Damage Multipliers are a huge part of Warzone Eternal. Making an opponent roll an extra d20 and forcing them to take the worst result can really ruin someone’s day.

Getting a damage multiplier is easy, you just need to score a critical hit on a target (ed note – not with your rolls!). This grants you a +x1 multiplier, turning that 12 damage into 12×2 damage. If you don’t feel like relying on good dice tho, some weapons already have a multiplier built in. These effects stack, so that HG-14 Shotgun with a built in 13×2 becomes a 13×3 when you score a critical hit on the attack.

But what does this mean mathematically? How can you strategically target your damage multipliers and wreck maximum havoc?

Normal Damage Roll Calculation

One of the great things about a d20 system like WZE is that the odds are pretty easy to do in your head. The chance of any number coming up is 5%, and if you remember your math (or maths, if you’re not a Capitol employee), to calculate a range of results, you add the probability for each number. So if an opponent needs to roll a [5], the chances are 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% = 25%. Or you can make it easy and just say 5/20. All of his can be expressed as a pretty simple equation, see below

Success Rate = Target Number/20

We know that this is basic stuff, but it’s always good to review the basics.

The Curse of the Damage Multiplier

The math for a damage multiplier is a little more complicated, but can be figured out, even by someone like me that isn’t great at math.

When rolling multiple dice and dropping the lowest, we actually only care about the result of the highest die. It doesn’t matter to us if the results are [19, 16] or [19, 2], since we are left with a result of [19]. When thinking about the math above, we can return to the basic equation of Target Number/20. Since we are ADDING a die, we need to MULTIPLY the results to see the chances of rolling any one number. Since each die is a d20, we can express this with the following equation

Success Rate = (Target Number/20) x (Target Number/20)

Or even more simply

Success Rate = (Target Number/20)²

Now, I’m going to be honest – I’m not doing this math by hand. Instead, I’m going to turn to Excel and plug this equation in (and for good measure, we’ll add the x3 multiplier in as well)

Now this chart shows the chances that your opponent will succeed a roll on any specific target number, which is great and all, but we don’t actually care about that! We want to know what their chances of failing are! To do this, we add one more step to our equation – we subtract the results from one. Doing this gives us the fail rates for any target number.

That’s more like it!

Looking at this chart, you can see just how devastating a damage multiplier is! If we assume that the opponent has 20 armor and we hit with a damage 10 weapon (meaning the opponent has to roll a [10] or less to save), you can see that without a multiplier they will fail 50% of the time. Add a x2 multiplier tho and that jumps all the way up to 75%, and it only gets worse from there!

Sliding Scale of Failure

The only complication that WZE presents, that is different from other d20 system (DnD, etc.) is the sliding scale of success on damage rolls. As we know, if an opponent succeeds by only a range of 5-0 they still take a Pinned Counter, fail by 1-5 they take a Pinned Counter and a Wound, and then a fail of 6+ is a Pinned Counter and 2 Wounds!

Looking at it this way, as the attacker, we can see that we actually have a significant range of outcomes that benefit us. Using our example of a 20 armor opponent and us hitting with a damage 10 weapon, the opposing model is going to be negatively affected on 80% of the rolls! While we always want to be doing damage when we can, the threat of a Pinned Counter can be just as nasty. Here’s a chart that shows every outcome of a single die roll

Again, we can use a chart to see just how bad it can get! With a x2 multiplier the model will take a Pinned counter 96% of the time, a single Wound 69% of the time, and 2 wounds a whopping 36%!

Here’s the full chart below

So What can I do with Information?

Fear, you can fear or strike fear.

Outside of that though, there are a few wrinkles in how you want to use these numbers to your advantage. First off, target higher armor targets with multiplier weapons. You’ll significantly increase your chances of taking them down doing that and saving your normal shots for lesser foes.

Another thing to consider are Area of Effect Weapons – as only the Primary Target is subject to Damage Multipliers. You need to therefore choose who that’s going to be wisely. This is also one of the main reasons to target specific models with grenades, rather than a spot.

So what do you all think? Are your going to print out these charts to use at the table? Or are you keeping all this to yourself and gulping in fear when you stare down a shotgun? Is my math completely wrong? Sound off below!