Roll your own

[joshwitz]

Just thought I'd share one of the house-rules I've been using for years. I like having players roll for attacks made against them. For example, if Phred the Fighter is battling an orc, he not only rolls his own attack rolls to see if he hits the orc, but also does the orc's attack rolls to see if the orc hits Phred.

I like having the all the combat rolls out in the open so that I'm not tempted to fudge the rolls. And I think the players like it because they know that I'm not going to go easy on them by cheating on an attack that might lead to death. Or go hard on them if they've done something to piss me off. (Though I'm not above sending in a 2nd wave of baddies who weren't in the original notes...)

Anyone else do this?

 

[Halivar]

That's a variant rule in the DMG. AC = D20 + AC mods. The current rule is equivalent to "taking 10" on such a roll.

Note that the average roll will be 10.5 over the long run... a slight advantage if one were to roll for AC.

 

[Altalazar]

I think what he's really saying is the player rolls the to-hit rolls of the orc, not that there is a variable AC. I like the variable AC angle, except for the game-slowing aspects of it.

An interesting idea, but I think I like the DM rolling - it would just suck to roll a critical against yourself and "kill yourself" in combat like that. Better to leave that to the DM. You can always have the DM roll dice out in the open. I usually don't, just because it leaves that mystery factor in as to how tough a creature is. It also does allow DM fudging if absolutely necessary, though I don't like to do that - better to just let things unfold as they will.

For some critical combats, I like to just roll out in the open to keep the excitement level up as the players battle that BBEG in the climactic encounter.

 

[joshwitz]

Altalazar:

That's exactly right. The players roll to see if the enemy hits. I don't use variable armor class. Yes, it does suck when you roll a 'crit' against yourself (and I have a fairly tough crit table), but it makes the game exciting. Is it any worse to know that you rolled the crit vs. the DM rolling the crit?

I think it's actually better because it's brutally honest. The players aren't wondering if I'm faking it either positively or negatively. There's always a chance the monster is going to get them, and they are making the roll.

Some of my players have been using two sets of lucky dice: those that roll high (for themselves) and those that roll low (for the monsters)!

The big reason I started using this system is because I'm a big softie as a DM. I like the players and I like their characters. I hate being responsible for a nasty combat roll, and I'll want to fake it if I think a character is going to die.

 

[Nifft]

I've considered using a variable AC for PCs, with a fixed Attack roll by enemies (bad guy "takes 10" on Attack). Thus, the PCs roll once for each attack, and I don't have to roll at all.

(Critical Hits would be handled thusly: if the PC rolls a 1, he gets to "avoid a crit" by rolling an AC above the bad guy's attack roll. Otherwise, he's Crit'd.)

The math works out to be exactly the same.

-- N