Fighter Woes

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Behold my woes:

  • LBB or FMC: Lots of dice-rolling.
  • AD&D: Stupid and bad; multi-attack hell.
  • B/X or OSE: Plain boring. Boooooo.
  • DCC: No multi-attacks.
  • D&D4: Too many choices.
  • D&D5: The worst of AD&D, DCC, and D&D4.
  • FMC Skirmishes: Hard to explain; relies on an alternate system; constant factor overwhelms random factor.
  • FMC Basic: Having a damage floor is kinda awkward.

What to do? Earlier I said that I like fighters adding their level to attack and damage rolls, in combination with some way for them to make multiple attacks per turn. That way, mid-level fighters are guaranteed to throw any regular figure they hit off the board, and can do so potentially multiple times per turn. I want fighter to be short for auto-fighter.

The problem is that these effects have to be bound with respect to targets' hit points and bonuses from magic weapons, without becoming overwhelming.

I don't really know what a solution looks like except for overhauling the whole thing.

Comments

  1. Illusory SensoriumNovember 30, 2023 at 2:44 AM

    Hi Marcia, really enjoying FMC and your various reflections on how to tweak the numbers of early DIY elfgames. Has certainly inspired me to take up writing my own blog (illusorysensorium.com).
    I agree that adding +1/HD to attack and damage is elegant and quite appealing for lining up with the implied progression from early monster stats, and the premise in Muster of moving from an average 1 hit to down you at level 1, to 3 hits to down you at high levels.
    Regarding how the random element gets swamped by the constant factor, what about drawing from the West End Games d6 systems and turning each +3 into a d6? So a 4th level Fighter would add 1d6+1 to damage (onto the base 1d6 for total 2d6+1) and by 9th level would roll a mighty 4d6 total. I would apply this same scheme to monster damage values by HD.
    This feels close to perfect to me, although then tempts making all damage dice explode (instead of common rule of critical on nat 20), and giving 1d6/+4 (as expected value 4.2 of exploding d6).

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    Replies
    1. Marcia B.November 30, 2023 at 5:56 AM

      hi illusory sensorium, thank you for your cool thoughts and kind words! i'm humbled to have been part of your blogging journey :D hope you have fun with it!

      i feel i remember hearing about +3 --> d6 in muster or some similar thing. i think it doesn't appeal to me because it involves rolling even more dice, and my brain doesn't like the potential of a d6 turning up a 1 when your previous bonus was 2.

      one solution that's kind of interesting is that fighters can just remove one adjacent HD 1d figure from the board per level, though something *else* that bothers me is the distinction between 1d and 2d+ figures when they're on a spectrum up to 10d, 16d, or 20d!

      i think the problem isn't anything but myself being picky! but at the same time, i think as much as i want fighters to have a non-awful multi-attack, D&D itself seems counterintuitive to that because of its basic mechanics.

      Delete

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