Using the opposed skill rolls method in combat

[Atgxtg]

On 3/31/2017 at 6:15 PM, Baconjurer said:

Its an interesting idea to tie the damage done to how effectively you hit the opponent and it makes perfect sense.

Well it addresses one of my pet peeves. Mainly that in most RPGs, damage is more dependent on what you are using for a weapon rather than how good you are at using it. It's one of the reason why small, light weapons such as knives and low caliber pistols are nearly useless in most RPG combat. For example, if you shoot someone with a .25 pistol in a game like CoC, they can walk right up to you and punch you and do more damage! I used to hate it when someoneboy would roll a speical success and then roll minimum damage and the "special" would "bounce" off the target. 

One thing I like about the old SAGA rulesets was that the attack score, basically was the damage score. Another thing I liked was that since the defense roll came right off of the attack roll/damage, the better your parry, the less damage you would take. 

Another thing I liked was that all the rolls were made by the players. So if a PC got clocked by a good hit, it was because he blew the defense roll, not because the GM got a lucky roll. 

On 3/31/2017 at 6:15 PM, Baconjurer said:

 

It might be a bit tricky mathematically to preserve the existing damage ranges without a complete rewrite of the rules. My off-the-cuff idea would be to look at the maximum possible damage they can do, and divide it down depending on how much off a difference there was in the attack vs. the defense. 

I don't believe that I'd need to preserve the existing damage ranges exactly. That said, it fairly easy to keep something in the right ballpark. A broadsword might do 1D8+1 in RQ, but with impales, and damage bonus, a typical character can do 19 points with a max roll, more with really good stats and magic.  

 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

On 4/1/2017 at 6:51 AM, Mugen said:

Well, you could simply add a die, or a static bonus, to the tens of the roll, based what you consider an "average fighter" in the original game.

Yeah, or use a multiplier. For instance I'd probably have a broadsword (1D8+1) have a x2 multiplier. 

On 4/1/2017 at 6:51 AM, Mugen said:

... but that's counterbalanced by the fact Atgxtg's system doesn't have crits.

Not quite. While I didn't have RQ style crtis, I did want to have a way to bump up the total to reflect lucky hits and desperate maneuvers. That's why I wanted to add some sort of bonus to the EFFECT total when the player rolled doubles or some such (remember this was/is a work in progress). 

 

I also had a concept for raising the difficulty where you traded off skill for extra EFFECT. The tricky bit is that if you fail your skill roll you zero out your effect total. So it could leave you wide open if you mess up. 

[Mugen]

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, that clears thing up. It's not that bad a method (in fact it's what old Strombringer used to do, pretty much). Mathematically it's not much different that doubles-at least until you break 100%. 

BTW, What if you chance of success is less than 10%? Do you have no chance of a critical, or is then a minimum of 1%

A minimum 1% seems fine to me.

[Atgxtg]

On 4/3/2017 at 2:16 AM, Mugen said:

A minimum 1% seems fine to me.

Me too. 

 

BTW, I'm really trying to figure out a better option to handle "criticals" in my variant. I don't have a problem with using doubles, but what I am concerned about is finding a way to give a nice boost in EFFECT so that a low skilled character can get lucky once in awhile. For example, someone with a 20% skill might get a crit by rolling an 11 (doubles) but even with a 5 point boost in EFFECT for doubles he can still be easily beat be a higher skilled character, or at least have most of this effect negated. Now since the is the "best" the character can roll, I'm thinking it might need a bigger boost or a bump of some sort. 

Maybe I could have doubles trump the normal "high wins". Since the characters with higher skill will have a greater chance of rolling doubles this seems reasonable fair. Also, I'm considering dropping the idea of have effect dice negate each other and just going with a winner take all approach.  

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Me too. 

 

BTW, I'm really trying to figure out a better option to handle "criticals" in my variant. I don't have a problem with using doubles, but what I am concerned about is finding a way to give a nice boost in EFFECT so that a low skilled character can get lucky once in awhile. For example, someone with a 20% skill might get a crit by rolling an 11 (doubles) but even with a 5 point boost in EFFECT for doubles he can still be easily beat be a higher skilled character, or at least have most of this effect negated. Now since the is the "best" the character can roll, I'm thinking it might need a bigger boost or a bump of some sort. 

Maybe I could have doubles trump the normal "high wins". Since the characters with higher skill will have a greater chance of rolling doubles this seems reasonable fair. Also, I'm considering dropping the idea of have effect dice negate each other and just going with a winner take all approach.  

What about simply giving the opponent a penalty to their next action? They have been placed at a disadvantage (tripped, bad footing, poor positioning, etc) by the action of the attacker. Say –25%? This, combined with the damage of the lucky hit, might yield interesting results. 

SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, SDLeary said:

What about simply giving the opponent a penalty to their next action? They have been placed at a disadvantage (tripped, bad footing, poor positioning, etc) by the action of the attacker. Say –25%? This, combined with the damage of the lucky hit, might yield interesting results. 

SDLeary

Hmm, let me clarify. As I currently have it,someone with a 20 skill, will be beaten by somebody with a higher skill who rolls a 21 plus. Even when the lowered skilled character does win, he doesn't do much damage (1 or 2 points plus modifiers), since my method uses the difference between the die rolls.. And chances are this is going to be rendered moot once we factor in for armor. 

The is no chance for the lower skilled character to get a lucky hit in the way he can in RQ/BRP ( or most other RPGs). Even if I were to allow doubles to get a nice bonus to EFFECT (say 5 points), a lower skilled character with doubles can still be beaten by a higher skilled character, or even when he does win, the effect will be marginal (1-2 points again), Which leave me right in the same boat as before. 

So,, what I think I need is a way for the lowered skilled character to occasionally get a good hit in. A penalty to the next action isn't bad, but it  doesn't solve this particular problem. It does help to address something else. I think I might have to do something like zero out the defense or some such just to let the lower skilled character get the occasional good shot in. Note that this is only a big problem with very low skill scores, since they can't generate much effect. 

BTW,  I'm thinking I can replace modifiers to the die rolls with modifiers to EFFECT. It should do about the same thing without having to alter the chances of success. 

P.s. Love the new icon. Maybe I'll change mine once Wabbit Quest comes out.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Atgxtg

[Baconjurer]

Hey @Atgxtg, could you clarify how EFFECT works?

[Atgxtg]

18 hours ago, Baconjurer said:

Hey @Atgxtg, could you clarify how EFFECT works?

Sure. The way it works is that you roll percentile dice against the character's skill or ability score. If the roll is under the score then you generate an EFFECT value equal to the 10s digit. This value is then adjusted for things like equipment, magic, special abilities and so on. If you roll over your rating, then your EFFECT value is equal to Zero and you can't add any modifiers. 

For example, let's say you had a character with a 65% Sword skill. If you rolled a 43 on the dice, you'd generate 4 EFFECT, plus modifiers, but if you rolled a 73, you'd generate 0 EFFECT and not be able to add any modifiers. Note that rolled really low, like 09, is better than rolling above your skill, since you get to add any applicable modifiers. 

Now if a roll is opposed by someone or something, the EFFECT scores generated cancel each other out, so that only the difference between the two counts. For example if the character  with the 65% Sword skill generated 4 points of EFFECT on an attack, but his opponent generated 3 points of EFFECT on a defense roll, only 1 point of EFFECT would get past the defenses. Oh, and with passive resistances, like say lifting a rock or jumping a ditch, the EFFECT score could be fixed, since the difficulty of the task isn't going to vary by performance. So a 100 pound rock will always generate the same EFFECT score to resist being lifted. 

In combat, EFFECT becomes the damage inflicted, and can also be "spent" (reduced) to buy special effects such as disarms, trips, impales and so on. Outside of combat, EFFECT can be used in a variety of ways depending on what you are doing. If you were trying to lift a heavy object, the EFFECT score would determine if you could pick up or shift the object and for how long or far you could do so. With spellcasting, the EFFECT score is basically the pool of points you get to use to craft and adjust the spell's parameters (damage, range, are of effect, and so on). When operating a vehicle, the EFFECT score is the number of points you get to spend to maneuver the vehicle (turns, rolls, slips, loops and so forth). If you are repairing or building something the EFFECT score becomes a running total of that is compared to some target value to see how long it takes to fix or build something. In a contest, such as a race, it is also used as a running total to see how far along the course a character has progressed. 

In other words EFFECT gives us a way to track how well a character is doing both in the short term (say 1 melee round)  with a single roll, or over the long term (hours, days, weeks) with the sum of multiple rolls.