Active defenses as modifiers

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by benz72

I've seen the slogfest argument before, and taken it seriously, but every time I look into it more deeply I come across a failure to utilize terrain and tactics to change the dynamics of the fight. I get that the default attack-defend-damage loop can get boring and crit fishing is dull, but suggest that we generally do have good options to make fights interesting without actually changing the rules.

Again, with equally-skilled combatants, you're looking at around a 45% chance of a hit, which isn't a slogfest - it's close to one out of every 2 attacks hitting. That changes as the target's defense goes up, of course - against a foe with a +1 to defenses, you're looking at around a 34% chance (one-in-three), with +2 it's around a 24% chance (one-in-four), with +3 it's around a 15% chance (one-in-seven), and with +4 it's around an 8% chance (one-in-twelve). But then a slogfest is kind of the expectation of equally-skilled combatants wielding large shields anyway - the whole point of shields is to prevent you from getting hurt! With combatants who aren't equally skilled, the more-skilled one will have an easier time than the above values - skill 14 vs skill 12 gives around a 57% chance of a hit, 14 vs 10 is around 67%, 14 vs 8 is around 76%, and 14 vs 6 is around 83%. Needing to target somewhere other than the Torso also serves to drop the attacker's effective skill, which will make it take longer to score a hit - but then trying to hit someone in the head should take longer to score a hit than just going after the Torso.