process. Going against Ulm, for example, you'd want armors most protective against crush and pierce, since they have no standard slashing units... but Ulm could counter by recruiting independent swordsmen. Suddenly, there would be a REASON for Ulm to seek out independent swordsmen!

The Warlords: Battlecry style assigns a damage reduction percentage to each damage type - so skeletons would get maybe 70% pierce protection, 40% slash protection, and +50% extra crush damage. This would be more in line with Dominions "Wards" - a creature could get little armor icons in the ability list, displaying the percentage increase or decrease in damage from each source.

Well, I'm not going to try to force any specific game mechanics on everyone; I'm just trying to make suggestions about how I would probably implement a "damage type" feature. But I think the presence of such a system would make army design a much more thoughtful process, and add greatly to the game.

-Cherry

[DominionsFan]

In NWN [RPG] there are 3 damage types: Slashing, Piercing and bludgeoning.

If we would have 3 different weapon types with different armor types, that would be awesome!

Example: Scalemail armor: 5 prot against slashing, 7 against piercing, and 2 against bludgeoning. etc. -> More strategic than just 1 damage/armor type.

[ October 07, 2003, 17:09: Message edited by: DominionsFAN ]

[Kristoffer O]

I do like the idea. In roleplaying games it is a nice feature that unfortunately slows down battles a bit. In computer games time is no problem.

I wouldn't mind seeing this feature in Dominions and we have given it some quick thougth. The main problem is that it would take a lot of data editing to implement. Above one thousand units and perhaps two hundred armors would need differentiated protection values and above three hundred weapons would need damage types.

Still, I do like the idea.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Still, I do like the idea.

Good, now I'll feel special all day!

-Cherry

[Yojinbo]

Kristoffer O,

Anything we can help with? Some actual work would keep this group from bothering you with new ideas every 2 hours....

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:


Still, I do like the idea.

Me too.