My game has no damage rolls. This will probably seem really weird to players familiar with tabletop RPGs, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Damage rolls are dice rolls made after a player has made an 'attack' roll, (which is called an Accuracy roll in Radiant Fantasia, since it is more self-descriptive). The attack roll is compared to the 'Armor Class of a character (called Defense in Radiant Fantasia, again because it is more self-descriptive). If the attack roll is higher than Armor Class, the attack succeeds but if it is lower, the attack has missed.
That is all fine and good, but then you must roll AGAIN to determine how much damage you actually dealt. So it is possible you might have gotten lucky and rolled high enough to finally hit that armored knight who you kept missing on for five turns, BUT because you rolled a 2 on your damage roll, you did only 2 damage points to his 60 points of health. This is what I don't like about damage rolls; they insert too much randomness into combat.
In Radiant Fantasia you make an Accuracy roll and if it succeeds, you've dealt damage. The amount of damage is pre-determined and largely based on the power of the Weapon / Spell Technique you used, with other factors adding to the damage like your STR score, the attack power of your Weapon, and other controllable factors like if you used a weapon they are weak against.
However, enemy armor might reduce the damage to half if they have Damage Reduction; for example, a spear technique dealing piercing damage can be reduced by Damage Reduction against pierce attacks.
On the other hand, an enemy might have flaws in their armor making them more prone to attack from piercing attacks, so they'll take double damage from that attack.
This also goes for elemental resistance and weaknesses; some enemies will take more and less damage from attacks aligned with a specific element.
And lastly, a character can perform a kind of desperation move called an Exceed Break that will also enhance the damage of their attacks.
The text from the book better explains the order everything is calculated.
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The procedure for calculating damage is always:
[Attack damage] + [Melee Damage Reduction / Melee Damage Enhancement] + [Elemental Damage Reduction / Elemental Damage Enhancement] + [Chosen Foe] + [Exceed Break] = Final Damage Output
To new players this may seem daunting at first, but it is actually quite simple to calculation. Let me demonstrate through an example.
Let us suppose that, during an Exceed Break, Bob has used a Weapon Attack that normally deals 100 points of bludgeoning fire damage, against Joe, an Earth aligned character with Damage Reduction (bludgeoning).
Step 1) Calculate Melee Damage Reduction
First, we halve the damage so it is 50 points. This is because Joe has Damage Reduction against bludgeoning, which is one of the damage types of Bob's attack.
Step 2) Calculate Elemental Damage Enhancement
Next, we double the damage so it is back to 100 points. This is because Joe is an Earth aligned character, which takes double damage from fire attacks, which is one of the damage types in Bob's attack.
Step 3) Calculate Exceed Break
We double the damage again so it is now 200 points. This is because Exceed Break doubles the damage of an attack after calculating all other enhancements.
Step 4) Subtract hit points
Joe loses 200 points from his Vitality score due to Bob‘s attack.
Additional modifiers may exist in the formula; for example, Chosen Foe increases damage dealt against certain races.
An Exceed Break is always the last multiplier in the formula.
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Now this is all well and good, but I still haven't explained why it works this way. So now I will; I think damage rolls are unnecessary.
First off, you have already rolled to see if the blow lands. Why should you need to roll again to see if you actually dealt any significant amount of damage? That bogs down play and makes things more complicated than it should be, and your damage depends too greatly on a completely random factor rather than factors you can control (like, what weapon you use to attack an enemy or whether you use a limit break ability to Exceed Break to force your way through any damage reduction the enemy may have).
Secondly, damage rolls were originally intended to model how powerful a blow was before things like Critical attacks and elemental damage resistances / weaknesses were part of D&D. Actually, the mechanics of "Attack roll", "Armor class" and "damage roll" don't even come from D&D: they come from a naval game Dave Arneson made before he got into Chainmail, which then was transformed into D&D.
I think damage rolls have continued to be part of RPGs because it's a sacred cow, "it's always been that way", and few have actually wondered whether or not damage rolls actually add anything of value to the systems. I don't think they do, I think they add unnecessary complexity and so I have designed my combat system to not need them.
This has the affect of making damage more predictable, which also makes it easier to balance the game along with making it easier for players to run the game, and that's what I think is most important.
So goodbye damage rolls. Radiant Fantasia has discarded you.
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