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Dice Combat

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Mon, 01/28/2013 - 17:14
jbmoyer
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Joined: 04/27/2012

Exploring what Mark suggested here: http://www.bgdf.com/node/7024

In that thread, Mark suggested something interesting that could put a great new spin on combat, especially in the RPG/Fantasy area. But my question today is, How many is too many?

I am contemplating a twist on this idea of the dice with Attack and Defense rolls and increasing the number of dice as a hero levels, but if a hero gets to say level 10 or 20 they could be rolling 12 or 15 or more dice, How many is too many when it comes to rolling.

Would it be totally ok if you played a game where all the heros are rolling like 9+ dice each combat round? and in turn the Monsters have big number of dice to roll as well. Is that too crazy? rolling 15 dice? Sounds slightly like it could be fun, but wondering what the general consensus would be on it in a game format where combat is not the central focus but clearly important.

Thanks
Brett

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Mon, 01/28/2013 - 18:00
#1
Lofwyr
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Joined: 02/16/2010
Dice are like food or beer.

Dice, like any other value in an interlinked system like an RPG, are a mutable tool for getting players through a turn or action with as much flare and immersion as possible. You will, I am certain, find that certain players will have an aversion to dice all together. This is most often because of some form of distaste for the random element of the dice. I do not wish to offend anyone…but…ignore these people. No matter how you slice it these folks represent a minority that simply can't be pandered to.

To be completely straight with you, players generally love dice. Huge handfuls of dice that directly reflect a player’s power level are a constant in my own titles and a valuable hook. You will, as you play-test, begin to notice all form of new interactions between your players on a very human level. Players will be aghast at the sheer volume of dice a player gets to roll, cover their eyes in worry as a monster rolls a massive fist full of dice, or simply become braggarts “If I do X then Y with another X, I get to roll 36 dice on the attack!” These kinds of interactions reflect immersion; they reflect players interacting with your product and showing a genuine interest or investment.

Two titles that have been or ARE at the absolute apex of their markets are Warhammer and Shadowrun. Warhammer is a miniatures battle game and Shadowrun a Role playing game; both use the fist-full-of-dice approach and did incredibly well with it. These products were so successful, in fact, that they spawned side products such as video games, MMOs, comics and more.

Too many dice!?! Hardly.

E

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Mon, 01/28/2013 - 18:17
#2
Orangebeard
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Joined: 10/13/2011
Agreed!

I agree with Lofwyr, but if it really bothers you, could the number of dice be scaled down as you go up levels? For example, you get 1 more die for each level up to 10, but after 10 you only get another die after every 2 or 3 levels?

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Mon, 01/28/2013 - 21:18
#3
MarkKreitler
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Mostly, yes

For the most part, I agree that more dice is better. My favorite RPG was Champions, where players regularly rolled betwee 8 and 12 dice for damage. As mentioned above, there's a great psychological payoff in scooping up two handfuls of dice.

That said, the system I suggested in the post to which you refer was not meant to scale to a typical RPG. The context was a dungeon-crawling board game with a much shorter life span. Personally, I prefer games with slow leveling curves (like Champions), where you could play for a year or two while increasing your "level" by 50-75%, so in my universe, you wouldn't have a problem.

Where I do see trouble is in the number of components. If you estimate players maxing out at 15-20 dice, but dice can be in 3 different colors, you're asking players to purchase 60 dice! RPG fans won't blink at this, especially if they accumulate the dice over time, but normal people might not dig it...

M.

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Mon, 01/28/2013 - 21:32
#4
JustActCasual
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A dice in hand is worth...

Another way to limit the number of dice is to plateau as levels go up by changing to a dice upgrade: so once you have 6d6 in something rather than gaining another die you exchange one of your d6 for a d12.

You might also want to include some kind of dice cups or dice tower if you're going to have that much dice rolling - rolling 36 dice is fun, but manually difficult and messy. You might also want to consider that your game is going to slow down a lot if you have to add and subtract a mittfull of numbers whenever you want to do anything: maybe just do auto cancellations at a certain point (the monster has 37 defense die, and you have 35 attack die: so the monster will roll 7 dice and you will roll 5)

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Tue, 01/29/2013 - 10:20
#5
jbmoyer
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Joined: 04/27/2012
Much Appreciated...

...really solid advice here. I do agree with you Lofwyr and I took a look at Warhammer and similar games and oh boy do you roll dice. I grabbed a pile of my own just playing around with the idea and it was exciting too funny.

Orangebeard, you have a great approach there, I can see value in decreasing additional dice when characters get to higher levels, making them work for it could be looked at as if once a character is a certain toughness it is that much harder to get tougher. Thanks.

I actually tweaked my mechanic and played some liast night with this approach and in my practice rolls it was super exciting, but in real play/execution the rolls seemed too random and somewhat disappointing and took a long time to kill a measly 5hp goblin.

Here is what I did let me know your thoughts, I think I need one more dmg icon. I took a few d6 and put skull and shield icons on the faces, 2 of each and 2 miss icons. the Character rolled 3d6 and the Goblin 2d6. For the most part it was even, but rarely a hit. I am thinking adding another Skull will help the odds, right now its 33/33/33

Does the dice face make a difference? I have the skulls on 2 and 3, Shield on 4 and 5, miss 1 and 6

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Tue, 01/29/2013 - 11:02
#6
MarkKreitler
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Distributions

Hey JB,

If you're used to D20 systems, your current distribution will feel slow. For example, at best, you can do 3 points of damage in one blow, and the odds of that are 1/500-ish. A goblin with 5 hp is a very strong monster in this case.

Now think of a D20 system where you're using a short sword against a less-than-1 hd monster. You can kill it in one blow, and the probability of that blow is roughly 5/20 * 1/6 or roughly 1/20.

Because the dice in this system work the way they do, a good rule of thumb would be: "let hp equal the number of attack dice."

Instead of reducing monster HP, you could scale damage. For instance, let each "skull" represent a successful hit with your weapon, which does x damage per hit. Larger weapons could "slow you down" -- thus reducing your attack dice. For example, a fighter with 3 attack dice could use a short sword that deals 3 damage per hit, or a broad sword that does 5 damage per hit but reduces attack dice by 1, or a great sword that does 10 damage per hit but reduces attack dice by 2. Note, these numbers aren't properly balanced with respect to the change in "to hit" probabilities.

Finally, you can re-introduce the idea of "skills" from the original post (at least, I *hope* it's in there). Replace one or both "miss" faces with "special" results. The "special," in combination with other results, allows the player to activate skills unique to his character.

For example, a fighter who rolls 1 "special" result gets to add +2 to his damage that round. If he rolls 2 "specials," he gets to double his damage. Obviously, this has scaling problems as you ramp up the number of dice, but you get the idea.

These are just "off the top of the head" ideas. With some deeper thought, I'm confident you'll come up with many other interesting ways to improve the system.

Mark

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Tue, 01/29/2013 - 14:01
#7
jbmoyer
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Joined: 04/27/2012
MarkKreitler wrote:Hey JB,If

MarkKreitler wrote:
Hey JB,

If you're used to D20 systems, your current distribution will feel slow. For example, at best, you can do 3 points of damage in one blow, and the odds of that are 1/500-ish. A goblin with 5 hp is a very strong monster in this case.

Now think of a D20 system where you're using a short sword against a less-than-1 hd monster. You can kill it in one blow, and the probability of that blow is roughly 5/20 * 1/6 or roughly 1/20.

Because the dice in this system work the way they do, a good rule of thumb would be: "let hp equal the number of attack dice."

Instead of reducing monster HP, you could scale damage. For instance, let each "skull" represent a successful hit with your weapon, which does x damage per hit. Larger weapons could "slow you down" -- thus reducing your attack dice. For example, a fighter with 3 attack dice could use a short sword that deals 3 damage per hit, or a broad sword that does 5 damage per hit but reduces attack dice by 1, or a great sword that does 10 damage per hit but reduces attack dice by 2. Note, these numbers aren't properly balanced with respect to the change in "to hit" probabilities.

Finally, you can re-introduce the idea of "skills" from the original post (at least, I *hope* it's in there). Replace one or both "miss" faces with "special" results. The "special," in combination with other results, allows the player to activate skills unique to his character.

For example, a fighter who rolls 1 "special" result gets to add +2 to his damage that round. If he rolls 2 "specials," he gets to double his damage. Obviously, this has scaling problems as you ramp up the number of dice, but you get the idea.

These are just "off the top of the head" ideas. With some deeper thought, I'm confident you'll come up with many other interesting ways to improve the system.

Mark

Thanks Mark, I am not used to any system. I just grabbed some dice, slapped some faces on them and tested rolls. Let me better explain what I am doing although what you say sounds very interesting.

Hero rolls 3d6, Goblin rolls 2d6

Hero rolls 2 skulls and a shield
Goblin rolls 1 skull and 1 shield

Now I am playing around with a "Real-Life" combat idea where each involved in the combat can do damage and block, like in real life. So...

In the above roll the Hero does only 1 DMG, not the 2 you woudl expect, because the Golbin has 1 Shield to block it. and the Goblin would do 1 Dmg to the Hero but the Hero also has a Shield to block it. So based on this format it seems to play out for slow combat.

I like your idea of scaling the HP to the number of dice rolled that may help, but it also may make the Monsters too week or the Heros too strong and in turn the monsters may never really be able to defeat the heros, hmmm have to think and test on that.

LUNCH UPDATE!
Ok so over lunch I just realized that I trashed too much of my orginal combat mechanic. So I decided to put part back in. The DMG part, still need to work out and test, but the plan is to roll and resolve as defined above, but if there is at least 1 skull unblocked, that means that a hit was scored on the opponent, the DMG applied is what is defined on the hero/monster cards. So in the above example, the hero dosent get 1 dmg on the goblin, he get 4dmg, because that is what that hero type has a its dmg. So since he got one HIT through and landing it on the opponent he gets to apply his dmg. let me see how this plays. Thanks

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