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I am working on a combat system, non missile weapons at the moment. The emphasis of which is the tactical choices made in regard to moves, attacks reactions  I want to have a random element in the decision of success or failure, but don't want to get bogged down in to dice pools etc.

My idea is that the combatants roll against their weapon skill determine sucesses. EG a skill 1 fighter would have to roll 1 to pass, a skill 5 fighter could roll 1-5 to succeed.  Nothing different there. But my thought is that low level fighter can end up beingcannon fodder, no bad thng but it can make things a bit repetitive?
My idea then is that combatants can choose how many dice they roll, there by increasing there chances of success, BUT (there had to be one) any failures count as success for their opponent. This can mean that a low skill fighter fighteing someone more skillfull, and knowing he will get creamed pretty quick, could decide to roll a lot of dice, on the hope that they will get enough success to do some harm, the downside that they may roll a lot of failures and still get creamed but at least they went down trying.

Does this make enough sense to give thoughts on? Are there any glaring things that I have missed?

Best
Jonathan

it seems that this would lead to a lot of dead characters. I'm not a huge fan of killing off a lot of PCs, unless somehow that is one of the major themes of the game. It would work OK as a "blaze of glory" mechanic, but I would be a bit leary of making it the primary combat mechanic.

You may be right. Though payers will be generally more skillfull fighters facing less skillfull ones with some of similar levels or higher. My current feeling is that lower level fighters may tend to feel "doomed" for the get go. The mechanic may give the option for an allout desperate attack, whcih can give them a slim chance of success. But still the chances are that with a lower level fighter rolling more dice will end up woth more failures and still go down. Also even with a lucky all out shot they still have to get through the opponents defences and actually cause damage.

As I mentioned I don't want to have things like dice pools but want to make the emphasis on the chice of tactics and specific moves. But I'm currently not sure how to make the mechanisim for success or failure work.

Jonathan

Perhaps the "fight" skill can be expressed though two figures. One for success and one for failure.  This would allow for different flavors of success/failure combonations.   "careful" fighters who have less range on the die for failure, and "berserker" types with high success and failure, for example

So, for a numbers example... 

     Sword: 1/1  - success on a 1, failure also on a 1+, so even if he succeeds, he aids his enemy.
     Sword: 1/5 - This could be some one who has learned, basically, not to stab himself.  rolls of 2-4  are null results.
     Sword: 4/2 - success on a 4+ so he's dangerous, but fails on a 2+ so he's also dangerous to himself
     Sword: 6/6 - success on every roll, failures only on a 6.  The best of the best.
     etc...

I'm assuming d6, but the principal can apply to any die type.

I played Call of Cthulhu with the D100 and it would seem like that. We had a house rule of one Dodge allowed every round of combat.
So, I stroke with my Pistol with 100% to hit. He had 100% in Dodge. The fight can be very long...
Another style is like Rolemaster. You apply your Attack bonus to both Attack and Parry. So if you had 60, you could be reasonable and fight with 30/30 or berserker with 60/0. Anyway, the target always had a chance to parry or dodge.
As for myself, I prefer games where you know if it's a good or bad hit. If you have 60% to hit, and you score 05% on the dice, it's a great hit and it should do more damages...
Just my opinion though.

Thanks for the input.
I guess my problem is that I want the game to emphasise the choice of tactics/maneuvers to be the main factor for the action, but need a qucik and simple mechanic to determine the success of those actions when they are compared.

These ideas give me some more to think on

JW