Being in the process of creating a Fantasy boardgame primarily featuring fights between heroes and various types of undead, I thought it would be good to get feedback on my current system of combat.
So far the only thing I have developed is Melee combat, though Ranged combat will follow a very similar path. The only thing that I'll really need to work on is Magic, but I don't imagine it being too terribly different.
To help, I'll supply a rough draft of my only finished character and one of my Undead creatures (further down)
Maverick Leonus
Warrior
Special Abilities:
-Flurry – Allows the Warrior to make two consecutive attacks
-Cleave – Allows the Warrior to hit all targets directly in front of him
-Protector – The Warrior may use his shield to negate an attack made on an adjacent Ally.
Weapon: Long Sword (3Ms+2)
Defensive Class: 5MR
Resistance: +2
Vitality: 5
Power: 3
Movement: 5
Carry-limit: 3
I will discuss most all of the abilities listed above, save for Resistance, which will factor in later once I develop the Magic mechanics, and Carry-limit, which is simply the amount of extra items that can be equipped at any given time on the character.
Each Weapon in the game will have a damage code. The Long Sword, for example, has a damage code of 3Ms+2.
The first number, the 3, represents the amount of six-sided dice that are rolled when attacking with the weapon.
The Ms represents the fact that the weapon is a Sharp Melee weapon. Finally, the +2 is the number added to each of the dice.
The Defensive Class has a very similar style, but Defensive Codes don't change nearly as often as Damage Codes.
The Warrior's Defensive Code is 5MR. Compared to most other man-sized creatures, the Warrior has a slightly better Defensive Code, both because this Warrior in particular is equipped with a shield and because he is tougher.
The 5 in the code is the 'Meet or Beat' number for the attacker. It is also the number of dice that the Defender will roll when warding off an attack (will explain further in the example at the bottom).
The M represents Melee attacks in general, whether they be blunt or sharp, and the R represents Ranged attacks. In a Defensive Code, the letters represent what a character or creature is Stronger against, unless the letters are red. If the letters are red, then they represent a weakness. When rolling defense, Strengths give all of your dice +1 if you are being attacked by that kind of weapon, but weaknesses take away an entire die. These effects are cumulative. Thus, if you are weak to both fire and blunt weapons, and you are attacked by a blunt weapon that deals fire damage, you lose two dice from your defense. You'll likely get hurt pretty bad.
Next up are Vitality and Toughness. Heroes have Vitality, whereas Undead have Toughness.
The Warrior has a Vitality of 5. This means that he can take five hits before he is incapacitated.
The Ghoul, however, has a Toughness 1.
Ghoul:
Special Abilities:
-Strength of the Horde – Movement and Defensive Class are increased by 1 for every other type
of Undead in play. This ability does not use Power.
-Angry Mob - If multiple Ghouls are going to attack one Hero, they may instead roll an amount of
dice equal to their mob size (number of Ghouls attacking the hero) without bonuses. The attack counts as Ms (Melee Sharp)
This ability does not use Power.
Weapon: Short-Sword (2Ms+1)
Defensive Class: 4Mb(red)
Resistance: 0
Toughness: 1
Power: 0
Movement: 3
Toughness is the amount of net hits that must be dealt to an Undead creature to kill it in one go. If multiple heroes attack one creature before the creature gets to make a hit, their total damages are cumulative, thus making it possible to team up on the much larger and tougher enemies.
The last things to discuss are Power and Movement.
Power is the amount of points each Hero or Undead will have to spend on Special Abilities per combat encounter. Depending on how balanced the Special Abilities are once I get around to playtesting, certain Special Abilities may use more Power than others.
Movement dictates both the amount of spaces that can be traversed on the board, and the character's initiative.
Thus, we begin our short example.
-Maverick and the Ghoul are already adjacent, so combat begins.
-Maverick's Movement is 5 compared to the Ghoul's 3, so he acts first. His Long Sword's damage code is 3Ms+2, so he rolls three dice. His results are 1, 3, and 3. With the +2 bonus, his total values are 3, 5, and 5.
-The Ghoul has Defensive Class of 4, thus only two of Maverick's rolls actually count as hits.
-The Ghoul now gets to roll his Defensive Class dice to try and further cancel out Maverick's two hits, and he must meet or beat the numbers. (Ties always go to the side rolling the dice) The Ghoul's rolls are 2, 2, 4, and 6.
-The Ghoul's 6 cancels one of Maverick's 5s, but the rest of the Ghoul's rolls do not reach Maverick's second 5, so the Ghoul takes 1 damage.
-Because this one point of damage is enough to drop the Ghoul's toughness to 0 for the current round, the Ghoul is killed and Maverick is victorious.
Please give me some honest feedback, and I do apologize for the lengthiness of the post.
Was it difficult to comprehend? Could it be toned back or improved upon? Do you think this could make for a fun combat mechanic? I am eager to hear your responses.
EDIT: I apologize for typos. I've gone through this giant wall of text twice now, and I still find tiny mistakes.
I appreciate the feedback, and the idea behind taking away the DefClass rolls for the Undead sounds decent to me. I'll have to try it out first.
As for the Strength of the Horde power, I did intend to cap it off somewhere down the line. Depends on how well it works when the playtesting.