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Demi B's picture

Re: Game design musing: ST schemes

There exists a ST/Damage/DR scheme that I think works well: BESM 3rd Edition. Mind you, it is designed as a simplistic cinematic system, and doesn't have the fine grain of GURPS much less Real Life, but the mechanism is elegant and scales well.

The mechanism is Size Templates. Each level of positive or negative Size Ranks gives a specific set of modifiers, each with itemized point values. Amongst these are: damage delivered, and armor rating (which can be negative, meaning extra damage received). Of course, the values are inverses and additive, and only apply to size differences - pixy on pixy fights use no modifiers since they're the same size, and pixy on giant fights quickly end in a little red smear since that's 4 or more Size Ranks difference.

The system partially decouples ST from damage (super-simplified "Body" stat contributes to combat, and combat rolls determine damage), but understands that smaller targets are more fragile, and larger ones more robust. So finds a way to scale damage values to the target in an extensible logarithmic fashion.

When I first read the book, this particular system reminded me strongly of your ST/size musings from years ago, and I wondered if David Pulver had read your works.

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