Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="SpiralBound" data-source="post: 3004487" data-attributes="member: 8396">Your alternate reach system is interesting, ("Melee reach"?), I'm not sure how it would affect combat - it would require playtesting.  Here are a few other ideas I've thought of for you to consider:1) give weapons varying bonuses to initiative.  As you said, a knife is faster than a broadsword.2) give weapons varying bonuses to attack and defence bonuses (be sparing with this one though!)3) I've been thinking about the whole "speed of use" versus "level of abstraction" issues within your system.  I have an idea for something that could speed things up and increase the realism.  You want a system that is more realistic and puts a higher degree of importance on the combatant's ability to defend as well as their skill level with the weapon rather than the weapon itself being the damage-determining factor.  Ok.  But then you added a "degree of success" component to your system that is purely random.  Furthermore, this component not only determines how well you hit, but it ALSO grants additional wounds if you roll high enough.  Since the default for succeeding in an attack roll is "one wound", then this is in effect granting the equivalent of extra attacks - attacks which don't even get defended against either.  I believe that this may actually be a step away from realism and towards abstraction.  How well one deals damage with a weapon is now a pair of opposed die rolls and a chart.  This seems at odds with your intended style.  Here's my suggestion to addrress this:Rather than making your opposed attack rolls a degree of success with charts to determine results, make them a success or failure roll instead.  Thus, the attacker determines his attack bonus the same as before, adds 1d20, and that's his attack.  The defender also does the same with their defense bonus.  If the attackers number is higher, then it was a success: one wound.  If it defenders number was higher, then it was a failure: no wound.  If you still want to allow for fumbles and such, grant these mechanics to rolling a 1 or a 20.  Rolling a 1 for attack could be a fumble that allows the defender an AoO.  Rolling a 20 for attack could grant an additional attack, or an additional wound.  Rolling a 1 for defence could grant a guaranteed attack (basically, nullifying the defenders BDB and other defence bonuses), or it could give the attacker an extra wound or an AoO, or perhaps the defender falls down.  Rolling a 20 for defence could mean that it totally nullified the attack (which could be really great against some secondary magical attacks) or perhaps it turns the attack damage back on the attacker, (which may end up being strange vs. an attack by a bow or other ranged attack...), or perhaps the defender gets an AoO (this seems unjustified, but maybe not).Either way, making this change to the mechanics of how the attack roll and the defence roll are managed will do two things: i) speed up combat.  You've removed the need for addit/sub to determine the relative degree of succ/fail., plus removed a chart lookup. ii) remove a purely random factor from the weapons' ability to grant damage.  The extra wounds in the first chart really played havoc with the BAB in higher levels.  It appeared to me that your system was using the same BAB progression per class rules as standard D20.  If so, then this means that an 11th level fighter would have a BAB of 11/6/1, thereby having 3 attacks per round.  PLUS, if he rolled high enough on a single die roll per attack, (and the defender rolls badly as well), those three attacks could end up becoming the equivalent of as many as 12 attacks!  This seems to be giving too much power to a set of die rolls alone.  The aspects of the characters' abilities to attack or defend get sidstepped in favour of a purely random and quite powerful (a much as x4 attacks) element.Even if you don't use or agree with my ideas and thoughts above, I hope they are useful to you in imroving your system.</blockquote>

Verification