Has anyone ever done the math on how much energy is released for 1 point of game world damage?
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around whether it scales up exponentially (like Joules) or linearly, or somewhere inbetween(geometrically); and how to determine a reasonable way to measure this between known factors such as Str scaling and weapon mass.
Any thoughts?
Your idea is terrible. Leaving aside the obvious WHY, consider the following:
*Crits and SA vs. regular hits*Impaling weapon vs. blunt weapon
*Acid Damage
It's not even about different damage types, it's also about the fact that the same amount of damage is not the same amount of damage with the way HP works.
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It's not even about different damage types, it's also about the fact that the same amount of damage is not the same amount of damage with the way HP works.
QFT. What Ion Raven said.
1 point of damage... are we talking 1 pt vs a 1st level character, or 1 pt vs. a 19th level character? She's right-- it really can't be translated well into real-world terms.
Your best bet is probably to leave people out of it (since part of a characters hit points is the ability to dodge or otherwise mitigate attacks which would have been fatal earlier in their career) and look at damage required to break objects or batter down doors and so forth.
I'd be astonished if there is any kind of consistency though - I'm sure those numbers would have been vague guesswork at best and probably driven by aesthetic considerations more than simulationist.
The only thing I can think of that comes even close is "Guns, Guns, Guns" (AKA 3G3) from Blacksburg Tactical Research Center. I know many of its calculations are joules/area. I believe it includes low tech weapons such as crossbows. It might give you a start or a methodology that you can extend.
Disclaimer: Greg Porter is an old college friend of mine and I contributed in a very minor way to the Macho Women with Guns games.
I think the reason people are objecting to even attempting this is because hitpoints and damage are so deeply about narrative resolution, that to apply any simulationist thinking to it would give one a headache.
I mean... you can take a weapon strike against objects and see what kind of results you get, but then you run into a number of simulationist problems:
- The game doesn't really distinguish between using a rapier to damage a metal door, vs a pickaxe, vs an unarmed strike.
- Falling damage vs objects will *almost definitely* not match any other damage/hitpoint model (since it was built purely with PCs in mind).
- The game is designed with a PC timeline in mind... with the way hardness works, water and wind could never erode rocks the way they do. Base minimum and maximums make it so real physics don't apply.
You can get maybe a general sense of how much energy is spent (and toss out any outliers, like falling damage), although I'm not sure what that data will get you.
Might be a fun math/physics experiment for a science exhibit in school?
Perhaps an answer as to why might give people a more focused direction on what to hunt for.