Matt Miller
Part of what makes the D20 work is the variable DC. Yet, the use of DC increments on 5 (such as for the falling tables) suggests that d20 is excessively granular.
Rob Hicks
The d20 system, as I saw it, was a way of doing a percentile in 5% increments. It makes it easy from a game design perspective to understand how much of a bonus you are giving across the board.
Matt Miller
That is one of the great virtues of d20: A +1 is a +1. But a +1 just isn't a big enough deal. Our minds can't grasp changes in probability that smaller (Our minds max out at about a 10:1 ratio). So get an effect we can intuit as significant, DnD requires math; it requires 'picking up the pennies' of +1 bonuses to get a significant effect. +1 on a d10 works, +1 on a d12 might also.
Rob Hicks
[D20] has too much variance. You need two to four categories of variance. Either "success vs failure," or "success vs failure with critical success and critical failure". The d20 added too much variation on that, which led to a system that was more crunch than flavor.
Matt Miller
You can lower the variance on a d20 by using multiple dice. DnD originally used 2d6, some games use 3d6, FATE uses 4dF. All generate bell-curves that make the outliers possible but uncommon. (As 7 is the most common in Settlers). But for counted variance, the range matters. 2d6 provides 2-12, 3d6 3-18, Fate -4 to +4.
Matt Miller
Using -4 to +4 provides a range of 9, and that may simply be enough. OD&D abbreviated into -1,0,+1, and 3e made it into -5 to +5. But there is a difference between possible outcomes from the dice, and possible outcomes for attributes. For the former, so large a range may not be necessary. But for the latter, a larger range is required...
Keith J Davies
FWIW, in Echelon attacks are contested rolls as well. Same number of successes = both hit (and both take damage). Otherwise, if I have more successes than you then I hurt you (and hurt you _more_; each success after a tie adds more damage), and vice-versa.
But there are also complications. If you roll 3 successes and 1 complication, and I roll 3 successes and 0 complications, you get to pick: tie (and both cause damage) and suffer a complication, or pay off the complication and take more damage (because I rolled more successes now than you did).
The active character does get to decide if there will be an exchange of attacks. If you attack me, it's on. As the target I could choose to ignore this (passive defense only), but that seems like an uncommon case so I largely ignore it. If I'm better at fighting than you are, or luckier, it might be that you end up getting hurt too (or even instead!).
Most games, you attack me and I have no recourse or decision at all. You decided to attack, I decide to... nothing. I get hurt or not entirely at the whim of you and the dice gods.
The mutual attack thing has some rather interesting characteristics. I ran models that suggest that it does a lot to balance out the action economy. Being outnumbered is still bad, but it's a much more even fight than in most games. In fact, I appear to have hit a sweet spot in the design. Even with four levels difference (i.e. exactly one tier higher), beng outnumbered is bad. The higher-level fighter has better rolls and slightly more hit points, but the sheer number of attacks makes things more even. The more skilled fighter is likely to get more successful (tied or better) attacks than any one of the lesser fighters, but they get spread among all the lesser fighters, while the lesser fighters' attacks are concentrated on one.
I forget if the approximate balance point is 2:1 or 4:1 (I think it was 2-3:1, to be honest). I know that 8:1 is very very bad, don't let that happen.
Matt Miller
Mechanically, I'm really liking Fate of late. 4dF provides a very strong median tendency, while permitting sufficient variance to make things unpredictable.
Rob Hicks
The best thing about the fate die system is environmental or situational bonuses. You can creatively do just about anything to get the bonus, but you have to justify it through actions, environment and character history. It blends the strategic elements of the game with the storytelling.
Paul Goldstone
Fate has extensive meta gaming that makes the game for me, players describing scenes, incidences etc to get mods. The end result being that if you have the skill you are more or less going to succeed. D20 for me has a huge amount of random, that doesn't cater to the if you have the skill you are most likey to succeed mechanic due to the wide possible variances. The arkham dice method for an RPG, when combined with a skill, offers the "have skill will succeed" mechanic which does seem to be popular of late. Its worth noting that ffg custom dice rpg have that, just with symbols over numbers, as does Mutant Chronicles to some extent (MC has a great system and is well worth looking at).
Nathan Dowdell
IMHO, what makes Fate sing is the way that Aspects and the Fate Point economy turn a test from a pure risk consideration to a matter of cost - being able to spend after the fact, and suffer costs for success, changes the game dynamic hugely. Failure isn't the end, merely a chance to ask the question "how much is success worth to you?"
Matt Miller
You make an excellent point. The ability to 'burn' clue tokens in Arkham, AFTER a roll, is one of my favorite parts. It makes rolling slightly less visceral, but it still works: Clue Tokens are a representation of a generic advantage in understanding.
Matt Miller
Before DnD adopted d20, 2d6 was the default rolling mechanism. But the 2d6 also included a margin mechanic, when how much you won by was important. Working on Mayhem, which also has a margin mechanic (for criticals) big margins were a nightmare.
I recall there being a feat in DnD that let you take -x to rolls to get +x to damage. I don't recall it being particularly exciting. Part of what made called shots exciting was that the pay-off was big: Big risk, big reward. A -1 to hit for a +1 to damage is just...tactical.
But the idea of margins doing more damage recalls to me Called Shit Criticals, from Skills and Powers (DnD), where you could take a -4 penalty to attacks, and then enjoy ridiculous damage bonuses. Thematically, I think I prefer the 'push your luck' mechanism of Called Shot Criticals.
Rob Hicks
Power attack. reduce your base attack bonus by 1 to get 1 extra damage. (2 extra damage for two-handed weapons.) Power attack was amazing.
Matt Miller
Ok, so expertise must have been -x damage to get +1 to hit.
Matt Miller
The more complex combat is, the more time it takes, the more it becomes the focus of the system.Would it be possible to have three distinct steps in an attack? Mayhem coupled the two together (one step) so that the margin of hit resulted in more damage dice.
In Mayhem, the roll to hit and the roll for damage were two separate things, but they were interconnected based on the "crit" range, the number by which it the die hit. It worked fairly well, but I was always eyeing it wondering if I couldn't streamline things somehow.
Matt Miller
D20 has two steps for damage: Roll to hit, and then and (independent) roll for damage. My object is to get the final damage number down as low as possible.
What about...a roll to hit, a damage roll, and an armor roll? Roll 1d20 (vs AC), then roll damage (vs. Armor). Rolling damage vs armor is very different from Armor subtracting from damage. Subtracting armor from damage generates 'false hits', where your attacks succeeds...but does not damage.
Players dislike those. But players like critical hits. So the trick is to make the damage roll translate into a count of criticals, with values of 1, 2, or 3. (Call them 'wounds') And that...I am not sure how to do. Not in a balanced, mathematically simple way. DMG minus armr causes 'false hits', while damage/armor is mathematically complex. Presume our damage dice will be regular polygons (d4-d12) with some use of multiple dice.
A ranked table might work, where >0, >10 and >20 determine if its 1, 2, or 3 wounds. But the 'margin' number would vary by armor, not weapon..
There are many dice mechanics that accomplish exactly this. Cortex Plus has a system where you roll 3d6, take the highest two for the success (hit) and the low one for damage. Or Godlike with its height+width, it evolved into the aptly named One-Roll-Engine. As soon as you look outside the boring mainstream games, you find a lot of very interesting and innovative game mechanics. I'm working on another system right now that will also have one roll to resolve both hit and damage. It's by no means a first
Quite a few older games have a roll to hit, a hit location roll, and a damage roll. Some throw in other rolls as well. BRP, in the complex case, has roll to hit, roll for the opponent's parry or dodge, roll for damage, and roll for hit location.On the opposite end, you have systems like Torg, where there is no separate roll for damage - the margin of success of the attack roll is instead added to a weapon damage value to give the damage done. Thus, each attack requires only one roll.
Rolemaster accomplished a lot with one roll (plus possible crit) which works nice, though a lot of tables.... I suppose there is a need to consider how important or how much of a focus is combat for the game, as well as whether the skill system will follow the same rolling premise. Finally how long it takes to work out and complete every roll. Played a few games where a "quick combat" takes over an hour for a couple of rounds for 4 players and 6 opponents can be a bit much. Finally how deadly/realistic is the combat system intending to be which is another important factor.
Rob Hicks
When I was working on Blueshift, that one used a single attack roll to speed things up, but that was also because I wanted to do automatic gunfire, which meant multiple combat rolls simultaneously, and I didn't want to have to roll multiple damage damage dice separately for each attack, and didn't want to create a huge variability in possible results by counting up lots of damage dice. If course, the other option involved multiplication, so go figure.
My own homebrew uses multiplication for damage: the amount you hit by is multiplied by a damage factor for the weapon used, with the adjustment that a zero (just barely hit) is multiplied by 1/2. The numbers involved are usually small - less than 10, so they're in the range of the multiplication tables most people have memorized.
Roll to hit, roll hit location, roll damage, depending on armor at hit location roll glancing (to further reduce damage). That's essentially how Phoenix Command Hand To Hand does it.
Matt Miller
Bought Fate Core, thinking about porting an AEG setting (Deadlands, 7th Sea, L5R) to it. All systems share what I'll call the 'Roll then Keep' mechanic; roll X dice, keep (and sum) the y highest dice. My memory of playing it was that it was...clumsy. Mentally, you have to perform a sort operations, which involves !(x-1) comparisons, and then sum three or four dice. So making a simple roll takes quite a bit of mental math.
Complicating this, 10's explode. While doing so makes it theoretically possible to reach much higher target numbers, the chances are small. Ie, reaching 30, on a d10 is a 1/1000 chance.
The 'Keep' system does a lot of unintuitive things to mean and variance. 10k10 is the same as 10d10. But 5k10 generates a distribution where a normal roll is 8±2, rather than 5.5±4.5. Higher mean and smaller variance. Translating the difference between steps is thus difficult. Is 6k4 better than 5k5? Not intuitive. Presenting such information requires a table.
Rob Hicks
Several worlds desperately need functional systems. Top of my list for doing so would be shadowrun. Cyberpunk fantasy. Suuuuuper tasty.
Matt Miller
In Mayhem, in devising round-timing we started with a DnD based 10-count round, then expanded to a 12-count 'combat clock' (with 10+ combatants, players were 'tied' too often. But our actions take 5,6,7 or 8 ticks on the combat clock. Somewhat with the idea that people would not overlap too often. But it happened often, as initial position on the clock was set so that everyone started at a different number. But after several hours staring at number systems, I begin to wonder if was a good idea.
If starting position+action is the formula, 1+8,2+7,3+6 or 4+5 all wind up on the same tick on the combat clock. Yet starting all at 1 would not help: All 'fast' actions would wind up at the same tick-mark. Increasing the magnitude of numbers makes for more mental math, not using single digits, but the biggest problem seems to be the change-over, when 11+7=6
Actually, we started with a 100-point combat clock first. Then went down to 50, then 30, then 10, then 12, assuming my memory serves.
Matt Miller
That seems...not unreasonable. Why did we ditch 30? It was such a reasonable number. Divisible by 15,10,6,5,3,2,1...60 might actually have been even better.
Matt Miller
Given that the virtues of the Fibonacci sequence are that two numbers in it add up to a third number, I am thinking we'd have been better to use non-Fibbonacci numbers, viz: 4,6,7,9. Rounds take a long time, so I recall estimating HP on the basis that no battle should average longer than 10 rounds. I tried a number of combinations, and they all overlap to some degree. 56789 just happens to overlap a great deal (20%) in the first two moves, which always bothered me. But alternate numbers are as big a head-ache: Either ratio between the highest and the lowest becomes too big, or the numbers become too big to do mental arithmetic with. 6-10 or 7-11 both have better ratios, but both still have the same 'overlap' problem. (7+11=8+10=9+9). Adding gaps between the numbers (1,3,5,7,9) fixes the overlap problem, but either generates speed ratio problems (9:1) or (using 5,7,9,11,13) mental math problems. The speed ratio was a problem because...players get bored when they take a 9 speed action, and someone else takes 9 1-speed actions.
This was particularly true because there were a couple of effects in the game that adjusted speed slightly. Even a speed adjustment of 1 was HUGE at the lower ranges. An action at speed 3 becoming a speed of 2 is a massive boost across the combat wheel, where a 5 becoming a 4 was a little more reasonable and easier to plan effects around. Gave a boost without being a relative game-changer.
Keith J. Davies(?)
...given 7, 9, 11, 13, your fastest is not quite twice as fast as your slowest. I'd probably consider a 1-20 scale for this (which happily aligns with a commonly-available die... not that that's really important)(and is still about twice as big as you're looking for)
Matt Miller
Why is 12 better than 10, or 30? Even fractions of APR, I guess. 60,30, 20,15,10, 6,5,4,3,2,1. So why not 24 or 18? Both are still 'hex'.
Rob Hicks
Heuristics. Convenient Mental representations. People who do statistics for fun and profit tend to have no problem with number crunching, and don't understand why people who don't can't wrap their heads around them. 30 is as good as 24 or 18 for them. 10, however, is iconic in human math. Decimal counting system, fingers and toes, very easy. 12 only slightly less easy, but was a little kinder than 10 on the backend, and had the added parallel of the clock, both represented in the fact that it is a time-tracking system, and is something that people could reasonably count around. 18 and 24 have neither advantage.
Keith J. Davies
10 or 12 are good, 24 might be too big (but D&D 3.x-style initiative is d20+Dex mod+stuff and can easily reach that high).Perhaps use prime numbers for your speeds. Not 5, 6, 7, 8. 12-step scale, speeds 2 (really really super fast, probably not seen often), 3, 5, 7, 11 (really really slow, probably not seen often). If you start on phase 12 (*cough* HERO) you end up with everyone using the same speed actions hitting the same points and staying together. If you randomize, even slightly, then you might find that people at the same 'speeds' never overlap (if they didn't in the first place), while those acting at different speeds who overlap do so _once_ before they need to lap the field. That is, speed 3 and speed 11, once they sync, will need to go 33 phases before they sync again (11 actions and 3 actions respectively). These might be too far apart; being able to act so many more times than an opponent is pretty brutal. 30-phase rounds with actions 5*, 7, 9**, 11, 13, 17*** might be a better fit.
* aligns with round, will always be on the same phases each round. Perhaps not desirable.
** not prime, but _relatively_ prime
*** maybe too big, less than two actions per round
Rob Hicks
Makes sense. Didn't think of primes, which is very interesting mathematically. Part of the reason actions varied from 5-9, (very fast, fast, average, slow, very slow,) was because the lower numeric end of the scale was trickier to balance for weapon damage. A weapon with a speed of 3 would be 3x faster than one with a speed of 9, where 5:9, was a little less than half as effective. Made the numbers easier to balance on weapon damage and such, when we were trying to get relative efficacy.
Rob Hicks
In the final release, we left it at 5-9, because ultimately the "tied" locations didn't affect things as much as they were initially thought to do. Everyone started on the same spot, and we broke the initial tie by going in order of Agility scores. When two characters tied, we broke the ties in the same way. When those ties were allies, it didn't usually matter. If one wanted to go first strategically, they lost nothing by letting one go before the other.
Matt Miller
We were also trying to keep it to keep the actions speeds to 'counting numbers' under ten.
Andy Klosky
What is the purpose of having such a convoluted initiative system? Does it make the game more fun? More realistic? Simpler for player or GM? Emphasize a type of combat, such as ranged or melee? Balance other game mechanics?
Matt Miller
Mayhem was designed pre-4E DnD, so we made a lot of the same mistakes as 4E. So it has a very crunchy war-game style of mass combat, focused on melee. It also had a very extensive weapons list, with something like 60+ weapons, all of which had unique stats, yet all of which had to be roughly comparable in the amount of damage they did.
Rob Hicks
The combat clock allowed an initiative system that was actually very easy to track and intuitive for players to run, but allowed for faster and slower actions in the game that had tactical meaning. That in turn let us adjust the damage for various weapons, so that daggers fought like daggers. Less damage per hit, but faster attacks and more strategic maneuverability. A maul, by contrast, took ages to swing, but hit like a truck. It really, really improves the cinematics and style of combat, giving different play styles that highlighted different character concepts. In addition, working on a timing-based system, rather than a bonus-based system, meant that where you were on the map and when you were going to act next was strategically important. It gave a great deal of depth in combat for those that like the wargamey tactics style of play, but kept the mechanics still relatively simple and smooth for the people that were more interested in the style and cinematics of the game.
Rob Hicks
Ultimately, people were very aware of who had the better agility as combat went by, so ties on the combat clock didn't end up slowing things down at all, and it gave Agility a particularly nice perk for stat balance. Additionally, characters acting at the same spot on the combat clock often had other advantages. Team attacks, for example, getting an extra bonus for simultaneous whelm attacks, or for big cinematic clashes where two characters struck simultaneously, like a classic samurai duel.
Matt Miller
Players tend to forget penalties, so all numbers were bonuses, with no "maluses", so rather than -3 to +3, we had 0-7. Given that players could always default to 'bare hands' at +0, all weapons had to provide a better bonus than that, so our range was only +1..+7. But the 'big numbers' made weapon very difficult to balance, so in the final list, the numbers were much compressed, even as it made weapons much more similar to one another than I would have preferred.
0 to +3 is what we ended up with for skill bonuses. +3 ended up being rare.Ultimately, for simulation, we ended up doing Jake's method of multiplying the damage of a weapon at a specific die result by the probability that such a result would happen and summing them for average damage. That let us calculate relative bonuses for two opposing dice rolls and two opposing bonuses. (What if your opponent has a shield? For example.)
Ah, shields are easy. I think. "Shields must be splintered!" rules: sacrifice your shield to prevent a hit. Done.
Or, since armor is a function of coverage (die size: d8 means it applies half the time, d12 means it applies 2/3 the time) and quality (leather is 1 die, steel plate is 3 dice), a shield might simply count as another die of armor (or, more likely, give you new options in the fight; as far as I'm concerned a shield is actually a weapon, specialized to defensive purposes).
Matt Miller always pushed for shields as a piece of armor, while I always pushed for shields to be treated as a weapon. My logic to justify my stance was to buy a padded shield and attempt to beat him with it. tongue emoticon
My reply was to build a viking shield, and then Rob attempt to beat me around it....which left only my head and legs uncovered, demonstrating that the Greek hoplite gear (Helmet, shield, greaves) is (1v1) astonishingly effective.
I had forgotten the wrinkle of different defense numbers.
In previous efforts, I've found that it often is beneficial to treat a shield as weapon specialized for defense...it let me collapse a surprising amount of mechanics.
Yeah, the combination of armor+shield can form a near-wall. Which, while realistic...isn't that enjoyable for gameplay. Armor mechanics are a head-ache all their own.
Matt Miller
In DnD, most XP comes from defeating monsters in combat. Making combat the main source of XP may not have been intended. But good tables on appropriate amounts of XP are available for combat, and none for other types of encounters. People respond to incentives. This suggests we need charts for different types of encounters-- a 'monster manual' for non-combat encounters, that includes appropriate XP.
I've never used wandering monster charts. I prefer to use lists that are based on environment, or theme them for the dungeon. Random encounters are done better through video games and don't tell much of a story....I bet fourth has charts out there, but if not, you could use 3e or pathfinder charts easily enough.
Nathan Dowdell
Functionally, random encounters are a part of a different style of play than 4e supports. 4e encounters are very much of the "set piece action movie" style, which makes random, spontaneous conflicts difficult to deal with (the best 4e encounters are ones the GM has had time to plan and prepare, with interesting environments and challenging opponents).
Wandering monster charts work well in 4e, assuming you aren't hand-waving exploration. Often 4e adventures assume you walk to the next dungeon or room of guys without incident, and as a result the dungeons can feel small, pre-generated and mechanical. The other thing that's different about 4e adventures is that encounters are usually balanced around the party, where random encounter tables usually don't cater towards any particular level PC.
There is no reason not to build Wandering Monster charts based on environment. A dungeon is a pretty generic environment--you can put almost anything inside it. A swamp or a forest offers a diverse habitat where dozens of creatures/foes could appear.
Making a wandering monster table is really easy... Just pick any number of your favorite monsters and make a table out of it...then, decide how frequently they will occur... 5th edition uses 17-20 on a d20. Older D&D versions used a roll of 1 on a d10, or a roll of 1 in 6. Frequency is all up to you -- the more frequent monsters appear, the more difficult things are for the party.
Nathan Dowdell
Random encounters really have their origin - and find their purpose most strongly - in the earliest versions of D&D, back when you got XP equal to gold recovered, rather than getting XP for monsters killed. By focussing all reward on treasure, the idea of avoiding encounters (because encounters could mean casualties, which lessens your ability to succeed) through stealth, guile, diplomacy, or deception becomes important. Encumbrance also matters here - the more you carry, the slower you travel, and the more chance of random encounters... which are a risk, rather than another source of XP, but the less you carry, the less XP you get at the end. In that context, XP-for-Gold, Encumbrance, and Random Encounters are three parts of a mechanical construct that encourages cunning over brute force, and self-preservation over battlefield glory.
In that context, XP-for-Gold, Encumbrance, and Random Encounters are three parts of a mechanical construct that encourages cunning over brute force, and self-preservation over battlefield glory.
Random encounters serve less of a purpose outside of that context, becoming more an element of worldbuilding for sandbox-style play (with different tables for different environments) instead of a hazard to force logistical considerations.
If a player's expectation is similar to an adventure like Dungeon Delve, or Keep on the Shadowfell, they may not have any experience with exploration and resource management. The hardest part will be introducing the game style to the players -- that the PCs move only their speed per round, and have to cover the space between before they get to those labeled encounter areas. The longer they dawdle the more potential for random monsters there are.
I always felt wandering monsters were more work. 'Where did they come from?', players trying to track them to origin, just added a lot of faff.....However if you are playing a free form travelling with no purpose type game...there are millions of tables from all the editions.
For outside environments, when players are 'on the road', wandering encounters make more sense. But you can't do the same time/space compaction in a dungeon...so you have to generate tension through spot checks and perception.
