A simple attack & damage system

[nnms]

It builds everything into one roll and the rolls share the middle die, which ties the accuracy of the attack into the damage roll. Armour can be a simple damage reduction system, with the truly best armour (say a full suit of hardened plate) can have some sort of armour save if I feel damage reduction isn't enough for something that good.

In my discussions with my friends, i don't think I advocated for the idea strongly enough. Heck, I didn't even hand them three dice and tell them to actually try it to see that ordering them from highest to lowest isn't any slower and certainly isn't any slower than figuring out how much you beat the other person by if you're both doing 2d6+stat in an opposed roll.

 

[WaroftheSendros]

I'd say stick with the 3 dice and maybe add in modifiers, such as if you are twice as skilled in combat you get an additional dice or if you are suprised you only get two dice. Similar to Malifaux's card system.

War of the Sendros

 

[nnms]

I have to be very careful when adding and subtracting dice. If you get 4 dice, your average attack value will go up, but your damage roll will actually, on average, go down. Similarly if you get two dice, your damage average will actually go up. An extra die dropping the lowest (bonus) or highest (penalty) would probably achieve the type of thing you are talking about though.

 

[Dethklok]

Right. However, you could change out the dice, one at a time, to d4s or d8s.

 

[nnms]

Now that is a great idea. I'm going to look at plots and curves of different dice size combinations and see their effect and figure out exactly how big of a modifier that is compared to just doing +1 or -1 or something.

 

[Dethklok]

I was going to say "Not much need to do that," but maybe you're not as steeped in statistical theory as I am. The long and the short of it is that:

Every increase in die size shifts the average by +1 (and increases the variance by a commensurate amount).

From your standpoint, swapping a d6 out for a single d4 will tend to reduce the damage, while introducing a single d8 will tend to increase the hit roll. Shifting them all at once will change attack and damage together.

In any system where armor is subtracted from damage dealt, changing the die rolled is a great way of altering penetration - a d4 dagger will deal almost as much damage as a d6 sword, but it will *never* penetrate an armor of 4, while the d6 sword will penetrate on a roll of 5 or higher and deal an average of 1.5 damage. (Although personally, if your smallest damage die is a d4, I'd recommend your best armor only subtract 3 points of damage - penetrating only to deal 1 damage is virtually the same as not penetrating at all.)

 

[nnms]

After looking at the math a bit, I'm not sure changing dice sizes really does anything that modifiers can't accomplish. Yeah, the standard deviation shifts slightly, but the results are already consistent enough that I'm not sure I'd want the tightening of the damage results that occurs when you drop down to a d4. With a dagger just having 1 less damage bonus, I can keep the wider range of results but still have the same average as if I incorporated a d4 in place of a d6.

This is starting to come together. Some people I know have gotten their reaper kickstarter miniatures and painting has begun. I've dug out my dungeon tiles and we'll probably do our first round of testing with almost peasants going into a lost temple to try to find the ancient idol of power for their farming community. Unfortunately for them, the dead will rise in response to their intrusion.

We've got the basic system, a range for armour and weapons, a small list of combat maneuvers and a couple of spell like effects to try out.

 

[Dethklok]

After looking at the math a bit, I'm not sure changing dice sizes really does anything that modifiers can't accomplish.

Although this post may be a bit late - it sounds like you're already past the design phase - I do want to add that I've found dice are almost always preferable to modifiers. It's easy to forget or ignore a modifier, but a die is right there in the hand. It even comes to represent the thing being used - the d8 says "sword" in almost every rpg I can think of.

 

[nnms]

We're still in the design phase in that we haven't started any testing yet. I do see what you mean about rolling a different die size being something that might be easier to remember.

The main issue I have with a dice change for modifiers is that the dice will possibly change both the hit and damage results. A d4 for a dagger means that there is one less possibility of 5 or 6 on a 1d6 in terms of accuracy (being the highest 2 of 3). 3d6, pick the highest two and 2d6,1d4, pick the highest two, just aren't the same. With a modifier, I can isolate either attack or damage or both as needed.

 

[Random Bystander]

You've created a system based on a dice roll that is not a gimmick. For that alone, you deserve congratulations. You've linked attack and damage in a very organic way, and I look forward to reading more about the new system.

To extend the dice roll into the "knowledge" skills, rolling a Knowledge:Orcs check could return a number of descriptors, such as "Green", "Large", "Smelly", "Barbarian", "Cannibal", "Librarians". The "To-Hit" roll would determine how many descriptors are returned; the "Damage" roll would determine how many of those descriptors are correct (distributed randomly).