A simple attack & damage system

[nnms]

Summary:

Roll 3d6
Add the highest two together = your attack roll
Add the lowest two together = your damage roll

Add modifiers to the first for skill & situation
Add modifiers to the 2nd for weapon & strength

If 2 dice are 6s, that's a critical.
Critical does double damage after all modifiers (yes, that's a minimum of 14 damage with no modifiers)

Normal person probably has around 10 HP.
Some sort of defense value based on skill, agility, etc.,.
Armour and superhuman toughness would reduce damage

Design goals:

Minimize number of times dice are rolled
Incorporate a bell curve
Allow for critical hits that are truly dangerous
Deadly if you aren't either highly skilled or heavily armoured.

Example of use:

Jorgi found himself walking home after his first duty shift on his first assignment after being conscripted into the King's Levy. He trained with the spear and got used to marching around wearing leather armour and carrying a shield. As we was nearing his home, a rebel peasant accosts him, shouting "All servants of the tyrant must die!"

Jorgi wins initiative (however that works) and raises his shield and readies his spear. The peasant charges, triggering Jorgi's readied spear attack (so maybe the system will have readied actions). Jorgi has a skill of 1 and his spear has a damage modifier of +2. The rebel has never been trained and has a defense of 8. Jorgi rolls: 1, 5, 3. So the 5 and the 3 make 8, +1 = 9, which is a hit. 1 and 3 combine to make 4, plus 2 for it being a spear, for a total of 6 of 10 hit points that the rebel has. But the rebel is wearing a leather jerkin and takes a point less of damage.

The peasant extricates himself from the spear and assuming he passes some sort of check for either passing out or losing heart for the injury (maybe I'll have something like that), he does his best to side step the spear and swing his table leg into Jorgi's head. He's not skilled at all and has no bonus to hit, but his is strong (+2) and his club is worth a further +1.

Jorgi is unskilled with the shield and can only really hold it between him and the peasant and hope for the best, so he gets +1 to his defense for the shield. And while he spent a bit of time drilling in moving up and stabbing target dummies, he didn't really drill any sort of parrying or getting out of the way. His defense, with the shield, is 9.

The roll: 3, 6, 2. So that's 9, which hits, and damage is 5, plus 3 for 8 total. But Jorgi is wearing boiled leather armour and has a good helmet, for 2 points of armour. He takes 6 damage. Assuming he stays in the fight, he's now fighting for his life!

Perhaps there is another initiative roll, but either way Jorgi goes next. He attacks and gets a 6, 2, 6. So that's a critical hit with 2 sixes! 2 + 6 = 8 damage, + 2 for the spear is 10, doubled is 20! The rebel collapses and dies as the spear pierces his heart for 19 damage (putting the rebel at -14, whatever that means exactly, it's probably dead).

I intentionally didn't put the die rolls in any particular order to give you a sense for the tiny bit of work it is to mentally have to put the dice in order from highest to lowest, which is potentially the biggest weakness of the system.

Other options

1) Simultaneous combat. If you roll dice against someone and they aren't distracted or otherwise unable to fight back, they roll against you. Apply highest attack result first and only apply the second if the character making it is still standing.

2) One fighting stat. If there isn't a separate attack and defense, simultaneous combat can simply be highest wins.

3) Crits are 2 sixes out of 3 like above, but you don't double damage, you just add all three dice as your damage roll. So the lowest a crit will do is 13 damage + weapon + strength, always felling the average person as long as you're wielding a lethal weapon of some sort.

 

[Dethklok]

Roll 3d6
Add the highest two together = your attack roll
Add the lowest two together = your damage roll

It took me a moment to get the point of this. This isn't bad! Almost no systems I know of link attack success and damage. It might be better to add modifiers to all three dice, which would allow skillful warriors to deal more damage and more wieldy weapons to have a better chance to hit. But that could turn out to be fiddly or difficult to implement.

If 2 dice are 6s, that's a critical.
Critical does double damage after all modifiers (yes, that's a minimum of 14 damage with no modifiers)

Normal person probably has around 10 HP.
Some sort of defense value based on skill, agility, etc.,.
Armour and superhuman toughness would reduce damage

Looks great.

Jorgi wins initiative (however that works)

He has a spear while his enemy has a table leg? Yes, Jorgi wins initiative. If you want, you can make him roll with an advantage for having the longer weapon, but seriously, the peasant must pass inside of his guard before having a chance to attack. While he is doing this, Jorgi will attack him unless he can't see him or is frozen with panic.

(I do realize that most roleplaying game systems don't do this. This is because most rpgs have initiative systems that make no sense.)

 

[GMMichael]

- A critical hit only benefits attackers. Do the defenders get a critical too?
- I'm not sure criticals are even needed - doesn't rolling dice already provide a range of damage outcomes?
- Static numbers for weapons is cool - adding them to a generic damage roll is cooler.
- Decide what hit points means. Is it only physical damage, or is it stamina, or luck, or more? Depending on your definition, a weapon can do "damage" simply by being hard to avoid. Or the attacker could miss with the pointy part, and still clobber the opponent with a basket or pommel. Your definition will help you determine how many hit points a character gets, and what bonuses the weapons should get.

 

[nnms]

- A critical hit only benefits attackers. Do the defenders get a critical too?

We haven't completely worked out what we might want to try for having the defender get double sixes or either of them getting double ones.

- I'm not sure criticals are even needed - doesn't rolling dice already provide a range of damage outcomes?

Basically, we want to be able to model the best possible hit. And the best possible hit is to get a dagger through the eyes and into the brain.

- Static numbers for weapons is cool - adding them to a generic damage roll is cooler.

It's partially inspired by the Silouette/Silcore system from Dream Pod 9's games from 10+ years ago. In DP9's games, you multiplied your margin of success by the weapon's damage number, so it could get pretty high, pretty fast.

- Decide what hit points means. Is it only physical damage, or is it stamina, or luck, or more? Depending on your definition, a weapon can do "damage" simply by being hard to avoid. Or the attacker could miss with the pointy part, and still clobber the opponent with a basket or pommel. Your definition will help you determine how many hit points a character gets, and what bonuses the weapons should get.

We started talking about exactly this. Don't have anything concrete yet.

It took me a moment to get the point of this. This isn't bad! Almost no systems I know of link attack success and damage. It might be better to add modifiers to all three dice, which would allow skillful warriors to deal more damage and more wieldy weapons to have a better chance to hit. But that could turn out to be fiddly or difficult to implement.

In discussing this with the people who will actually be playing it, we figured out we should probably drop the third die and not bother figuring out which two are the highest and which two the lowest and instead have an opposed roll for PCs where the difference is added into the damage. So if Jorgi rolls a 7, has total combat bonuses of +1, that's an 8. The rebel rolls a 5 and has no fighting skill. So Jorgi's damage is 3 (the difference between 8 and 5) + his strength + the damage rating of the weapon.

If you roll double sixes on the attack, you ignore all armour.

We're leaning towards doing something similar to the armour rules from the 1985 game Dragon Warriors. It was only released in the UK and some commonwealth countries like Canada or New Zealand, so it's barely known in the US.

Basically the idea is that armours have a value and you have to roll to bypass it. The size of die you roll is based on how good a given weapon is at getting through armour (or if you want to go detailed, the specific type of armour in question). For example, a suit of plate and mail might be armour 5 and an early arquebis at close range might roll 1d12 and bypass it completely more than half of the time. You'd roll your weapon's armour bypass check when you rolled the attack for time saving reasons. If it's also a d6, make it a different colour than the two attack dice.

He has a spear while his enemy has a table leg? Yes, Jorgi wins initiative. If you want, you can make him roll with an advantage for having the longer weapon, but seriously, the peasant must pass inside of his guard before having a chance to attack. While he is doing this, Jorgi will attack him unless he can't see him or is frozen with panic.

(I do realize that most roleplaying game systems don't do this. This is because most rpgs have initiative systems that make no sense.)

I like the idea of incorporating some sort of fighting distances back into weapons after they've been so horribly missing for such a long while. There's a reason pikemen in historical armies who shortened their pikes by even a small bit in order to make them lighter to march with were severely reprimanded.

I'm also going to try to do something similar with shields where the relatively untrained can hold them in place the best they can to get some cover, but true experts know how to wield them and how to use the various edges and surfaces for different effects in a fight.

 

[Dethklok]

In discussing this with the people who will actually be playing it, we figured out we should probably drop the third die and not bother figuring out which two are the highest and which two the lowest and instead have an opposed roll for PCs where the difference is added into the damage. So if Jorgi rolls a 7, has total combat bonuses of +1, that's an 8. The rebel rolls a 5 and has no fighting skill. So Jorgi's damage is 3 (the difference between 8 and 5) + his strength + the damage rating of the weapon.

Lots of dice that way. Why not just 1d6 per character, or 1d10?

We're leaning towards doing something similar to the armour rules from the 1985 game Dragon Warriors. It was only released in the UK and some commonwealth countries like Canada or New Zealand, so it's barely known in the US.

Then let me make a suggestion. On a failed roll, attacks should still deal damage (either 1 point, or varying by weapon type). This is the way we played Dragon Warriors.

Although... for all that I love that quirky game, a system where armor straightforwardly subtracts from damage is much cleaner.

 

[nnms]

Lots of dice that way. Why not just 1d6 per character, or 1d10?

I agree and am pushing for a system where players roll dice for defense and opponents do not, instead always counting as if they had rolled 7 (with their defense stat adjusted accordingly to produce a simple target number).

I don't find 2d6 really any slower to roll and read than a d10. The players are also long time Warmachine/Hordes (a miniature game) and are very used to rolling and reading 2d6, 3d6 or more very quickly.

And finally, one of my design goals is to incorporate a bell curve. If both attacker and defender rolled every time, 1d6 would indeed produce a bell curve, but since everyone playing likes 2d6+stat, I figured I'd go with that. And it keeps the bell curve if only one side is rolling.

Then let me make a suggestion. On a failed roll, attacks should still deal damage (either 1 point, or varying by weapon type). This is the way we played Dragon Warriors.

I was actually thinking of something like this. It's on my list of things to look into if we do end up with a armour save that negates damage.

Although... for all that I love that quirky game, a system where armor straightforwardly subtracts from damage is much cleaner.

I agree, but I think there's some potential in a system where a totally fatal attack is completely stopped by armour. Under damage subtraction systems, armour saves you only in the aggregate and not from the debilitating single wounds. I'm not sure exactly how it's going to work out, but I think I'm slowly moving towards some sort of hyrbid damage reduction and attack negation system.

 

[Dethklok]

And finally, one of my design goals is to incorporate a bell curve. If both attacker and defender rolled every time, 1d6 would indeed produce a bell curve, but since everyone playing likes 2d6+stat, I figured I'd go with that. And it keeps the bell curve if only one side is rolling.

Em... 2d6 is not a bell curve. It's a triangle curve, which I actually prefer to both bell curves and flat curves. The triangle curve doesn't have the inflection points of a Gaussian distribution that give rise to long, thin tails; in practical terms, a triangle curve will roll max & min more frequently than a bell curve.

One system I'm very partial to is +d6 -d6. What this allows is you to put all your stats on a 0-10 scale, add the roll on your stat, and then compare to a target stat or difficulty. So if your ATTACK is 6 and his DEFENCE is 7, you would hit on a roll of +4 -2, but miss on a +2 -4, and tie on a +5 -4 (whatever a tie means). Come to think of it, I believe Feng Shui used a system very much like this. You also need not use d6s; d10s also work well if you want more granularity.

 

[nnms]

You're right, I was conflating some curve types. 1d6-1d6 also produces something very similar to fudge dice.

 

[nnms]

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I like the 3d6, highest two is attack, lowest two is damage than the 2d6+attack vs defense, damage equals difference. I think my initial idea might be better than the more traditional dice + attack bonus vs AC type approach.

 

[Dethklok]

I liked your 3d6 idea better myself.