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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6064578" data-attributes="member: 2067">Part of the thing is that a perfectly balanced fight is "rocket tag." If I'm doing 1d8 damage each round against you and you're doing 1d8 damage against me, and we each have 4 hp, whoever goes first wins. That's a good coin flip.Rocket tag also isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's plenty of modes of play where it makes sense.But I'm doing it like this: Every weapon has a damage die, 1d4-1d12. Average 1d8.Two-handed weapons generally have two dice (ie: 2d4-2d12). The average is 2d8 (ie: greatsword).One-handed weapons generally have one die (1d4-1d12). The average is 1d8 (ie: longsword). You can wield another weapon in your off-hand, and then you have the equivalent of a two-handed weapon (ie: two longswords = one greatsword). You can also wield a shield in your off-hand. That allows you to actively block: when you take damage, you can roll a dice to negate that damage. Basic shield? It's 1d8, o'course. So take two sword-and-board folks fighting. Each one rolls 1d8 for attacks, and their target rolls 1d8 to negate damage. On average, they're just wailing on each others' shields all day, but the chaos is such that there's exceptions on both sides. This is slow, but it should be for two defensive-oriented warriors to fight each other.Now, Dr. Two-Swords gets in there and fights Mr. Sword-And-Board. Dr. Two-Swords isn't negating any damage, so he's taking 1d8 each round. Mr. Sword-And-Board is rolling 1d8 to defend as well, so while he's taking roughly the same damage each round. This goes faster, but we have Defense vs. Offense. When Corporal Two-Hander goes up against Mr. Sword-And-Board, same thing.When the good doctor and the corporal fight each other, they're both doing 2d8 damage to each other each round -- they're sinking fast. Offense vs. Offense. The big difference here is one of spikes vs. consistency. The doctor is reliable, because if he misses with one hit, he'll probably still slam on the other one (and there's the rare chance of hitting twice). The corporal, meanwhile, is all-or-nothing: his hits are always powerful, but they're less common. Now, there's a measure of strategy. If you're a typical heavy-armor kind of character, you've probably got lots of hit points and all-around high defenses, and your shield is just adding to the fact that you will never frickin' go down. Your redundancies have redundancies. On the other hand (ha), if you're a dual-wielding Dex-monkey stereotype, you can dish it out, but you can't take it. If you're hit, you're in trouble. Maybe not one-hit kill, but maybe two. And if you're somewhere in the middle (ie: beefy barbarian with a big blade), you've got at least one other mode of defense, but you're not building layers upon layers. Shields also get more interesting than "an extra +1 or +2 to AC." Active defenses!</blockquote>

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