It mostly lacks representation for large force spread over large surface or long time.
- Concussion from impact to (armored) head
- Soft armor stopping sharp edges but failing to dissipate the force
- Damaged joints from having limbs pulled by a horde of superhumanly strong zombies
- Bites against fingers and toes
Those could be fixed like this:
Bashing damage would be split into two subtypes: the “strike” and the “slam” - the former representing concentrated blow comparable to piercing/cutting and scaling with skill and weapon quality, the latter representing pure force (causing joint displacement etc.) and scaling with strength and (very roughly) weapon mass.
The “slam” part would bypass armor really well, but could be resisted by some monsters (large or blobby ones). Possibly some body parts could get affected by it more (head, hands, feet) or less (limbs).
The end result would be:
- Huge wooden clubs (in huge hands) could bring down armored knights without getting any better at piercing tank armor
- Bashing at low strength would become feasible, just not effective against big targets
- Would allow the removal of the horribly limiting bashing scaling with strength that I didn’t manage to exorcise properly last time I buffed bashing
- Head (and hands and feet) would actually be a weak spot without adding any dangerously unstable global multipliers
- We’d have a measure of attack force less abstract than pure bashing damage
Disadvantage would be extra complexity (from user’s side) in melee combat. Player melee combat is already a black box comparable in size and unintuitiveness to ranged combat. Things like damage scaling (with skill or stats) aren’t exposed properly, so only people who read the code really know where does the damage actually come from (stats, skills, damage type, enemy armor, hit limb).
