Upscaling d20 bullet damage

In a previous post tied bullet damage to the diameter of a round multiplied by the ratio of length to caliber in millimeters. This works fine for bullets which rarely go over 1 inch in diameter, and rarely have a ratio greater than 10:1 (which would max out at 10d12). I randomly mentioned this blog, and that got me pondering how the math would work out. Having looked into NATO Fox Calls for fighter planes, I came to realize that a large amount of weapon specs are available for US Munitions on wikipedia. I'm sure missiles are a bit more complicated than what is presented here, but I thought it would be worth the thought exercise. That being said, one note to mention is that in the previous post, the maximum size was d12 for 1". Most missiles are going to be more than one inch, and the inches should probably be multiplied separately from the ratio, but it seems easier to add the inches to the length ratio and multiply by that number. Both methods are shown here so anyone who wants to use them can use either method

Missile                     Dimensions (ratio) Damage

AIM-7 Sparrow (Fox-1)       ~8x144" (~x18)     d12x26 or d12x144

AIM-9 Sidewinder (Fox-2)    ~5x119" (~x24)     d12x29 or d12x120

AIM-120 AMRAAM (Fox-3)      ~7x144" (~x21)     d12x27 or d12x147

AIM-54 Phoenix (Fox-3)      ~15x154" (~x10)    d12x25 or d12x150

AGM-114 Hellfire (Fox-2)    ~7x64" (~x9)       d12x16 or d12x63

RPG-7 Round (~75x950mm*)    ~3x37" (~x13)      d12x16 or d12x39

AT-4 Round (~84x245mm*)     ~3x9" (~x3)        d12x6  or d12x9

Minuteman ICBM (~5.5x60 ft) ~5x60' (x11)       d12x785 or d12x46,800

Percentile Damage

You may have noticed that multiplying caliber and length separately produces damage in excess of 100 in all cases. It may be helpful to roll fewer dice and get bigger damage values. In that case, round the maximum damage to 100 points in whichever direction makes the most sense, and use that number of d100s. The following is the result of that.

Missile                     Damage Maximums    Percentile Roll

AIM-7 Sparrow (Fox-1)       1728               18d%

AIM-9 Sidewinder (Fox-2)    1440               14d% 

AIM-120 AMRAAM (Fox-3)      1764               18d%

AIM-54 Phoenix (Fox-3)      1800               18d%

AGM-114 Hellfire (Fox-2)    756                8d%

RPG-7 Round (~75x950mm*)    468                4d%

AT-4 Round (~84x245mm*)     108                1d%

Minuteman ICBM (~5.5x60 ft) 561,600            d%x5616**

Musings on Firearms in d20

A long time ago, way back before there were two kinds of Dungeons and Dragons, in an era where the first kind had only three editions, there was a modern version, with guns. It was sort of ok for generic purposes, but they ended up having to put out further supplements on additional firearms, both fact and fiction. That's all well and good, but ya know... it's probably out of print or something, and also you might not want to encourage piracy even if there aren't going to be particularly strong consequences for it. With that in mind, I came up with my own system for gun damage.

Damage Dice

Guns (and everything) deal(s) damage based on F=MV, but we don't need to complicate this. We can replace F with Damage, M with the size of the bullet, and V with a typical load of propellant. We don't have to even do it directly, we can just sort of provide a logical basis.

In this case, the M of the bullet is tied to its caliber, we'll assume that the following is true:

Caliber     mm           Dice
up to.25    up to 6mm    d4s
.26-.40     7-10mm       d6s
.41-.55     11-14mm      d8s
.56-.75     15-19mm      d10s
.76-1"      20-25.4mm    d12s

The V of the bullet is tied to its case length inasmuch as the case length defines what safe amounts of powder can be used to fire projectiles from it (actually thickness and material is more important than actual length, but it's a close enough abstraction for our purposes). To determine the number of dice, use (Case Length/Caliber in mm, rounding to the nearest whole ratio e.g. 9x19 Parabellum is 2d6 with 19 being 2.1x the length of its 9mm caliber. AK rounds (7.62x39) deal 5d6, and 5.56 NATO rounds deal 8d4. A .50 BMG being 12.7x99 makes it 8d8.  Likewise, a slug in 12 gauge is typically 18.5x70mm, which amounts to a ratio of 3.75, or 4d10.

Shotgun Shells

Instead of going into excruciating detail about how many different levels of buckshot and birdshot there are, we can just assume that buckshot reduces dice size by 1, but adds a 2 dice (5d8 instead of 4d10 for 12 gauge) birdshot reduces dice size by 2, but adds 3 dice (7d6 instead of 4d10 for 12 gauge), and Frangible reduces dice size by 3, but adds 4 dice (8d4 instead of 4d10 for 12 gauge).

Oh and one final thought: That original document may have propagated a myth that shotguns fire in a cone. They sort of do, but even at 150 feet you're only going to get about a 3" spread or so.

Weapon Actions

We will categorize weapon actions more broadly here for the sake of game rules--and because if we didn't a character with an M-16 can easily fire off their entire magazine in under a full round.

Single Shot

Covers breach action shotguns, flare guns, bolt action rifles, and single action revolvers.

• Each attack with this requires a single action (in PF2e) to bring a new round into battery

Semi-auto

Covers magazine fed auto-loader pistols, double action revolvers, lever action rifles, and pump action shotguns. 

• You can fire off as many shots as you can pull the trigger. It's a two action activity to multiply damage by 1d3, and a three action activity to multiply damage by 1d6. This costs 3 and 6 ammo respectively

Full-auto

Covers anything where one press of the trigger equals multiple bullets, including modified trigger assemblies that fire a second round when the trigger is released.

• With selector fire you may treat the weapon as a semi-auto
• If it's full auto only--or you've selected burst or full auto--you can still limit your trigger pulls to multiply damage by 1d6 with a single action activity (costing 6 ammo)
• You can multiply damage by 2d6 as a 3 action activity.(costing 12 ammo)

Generating a random dungeon in DW with Tarot

This reddit post suggests you can draw tarot cards to make a dungeon, but doesn't provide much in the way of guidelines to finish it off. In Dungeon World, it could be fair to assume the same thing about dungeons that you do about treasure. That they are related to the damage dice of the enemy. Damage dice in dungeon world are very small. I don't recall seeing anything bigger than (b[2d12+9] damage). The average dungeon befitting a boss monster with just such damage would be 6.5+9 or 15.5. Call it 16 since it's the better of two rolls, which are presumed an average of 6-7. Another example, the bandit king (b[2d10]), would be probably about a 6 room dungeon. You can toy with it too. Goblins might not have half the damage roll in dungeon rooms, and a Noble who has a Knight probably has twice the Knight's damage roll of rooms in his castle.

Gashes: An Alternate take on HP

From a redditor: 

I’m not about this stressing over games business. I think it’s completely valid to just wing it. [...]
Let’s say my immolator gets a 6. I don’t mark health points, I just tell him you’ve got a decent cut on your leg. My thing is to just make it believable. So you can’t take a ton of gashes and just be ok, but other than that, health is totally in the fiction.

So I know people like and take comfort in knowing their HP, and I told them so, but I had another redditor bring up Defy Danger. On the G+ community, there are a lot of people who don't like Deal Damage As Established as a move. And of course, this player doesn't really like HP. This got me thinking about medical states (good, fair, serious, critical, dead)

When you have have not been injured, you are in Good Condition +(CON-gashes)

If you suffer up to +CON gashes, you are in Fair condition (-1)

If you suffer up to twice +CON gashes, you are in Serious condition (-2)

Anything more is Critical condition (-3)

Endure Punishment

When you take a hit or worsen an injury through vigorous activity, roll +Condition. *On a 10+, you're fine and can continue. *On 7-9 take 1 more gash. On 6- you're out. What this means depends mostly on your Condition. At Fair you are merely unconscious. At Serious or worse, take your Last Breath.

Armor
Keep rolling damage normally. Use the damage value to find out if damage exceeds armor. If it does, a gash is scored. If it doesn't, nothing happens.

Getting Bogged Down
Wounds in real life don't really get reflected in games that have HP. If you would like for wounds to have impact, if you are Fair or worse, add +Condition to any +STR, DEX, CON or WIS rolls.

Monster Gashes
A monster can take 1 gash per 8 HP rounding down (so the Apocalypse Dragon {26 HP} can take 3 gashes if you can find a way to gash it).
A monster can deal 1 gash for every 8 average damage it can do rounded up. Add a gash for using b[2d6] or higher.

Recovery
Healing Magic
Whenever someone casts a Cure spell or uses a move like Lay On Hands, each d8 they heal counts as one condition state (e.g. healing from Critical to Serious, Serious to Fair, or Fair to Good)

Recover Move
Normally this heals you in full, but this change itself is evocative of a far grittier game, and as a result, you can say that each day using the Recover move only heals one condition state.

Abstracting Coins

Someone on reddit made me think about not keeping up with specific amounts of coins. They thought of using coins as a sort of +Wealth. The values I thought of for +Wealth were as follows:

+3: A giant sack of loot

+2: A chest of riches

+1: A few coin purses

+0: A small purse

-1: Some dusty old coppers.

You could give them a wt. score equal to their respective score. Then instead of specifying an amount, you can let players lower their +Wealth by one or more to get a bonus to a Carouse, Parley, Recruit, or Supply roll.

For Carouse, sacrifice 1 point to get the full bonus associated with the old level of wealth
For Parley or Supply roll Wealth as noted below
For Recruit you only sacrifice Wealth if their Cost is Money. Otherwise roll Wealth as noted below

If you have them roll +Wealth, use the following results

10+: They get the thing without lowering their wealth or having another incident

7-9: They get the thing but pick one:

• take -1 wealth
• the item is contraband, inferior, or stolen

6-: They get the thing and

• Lose -2 wealth 
• Just kidding, they don't get the thing, but lose -1 wealth anyway (such as by a finder's fee, a local ordinance levying fines against the intended purchase, and so on)
• must do a favor for the seller
• must steal the item

Abstract Warrants
So you've done something against the law, or something that pissed off the powers that be, but might not have been against the actual law... Whenever you have this sort of charges against you if a bounty is to be levied you need to know how many points of wealth you need to even be able to make a roll to pay off any bounty, or fine The list below is a start but is by no means complete:

+0: Minor Assault, Petty theft, Negligence
+1: Battery, Burglary, unarmed Robbery, Swindling
+2: Manslaughter, Impersonating a higher social status, Lewd Behavior
+3: Murder, Theft of extremely valuable property (such as a horse, or the keys and deed to a house), Rape

Weight and Loot

The +Wealth level of  whatever you have for positive values also corresponds to its weight. For the purposes of load, A giant sack of loot has a wt. of 3, a small coin purse, wt 0, and some dusty old coppers, .1.

Starting with Abstract Loot
Characters whose playbooks canonically suggest they have any coins (up to about 50 or so) should start with A small purse (+0).

If they're playing something custom like a Class Warfare build or unofficial playbook that gives them up to 100 coins, they can start with A chest of riches (+1)

Otherwise they will have Some dusty old coppers (-1)

Gaining Abstract Loot

The easiest abstraction of increasing loot would be the rule of threes

Some Dusty old coppers>A handful of dusty old coppers>A lot of dusty old coppers>

A small purse>Two small purses> Three small purses>

A few coin purses>Several coin purses>Many coinpurses>

A chest of riches>Two "">Three ""

From A giant sack of loot, keeping track further seems futile, but it could be fair to say that 3 such giant sacks generates "A small hoard". For the purposes of A Whole Damn Army, Resources is increased by 1 point for a small hoard. Beyond that, each additional larger size (Medium, Large, Huge) is an additional Resource point.

Steading Prosperity and Abstract Coins

Dirt: This town won't sell you anything worth more than 5 core coins. (-1)

Poor: One person in the town can sell you something up to 25 core coins. (+0)

Moderate: Less than 10 people can sell you up to 100 core coins worth of stuff. (+1)

Wealthy: Any merchant can sell you up to 100 core coins worth of stuff, one can sell you up to 300 coins worth of stuff. (+2)

Rich: Anything of any value is probably here, but in order to preserve magic items, you may find one specific item in such a place if it has been explicitly mentioned in the fiction. (+3)

Real Estate

A Cottage is 500 coins in the core rules. As per these rules, it takes 3 units of a wealth level to move up to the next. As per the starting rules, it takes either A giant sack of loot, + 2 chests of riches, or simply reducing Wealth by 2 points to just buy a cottage. For simplicity, I'll just say how much the party's total wealth needs to be reduced to purchase a particular housing unit

House/Land     Wealth Reduction total

Hovel          No loss unless you fail a Wealth Roll

Cottage        2

House          10

Mansion        200

Keep           300

Castle         1,000

Grand Castle   4,000

Payment Plan
A group of adventurers can pay as little as 1% of the points per adventure minus a number of points equal to the highest Charisma score. So for example, the "monthly" cost on a grand castle is 40 points, so if a character has CHA 18, they can lower the payment to 22 points a month. This would amount to reducing wealth from +3 to -1 for 5.5 Adventurers. They could also reasonably trade in magical items for points equal to the number of distinct functions it has.