Re: Experience with Comparative DX for Combat?
 

Those rules are, in my opinion, the madness of which Lear warned. Lots and lots of die rolls and not a player decision among the lot of them.

Re: Experience with Comparative DX for Combat?
 

Yes, there is enough die rolling as it is with separate initiative, to hit and damage rolls.

Re: Experience with Comparative DX for Combat?
 

Ok. I imagine I'd agree with your assessment of the house rule you were playing with.


I don't see an issue with Chris' house rule there, but I could see expanding it to represent what you're pointing to, which seems to me like wanting combat talents to figure in. Perhaps daggers and weapons without talents would have less defensive effect, for example. In my own playtest experiments, I added options where a figure can forgo their defense to get a higher chance to hit, which the heroes facing wizards might well choose.

Re: Experience with Comparative DX for Combat?
 

I don't think it's quite that bad, but I am in agreement with David and Chris about not wanting to add more die rolls to TFT. I merely wanted to suggest the article as another way of applying an offensive/defensive advantage based on DX.

Touching on another aspect of David's response, however, I also think that player choice (especially when it involves making trade-offs between two or more opposing options) is core to TFT's design. With that in mind, I'd like to offer a variation on Chris' house-rule... instead of using comparative DX for every engagement, let each figure decide if they want to exchange some of their offensive advantage for defense. So using the original example, in melee Aragorn can opt to lower his 16 DX to 14 and then use those sacrificed 2 points as a DX penalty enforced on the orc's attack (-2 DX to hit Aragorn).

I originally shared this optional rule in a different thread last year.
https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=171350