Revising B/X Combat (for, like, the Upteenth time)

Actually, I might as well call this "revising B/X period," but whatever. Here's a look behind the curtain of something I'm currently working on.

It is a sad state of affairs that when you start to tweak one thing, you end up needing to tweak another and another and another until pretty soon you're game only superficially (or thematically) resembles the one you used to be playing. For examples, check out D&D 3E forward, and perhaps games like, oh, Palladium Fantasy, or any other number of "fantasy heartbreakers" marketed as "new, innovative" entries into the RPG market. What starts out as a tweak or two ends up snowballing into a giant ball of house rules that might as well be (well, pretty much is) its Very Own Thing.

This is the way hack game designers (like myself) are created.

So, as usual, the original idea for a game I'm building "from the ground up" comes (in part) from some "fixes" I was making to the B/X D&D game. It's unfortunate that so much had to be revised, but c'est la vie. You've got an idea, or thought, or philosophy, and sometimes it's implantation requires redesign. In this particular instance, we're talking about a shift in paradigm with regard to variable weapon damage in small scale encounters.

In Five Ancient Kingdoms, my combat system is very, very different from what you find in B/X because it is based in the root combat system of D&D, namely the Chainmail wargame system. For those who haven't been following the blog too closely (or for those who have gotten completely lost in the meandering of my rambling thoughts on football and whatnot), I'll try to sum up quickly:

- the current system of D&D combat (D20 attack vs. armor class, roll damage, subtract from hit points) is based on an ALTERNATIVE combat system presented in the OD&D books. It went from being an "alternative" to being de facto in part because (as Arneson wrote in Blackmoor) players didn't like getting one-shotted in combat.

[I'm paraphrasing]

- Chainmail did not allow for heroic staying power in PCs...you were wounded (and out o action) or not. Large monsters (like ogres) could sustain more wounds (i.e. had more hit dice) than a human. You'd have to wound the ogre four times to kill it (unless your character was of an especially heroic type or using a magic weapon). Makes for short, sweet combats.

- What I did with 5AK was to make hit points a part of being an adventurer (PC type) only...PCs take HP damage (rolled randomly) from monsters, but monsters just take wounds. In other words, I took the same approach to my "monster manual" as was the case in early editions of D&D: a monster's profile is just plain different from a player characters (this is not the case with 3E/Pathfinder where monsters have ability scores, feats, skills, etc.). If monsters exist as challenges to be overcome (however one chooses to do that) then why the hell do they need to be all statted up? A ridiculous excess, in my opinion.

The added bonus here is that, being based on a war game (Chainmail) the 5AK combat system is easily extrapolated to mass combat situations (if you want your Arabian horde to go to battle against the northern barbarians or whatever). Small scale and large scale combat can both be handled easily.

But, okay, not everyone is interested in playing out epic sagas on the sand-swept plains surrounding Baghdad. Some people just want to go down into dungeons, yo.

SO...I began writing a new heartbreaker of a game, one with a specific objective (because, you know, objectives are good for games) but whose objective requires the plunging into the depths of the earth with small bands of adventurers. A more basic fantasy adventure game, if you will. And one that uses all sorts of dice, not just six-sided ones (maybe I'm tired of writing up all those D66 random tables).

Anyway: here's the philosophy I wanted to instill in the game design (which required tweaking of the "basic" system/chassis I was using):

1. Combat should be fast. The game is not solely about combat and should not take hours to resolve.
2. Damage should be variable. In small scale (skirmish level) conflict, some blows are more telling than others (this gets into a change in philosophy with ability scores, but that's a separate post), and players should experience both the agony of inflicting "only a flesh wound" or the rapture of carving out a big chunk from their opponent.
3. Randomness should be minimal. We want to cut down on the number of dice rolled...ideally, one die roll per player per round of combat (with the exception of possible "resistance" rolls, i.e. saving throw).

[the game is not narrative based, so "scene resolution" is not what I'm going for here...I want to play the back-n-forth of combat, even if it's still quicker than your average 3E throwdown]

In order to accomplish all this, I needed to find a way to combine the attack roll with the damage roll. Or (more specifically) make the attack roll the measure of how much damage is inflicted (rather than an additional, random throw of the die, which I hate).

What exactly is an attack roll? Well, it's a fortune (random) method of determining whether or not an attempt to hurt one's opponent succeeds. The target number (and, thus, the percentage chance of success) is based on two factors:

- the opponent's defense (how hard is it to damage this dude?)

- the attacker's skill (how easily can I inflict punishment?)

In D&D, the first factor is boiled down into one short hand called "armor class" which includes not only armor but magical protection, shield use, agility ("dexterity"), and other assorted bonuses. The second factor is determined by class/experience (one's "attack bonus"), certain enchantments, ability bonuses (depending on edition and type of attack), and perhaps a couple other random bonuses.

This final target number is the minimum number an attacker must roll to succeed...that is, the minimum number needed to successfully inflict damage on an opponent. If I roll under that target number, I fail (i.e. do not inflict damage), whether I miss it by one pip or 20. If I roll the number exactly, I have (just) managed to succeed in inflicting damage. If I roll in excess of the number, I have managed to...well, in normal D&D you haven't managed anything more than the bare success of rolling the target number exactly.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Here's the new way of looking at combat: if you roll your target number exactly, you inflict 1 point of damage on your opponent...the bare minimum damage for a bare minimum attack roll. For every point over your target number, you inflict one additional point of damage up to the maximum damage that a weapon is capable of inflicting. If I need a 14 to hit and I roll a 20, I've inflicted one + six (since 20 is six more than 14) for a total of seven points of damage. This is, of course, assuming that I'm using a weapon capable of inflicting seven points of damage.

"Ooo...that was a good roll!"

In my game, one's Strength score increases the maximum damage a weapon may inflict (you still have to roll a good hit to inflict that massive damage, though).

In my game, a magic weapon both increases the maximum damage a weapon may inflict, and reduces the target number (thus making it more likely to inflict said extra damage).

Creatures with a higher AC are harder to damage. Creatures with a lower AC are easier to damage. Fighters (with a better chance to hit) inflict more damage in combat. Other classes (with a lower chance to hit) inflict less damage in combat. That all seems to make sense to me.

Of course, PCs are heroic in my game so the way monsters dish damage is a little different from how they take it: no PC hero should go down just because the DM rolls a 20 in combat and is only wearing leather armor. However, a split between the way monsters fight and the way PCs fight is nothing new (neither to me, nor to the basic editions of D&D), and only the DM is responsible for learning both types of combat so, you know, no big deal.

All right, that's enough for now. Perhaps I'll talk about my changes to ability scores tomorrow.

; )