An Even MORE BLASPHEMOUS Polyhedral Dice Concepts for TFT

[JLV]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

As an aside, I’ve considered making damage a fixed amount and making armor variable. For instance, a broadsword does 9 points of damage. 0 armor in TFT would be d4. Leather would be 1d8. chain would be 1d10. Half plate d12. Plate d12+1. Fine plate d12+2.

So, attacker rolls to hit. If he succeeds the target rolls for armor and applies damage. A bit slower compared with the current system.

The problem was (a) it was jarringly unfamiliar to players; and (b) I wasn’t real sure what advantages it might have (if any).

However, I have definitely toyed with the idea of making armor protection ALSO a variable number (I also would use polyhedrals for weapon damage). Using the current polyhedral weapon damage, 1 point of TFT protection stops d4-1 hits. 2 points stop d4 hits. 3 points stop d6 hits. 4 points stop d8. 5 points stop d10. 6 points stop d12. Each additional point of TFT protection adds 1 to the d12 roll.

But again, while it would make combat much more variable (and a little longer), I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Actually, that system was used in a British RPG, Dragon Warriors, which was published contemporaneously with TFT in the early '80's. Dragon Warriors has a LOT of interesting ideas in it (and was republished a few years ago and is available from DTRPG). Systemically it wouldn't be hard to convert DW to TFT or vice versa -- they're close enough to make it do-able. I've often thought it would have resulted in a very interesting game if the designers of TFT and DW would have gotten together and collaborated on their designs -- so many great ideas that didn't overlap exactly but were easily applicable from one design to the other.