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Odds of hitting

6 replies [Last post]
Thu, 12/18/2003 - 18:17
Anonymous

I'm working on a new "custom" style card game where you fight charecters of different sizes. Each charecter has 6 "zones" and these zones can be either Head, Body or Miss. "Head" zones are always aranged to the left most side and "Miss" is always on the rightmost side.
The head zone does extra damage when hit, and miss obvously does no damage to that charecter. So, a normal charecter might look like: HHBBBM and a smaller charecter with a big head would look like HHHBBM.
But I don't know how to handle how to descide when a zone is hit.

At fitst, I was thinking a seperate deck of cards that's Draw from one at a time. But the problem with that is the nessesity of extra cards. nd I can't use cards from the deck with symbols (As I did with my last game) Because I want the odds to be the same as the odds on the charecter card.

Right now I'm using a 6-sided die which is neeter, but more random. One problem also is you have to roll for each and every attack. (Or si this not a problem?) One plus side, is lots of rolls=better random distrubution.

Does anyone else have any ideas of how to have a mechanic for zones thats both neat and not so random? Thanks!

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Thu, 12/18/2003 - 19:44
#1
Anonymous
Odds of hitting

Well a 6 sided die wouldn't necessary be "more" random, as drawing a card is random as well.

They're both probabilities.

If you marked each location as a number like this.

H1 H2 B3 B4 B5 M6

It may seem random, but you have a 2 in 6 chance of hitting the head (~33%) a 3 in 6 chance (~50%) to hit the body and a 1 in 6 (~15%) chance to miss.

Although with only 6 possibilites, and 3 choices, that gives you far less room to play with probabiltiy as you'd probably like.

If you wanted a character to be harder to hit, 2/6 chance to miss would lower the other chances to hit as well. A character with a large head and is very speedy, would be extremely hard to hit the body.

I would either use a d10 to help give you more room to play with the probabilities, or go with two die rolls. One to determine hit, the second to determine hit location. However, the more die rolls you have the more time it takes, and in some people, increases the perception of randomness.

If you mark everything down as 1-6 (i.e. every number is mapped to a different location) then yes, that is true randomness. More than one number has to be mapped to a location for probability to start taking place.

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Thu, 12/18/2003 - 20:58
#2
Anonymous
Odds of hitting

What I was thinking, and probibly should have mentioned is that with cards, I wouldn't have to shuffle each time, so there would be a limit to the number of hits per zone. (A player couldn't keep getting critical head hits). I didn't really think about how small the difference is with a 6 sided die. Maybe I will expand it to 10 sided. Though I can't help wonder if there's a better way of doing this.

One of the things that frustrates me about a lot of games is the runaway random element.

I don't mind cases where it's mearly a desciding factor with no real help twords a specific player (Like in balderdash, the roll descides what word to use). Or where it could help any player based on how they played (Like Settlers of Catan).

But rolling a die and being put to sleep or paralyzed 3 times in a row and not being able to do anything about it in the pokemon TCG just about drives me insane every time, that's why I quit the game. This is I feel a desig mistake and I deffinitly don't want to repeat it.

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Thu, 12/18/2003 - 23:22
#3
IngredientX
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Odds of hitting

One question, Foolster... what are the available tactics in your game? I'd imagine that the combat isn't decided only by die-rolling, but there's a little bit of player decision in there too. This will go a long way in working out your combat system...

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Fri, 12/19/2003 - 17:42
#4
Deviant
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Odds of hitting

Just to inject a *little* extra strategy in here you could give the player the choice to hit either the head or the body. Obviously, you'll have better luck with the latter, but a head shot could "stun", and some attacks may demand it.

Some attacks would be especially powerful and difficult to pull off. You don't want to waste these opportunities. Accordingly, you have the chance to "aim". You lose a turn, but next turn you can roll 2 dice. If even one dice "hits" the attack is successful.

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Fri, 12/19/2003 - 23:28
#5
Anonymous
Odds of hitting

I guess aiming for zones could be a tactic, but the main idea was to0 have units that had varrying zones of damage depending on the size, and cards that allowed you to either modify your zones, replacing the "letters" of their own monster, or changing how the letters are treated of the zones on the monster that monster is attacking.

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Tue, 12/23/2003 - 17:24
#6
Anonymous
Re: Odds of hitting

Foolster41 wrote:
Does anyone else have any ideas of how to have a mechanic for zones thats both neat and not so random? Thanks!

Foolster,

You might consider having two dice, which would tend to group the results around the middle (e.g., 7 on 2D6). You could then assign probabilities of hitting an area (or missing, for that matter) based on nearness to the middle. It would give you more possibilities than a single D6, which leads to more finely balanced probabilities.

As an example, you can make the slow creature with large legs miss on 2-3, hit the head on 4, torso on 5-6, legs on 7-8, and miss on 9-12. If you work out the n/36 probabilities, that's a 36% (13/36) miss chance, 8% to hit the head, 25% to hit the body, and 31% to hit the legs.

You can also bring in an aiming mechanic that allows you to add or subtract from your die roll--either simply declared before the roll, or card-modified after the roll--which would allow for skill. On the creature above, you could declare that you're taking 2 off your roll, in hopes of avoiding the upper miss range and hitting the head. Of course, and number <2 or >12 would have to be considered a miss...

Everything I know, I learned in the casino... (*)

--Greg

* -- Not really, but it's fun to say.

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