Variable actions per round system and question about DEFENSE/MENTAL DEFENSE

Hi all,

A thing I really liked in a few other games is the possibility of cinematically describing many actions to be performed in the same round, like this:

- each character can basically perform 2 actions (two moves, two attacks or one and one, or cast a spell)
- for each action he takes after these two, he has a cumulative 1 die penalty to each of his rolls until his next round

So if a character decides to move close to a wagon, fire an arrow and then take cover (3 actions), he could move and fire the arrow with no problems, but as he is also taking cover, each action/reaction he'll have to make until his next turn will be made with 1 die penalty. The same would be if he was covering, stood up to fire and then covered again.
If instead he moved, fired 2 arrows and than took cover it would have fired the first arrow with no problem, but would have taken a 1 die penalty to the second one and have a 2 die penalty to every other action/reaction until the next round due to the 4th action (cover)

As for the question: is there a precise reason for you setting DEFENCE and MENTAL DEFENCE to be different than other benchmarks? I mean, why didn't let these static values to be simply 3 times AGI or WILL score?
That way, a STR 4 char (3 dice) fighting an AGI 4 (= DEF 12) char will hit it almost 50% of the time...
As a side note, what about simply rolling for DEFENCE as your AGI score would determine for each attack (thus, using the above mentioned system, a reckless charge followed by 2 attacks will automatically leave you much more vulnerable, rolling 2 dice less for DEFENCE or giving you a flat -6 penalty) ? Maybe it could slow the pace a bit, but I think it would allow for much more variability...

IMO this kind of systems allow for very dynamic combat sequences, and very dynamic action scenes too...

What do you think?

lichmaster said:

That way, a STR 4 char (3 dice) fighting an AGI 4 (= DEF 12) char will hit it almost 50% of the time...

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There's a mistake there. Keep in mind multiple d6s are approximately a normal distribution, not a flat distribution like a normal dice roll. For 3d6 they have an average of 10.5 and a standard deviation of 2.958. If we assume its half a standard deviation out (11.979 compared to the DC 12) then there's only about a 30.85% chance to hit the target. That's less than 1 in 3, not 50/50.

Also, with regards to rolling your defence its my understanding its mostly an efficiency thing. If you rolled every time defence came up you'd increase the rolls in each round of an encounter by a factor of approximately 1.5x.

Sniperfox47 said:

There's a mistake there. Keep in mind multiple d6s are approximately a normal distribution, not a flat distribution like a normal dice roll. For 3d6 they have an average of 10.5 and a standard deviation of 2.958. If we assume its half a standard deviation out (11.979 compared to the DC 12) then there's only about a 30.85% chance to hit the target. That's less than 1 in 3, not 50/50.

Also, with regards to rolling your defence its my understanding its mostly an efficiency thing. If you rolled every time defence came up you'd increase the rolls in each round of an encounter by a factor of approximately 1.5x.

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Hmm that's right. But if we consider weapon skills (since every monster and character has at list 1 skill in a weapon), so we should factor 4d6 instead of just 3d6, and the chance than becomes approx 76 to hit DC 12...

The way it's set up currently seems pretty accurate. An average person wielding a weapon with either no or little training has just over a 50% chance to hit the average other person. On the other hand a trained person is about 87% likely to hit them the average human. And keep in mind that's not taking into account modifiers for shields, slippery footing, ect.

I didn't do all the math for the system as it is right now, for I was more concerned on the general "feeling" at first, and that exception for DEFENCE simply caught my interest, however now that you pointed it out it seems rather accurate indeed.
I'll check how it works when more dice will be thrown (10d6 seems a suspiciously narrow bell, maybe it'd be reasonable to start adding a flat value already at 5d6...)

Rollin for DEF might be let as a choice, as it increases the number of rolls required each round, but it could work with the system I described earlier: what do you think of that variant?

If you want to roll DEF as an opposed check, go right ahead! D&D has had that as an option in many iterations of the game. They're all opposed checks really; it's just some common ones are converted to flat rolls to speed up gameplay. If you don't mind longer combats, go right ahead!

Morrus said:

If you want to roll DEF as an opposed check, go right ahead! D&D has had that as an option in many iterations of the game. They're all opposed checks really; it's just some common ones are converted to flat rolls to speed up gameplay. If you don't mind longer combats, go right ahead!

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This might make for a nice little sidebar ALT rule.

lichmaster said:

- each character can basically perform 2 actions (two moves, two attacks or one and one, or cast a spell)
- for each action he takes after these two, he has a cumulative 1 die penalty to each of his rolls until his next round

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Drama isn't in the number of actions so much as in what the actions allow. If an action is defined as, "a simple movement, attack, or skill use" then your activities will look pretty simple, right?

What if an action is "6 seconds of activity?" That leaves a really large space for creativity. But it brings us to the next problem:

A player who can describe and justify more (and more dramatic) activity gets more out of the game than one who can't. Enter your parameter: apply a cumulative 1-die penalty to additional actions. This puts a damper on additional activities, but it doesn't stop them. And it enables the character with larger dice pools to do more (significantly more?) than other characters.

Important note: doing more is a lethal advantage in combat.

Doing more during your turn also divides combat into larger segments. Think about the turn-based combat system. All players can't act at once. It's too difficult for the GM to adjudicate and control. So you divide combat up into digestible segments. Well, adding more actions to a character's turn brings the game style closer to a play-by-post game than a tabletop game.

My major concern: combat loses its realism when other characters must stand still while watching one character do lots of dramatic things.

Yeah; that's a very different game. I'm not saying such a radical system couldn't work or be developed, but it's not this system!