(d20 system) Altering combat with "defense rolls"...

[Evenglare]

I am aware of the unearthed arcana book about the "player rolls all the dice" where attacks are simply 11+whatever, and the players roll a defense roll which is ac-10. Basically replacing the 10 with a d20. Has anyone ever tried to do both ? Like an active attack and defense? Seems like it would draw the players into the the battle more, rolling against attacks and such.

 

[jedavis]

Yeah, we did this once. It was OK; you end up with mathematically slightly more centered outcomes (I think? It's late at night; I'll look at it again in the morning), but the real problem is player attention and reactiveness. If you're DMing normally, you can write down / cache each PC's AC, then roll to-hits for the monsters and dole out damage without requiring any action on your players' part. This allows combat to be faster. If you required a defense roll with each attack, then you have to either roll it secretly for them, or get them to roll it and do math. This takes more time, which is why we eventually abandoned this idea.

 

[amerigoV]

Under 3.x we did this for awhile.

In general, it was seen as a negative by my group. (1) it took longer. (2) it made feats like Power Attack difficult to use. Say you roll a 17 to hit on your first attack and you miss because the opponent rolled a 20 (but as a player, you do not know what the defender rolled). You are not sure if the creature is really that good (so do not use PA) when in reality they had a +9 or 10 bonus going on vs. the "real AC" (in which you usually would PA). A great DM could drop description to indicate that was just a lucky defense, but I never claimed to be a great DM (just a killer one )

But that is just one man's experience.

 

[Mark Chance]

I do this with my group, and I have for more than two years. It doesn't slow things down; on the contrary, it speeds things up. It also keeps the players more focused on the game because they're responsible for finding out if their PCs avoid damage. Having the players roll the dice also cuts down on the amount of in-game work I need to do.

I say, Go for it.