d20 Variant Combat System - Learn how to kill goblins all over again!

[sorites]

I've been working on my own RPG (d20 variant) for a while now, and I'd like to share my thoughts on an alternate approach to combat and damage.

I know that in d20 hit points are an abstraction and are good at what they do, but I wanted to see what it would be like to ditch hp and try something different. I wanted to use a system that reflected the fact that you are less effective when you have a minor wound as opposed to say, when you've been stabbed repeatedly. ("It's just a flesh wound!" "No it's not! Your arm's off!")

What I've come up with a mixture of ideas with d20 at the core. It's a skill-based combat system that I think is easy and fun while offering a moderate amount of complexity.

I'll lay out the basics, but you can check out the full thing here:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...ZjE3YS00NmRiLTg4Y2UtMjlkZjY0YzI2YzRl&hl=en_US



Health Track - You have a health track instead of hit points. It ranges from Light to Moderate to Serious to Critical to Unconscious/Dying. You take a cumulative -1 penalty for each wound stage you hit.

[ ] Unconscious/Dying
[ ] Critical Wound (-4)
[ ]
[ ]
[ ] Serious Wound (-3)
[ ]
[ ]
[ ] Moderate Wound (-2)
[ ]
[ ] Light Wound (-1)

Weapons - Each weapon has a damage value of Light, Moderate, Serious, Critical, or Deadly. Weapons also have a Parry rating, which is added to your Parry AC if you are using a weapon in which you're trained.

Armor Class - Touch AC, Dodge AC, Block AC, and Parry AC are all available to characters. Most monsters have Natural AC. Depending on the attack, the defender might be allowed to choose which AC to use for defense.

Combat Skills - Instead of a BAB, you have combat skills like Martial Weapons and Throwing, which you can increase as you level up.

Attack Roll - To make an attack, roll a d20 + combat skill + ability modifier + situational modifiers. Compare your result to your opponent's chosen AC. For each five by which you exceed the defender's AC, you increase the weapon's base damage one stage. For example, a dagger does Light damage. If you get a total of 20 and the defender's AC was 15, you staged up the damage to Moderate. If you had gotten a 25, you would have staged it up to Serious.

Resolve Damage - To resolve damage, the defender makes a saving throw with a target DC equal to the attacker's attack roll. If the defender succeeds, he stages the damage down. For each five by which he exceeds the attacker's result, he stages the damage down again. For example, if the attacker had rolled a 20 and dealt Moderate damage, and the defender gets a total of 22 on his save, he lowers the damage from Moderate to Light. Then he records a Light wound on his character sheet.


----
Thoughts?

 

[JamesonCourage]

Just skimmed over the combat system. and thoroughly read the example (checked out stuff as I had questions... Parry rating is added to AC as the Parry rating of the weapon or the skill of the weapon, whatever is less?). It looks pretty good to me. You have what people call a "death spiral" in your game. The more you get hurt, the harder it is to defend yourself, so the more you get hurt, etc. I like it, but many people don't.

If you want, we can grab my paladin/monk, and try a combat with him sometime, but as it stands now, the system looks pretty clear to me. I like gritty games, and this definitely seems grittier than D&D.

 

[Living Legend]

Have you playtested this much? I can see two thing that might come up during gameplay, so if you have tested this I would wonder:

1. During gameplay how hard is it to get players to remember the wound penalties?

2. How hard is it to track the wounds for all the enemies?

I think that some features of 4e (marks and curses) were good in terms of design, but problematic during play. I wish they would have engineered out these issues early on, cuz it's too late now. These two elements could pose similar problems in your game, but I do have to say that just looking at your rules I think you have a solid mechanic here.

As long as combat flows well (hopefully the extra rolls don't slow things down too much) and the feel is still right (PC's aren't dying left and right or combats aren't lasting forever) your biggest problem is probably going to be people who are used to playing the regular d20 rules forgetting some of your rules and messing up the math on some rolls.

good luck.

 

[sorites]

Just skimmed over the combat system. and thoroughly read the example (checked out stuff as I had questions... Parry rating is added to AC as the Parry rating of the weapon or the skill of the weapon, whatever is less?). It looks pretty good to me. You have what people call a "death spiral" in your game. The more you get hurt, the harder it is to defend yourself, so the more you get hurt, etc. I like it, but many people don't.

If you want, we can grab my paladin/monk, and try a combat with him sometime, but as it stands now, the system looks pretty clear to me. I like gritty games, and this definitely seems grittier than D&D.

The idea is that some weapons are better than others for defense, but they're still only as good as the wielder. So if you have two fighters wielding longswords and one has a Martial Weapons skill of 2 and the other a skill of 9, the one with the 9 will be better at parrying. So the Parry rating of the weapon is the *max* skill rating that can be added to Parry AC. The newbie fighter would have a Parry AC of 10+Armor+2(skill) and the advanced fither would have a 10+Armor+8(skill). Longsword has a Max Parry rating of 8, so the advanced fighter only gets to add 8 to his Parry AC.

As for the death spiral . . . I see what you mean. Since the penalty only applies to rolls, it does not actually lower your AC. You are just as hard to hit when unwounded as when critically wounded, but it is harder to pull off your saving throws, so you are less likely to stage damage down and will therefore potentially die more quickly. I thought about making saves immune to penalties to fix the problem, but to me, it makes sense that a penalty from being wounded would make it more difficult to Reflex away from an attack. I could see making the Fort save immune to wound penalties. That would mean that Block AC and its accompanying Fort save would never decrease in effectiveness as a result of wounds, and neither would Parry AC and its Fort save.

Have you playtested this much? I can see two thing that might come up during gameplay, so if you have tested this I would wonder:

1. During gameplay how hard is it to get players to remember the wound penalties?

2. How hard is it to track the wounds for all the enemies?

I think that some features of 4e (marks and curses) were good in terms of design, but problematic during play. I wish they would have engineered out these issues early on, cuz it's too late now. These two elements could pose similar problems in your game, but I do have to say that just looking at your rules I think you have a solid mechanic here.

As long as combat flows well (hopefully the extra rolls don't slow things down too much) and the feel is still right (PC's aren't dying left and right or combats aren't lasting forever) your biggest problem is probably going to be people who are used to playing the regular d20 rules forgetting some of your rules and messing up the math on some rolls.

good luck.

I have playtested it in my head.

See, my guess is that the hardest thing will be to remember what the attacker rolled. Because the defender has to use that number as the DC for his saving throw. I honestly think the would penalty will be remembered because it applies to every roll while the character is wounded (so it has great consistency). Tracking the condition of each enemy might be a little bit of a pain -- as you say, testing is needed.

--

One aspect of this that might not be readily apparent is that Parry AC (which is based on weapon skill) can be improved as the character levels up, but Dodge AC (which is based on Dex) and Block AC (which is based on your shield) do not improve, or at least not nearly as much. Also, Parry AC cannot be used against ranged attacks, so at high levels, the archer will have the advantage. If I instituted the idea above concerning Fort, it would mean that Block AC would be the most reliable AC since it never decreases in effectiveness due to wound penalties and it can be used equally well against both melee and ranged attacks. I personally find this nuanced level of detail fine--I think complexity can be enjoyable. I'm wondering if some might find it unbalanced.

 

[JamesonCourage]

The idea is that some weapons are better than others for defense, but they're still only as good as the wielder. So if you have two fighters wielding longswords and one has a Martial Weapons skill of 2 and the other a skill of 9, the one with the 9 will be better at parrying. So the Parry rating of the weapon is the *max* skill rating that can be added to Parry AC. The newbie fighter would have a Parry AC of 10+Armor+2(skill) and the advanced fither would have a 10+Armor+8(skill). Longsword has a Max Parry rating of 8, so the advanced fighter only gets to add 8 to his Parry AC.

Yep, it works like I thought it did. It makes sense to me. Are you capping skills at rank 10 (or 11 for epic)? If so, 8 is pretty high! That's not a bad thing, I'm just saying that as people get higher martial skills, they might gravitate towards certain weapons. That is, if they want to parry, which certainly isn't the only defense.

As for the death spiral . . . I see what you mean. Since the penalty only applies to rolls, it does not actually lower your AC. You are just as hard to hit when unwounded as when critically wounded, but it is harder to pull off your saving throws, so you are less likely to stage damage down and will therefore potentially die more quickly. I thought about making saves immune to penalties to fix the problem, but to me, it makes sense that a penalty from being wounded would make it more difficult to Reflex away from an attack. I could see making the Fort save immune to wound penalties. That would mean that Block AC and its accompanying Fort save would never decrease in effectiveness as a result of wounds, and neither would Parry AC and its Fort save.

Death spirals make sense to me, and I enjoy games with them in it, but you are correct, it doesn't affect your AC with your system. Personally, I'm okay with its current implementation (that was there's no exceptions you have to remember), but you can change it if you like it more.

It makes sense for you to slow down when injured, so Reflexes could well be hit by it. Now, when you're rolling Fortitude saves to reduce damage, how do you imagine that happening? Depending on how that works, it may or may not make sense for it to get penalized as well. Is it throwing force behind the shield, or just being better at deflecting blows, altering a blow that would otherwise be much worse? I could see you having a lot less force or reaction speed if you're injured.

I have playtested it in my head.

See, my guess is that the hardest thing will be to remember what the attacker rolled. Because the defender has to use that number as the DC for his saving throw. I honestly think the would penalty will be remembered because it applies to every roll while the character is wounded (so it has great consistency). Tracking the condition of each enemy might be a little bit of a pain -- as you say, testing is needed.

I don't know if that's much harder than hit points. If you have an enemy that's injured, instead of marking down "-12 hit points" when he's lost 12 hit points, you mark down "-5 wound, -2 rolls". Yes, you need to remember to factor in their penalty, which is something you need to remember, but I don't think tracking itself is much of an issue.

One aspect of this that might not be readily apparent is that Parry AC (which is based on weapon skill) can be improved as the character levels up, but Dodge AC (which is based on Dex) and Block AC (which is based on your shield) do not improve, or at least not nearly as much. Also, Parry AC cannot be used against ranged attacks, so at high levels, the archer will have the advantage. If I instituted the idea above concerning Fort, it would mean that Block AC would be the most reliable AC since it never decreases in effectiveness due to wound penalties and it can be used equally well against both melee and ranged attacks. I personally find this nuanced level of detail fine--I think complexity can be enjoyable. I'm wondering if some might find it unbalanced.

If all of the ACs are perfectly balanced numerically, some people will complain that it's not balanced. On the flip side, some ACs may never get much use if the other ACs are too good. Why would I use my dodge AC unless I have to if my parry AC scales with my weapon? Why would I use a shortsword over a longsword if both the damage an the parry rating is better?

Now, I'm okay with a system that has certain things be blatantly better than others. Yes, a longsword is better at parrying and damaging than a dagger, but a dagger is easier to hide, or is lighter, can potentially be thrown, etc. However, as it stands, a longsword looks better than a shortsword. The question is, do you want people gravitating towards longswords? If you don't mind, it's fine. If you don't want that, I'd suggest changing it.

 

[sorites]

Why would I use my dodge AC unless I have to if my parry AC scales with my weapon?

You probably wouldn't. However, as a caster, you might not have a good weapon skill, and some weapons like bows won't have a Parry rating; so Parry AC won't be available to all characters all of the time. In part, it's a way of differentiating melee characters from others. It makes it so they are good at defending themselves in melee combat, unlike the wizard and the archer.

Why would I use a shortsword over a longsword if both the damage an the parry rating is better?

I still need to do the crunch on weapons, but as with d20, certain weapons will most likely be seen as superior. But not all characters would have all weapons available. For example, to sneak attack or quick draw, you have to use a light weapon, so that's one reason I'd be using a short sword. I have also been thinking about character size, and I am thinking about doing something like the way 3.0 handled it. But that might also be a reason -- as a small character I might be able to use a short sword without penalty.

 

[JamesonCourage]

You probably wouldn't. However, as a caster, you might not have a good weapon skill, and some weapons like bows won't have a Parry rating; so Parry AC won't be available to all characters all of the time. In part, it's a way of differentiating melee characters from others. It makes it so they are good at defending themselves in melee combat, unlike the wizard and the archer.

That makes sense to me.

I still need to do the crunch on weapons, but as with d20, certain weapons will most likely be seen as superior. But not all characters would have all weapons available. For example, to sneak attack or quick draw, you have to use a light weapon, so that's one reason I'd be using a short sword. I have also been thinking about character size, and I am thinking about doing something like the way 3.0 handled it. But that might also be a reason -- as a small character I might be able to use a short sword without penalty.

Okay, if there will be paths that require certain weapon types, that helps make an argument for "balance" between the weapons. Again, I'm just bringing up questions to help you balance the system the way you like it.

Personally, I didn't like 3.0's take on weapons, if only because the grip size would be too different. That is, if you had a dagger for a huge-sized giant, it'd be a large sword to a medium creature? However, the grip for the dagger would have had to be large enough to fit the huge-sized giant, who is standing 25 feet tall. Yes, that dagger will be about as large as a large sword, but the grip will be much more... round, we'll say, than a regular large sword for a medium creature. But that's just preference.

At any rate, I'm just trying to give productive feedback. As always, play what you like

 

[sorites]

the grip size would be too different

Hmm... Good point.

At any rate, I'm just trying to give productive feedback. As always, play what you like

And I appreciate it. You bring good food for thought. Thanks.

 

[Living Legend]

Sounds like you need to playtest. I'm sure that as people play regularly they will get the AC's figured out and if there are any problems there they should stand out. I think you really need to get a feel for combat and how it flows at the table.

When I first started testing my system I had a few mechanics I was married to... and after a little time at the table I realized some of them worked just as I hoped, and some had to go because they slowed things down or just didn't work for some players. As you said remembering that attack roll could be a problem, but the only way to really know is to start testing.