The Gaming Den

So procedurally speaking, the minimum number of die rolls one could make is zero. There is no specific limit to how many you could make in a turn. Here's an example of a list you could make without going too crazy:

• Positioning rolls.
• WoF roll.
• Targeting roll (miss chance).
• Attack roll.
• Dodge roll.
• Damage roll.
• Critical roll (hit location)
• Soak roll.
• Recovery roll.

Needless to say, I think that can be cleaned up a lot. That is a number of rolls that I feel is too many. But how many is too many?

-Username17

I think you can save time by making rolls that don't put the game on hold after they get made.

For example, if you make a Winds of Fate roll at the end of your turn rather than the beginning of it, it saves time because a player can be analyzing their roll and planning what to do with it without slowing things down.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I think you can save time by making rolls that don't put the game on hold after they get made.

Yeah, it's nice to have rolls that don't respond with "await" states after them. So you can continue the game without waiting to see what happened. Because everytime you have to await the result, it slows down the game.

I like the basic SR model of an attacker's attack then a defender's dodge roll and soak roll. Though I don't think the dodge/soak should be made until the end of the turn, with the attacker having to do all his actions first. That way you can make two shots without waiting to see if the first one killed your foe. This makes resolution easier since the soaking part can be basically calculated at any time, as opposed to requiring it to be calculated immediately after the attack before a further attack can continue. That's bad.

4E is a really bad offender with that when rolling for area spells, because every roll has to be checked to see if it's a hit or miss with your DM and that takes a lot of time.

Ideally, you want a system where you can roll and pass on the results without requiring any real feedback to continue your action. So you can simply say "4 hits on my attack roll, base damage of my gun is DV 6". And that's it. The defender now handles the rest and you have no further input in the matter, even if the defender happens to be currently taking a bathroom break or whatever, you can still continue the game and just tell him what he has to defend against later. That flow is best for handling round structure.

As far as max number of rolls, offhand I'd say the guy who currently holds the round should be making at most like 7 rolls. That includes rolls for henchmen and the like under his command.

As far as which of those rolls I like...

I think attacker should make: Attack Roll with the possibility of a recovery roll at the end of the turn (though not 4E style where it's one roll per effect. This would be just one roll, where depending on your margin of success you get to remove either a random effect, an effect chosen by you or all effects).

I'm a fan of the standard 3.x hit and damage roll.

There seem to be 2 parts to the question though, how many stages should combat have and how many rolls should combat have.

I think that nWoD failed at combat more because there was a single stage, to hit, than because there was only one roll. It was clearly deficient in both areas though.

Stages seem to do well by the traditional 2 stages.

1. We have accuracy and defense. Usually the defense is static and the accuracy is rolled but occasionally both are rolled. We don't really have an option for no rolls at this stage because it's so crucial to hit sometimes because otherwise you aren't doing any damage.

2. The second stage is usually damage and soak. Again this seems to typically only have the damage be rolled, but more systems seem to have a soak roll than a defense roll. This stage could be completely static. nWoD has a critical error of not having this stage at all and simply folding it into stage 1.

Now the reason we seem to usually have 2 stages is to allow for on the offense inacurate but hard hitting, balanced, and accurate but weak damage; and on the defense armored but easy to hit, balanced, hard to hit but little armor.

Because hitting or missing is so crucial, I think a hit roll is definitely needed.

Initiative rolls seem to be fairly required to determine who goes when, but this could be split up into "my team: your team" where players all go at once in any order, and then the enemies go all at once in any order. Most Table top wargames go the "my team: your team" route.

Beyond that though it seems pretty optional how many stages you want.

These are the ones I'd remove right out. They can either become static values, or changed to absolute actions without opposition:

[*] Positioning rolls.
[*] Targeting roll (miss chance).
[*] Critical roll (hit location)
[*] Soak roll.

Critical Location: Becomes a part of Attack.
Recovery is exceptional, since in most rounds a character will not be making one.
Miss Chance is a relic that should be folded in to Attack vs Dodge.

So, unless there are other key factors missing here, the total shrinks to about 5-6, most of the time less in any given round due to limited actions and conditional defenses that aren't activated unless under attack. That's fine by me.

ggroy wrote:A more insidious problem is keeping track of and adding up all the modifiers, bonuses, penalties, etc ... to a particular die roll. 3E/3.5E and 4E can be notorious for this, especially when figuring out which bonuses can "stack" and which ones don't "stack". The division of labor of keeping track of the math is split between the DM and players in 3E/3.5E and 4E.

A-fucking-men.

In a streamlined game, everything would stack, a la MTG. (Well, Lifelink doesn't stack anymore, but whatever)

Back to the original question though: on my turn, I think I'd like to make TWO rolls:

1. To-hit (because it's positively thrilling... seriously, I think D&D became a staple not because of elves and shit, but because you rolled a d20 to see if you clobbered something).
2. Some kind of effect roll. You can call it damage, severity, or whatever. This one is not as important and can actually be incorporated into #1.

Depending on the details of the system, a defense roll might be justifiable. Additional rolls add extra potential design depth, but slow shit down.

One other thing: It would be nice to keep the number of dice and addition to an absolute minimum if possible. No more than 6 dice per roll.

In the end, rolling is just randomization. Each node of randomization in a game can potentially add depth to it, but I think there are diminishing returns with each additional die roll required. Unless you want to be "simulationist" or whatever...

Hit roll, effect roll and some kind of defence roll (soak or whatever) works fairly well IME. A friends heavily house-ruled nWoD campaign uses this, so did an Alternity game I played.

Shadowrun's counting successes (& WoD equivalents) let you combine hit and effect roll & still seem to work, though I hadn't noticed any increase in speed of play from this.

rapa-nui wrote:

ggroy wrote:A more insidious problem is keeping track of and adding up all the modifiers, bonuses, penalties, etc ... to a particular die roll. 3E/3.5E and 4E can be notorious for this, especially when figuring out which bonuses can "stack" and which ones don't "stack". The division of labor of keeping track of the math is split between the DM and players in 3E/3.5E and 4E.

In a streamlined game, everything would stack, a la MTG. (Well, Lifelink doesn't stack anymore, but whatever)

I'd cap the stacking to a specified, yet increasing, amount for each level benchmark.
For instance, no more than +5 in all from spells, circumstance, items, race, and so on to a d20 roll or static defense at level 1 through 4, then every 5-level benchmark bumps that cap up by some amount.

Creators could go hogwild with new bonus types if they so wished. It wouldn't matter.
They'd still be within that little box, keeping characters from breaking RNG.

Any die roll that can be eliminated without using narrative detail is good in my books. Miss chances for example should just add to your avoidance and be folded into your hit roll. The to hit and soak/damage rolls have to stay though, because you need them to distinguish between the fencer and the brute. So from your example:

Positioning rolls - should probably stay. I'm not sure what you mean, but it doesn't sound like there is anything to fold this into.
WoF roll - needs to stay if you are using WoF.
Targeting roll (miss chance) - should just be folded into dodging.
Attack roll, Dodge roll - should be an opposed roll.
Damage roll, Soak roll - should be an opposed roll.
Critical roll (hit location) - I haven't seen any system worth the trouble yet, so I'm in favor of scrapping this.
Recovery roll - to recover spent powers I'm guessing? I would prefer a mechanic which doesn't use dice (same goes for WoF), but this is ok I guess, especially as the player can do this on the next character's turn.

I assumed "Recovery" was more like saves, checks to 'stabilize', breaking out of effects, and similar.

sigma999 wrote:I assumed "Recovery" was more like saves, checks to 'stabilize', breaking out of effects, and similar.

Yeah I pictured the 4E end of turn save system to end bad effects.

That is too many:

• Positioning rolls.
  
• WoF roll. I am against WoF on principle, and I believe it to be a superfluous addition that wastes time while breaking imersion. pass.
  
• Targeting roll (miss chance). increased penalties that relate to targeting should either reduce your attack roll or increase your dodge roll. pass.
• Attack roll.
• Dodge roll.
  
• Damage roll. Damage can be treated as a static number and since it is more elegant and faster to do so it should be done so, to which the net bonus on your attack vs. dodge roll could be added. This also (in the case of logarithmic wound scaling) would negate the purpose of the critical roll, as a high enough net attack roll would basically auto-drop mooks. You shall not pass.
  
• Critical roll (hit location) Reason above. pass.
• Soak roll.
• Recovery roll. This covers a lot, but PCs go through a lot, so it stays.

Why do we need a soak roll and a damage roll if we already have an attack and dodge roll?

My personal opinion is that out of those four possible rolls you should only have three. I'm biased towards keeping the dodge roll since in my opinion it's the most exciting one.

The Wind of Fate roll should be at the end of the turn to save time and to assist with planning on other PCs.

The Recovery roll should be at the beginning of someone's turn to prevent situations like we see in 4E:

Goblin Hexer does some funky 'move and you're damaged' thing, save ends. The problem is that it disengages a player for at least a round of combat because they know ahead of time that their turn is going to be wasted. If they recover at the beginning of their turn there is more excitement because they might get to keep their turn.

Of course, this would mean redoing the way we do durations. I don't like 4E's all or nothing, flat-chance system so this should be done anyway. The duration of an effect should be determined from an attack's damage roll--recovery rolls and related effects (like aid another or heal checks) add up to receive a recovery number. You could also have it such that shaking off most of an effect improves your condition.

For example, a lizardman shaman uses Blinding Hex against a PC and does 20 blinding damage. At 10 damage and above the PC is blinded and at 1 to 10 damage the PC is dazzled. The PC attempts a recovery roll at the beginning of their turn and rolls an 8, which drops the damage down to 12 but still leaves them blinded. A party member later in the round uses Cleansing Bubble which heals 10 damage and halves the damage of any duration effect, which changes the PC's condition to dazzled. The next round the PC rolls 13 on their recovery roll and shakes off the blindness.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Why do we need a soak roll and a damage roll if we already have an attack and dodge roll?

Because the Gilgamesh (who is 2/3s god and 1/3 man) and Enkidu dodge an army's thousand arow volly with their massive chest muscles. And that is awesome. Yes, THE GILGAMESH. Like THE BATMAN, only with more CHEST.

There are characters who are just tough, like The Thing, and people who want to play that. Not every player needs be The Flash to actually live when swords are drawn, though of course it couldn't hurt.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu could absorb all of those arrows just by having enough of a soak score (or have damage reduction on top of that or whatever) so that arrows from mortal humans can't penetrate their tender manflesh no matter what the archers roll.

No soak roll needed here!

Just as I noted before, Soak can go. Easily. I did neglect to explain the exceptions though...

Soak is vital in HP-less wound track multiple-pass dice systems.
You could get away with a single d20 Soak roll but that's ridiculous.
It functions as the method of surviving injury. Remove that, and you have injury straight to the wounds... at which point you might as well have incredibly low damage amounts and a tiny list of HP with certain wound effects for each one lost.


Soak in HP systems is known as Damage Reduction in D&D, and either Resistance or Armor in some others. There are other names, but it's all the same; a static value reduces damage against all attacks that qualify.

IMO the best kind is universal soak, defenses that apply to ALL damage in a HP system rather than forcing a player to ask "Was it Ice? I can't stop Ice damage. Oh, it was Fire AND Ice... what happens now?"
You might have additional specific soak types on top of the base one, but as with hack-n-slash combat games such as Samurai Warriors, it serves one simple purpose on a regular basis:
Get it high enough, and you can literally pick your nose in front of a hundred aggressive yet weaker soldiers without a care at all.

There's always a need for that kind of basic character property, or even as an optional ability, but attaching rolls to it for HP systems is a waste of everyone's time in each round.

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Hicks: Static damage works in some kinds of games, such as Pokemon, but usually becomes adjusted up or down beyond the initial base amount.

For instance in Pokemon it's modified (almost always up) by either Attack or Special Attack stats, then doubled or halved due to in-battle effects and elemental matchup.
It works, but only because the unpredictability of combat effects (and sheer variety) combined with such numeric difference between competing monster stats.

There are an unlimited number of systems you could use to represent damage. D&D uses a varied hit point system where each hit point mans relatively little. Shadowrun used to use a static hit point system and now uses a mostly static hit point system. Right now I am playing with a no hit point system where people simply get conditions (some of which are incapacitation or death) like unto Bushido Blade. As such, it becomes imperative that something distinguish stabbing someone in the eye from grazing them in the leg.

Anyway, rolling dice can in all cases be replaced with static numbers. In some cases, this provides no real benefit. Keeping track of static amounts of time is actually way more irritating over several turns than is rolling a die each turn to see if something is ready or finished. That's a pretty well established fact.

I would like it if the attacker and the defender both got a die roll when an attack happened. The minimum number of die rolls to resolve an attack with that stipulation is two, and I see no reason to want to roll more dice than that.

-Username17

I like the 3.5 system's attack, save, and damage rolls. Its simplest for me and my players. I attack vs this static defense. If I hit I do this much damage. Crits just multiply the damage done. the only other roll I should need would be a saving throw for things that aren't attacks. This seems to be the fastest way to get things done. Just have everyone know what they're bonuses are while I keep their defense numbers pinned the the DM screen. DR handles soak damage, dodge is a simple bonus that ties into the defense score. Don't need WoF. I would prefer to keep out other miss chances (targeting rolls) but its part of the game. Recovery relies on healing. otherwise you're down for the count.

I like just having 3 possible types of rolls to be made on any given turn. If I were to give a number of too many it would be more than 5 (1 for attacks, 3 different kinds of saves, and a skill roll) possible in one round. If people are making more than 3 kinds of rolls than too many numbers start getting involved and a lot more time is taken up. I say kinds of rolls because if you're making the same kind of roll IE attacks in a round or saves against various ongoing effects, at least some of the time spent can be mitigated by rolling a bunch of die at once though this does nothing to keep the number mix ups at bay.

An entirely static system doesn't sound very enjoyable. The best strategy games I've ever played have some element of randomness (Card games keeping the randomness to what I have in hand/available at any given moment during play). I'd keep things like skills static. I prefer regular defense to be static and saves to be rolled because things that call for a save are gonna have harder penalties for failing against them then taking regular damage. Positioning, soaking, dodging, are better off static in my opinion, simply to streamline the fight a it. I have no use for a WoF roll.

I am a fan of condition tracks. I have yet to find one that was simple enough to use for my players though. Anybody know of any good ones that relate to hp?

I'm in favor of

Initiative: Roll once when entering combat. If possible not modified after that so I can write it down on a peice of paper and don't have to put little arrows all over it if someone decides to delay or gets hit.

Attacks:
Attack Roll
Defense Roll
NO Soak Roll NO Damage Roll

To resolve attacks, SR's system of attacking then dodging and then still having damage done being a random number up do the damage you hit for is not very rewarding. Having damage (or effect) be reduced or raised by a static amount representing the resistance, armor or lack thereof is fine, since this is a theoretically knowable number and scales with how well a character pulled his move off.

So attack and defense should be an opposed roll with the difference being the only variable input into the damage calculation. The actual number would ideally be single digits where it is possible to simply 'see' the result, and not involve adding up multiple numbers to get two results which are subtracted from each other.

Recovery Roll
A recovery roll to end those effects which may be ended in combat, rolled once per round and the result is applied in some form to all pertinent conditions. On a separate note, conditions should have distinct first characters, to make notekeeping easier.
This should go to the end of the turn so any calculations could be done while other people take their turn.

That's 3 rolls a turn per character in a one on one matchup, with the possibility to be a lot more if you're fighting multiple opponents or using area effects. There's a solid argument for making the attack vs astaic number and rolling soak to reduce the total number of rolls made and still allowing for interaction of both parties, but simply prefer rolling dodge since it's something the character does instead of soak which pertains more to what a character is than reflecting active involvement.

It's worth remembering that one roll can determine multiple things. For instance, the One Roll Engine uses a d10 die pool looking for matches, where the number of dice that match count for both speed and effect level, while the number on the dice that match determines hit location or style, or some other thing depending on the action in question.

With a decently sized pool, it's longer than longcat. Also, d10s are expensive and the standard issue roll poorly (icosahedrons are not helping, they're too round to use lots of them).

On the matter of Bushido Blade series: Ever heard of Dwarf (Dorf) Fortress? Google it up. It has a wound system not too far from this.

The downside to BB style hit location is that some characters are simply immune to nonfatal "peck attacks".
It works, but greatly favors heavy weapons, reach, and guns.

Bushido Blade I remember that game that takes me back a few years... I couldn't do that to my players. It would be hard for them to ever get from a battle without wounds (fucking spears and their stoopid pokes!)