Damage Numbers, Part 2

tim-cain system-design damage combat game-design numbers balancing

Abstract

Problem: How do you actually pick damage number ranges for your game, and how does that choice cascade into hit points, bonuses, armor, and overall combat pacing?

Approach: Tim Cain walks through his iterative "pin and spread" method — pick one value (like a weapon damage range), then calculate everything else from it, adjusting when contradictions arise.

Findings: Damage range selection is not a one-shot decision. It's an iterative process where one choice (e.g., 1–20 vs 1–100) ripples through attribute bonuses, enemy health, boss design, armor systems, and player survivability. Spreadsheets and repeated testing are how professional designers converge on good numbers.

Key insight: There is no single correct answer — pick a starting range, spread out the design, and iterate. Treat it like a proof by contradiction: assume values, follow the math, and when something breaks, change the assumption.

Source: Damage Numbers, Part 2 — Tim Cain's YouTube channel

1. Big Numbers Make People Happy

Perception matters more than proportionality. A player hitting for 2,000 feels better than hitting for 2, even if the ratio to enemy health is identical. This is why old arcade games awarded 100 points per alien instead of 1 — a score of 21,100 feels more impressive than 21.

The goal of your game is fun. Players don't actually want mathematically "fair" or "proportional" damage — they want a feeling of power and impact. Big numbers deliver that feeling.

2. The Percentage Problem

Big numbers also have a practical advantage: they play nicely with percentage-based modifiers. If your damage range is 1–10 and a weapon grants +5% damage, hitting for 10 gives you 10.5 — an awkward fraction that functionally rounds to nothing.

With a range of 1–100, that same 5% bonus produces meaningful, visible differences. If you plan to use any percentage-based buffs, debuffs, or modifiers, your base numbers need to be large enough to make those percentages matter.

3. The Pin-and-Spread Method

Tim's core method for designing damage numbers:

3.1. Start With One Range

Pick a weapon damage range. Say a sword does 1–20. From there, spread outward:

  • A club does 1–10
  • A dagger does 1–5
  • Damage bonuses might be +1, +2, +3

3.2. Watch for Contradictions

If strength (1–10 scale) adds its value as a damage bonus, and weapons also have flat bonuses, you quickly discover that on a 1–20 range, bonuses alone can account for half the total. A player with high strength wielding a dagger might do 11–14 damage — barely different from a sword.

At this point you have a choice: expand the range (1–100), or restructure how bonuses work.

3.3. Consider Multiples

A 1–100 range has huge variance (3 vs 97 feels unfair). An alternative: use d10 × 10, giving values of 10, 20, 30... 100. Nobody ever does less than 10, the average is 55, and percentage bonuses work cleanly on these numbers.

4. From Damage to Everything Else

Once you have a damage range, calculate outward:

4.1. Enemy Health and Combat Pacing

Think in terms of combat beats — how many hits should it take to kill an enemy?

  • Average damage of 55, want enemies to die in 2–3 hits → give them ~110 HP
  • One hit won't kill them, two might, three should, with a chance of four or more

4.2. Boss Design

If regular enemies have 110 HP, a boss might need 1,000 HP. But you can also use armor systems instead of just inflating health:

  • Damage threshold: Must deal at least X damage or the attack does nothing
  • Damage reduction: A percentage of damage is removed from each attack

Low values on regular enemies, higher values on bosses. Both affect how many rounds combat lasts — which is what you're really trying to figure out.

4.3. Player Health

Players face multiple enemies, each dealing damage. If monsters deal similar damage to what players deal, player HP needs to be in the hundreds or thousands to survive multi-enemy encounters. Alternatively, reduce monster damage output — but then percentage-based enemy buffs (like a shaman buffing allies) run into the same small-fractions problem.

5. Proof by Contradiction

Tim explicitly compares the process to mathematical proof by contradiction:

  1. Assume a damage range
  2. Calculate everything from it (bonuses, HP, armor, pacing)
  3. Find contradictions (bosses too easy, fractions too small, bonuses dominate)
  4. Change your assumption and recalculate

Pin one value, derive the rest. If the output doesn't feel right, go back and change the pin. You can have many pinned values and many unpinned ones you're still figuring out.

6. Use Spreadsheets

Most professional designers use spreadsheets for exactly this reason. The process is not about creating a perfect design in 10 minutes — it's about seeing how every choice affects every other choice, and iterating until the system feels right.

Even after implementation, playtester feedback ("bosses are too easy") sends you back to the spreadsheet. Do you increase boss HP? Add better armor? Introduce damage thresholds for bosses only? Each tweak ripples through the system, and the spreadsheet shows you where.

7. There Is No One Answer

Tim is direct about this: there is no single correct set of damage numbers. The process is inherently iterative — pick values, see where they lead, adjust, repeat. Every designer does this. The key is having a systematic method (pin, spread, check, adjust) rather than guessing randomly.

And always remember perception: if your numbers are small and your HUD displays them, many players will feel a lack of impact regardless of the underlying math.

8. References