I got a rush of inspiration last week after reading Prismatic Wasteland’s latest blog post about re-adding to-hit rolls into indie rpg games. This was spurred by a post on the Traverse Fantasy blog about constant weapon damage. These posts were inspiring because I have been developing some treasure tables for use with another idea I am taking from Prismatic Wasteland: the dungeon alarm die. I couldn’t think of a good reason a player would want to find a random weapon over armor or treasure if they already have a weapon. Having individual weapons deal a range of damage gives more of an incentive to find weapons. Even more so if their weapon has a chance of breaking.
Using the blackjack method of roll high-under as suggested by Prismatic Wasteland fits perfectly with the core check procedure from Errant.
So I started cramming these ideas into my own hack of Errant, currently called Blaggards. Here is what I have got after several hours fiendishly trying to write down these ideas while I was at work, then stewing on them over the weekend:
When attacking, roll a d20 using the weapon’s relevant ability score and use the opponents Armor Defense (AD) as the Difficulty. If the attacker rolls:
- Under their ability score and above the defender’s AD = a hit, deal weapon damage.
- Over the ability score = a miss.
- Equal to Ability score = a critical hit, deal double weapon damage.
- Under or equal to AD = hits armor, the opponent may spend points of blocks to reduce damage.
Weapons have a set damage. When a weapon is found, roll its damage die and record the number rolled. If a 1 (or similar minimum) is rolled, increase the quality of the weapon and roll again. Store-bought and starting weapons deal average damage (rounded down). So a d6 short sword bought from the local weapon smith will deal 3 damage.
Armor gives points of blocks. Half of the total of all a character’s blocks minus Encumbrance is their AD. When an attack hits armor:
- The character can spend blocks to lower the incoming damage.
- Multiple blocks of the same armor piece can be spent to block more damage, but only 1 piece of armor can be used to block per attack.
- If no blocks can be spent, an armor piece can still block, but must lower its durability instead.
- Damaged reduced to 1 lowers both the armor and weapon’s durability.
- AD is not lowered when blocks are spent, only if an armor piece is destroyed.
As far as how damage is blocked I had a few ideas. First idea was a percentage of the damage blocked. Terrible. Too much math. Second idea was to use the armor’s max blocks as armor points that reduce the damage by that amount. What could be a problem is with better armor, a significant amount of damage is being blocked per instance. Plate in Errant has 10 blocks, but in Errant each block still does the same thing; plate just has more blocks.
Third idea was to just stick with the original block mechanic in Errant. Every instance of blocking reduces the size of a damage die, so a d6 attack would be reduced to a d4. This does require characters to roll damage again, and this goes against the spirit of the Prismatic Wasteland post, keeping a combat to just 1 roll. But rolling dice is fun, and it won’t be happening as often as regular hits and misses (hopefully).
Regarding monsters. Since Players will be rolling against monsters’ AD, and some monsters don’t have a whole ability score stat block, here’s some ideas on how to convert:
- Instead of an ability score to roll under, use the monster’s HD+10.
- To convert AC to AD:
- Ascending: AC-10 = AD
- Descending: 9-AC = AD
This creates some interesting interactions. A Gold Dragon from B/X would need to roll under 21, so it never misses attacks. And its AD is 12, so an average low level character wouldn’t even be able to hit it without hitting its scales. If a character can’t even hit past armor, I wouldn’t even have the roll or deal damage. They are too weak to hurt a beast of this level.
Characters could have options like readying their weapon in defense as an action. Add their weapon damage to AD, but they must lower their weapon durability if their AD is hit. This can create interesting decisions: do they risk breaking their 5 damage short sword to defend themselves? Why not bring an arsenal of weapons? But then you have less room for supplies and bringing back treasure, as well as the weight impeding your AD.
So this is what came out of my boiling brain stew after reading those blogs (as blogs tend to do that to me). I have a game coming up tomorrow and I hope to get some play testing in.
A Blaggards Blog 