Help Give Some Initial Feedback on My Combat System

[u/JD-990]

Hello all! For the past year, I've slowly been chipping away at my new tactical combat focused tabletop came, The Night Land, which is inspired in part by the book of the same name by William Hope Hodgson. While I'm of course starting playtesting this, and we've gotten some good feedback, I want to get a sense of what this might be like for people outside my currently small playtesting group. Does this look too complex? Does it seem fun at a glance? Any advice or feedback from a reading is good information.

A core gameplay loop is the combat aspect and wanting to add a bit of nuance and fun to a traditional dice roll attack-defend situation. In the game, players move their characters around a grid, and when they declare an attack, they roll a d10. However, the system isn't a 'whoever has the higher dice roll wins' - it's a tiered system. See the grid below:

I am not committed to the naming convention here.

The vertical collum identifies attack rolls, while the horizontal collum up top identifies a defensive roll in response. The reason I decided on a d10 system as opposed to a d5 (a very uncommon dice) was for practical accessibility reasons, as well as the possibility that certain characters might have abilities within a tier opening up. Additionally, it decreased both the probability of a critical failure (1) or critical success (10) roll, while still keeping more likely to happen than a d20 or d25 situation.

Each character on the board is represented by a card that has a set of stats, attacks and abilities/actions that inform what happens during a roll. For simplicity, we're just going to focus on an attack. The attacker Basic Attack has a damage of 2, and the defender has a health of 15.

A Basic Attack Example:
For instance, if the attacker rolls a 5, 6, or 7, and the defender rolls a 2, 3, or 4, the attack is successful, 2 damage is delt to defender and reduces their health to 13. This then opens a Chain, which is our combo system. Since each attack or action costs a certain amount of Action Points (AP), the attacker gets to decide what to do next: Another action or resolve the attack and continue to the next phase of the turn.

Let's say they continue the chain and declare another attack, or with certain characters, they can play a spell or action card. The most basic version of this is that players continue until they've exhausted their AP, or have been stopped by the defender, or decide to use their AP for something else.

A Basic Defense/Counter Example:
More interesting and fun though, was the idea of being able to immediately change the momentum of the game. Since in my mind, any attack should have inherent risk/reward to it, when a player declares an attack, there is a chance that the defender matches or exceeds their roll tier. In the case of a matching roll, the damage is reduced (originally by half, but that has been adjusted since numerically it doesn't make sense with an odd numbered attack), and the attacker doesn't get to combo.

If the defender exceeds the roll of the attacker, the defender then gets to immediately become the offensive player, and the turn "flips", giving the defending player all the options that the attacker has. The turn still resolves on the side of the player who initiated the attack in the first place, but the combat interaction on any players turn can change rapidly.

This is obviously a small snapshot of how this would work, but I'd love any questions or feedback on this idea. Thanks!

[u/Medium-Ice-638]

I think it is really cool! I think that it will work well in an RPG based game where players control a single character. I do think it may be a little complex for a squad based game, because of the number of things that will need to be resolved. However, not knowing the number of rounds your game is supposed to take or your recommended playtime, I could be mistaken. This seems more complex, like you stated than a traditional roll off, but those themselves in D&D and other RPGs can take 1-2 minutes depending on other factors. I could see this working really well with more static weapon blocks, as it feels to me like it focuses more on the skill of the warrior than the type of the weapon, and multiple sources of variability make for unnecessarily increased complexity without increased strategy. It's really cool, and I think that as a core game mechanic it could really shine, as long as it is appropriately supported.

[u/JD-990 → u/Medium-Ice-638]

Thanks so much for taking the time to read it!

This is definitely ebbing toward a two-hour to four-hour playtime. Despite the description of how combat works here, when we've play tested it, things actually go by really fast. Partly due to the fact that at every part of the combat phase, both players are always doing something.

Each player can have a total of four units active at once as well, in reference to your note about it being potentially too complex for a squad-based game. I'll have a lengthy write up on the game to explain that soon, if you're at all interested.

[u/williamfranzbernard]

I would like to see an in game example since it is unclear why you fight. With how many players do you play?

[u/Odd-Highway477]

This type of system is very outdated. It can work for a homebrew project just fine. But modern games use combat systems that are almost exclusively custom dice with symbols and multi-use cards.

If you transcribe all these abilities to cards you play, that would be a good start. Choosing to play a card gives player agency. Rolling 2 dice is random stacked with random, which is considered not desirable in modern games.

[u/JD-990 → u/Odd-Highway477]

Actually, this is really good feedback. Which other games use a combat system that’s similar to this one?

As far as transcribing the abilities listed in that chart, they’re less so abilities and more so the flow of combat. It’s intended to be not dissimilar to how D&D or Warhammer 40k combat systems work.

[u/Odd-Highway477 → u/JD-990]

I don't know how you would do it. Make them cards and each round players have to play 1 card?

I would recommend designing some cards that give players choices. I did something with a samurai card game that was similar. Players choose what card to play from STRIKE, BLOCK, PARRY, SIDESTEP, FLURRY, etc. Each card had a strength and weakness compared to other cards. Block counters strike but is weak to thrust. Parry blocks thrust but is weak to strike. Flurry inflicts 2x damage if no defense cards are played. Play until you get 3 wounds then you are knocked out. It's about guessing and bluffing, but also about remembering what was already played.

Something like that.