Static defensive battles turn in to one big My-AB(attack bonus)-is-Bigger-than-your-AC fest. I am constantly playing with power gammers who love to add as many bonuses as they can to their weapons and armor. this in turn leads me to make creatures with higher and higher AC and AB. they are personally insulted when they do not hit or if they get hit, even though I tell them there is no adventure if they have no fear of fighting battles that they might lose if they play wrong. (I really need to DM for a different crowd but they are my friends and they like my DMing despite their complaints about being hit).

At low levels this is not too bad 14-16+ is still a hit and one or two hits will kill the enemy, but as we play campaigns that get them up in to the double digit lv’s the number of attacks they make increase, their AB increases and their AC increases; which leads me to fights where no one hits unless they get a 19+. On top of that, everyones HP has gone up so much that even when you get that 2-in-20 hit, it still takes 10 of them to kill the enemy. which leads to 6 hour sessions where all you accomplish is finishing the fight you started last time. Not to mention it takes 10-15 minutes per player per round, so that the other 5 player sit there and wait for their next action (and some of them even spend time thinking about what that action will be….some of them…)

MY Proposition:
so, I would like to make combat more interactive and quicker. I like the over all game mechanics of D&D more than any other system I have played so I don’t want to play a new game. on top of that I don’t like how other games chose one type of dice and make everything based on a d6 or a d10; D&D does a fair job of incorporating all the dice sizes. Still I want to overhaul the combat system, and here is where I need input from all you experienced DM’s.

I would like attacks to have a d6 base from the attackers perspective. if the defender has an advantage or disadvantage then he would roll an oppose roll of a dice size either bigger or smaller respectively than the d6. The attacker too would get an upgrade or downgrade of dice size if the advantage or disadvantage was his and not the defenders. the lowest dice size for the sake of this system would be a d2 and the biggest would be a d100. so a lv 1 fighter attacking a lv 20 (or a lv 10 for that matter) dragon would use a d2 to hit and the dragon would roll a d100 to defend. thus the only way that fighter would hit that dragon is if the dragon trips and falls on the fighters sword (aka the fighter rolls a 2 and the dragon rolls a critical miss of a 1). conversely, the only way the dragon would not hit the fighter is if the fighter rolls a 2 and the dragon gets distracted by a random princess running by (rolls a 1). (the ABs and AC bonuses are a factor as well but I am using an extreme case to
make the point).

now before I blather on incoherently any more, I am going to post what I have and see if any of you even think I am worth responding to. I have more Ideas on how to implement the existing feats and skills into this but I would like some feedback on the basics first.

And you’d need some kind of ‘judge opponent’ skill or perhaps feat for PCs to notice that an enemy was all of a sudden screwing up his defense.. It doesn’t seem right to make it free information, and it would take too long in major battles to describe everyone’s defensive condition each round.

With a mechanic like that added, I’m starting to like the idea of defense rolls. “Do I attack the orc that’s low on HP, but seems to be defending himself really well this turn? Or do I go for the less injured guy that’s totally leaving himself wide open?”

Should a defender who rolls under 10 be considered “flat-footed” — the equivalent of losing their Dex bonus to their AC — and thus be vulnerable to a rogue’s Sneak Attack (among other things).

It was just a thought I had on the drive into work today.

For one, it takes a lot of the joy out of a good attack roll. A player can roll a 3 to hit (low is good), and still miss. The next player can just barely make their attack check, but still hit the same opponent.

Similarly, it can hurt the party. The group lost what should have been a fairly straightforward tourney battle after three players botched their defense checks. It was frustrating for all concerned, especially since it’s rather hard to fudge and say “He didn’t hit” when the player says “I rolled a 19 on my dodge” for the second time in a row.

On the flip side, it can lead to great moments – one party’s assassin who repeatedly rolled 2s and 3s for her dodges comes to mind. Then there was the security guard, blinded in the first round of combat, who continued to roll 2s and 3s on his defense checks for the remainder of the combat, despite being unable to hit anyone.

When I play D&D, I enjoy the chance to just relax and know that a 19 means I hit. While it can be disheartening to hear “He hits you” without rolling any dice myself, Iron Heroes at least lets you roll armor, which puts some of your defense in your hands/dice.

I guess what it really comes down to for me, is that some systems, like tri-stat, have curved probability and opposed rolls. Some, like D&D, have linear probability and a lot of static rolls. Since I get the opportunity to play both, I’d rather enjoy each for what they offer.

1 divide hp by 5 to find break points
2 use use modified dice for all “d20″ rolls (attack, defense, saves, skills, etc).
3 the target number remains the same it just gets harder to achieve
4 this works on a bell curve so crit values have been adjusted

HP 100-81% d10 d10 crit 19-20 fail 2-4
HP 80-61% d10 d8 crit 16-18 fail 2-4
HP 60-41% d8 d8 crit 15-16 fail 2-3
HP 40-21% d8 d6 crit 13-14 fail 2-3
HP 20-0% d6 d6 crit 11-12 fail 2-3

this system is a little more work for the dm but we just round the monster hp down to the closest 5 and let excel do the math for us.
It also means the big bad fighter isnt going to be as efective when he is low on hp as he was at the start of combat,

But the 3d6 thing… hmm. Basically, bell curves make the modifiers more important. I was close to making Skill checks be 3d6 rolls for D&D 3.5 (since skills don’t ‘crit’, and I don’t feel skills should have a linear probability).

I like the 3d6 mechanic, if it could be properly implemented (say, AC = 3d6 plus modifiers). Attackers could use d20s, or 3d6 as well, if you really wanted to get ‘average’.

When my character got hit by a baddie in D&D, I always felt sort of like my character was a wooden plank. The game system builds a certain expectation that every time you _do_ something (that has a reasonable chance of failing), you roll. When I don’t roll, I feel like I’m not doing anything.

At least if I rolled for defense before getting hit, I’d feel like I was participating, making an attempt to shield myself or parry. And too, I get a sense, perhaps, of how well I defended myself (or how poorly). That can go a long way to painting a dramatic picture of the action in one’s mind.

Plus, in a 3d6 vs 3d6 system, the combatant with the better skill tends to win more often, though there’s still some room for heroics and luck. Sure, it takes time for the players to get used to combat mechanics, but adding a dice roll here and there, or making a 3d6 rather than a 1d20 roll, shouldn’t have a significant affect on time or complexity once everyone’s used to it.

There are game types where less rolls is better, I won’t dispute that (games that abstract the details out at a higher level). Certainly if you have 8 people playing in a game at one time (that’s 4 too many for my preference) then you need to find ways to steal time.

Consider this: You excitedly roll a high 18, only to be nerfed because the enemy got a lucky high roll too. The effect is essentially bestowing a random attack bonus or penalty between +9 and -10.

3d6 helps with the randomness, but not with the time-consuming aspect. More rolling actually means more work to achieve the same goal. Compared to the traditional method, you have to add four numbers (three dice plus bonus) rather than look up a number, and that’s going to slow combat.

There’s no way I could implement this in my current game, though. Chat-based combats take long enough as it is…

MidThreeD20 is better than 3d6 (this idea came from RPG Create IIRC)
http://www.ironfort.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MidThreeD20

PlayerOnlyRolls because if you use MidThreeD20 opposed is not needed.
http://www.ironfort.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PlayerOnlyRolls

Regards
DaveF