One-Roll Chainmail+LBB
Someone shared with me Chaos Reigns, a hack of OD&D combat. It’s not to my own taste (check it out still!), but it got me thinking about something I wish it had done: consolidate attack and damage rolls. Since everything is d6, why not!
My thought was: roll 2d6 ≤ AC, and the damage is the highest of the two dice. For example, if a target has an AC of 7 and you roll a 2 + 5, then you hit and deal 5 damage. This is how the numbers break down, for AC values from 8 to 3. ‘DPA’ stands for damage-per-attack, and ‘DPH’ stands for damage-per-hit.
| Armor Class | To-Hit | DPA | DPH |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 72% | 3.5 | 4.3 |
| 7 | 58% | 2.9 | 4.0 |
| 6 | 41% | 1.9 | 3.4 |
| 5 | 28% | 1.2 | 2.9 |
| 4 | 17% | 0.6 | 2.2 |
| 3 | 8% | 0.2 | 1.7 |
Given that table, I think values from 7 to 4 are the best range, and they could easily correspond to the typical four armor types (none, leather, chain, plate); alternatively, treat 7 to 5 as light/medium/heavy and subtract 1 for a shield.
I like the numbers better than the Kubular method, which is similar but uses d20. However, converting AC values to this scale would be a pain. At the same time, the reduced scale makes it a lot easier to make a weapons-versus-armor table. Who’s to say?
This is reminiscent of the methods in Best Left Buried (3d6, assign two dice to equal or exceed AC, and if that hits remaining die is damage) and Vagabonds of Dyfed (2d6, hit as PbtA 7-9 or 10+, and lowest die + modifier is damage). Numbers for BLB:
ReplyDelete2 100.0% 5.0 5.0
3 99.5% 4.7 4.8
4 98.1% 4.4 4.5
5 94.9% 4.0 4.3
6 89.4% 3.6 4.0
7 80.6% 3.0 3.7
8 68.0% 2.2 3.2
9 52.3% 1.6 3.0
10 35.7% 1.1 2.9
11 19.9% 0.6 3.0
12 7.4% 0.24 3.2
I'm presently playing around with another variation for a Metamorphosis Alpha-like game: roll 2d6 and assign one die to hit on a per weapon vs armour chart (targets 2 to 6) and other die to a damage chart like Troika! This is intended to help differentiate a much wider set of weapon technologies (eg. clubs to plasma rifles), and each weapon would come on a card that has the small charts for vs armour and damage for easy reference. I am sure it could work for an OD&D-like too, however. Here are the numbers:
AC TH DPA DPH
1 100.0% 4.5 4.5
2 97.2% 3.6 3.7
3 88.9% 2.9 3.3
4 74.8% 2.4 3.2
5 55.6% 1.8 3.2
6 30.7% 1.0 3.3
Nice, although I prefer 5-8 over 4-7. If you look at the basic to hit rolls for a 1 HD monster/ 1st level character in OD&D, the chance to hit ranges from 20% (17+ to hit AC 2) up to 55% (10+ to hit AC 9), which is almost exactly the ratio for the to hit chances on the range 5-8 on 2d6. Assuming all attacks inflict the same damage, the flat 2d6 roll all gives the same DPA ratios as OD&D.
ReplyDeleteBy comparison, to hit chances for the range 4-7 favours heavy armour as compared with the original. When you also introduce variable weapon damage, the DPA figures in your table are much more favourable to heavy armours relative to light armours because reduced to hit chance goes along with reduced DPH under that system. There's no problem with either of these effects, obviously. It all depends where you want to take your game.
Because it better matches the original damage profile so well, when I do the 2d6/ one roll conversion, I often drop the HP concept altogether and make the targets P 5, C 6, L 7, N 8, and each successful to hit roll = 1 HD cancelled. Admittedly this is about 40% more lethal than RAW. For skirmish games I think that's desirable. For a TTRPG, I might reduce the impact of that lethality for low level characters by allowing PCs a Save vs Death to keep going/ not die when reduced to 0 HD.
An option I've not closely analysed would be to say that a miss by one pip (e.g. rolling a '9' to hit an unarmoured character, or '6' to hit a plate armoured one) inflicts 1 HP damage, with 1 HP = 1/3 HD. This would give you a way to handle the X+1 HD entries the character level progression tables (and make a F1 better than an MU1 in this respect), at the expense of some extra fiddling. And making combat more lethal again.
There's various ways you can juggle the numbers. If you're willing to retain the HP construct, then you might get closer to the OD&D DPA rates by using some permutation where 1 HD = x HP and a standard hit = x-1 HP.
For example, I think 1 HD = 3 HP, with attacks scoring 1 HP damage if 2-3, 3 HP damage if =Target AC and 2 HP damage for dice scores 4 through Target-1 tracks pretty closely to the OD&D ratios and effective DPA, with only a very small increase in the relative value of a +1 HP score. It does have the problem that hits are more likely and damage relative to HD lower than the OD&D rules. It still gives a 1/6 chance per round to kill an undamaged AC 6 x 1 HD monster outright. So, pretty good, really. If you can live without a rule for shields...
In any case, if you are willing to disregard shields and Dex bonuses, the AC conversion couldn't be much simpler.
The Shield has always been the fly in the D&D attack matrix ointment. If you give it a full +1 on the 2d6 scale it becomes far more effective than the alternate combat system shield, and you certainly need to do something to compensate two-handed weapon users. Modelling a shield as part of a simple AC stack has always been a kludge, but it is hard to work around. :(
thank you for your thoughts kenco!! i prefer 7–4 over 8–5 because i thought of 58% to 17% being closer to the range in D&D proper (3% distance from 55% to 20%), rather than 72% to 28%.
Deletei have also occasionally thought about turning hit dice into discrete hits, but i think i would want to account for that 40% by increasing the discrete hits that figures can take, either by 2x or maybe below to account for that specific ratio:
HD 1/2 --> 1 hit
HD 1 --> 2 hits
HD 2 --> 4 hits
HD 4 --> 6 hits
HD 8 --> 12 hits
someone also told me a great idea, that rather than providing +1 to AC, a shield can be entirely to block attacks altogether! i.e., oops, all splinter.