Been thinking of a variant to make combat more difficult and armor more useful.
When you do a combat check you need to pass it by more then the actual combat check, the combat check divided by 2 rounded up, to receive no damage. If you pass the check on the card by the exact amount you still defeat the bane but you will take damage.
As an example if you encounter a bandit with a difficulty of 8, and you roll an 8 on the check you would take 4 damage on the check unless you reduce it with armor, but if were to roll a 14 you would take 0 damage.
If you are to fail a combat check you would just take the damage as you would in the base rules.
Justification for that would be if you got an 7 against the bandit you just fought to almost a stand still and only took marginal damage, but if you were to get an 8 on the check you just were barely able to beat the bandit and took some serious wounds.
It also makes items that reduce damage more useful and abilities that evade creature to the bottom of the deck more useful, thus making things like the illusionist class way more viable.
Wondering what other people think of this house rule.
You might have to tinker with it somehow because your variant would wipe out most of the lightly armored, imo. Even characters with armor would be shredding theirs every combat. Consider some of the later monsters with checks around 20. If you didn't get at least 30, you'd either lose a lot of cards or lose an armor. Maybe defeat it by the adventure deck number? It would still make armor super important and thus unbalance some characters who have little or no access to armor. Arcane Armor doesn't work all that great and it's arcane. Relying on evading monsters would really hurt casters.
The game punishes low rolls without rewarding extra high rolls and your variant would do that, which I think could be interesting ...
As for capping damage I just tried to keep it as simple as possible and I think it makes shields vs 2-handed weapon more interesting.
You can use a two-handed weapon and go for a more random higher roll or you can use a one-handed weapon and go for the guaranteed damage reduction if you don't roll as well. Also by keeping the cap high it makes reducing damage to 0 with banishing armor more of a risk on lower combat damage when the next time you encounter something your armors could be all banished and you take a big hit and you are screwed.
As for spell casters of the arcane variety, I don't think the lack of armor is a problem. Right now evasion, at least in RotR I haven't played my S&S yet, is way under powered. Arcane casters have a ton of evasion spells yet why ever use evasion when the risk to doing combat is so little. With this it makes evasion more useful to use especially with spells or skills that put evaded creatures to the bottom of the deck. Also it makes items that are damage reduction usable now. How many people do you know that play use damage reduction items? I can't think of a single person.
I admit there is probably some damage problems with some of the divine casters that barely have any armor, but that just means they need to put a higher priority on damage reduction items.
Maybe instead of doing 1/2 the check for ranged and spells it can use 1/4 for spells and ranged to compensate for lack of heavy armor.
The ideal solution would be to have how much past the check you would have to make to not take damage built into the cards though, *wink wink nudge nudge at the game designers*.
Some of the most dangerous monsters already give you damage even when you succeed at your combat, the before and after encounter damage. Armor or items, like the Ring of Protection, are great for that kind of damage. My Seoni carried the RoP from about the third deck until the sixth when she got the Sihedron Ring. I imagine in S n S we will see more of these monsters that have before or after you act possible damage. Your variant also reminds me of the Rat Swarm where you have to roll extra high to actually get rid of it.
There are some evade effects that put the card on the bottom of the deck. Illusionist Ezren is one, but I think some of the spells do it to.
I also kind of think this might overly punish some characters who won't have good ways to deal with the damage, though to be fair I haven't tried it. If anyone does, please share.
The idea of having to succeed by the adventure deck number sounds interesting too, as does the critical failure.
With so many Veteran cards in S&S, some even double the adventure deck, having to beat the target by the adventure deck AGAIN to avoid damage sounds like overkill.
The idea of having to succeed by the adventure deck number sounds interesting too, as does the critical failure.
Maybe. But most of those veterans have that power so that they keep pace with the other banes in each adventure deck. The Warlord at +6 difficulty isn't really any more difficult than any monster that came in deck 6. He'd only be a Combat 15 check in adventure 6. I think most of the monsters that came in adventure 6 of RotR were 18 difficulty minimum.
Now the veteran barriers, I totally agree with you. Characters that were "ok" (not great, not horrible, just ok) with some barriers saw them become brutal by the later adventures. Valeros's d8 dexterity, for example, was ok with the collapsed ceiling early on, just needing a little help. But by the time adventure 5 and 6 rolls out, it is cringe inducing.
And I guess I'm not really advocating any changes in S&S. I wouldn't personally implement any house rules until I had really experienced the game as designed. And truth be told I don't actually use any house rules at all.
Seeing the twists that monsters have in just the base deck of S & S, I would not be surprised to see a monster like this
Defeat the hypothetical monster by at least the adventure deck number, if any, or take 1 combat damage after you act
Critical fails on a 1 or a 2 was already introduced in scaling Mhar Massif (turned to zero). That was a struggle ... So maybe something like it will show up again.