UVG-Troika! damage conversion - take two (and two important questions)

Hello

I recently posted a damage conversion from UVG to Troika!  Unfortunately, I screwed up.  My players protested even before the play-test, I looked at it again, and I realized something fundamental.  Specifically the damages rolled on an 1 are WAY too high.  If you look at the existing weapon damages in Troika!, on a 1 you do 1-4 points of damage, with the sole exception of dragon fire (which is 6).  If you look at my first attempt, you will note that for several weapons, damage on 1 are WAAY above this.

Sausage indeed...

The value you get on a 1 is pretty important because it represents "grazing" damage and, because of armor, it comes up not that rarely (armor imposes a penalty on the 1d6 roll).  It's also important as a determinant of the effectiveness of a weapon vs heavily armored foes.  So I have to re-do this.

First, I'm tweaking my basic patterns:

AVG 6 (base step is 2)	-1	2	3	4	5	6
FLAT (can opener, sword)	4	6	6	6	6	8
Average (spear based)	3	4	6	6	8	9
Wild (ax derived)	2	4	6	6	8	10
superwild	1	3	5	7	9	11
Spike	2	2	4	6	8	14

You'll note that the roll on a 1 or less for the average damage is no longer 4, but 3.

The second thing is that the damage on a 1 must NOT change when the average damage is scaled up.  So if I have an average damage of 7 (not 6) I would go +1 to everything *except* on a 1.  The extra missing damage would go on the 6 instead.  So an average spread, average damage 7 would look like:

3 5 7 7 9 11, instead of 4 5 7 7 9 10 (the old method)

On an average damage of 8, the extra goes on the 4, becoming

3 6 8 9 10 12 , instead of 5 6 8 8 10 11

This may have to be adjusted for individual damage patterns of course - for example on the "flat" pattern that extra is applied to the 6 twice.

Once we reach an average of 9, we create a new set of patterns.  You'll note that the damage on 1 has gone up a wee little bit, but not much.  This means that damage will go wilder as it goes up - a pattern that already happens in Troika!

AVG 9 (base step is 3)	-1	2	3	4	5	6
FLAT (can opener, sword)	5	9	9	9	9	13
Average (spear based)	4	7	9	9	11	13
Wild (ax based )	2	6	9	9	12	16
Superwild	2	5	7	10	13	17
Spike	3	4	6	9	13	19

Again, if you need a higher damage you increase damage but *not* on the 1 d6 value.  And when we reach average 12, a new set of patterns is needed.  Note how the minimum damage has crept up, but again not too much.

AVG 12 (base step is 4)	-1	2	3	4	5	6
FLAT (can opener, sword)	6	12	12	12	12	18
Average (spear derived)	5	10	12	12	15	18
Wild (ax derived)	3	8	12	12	16	21
Superwild	2	6	10	14	18	22
Spike	3	5	8	12	16	28

So let's apply this to UVG guns...

UVG PISTOLS	-1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Inquisitor squirt gun	2	2	3	4	5	8	10
Revolver	2	3	4	5	7	9	12
Porcelain Prince Pistol	3	6	8	9	10	12	14
Ultra Blaster	5	10	10	10	10	15	18
Blue God Blaster	5	12	14	15	17	21	25
UVG RIFFLE	-1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Heavy Crossbow	4	5	7	8	9	9	12
Scavenger bolter	2	5	7	7	9	12	15
Redland District SMG	2	4	7	10	11	14	17
Violent Cat Riffle	4	9	10	10	12	15	20
Vome Slagger	2	6	8	11	14	19	24
black city matter disruptor	2	7	10	10	13	18	22
Satrap gun	2	8	11	12	14	19	22
Voice of Death	3	6	9	13	17	30	35

This isn't perfect, but it should be a lot better.  There are probably slight tweaks here and there that would make that much smoother, but it's a solid step forward. It feels more in line with existing Troika! weapons, although some of them hit *very* hard indeed. I admit that I may have pushed the damage too high - playtest will reveal this.  But now that I have my patterns down, adjusting them should be fairly easy from now on.

Lastly, the important question.  In Troika, you have skills tied with specific weapons - spear, hammer, knife.... but when it comes to ranged weapon, there are only 4 - bow, crossbow, pistolet, fusil.  So I assumed that if  you had pistolet, you were proficient in all pistols, and fusil in all rifles... but now I am not so sure.  With that interpretation, it will push people towards pistols and rifles.  

Another thing I was thinking about is the importance of melee combat in Troika! Whenever someone attacks another, there are no "misses" - either the defender gets hurts *or* the attacker get hurts (baring the occasional ties).  This makes fights go quickly, it's a very cool aspect of the system!  But in a ranged battle, especially if everyone has cover... fights can go long because there is a lot of of missing going on.  I wonder if this needs a fix or not... 

 "this post is an independent production by me and is not affiliated with the Melsonian Arts Council"

Converting Troika! damage: How the sausage is made

As I have mentioned before, I'm currently running a UVG game with troika!  It's a lot of fun, the feel of the rules work well with the setting, it's all good.

But behind the scene, converting Troika to UVG's D20 ish system is not easy.  And this is particularly true for weapon damage.  The Technical Grimoire took a crack at it, but this was done quickly, and I felt that it needed more attention.  (edit: I am glad to note that we are collaborating on this project).

The author of Troika! has kindly given us DIY-type game bloggers permission to create new Troika! material, but with the following disclaimer "this post is an independent production by me and is not affiliated with the Melsonian Arts Council".  And well... the following is going to make Daniel Sell and any fan of Troika! scream, because this is NOT what Troika! is about - it's whimsical and fun and mysterious.  But converting a series of weapons doing 1d8, 3d6 etc damage to the Troika! 1d6 damage chart system is *harsh*.   You either completely eyeball it (and this is much more difficult than it looks).  Or you go about it systematically.

So please Troika! fans, don't throw too many tomatoes... (who am I kidding, no one reads this blog ha!).

Please note that this has NOT been play-tested, and is not the final product.  The interesting thing here is the system, not the end results.

So, in Troika!, to roll damage, you roll a D6 and consult a chart.  The dice can be affected by armor or luck, so a result of 0 or 7 are possible, but the 1-6 range is the most important.  For example, let us consider a few weapons:

	1-	2	3	4	5	6	7+
WEAPON
Sword	4	6	6	6	6	8	10
knife	2	2	2	2	4	8	10
Club	1	1	2	3	6	8	10
Greatsword	2	4	8	10	12	14	18

You will note that the "pattern" of damage distribution varies a lot between weapons.  So the sword has a very "flat" damage.  This means that it will be relatively unaffected by luck or armor.  I don't know if this was the author's intent, but the sword is the game's can opener, really good at piercing even heavy armor.  The knife can do as much damage as a sword, but most of the time it's paltry, and armor is very effective against it.  The club is less "spiky" than the knife, but it's almost useless vs armor.  The greatsword can deal devastating blows, and the average damage vs an unarmored character is high, but again not as good vs armored foes than a sword.   (Armor imposes a penalty to the 1d6 that can range from -1 to -3).

So not only do I have to consider the average damage, I have to consider the pattern of the damage on the 1d6 chart.  I also have to consider the "flavor" of the weapon.  If the damage in UVG is 3d6 (fairly high damage and fairly "tight" grouping, very high or very low results will be rare), how do I reflect that in Troika!  And what do I do if the "flavor" of the weapon doesn't match the dice?

So to start, I made 5 damage patterns:  flat, medium, wild, superwild, and "spike", based on existing Troika! weapons.  Flat is the best vs armor, while superwild is the worse, but has a much higher max damage potential.  I didn't include the 7+ in these patterns - that value comes up less often and I just eyeballed it.  I also ensure that all these had the same average damage vs an unarmored foe:  6

AVG 6 (base step is 2)	-1	2	3	4	5	6
FLAT (can oppener, sword)	4	6	6	6	6	8
Average (spear)	4	4	6	6	8	8
Wild (ax derived)	2	4	6	6	8	10
superwild	1	3	5	7	9	11
Spike	2	2	4	6	8	14

If I have a weapon I want a higher average damage, I just increase each value by 1 - for example a "wild" weapon with an average damage of 7 would have damage values of 3,5,7,7,9,11.

However, as damage goes up, what was wild before can become very tame.  For example, if I used this for a weapon with an average damage of 12 points (ouch),  and used the wild pattern, the resulting pattern would be  8, 10, 12, 12, 14, 16 ... which seems kinda flat doesn't it?   So I created 2 more patterns sets, one for an average damage of 9, and one for an average damage of 12:

AVG 9 (base step is 3)	-1	2	3	4	5	6
FLAT	6	9	9	9	9	12
Average	6	6	9	9	12	12
Wild	3	6	9	9	12	15
superwild	2	5	7	10	13	17
Spike	3	4	6	9	13	19

AVG 12 (base step is 4)	-1	2	3	4	5	6
FLAT	8	12	12	12	12	16
Average	8	8	12	12	16	16
Wild	4	8	12	12	16	20
superwild	2	6	10	14	18	22
Spike	4	4	8	12	16	28

The two values to keep an eye on here is the minimum (1 or less) and the max (6).  A six can *really* hurt a PC, but it rarely happens because, in my experience, most PCs wear at least light armor.  The minimum has *very* big impact on performance vs heavily armored foes.   Heavy arrmor is -3 on the damage chart, so rolling a 1 or a 4 results in the same damage.  So a sword would become 4 4 4 4 6 6, while a superwild weapon (average 6) would be 1 1 1 1 3 5!  Again, there is a reason I call the sword a can opener in Troika!.

So that was probably the hardest part.  Now that we have that, we need to decide what average damage in Troika corresponds to what average damage in the UVG.  We are a little constrained here by existing weapons, and it results in a system where bows and crossbows are a little bit better than some cheap firearms... but I can live with that.   The conversion is as follows:

UVG dmg	UVG avg.	Troika avg.
1d6	3.5	4
1d8	4.5	5
1d10	5.5	7
2d6	7	8
3d6	10.5	10
2d10	11	10
2d12	13	11
3d10	16.5	13
4d8	18	14

Now this level of damage seems a bit dangerous, and it *is*, but remember that large monsters can also hit very hard.  Also, in my version of Troika, heroes can gain a bit of stamina with spending XP.   Lowering (or increasing!) the Troika! damage chart is possible.  You'll note that the Troika versions hit a bit harder for low damage weapons, and a bit less hard for higher damage weapons, this was done on purpose.

Next, we have to decide what pattern applies to each gun.  The "flavor" of the gun was a dominant factor for me.  Again, this has not been playtested yet.  Use with caution!

(edit: ha! we found a serious flaw.  New numbers will be posted, I don't recommend you use this!)

UVG PISTOLS	-1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Inquisitor squirt gun	2	2	3	4	5	8	10
Revolver	2	3	4	5	7	9	12
Porcelain Prince Pistol	6	6	8	8	10	10	12
Ultra Blaster	7	10	10	10	10	13	16
Blue God Blaster	10	10	14	14	18	18	25

The revolver uses slow, fat bullets that armor deal with well... but a lucky shot vs an unarmored foe can hurt a lot (so a tweaked wild).  The Squirt gun is a "dart" gun so I used spike, but I had the jump from 6 to 7 be modest - there is only so much a lucky shot from that can do!  The porcelain prince pistol I put at average - fairly high tech, reliable, but not a huge gun, you aren't going to kill an elephant with one shot.  The Ultra Blaster is a hyper advanced weapon that is very dependable and makes a mockery of today's armor, so I gave it a flat damage.  The Blue God Blaster's dice is 4d8 which suggests a very flat damage - but the power seems wild, so I compromised and made it average.  It's quite effective even against well armored foes, which makes sense for the necrotic nature of the damage.

UVG RIFLES	-1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Heavy Crossbow	4	5	7	8	9	9	12
Scavenger bolter	2	4	6	8	10	12	15
Redland District SMG	3	5	7	7	9	11	16
Violent Cat Riffle	7	7	10	10	13	13	20
Vome Slagger	3	6	8	11	14	18	22
Black City matter disruptor	4	7	10	10	13	16	22
Satrap gun	5	8	11	11	14	17	22
Voice of Death	9	9	11	13	15	21	30

The heavy crossbow is based on the crossbow already existing in Troika! , and is quite effective vs armor.  The scavenger bolter I made superwild - basically it's the revolver on crack.  The redland SMG (submachinegun)  is wild, due to using revolver-like bullets.  The violent Cat Riffle is noted as being dependable, so I gave it average damage.   The Vome Slagger and the Black City matter disruptor both have 3d6, but I figured that the explode-y nature of the Vome Slagger would make it super wild, while the matter disruptor is "merely" wild - keep in mind that it has exploding damage dice, which I still haven't decided how to do in Troika!, and that special power changes this weapon.  The Satrap Gun is a laser gun, and I decided to make it wild as well.  Lastly, the Voice of Death has a spike pattern, given its divine origin and sonic nature.

And that's how you convert damage from a d20 based system to Troika! in a systemic manner!   Should you?  Nah, let those diehards from the internets do it for free for you...  If playtesting shows this doesn't work, adjustment will be made :)

Lastly, I will do melee weapons later!

Troika UVG! Further conversion notes

Hello

So as I mentioned a while ago, I'm running a UVG game with the Troika ruleset.

I'm not going to do play session reports, but here is what has happened over the last oh, 6 sessions or so:   So far they've gone to the Last Serai, managed to make a killing on vodka, and are regrouping at the violet city for a new voyage.  They have befriended a porcelain prince, the chicken warrior has accidentally joined a revolutionary group AND another porcelain prince is after his body, the inquisitor has a low-grade vome infection and they now have 2 motorcycles.  The group is very keen on finding a Behemoth pearl for Cubina - for some reason they really latched on this side quest hard.  Maybe because they all tried to save the were-pug and failed badly on their rolls?  But I already have plans for this quest now.  I didn't know where campaign was going to go, and it may still veer off in different directions, but well the players have a goal and that's great.

Play-testing is very important, and I thought I should report on my rules finding.

First, my conversion table is... a bit harsh.  It works OK with luck checks but not so much with skill checks, so I've tweaked it:

LUCK BASED			SKILL BASED
2d6	1d20		2d6	1d20
Fumble	Fumble		Fumble	Fumble
-6	1		-6	1
-5	2-3		-5	2
-4	4		-4	3-4
-3	5		-3	5-6
-2	6		-2	7-8
-1	7-8		-1	9-10
0	9		0	11-12
1	10-11		1	13-14
2	12		2	15-16
3	13		3	17-18
4	14		4	19
5	15-16		5	20
6	17-18		6	21+
7	19
8	20
9	21+
Critical Success	Critical Success		Critical Success	Critical Success

It's not perfect, but it's better.

Second, the gun damages is *wild* in Troika! and I have a few thoughts about that.

A: armor is *essential* - even a little bit will greatly enhance player survival.  It can also enhance the survival of villains (but don't give every mook armor).

B:  A better "fix" would be to revise damage... but that's a lot of work, and I'm going to wait for that, because it would mean looking at *all* the Troika! weapon damage.

C:  I will allow players to spend 500 XP to gain 1d3 stamina UP to a maximum of 24.  After that, it's 1000 XP.

Third, a new weapon - the humble revolver:

	1-	2	3	4	5	6	7+		# shots	Weights	range	base cost
Revolver	2	2	3	4	7	9	13		6	1/3 stone	near	75

Lastly I will note that I am collaborating with David Schirduan (ie Technical Grimoire), we are exchanging notes on play tests etc, and he will be publishing a new version of his conversion guide - as he is infinitely better at layout than I am, that should be a far better documents than my rambling blog :P .  We aren't aiming on having identical rules, but I'm confident that our mutual work will make each version better - peer review isn't just for science..   Also, Coins and Scroll is forging ahead full metal on UVG, so read his blog!