Greetings In programming my game, I've decided that it would be interesting not to add a range element to weapons, i.e. it doesnt do 100-150 damage. Instead, it will just do 125 damage. What happens is when the player attacks a random value between 0 and probably their strength/4 is chosen. This gets added too (or subtracted from) the damgage done. Now each str point past the required value to use the weapon, the minimum damage increases by damage/5, as does the maximum. This works for a maximum of 50 bonus points for using a weapon with a lower str req. Armor of the defender will also be factored in. Would that be a good way to manage range, or does anyone have any suggestions that dont involve giving each weapon a max and min damage? Thanks.

That's not a bad idea. Its fairly close to a system that I've been fine tuning. As for the ranged idea, you can do something similar.

Something like this:

Ranged weapon will have set damage, and the user of the weapon will increase or decrease the value depending on something like accuracy or something similar. Therefore you could both check to see if they hit do to accuracy and the area they would have hit (that determines the damage done).

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Original post by Darobat Now each str point past the required value to use the weapon, the minimum damage increases by damage/5, as does the maximum.

Change that to percentage would be better. Otherwise at lower level where the player would have less strength, using a lower a low req could double or triple the total damage, while at higher level the bonus would be too little to notice.

I'm confused as to where the range of the target ever becomes a consideration. It seems that, no matter what range the target is at, the same amount of damage will be dealt, unless you reconsider the damage of the attack as it flies through the air, having it decay over time.

capn_midnight: I believe he was referring to a numeric range, such as "the 10 to 15 damage range" as opposed to firing distance.

OP: manipulating a knife is not the same as manipulating a barbed spear. While using a barbed spear can inflict a lot more damage than a knife if you are lucky, it can also inflict much less damage than a knife if you suck. It doesn't look like your system can manage the barbed spear having a damage range that contains the damage range of the knife.

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Original post by capn_midnight I'm confused as to where the range of the target ever becomes a consideration. It seems that, no matter what range the target is at, the same amount of damage will be dealt, unless you reconsider the damage of the attack as it flies through the air, having it decay over time.

I don't think he means range as in 'distance to target' he means as in 'min/max damage'.

Anyway, as to the original poster, I'm not entirely sure what you mean, so I'll give an example of what I think you mean:

Bubbles The Barbarian has a strength of 8. He carries a two handed sword which has a base damage of 10 points. However, the two handed sword has a minimum strength requirement of 6, so he gets to add 2x(10/5) == 4 points to the base damage.

He spots a passing goblin and proceeds to smack him in the face with the sword. He rolls a random number between 0 and his strength/4 (in this case, 2) which comes a 1. This gets added to the base damage - inflicting a total of 10 + 4 + 1 == 15 points of damage, causing the hapless goblin's head to explode like a watermelon.

Anyway, it seems reasonable enough, although a lot depends on the range that the various variables can take. Is strength measured in the range 0-10? 0-100? 0-6746? What about damage?

If the ranges and typical values are wrong, you could get all sorts of weird and nonsensical results - for example, you might find a Wizzy The Weakling Wizard can do more damage with a 6" knife than Bubbles The Barbarian can do with his 6' two handed sword.

"works for a maximum of 50 bonus points for using a weapon with a lower str req"
I don't know why I said that because it is completly not what I ment to say. I ment to say that this applys until their str is 10 greater than the requirement.

I don't see how that could become unreasonable...

If we are discussing a turn based RPG then this idea sucks very very badly. The idea of a damage range is to give players that feeling where they are crossing their fingers hoping to god that it'll hit hard enough. Thats what makes the battles feel epic. If we are talking about a diablo like click and kill game then the idea still sucks, because then it comes down to timing, you know ahead of time how many clicks it takes to kill one enemy and then get into a habit of timing the kills right so that you know which ones you can kill off before more will arrive. That would just make it feel monotonous way too quickly. If we are talking about a first person roleplaying game, then I'm all about it. When the game requires skill, the skill (or lack thereof) of the player is enough to create the chaos of a battle for that epic feeling that we all crave.

~Vendayan