Talk:Combat Mechanics

From Shape Shifter

Bonus Penalty Thoughts

Over the years, role playing games have tended to refine the rules to make it simpler for people to learn and remember the nuances of playing. One of those "mantras" is to change all numbers to the "higher is better" philosophy. I am torn on the matter. Simplicity of design does appeal to me, but then there are certain situations where "higher is better" does not feel right.

For example, take the idea of weapon speeds. I like the idea of a fighter wielding a large heavy two handed sword swings and attacks at a slower speed then a quick thief wielding a dagger. The natural (to me) way of dealing with this would be to have the two handed sword to have a negative effect on initiative (say -1 for the dagger, -6 for the sword, just to throw out some numbers) But if you wanted to really stick to the "higher is better" mantra, you would reverse your scale. A two handed sword would have a +1 to the initiative roll, versus a dagger having +6 for a dagger.

Dicey Combat Discussion with Frank

Frank and I talked about utilzing a different system to determine success and failure. The basic idea would be to always want to roll low. For some reason this goes against my sensibilities for rolling to hit (there is just something intrinsic to rolling a 20 on the d20). The second part to this idea is that the player would roll an additional die if the target was harder than normal. 1d20 + 1d4 for slightly difficult, 1d20 + 1d6 for challenging targets, etc...

So.. the players would still have a target of 10, they would add all their bonuses to hit and that would be added to the target. Then they would have to roll under that number on the d20. (or d20 + some other die for harder tasks)

I think it would simplify things for the Dungeon Master, as he could just say... Hey, this dragon is hard to hit, you need to roll an additional d10 as a penalty.

But ultimately, I think the idea is just too different from what we have played in the past and won't go over well.

Couple more thoughts on the subject... It would be easy enough to say you suffer a 1d4 penalty on your hit roll and then subtract that from what you would roll on a 1d20. I think one of the reasons rolling an extra die appeals to me is that it HAS to be done at the same time as they player rolls. For some odd reason, I don't like the current situation where I say something like "Hey, you need a 14 to hit this orc". And then the player says, well I have +2 to hit against orcs, so I only need a 12, and then proceeds to roll. Whereas if they had a bonus of 1d4 to hit, it would force them to do the calculation after the roll. Why do I like this better? I have no good answer to that.

Combat From First Play Test

I personally have not thought through the effect of making all player's THAC0 10. In the old game, armor had the effect of making you harder to hit, and it worked in reverse. (The lower the AC the better). In effect, at first level, a player would typically have a THAC0 of 19 and would be facing opponents with AC of 5 to 9. This would mean they would need 10 or higher for easy opponents, and 14 or higher for harder opponents.

So in the new game, if we still used chain mail as AC 5 and cloth as AC 1 (reversing the AC values), then the players would need a 11 or higher for easy opponents, and 15 or higher for harder opponents.

But armor no longer makes the wearer harder to hit.

Also, with all the powers available to a beginning player, there are sure to be numerous bonuses to hit an opponent.

The second encounter was against a hill giant with 60 HP, 0 AC. He made 3 ranged attacks with a boulder. An attack can hit multiple players. Boulder would do 6d6 unless a player made a dexterity check, in which case it was reduced to 3d6. After players closed in, he attacked with a tree club that did 2d6 damage.

Players made short work of the giant, but then it was 5 against 1. And their were some lucky breaks. Richter rolled a 1 on a dexterity check and so took no damage from a boulder throw. The giant rolled a 1 on an attack roll and then failed a dexterity check, so he fumbled his tree club.