Gruntz inspiration and the damage roll

[gypsycomet]

Recognizing that the basic mechanic of the game comes from a highly successful 30mm skirmish game, I'm curious why the damage roll mechanic was shifted to "ties do a point, plus one for each point the roll exceeds the soak", from "subtract armor from roll, do the resulting in damage".

It leapt out at me because our local community of the other game often shorthand that process by calculating the difference between weapon strength and armor, and then applying that to the roll: "Damage is dice minus 4" because the difference between Strength and Armor is four.

In Gruntz, a difference of four means the damage result is "Dice minus 3".

If it is a copyright concern, that only applies if you copied their rule word for word (or very close to it). The rules process (ie. the "mechanic") cannot be copyrighted; processes are covered by *patents*. Very few game companies ever bother with patents.

[inrepose]

Actually this was feedback from a close local friend and several of the original playtester group and proofreaders. They wanted to keep it the same as the shoot roll i.e. Equal or higher to the target statistic. Essentially you always do 1 point of damage if you equal the soak which matches the fact that you have to equal the Guard with the Shoot roll. In the end I took a call on the balance of play and thought it made sense but it can be confusing if you consider the traditional way of working out armour damage.

However in retrospect I do like it this way because you can quickly work out that a damage point has been inflicted when you equal the target Soak. It just takes a brief moment to consider the fact that everything higher than the target Soak is "additional damage".