RPG Combat

Hey Desprez,

Continuing the earlier reply, I'll briefly explain one way to adapt your system for more flexibility.

Everything starts with a custom die, a la Battle Lore or Memoir '44. In this case, the faces are:

1x skull and crossbones
2x shield
2x sword
1x star

Armor is represented by a card with a defense number and an dodge symbol, expressed as a shield with a number inside it. The number could be 0, 1, 2, 3, or an infinity symbol.

When a player attacks, he rolls all his dice and "tallies" them as follows:

a) For every skull, discard a shield. If you have more skulls than shields, place the extra skulls on your armor card.

b) Stars are wild. Each one can be turned to either a shield or sword, or kept as a star. Stars are used to activate skills (see below).

c) Place remaining shield dice on your armor card, up to the "dodge" number (the number inside the shield). Discard leftover shields.

b) Count swords. That is the damage you dealt to your target.

Skill Points
Players who kept stars can use them to activate combat skills. Different skills may have different levels of activation with different effects. For example:

Judo Skill
1 Star: sacrifice throw -- take normal damage but throw opponent to ground

2 Stars: defensive roll -- take no damage from short or medium weapon

3 Stars: counter throw -- take no damage from short or medium weapons and throw opponent for 2 pts of damage

Taking Damage
In this system, armor acts as a straight subtraction from damage done, but skulls and shields affect the subtraction. Skulls reduce the armor's defense rating by 1/skull. Shields increase it by 1/shield. Each successive attack destroys 1 skull or shield, and all skulls/shields are removed at the start of the player's turn.

Example: Roderick the Rogue has leather armor with Defense 1 and an infinite Dodge rating. He has just been ambushed by 4 kobolds while trying to open the chest containing their legendary ancestral treasure.

Roderick goes first and rolls 5 dice, getting skull star shield shield star. He decides to play defense until he knows how strong his enemies are, so he converts both stars to shields and discards the skull along with one of the shields. He places the remaining three shields on his "Leather Armor" card.

The kobolds all roll 2 dice each, getting:

shield sword -- does one damage and forces Roderick to remove 1 shield from his armor card.
shield skull -- the dice cancel for no effect
sword sword -- does two damage and forces Roderick to remove his remaining shields.
star shield -- star converts to sword which does 1 damage which is blocked by Roderick's leathers

Feeling confident, Roderick rolls again and gets

sword
sword
star
shield
shield

He converts the star to a sword and targets kobold #2 (the one whose dice canceled last turn). The kobold has armor of 1, so it takes 3 - 1 = 2 points of damage. It's health drops from 4 to 2.

The GM rolls a morale check on the injured kobold and determines that it runs away. The remaining 3 kobolds attack as follows:

skull skull

sword shield

star shield

The GM converts the last kobold's star to a shield. None of the attacks do enough to hurt Roderick.

Roderick attacks again. This time he rolls

skull
skull
shield
sword
sword

One skull cancels his shield, the remaining skull goes on his armor. He targets kobold #1 (the one that rolled 'skull skull'). The two skulls reduce its armor to -1, but 0 is the minimum allowed, so it takes 2 - 0 = 2 points of damage.

That kobold makes it's morale save and continues battle. The kobolds roll:

star sword

shield sword

skull sword

The first kobold converts star to sword and does a 2 point attack. Roderick's skull cancels his 1 point of armor and he takes 2 damage. He discards a single skull (the only one, in this case), following the attack.

The next two attacks bounce off his armor.

Roderick rolls again:

star
star
shield
sword
sword

Seeing two stars, Roderick decides to use his Rogue skills as follows:

"Blinding slash" -- a feint to the opponent's eyes -- negate 2 armor dice

and

"Vicious stab" -- double damage vs a blinded opponent

He then targets kobold #3 (whose roll was: skull sword). His two swords' damage doubles to 4, and the kobold's skull cancels its armor of 1, so it takes 4 - (1 armor - 1 skull) = 4 - 0 = 4 points of damage and dies outright.

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...and so on.

Roderick eventually defeats the kobolds and recovers the treasure, which turns out to be a mummified turkey drumstick. This is why he not called Roderick the Lucky...

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The details of a system like this can change a lot, but the pros are:

1) You don't need to know all the rules of combat -- just the ones for the skills you purchased, which are on the cards you bought.

2) The math is easy -- addition and subtraction of small numbers.

3) Opportunity for strategy -- having "wild stars" lets players tune their play from offense to defense, and to introduce special skills some of the time.

4) Flexibility -- by replacing references to specific skills like "Dodge" with abstract "stars", you can expand the game as much as you like, without changing the effects of existing skills.

As for the number of dice players roll, the total comes from a combination of innate ability and experience, so there's room for growth over time. Players can also purchase new skill cards as the level up.

I've used a more complex variation of this for a superhero RPG system. The combat worked pretty well, though I prefer this simplified version.

There are challenges -- like record keeping for the GM -- but you have these in every system, and seasoned referees will already know how to keep track of skulls and shields from turn to turn without needing loads of dice.

I see. Well, in that case, you're probably good to go. The game sounds like a lot of fun. :)

The only difficulty I still see is game balance. The original system still has the feature that it each specific skill is tied to a particular pip on the die. Since you've only got 6 pips, you don't have a lot of room to maneuver. Seems like you've thought about it a lot, though.

So, were there specific problems with this system you wanted to iron out? How much have you playtested it?

> Now, you have shown some ways a two die system might work, though I'm trying to get away from too many dice and die rolls. But there were definitely some interesting ideas there; it feels a little more euro-style in execution.

Yeah, it's definitely Euro-style -- that dicing system is much like the one in Memoir '44. Works great, there.

I didn't realize you were literally using a single die. I agree that it's important to reduce the number of dice and rolls. I came to my original version of the above system for the same reasons (I used the Hero system for many years, where rolling 3 D6 "to hit" followed by 10 D6 for damage was a "normal" attack for a superhero). I've found that going up to 5 dice in a single roll still goes fast, especially when you use symbols instead of forcing players to add pips. Plus, players like to roll a handful of dice. :)

I like both your mana ideas, and could see either (or both) working well for the game.

Putting multiple levels of effect on the cards is a bit clunky, but it allows for greater variation of FX, so it has its advantages. It can make players feel more unique.

If you want to stick with a single die, you could experiment with having characters choose from among several kinds of dice to roll. For example, SlyBlu7 pitched an idea a couple of weeks ago where players had "red" or "blue" dice, where red favored offense and blue favored defense (I'm paraphrasing drastically, here). You could also have a green die that favors mana use, etc. Or the different dice could line up with different skills: green pits agility vs armor, while red pits strength vs agility, and green pits mana vs armor. Or whatever.

Hope you'll keep posting as you refine the system. You're exploring new and interesting ideas, here.