Ye Olde Inn

Something I read on another thread made me think of this. If you make a new artifact, or change the
artifacts already there, how do you give it special damage or defense.
For example - a sword that has special fire damage. Is that a base damage that is always there if it causes
any damage (therefore giving a minimum of 2 damage, even if you only cause 1 damage). Is that a base
damage, no matter what?

I got to thinking about special event based causes for a weapon or item to give more damage, or an armor
to give more defense.
Any one else have thoughts on this?

Event based events for extra weapon damage/armor defense
- number of skulls rolled/shields rolled
- monster's number of skulls rolled/shields rolled
- certain type of monster appears/disappears
- number of monsters in same room
- monster has certain BP (1, over 6)
- spell is cast for heroes/type of spell?
- spell is cast for monsters/types of spell?
- trap is found/set off/does damage
- hero is cornered
- monster is cornered
- hero moves more than __ spaces
- hero finds himself in certain surrounding/environment

It worx for me - 1 skull base dmg minimum should ALWAYS give unblockable magic dmg.
Monster can block the physical; that's it.

I prefer a die of bonus damage (ie. fire) to be blockable. Keep in mind that bonus skull will be applied again and again throughout a Quest. Most spells allow for cancelling some damage anyway. For instance, each of the two Body Points of damage from a Ball of Flame spell can be canceled by rolling a 5 or 6 on a red die (NA), or a white shield on a combat die (EU).

I would also allow the automatic skull result to apply to a miss. This would provide a chance for just 1 Body Point of damage, which I don't think should be skipped over. I think of it as the magic effect taking effect regardless of a physically-telling hit. In the case of a Flame Axe description, the magical flame creates a swath of heat and fire that penetrates wider and more completely than the actual Axe. Just being the intended target of such attacks puts the victim in the combat zone and subjects the target to the magical effect. This is kinda like casting a Fire of Wrath spell while simultaneously attacking with the weapon--quite a powerful combination that should be reserved for higher-level Quests. Adjusting the damage of a Flame Axe down to 3 Attack Dice plus the bonus fire die is probably a good idea here to tone down it's threat. Another option is to keep the 4 Attack Dice of a Battle Axe, but only allow the magical flame to trigger under certain circumstances like you mentioned in the OP.

The bonus skull of damage may still be defended against and cancelled. I'm fine with a defend roll doing this. In the case of a complete miss, armored defenders are more likely to cancel the single skull of magical damage than they would be able to cancel a single skull from the Fire of Wrath spell. However, should an attack score skulls anyway, then white shields will be needed to cancel them and the bonus skull of magical flame is more likely to score damage. This auto-skull Attack Die describes the blending of magic and combat pretty well, I think.