Chris Rice's suggestion for to-hit rolls

[tbeard1999]

As I noted some time ago, it’s somewhat reminiscent of the resistance chart in Runequest. A truly scalable game needs a combat mechanic like that. However, as others point out, it’s very different than the standard TFT mechanic. It also doesn’t necessarily model the results in the current TFT combat system very faithfully...which is kinda it’s point. The math is off putting, though I suspect players and GMs get used to it fairly quickly. Also, it may solve a problem that’s no longer so serious with the 8 point limitation on attributes.

There are also other ways to approach the problem:

1. A defense mechanic. Mine was passive (i.e., it subtracted from an attacker’s DX); others use an active parry roll.

2. A defense mechanic in which a figure reduces its DX by a certain amount and a similar reduction is applied to his opponent’s DX.

3. Have a series of advanced weapon talents that require high DX but make you harder to hit. My version was to have Expert and Master weapon talents. Expert required an adjDX of 13 but opponents had to roll 4d to hit you. Master required an adjDX of 17 but opponents had to roll 5d to hit you.

4. Simplify Chris’ approach. If your adjDX is the same as your opponent’s, you hit on a 10 or less. If your adjDX is 1-3 more than your opponent, you hit on an 11-. If your adjDX is 4+ more than your opponent, you hit on a 12-. If your adjDX is 1-3 less than your opponent, you hit on a 9-. If your adjDX is 4+ less than your opponent’s, you hit on an 8-. Or in chart form:

Difference: Hit #
4+..........12 (74%)
1-3........11 (63%)
0...........10 (50%)
-1 to -3....9 (37%)
-4 or less..8 (26%)
(Numbers are representative only.)

5. Turn combat into a test of skills. Each engaged figure makes a 3/adjDX roll. He hits one enemy figure that he equals or beats.* Each enemy figure that equals or beats him hits him.

Example 1: Bob (adjDX 14) is fighting Cyril (adjDX 15). Each rolls to hit. Bob rolls an 8, making his roll by 6. Cyril rolls a 10, making his roll by 5. Bob hits and Cyril misses.

Example 2: For instance, Bob (adjDX 12) is fighting 3 Orcs (adjDX 10). He rolls a 7, so he makes his DX roll by 5. Orc A makes his roll by 3, Orc B makes his roll by 6 and Orc C misses his roll. Bob hits either Orc A or Orc C. Orc B hits Bob.

*For cinematic campaigns, allow a figure engaged with multiple opponents to hit ALL of the enemies whose attack roll he beats. In example 2 above, Bob would hit Orc A and Orc C.

I personally liked option 2 the most.

[Jim Kane]

We explored variations on this idea years ago.

For those who care to read my experience and findings, you can find it Here

JK

[larsdangly]

This particular implementation is fiddly but the concept is strong. The best game system for this issue is Pendragon, where the highest roll that is under the target number wins, but if you make your roll yet 'lose' the contest you gain a mitigating benefit (significant protection from your shield). It is simple, fast, has minimal die rolling, surprisingly dramatic (because combatants roll off simultaneously, and usually something happens). It is really good. It would also fit well with the 'granularity' of TFT. It never occurred to me before that I wished TFT had an attack roll mechanic like Pendragon, but I suspect it would be great!

[Kirk]

As Jim has mentioned in his reference, probably all of us have considered the problem of a lack of involvement of the target with the attacker in TFT, but to change it destroys TFT and its unique flow of play, chess-like...

Table lookups are to be avoided, as well, most other games I have diminish in value quickly if too many table lookups are required regularly in the course of a game.

It also has the problems mentioned prior of attacks against non-active targets or with missile or thrown weapons and so forth.

Ultimately, we have found in play that this doesn't affect us wholeheartedly because no one really wants to "waste" DX. That is, having a DX of 18 has diminishing returns (except perhaps with optional aimed shots, etc.) and no one wants to be a pin cushion for other attacks, either.

So usually someone that has worked hard to achieve DX 18 will begin to reduce it to 15 or 14, somewhere in that range on the bell curve, by using *armor*! :)

So a contest between high DX figures "balances" out, because instead of having 95% chances of hitting each other and killing outright, *armor* takes over as the mitigator, reducing the "auto" hits to survivable levels, much like two 50% hitters with no armor.

This auto-leveling feature (the Player's ability to keep his DX in a functionally interesting range with armor) works great for us, and effectively manages the "my DX gives me almost 100% of hitting someone" because players naturally gravitate to affording themselves protection with ever increasing amounts of armor.

Does this *solve* the problem? No, but it pushes back the over the cliff numbers, usually to a total for a character of around 50. ST-15 DX-21 (16) IQ-14 /5 hits is a workable character that can be played without breaking the system, but runs an upper limit to an "auto" success character in most of his attributes.

[zot]

Kirk, you didn't mention that Dark City Games' TFT-like systems use opposed rolls like Pendragon but let the players choose how many dice to roll.

Did you guys come up with that mechanic? It's a brilliant solution to removing fiddly math from the rolls!

[Kirk]

Originally Posted by zot

Kirk, you didn't mention that Dark City Games' TFT-like systems use opposed rolls like Pendragon but let the players choose how many dice to roll.

Did you guys come up with that mechanic? It's a brilliant solution to removing fiddly math from the rolls!

Near the beginning of DCG George and I had many hours of discussion on many things, from adventure development, mirrored rules that would allow TFT style play without being TFT, to production issues, art, playtesting and QA, etc. etc. so I don't remember after more than a decade where everything came from, necessarily, to get those early rules and modules out.

There was a lot of quiet solo work done in our spare time in making adventures available and marketable, and review of the work through the mail and interwebs.

I give George lots of credit for carrying the torch of working to provide programmed modules to fill the gap for the ever lost (at the time) TFT system, as we both have equivalent passion for TFT. DCG was originally George's idea, and he had final say, and final production occurred in NYC in those early days.

[Wayne]

I think this too much of a change from TFT.

I acknowledge the problem but I think this would hamper speedy play.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

As I noted some time ago, it’s somewhat reminiscent of the resistance chart in Runequest. A truly scalable game needs a combat mechanic like that. However, as others point out, it’s very different than the standard TFT mechanic. It also doesn’t necessarily model the results in the current TFT combat system very faithfully...which is kinda it’s point. The math is off putting, though I suspect players and GMs get used to it fairly quickly. Also, it may solve a problem that’s no longer so serious with the 8 point limitation on attributes.

Yes, good summary. I like how it actually plays exactly like TFT for some cases that I don't think are broken, but fixes the cases I do think are broken (having high DX opponents hit each other almost all the time, as if skilled people don't use their skill to avoid getting hurt), and it also fixes a case I was expecting but I think is also good (making low-DX opponents relatively able to hit each other).

I like to work on finding something that makes sense and plays well before worrying too much about how to make it easy to use and explain... I'm holding out hope that it might be possible to convert it to an easily-learned & used form, but I'm not going to worry about that for now.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

There are also other ways to approach the problem:

1. A defense mechanic. Mine was passive (i.e., it subtracted from an attacker’s DX); others use an active parry roll.

Yes. As I wrote to zot, I like active defenses as in GURPS and have played many different versions of them, but I'm intrigued by the possibility of a modified TFT mechanic that wouldn't have the elements that make me not want to play TFT, which this so far seems to be handling better than the many systems I've tried before. I'll probably also look into how something like it could be applied to GURPS, because even with a separate active defense rolls and much more crunchy rules, it too has issues scaling to high skill levels, that it looks like something like this could address well, maybe... needs a bunch more testing.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

2. A defense mechanic in which a figure reduces its DX by a certain amount and a similar reduction is applied to his opponent’s DX.

Yes, I've seen this as a house rule several times over the years, and it's extremely similar to the way this mechanic works. But every version of such rules I've seen before has suffered from the specifics of how they limit who can increase or decrease whose DX by how much in what circumstances. This system seems to work pretty well eliminating that choice, or reducing it to pretty limited levels of choice.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

3. Have a series of advanced weapon talents that require high DX but make you harder to hit. My version was to have Expert and Master weapon talents. Expert required an adjDX of 13 but opponents had to roll 4d to hit you. Master required an adjDX of 17 but opponents had to roll 5d to hit you.

Yep. I GM'd with such talents after some were published as a suggested optional rule in Metagaming's Interplay magazine (though they had VERY high requirements and so it was rare anyone had them) and played with them using house Rules Rick was using when he was GM'ing Thail (which had them at relatively low requirements (IQ 10 DX 11 (2) for Expert, IQ 13 DX 13 (4) for Master, and there were higher levels, IIRC). In both cases, I really disliked the effect they have of creating "tiers of mastery" where each tier is about 3.5 points better than everyone below in an ability no one else has. Basically it's unlikely a fighter with a lower level will beat one with the higher level of those talents, which feels more artificially chunky/imprecise and symbolic/simplistic-kung-fu-film-like than I want.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

4. Simplify Chris’ approach. If your adjDX is the same as your opponent’s, you hit on a 10 or less. If your adjDX is 1-3 more than your opponent, you hit on an 11-. If your adjDX is 4+ more than your opponent, you hit on a 12-. If your adjDX is 1-3 less than your opponent, you hit on a 9-. If your adjDX is 4+ less than your opponent’s, you hit on an 8-. Or in chart form:

Difference: Hit #
4+..........12 (74%)
1-3........11 (63%)
0...........10 (50%)
-1 to -3....9 (37%)
-4 or less..8 (26%)
(Numbers are representative only.)

Hmm. I'll keep it in mind if/when I get to the stage of being happy with the results and looking for a way to make it easy to learn and play. It sacrifices some precision, which might be a problem, but I'll keep it in mind and see how it plays sometime. (I also sometimes have a hard time predicting what people will find easy or hard with mechanics that seem simple to me. Need to poll people.)

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

5. Turn combat into a test of skills. Each engaged figure makes a 3/adjDX roll. He hits one enemy figure that he equals or beats.* Each enemy figure that equals or beats him hits him.

Example 1: Bob (adjDX 14) is fighting Cyril (adjDX 15). Each rolls to hit. Bob rolls an 8, making his roll by 6. Cyril rolls a 10, making his roll by 5. Bob hits and Cyril misses.

Example 2: For instance, Bob (adjDX 12) is fighting 3 Orcs (adjDX 10). He rolls a 7, so he makes his DX roll by 5. Orc A makes his roll by 3, Orc B makes his roll by 6 and Orc C misses his roll. Bob hits either Orc A or Orc C. Orc B hits Bob.

*For cinematic campaigns, allow a figure engaged with multiple opponents to hit ALL of the enemies whose attack roll he beats. In example 2 above, Bob would hit Orc A and Orc C.

Yeah. And if, like me, you don't like the "usually one person hits and the other misses" effect, there are variants of this that don't have that issue. It reminds me of the system I've used a lot to accelerate massive GURPS combats with many NPCs, but I only use it for generic NPCs fighting each other away from the PCs.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I personally liked option 2 the most.

I do too... though it also seems like essentially the same system but without the parts I'm enjoying about this new idea.

I imagine I will soon find some major snag, but I haven't yet, so that's always a fun place to be until "the other shoe drops"... ;-)