I've been thinking, hot off a long combat session. Most systems use dice rolls to resolve uncertainty in a manner not involving human judgment, and that includes "if you punch the guy in front of you", right? But what about making that a given instead of a wonder? What if - extrapolating from the "hit points are exchange of hits, not necessarily your health bar" interpretation - combatants are assumed to be guaranteed to hit each other outside specific circumstances (say, only rolling if you're shooting a projectile involving your friend in melee)?Is it mechanically viable to design around that? What implications would it have from a development standpoint (would such a thing contribute to the "HP bloat" math trap to offset the reliable damage, for example)? Do systems that pursue this method actually speed combat as a flow (as I'm certain there must be a few and that fa/tg/uys have played them)?
>is it mechanically viable to have attacks take 1 die roll instead of 2Yes
It takes out some of the excitement from combat.You should be striving to figure out how to make combat more exciting, not less.
>>98317987That's done in Daggerheart isn't it?
>>98317987There is absolutely no way to make combat in TTRPGs elegant without also robbing it of energy. I'm perfectly convinced of that after 10+ years. Accuracy checks are a necessary evil because, as >>98317995 says, you want to make combat exciting if circumstances have made it necessary.
>>98317987I noticed that actual rolling takes very little time, while players deciding what to roll takes most of the time. Reducing the amount of rolling is irrelevant when compared to having good reactive players
>>98318050You haven't played with the genuine incompetents who struggle with basic addition
>>98317987Games that go for 1 roll attacks usually have static damage with a bonus on crits
>>98317987Such systems already exist. Obviously it removes a potential dimension of attack distinction, and isn't compatible with the common mechanic of armour making you harder to hit.It greatly reduces the chance of whiffing and thus turns that do nothing, as well as just being less rolls. Otherwise I'm not sure it's much of a win. When combat is boring it tends to be because of the lack of options, not because mechanics take too long to resolve. To some extent that's a skill issue of players not being creative enough, but I think good systems would give more options other than, "roll the dice and describe it how you like" or, "try something else and the GM can make it worthless or OP at a whim".
>>98317987>>98318041>>98318064Another thing to keep in mind is the vast majority of ttrpg players are not the types to seek out highly skill based "attacks are guaranteed" opportunity cost based games.
>>98317987Instead of asking us what would work for you, you should instead be testing what would work for you.The roll to hit in my games isn't "pass AC or suck", instead, it's an evolution of hit location systems. What the "hit check" represents is a quick, unfocused attack at the cost of precision, hitting the first dangerous component the hero decides on. To perform a focused attack, the hero must choose one foe to focus on at turn start, which grants benefits such as increased reflex against that foe and being able to choose what feature to hit without a hit check; but all other foes have a small advantage against the hero as a result. Some forms of casting are also tied to the focus state, but that's not relevant to this topic.After the target feature is decided, the first change to the skill's power modifier is made; some features are inherently harder or have magical properties that reduce damage, and this reduction depends on the type of attack versus type of feature targeted. Then the foe decides to either make a defense check, which represents how well they defend with that feature, or to make a reaction to potentially either negate the damage or interrupt the hero's attack. Reactions are risky because the incoming attack usually counts as a critical hit or direct hit if they fail.There are other steps to attack resolution I won't get into here, but this is something that works for me; I developed it through experimentation because I greatly dislike "hit or suck" AC systems, and I want more depth to damage modification than "halve it" or "double it".And what works for me doesn't work for others, as indicated by all the times retards screeched nonsensibly at me about video games or counting beans. The point isn't about what I use, it's about what I use working for me and finding out through testing.See what you can find for free, test it, alter it, experiment with it. That's the point.
>>98318148I'm not sure that's relevant, or that guaranteed hits makes a game any more skill based.
>>98318174If you're so against asking other people their opinions, why the fuck are you here?
>>98318194So get mad about it instead of thinking about it.Don't think about the fact that OP's question relies entirely on his own group's ability to take in, process, and retain information, just get mad at my post.Don't bother understanding that the reason why everyone's group's are different is because of differences in these factors, just get mad at my post.Why think, or have any personal agency at all, when you can just get mad at people who tell you about your own agency?
>>98317987Yes. Into the Odd does this. Work fine as long as you can keep the terrain, objectives and foe varried while the players are able to engage with that and bring their own tactical approaches. If they can't it gets very stale.
>>98317987Look into Worlds Without Number and shock damage.
>>98318225>if your group can do it it works, if they can't it doesn'tExactly.But watch out for the retard getting mad at people for pointing that out.
Nah should be the opposite, melee combat should be a contested roll
>>98318281That's the case in Imperium Maledictum.
>>98318305Nice. It works well in Cyberpunk RED too
The way I have it in my sketched-out system skeleton that will probably never be finalized:>Aggressor makes an attack using their Offense die (typically a d12, d10, or d8, depending on the character path) and an appropriate attribute>Target resists using their Defense die (typically a d10, d8, or d6) and an appropriate attribute>Others can, subject to action economy restrictions, also try to mitigate the attack (typically with a d8, d6, or d4) after the roll results are known, but it’s much costlier in terms of action points>damage taken is attack result minus defense and mitigation resultsThe idea is to have more active participation in the back-and-forth of combat, with a minimal action point cost to even defending against an attack so that you can’t overextend without opening yourself up to getting bodied—unless, of course, you have a tactical setup with your teamwork to make sure they can mitigate the attack on you.
>>98317987I'm pretty sure Nimble does exactly this. You make one roll, missing on a nat 1, but otherwise the result is just applied as damage.It does strike me as more streamlined. Less realistic perhaps, but there is an appeal in just ensuring that the combatants aren't spending round after round failing to advance the game state.
>>98318053And I have no interest in doing so.If you can't handle simple addition, this hobby is not for you.
>>98317987Ive made one, it works. Why are you rolling to hit? What uncertainty are you modeling? If you cant answer it, you dont need to roll
>>98317987I'm running a game in CosmereRPG, and in the system you can spend a resource to make a missed attack graze instead, which deals the damage rolled on the die without any of the normal bonuses, which still is enough to make fights more lethal.Making attacks always hit becomes a numbers game instead of a game of chance, which is fine for wargames and might be fine in a crunch heavy game like 4e, though your party is much more liable to TPK if they roll poorly in initiative unless you inflate HP to compensate when building encounters.
>>98317987Of course you can do that. You can have combat simply be deterministic grinding down each others' numbers if you want. It won't be exciting and heroic, and you'll probably want to have mechanical uncertainty in some other part of the game instead. Like if your game is about cool 90s computer hacker guys then your computer hacking rules should probably be the focus, but you could probably boil physicsl combat down to some really simple subtraction.
>>98317987Monkey brain gets highly excited with gambling.If the game mechanics are similar to gambling then the game is exciting.If it is not similar to gambling then the game mechanics become boring.This is part of the secret sauce that made dnd and with the d20 mechanics so great.Your level 1 adventurers are gambling with every roll to kill the orc band and not get killed in the process
Panic at the Dojo does it pretty well. You roll a dice pool as soon as your turn starts, and you spend the resulting numbers on your abilities, with higher numbers usually unlocking stronger degrees of success. You always hit and are always doing something, even if it's not as strong as it could be.
>>98317987Battle Century G does that, you have a defense stat that subtracts for the enemy's damage to determine how much damage you take, the system also uses a tension system where attacks inherently scale stronger the longer the fight goes on so everyone is increasingly on edge/in the zone. The system also doesn't really have an HP bloat problem either it arguably has a reverse where everyone is too fragile against good offensive builds and unless you're properly using your very limited cheat the basic conventions of the system points properly, you'll have half your HP or more cleaved off. Great System though would recommend for a Magical Girl or Mecha campaign.
>>98317987It is viable to design around that, and it coincides with how combat usually shakes out. In HEMA, if you pit two untrained amateurs against one another, what you will never find is two fighters wailing against one another and only hitting air. Instead, they will hit each other instantly, often at the same time. The difficult portion of combat is not attacking, it's defending, and most of your training will revolve around learning how to defend rather than offend. But if you do have a system like this, you cannot leave defence without some sort of test. If you do, the system is just a math equation and a comparison of stats. I have designed a system like this (well sort of, there is still an attack roll). The reason you roll dice is because it increases tension. It's essentially gambling, and any system you do implement needs some level of gambling to function as a game. If you remove that portion, it had to be swapped for some other system. Cards perhaps, or some other mechanic that makes it so the combat isn't simply a question of looking at static numbers and then deciding what the outcome is. My experience is that it only speeds up combat if the players have no agency, i.e, ther are no attack manoeuvres, no special abilities to add, etc. People adding their bonuses together eats a lot of time. I'd also say that without such things, the game becomes kind of boring. Players tend to enjoy the gambling part.
