Action Dice - a core mechanic

[John Blaz]

I see what you're saying V, and it sounds like it could require a chart lookup to use effectively.

...and normally I think charts slow things down, but since you've already indicated different hit points for different parts of the body, it would be just as easy to illustrate the body with these target numbers indicated on the various parts. So I didn't think this was too much of a stretch.

V

Yeah, I gotch ya. I was starting to get a little tired there and not comprehending as well as I oughta be... Anyway I did understand your logic, and it makes sense to me. Characters declare their intent to target a part, then they need so many successes to hit it. I was just thinking of giving each main part a certain amount of Wounds it can withstand.
Head = 5
Torso = 10
Arms = 6 each
Legs = 8 each

This number is purely theoretical though, as I'm still not 100% sure of how I want to calculate damage. Somebody had suggested weapons deal x damage per success, based on the weapon.
I'm still considering a separate damage roll, though. I would like to avoid that, so can you suggest anything to do with damage for different weapons, Vulpinoid?

[Creatures of Destiny]

Why not make it that the defender chooses where to take the hit UNLESS the attacker uses success dice to attack a specific location? Each success spent this way enables them to move one body area to where they want to hit OR choose a more specific location (like a pressure point/vital spot or weak point in armour).

If you think about actual close combat or even a sport like boxing, the defender is usually choosing where to defend (like a boxer's guard covering the head) while leaving other areas exposed - so the defender choosing is not so unrealistic (a little more so in missile combat but it's a reasonable abstraction).

Body areas could be Low/Middle/High and or Legs/Torso/Arms/Head. If the defender declares that he's taking the hit to the shoulder, then it would take one success to move the hit to the head, and then another to bring it to the eye area. Any left over success indicate extra damage (my X number of damage per success).

That way you could say that a dagger has a max damage EXCEPT to a vital location, where the dagger has no maximum damage (so you can't cleave someone's arm off with a dagger, but you can poke them in the eye).
These dice should be declared BEFORE rolling (otherwise it gets very gamey as players fiddle around trying to max out the damage).

That way in one roll you've got hit/miss, hit location and damage. As a useful side effect it makes "called shots" slower (they need more dice to work) than attacks to just anywhere (which is realistic and probably balanced too).

An example:

Skipper swings his cutlass at One-Eyed Bob's remaining eye. Bob declared he'd take any hits on his peg-leg (effectively avoiding wounds). So from legs to head is 2 spaces, and then a further success is needed to hit the eye. Skipper rolls his dice and gets 3 successes. Just enough to get the eye, but with not enough to cause damage. The rules (or GM) could run this two ways - Skipper's strike glances past the eye, cutting his eyebrow but causing no damage (but blinding Bob temporarily) OR Skipper's strike hits Bob in the head (but not the eye) causing one success worth of cutlass damage (which would probably hurt quite a bit unless Bob's wearing a helmet).

That last bit could be decided either by a general rule (the last remaining success must be used for damage), by player declaration "Last die for damage/last damage for special effect (blinding in the case of this fight)", by GM fiat, or by random selection (flip a coin, roll a die).

One last note: Another cool thing about this is that it can cover other situations too - for example if the bad guy defender is holding a hostage at gun point, then he can declare that he'll take hits on the hostage! The attacker would then need to use successes to hit the bad guy and scoring less successes would have tragic consequences.

[Vulpinoid]

Why not make it that the defender chooses where to take the hit UNLESS the attacker uses success dice to attack a specific location?

That's a cool idea...and it actually makes defensive actions worthwhile.

A character going "all out attack" is leaving themselves open to being hit wherever their opponent sees the opportunity. A character playing defensive on the other hand can focus the hits into their shield, or into a less volatile part of the body.

As for getting more specific, I guess it all depends how crunchy you want the combat to be.

V

[Vulpinoid]

New Idea.

I don't know if you've now resolved this for your system but I've just struck upon a new idea for the action dice mechanic.

Please ignore this if you've resolved a concept that works with your current ideas, but I just had to get it out.

After posting about initiative concepts...and combat notions without the need for an initiative roll, I just thought of this concept that seems to make sense with the action dice idea.

Simple Axioms:
1. Initiative always goes to the player with the highest number of action dice in their current available pool
2. In the case of a tie, Initiative goes to the character with the highest reflexes (or a random roll-off if this has already been incorporated into the number of available dice)
3. After any action, dice are immediately rerolled to see if they return to a players available pool or if they are temporarily spent.

The general idea can be picked up from the axioms above, but all actions are basically divided into three steps. First the dice are rolled to see if the action succeeds, then the dice are rolled to determine how much damage is done (if applicable, since this could easily be incorporated into the success stage), finally all the dice are rolled again to see if the return to the players pool (if a die rolls 6 or higher it returns to the pool, otherwise it remains temporarily out of play).

Pools are then compared again to see whose turn is next.

A player can also choose to have their character gain their breath, by rolling a single die after every action performed by someone else (if a player has the initiative, but chooses to gain their breath, then the player with the next highest available dice may take an action).

If a player is lucky, they could get a couple of big hits in. But the best way to maintain the initiative in combat would be to perform a number of quick hits in succession.

Just an idea that's come to me in it's rawest of forms. It needs a bit more refinement.

V

[DWeird]

It seems like there are now two threads with exactly the same topic (my bad for nudging the other one off from where it should be!), but what I have to say seems more immediatelly relevant to what Vulpinoid just said, so here I go.

I liked it, but immediatelly felt like there'd be too many rolls in this sort of thing... Started thinking on how to limit it to one single roll.

So.

You roll whatever number of dice you want to roll. What's higher than a target number (Stat/Skill based) counts as a hit. Damage is somehow calculated off the "hit" dice.

This could possibly also be stat-based... Say, the difference between the target number (Stat/Skill higher = Target # lower) is the flat damage bonus. If you have multiple successes, having various combos of the success dice grants damage multipliers/special effects/whatever. I.e., you get one 10 and two 8s as successes for a target number of 5. The 10 gives you 5 damage, the two 8s - 3x2 (2 being the number of indentical rolls).

The stat/skill determining damage could be the same thing that determines damage or something altogether different.

And, finally... Whatever dice of the total roll are lower than your Endurance score return back to you.


Also. I'm a little bit against the "refresh whenever an opponent makes a move", as doing lots of little jabs may well benefit your opponent more than you, an effect that seems sort of counter-intuitive to me.

And basing them off the actual dice your opponent has rolled seems to have the same problem.

...And basing them off the dice *you* roll seems to have a crazy snowball effect, compounding whatever initial advantages/disatvantages you had ad infinitum.

One possible thing... You get new dice whenever you the amount of dice you roll is lower than your Speed stat or some such. The possible endless loop when someone has a couple dies more than you and keeps hitting you with one die probably could be avoided if there were some inherent dangers in rolling. Counter-attacks or whatnot else.

[Vulpinoid]

It seems like there are now two threads with exactly the same topic (my bad for nudging the other one off from where it should be!), but what I have to say seems more immediatelly relevant to what Vulpinoid just said, so here I go.

Yes and no.

I see this thread as delving into the manipulation of the dice refresh elements while the other thread focuses more on how specific damage events are handled. Both relate to one another, but they aren't necessarily the same thing.

If people want to consolidate the topic into a single thread then it might be a good idea to start a new one that references both of these threads.

V

[John Blaz]

It seems like there are now two threads with exactly the same topic (my bad for nudging the other one off from where it should be!), but what I have to say seems more immediatelly relevant to what Vulpinoid just said, so here I go.

Yes and no.

I see this thread as delving into the manipulation of the dice refresh elements while the other thread focuses more on how specific damage events are handled. Both relate to one another, but they aren't necessarily the same thing.

If people want to consolidate the topic into a single thread then it might be a good idea to start a new one that references both of these threads.

V


I feel a little bad for taking up two topics on the front page, if there's a way to consolidate them, I'm all for it. Especially since I'm now flipping back and forth between both topics.