2d Damage

GURPS uses d6 for everything. For purposed of determining damage, GURPS makes use one or several 6-sided dice. 1d6 gives you a flat random distribution. 2d6 gives you linear up --> peak --> linear down. 3d6 (or nd6 where n >= 3) gives you a bell curve. I.e. when you graph these results, 1d6 is flat, 2d6 looks like a pyramid, and 3d6 looks like a bell curve.

I've decide that the 2d6 gives the kind of distribution I want for damage. In general, I think using 2 dice to determine damage should be preferred whenever possible. Furthermore, I want the minimum possible damage to be about 15% of the expected average and the maximum possible damage to be about 185% of the expect average. To that end, the following charts should be used to determine damage:'

Damage Table

ST	3d6 thr	3d6 sw	2d thr	2d sw
1	1d-6	1d-5	2d2-4	2d2-3
2	1d-6	1d-5	2d2-4	2d2-3
3	1d-5	1d-4	2d2-3	2d3-4
4	1d-5	1d-4	2d2-3	2d3-4
5	1d-4	1d-3	2d3-4	2d2-2
6	1d-4	1d-3	2d3-4	2d2-2
7	1d-3	1d-2	2d2-2	2d3-2
8	1d-3	1d-2	2d2-2	2d3-2
9	1d-2	1d-1	2d3-2	2d4-2
10	1d-2	1d	2d3-2	2d4-1
11	1d-1	1d+1	2d4-2	d4+d6-1
12	1d-1	1d+2	2d4-2	d5+d6-1
13	1d	2d-1	2d4-1	2d6-1
14	1d	2d	2d4-1	d6+d8-1
15	1d+1	2d+1	d4+d6-1	2d8-1
16	1d+1	2d+2	d4+d6-1	d8+d10-1
17	1d+2	3d-1	d5+d6-1	d8+d10-1
18	1d+2	3d	d5+d6-1	d8+d10
19	2d-1	3d+1	2d6-1	2d10
20	2d-1	3d+2	2d6-1	d10+d12
21	2d	4d-1	d6+d8-1	2d12
22	2d	4d	d6+d8-1	(d6+d8-1)x2
23	2d+1	4d+1	2d8-1	(d5+d10-1)x2
24	2d+1	4d+2	2d8-1	(2d8-1)x2
25	2d+2	5d-1	d8+d10-1	(2d8-1)x2
26	2d+2	5d	d8+d10-1	(2d8-1)x2+1
27	3d-1	5d+1	d8+d10-1	(2d6-1)x3

See Also

Detect Lies Interrogation Tactics