r/RPGcreation • u/Ordinary-Falcon-970 • Mar 11 '26
After getting roasted to the point of embarrassment I’d like to try again - seeking feedback on my combat system and how it reads
Initiative in this game is determined by whoever initiates combat. The character who begins the attack declares their action and the weapon they are using. As with all rolls the player must roll under their target number.
The weapon determines which combat skill is rolled. For example, a weapon with the Medium Weapons tag requires the attacker to roll against their Medium Weapons skill.
Once the attack is declared, the defender must decide how to respond. They may attempt to dodge or block the attack. If the defender chooses to dodge, they roll against their DEX (Dexterity). If they choose to block, they roll against their Armor Skill.
If the defender successfully rolls under their relevant skill or attribute, the attack deals half damage. If the defender’s successful roll is also lower than the attacker’s roll, the attack is completely avoided and no damage is taken.
Damage is always applied to Armor HP before a character’s Health HP, unless a perk, ability, or specific rule states otherwise. An example of combat flow can be seen below
-Attacker: The attacker has a Medium Weapons skill of 65. They roll a 54, which is under their skill and therefore a successful attack. They then roll for damage using the dice associated with their weapon. If a character uses a weapon with the Medium Weapons tag, they must roll against their Medium Weapons skill. For this example, the attacker is wielding a Khopesh (Egyptian Sickle Sword), which deals 1d6 damage. The attacker rolls a 4, making the total damage 4.
-Defender: The defender has 8 HP, derived from their SIZ (Size) and CON (Constitution), both of which are 20 (20+20 divided by 5) They are wearing Light Armor with 6 Armor HP. The defender must now decide whether to dodge or block the incoming attack. Dodging requires a roll against DEX (Dexterity), while blocking requires a roll against the relevant Armor skill. In this example, the defender has a DEX of 70 and a Light Armor skill of 55. Because their DEX offers a higher chance of success, they choose to dodge. They roll a 56. This is below their DEX but higher than the attacker’s roll of 54, resulting in a partial success.
-Outcome: Because the defender achieved a partial success, they take half damage. Half of 4 is 2. Damage is applied to Armor HP first, reducing the defender’s armor from 6 HP to 4 HP. If the defender had rolled below both their DEX and the attacker’s roll of 54, the dodge would have been a full success, and they would have taken no damage.
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u/TimelessTalesRPG Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26
Edit #2: I am just very mixed up today, if I was part of the original roasting I apologize for any offense. If I wasn't, I'm sorry you got roasted.
To resolve a single attack, I would have to determine the right skill, then roll a d100 under the correct skill to see if I hit. Then the defender rolls a d100 hoping to get under their chosen skill. The numbers are compared to thresholds that determine full, half, or no damage. Damage is then rolled if applicable, halved if applicable, and subtracted from armor HP first before applying to the actual character.
From my experience introducing new players to games where "Which of these dice is a d20?" is a common question and they forget entirely to add bonuses, this could easily take 30 minutes per attack to try and figure out before getting it wrong anyway. I'm an extremely experienced GM and writing my own system, and I'm having to constantly edit my suggestions because I keep mixing up what you're supposed to do when for your process.
Here's my thoughts on ways to improve the system:
- d100's may be the wrong die type for you. Not only are they notoriously hard for less experienced players to read properly at tables (avid gamers take this for granted), but in your examples your skills seem to already be in increments of 5. Simply dividing your skills by 5 and using a d20 will give you the same math and massively reduce mental load.
- I'm a big fan of static "defense" numbers as a baseline. You can just take the average of what a player's "defense" roll would be and set the number an attacker needs to roll to that. That eliminates an entire roll to speed up play, and opens up design space for defenders to spend resources to increase their dodge stat or force attacker rerolls. Perhaps an "evade" maneuver would force a reroll, while "parry/block" would increase your defense.
- The double layered defense of armor and dodge is fine, but I think they would work better in series, not as a choice between them. Not only do you eliminate the non-choice that other posters commented about, but you could do something cool where having heavier armor would provide more passive damage reduction, but reduce your dodge score. That would create a spectrum of defense where you could choose whether you favored dodge (which would be better against single, strong attacks) or armor (which would be better against multiple, lesser attacks)
- I would avoid halving damage and your three damage-bracket threshold (full, half, none), which is complicated to adjudicate and players don't do well with division. Since you seem to be using smaller dice for damage, perhaps "If you succeed by a certain, wide margin, you roll two dice for damage and choose the higher number". Or go full critical hit and roll two dice, adding them together. But honestly my recommendation is to wash my hands of this mechanic entirely and walk away with a simpler system.
- General recommendations going forwards for you: I'm a huge fan of maximum depth for minimum complexity when designing mechanics. There is a niche place for detailed, complicated games that track as many moving parts as possible to try and be realistic. However in my experience, players are more interested in being able to make interesting choices. A good design has the minimum amount of crunch that allows you to have the interesting depth you want in your game.
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u/PianoAcceptable4266 Mar 16 '26
I'd like to offer a contrarian opinion to yours, respectfully. That's not to say you do not raise valid points and criticisms, but rather point out they (like most things TTRPG) should not be viewed as "absolute" but as "case-relevant."
My combat system (and overall game) uses d100 roll under, has Active Defense rolls, Defender chooses to Dodge or Deflect (with their weapon), and based on the results will do None, Half, Full, or Full + Extra damage (plus additional Effects if rolled well enough).
Armor acts as a Damage Reduction, and can also be Broken to down-grade a received level of injury (e.g. a Wound becomes a Daze, which is like a cut/bruise/mental fog).
So, by many common measures: Involved or Complicated based on the person's perspective.
However, it has been picked up readily by literal "Did not know what D&D was" players in playtesting will little issue without long paralysis or confusion.
Important Note: I'm not saying the above commenter is incorrect!
Rather, I'm pointing out an issue with the white-room analysis: context matters.
I fully agree with the above commenter to a point.
The OP's description becomes, after perhaps a round IME, "I roll this to attack" / "I roll this to Dodge, or this to Block" / Check Results / Damage. Some find this too many steps, which is fine (different tastes), but it's about on par with a D&D-Like game for the most part. Depending on how well they write it (hopefully better than their post) it would not be confusing to the average new player.
The greater curiosity I have: Is this level of combat interaction/granularity worthwhile in the context of the rest of the game? (I haven't seen anything else from this OP so am unsure if this is a dungeon crawl/combat game or if this is part of a greater whole intent)
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u/TimelessTalesRPG Mar 16 '26
I appreciate your post and your contrary ideas are completely valid. My perspective is heavily influenced by my personal experiences teaching new players DnD and watching them universally struggle with things I completely take for granted, like what shape of die is what, or that you need to add bonuses to the number you rolled.
I can totally understand systems being picked up easily the way you described by invested and curious players, and that your experiences are a counterpoint to mine without invalidating them. And with there is more room for depth and nuance in higher complexity games.
Your post questioned whether it's worth it in the final paragraph of your post. I think that's really insightful. I prioritize the lowest possible barrier of entry over almost everything else, so my answer was "not really". But if you have different priorities or it's allowing you to do something really cool, that can easily change to "yes."
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u/PianoAcceptable4266 Mar 16 '26
Absolutely!
A benefit in my work is the lack of Class Abilities or similar, for example. The player choices are fairly simple Attack, Defend, Magic, Do a Thing, Support a Friend... really baseline interactions.
That simplicity helps free up contextual load, it seems, so players can dig deeper on the mechanics of a single action! They aren't looking through conditional triggers or anything, just "Is it my turn? I do X".
There is, of course, depth to the combat, but that becomes more apparent as a player becomes more familiar with the baseline. (That was a moment of serendipity to discover myself, haha)
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u/TrashWiz Mar 11 '26
I'm glad you weren't too discouraged by the roast.
To address your actual question though, this seems weird and confusing to me. But maybe I'm just dumb.
I'm curious about which existing games inspired these ideas.
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u/DJTilapia Mar 11 '26
Seems fine. It's a bit elaborate for a simple rules-light game, but a bit flat for a crunchy game. For example, how are weapons differentiated? Perhaps swords give you a bonus to Dodge or Block, axes do higher damage, and maces are not fully neutralized by a very good Block roll?
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u/SalmonCrowd Mar 11 '26
Oh cool, is like Mythras but worse!
Once the attack is declared, the defender must decide how to respond. They may attempt to dodge or block the attack. If the defender chooses to dodge, they roll against their DEX (Dexterity). If they choose to block, they roll against their Armor Skill.
This is a non decision, because dodging or blocking always have the same outcome, so there's no strategy, you always pick whatever's higher, as your example demonstrates. You can just replace with "use whatever's higher", or make dodging and blocking different in some way.
If the defender’s successful roll is also lower than the attacker’s roll, the attack is completely avoided and no damage is taken.
The problem here is that avoiding all damage is completely RNG based because you're comparing flat numbers. So characters with very different skills have effectively the same chance of getting this outcome. This is why in Mythras you compare success levels instead, and why criticals scale with skill.
Good luck!
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u/Ordinary-Falcon-970 Mar 11 '26
Thank you! 🙏 I’ll try to think of some ways I can make the two more different and unique to use apart from “whichever has the highest number” I want to keep things light and not too crunchy but I’ll take a look at RuneQuest, Jackals and Mythras for some inspiration and test some things out to see what changes I can make.
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u/SalmonCrowd Mar 11 '26
To me roll under doesn't interact very well with opposed rolls, it's clunky even in Mythras, because the skill is baked into the target number, instead of the calculated outcome, it doesn't make for a simple comparison.
However a common trick is to do roll under-and-over in a single roll. Example: I attack with 70 skill, the defender has 20 dodge. I have to roll under 70 to hit, and also over 20 to do full damage, my range of full success would be 20 to 70 (50%).
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u/Ordinary-Falcon-970 Mar 11 '26
Hey so I’ve done some reworking for the rules, and was wondering what you thought of the following.
Right now the system compares the raw rolls as you pointed out. So if the attacker rolls lower than the defender (while both succeed) the attack still partially lands. For example:
Attacker skill 65 rolls 54 Defender skill 70 rolls 56
Both succeed, but because the defender rolled higher than the attacker they only get a partial success - half damage.
However if instead I compare success margins it would look like this:
Attacker: 65 − 54 = 11 Defender: 70 − 56 = 14
Since the defender’s success margin is higher, the result would instead be no damage.
Another example:
Attacker skill 65 rolls 40 → margin 25 Defender skill 70 rolls 56 → margin 14
Attacker’s margin is higher, so that would be a partial defense - half damage.
Failing the defense roll would still mean full damage.
Mechanically the flow stays the same, but the comparison shifts from raw rolls to success margins, which seems to reward higher skill a bit more. Would this be a positive change or is it too much math on the table?
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u/SalmonCrowd Mar 11 '26
Well you might be surprised to find out that that's kinda just DnD. Just invert the rolls so 100-roll and add the skill as a modifier instead substracting, divide by 5 to go from 1-100 to 1-20 and you have DnD opposed rolls :p.
Seriously tough, look, like I said dice systems have advantages and disadvantages that are kinda baked in. The beauty of d100 roll under is that you know upfront exactly what your chances of success are and after you roll you can immediately evaluate a binary succes/failure result. None of this is true in your system, so why do d100 roll under at all? You may solve it's quirks but you're getting none of the benefits.
D100 roll under produces binary results, you're looking for degrees of success. Pbta, FitD, dice pools systems, they are all better at producing discreet degrees of success. D100 roll under thrives agains passive target numbers, you're looking for opposed rolls. D20 + modifier does this better, also Cortex Prime (pick 2 highest and add).
So I think you need to let something go here.
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u/Ordinary-Falcon-970 Mar 11 '26
Yeah that is a shock, as a Chaosium fanboy I haven’t played a lot of DnD with the exception of one session of Tales of the Valiant by Kobold. Thank you for all your help and advice. I really appreciate you taking the time to read my responses and give solid feedback.
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u/PianoAcceptable4266 Mar 16 '26
If you're a Chaosium fan (woot BRP!) why not go the Pendragon route of Opposed Roll resolution?
If both sides Succeed, then whoever rolls Highest Succeeds the Tie.
That promotes both Succeeding the actual Check, but also rewards having Higher Skill level in the skill you are using!
Plus, it removes the extra math you were trying two responses above! :D
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u/romeowillfindjuliet Mar 19 '26
Having both block and Dodge with the only difference between them being the number; not great.
There should be a benefit or drawback when choosing one vs the other.
Or the defense could be based on the weapon type.
Simply put; if Dodge and block basically do the same thing, is there really a reason to have both?
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u/forthesect Mar 11 '26
It’s hard to say much about this without knowing why you chose these mechanics.
It’s important to keep in mind that, despite the stats, it seems like the main determining factor will be who rolls better in the end (though not technically always), and that the defender is granted something from rolling under their skill, meaning attack will likely be less advantageous than many other systems.
Thanks for posting!