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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Removing Attack Rolls -- and maybe more? (Game Design / Theory Discussion)
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<blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8564557" data-attributes="member: 72555"><p>So in OD&D, the trick was that accuracy grew while damage did not. And meanwhile, AC was static (determined by gear) while HP grew.</p><p></p><p>The product of (accuracy) times (damage) divided by (HP) determined how effective you are at killing a foe.</p><p></p><p>While OD&D didn't use THAC0, THAC0 was a decent approximation for OD&D's combat tables before it existed. You'd start with a THAC0 of 20, and AC went from 9 on down.</p><p></p><p>Against a modestly armored foe (AC 5), at level 1 you'd hit 30% of the time, going up by 5% per level. A hit would average about the HP of a 1 HD foe, give or take. So, at level 1, you defeated 0.3 HD per round, and had 1 HD.</p><p></p><p>While the tables where not linear, you could approximate them with about 1 point of accuracy per level.</p><p></p><p>So at level 2, you had 2 HD, and defeated 0.35 HD per round, etc.</p><p></p><p>At level 8, you had 8 HD (could take about 8 hits), and hit 65% of the time against a modestly armored foe.</p><p></p><p>There was also the "1 HD or less multiple attacks" rule -- a level X fighter would actually get 5.2 hits/round against 1 HD or less foes -- so anything non-heroic would be quickly defeated by high-HD hero units.</p><p></p><p>Multiple attacks in other cases ended up existing as well.</p><p></p><p>But the core bit is that by scaling accuracy <em>and</em> attack count, you could make fighting characters more effective <em>without</em> directly scaling the number of attacks/damage per attack quite as fast.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="NotAYakk, post: 8564557, member: 72555"] So in OD&D, the trick was that accuracy grew while damage did not. And meanwhile, AC was static (determined by gear) while HP grew. The product of (accuracy) times (damage) divided by (HP) determined how effective you are at killing a foe. While OD&D didn't use THAC0, THAC0 was a decent approximation for OD&D's combat tables before it existed. You'd start with a THAC0 of 20, and AC went from 9 on down. Against a modestly armored foe (AC 5), at level 1 you'd hit 30% of the time, going up by 5% per level. A hit would average about the HP of a 1 HD foe, give or take. So, at level 1, you defeated 0.3 HD per round, and had 1 HD. While the tables where not linear, you could approximate them with about 1 point of accuracy per level. So at level 2, you had 2 HD, and defeated 0.35 HD per round, etc. At level 8, you had 8 HD (could take about 8 hits), and hit 65% of the time against a modestly armored foe. There was also the "1 HD or less multiple attacks" rule -- a level X fighter would actually get 5.2 hits/round against 1 HD or less foes -- so anything non-heroic would be quickly defeated by high-HD hero units. Multiple attacks in other cases ended up existing as well. But the core bit is that by scaling accuracy [I]and[/I] attack count, you could make fighting characters more effective [I]without[/I] directly scaling the number of attacks/damage per attack quite as fast. [/QUOTE]
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Removing Attack Rolls -- and maybe more? (Game Design / Theory Discussion)
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