I cut a chunk of the script where I described the actual rules for armor and how it's calculated because I thought it was a distraction. But! Maybe I should have left it in! Because it would have answered the question everyone's asking which is: Agility also adds to your defense here. Though the heavier your armor, the less of your agility you benefit from on defense. So high Agility characters are avoiding incoming damage, heavy armor is absorbing it, same effect.
Similar to the PF2E design, then! I say that as a good thing. In PF2E, light and medium armours can total a maximum of +5 AC, and the different armours just change how much of that comes from your Dex, and how much of that is the armour itself. Heavy is the same way, just the total goes to +6 AC (and plate armour is +6 from armour, +0 from dex).
Does anyone on your team have Tunnels & Trolls? Your current solution is dangerously close to what they do, you should probably take a look at what they did to see how they solved certain problems like scaling and stuff.
@@jhinpotion9230tbh, that system always sounded like it was a fancy way of just giving everyone a flat AC of 15. If there is no difference, then your armor shouldn't factor in, and we should dispense with the charade. I want to assume Pathfinder isn't that boring, so feel free to contradict me.
@@tagg1080what do you mean “dangerously”? They don’t own that game mechanic, it’s not like MCDM would be stealing if they produced a mechanic similar or even the same.
Like the autodamage, I found an issue when I tried the instintive notion of armor reducing damage in my rpg idea, weapons, magic or whatever with a lot of damage trumps over weapons that allow many attacks but with little damage output, I had to standarize the damage of everything in order to make it work
If you end up creating a book as valuable as "Flee, Mortals!" has been, the Wizards can stay on the Coast. I'm moving to dry land! Take your time and let us, the community, know how we can be of value when you need it.
Question: Is there a method for integrating this system with melee spell attacks in a balanced way? Magic crafting may be a ways off for your team but theory-crafting about integration of magic into combat, at least on a tertiary level, opens up possibilities for cool design choices farther down the road.
Thank you, Hasbro, for letting your greed launch us into this hurricane of creation: new RPGs from MCDM, Critical Role, RuneHammer ... etc. It's going to be a Golden Age
@@TheOnionKnight1i mean, no one forced you to read new stuff, same as before (when new stuff was also coming out). Having variety has literally no downsides.
@@TheOnionKnight1 You only have to learn the one you're playing. And even then, only the bits that apply to your character. And even THEN, if you actually like the people you're playing with, you all get to make the learning process fun together. And on top of all that, if the system is good, there's only really going to be one central mechanic to get your head around that gets applied in a variety of situations. All the best systems can be taught in about three sentences.
The talk about hit points as "ability to avoid death" instead of wounds is honestly one of the things that gave me an idea for a TRPG system, even if I've never expanded beyond the base concept. The objective of the combat becomes less "Reduce the enemy's hit points to zero" and more "Say "I Kill my opponent" when your opponent has no means to say "no you don't"". The sort of initial idea actually works very well for a sort of swashbuckly one-on-one combat scenario, but things got real ugly real quick when I started considering multiple combatants... (Which, to be fair, is actually pretty realistic: You've got to be astronomically better than your opponents or extremely lucky to win when outnumbered). Essentially, every action in a turn costs action points which are both used for attacking, defending and maneuvering. Declaring "I kill my opponent" is actually a relatively expensive action, while saying "No you don't" is relatively cheap, meaning for one fighter to win they have to acquire a pretty significant advantage through other maneuvers that spend these action points, often reducing the points your opponent has to work with in the subsequent turn. The amusing thing is when I started expanding this out: You could use a similar system for a magician's duel, or a debate, or even a stealth situation that treats the area being infiltrated as an entity with actions of it's own... if you wanted to get into the weeds on it. The trouble is fleshing it out past that point, which is why this has really only ever been an idea.
Interesting idea. I actually did try to apply combat logic to noncombat things once. So persuasion could be its own combat for instance. It can have items and weapons like money (bribery), specific knowledge (blackmail and such), etc, but also just appeals (reason, logic, etc. Player would come up with the argument and GMs could give them a bonus if the argument is really good). And "HP" would be determined by something like willpower. So you come up with a way to pressure the opponent to capitulate and roll to see how effective it is, which could reduce their willpower or whatever. Since this is a more time consuming thing, you want other players involved. So multiple could take part potentially, switching who goes in the player's turn. This was developed for a more Game of Thrones style game I never finished. So the idea was the nobleman in the party would have to do this typically, but his party members that are lower born would find info and such he can use as leverage in negotiations. So everyone has a role to play in noncombat encounters just as they do in combat encounters.
You magnificent bastard! I've had an idea for an RPG where instead of a GM each player is a monarch over their own territory. But I never figured out a good way to gamify it without it being better as a board game. A system of hidden action points based around stratigic deduction? Now that could work amazingly!
"Missing" and having the someone get a free action is more punishing than just missing. If having heavy armor potentially gets you a free action when it's not your turn then everyone will want heavy armor all the time. Characters with weak damage output will suffer.
Thank you for the BTS of this whole process! I’m all to excited to see this moving forward and especially for the finalized product. Cheers to you and your team, Master Coleville!
More and more this is reminding me of Into the Odd/Cairn, where you just roll damage with no attack roll, HP is referred to as "Hit Protection," and armor reduces damage. It's interesting to see how you guys expand on that concept. Looking forward to more!
Me too--and those games are great, so it's good to see. Though the focus of those games is very different. Pretty far from the tactical direction this is going. So it's also good to see they arrived at this mechanic honestly
Tunnels and Trolls (T&T) works kind of similarly too. You just roll all the d6 damage dice (and bonuses) for each side and total them up. The side with the highest score inflicts the difference on the losing side which they can distribute however they want, with armor absorbing damage points. However, any roll of 6 on a d6 counts as "spite" damage and gets through any defences so armor can't stop it. This is true even for the winning side - if the losers rolled any 6s in the damage pool, that hurts the winners too. Ranged weapon fire is handled differently with a Dex "to hit" roll, based on the target's size and distance, being made by the attacker - if successful the weapon damage can be applied to that single target, even if the attacker's side loses the round in terms of total damage count, otherwise it just adds into the side's total.
@@theastralwanderer IMO, T&T combat can be a little mundane if you use it "vanilla". Players are encouraged to perform cinematic "stunts" (but they aren't called that) that require a Saving Throw to be made and, on a success, will apply some sort of penalty to the enemy or a bonus to themselves - usually in terms of the number of dice thrown in the damage pool.
this has been a fascinating series so far! and the concept of "no missing" is really interesting. the one thing i feel though is: If my fantasy is being a unarmored, dexterous character is dodging attacks, and the failure state of an attack role is damage reduction from ARMOR, how do i play the character who dodges and parries? I'm excited for the DTG video addressing this!
Maybe dexterity, if unencumbered, can also reduce damage! It's not terribly dissimilar from how 5e combines both ideas into AC. Although it'd be nice for narrative purposes to know if you missed entirely, or if your aim was true but couldn't pierce armor.
I think what would be thematic and make the most sense would be for your dexterity or ability to dodge to raise the miss threshold above zero instead of reducing damage. For instance if your dexterity defense (whatever you call it) is 3 then any attacks that do less than 3 damage miss you, but an attack that does 4 damage does 4 full damage. This gives a nice, and thematically appropriate distinction between dodging and armor defense, and doesn't really require any more math.
Last I remember from the Patreon posts, you have an overall Defense stat that I believe incorporates Agility (or whatever the Dex-equivalent stat is called) and the Block/Parry properties of certain weapons along with Armor. I don't remember the details off-hand but they've definitely thought about all that.
This series has really inspired me recently. In a game I’m currently making, missing an attack gives your enemy “flux” which is a resource that can be spent to deal extra damage. Keep up these videos, they’re awesome!
I've been designing a no-attack-rolls variant for 5e as well and I came up with something similar but not quite the same. A major goal for my system is that the players always feel like you make progress on your turn. I made these changes to reflect that and also balance big attacks and light hits. __Armor Class__ Armor class is a straight reduction to the damage number __Criticals__ Whenever a damage dice rolls its maximum number, you double that die __Super Criticals__ If you ever roll max damage on ALL of the dice, you ignore AC entirely __Evasion Tokens__ Players are given evasion tokens at the start of combat based on their Dex Modifier. These can be used to dodge an attack entirely once. __Sunder__ If a player rolls damage and it is entirely negated by armor, reduce the targets armor by 1 I haven't play tested it yet but this is what I'll be running next session
Cool video! I am curious to learn how this kind of counter system works with ranged attacks. Maybe the answer lies in the different counters each hero can have, which Matt alluded to toward the end of the video? Excited to see more!
These videos are ABSURDLY GOOD they're short cool tips on how to think about game design. Really awesome! As usual Matt and MCDM are the best source for rpg design on RU-vid!
I'm excited to play the final version of this with my wife and kids in a couple years. I wish I'd known about Tabletop RPG's as a kid, and I hope it's something they all like when they're older
I should go to the patreon but haven't had time yet. First thing that comes to mind is an exploit where someone could get so heavily armoured they can just constantly counter. In my mind those things are somewhat opposed. The heavier you are armoured the less manoeuvrable you are. (something you alluded to in different videos) And surely that should mean you are less likely to be able to get in a quick counter rather than more likely. You might even think that a lightly armoured agile combatant can do more counters than a heavily armoured slowed combatant. Then the choice (around armour) is more likely going to be "do I reduce incoming damage or maximise chances of countering/outgoing damage taking incoming damage as a trade-off?" This however will result in lightly armoured/agile combatants being in a superior position UNLESS taking less damage (or damage less often) has a significant advantage. Which would probably lead to some kind of debuffs or such for recently having taken damage to compensate... In other words, the video gives some great idea about the thought processes and inspires to think (along). Thank you for that.
Of course he also spoke about heavier armor slowing you down. So if you are too heavily armored, smart enemies will stay out of your reach and plink away at you until you collapse
7:45 I know this is not the point of the video, but I have to disagree with light weapons and attacking first. In one on one or small scale combat, the one with the bigger reach could make such an attack, not one with the small, but fast weapon. The attack speed is not about how much you can flail with you hands, but how many reasonable opportunity you have to attack, and unless you move near grappling range or start to grapple daggers can't attack more often then a longsword for example. Yes, the dagger is fast, but no matter how fast it is if I can create distance with my longsword and you have no opportunity to damage me. But once you have an opportunity to move into grapple range with me, my reach becomes a hindrance and the dagger can really cut me up, by attacking my armour's weak points.
It's kind of funny to me that you gave daggers this 'fast' ability that lets them get a strike in first against an attacker, when it's (at least conceptually) very similar to a trait I give to weapons with more reach in my system (because that's kind of how weapon reach works in real life; a long weapon, nimble or not, just simply gets to attack before the shorter weapon even has a chance), but typically this means that in my system this trait is usually on bigger heavier weapons and not on small fast ones. One thing to think about is how this fast property could have interesting interactions with other mechanics; for example, in my system, one of the big things about shields is that they give protection against the attack-first advantage that long weapons have (again, heavily influenced by historical martial arts over cinematic stuff in my case), and this is a possible angle to consider. Let shields (which are usually SUPER nerfed in most fiction compared to irl), rather than a boring boost to your armor, be a defense against this type of auto damage from opposing weapons. It's also worth considering letting reach weapons achieve a similar effect (granted both can then run into the issue of re-introducing failure states for attack rolls this way, which would need to be re-solved somehow).
Same, my system also uses reach to determine attack order. He seems to be going a bit more theatrical, whereas my designs are informed by how things actually worked and adding some special abilities that kinda break those rules to increase build diversity because it's fantasy.
I thought the same but that only matters when you're trying to simulate some degree of realism or verisimilitude with the weapons. Fast weapons attacking first like a dagger has been a thing in video games for decades and tabletop games alike. It really just depends on what you want to achieve. In my 5e games, I did however create side abilities for weapons allowing spears and such to attack first with a reaction when someone wants to attack them in melee if the other person has a non-reach weapon but it would use one of their actual attacks for that round at the cost of a reaction, not an extra attack like an opportunity attack. Not the most elegant but often trying to patch things onto D&D is like that. You're constrained by the base system in many ways which is why ultimately I was creating my own games too
It's interesting, coming from nearly the same age of gaming as Matt that I've never had an issue with the missed attack roll, next turn wheel. And not because of wargaming - I was never in that scene. But older D&D moved faster because we had fewer options (aside from wizards as always). WHen your next turn comes up in less than 5 minutes, missing your attack is a moment of dramatic tension that your companions have to make up for. But by the 3-4-5e eras we take so long to get your next turn to come around (~20 minutes is pretty common even when I'm hurrying my table along), that's what makes having no effect on the battle for a turn feel crappy. But also, I don't see the difference between "missing your attack" and "you deal zero damage" - either way the player rolled dice and achieved nothing, and with the current counter system, they essentially get a slap in the face to boot. It does turn two dice rolls into 1, which is nice streamlining, but I don't feel like it actually addresses what it claims to, in terms of "turn where the player action has no meaningful effect". And as I said, I don't think that's actually a problem to be designed out of a game.
Very well put insight, I hope their team considers what you’re saying as it’s essentially trading out one failure for the other, except you’re taking up more time to allow the enemy to counter and penalize you for failing even harder than simply missing.
When the game was first announced I was concerned it might be another D&D clone. There's nothing wrong with those but there's already several. These videos make it sound like it truly is a new game and that's awesome.
Interesting ideas, but this also gives me some concerns. This will get a bit long, as I have strong feelings when it comes to game design. 1) I have found that having a bad effect happen to someone when they fail their attempted action can be fun and interesting in the very short term, but for many players it gets old really fast. I've seen D&D players get despondent after just missing a few attacks in a row. If each of those failures also resulted in them taking damage this would be further amplified. It goes from "why did I bother trying?" to "I would have been better off if I didn't even try in the first place", which is a much worse mental place to be. You wanted to remove the "I did nothing" fail state, but ended up just replacing it with an "I hurt myself" fail state that is even worse. This is why most groups don't play with critical fails for very long if they even try it at all. This gets even worse when facing something that is very hard to damage. In D&D an enemy with high AC can create a feeling in players where they are willing to go through a lot of failed attacks for the excitement that comes from someone finally landing a hit, or engage problem solving as they look for ways to deal damage that don't involve AC (e.g. saving throws). This type of encounter shouldn't be the standard, but the fact that it can exist gives the DM room to do some different things creating gameplay variety. With this armor system the players get punished for those attempts, so the hard-to-damage opponent can feel even more insurmountable. 2) The concept of "Heavily Armored" and "Good at counter-attacks" are often diametrically opposed thematically. Heavily armored characters tend to be slow and ponderous, encased in their protective shell of steel. On the other end of the spectrum, when people think of someone who is good at counter-strikes they tend to think of the agile blademaster, eschewing armor to maintain maneuverability so they can evade an opponent's attack and strike them while they are recovering their backswing. If a player wants to counter attack a lot I feel like telling them to get the heaviest armor they can will seem counterintuitive. It also becomes almost impossible to make characters like fencers or samurai who tend to rely heavily on that evade/counter combat style and have them feel at all accurate to what they're trying to represent. 3) It sounds like you reduced the counter attack down to a single point of damage to prevent players from feeling like "If I attack and miss the counter will take me down" too often, but this raises another issue. If the counters are infrequent and small enough to prevent punishing players too harshly when they roll badly, then they will also just end up not mattering to the overall combat. If they end up being the deciding factor that leads to the players losing then they will feel really bad, but if they can't do that then it's just some extra damage that is thrown around randomly that is too minor to actually matter. A rule that requires tracking on a turn-by-turn bases but doesn't change the overall outcome is basically the worst thing you can add to a game. Personally, if this were my project I'd take a step back and try to figure out what themes you want to be able to capture. Should the nimble but lightly armored samurai and the slow but nearly impenetrable Iron Golem feel nearly identical mechanically, or should they feel drastically different? If so we need a distinction between "hard to hit" and "hard to hurt". This isn't something that 5E D&D handles particularly well, but this system seems even worse at it. In D&D this is mostly fine because the difference between "I am fast enough to dodge your attack" and "I am so durable your attack didn't even hurt me" is basically negligible. 3E played around with it a bit more with Touch Attacks, but it still wasn't a huge part of the game. Within this system, counterattacks are strongly associated with the former while partial damage reduction is associated with the latter and you're trying to make one rule do both at the same time. It's probably fine in a fairly generic fight between lv 1 fighters and goblins, but it's going to break down as individual combatants become more specialized in one direction or the other. Now let's say I wanted to fix this, but I also want to keep the "only roll damage" part of these rules. I'd probably break down defenses in two directions. If a character wants to wear heavy armor, they get large flat damage reduction value. This gives them reliable defense and their character needs no skill or ability, but the trade-off to this is that they cannot counter attack at all as the bulky armor prevents such quick movements. On the other hand, a character in light or no armor can gain a randomized amount of damage reduction based on their agility/dexterity/whatever. This could be rolled per attack, but to keep up the game pace you could also just have them roll it once on their turn and use that value until their next turn (which also means that they can't dodge until they act at least once, which is thematic). While this is higher risk because a poor roll can lead to taking a lot of damage and it puts a higher demand on the character's abilities, the trade-off is that they can use powerful counter-attacks that can change the course of the fight. Then I put medium armor in the middle, giving flat damage reduction (smaller than heavy armor) with very weak counter attacks. Basically, medium armor is what you have now and the light and heavy armor allow specialization on one direction or the other. This adds even more depth to your armor choice beyond the trade-off between damage reduction and movement speed, which is also interesting. With these options available to players, monsters can mix and match these different types of defenses allowing for a wide range of possible encounters. Perhaps the Iron Golem and Dragon both have similar damage reduction, but the Dragon gets a powerful counterattack to make it even more threatening while the golem gets none. Most of the goblins wear a version of Medium armor giving them minor counterstrikes, while the hobgoblin that leads them protects himself in plate armor. Going for the hobgoblin first to try to break the goblin's morale is harder because he has more damage reduction, but he also doesn't counter attack because he's really counting on the goblins doing most of the work as long as he survives.
I've been interested in the idea, lately, of attacks hitting automatically unless someone uses a reaction to defeat the attack. Parrying a sword to keep yourself safe makes sense. It could make for interesting gameplay where instead of a "flanking" bonus, ganging up helps because you can only parry once per round? It also allows for some intuitive things - someone standing in front of you not expect an attack is certain to be hit, someone held down or sleep is certain to be hit etc. It also allows for "rogue-like" characters to be good at avoiding hits but squishy, while "knight-like" characters aren't as good at it but have armour for lowering damage. It seems to lead to all the right outcomes, and is more dynamic. Thoughts? Edit: the other benefit is that forcing the enemy to "spend" their defence means that even if they block your attack, your action isn't wasted! It could even work more like legendary resistance: no roll, x parries per fights depending on class/gear/etc
Love hearing about this journey and thinking more objectively about the basic assumptions of the games we've been playing for years. It's super refreshing
Man, I'm so jazzed for this. I'm probably never going to play it since it doesn't really seem like my kind of game, but I love that you're doing it all the same. You clearly care SO much about making a good high fantasy game.
sounds like a great reward for good planning and easy to punish if the players abuse it too much. Nothing is stopping the DM from using some juicy legendary actions with the [always hits] or [dispel] tags 😈
@@pascal6871 Yeah, this too can be used creatively and designed around. But if you don't... "Here, have a 1HP, AC30 turtle! - Well great, then I'll just stab it."
I love the thought of flipping this script on the players. Fighting a swarm of giant mosquitos? Sure one is only going to do 1-2 damage a turn. But times that by 30? That's suddenly a really scary fight! And the players KNOW they only have a couple rounds before they're bled dry. Any time I've tried to do something like this is 5e it falls flat because so few of the monsters actually hit, or it just turns into a ridiculous amount of dice rolling and management.
I think that simulates a cool fantasy though; like the big armored enemy that can effectively block incoming attacks, so it’s smarter to wait for them to overextend themselves and take jabs at the exposed joints in their armor, perhaps with a poison-tipped weapon??? And like I can easily imagine describing a fatal blow using like a quick weapon as stabbing them in the eye, or slipping your blade through a part of the armor that was damaged absorbing a previous attack and slicing through an artery! Definitely it’s something to consider when designing a boss, like I imagine immunity to pricing damage for like, a stone golem would make sense and challenge the players in a different way; especially if early level bosses were susceptible to that method.
I love the overall design here. I wonder of a broader weapon design design could cover the counter system? Weapons are split into "fast", "average" and "slow" You can counter anything that is slower than your weapon, but not those that are equal! You can then layer specific defensive perks on top of that, A 'duelist' perk may let you counter weapons of the same weight class "Defenive stance" may let you avoid being countered, but take a penelty to your atack roll. "Shield expert" allows you to counter with slow weapons, but only when the enemy rolls zero on damage (similar to original rules). I think this bit of granularity adds spice to the combat, rather than passive effects. A fighter might use a maul against a single strong foe, choosing to just soak up the counter hits, but when a group of minions run in, he may swap out to a shortsword so he can deal a bunch of damage to them as they try to hit him.
The system I'm building has no attack rolls. If you're in range to attack with your weapon, you just roll damage. I haven't fully playtested this system yet, but in my mental simulations it puts more emphasis on alternative ways to avoid damage, like mobility, armor, and healing, and I've included many options for these in the game.
When you mentioned the counter attacks, I was picturing something that can actually be pretty difficult to create in some of the systems I play. Picture a massive warrior in heavy armour. He doesn't dodge, and he isn't immune to incoming hits, but he swings hard and slowly. He absorbs a hit and swings at you instead. This is actually pretty much impossible to make in my system of choice as being big and slow means you're atrocious at fighting, which this armoured warrior would not be, but would fit perfectly into that attack system you mentioned. He would be trying to maximise his odds of countering and hitting as hard as he can with a counter.
But doesn't attacking and not being able to bypass armor equals Missing? I mean, what's the difference between a missed attack roll, and an automatic hit that rolls 0 damage, because armor?
I'm not thrilled with the idea of armor just not mattering for normal sources of damage. It's one thing to say 'this attack with a lightsaber gets to just pass straight through full plate like it's not even there,' but 'all counterattacks ignore armor because *handwaves* it's not an attack roll' feels strange, and has got to feel horrible for a character who's built to be *tough* and then just has random bullshit apparating through heavy steel. The ability to pierce armor, in my opinion, should arise due to something in-world.
I like the idea that a goblin with a knife will deal you 1 damage if you miss and leave yourself open. It naturally implies a lot. 1 - A goblin with two knives would deal 2 damage! 2 - Some warriors might be able to fight without leaving any openings! 3 - If you can take his knife before attacking him, he can't counter!
I think the idea for fast weapons allowing counter damage is cool, but I think it would be better suited to longer weapons like spears than daggers. It's dangerous to close distance and strike someone with a longer weapon than yours, that might be a little too simulationist on my part.
I have taken these ideas of removing the null-result and applied them to my game. They might be inspiration for a good option to apply to this system. (In Cypher, the GM does not roll to attack; the GM declares an attack and the player rolls to defend.) Rather than separate actions between PC's and enemies that are adjudicated separately, on a players' turn, I declare what actions the enemies are taking against the PC's and the player declares what action their PC is taking in response. The player then makes a single roll to determine which party overcomes the other in that exchange. Either the player succeeds, or their foes do. (I am experimenting mechanics for mixed or partial successes.) If multiple enemies are engaged with a single PC, they act as a single unit with increased difficulty and damage. Often with the ability to take multiple small actions - knocking a PC prone and damaging them. Bosses and other large enemies get one action for every PC they are engaged with. This speeds things up fantastically and allows for really fun sequences with mods of baddies all dog piling on a single hero like Captain America in an elevator, or large monsters grabbing PC's and using them as weapons to bludgeon or hurl at their allies.
Great video! Already brought crit failing attacks equal monsters move to hit them with their reaction or legendary action. Ive been critically thinking about removing rolls for attack of opportunity from combat- and just making it a hit. But i was afraid damage would be too high. Hearing you’re counter idea made me think… stab or counter could be 1 damage per level. So it grows in power based on pc. Idk GREAT VIDEO
In the game I've been working on since the WotC OGL debacle, I've been coming up with my own way to handle the no null result issue myself. Back when my game was a massive 5e homebrew, I just made an armor overhaul, adding a second number I was calling Evasion class. If you rolled lower than evasion class, you missed completely (but considering EC was usually only 12-13 it was hard to do so.) If you rolled above armor class, you hit for full like normal. If you hit in between, you scored what I called a "glancing blow." A glancing blow has changed over time. But originally, it was going to be "you do half damage, the attack cannot crit." (I was adding a TON of critical threat range boosters to the game as well, cuz crits are just fun.) But over time, I changed it to just "You don't roll your weapon's damage dice. You just deal your flat damage." Now, that I'm making my own game, I've removed armor class entirely. I prefer perfect information games; I've never liked having to ask someone else on MY turn for a piece of information so I can know whether or not I succeeded in my task. Actions are going to have their own success rating (which is really cool that you guys talked about doing the same thing at one point for your own game) and so the player will have all the information they need to know to run their own turn, theoretically. And instead of armor class, character's have an Armor, Evasion, and Will score (these can be buffed by armor and class features) that reduce certain damage types. Armor resists physical damage types (blunt, pierce, slice, and force.) Evasion resists elemental types (fire, cold, lightning, etc.) And Will resists mental/metaphysical types (Psychic, Holy, Shadow, etc.) I really like the concept of making the damage reduction not reduce things that are ONLY flat damage tho. Sounds like it would fix an issue I've been seeing with my glancing blows. Would it be wrong of me to try something similar after hearing about what you guys are trying? Anyway, love the vids! You guys are doing great work. Always such an inspiration.
waitwaitwait... The round goes: You roll for damage, if the armour is absorbed, the opponent counter attacks? And then on the enemy turn it's reverse? This all of a sudden turns any tank into a counter-attack machinegun!
I just re-listened and yeah. Give the tank the heaviest armour and two daggers and watch the tank take down anything! Static damage left right and center with "quick" strikes and then "Counter"
I’ve been researching to host a Basic RPG game and there is one thing that I love about it, that I want incorporated into more rpgs. BRG is a d100 skill based system. You have a 30 stealth skill, you roll a d100 and if it’s 30 or less, you succeed. In combat, if you’re attacked by a melee weapon and your weapon has the parry ability, you roll on your skill with that weapon, and if it’s a “hit” you successfully deflect it and take no damage. What I love about this is that, in real life, being really good with a sword means you’re really good at deflecting and thus hard to hit. Your sword becomes like a shield. I feel this is something lacking in DND. Being a good swordsman makes your damage greater, but it doesn’t make you harder to hit. Not sure if there’s a better way to implement this concept, but I want the realistic aspect that getting better at combat also makes you harder to hit.
I'm familiar with a couple of "roll under" systems like you described, but for some reason today it gave me a different idea... A minimum roll system. Instead of bonuses being added to the die roll, they act as a minimum number you could roll. A +7 means that you always hit at least a seven difficulty. It wouldn't be something you'd be able to directly implement in most d20 games, unless you modified the target values to adjust for the fact that the highest you can possibly roll is a twenty. You'd have to decide if a Nat1 overrides the minimum score or not as well.
As someone who has always been interested in your Running the game videos and the whole idea of "GMing is designing" I already thought these videos were great. But just this week a "small addition to a system" finally ballooned into a whole new system from scratch, this just hits another level. I also did away with attack roles in the main combat pieces of my system, but since I'm adapting pokemon, this removed one of the axis that the original game used to balance its moves, which left some interesting design shoes to fill. I cant wait to see these videos and see which solutions we both think of for our respective systems. This has been really amazing!
Im certainly still apprehensive about no attack rolls (im very much of the opinion that the ability to miss, makes the hitting matter) but this video does dissuade some of those fears. Excited to see how it works in practice!
In truth, there is still an attack roll, it's just a damage roll and attack roll rolled into one. It's essentially a 2d6 + mod vs Armour Class (the reduced damage ability of said armour). Roll higher, you hit and deal damage. Roll less and you miss and they counter. The only thing I'm not sure of is, does a hit only deal damage equal to the excess, so Armour is 5, attack deals 8 damage, damage dealth is 3 or once you hit by exceeding the armour or agility, do you then deal the full 8?
I love that you're sharing the design process. This is really helping me get a grasp on how to homebrew my own systems or features within a system. I'm also super excited to play this when it's finished.
I find myself torn between my tradition and excitement by matt making the new way sound cool. We'll just have to see how it feels when it's ready for us to see how it feels
Thanks, Matt. I now have my new rpg's name: "Equally Arbitrary Abstractions." Okay, we may have to workshop it a little, but at the very least, that's the subtitle! Also, in my limited experience, the old wargames I saw were diceless. Units had attack and defense values, and victory was determined according to those numbers. idk what Arneson, Gygax, & co played tho.
im skeptical of mechanics that are a) triggered automatically and b) dont use die rolls because at that point as a player i tend to feel like i don't need to be there. Like if my decisions and my luck arent affecting a thing thats happening it kinda feels like more of an automatic simulation that can run itself. I have the same issue with static damage sometimes like if I know that something Im about to do is definitely going to hurt me a specific predetermined amount, then deciding to do it feels more like doing math than taking a risk. This was my experience with the Avatar RPG. In combat a lot of the options have a specific cost and effect that isnt determined by rolls, so choosing an action felt very clinical and boring, even when I was choosing to do something that I knew would knock me out. If success is assured and im hurt no matter what i do, what am I here for?
I've actually been toying around with the idea of having "missed attacks" causing the opponent to take some sort of stamina-like cost, as they're professionals and every move they make at least makes a real threat to the opponent. As well as cooler stuff never missing, but you roll to avoid some unwanted side-effect of the action that I call the "risk-cost"
Reminds me of a mechanic in the Battletech video game, where a mech gets a certain level of dodge based on how far they moved, and any attack on a mech reduces its dodge by one. This means there's never actually a null result. If you miss a mech, you at least make it more likely for the next attack to hit
That last edge case reminds me of Gloomhaven,where that exact scenario occurs pretty regularly. But it's great! The monster damage is resolved after the player damage, so if the player kills the monster, they don't take that damage. So that leads to an interesting choice. Do you attack? Do you use an ability that should be just enough damage or one that is over kill in case you draw a -1 or -2 damage card? And you always have that critical miss in the deck... Decisions, decisions.
Excellent video, and I really enjoy looking into the process of design and figuring out where the real problems are. I find that all fascinating. And am still very interested in how this game is turning out. On a completely separate note that is in no way meant to really alter your design, just pointing out something that has always bothered me when it comes up. I never liked "fast" attack weapons in ttrpgs. They're always put on weapons like daggers or something, and I get the idea that you can swing the small weapon more. It makes sense, but really, the person with the three foot sword is going to strike the guy with the knife about four times before the knife ever gets close. But that's just where my mind goes. And you even start the video explaining there's going to be these kind of abstractions and that's unavoidable and even good to make decent gameplay. So, yeah, do what's best for the game.
Doing a similar approach in the game I'm designing -- players are loving this mechanic with "Attack for Damage" not "Attack to Hit". Critical hits have a different effect which stops that daisy chain of attacks against each other. Lots of similarity of thought in design -- funny how alike despite just discovering your channel today.
3:10 Thinking too hard about Armor Class DOES improve your experience. Not down the path you picked, but hear me out. In 3.5e, AC was a whole slew of numbers, and they were explained very poorly, but if you understand them, they provide a narrative guideline to dynamic combat. You have to list all the AC bonuses in reverse order, and start from a base point of AC 3 for a size medium thing that can't move, like a restrained unarmored human (AC 10+dex, except when restrained dex=0, so AC=5, but also being restrained gives -2, so AC=3), and then various conditions increase the AC from there, which determines what the target does to defend. I'll do a demonstration of a character with a shield (+2), dex bonus (+1), armor (+3), a magic item that gives +1 natural armor, and spell that provides a magical protection bonus (Magic Circle Against Evil, +2). In 5e, the protection bonus probably instead gives disadvantage to the roll. Anyway, this would give the character an AC of 19, but it also tells you how to respond to certain attack rolls made against an AC. AR is Attack Roll AR < 3 = Miss, the target doesn't even need to dodge AR < 5 = Attack deflects off Magic Circle, still doesn't need to dodge AR < 13 = Character Dodges AR < 15 = Blocks with Shield AR < 17 = Deflected off Armor AR < 18 = Superficial damage to natural defensive areas like horns, scales, or bony plating. AR > 18 = Hit The lack of knowledge about an enemies Health and AC breakdown means that players typically can't use these handy tips to make combat more interesting and engaging. The DM has to give out monster stat cheat sheets for that to work.
I love opposed rolls. I like the idea of rolling a die, seeing a number, and that being the number I use to know if I win or not. How tedious is it to roll a die and then take that already abstract number and add it to another abstract number (the attribute score), which we derived from a 4d6 drop the lowest number, abstracted into a +0-+5 number (the attribute bonus), and adding other incidental numbers like cover, bonuses from spells, etc., JUST TO KNOW IF THE ROLL SUCCEEDED. We rolled the d20 two minutes ago-did it go higher than the other guy’s? Then I win this toss!
A couple of thoughts: - how you deal with attack/damage depends on how you picture HP. Is it literally how much health you have (makes sense with healing) or is it your resolve/ability to keep going (bit more wooly, but works with every attack hitting). - I've thoght for a while tha some sort of reward for absolutely ratioing someone's armour should have a boost (AC16, an attack roll of 17 is the same as an attack of 32, that doesn't seem right) best I've come up with is for every 2 points over the AC you get a damage die, but that might get ridiculous quickly (above example could be 8D12 damage)!
I love 5e straight up (w a bit of my tables agreed upon homebrew as well) and have A LOT invested in it, an can run games literally forever with my group (currently in the MIDDLE of a so far year and half homebrew campaign) and never purchase another thing from WoTC, which I’m very comfortable with, but also have never been interested in any other products with the exception of some of the OG MCDM supplemental stuff, just to support Matt since I’m so grateful for him and bc he makes great products. I am NOT interested in other games or game systems and neither are my grognards I run for… but I am DEFINITELY interested in trying this game. I love these ideas. Do we have a name yet??
Dear Matt: I've thought about this quite a bit and thought I'd make a comment: 2D6. Yes you can base a game on it and there is indeed a nice bell curve if you want the average roll to be a 7. But, getting that set of polyhedron dice is a rite of passage for RP gamers. Abandoning the 2d6 of Monopoly for the cool, weird dice that need explanation to outsiders is something I, as a GM, find that players LOVE! The math may work perfectly for a 2d6 TTRPG but I really think that there has to be some way to maintain the full dice set. Even though it's easier, more mathematically correct, etc. to use 2d6, I really feel there will be a bit of the "coolness" factor that is removed by doing this. If the goal is to maximize the fun of a TTRPG, I wonder if jettisoning the d20 system is a good idea.
Coming back to this video where Matt says nothing is set in stone but the 2d6 will likely stay after they removed the 2d6 really sheds light on how game design goes everything might have it go if it’s not working
When all the OGL nonsense went down, I swore off WOTC, sat down with my 5E heartbreaker with Matt’s design philosophy in mind and refigured my whole game. It’s much more interesting, interconnected without being too crunchy, that feels intuitive and offers the players a lot of alternatives to null results. The challenge has been really rewarding, and Matt’s advice and WOTC’s bs have helped me crack so many design issues, I might actually publish something. Thanks, Matt.
Critical Reach issues between a skilled guy with a 7' spear in 2 hands facing off against a Dagger wielding thug... matter, and are understood by many gamers when they give it a thought. Your rules should model basic medieval realities and challenges that people see in movies and read in quality fantasy books. Obviously you cant model it all, but choosing the aspects that matter, like reach, count. Being surrounded was seriously dangerous, and was being prone..... Hope this adds to the creative process...
What if you just dumped "I go, you go" turns in combat to speed things up? Everyone rolls at the same time -- too chaotic? Always thought characters in D&D should get an AC melee bonus equal to their to-hit bonus. It makes sense as you level up your skill at parrying, blocking, etc should improve.
This video is the first time I have ever thought WOTC has a problem. No other game (Pathfinder, whatever Roll20 is making) has made me think that. This attack-counter mechanic is good enough to switch games. Wow.
Matt, I have no idea how your plans for releasing this game might be, but I REALLY want to play this. It already sounds amazing. I'm from Argentina, our economic situation is always dire (so importing anything it's super expensive) (and we lost book depository which made it somewhat easier😢) but if this game is ever released on a PDF or something easy to get without so many taxes in the way... You can bet I'll be getting it and showing it to my table ❤
Huh. Sounds like the system I’ve been designing is surprisingly similar. I’ve still got attack rolls for ranged attacks though, except it’s more of a skill check.
Hey, I really like speeding the game by reducing the number of rolls. I think the idea of rolling dice only during your turn is really good and you should stick to it, not only for attacks. Also possible to implement for opposing roll, where you can just assume, the target rolled 10. (yes it makes some rolls pointless) Alternative is, PCs are rolling whenever possible, so for opposing roll the PC is making roll and NPC rolled 10. (slower but maybe better for players)
Counter being tied to an ability, or having a counter ability seems neat, to make some enemies more dangerous when countering vs others. Like, either your counter damage is based on your Agility or some other stat, and/or everyone deals 1 damage with counter, UNLESS you have an ability that boosts your counter damage.
Hey Matt! I initially loved this idea, I implemented it (minus the counter attack) in my 5e game with only partial success. Yes it sped up combat, which was great, but it seems to only really work at low levels in 5e. Once your players can consistently do a large amount of damage armor doesn't become obsolete, but it does seem to be slightly irrelevant. What's a reduction in 6 points of damage when you just took 35. Doesn't seem to help much. I guess all of that just to ask, does your system have a work around for this in the amount of armor you get/ the amount of damage you do? Has it been play tested at higher levels to make sure it still works? Your running/ desining the games have been a huge inspiration for me, keep up the good work!
I'm really curious, do anywone know how they are approaching "the skinny agile guy with super light armor fantasy" balance without a hit or not rule? I assume if armors reduce damage taken so light armor are likely to reduce almost nothing. How a "dex" character avoid damage in this sistem?
"Surely [wearing armor] makes me easier to hit and harder to wound." Honestly, that's something that's always bothered me about so many RPGs, and I feel that's also at the heart of how in 5e D&D combat there tends to be just too many "lightly armored but high dex" characters going into and staying in melee, which just feels wrong to me. If a character's expecting to go into melee combat, that character's probably going to dress for it, and if that dressing does not include the heaviest armor they can get their hands on, that feels wrong. Also, it feels wrong how there's just too many "light armors" in 5e that, with a high Dex, make you fairly durable. I'm no historian, but I've seen reproduction textile and leather armor. People in history didn't wear that because it's "light enough while still being able to take maximum advantage of your natural dexterity", they wore it because they couldn't get their hands on anything made out of metal.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but to me it sounds as though damage will almost certainly be taken every turn? Unless reducing to zero is a common occurance.. otherwise you're going to need a lot of HP or healing, even if you're only losing 1 or 2 hp a turn (especially at low level!)
I have a prototype system which uses a LIFO stack to arrange actions like Magic: The Gathering. The intended setting is modern, so I wanted to keep misses. I suggest the problem of players forgetting whose turn it is is only because of the initiative not following the order of butts in seats. The upside of having a LIFO stack ordering for actions is that player AP recharges don't affect combat directly and can just go around the table.
Sounds a little bit like "Symbaroum" with a few different steps (in which the game master rolls no dice, character doing damage is rolled against absorption values, while character armor is absorption rolled against damage values).
Our group made up our own rules lite system and we also didn't have rolls to hit. Combat was opposed fighting rolls with how much you beat the opponents roll by being what determined effectiveness. And vice versa. We both roll fighting and add modifiers, and if at the end result, I got 24 and you got 18, I did a wound.
