Gematria Damage

Gematria damage in the Milhamah RPG is a special way of inflicting damage on a foe, immediately targeting its weakness by rolling a gematria figure on the damage dice that matches the target’s own gematria.

In combat, when rolling for damage, you may instantly reduce a character to 0 LP by successfully rolling any number of damage dice that add up (or subtract down) to his main shoresh root’s gematria. Not all rolled damage dice need to be used to reach the gematria. Unlike typical damage rolling, do not disregard zeroes on a die face when counting for gematria.

Ex. David’s character, Devorah, successfully targets Shem ‘Etzem with her spear, getting four attack successes in an opposed roll vs. Shem’s two reaction successes. Shem’s shoresh is ע-צ-מ, or 40, 90, 70 respectively, which totals 200. Shem also has 17 LP.

David rolls two dice for damage. He gets a ק-ש, or 300 and 100. While the sum of these two numbers is 400, David subtracts the two numbers instead, which totals 200 — the same number as Shem’s shoresh.

Rather than damage Shem for 2 LP, David naturally chooses to have Devorah do gematria damage, thus ramming her spear upside Shem’s head, catching him off guard and reducing his LP to 0. Now Shem has no more room for error, lest he get some serious wounds.