Friday 26 September 2014

Fixing Mutant Future low melee damage

Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord (well, basic era games in general) have similar melee weapon damages but there's a big difference; the HP.
In Labyrinth Lord you roll one die per level so your first level adventurer has enough hit points to survive a blow or three. In Mutant Future you roll dice equal to your Constitution score (16 dice for CON 16 dude) making him around ten timed -or more- resilient than his poor fantasy cousins.
Firearms and lasers do more damage, but aren't melee weapons lethal too instead of just being annoying? And in default Mutant Future setting(s) modern and future weapons are scarce... Mutant powers deal good amount of damage though...
But as there are good damage dealers in the game (modern arms, mutations) why make most common available weapons damn ineffective and boring? Baseball bat with nails and good-ol-machete re cool in hands of mutant - but not in this game.
Mutant Future Low Melee Damage Fix
Weapons have base damage as listed.
When base damage is rolled, multiply it with STR bonus, if positive.
In some situations (finesse weapons, skill matters more than brutal strength) DEX modifier can be used.
Example: Dex the lizardman gets into a barfight! He opens his butterfly knife and maked it dance between his fingers. He might not be the quickest pistolero in the wasted, but he sure is damn nimble.
Quick attack and his opponent is bleeding - badly.
Dex rolls 1d6+2 damage (his butterfly knife is goo'od) and scores 7. He is nimble with DEX modifier of +3, what is now damage multiplier so his total damage dealt is 21! Not bad!
(I don't have MF rulebook in my hand so I had to pull knife damage and DEX modifier from my hat).

3 comments :

  1. I agree, this is something of a problem, carried over from the first edition of Gamma World. There might be some cases where it's unclear whether a high-tech powered melee weapon of some sort gets this bonus. I think they always should, perhaps reducing their base damage to compensate.

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  2. In my games I did a fix of adding the whole STR score to damage on melee hits and the whole DEX score to damage on ranged combat hits on a critical roll of 20 to hit. Higtech gear maxes out on the topp of itks normal damage range on a crit.

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