ACTS of Sorcery 10: Damage Dice

(10th chapter in a “book” of thoughts and learnings from a GM who is studying Ron Edwards’ game of Sorcerer in preparation for his first game)

We had our Sorcerer planning session on Tuesday, and it went great.  In the coming days I’ll be sharing our One-Sheet and excellent characters, backstories and kickers.  For today, here is the last of the posts that I wrote while re-reading the rulebooks and trolling The Forge to develop a GM’s level understanding of the game.

-Johnny 0.

Damage Dice

The whole combat, damage and penalties thing was a bit confusing for me at first. Ron explains it forwards. I’d prefer it explained backwards…:

Damage, like everything else, is counted in “dice.” If you have 2 damage, then you suffer a 2-dice penalty to all scores (Stamina, Will and Lore) for as long as the damage persists.

How long does damage persist? There are two types of damage: “next-action” and “lasting.”. When you take a hit in combat, you’ll usually take a bit of both types (according to the Damage Table on pg.107).

• “Next-action” damage applies as a penalty to your next action, after which it goes away. Think of it as you being momentarily disoriented after being injured in the fight.
• “Lasting” damage persists until you get a chance to rest, after which it is halved. The remaining half of your lasting damage sticks around for a few days or weeks, to be determined by the GM and commensurate with the type of injuries you’ve received.

How much damage does an attack do? Take the number of victories of the attack and look it up on the Damage Table (pg.107). For example, attacking with fists does X next-action damage and 1 lasting damage, where X is the number of victories rolled.

How will we track two types of damage? See the paperclip method and the two-zones method, described on pg.109. To my players: given our small table, I recommend the former.

How many hit points do I have? Look at your Stamina score. While your total damage (next-action + lasting) exceeds your Stamina, “pain incapacitates movement or action,” but you still have options. If total damage exceeds 2x Stamina, you are “stunned into helplessness.” Notice there’s no explicit point at which death occurs. That’s a post for another day.

I hope that gives you a conceptual grasp of Sorcerer’s damage system. It’s not the whole story, but it should set you up to get more out of the rulebook’s Chapter 6. Go read it now.