Rolling Damage Outside of Attacks/Spells

I'm running into a situation, and I'm hoping some of the more experienced folks here might have an answer. My adventures feature a lot of environmental effects (falling damage, burning damage, etc.) but I can't for the life of me figure out how to apply this damage in a way that takes advantage of all the automation built into the SWADE ruleset.

For example: A character falls 30 feet, and takes 3d6 damage. I can roll 3d6 in the chat window, but the dice won't explode and it won't apply that as a damage result to the character.

While I don't have any problems re-rolling aced dice and adding it all up, many of my players are not as familiar with the ruleset and it inevitably ends up turning into an ordeal when it comes time to deal with the damage. I'm hoping there's something simple I'm missing that lets me just roll damage and apply it to characters.

Thanks for your help!

Create an NPC for the Pit Trap and have its attack be falling damage? That always works and you can even put the trap in an encounter and drop it on the Combat Tracker.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sam_W

I'm running into a situation, and I'm hoping some of the more experienced folks here might have an answer. My adventures feature a lot of environmental effects (falling damage, burning damage, etc.) but I can't for the life of me figure out how to apply this damage in a way that takes advantage of all the automation built into the SWADE ruleset.

For example: A character falls 30 feet, and takes 3d6 damage. I can roll 3d6 in the chat window, but the dice won't explode and it won't apply that as a damage result to the character.

---

If you have the "Dice: Desktop dice can Ace" option turned on in settings, any rolls in the chat window will ace/explode.

Of all the hazards there's only 3 that actually roll damage. I do something similar to Jiminimonka with NPCs. I created 3; a Hazard-Falling NPC with attacks for the 10 falling increments, a Hazard-Fire for the 4 degrees of fire damage and a Hazard-Electricity NPC with 2 attacks for the degrees of high voltage damage. You don't have to place them on maps (just target within the Combat Tracker), unless you're using one of them as a trap and want to gage a PC's proximity to it.

Expanding on the NPC concept, you can roll the damage in the chat window and then drag and drop the damage balloon onto the character that took damage. This will put the damage onto the character in the combat tracker where they may choose to soak or you can apply it.

For traps, I put "/dmg 3d6 Rock Falls on your head" in your Story Entry as a quote (you do not put in the ""). From your story entry, just click the quote like any other and it will roll the damage and put in the wording you have associated with it into chat. Then you drag the result onto the PC in the CT. Take avoids having stay NPCs in your CT.

You don't need NPCs at all. Just roll dice in chat and drag and drop the roll onto everyone who deserves it.
Though I hadn't thought of the NPC approach for recurring damage or an obstacle.

Building on amrigoV's idea, if you add something like "You suffer loss of intelligence from a rock hitting your head. [Smarts -1]" as a chat in your story, you can drag that affect from chat onto a character in CT and it will apply the effect to them.

I like NPCs for the hazards that actually deal damage, because I can't always remember where I've placed hidden hazards or traps for an encounter. Having hazards as NPCs allows me to place them on a single map image, while keeping them hidden from the players. Sure there's GM versions of maps, but I mostly homebrew and don't really have the time for creating a 2nd map. I'M also not particularly keen on FGU stories, because they take up screen real estate which I find in short supply with the FGU GUi. Most of my stories I keep as outlined docs on another screen in my multi-monitor setup. When the day arrives that FGU supports undockable/floating windows, I'll no doubt adjust my habits.

You can always just type /dmg 3d6 (for example) in the chat window for one time use, or drag it to a shortcut button at the bottom of the screen (before hitting Enter) if you'll need it more than once as an alternative to Story entries.

Thanks for all the info! A combination of NPCs and /dmg commands seems like it will work perfectly. You folks are awesome!