Resolution mechanics with more complex results?

[Ilja]

Didn't know how to title the post well.

I'm currently trying to make a homebrew 'mecha game, based on the BattleTech rules but streamlined and simplified a bit.

The game will use both to hit rolls and hit locations, and I'd prefer the same resolution mechanic to give a result to both.


In the normal BattleTech rules, you first roll 2d6 vs skill plus any difficulties (being good = having a low skill number) to hit, and if you hit you roll 2d6 to see where you hit from a table. I want to condence those two resolutions into one, though the same numbers and distributions don't need to be used.
I'd prefer it to be quickly and easily understandable for each roll, since there are going to be a lot


Currently, the only reasonable idea I've come up with is using a deck of cards, the numbers 1-10 of each suit. This means when you attack, you flip the top side of the card and the number shows your to-hit-roll (1d10 instead of 2d6) and the suit shows where you hit if you hit (from four different possible hit locations).
The system seems functional, though not beautiful (it could look quite decent with home-made customized cards though), and so I thought I'd ask here for suggestions/input.
So, what's your suggestions?
P.S. I realize you can roll the standard 2d6 and 2d6 at the same time, but since after that you will often have to roll 2d6 to determine if there's a critical hit and if that's the case 1d6 or 2d6 (depends on location) to determine what the crit does, it becomes a lot of different dice rolls with a lot of different color coding needed, and thus I'm looking at alternate options.

 

[dbm]

Have you seen the One Roll Engine at all? As the name suggests, it's designed so only one roll is needed, resolving both hit resolution and location.

There are several game based of the ORE engine. Here's the (short) Wikipedia entry:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Roll_Engine

Maybe you could mash something up to achieve the result you are looking for?

 

[Ilja]

That's... Really, really interesting. Honestly, that's the coolest system I've seen in quite a while. Not sure how to alter it to work for this, but it was a very interesting read.

Any ideas on how to adjust it? What I need is decent granularity in the to-hit part of the roll (which I guess would be the width?) to accomodate for a decent amount of modifiers (such as distance, movement etc). Or perhaps that could be done through adjusting the dice pool, like, if you shoot at long range, you have one less dice?

So, say that you roll a pool of d4 dice equal to skill+modifiers (where modifiers will mostly but not always be negative). You need a width of two to hit, and the height determines hit location. If you get several pairs, you can choose one of them.
That's really cool, actually. Could theoretically even use customized d4's with the numbers replaced with hit location markers or colors, if I could get my hand on such a thing. It's clearly better than the card mechanic, though I'll still keep my eyes open for other options; the more options I know about, the better chances of making it good. Thanks a lot!

EDIT: Another option would be to go with 6 hit locations and customized d6's, since I know where to get my hands on "empty" d6's. They could easily be color-coded. The drawback of going with d6's, apart from the increased complexity of additional hit locations, is that you also require a higher number of dice rolled since the chance of rolling a pair is far smaller with d6's... Which can of course also be a benefit, since higher granularity.

 

[dbm]

I'm not an expert on the system, but collecting systems is kind of my hobby.

The core rules have a hit chart where each value is a different location. It's a dice pool system with penalty dice for difficulties. As long as you can whip up a chart with suitable mech locations I think you would be good to go.

Another thing about the system is that you can mix speed with accuracy, too, as part of the skill system. Could be effective for handling competitive mech driving situations.

 

[Ilja]

Preferably I want to minimize the amount of charts; the vanilla rules are basically "Charts & Tables, Tabletop Accounting in the 31st Century" (or well, not that bad, but it certainly has a component of it).

Right now, I'm considering keeping the 4 hit sections, and using customized d6's, painted in various colors.
2 sides are black, for body.
2 sides are white, for legs.
1 side is green, for right/starboard.
1 side is red, for left/port.
I'll buy empty white dice at the local sci fi store, and paint them myself.

When making a check, you roll a number of dice equal to your skill (default is four, a veteran would have 5 and a greenie 3, having 6 would be awesome) plus/minus dice depending on modifiers; short range is +1 dice, long range is -1 dice, having jumped is -1 dice and so on.

If you get a pair with the same color, you hit that location. If you get several pairs, you may choose which hit to use. If you roll four of the same color, it's an automatic critical (as is any hit that damages the internal structure past the armor). For critical hits, you roll a standard d6 and consult a critical slot chart. Since this is a numbered dice, it can be rolled together with the color dice and just ignored if it isn't a critical.

I really think this might be a great solution. It requires minimal math - just determining the dice pool size using a short list of common modifiers.

Though I might have to adjust the color coding to open up to people with issues of differenting red/green from each other. Though I really like the starboard/port solution, since it's easy to remember and makes the 'mechs feel like ships ^^

 

[dbm]

I would have two questions on that:
1) What happens if you don't get any pairs? This is definitely a real possibility with low skilled combatants.
2) How will you distribute colours versus numbers? If the numbers are universally higher = better then you really want some other coding for your hit locations to give it any meaning.

You could add coloured dots to the dice, with two or even three different coloured dots on every face, then use the highest occuring colour as the target location? Depending on how you distribute the dots that could give an interesting variation?

ETA: Note that, generally people don't like custom dice systems as they stop them using the own, personal dice.

 

[Ilja]

I would have two questions on that:
1) What happens if you don't get any pairs? This is definitely a real possibility with low skilled combatants.
2) How will you distribute colours versus numbers? If the numbers are universally higher = better then you really want some other coding for your hit locations to give it any meaning.

You could add coloured dots to the dice, with two or even three different coloured dots on every face, then use the highest occuring colour as the target location? Depending on how you distribute the dots that could give an interesting variation?

ETA: Note that, generally people don't like custom dice systems as they stop them using the own, personal dice.

1. You miss. Missing should be a high risk, especially if unskilled or shooting in disadvantageous situations (shooting at long range vs a moving light 'mech for example). Though most 'mechs will have two or three different attacks, so there's a decent chance of hitting with _something_, at least.
2. I don't get the question really? There'll be a 2/6 to roll for body or legs respectively, and 1/6 for each arm. This replaces the standard method of rolling 2d6 and consulting a table. There's no universally "better" or "worse" place to hit, it depends a lot on circumstance, though you generally want to hit as much as possible in a single location and avoid spreading the damage out if possible. Higher skill will make it more likely that the pilot can control where the damage ends up; they can take advantage of more openings.

The only numbers involved at all would be in the number of dice used, as well as a single d6 for determining which critical hit effect happens if you're critically hit. Each hit location has six "slots", so for example, the "left side" location of an Atlas AS7-D would contain something like 1. Arm Actuator; 2. Heatsink; 3 Heatsink; 4 LRM-20; 5 Medium Laser; 6 LRM ammunition. It has 20 points of armor and 15 points of internal structure.

So for an example, let's say I'm piloting a heavy 'mech known as the Grasshopper GHR-5H, and have managed to jump in right behind the assault 'mech known as the Atlas AS7-D (mentioned above). The Grasshoppers main weapons are a Large Laser and a set of four Medium Lasers. I'm already running pretty hot from previous firing and jumping, so I'll opt just to use the Medium Lasers which together do 8 damage.
Let's say my skill is 4, and I'm firing at close range so +1, and at the back of the enemy 'mech so +1, but I've jumped this round so -1. So I roll 5 colored d6's and one regular d6. Let's say hypothetically two of them come up red, so I hit the left side. The left side is already pretty stripped of armor, so my hit goes through the last remaining armor and tear into the internal structure. Since it hurts the internal structure, it scores a critical hit, and I look at my rolled regular d6, which shows 4. Then I look at the atlas sheet and see that 4 means I've critically hit the LRM-20, which is great. The long-range missiles are destroyed, and the atlas has lost a lot of punch.

EDIT: On your edit, that may be different from area to area; I've only met two people ever who insisted on using their own dice, and both of those were in WoD. And of course magic players love their personal life counters. But in other games I've rather met the opposite, people prefer if the game arranger/gm has dice for everybody xD.

 

[GMMichael]

Dark Heresy uses a cool rule for hit location, but I'm not fully remembering it...

Your to-hit number is going to be somewhere from 1-100. They couldn't use the actual roll, because it would mean that more successful rolls always migrated to a certain hit location, depending on the table.

For example, if 90-100 results were usually a hit, and that same range corresponded to headshots, then that would make headshots unusually common.

So they said, just flip the digits, and that's your hit location. Since there's a little more variety in the ones digit, that helped to spread hits out more. This does require a table, but with a little tinkering your table could simply be ten locations, one for each digit.

 

[Hyper-Man]

Why not just roll 4 dice, 2 of 1 color and 2 of a different color and just define ahead of time which is for "To Hit" and for "Hit Location"?

 

[Ilja]

Dark Heresy uses a cool rule for hit location, but I'm not fully remembering it...

Your to-hit number is going to be somewhere from 1-100. They couldn't use the actual roll, because it would mean that more successful rolls always migrated to a certain hit location, depending on the table.

For example, if 90-100 results were usually a hit, and that same range corresponded to headshots, then that would make headshots unusually common.

So they said, just flip the digits, and that's your hit location. Since there's a little more variety in the ones digit, that helped to spread hits out more. This does require a table, but with a little tinkering your table could simply be ten locations, one for each digit.

That's a cool and smart solution. Granted it seems unnecessarily complex for this as you only want four locations and would still need a secondary roll for critical locations (or more mathyness separating the 4 hit locations into a list of 24 crit locations, but then again, longer table...).

I'll keep that method in mind for other projects, but at this time I think the solution mentioned above, based in the ORE system dbm linked to.

Why not just roll 4 dice, 2 of 1 color and 2 of a different color and just define ahead of time which is for "To Hit" and for "Hit Location"?

See the first post; want to make a smoother system than the existing, and together with crit rolls it'd be more like 2d6, 2d6, 1d6, 1d6. Also, more math, referring to tables and less intuitive than color coding.