Board Game Designers Forum

I like the first suggestion, it's not complicated. You can also keep your first idea but the Defense value Z is just subtracted from the dice rolled from attack.
Just my 2 cents.

What you are approaching in either case is something similar to White Wolf's World of Darkness Role Playing Game combat mechanic. This is, unfortunately, not a good thing. One of the best things White Wolf did with their later title Exalted was to make defenses un-rolled to speed up gameplay. What they did was simply take the average number of successes that a character would get on a Defense roll and assume that they always roll that number.

For example, if a character has 10 dice and a 50/50 chance of getting a success on a given die then they would have a defense value of 5. Attackers still roll dice as normal, but defenders are treated as having a static value which must be overcome. This static value is frequently modified by situations/weapons/abilities, but it serves as a starting point.

You could do something even simpler and cause defense values to simply subtract successes from the attack. Any successes remaining would help to determine the strength of the resulting hit in some way. This approach gives you an easy way to assign defense values to things: "How often do I want a given attack to hit this character?" The math afterwards is quite simple.

Now I know that this is getting away from rolled defenses as-such, but I thought it might be instructive to think about games that have walked this path before.

I really like that. I'd be able to as far as 4 DEF before it starts negating all dice. I guess I could put a rule that you and never completely negate all dice rolled against you. Minimum 1 die.

Warmachine does this too. I went with un-rolled defense because public opinion (told to me) is no one wants defense you can't count on. Random defense successes allows for no planning or strategy.

That's exactly how my defense works now. Remaining successes do 1 damage each.

The problem I'm finding is: The average attack will be 5 dice and 7+ (50%) is a hit. Average success is 2.5. At 2 DEF, you are a tanky M.F.'er. Now, if I add a die to attacks, you get more damage in, but it's more wild swings in damage and more potential damage as well. (Rolling all successes)

It's been now suggested (and +1'ed) that I should do this:

When the attacker rolls his X attack dice, the number he must roll for a successful hit is his Skill number plus the Defenders defense number.

So, I roll 5 attack dice and need 8 to successfully hit. If the defender has 2 DEF, I will need 10 to hit. Other modifiers are added as well such as +1 for being behind cover.

One other thing you might consider is slowing down how quickly someone's defense level can go up. For example, maybe the first time they invest in increasing defense, it goes from zero to 1. But to get to 2 may take 2 more investments (time, money, whatever it is they need to improve their capabilities). And to get to 3 takes even more, etc. This may balance it so that someone who puts all his energy into defense isn't completely untouchable...

Oh, sorry for not mentioning it, but no one levels in this game. All the stats are static in this simple tabletop game. Though, I'm going to implement a limited system for purchasing stat boosts before the game. Thanks for the reply!

This seems weird to me: the higher my skill, the harder it is for me to hit?

This would make more sense to me:

Success Number = Enemy's defense - my skill

But I probably misunderstood something...

One of my games I'm working on have an attack/defense mechanic that I really like. Without getting into specifics, because I plan on expanding it to a full system. I find that attack vs defense then decide damage based on how successful the attack was works very well.

It really is arbitrary. With the new system of combat "Skill" is more like "The skill required to hit a target using this weapon" not "your personal skill". If I were to do it the way you explained (which makes perfect sense) I would have to reverse all the skill and defense numbers and require the players to do subtraction math every time they attack.

How it is now:
Look at Skill number, add Defense number, roll that number.
7 + 2 = 9
How it makes sense:
Look at Defense number, minus Skill number, roll that number.
11 - 2 = 9

I guess it could work.
1 success is 1 damage
3 successes is 2 damage
5 successes is 3 damage

Malifaux also has a way of doing it. A random card flip to determine 1 of 3 wound levels and the character has predetermined damage he does for each wound level.