Combat redesigned: faster combat, more deadly but greater mutability with Armor Class

[Moniker]

After reading the Game of Thrones d20 book, I've decided to make a few fundamental changes to how I work the game system. The intent is to speed up combat while giving room for a more flexible Armor Class.

Here's how I plan to work it. Please pick it apart and let me know what you think:

Armor Class will be as Damage Reduction. Each armor type will reduce damage by weapon type (Slash/Crush/Pierce). Meaning, a person with a dagger likely cannot harm someone in half plate unless they attempt a Called Shot to Bypass Armor or a Called Shot to Vital Spot.

A new Defense will work as how armor class used to. This is calculated as a pure bonus, based off of Dexterity modifier, a Class modifier (meaning, diff. classes improve their defense with Fighter-types more prone to have higher bonuses) and any miscellaneous modifiers. A defense roll is made everytime a player is hit with a weapon in order to determine whether they've been hit. Since Defense bonuses per class are lower, the Defense roll is treated much like any other skill in the game (flat bonuses plus a d20). In a sense, it gives greater dynamism since Defense will be notibly lower

Hit Points now work as thus:
Constitution modifier only works with first level HP
1st level w/D4 gets 2+Con bonus with an additional 1HP/per level. No rolling required
1st level w/D6 gets 3+Con bonus with an additional 1HP/per level. No rolling required
1st level w/D8 gets 4+Con bonus with an additional 1HP/per level. No rolling required
1st level w/D10 gets 5+Con bonus with an additional 1HP/per level. No rolling required
1st level w/D12 gets 6+Con bonus with an additional 1HP/per level. No rolling required

Weapon Adjustments: None
Criticals remain the same, and are still the most direct way to kill someone.

Sneak Attack:
Sneak attacks no longer do multiple dice of damage. Everytime an extra D6 is given for a sneak attack, it inflicts an additional 3 damage instead of an extra d6.

Spell Adjustments:
Spells that have incrimental dice (like a 5th level fireball is normally 5d6) adjust as well. Basically, they do a D6+3 damage multiplied per level [5th level fireball does 1d6+12 damage)

Basically, all dice boil down to these new conventions (in regards to multiple dice for spells)
d4 is represented by a flat 2
d6 by a 3
d8 by a 4
d10 by a 5
d12 by a 6

In essence, it will cut HP in half, make combat more dangerous yet more dynamic and cut down the amount of real time it takes to resolve combat. Our gaming group are heavy roleplayers, but we have a tendency for combat to be long (1.5 hours to resolve 8 rounds of difficultm multiple combatants involved in a sortie). Soon, it becomes a battle of attrition and ends up losing a lot of the immersion as multiple dice are rolled.

Please PEACH!

Cheers,
Daniel

[MittenNinja]

I think you'll actually find combat moving slower using these rules. With every attack made instead of rolling one die and adding modifiers to see if someone hits you'll be rolling two, each from a seperate individual. So while you may be cutting down on the amount of rounds of combat, the real-time will be either the same or increased methinks.

example: Player 1 has a Bab of 16 and gets four attacks. He makes four attack rolls against an opponent.
1 - Player one rolls his first attack
2 - DM rolls monster's defense check
3 - Player rolls damage
4 - repeat steps 1-3 three more times

that's twelve rolls for one player for one round. Which under the current rules would only be eight.

[Stargate525]

couple of notes.

I would dump the defense roll and revert back to the base ten. Alternatively, you could have them roll once per encounter, and use that as the base until the encounter ends.

instead of turning those dice into set numbers, I suggest taking them down by 1-2 die types; 5d6 becomes 5d4, 2d10 becomes 2d8, etc. That'll bring damage down and keep the bell curve. The way you've got it set is that anything that does multiple dice of damage has just become lots more dangerous. Take fireball, originally it's a range of 5-30, where yours is 13-18. It's more reliable, hence dangerous. This might be what you're going for though, so...

[Xeviat]

Reducing the HD to status halves like you did hardly reduces the average HP; a d4, for instance, has an average of 2.5, so you're only losing 0.5 hp per level in this system. I don't like the idea of static damages, but reducing spell damage to be more reliable/less varied might be a nice change.

You have to be careful about armor as DR; generally, it ends up being too good at low levels and almost worthless at high levels.

[Moniker]

Damage rolls by weapons will not be static, they will still use whatever dice are required (making critical hits truly critical).

I also currently use a Shock Value system (e.g. if you take massive damage equal to your Constitution, you take a point of Constitution damage on a failed Fortitude save). In that, Critical Hits will be crippling.

Thanks for the reviews, everyone. Keep them coming! I have a spreadsheet I want to toss in the body of the message to show you some of my final notes; is it possible to do so?

[Moniker]

Reducing the HD to status halves like you did hardly reduces the average HP; a d4, for instance, has an average of 2.5, so you're only losing 0.5 hp per level in this system. I don't like the idea of static damages, but reducing spell damage to be more reliable/less varied might be a nice change.

You have to be careful about armor as DR; generally, it ends up being too good at low levels and almost worthless at high levels.

2.5 average of a d4; that's on a Bell Curve, right?

What about with these numbers:

d4 = 1
d6 = 2
d8 = 3
d10 = 4
d12 = 5

[Moniker]

http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/Armor-Resistances-by-Weapon-Type

Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the table

[LordVreeg]

Heh.
Who needs the bell curve?
I also use reduced hp, damage reductions, non-bell curve distributions.  ANd DR's don't lose their usefulness if the possible range is large enough.

Great posting and ideas here.


Though I'll be the first to say my combat resoultions are slower than most, not faster.  I have a group of gamers who prefer the reaslism, letahlity, and strategy it allows, while others like to get more done.
Your group sounds more like my people.

I will copy a relevant page, as I feel strongly that the reasons you have done much of this are the reasons I did the same thing.
[spoiler=damage and lethality]
Damage, Protection, Hit points, and the Lethality of a Campaign
Or,
Another Inside Look at the Mechanics of Celtricia
Or
The Warhorse Fallacy, Revisited.

The Warhorse fallacy is, quickly put, a critique on the HP system that allows players to take the amount of damage they can in many systems. The Warhorse is chosen because at a relatively low level, most fighters can absorb more damage than a 2000lb destrier. (yes, they could get that heavy, though that is about the max).
I understand full well the arguments that HP also equate to luck, learned skills, destiny, etc. And to a small degree, I totally agree. It is fun to be able to take more damage as a character gets more powerful, and it is better for the game, to some extent, to have the characters not as threatened by every bow shot.
But I seriously have trouble to the extent that it is done in most systems, and would contend that it is, like many rules , a crutch for bad GMing.
Note : This is not to say everyone who uses such systems is a bad GM, merely to suggest that said rules mitigate the problems that come from poor GMing at the expense of assisting the better GMs to create a more dramatic world
I mean, I consider it an overdone mechanism of the game that a rogue who never gets hit and almost never gets attacked has 30 HP at a medium power level, and a fighter at that level, unarmored will have 45 or more HP. Not to even get into higher level characters.

Hit points are a skill in Celtricia, and you only get experience in them in Combat, and a lot more when you get struck. As all skills, it is not hard to break levels early, but it gets much harder later on. HP as a skill has a base of 3 and gains 2-5 per level (better guilds and schools (and factions) have better experience mods and gain levels faster...a healthy Knight might have an EXPMOD of .35, a wizenned alchemist a .1). The very highest a PC has in HP is level 9, with 33 HP. Out of the 13 active PCs, no one else has even 30. The beginning players that my Igbarians just rolled up have between level 1 and level 3 HP, based on their initial EXP breakouts, and have HP from 5 to 15.

Ogre warriors (between 1st and 3rd rank) will have between 20-35 hp, Hill giants at the same ability will have 45-65 hp.

the two parts to the reasoning here are:
1)We use other mechanisms to keep everyone from getting killed whenever they go into combat. That would be no fun either,
2)Frankly, on the other hand, our game is a lot more lethal than most. On purpose. Dumb moves get you killed. And I want it that way.

Spells and missle weapons, and their proper use, definitely do help. But the way weapons (and everything) does damage, and the way protection is done, makes for an interesting game.

To maintain a potential of great lethality, yet not overly so, was a challenge. First of all, I did what many games had done, and I broke armor into avoidance and protection, and decided that anything that dealt with a character dealing with a blow that was going to hit something (armor, shield, a defensive weapon) dealt with protection, and slipping by all that was avoidance. But it still didn't quite give me the variability I needed. Daggers just could not ever touch anyone even in chainmail. The breakthrough came one day when I really got down to brass tacks and looked at the probablity curves I was trying to create. I wanted armor to have a range of protections, but more of a bell curve, while I wanted weapons to have a potential of lethality, but not every time, and the smaller the weapon, the lower the chance of a really lethal strike.

So what came out of it was to give both protection and damage a range, with a dividing die. Which allows you to really mess with the probablity curves.
I wanted almost all armor to have some protection, but to have a pretty good range. And I wanted the frequency distribution to group somewhat towards a bell-curve, but still with a bulge towards the low end and a big single tail. So the dividing die in armor is actaully the average of 2d6, which gives me my slightly taller bell in my curve. An example of a character with very light armor would be some guy in Hardened leather and padded silk, who would have a base protection of 14-23, divided by those 2d6. A guy in chain mail and padded silk would have a base protection of 22-31, with a divider, and a guy in Lammellar and padded silk would have 42-51 base protection, still with a divider.
Note : Note that none of these include the avoidance or any skills, for the sake of simplicity.
So our dude in the leather can protect up to 23 hits, he averages 6 protection, and his minimum is 3. Our guy in chain mail can protect up to 31, his average is 8 protection, and his minimum is 4 hits. Our tank can protect up to 51 hits, which is a ton. He averages 14 protection, but can protect as little as 7 on a couple of bad rolls. This gives even the medium armors the hopes of rolling a pair of ones or a one and a two, and protecting on a big damage hit. But it means that even the tank can get nailed if he rolls badly. And heavily armored tanks never get missed.

Now weapons I wanted something slightly different. I wanted a range of damage, but I wanted to curve to be a little less belled. I also came up with a neat mitigastion that allows me to not have the amount of damage being the only factor, but the bigger a weapon is, the smaller it's dividing dice. Note : Smaller weapons also are much faster. Sometime, a guy with a short sabre will get in 2-3 attacks for every attack of a guy with a bec-di-corbin, or something. This is great when you are fighting a lightly armored opponent with a low protection. However, it has been proved a zillion times that attacking 10 times and not getting through someones protection is not as good as one hit that does. It's all a ratio, both have their place.
so a Bank dagger might have 11-18 damage, with a d10 divider, a gladius might have 15-26 damage with a d8 divider, a broadsword might have 17-28 damage with a d6 divider, and double bladed broadaxe might do 22-37 dmage with a d4 divider. Behind the curtain a little bit, this means that with the dagger, you can do up 18 hits (before modifiers), and our guy in Lammellar averages 14 and can protect as little as 7. So if the guy with the dagger rolls a 1 or a 2 divider die, he has a hope of doing some damage to the tank. But it also means that there is only a 10% chance of doing decent damage, the gladius has a 12.5%, the broadsword 16.6%, and the axe 25%. Only huge, slow weapons have d5 or d4 dividers, they are rare. Giants generally have all d4 dividers, dragons have d3. Don't get hit by a dragon. A medium dragon bite is (55-70/d3)
The way the game has fallen out, and this is a gross generalization, is that a 1 or a 2 divider has a decent chance of doing some damage, anything else means you have to hope your opponent rolls a crappy protection. So the odds of getting 'decent' hit become 20% with a really small, d10 divider weapon, 25% with the d8 medium weapon, 33% with the good sized weapon, and 50% with those super slow, punishing weapons.[/spoiler]

[Pellanor]

If I understand correctly, you're going to be cutting down on player HP tremendously. Currently a 20th level barbarian with a Con score of 26 (34 when raging) has around 12+6.5*19+12*20= 375 HP. With your system he would have 6+12+19= 37, or 10% as much as normal. At that point pretty much everybody is a one shot wonder.

Perhaps your system works well at low levels, but it would be an absolute gong show the moment you got near to double digit levels.



However I do like what you're trying to do with combat. Here's a couple of the changes I'm planning on implementing in my combat redesign.

Eliminate the full attack action, but give more potent standard action attacks. This will cut down on the amount of dice rolling, especially at high levels. It will also put more emphasis on mobility, since you should have a move action usable pretty much every round.

Modified WP/VP system. VP will heal quickly, and be used to fuel many special abilities. WP will heal slowly, possibly giving penalties until healed. Also it will be harder to do WP damage than in the standard VP/WP system.

Armour as DR and Defence Bonus based on Base Attack will also be used.

In addition I'll be changing how NPCs work slightly. First off will be the Players roll all the dice variant. Also NPCs will receive a bunch of npc-only passive abilities that are always active, in place of the many activated abilities of PCs. This should help speed up combat as well.

[Moniker]

A 20th level Barbarian under the proposed rules without Con will have 12+6*19=126 Hit Points. Under this system (since all die rolls are reduced) he is guaranteed to always have max hit points, with the variable being the Constitution score.

One thing to note is that there has rarely, if ever, been an encounter with a true "monster" out of the Monster Manuals in my gaming world. The most common enemy are other men.

I like the idea of Defense bonus based on your BAB though. I may have to look into that.

[Moniker]

If I understand correctly, you're going to be cutting down on player HP tremendously. Currently a 20th level barbarian with a Con score of 26 (34 when raging) has around 12+6.5*19+12*20= 375 HP. With your system he would have 6+12+19= 37, or 10% as much as normal. At that point pretty much everybody is a one shot wonder.

Perhaps your system works well at low levels, but it would be an absolute gong show the moment you got near to double digit levels.



However I do like what you're trying to do with combat. Here's a couple of the changes I'm planning on implementing in my combat redesign.

Eliminate the full attack action, but give more potent standard action attacks. This will cut down on the amount of dice rolling, especially at high levels. It will also put more emphasis on mobility, since you should have a move action usable pretty much every round.

Modified WP/VP system. VP will heal quickly, and be used to fuel many special abilities. WP will heal slowly, possibly giving penalties until healed. Also it will be harder to do WP damage than in the standard VP/WP system.

Armour as DR and Defence Bonus based on Base Attack will also be used.

In addition I'll be changing how NPCs work slightly. First off will be the Players roll all the dice variant. Also NPCs will receive a bunch of npc-only passive abilities that are always active, in place of the many activated abilities of PCs. This should help speed up combat as well.

Are you using armor as DR based on the type of weapon being used? If so, can I see an example of your tables?

[Pellanor]

Okay, let me see if I understand how you're doing HP here...
D4: 2*level+con
D6: 3*level+con
D8: 4*level+con
D10: 5*level+con
D12: 6*level+con

In this case I think you're nerfing Con a bit much. Sure it's still useful for Fort Saves and the Concentration skill, but the extra 8 hit points at 20th level between a character with a con of 18 and a con of 3 just doesn't matter.


As for Armour as DR, I haven't decided if it'll be DR X/-, DR X/crit, or DR X/weapon type. If I do go for the X/weapon type then Mail Armour will have DR X/Piercing, Leather DR X/Slashing and Plate DR X/Bludgeoning.
I am leaning towards DR X/- though. We'll see...

[Moniker]

Con is applied every level still. I have given that a bit of thought on how it would work.

For instance:
10th level Fighter w/Con 18

Begins with 14
Every level, gains 9 HP

Less variance on HP in this regard.

I've attached my resist tables as well in Excel

http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/Armor%20Resistances%20by%20Weapon%20Type