Hey guys,
Working on some combat mechanics and I have way too may options. Please help me narrow it down. I want to get a simple combat system such that fights go down rather quickly, but players should have to make choices.
The basic idea is that I want players to acquire a dice pool via items their characters equip, such as swords, bows, fireball spells and plate armour. People should get better at the things they use so I was thinking they can increase one item they use after they defeated monsters in a fight.
So someone could specialise in swords and armour, whilst another could specialise in healing spells and try to get more mana.
1. Monsters have a threshold and each individual die exceeding this gives a hit. Every won fight gives an extra die with the item the player chooses, for instance swords for the rest of the game. Choosing swords again after the next fight gives him another die, and so on and so forth. Also, players can find stronger swords, that give a different type of die (e.g. d4 changes into d6) or give other effects.
2. Like the first, but dice don't have numbers nor monsters a threshold, but dice have symbols of how much damage is done. stronger weapons use different dice so do more damage.
3. Like 1 and 2, but if a single die exceeds the threshold, the monster is hit for as much weapon damage as the weapon indicates. So the more experienced a player is with swords, the more likely it is he will exceed the threshold. Damage is always the same but different weapons do different amounts of damage.
4. The sum of all dice thrown has to exceed the monster's threshold, and if this is the case the player deals weapon damage.
I think 1 and 2 don't scale well. A hero that can use multiple dice and has a strong weapon can do immense amounts of damage. I think the third option scales really well but I find it less inspirational to roll for attack instead of damage. Rolling for both attack and damage (like D&D) is too excessive.
I think the fourth option does not scale at all. Imagine a low level player with 1 die compared to a higher level player with 5 dice. With d6, the first can only throw 1-6 and the second can throw 6-30. I believe that scales terribly against monster thresholds because someone who doesn't specialise in something does not even have to try and use the weapon against a high-level monster.
Thanks for the replies, guys. I really appreciate it.
That's like my third option. Whereas in Arkham Horror the number of dice increases by levelling, and all dice increase, in this version the dice increase after winning af fight, and they only increase in one or more things that you used that fight.
Arkham Horror is pretty cool in which a hero has a combat rating, which dictates how many dice he can use, from which the monster's combat rating is subtracted (so e.g. 6 - 3 = 3 dice). Then the monster's toughness dictates how many successes a player needs (in the example, a player would need all three dice to be successful if a monster has a toughness of 3).
Although this works, I want players to get attack dice from weapons (and spells), and defense dice from armour (and spells). I thought that the successful attack dice do damage, whereas the successful defense dice prevent damage. The number of dice used could be determined by level or the item, and then it is the question how they scale.
I get the impression that you need to get more of a feel for what is out there in terms of combat resolution for board games. For starters, I would suggest the aforementioned Descent (or any of the other FFG offerings with the same dice mechanic) and Okko: Era of the Asagiri. I hear good things about Memoir 44 but haven't played it. I'd have more to offer if I hadn't spent the last hour cleaning up vomit.
No #1 is really different from D&D (at least the table top, I have only played one board game). In D&D there is first a role to see whether an attack hit (the famous d20) and then one or more dice of any type, where the number rolled dictates the damage. In my system, I would give 1 hit (of 1 damage) for every die exceeding the threshold. So more like the WoW board game.
I think the only comparison #2 has with Descent is that it has custom dice. In Descent, a player rolls one melee, ranged or magic die, possibly accompanied by extra damage or range dice and/or power dice. My system looks more like the D&D Board Game
Shadowrun is actually more like #1 and comparable to the WoW Board Game. Every player gets a dice pool based on his skills and every role that exceeds the opponent's threshold is a hit. That can work great if only the number of dice used increases per level, but will be tricky if the type of die also changes when a better weapon is equipped (for instance changing from a d4 to a d6 makes a weapon so much stronger, I guess).
It is important to note that I want a simple system, so rolling for either attack (hit/miss) or damage seems to make sense. So definitely no CRTs, and players should not have to remember or look up too much for every combat round. Also, I want player to roll multiple dice because that is cool.
Another option would be that every die exceeding the threshold does as much damage as with how much it exceeds. So if a player rolls a 7 and an 8 against a threshold of 6, he does 3 damage (1+2). But then there is not much a weapon can add (e.g. a simple sword versus an epic sword).