Caul,
No feathers ruffled. I'm all for house ruling and experimenting. But after 10 years of Savage Worlds, I've grown fond of the "play the game a few times before house ruling" mantra. The only house rules I've added to my game (outside of GM-level background stuff that is meant to be invisible to the players) are a handful of skill additions (and only one new skill), expanding the assist ally rules to cover skill tests as well as combat, and porting the inebriation rules from 7th Sea (because one of the players wanted an "Able Drinker" Talent). Most of these tweaks grew out of regular play. The core of the game hasn't been an issue to us. The Skill Summary table recently caused a bit of an uproar, which is why I went ahead and updated it in my reference materials. The more we play, the more I'm experimenting with different Skill/Ability combos.
I can certainly see the benefit to taking one roll out of combat, and your math doesn't sound bad. However, I've found that players LIKE to roll damage, especially when the numbers get high. The real trick is to minimize the whiff factor – which I haven't found to be an issue in WH. If I were going to house rule damage in my game, I'd probably go with one of these two ideas: 1) A successful attack always does 1 point of damage. (My first choice: super easy, intuitive, and does the job without breaking anything). 2) A weapon's damage modifier becomes automatic, so a damage roll becomes (Ability+Excess Successes)–Armor; add your weapon DM to your damage roll for points in damage. So a great sword would always do X points of damage, plus whatever you rolled. The problems I immediately see with this are it doesn't affect minions and there is even less incentive to carry a light, gentlemanly weapon. The upside to this is that damage USED to work this way in the previous edition, so it might make the rules less confusing.
You could also always go back to first edition combat and just institute the Consistent Defense Talent from Grand Tome of Adversaries across the board to replace the new defenses.
But for me, how damage is determined is a big chunk of the game. If I need to change that, I'm gonna have to balance it against the existing Defense, Armor, and Damage Value rules. And I just don't have time to do all of that these days.
But by all means, go crazy and let us know how it works out! I run a home game, too, so don't let these WHR players get you down.
_________________ ...and a Brace of Pistols a blog dedicated to swashbuckling, fantasy and horror gaming
Witch Hunter: The Invisible World Unofficial Home on Google+
|