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RE: saving throw and multiple attacktypes




As Mark points out there's some confusion of "attack type" versus "weapon
effect" that needs to be worked out here as well.    I can't make sense of 
fear doing damage,
but I can see how fire can do damage.   Maybe these should be broken out into
separate flags, or at least interpreted differently.  As far as damage goes:

Mark suggests:
> 1) Damage for all the attacks is averaged - thus if you weapon has 4 attack
> types, but only 2 of them can affect the creature, you effectively do half
> damage. 

I agree with this principle.  Think of it this way:  If a sword was made of 
ordinary steel then
all of its damage derives from a physical attack.  If you had a magical sword 
whose
blade was pure fire, then all of its damage derives from fire, no physical 
damage.  If
you had a steel sword that was flaming, then it would do both kinds, but to 
creatures 
that were immune to physical it should only cause damage from the heat portion 
of the
attack.  

> This is a pretty good weapon - actually means that weapons with a lot
> of attack types isn't necessarily what you want.

Except that weapons with more attack types should generally have a higher base 
damage
than other weapons.  I would expect my flaming steel sword to hurt worse than 
an ordinary
sword.  I guess under this model a weapon's "damage" would actually be 
"optimal damage assuming
all attack types are effective".

> 3) Sum all the damage values - this would be outrageous.

This is actually exactly the same algorithm.  Under this model a weapon's 
"damage" would actually
be "damage from each effective attack type".  Under model 1, let's say our 
sword has
a base of 8 damage, of which we attribute 4 to physical and 4 to the fire.  
Depending
on a monster's immunities we can do any of 8, 4 (phys), 4 (fire), or 0 damage. 
  Under
model 3 we set the base damage at 4, meaning we do any of 8 (both effective), 
4 (one
effective) or 0 (neither effective), same as the first model.  The biggest 
drawback to
model 3 is that we'd have to make sure we lowered all of the base damages for
multiple attack weapons to reasonable levels.  We'd also have to figure out 
what to
display under the damage stat.

Model 3 has a slight programming advantage in that it would be easy to account 
for
vulnerabilities by multiplying the damage contribution by the vuln. factor 
(say 1.5).  For 
example, let's say I attack a wraith that is physically immune (non-corporeal) 
but 
vulnerable to fire with my flaming steel.  We calculate the damage this way:

  total damage = phys. mult. * base + fire mult. * base = 0 * 4 + 1.5 * 4 = 6

This seems more reasonable than the sword either doing 0 (based purely on the 
immunity
to physical) or 12 (based purely on the vulnerability to fire).

In model 1 you have to first divide the attack by the number of attack types 
to get
the appropriate value for calculating vulnerability effects. 

As for magic immunity, I don't think that it should imply an immunity to all 
attacktypes,
only those that derive from magic.  A flaming piece of wood should do damage 
as
usual (a club plus fire damage).  A flaming sword should probably still do
the physical portion of its damage, but the flame clearly is magical and 
should be
negated.

--Ken