Help with Combat Mechanics (Symbol based)

I read your post and to me, I think you can pull off your system by the game called Farkle.

Players roll a 1 or 5 to to keep rolling. A 1 is 100 points and 5 is 50 points. From what I remember,"To even get on the score board a player must get I think 500 points to start with and to keep on their first roll."

I like your dice setup.

A player rolls for a solution to attack or defend or dodge or cast an effect or affect to the opponent's armor, weapon or other abilities like stun, freeze, poison or other attributes. Maybe have a roll sheet to find Roll Solutions for the player can try to roll. If something is locked by even 1 skull dice appears, That 1 dice is locked. The player can choose to keep rolling for a solution.

But maybe a skull can be dangerous to the opponent and not to the attacker?

What if say the player gets 3 skulls the opponent suffers negative or positive damage to what ever the attacker was aiming for?

The opponent can counter roll after each skull appears from the attacker? Like a combo breaker of some kind? This way both players are always engaged trying to find a solution to do whatever they are trying to do on the board?

For example:
Like parkour runners running through a large course, racing at the same time. Each runner can try to stop each other by blocking , jumping, climbing to higher or lower obstacles to win the race?

Or two fighters tactically size each other up in a fencing duel?

Let's go back to your idea of a locked skull that appears. I would say, yes, allow the player to keep rolling the dice until more skull face appears on the dice.

What if your players are trying to lock up the opponent's abilities by trying to gain 3 skulls and have 1 extra fight blow to do massive damage?

Jesse
Aka: Stormyknight1976

I'd suggest incorporating a "wild" symbol, that can be used for any required symbol, on at least a few available dice. Maybe they can sit in on the otherwise blank face of the die.

This will make it twice as likely the desired symbol appears on any one die, and may encourage players to strive for more combats during their turn. "Saving dice for later" becomes more of a viable tactic.

Lots of games use wild dice faces, particularly those which want to be more forgiving. The game that comes to mind right away is Catan Dice. The attractive thing about the system used there (well, to me anyway) is that it takes two wild symbols to equate to a single symbol of any other type. Should you want to increase the challenge of using wild symbols, this becomes possible.

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Another possibility is the idea that skulls lock a die and keep it unusable for that combat, but they also charge up a "limit break" meter or something like that. Once the meter is full the player can use that special/unique ability once, then the meter resets, charging only when skulls are thrown.

For instance: let's say one of the patterns required to succeed in an encounter in your game (combat or otherwise) is 1, 3, 5. It's possible to do that with three dice, sure. But how likely is it?

Another pattern is 2, 4, 5, 6. Not possible with three or fewer typical dice, but possible with four. How likely is it that the player's throws result in this combination?

The more exact/specific you want a die result to be, the less-common the first throw will match it. Fortunately, with the system you describe above, players can throw remaining dice up to three times, increasing the 1-in-6 chance of matching a symbol accordingly.

The thing that might make this difficult to determine in terms of straight-up probability is the skull result. There's a 1-in-6 chance of that occurring, and then that die can no longer be used. That's why I suggested the "consolation prize" possibility above. I see problems with that, but it's only one way to approach your dilemma.

As it is now, your system is extremely random... Some would say terribly, terribly random. :) At some point, lots of skulls - which again have the same chance of occurring as the desired symbols - make it impossible to achieve the desired pattern, no matter how many dice you have in your pool. If you rely solely on dice, and no mitigation or adjustments of results, then that's all it will be. When you have opposing players throwing dice to compete with one another, randomness is compounded.

The player, on the other hand, simply observes the results. If they didn't achieve the pattern, they pick the possible dice and throw again. If a die has a result they want, then they keep it. If it's a skull, they can't re-throw it. No real decisions can be made here.

Yahtzee provides the player with a wide array of patterns to aim for at the outset of the game (what makes it interesting is that this pool of options shrinks over time). Can you implement additional patterns for players to seek out at once? This adds utility to more die results than just that single one required to "beat" the encounter.

ZOMBIES!!! allows players to use their limited supply of bullet tokens to increase their die results to the next highest number. Can you think of consumable/limited-use mitigation tactics the player can elect when to use, or at what intensity? These are a few "classic" ways to mitigate the random nature of dice results, which you might want to consider as a starting-point for your own mitigation approach.

SO: More dice = more chances to make the pattern, but more chances to throw a bunch of skulls. If there's no way to make adjustments on the fly via mitigation tactics or options, then a player will be a servant of chance and won't be able to make many interesting decisions.

Wow, you're really coming along with this design! This has been fun to read. I have a couple thoughts on your current design plans.

Regarding Basic Dice
I understand your attribute system clearly enough, I reckon. A simple solution to add utility to the basic dice is to omit skulls from them, and have skulls appear only on the Attribute dice. Put two of the desired Attribute, two Skulls, and either a blank face or a single occurrence of complimentary Attributes.

Regarding Encounter Outcomes
I had happened upon a game from the 1970s called Dungeon Dice some time ago, and I was faced with a similar dilemma in creating my own version. The six included dice each had fantastic little icons on them, related to being in a dungeon or a medieval mine or something like that. The problem was that, in my opinion, the original game sucked! There were ladders, lanterns, daggers, keys, shovels, and guard helmets (the "bad" symbol), but only the shovels and helmets were implemented in the rules... It was positively begging for an upgrade.

So I came up with a mini dungeon escape game using them. The general idea was this:

• Players throw the dice as many times as required, locking only helmets (they're the equivalent of your skull result).
• To progress in the game, the player draws a card from a deck of possible encounters.
• Each card presents an encounter (combat-related or otherwise), and provides for three possible resolutions: failure (always an option, and occurs when 3+ helmets are shown), a so-so result (two or three matching dice of a certain symbol), and an obviously positive result (three or four of a certain symbol).

The point I'm trying to indicate here is that there need not be only a single positive outcome for your encounters. Maybe combat results in a "flawless victory" with one result, a win with a few scratches and wounds being a second result, and a total failure resulting in a win but many wounds.

If it's a skills check you're resolving, provide for two outcomes: each one relying on different symbols. Again, you can have three possible results each indicating varying degrees of success.

Allowing for a couple skills to be used to generate non-failure outcomes with a given encounter can provide replay value, incidentally. It also helps prevent obvious choices when it comes to encounter resolution, and ensures that someone who chooses a certain "class" or skill-set has at least some chance to generate a non-failure outcome for any given encounter.

...Hope this is useful! Come up with a prototype ASAP and test out some of your ideas. That's likely the most-effective way to see if execution measures up to your idea. :)

I read the thread in diagonal

First ask yourself about the purpose of the dice. Is the goal to do pattern matching with a pool of dice you have and make choices on which pattern you complete. A game with similar mechanics is Elder sign.

Or is the objective only to vary the outcome of your units randomly. In that case, much less dices could be used.

For example, in my Rats Craft game, I using D6 with 3 faces: Attack, support, control, and the face distribution is 3-2-1. When you assign your dice, that will set the unit in attack, support or control mode which could lead to different behaviors according to the unit. In that scenario, I only need 1 die per unit.

Consider that combination of dices, is just a more complex distribution of odds that could be resolved with less components. Even poker hands, could be reduced as percentage of success and could probably be mapped on a single D20 or D100.

So this is why I am asking if dice pattern mix and match is a necessity to the concept of your game.