The Session Tapes
Villager
The vast majority of my recent Gamemastering has been in D&D 5th. It's a relatively functional system, but there are some things about it (and a lot of its descendant d20-based systems) which I'm really not keen on.
The most egregious for me is "Armour Class". I've been able to forgive many, many sins over five iterations of D&D rules, but I've never really reached a point where I'm at peace with the idea. I think the biggest issue for me is the logical handwaving necessary to combine the idea of "hitting a target" with the idea of "injuring a target" in a single abstract number.
I know there is the argument that "hit points do not equal injury", which takes some of the burden off of Armour Class, and this definitely works for me when I am forced to run vanilla, by-the-book d20 systems. But in using this method, I've discovered another, deeper issue that I have with Armour Class:
It's boring.
I know that's a bit of an inflammatory word, but there's really no other way to express my feelings on the matter. I think it extends out of my formative roleplaying experiences. While I cut my teeth on D&D, I really developed both as a player and a GM using White Wolf's Storyteller system. For those not familiar, combat in Storyteller works like this:
Attacking Player rolls Attack -> Defending Player rolls Dodge/Block -> Attacking Player rolls Damage -> Defending Player rolls Soak.
It seems a bit long-winded, and it frequently was. But what resulted was combat which was much higher-stakes (it was completely possible to utterly destroy an opponent in one turn, or to get utterly destroyed yourself) and much more involved for everyone at the table. This level of interaction is sorely missing from a lot of d20 systems, and rather than "re-inventing the wheel" and taking my setting into an entirely different system, I would rather take the easier path and try to integrate this or a similar mutually-interactive system into the d20-Verse.
One method which has come to mind is based on the Pathfinder 2E "Armour Class" system. In PF2, AC is governed by Proficiency scores just like any other skill. So while AC is expressed as a number, that number is just a Skill Roll with a default "Take 10" result (eg. AC25 is just just a +15 skill roll with a default 10 roll). Thus I could have the defending player roll their d20, rather than just using the default 10 result.
This unpicks the "passive defender" part of the d20 problem. There is still the issue of governing "hit" and "wound" on the same roll, but that's something which I'm willing to tinker with a bit more, using this system as a temporary patch.
Any other DMs/GMs out there tinkering with Active Defense for d20, or looking for ways to uncouple the "Roll to Hit and Wound" issue? Whatcha got? I'm really curious to hear.
!!!PLEASE NOTE!!!
I know there are multifarious other systems which use different combat mechanics. The purpose of this post isn't to find an alternative to d20... it's to fix what I see as a fundamental flaw with d20 while maintaining its core integrity. Yeah, I know. A tall order.
Thanks!
The most egregious for me is "Armour Class". I've been able to forgive many, many sins over five iterations of D&D rules, but I've never really reached a point where I'm at peace with the idea. I think the biggest issue for me is the logical handwaving necessary to combine the idea of "hitting a target" with the idea of "injuring a target" in a single abstract number.
I know there is the argument that "hit points do not equal injury", which takes some of the burden off of Armour Class, and this definitely works for me when I am forced to run vanilla, by-the-book d20 systems. But in using this method, I've discovered another, deeper issue that I have with Armour Class:
It's boring.
I know that's a bit of an inflammatory word, but there's really no other way to express my feelings on the matter. I think it extends out of my formative roleplaying experiences. While I cut my teeth on D&D, I really developed both as a player and a GM using White Wolf's Storyteller system. For those not familiar, combat in Storyteller works like this:
Attacking Player rolls Attack -> Defending Player rolls Dodge/Block -> Attacking Player rolls Damage -> Defending Player rolls Soak.
It seems a bit long-winded, and it frequently was. But what resulted was combat which was much higher-stakes (it was completely possible to utterly destroy an opponent in one turn, or to get utterly destroyed yourself) and much more involved for everyone at the table. This level of interaction is sorely missing from a lot of d20 systems, and rather than "re-inventing the wheel" and taking my setting into an entirely different system, I would rather take the easier path and try to integrate this or a similar mutually-interactive system into the d20-Verse.
One method which has come to mind is based on the Pathfinder 2E "Armour Class" system. In PF2, AC is governed by Proficiency scores just like any other skill. So while AC is expressed as a number, that number is just a Skill Roll with a default "Take 10" result (eg. AC25 is just just a +15 skill roll with a default 10 roll). Thus I could have the defending player roll their d20, rather than just using the default 10 result.
This unpicks the "passive defender" part of the d20 problem. There is still the issue of governing "hit" and "wound" on the same roll, but that's something which I'm willing to tinker with a bit more, using this system as a temporary patch.
Any other DMs/GMs out there tinkering with Active Defense for d20, or looking for ways to uncouple the "Roll to Hit and Wound" issue? Whatcha got? I'm really curious to hear.
!!!PLEASE NOTE!!!
I know there are multifarious other systems which use different combat mechanics. The purpose of this post isn't to find an alternative to d20... it's to fix what I see as a fundamental flaw with d20 while maintaining its core integrity. Yeah, I know. A tall order.
Thanks!