Hello, New to this forum. Question about game play statistics

[DannyM]

Hello There,
    I stumbled across your site recently and had a few questions about RPG gaming mechanics.

I used to play D&D years ago and recently I started getting back into it ( I picked up the book "D&D for Dummies" recently).

I noticed that they had changed the rules since I had last played ( I dont remeber a battle grid back in the day I think we used to play with just the map).

Anyways, I am very intrigued with gaming and want to try my first hand at making jmy own system. The idea is that I have a battle game idea that is like a very paired down D&D battle grid.

Basically ( I'm keeping my first game simple because I am still learning this stuff all over again) I want to make battle game with prdefined characters that have specific feats already generated for them.

Basically you roll the dice to see if you can achieve ( I think this is called a skill check?) the task at hand. If you roll the number ( I am thinking a standard d20) then you can roll a 6 sided dice to determine damage against your opponent.

The idea is that I want each character to have a sort of rock paper scissors aspect to their feats so that each template character will have the same amount of chances per turn.

Say you have 4 moves per character. you choose your hardest feat and it has a dificulty of 15 ( I am still not sure if i am going to include modifiers or not I want to keep things simple as possible now). You roll a 15, but because the 15 is a moderately hard to hard move to pull off I want the pay off to be higher. So if you roll a fifteen then you get to roll the 6 sided dice maybe 3 times.

I want my dificulty level to start out at 5 or greater. At 5 you get to roll the 6 sided dice once. At dificulty level 10 you get to roll the d6 twice, at 15 d6 3 times and at 20 you get to roll the d6 4 times for ultimate damage.

Basically at this point I dont want each character to have the same exact moves. I want each one to have the same percentage of possible hardness and damage infliction.

Is there and easy way to reverse engineer moves from the system I have just described that will reflect that same level of percentage for each move??

Thanks for reading this far,
-DannyM

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Welcome to the forum, Danny.

As I understand it, you're presenting a game where characters are presented with a choice of which type of attack to execute, accepting a higher risk of missing for more damage?  In cases like this, I usually assign the value of any choice to the chance of any effect, multiplied by the value of that effect.  This results in the average value of attempting that action.  Since the average outcome on a d6 is 3.5, we'll say 3.5 is the value of each d6, even though we could easily just divide our ending results by 3.5 to compare them versus each other, since you're only using d6s for damage.

5 for 1d6:  Average Damage = 2.8
10 for 2d6:  Average Damage = 3.85
15 for 3d6:  Average Damage = 3.15
20 for 4d6:  Average Damage = 0.7

So, if I understand you correctly, the optimum attack would be trying at Difficulty 10 for 2d6 damage.  The reason the average damage is so low for 20 for 4d6 is that, you're giving only a 5% chance of scoring an average of 14 damage, so 14 times 5% is 0.7.

Of course, there are other issues that give value to riskier options such as this.  If a character only has one attack left before dying, and must do 19 damage to disable the enemy and thus prevent herself from dying, then only the option of 20 for 4d6 will have a chance of helping her out, so she would take that one.  But that's part of the fun, right?

-Jason T.

[DannyM]

I guess my next question ( thank you for replying I totally appreciate your insights) is , is there any way that that I could make different attacks at differing levels of dificulty but ones that are statistically even per characters?

I was thinking about it and it came to mind that I want the characters to be different and if they all had the exact same levels of functionality then what is the point of making different characters?

What do you think of the idea of using modifiers to mix things up but doing it in a way that is still statistically fair for each character? Would that be an additive function or would it have to deal with percentages?

thanks again,
-Danny

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Aloha, Danny.

I don't think there's any way of reducing this mechanic to an additive scale.  It'll have to stay multiplicative.  You don't have to think about it in terms of percentages or even average damage.  Probably the easiest unit to use if you want to make the math easy on you might be called "d6chances," where one "d6chance" equals the number of chances in 20 the attack has of doing the damage, multiplied by the number of d6s the attack would do.

If you think of "statistically even" as "equal average damage per attack", then you could just do this.  Find a number of dice with a lot of factors; say, 36.  You could set this to be the result for one chance.  Since 36 * 1/20 * 3.5 = 6.3, this would give us 6.3 average damage per round.

You could then set Diff 3 to 2d6, Diff 9 to 3d6, Diff 12 to 4d6, Diff 15 to 6d6, Diff 17 to 9d6, Diff 18 to 12d6, Diff 19 to 18d6, and even Diff 20 to 36d6, if you like.  All of these have 36 d6chances, which equates to 6.3 average damage.  So you've achieved "equal average damage per attack."

Of course, like I said, other factors matter, so if character HP is going to be lower than 50 or so, nobody will want to choose Diff 20 as an attack. 

As far as modifiers, it would add some complexity here.  Remember, +1 to defense versus the attack at Diff 20 would completely negate any chance at attack.  It would reduce a Diff 11 attack's effectiveness by 10%, but it would reduce a Diff 16's attack by 20%.  So defensive modifiers would have a different effect on each attacker.

That's not to say that it's impossible to have modifiers and mathematically balance things out.  You can have a computer do the math for you on some of it.  It wouldn't be as simple as a single additive function.

-Jason T.

[DannyM]

Thanks again Jason,
   I will have to take some time to absorb fully what you are saying so that I can appreciate it better. As it is I am an artist with some technical abilities. Although math has never been a strong suit of mine.

ideally what I would like to do is set up a statistical system that can generate character moves parametrically. That way I can then get a look at the profiles and be able to generate characters better.

Basically using the profiles generated as an educated guess for my concept art.

Here is a sample of my art:

The Changeling Becomes Weapon
I really love creatures and I am just looking for an excuse to design them.

cheers,
Danny

[edited by me to change the image into a links - Ron]
[No big deal, Danny, no apologies necessary or anything like that; just use links, that's better for lots of reasons]

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

Well, don't take this in any way as an insult or belittling because I don't intend it as such, but I personally would suggest if you just got done reading dungeons and dragons for dummies, your design skills would benefit from trying other games. I know when I played D&D exclusively it was difficult for me to consider a lot of things about games I learned later from playing other games. And since I got it in my head to design my own game I've read more games than I can count, practically every free preview or game that sounds good I download or buy. So it might help you if you're getting into gaming to try a few other games.

p.s. you artwork is amazing.

[DannyM]

I cant belive that you just said that to me now!!! ; )

hehe, I actually take no offense at your post at all. I guess my main aim is to create a game that is easy to learn. Has some deph of playability and is fairly self contained ( I want the characters cards to hold the information on an as needed basis as I am not going to print manuals or books like the fiend folio or anything).

I agree that D&D has its limits. I do not want to draw kobolds, elves and wizards all the time (but I am using it for reference of its battle system ( roll difficulty check, then damage rolls). In my game there are no spells or movement ( or switching of weapons even)). Basically head to head combat with a menu of attacks to select from.

I guess my main hurdle ( in my head anyways) is finding a way to mix the menus up so that each character has a fair chance against each other, and that its up to the player to decide how much of a chance he wants to take. The game is basically based on raising the stakes and risk management.

Thanks for the insights so far!!

cheers,
Danny

[Adam Riemenschneider]

To give your game idea room to grow, you might want to sit down and make a list of ways your characters can act besides attacking, doing damage. In keeping with the notion of making the characters basic and easy to understand, I'd stay away from character classes and the like. However, you mentioned the characters having Actions/Feats. Let's see if you can cook up some more, based on the parameters of achieving "victory" in the game.

So, I presume that winning in the game means essentially means killing the enemies/opponents before they kill you. Right now, characters can
1): Attack, and hit or miss,
1a): If they hit, they can do damage, based on how much risk they took in declaring the attack.

Also, characters have a certain # of actions they can make.

This is your baseline. Everything else you could add would affect what's already taken as a "given." From here, some basic actions that could have an impact would be:

2): Defend (or Dodge, or otherwise make it harder for them to be hit)
3): Heal, or somehow recover damage they've already taken
4): Entangle (or Confuse, or whatnot) that takes away opponent's actions
5): Presumably, whether or not you can attack someone depends on how close you are to them. How about attacks at longer range?

Even if you want to discount #3 and make all fighting a net loss prospect (there's no way to regain damage once it has been done), you have 3 other ways that characters can act that would affect their opponents. And you can even work up to counters for these maneuvers, and work them in as modifiers or declarations (hope that's not too confusing wording).

For example, instead of raising or lowering the difficulty of attack (for more or less damage dice), a character could:
(reference #2): make an attack that cannot be Defended, or instead of attacking, Defend themselves
(reference #4): make an attack that does lower damage, but uses up some of the opponent's actions
(reference #5): make an attack that does lower damage, but can hit farther away (increased range)

Further ways to individualize the characters would be to give them "free abilities" or traits that otherwise play with the above. You could have a character that was immune to Entangle, or had an automatic Defend against ranged attacks. If you didn't want to give these away and make them automatic, you could say the character who has the super trait always gets a chance to do so (essentially, gets a free action to make the attempt).

These are just examples (make use of them if you wish). Break down the mechanics of your game as far down as you can, and think up ways to modify the mechanics themselves.... come up with titles and explanations later!

Cheers!

[DannyM]

At this point I want to set up things in as general a way possible. My goal is to make a starter pack and then develop booster packs later on.The booster packs will just enable ( or disable) each character depending on the venue, or if the characters have a previous beef with one another.

I admit that I am new to the trading card/ rpg gaming development world and still have a lot to learn about things.

Thanks for all the help thus far. You guys have helped me to have more of an educated guess on things.

-Danny

[Nev the Deranged]

That's some pretty excellent art there, Danny. Where would one go to see more of it?

N.

[Simon C]

This flash game is a cool model of one way to make a very simple game concept that's still exciting and tactically challenging.  What's more, it would play perfectly well with cards and a small game mat, or miniatures, or whatever. 

The world is heavily populated with great miniatures combat games, so a game in this genre really has to stand out.  I think it's wise (as others have said) to look as wide as possible for inspiration.