Alternative Combat System Brainstorm

[tetramorph]

I've been using Delta's Book of War for resolving mass combat in a Wilderness campaign I've been running in Planet Eris.

It got me thinking.

What if we did this for combat resolution, instead:

Roll or above on d6 to hit:

	Light	Medium	Heavy
Untrained	2	3	4
Trained	3	4	5
Expert	4	5	6

Each success equals one hit. HD = how many hits a unit or figure may take before defeat. (So, essentially, no hit points and no separate damage rolls).

Units or figures with more than one HD roll a d6 for each of their HD. In other words, HD also represent number of attacks per round.

Untrained, trained and expert represent whether or not troop is conscript / levy, trained soldier or expert warrior. This would affect the hiring rate with regards to NPCs. Playing characters start out "untrained," but progress through each category at the original edition rate (i.e., after every three for FM, four for CL, 5 for MU).

Light means plain clothes through leather padding (20 gp) (including leather cap), medium means chainmail (30 gp) over leather padding (including chain head covering), heavy means plate armor (50 gp) over chainmail (plate includes helmet). So to have the "best AC" from the get-go the player will need to roll for some high money, it will cost 100 gp to get "heavy." MUs still, of course, have no armor (so "light"). I like CLs to have limited armor, so I would limit them to "medium," but that is just me.

Three types of weapon combos: blade or bludgeon and shield or buckler, blade or bludgeon and blade or bludgeon (such as rapier and dagger, mace and morning star, etc.) and pole arm. This would be rock-paper scissors: blade and shield +1 against blade and blade, blade and blade +1 against pole arm, pole arm +1 against blade and shield.

Cavalry would include HD of mounts in total hits the unit could take. Other rock-paper-scissors could get worked out between infantry / cavalry / archers. This may affect the way we imagine combat styles for certain monsters, etc.

CLs would gain one HD per lvl. MUs would gain one HD every odd lvl. FM would get one HD per lvl with an additional HD after every three, so lvls 4, 7, 10, etc.

Brainstorm. Thoughts?

[hedgehobbit]

Two things. Firstly, why not just use the similar chart in Chainmail?

Secondly, having high level character roll more dice and have a lower target number seems like double dipping. [I'm assuming there's a mix up on the table as an untrained fighter hits on a 2 or better whereas an expert needs a 4 or better]

[tetramorph]

hedgehobbit, honest answer: Chainmail just confuses me every time I try to read it. I would need to play it with someone else who gets it.

Second, it is not what they need to hit, it is what the attacker needs to roll in order to hit them. Better?

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 7, 2015 17:05:34 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

Playing characters start out "untrained," but progress through each category at the original edition rate (i.e., after every three for FM, four for CL, 5 for MU).

Rename "untrained", "trained", "expert" to: "normal", "hero", "superhero" and you're almost there

[merctime]

What Ways said!! xD

Oh, but how I adore DD's tier system!

/endthreadderail

[todd]

This reminds me that I have to read through Chainmail again. I've gone through it once or twice but have only picked up the barest essentials.

[merctime]

Same with me. My only really readable mass combat add-on for OD&D is Delta's Book of War at this time. I really need to find an affordable copy of Chainmail.

[todd]

I wonder if WotC will ever release a Chainmail PDF. I managed to snag a copy off of eBay a couple of years ago for not too much scratch, as I recall.

[tetramorph]

If you feel ethically okay with it, a simple google search should turn up a readable PDF of Chainmail for all.

Yes, I am trying to keep this D&D. So, tiers and levels and yes.

I was just imagining another "alternative combat" system to the one we all know and love.

Thoughts?

[merctime]

I'll chime in once I've had time to really dig-in and formulate an educated opinion. I'm probably one of the worst people to do this though, having little to no experience with D&D mass combat; Back in the days, all of mine was super simple as I didn't have Chainmail or the AD&D mass combat box set (the name of which escapes me).

[hedgehobbit]

Jul 7, 2015 20:41:21 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

Second, it is not what they need to hit, it is what the attacker needs to roll in order to hit them. Better?

Not really better. From the chart it looks like if an Untrained dude is attacking someone in Light armor, he needs to roll a 2 or better to kill him. Whereas he'd need a 4 or better to kill an opponent in Heavy armor. An Expert attacking a Light dude needs a 4 or better but he'll need a 6 to kill a Heavy dude. Am I right?

I looked over the similar charts in Chainmail. That game was significantly less lethal. Generally a dude only kills another dude on a 6. Armored troops attacking light troops hit on a 4 or better. 

[tetramorph]

hedgehobbit, maybe I am suggesting something more lethal.

I think my chart must be very confusing. Here is what I mean.

For ANYONE to hit an untrained dude in light armor ANYONE would only need to roll a 2+.

The HD of the dude determines how many chances they get, per round, to roll 2+.

ANYONE can hit an expert in heavy armor on a 6+ (bonuses from magic, etc.).

So a a lvl 4 hero with 5 HD rolls 5d6 against a unit of 5 light untrained light armored dudes. Let's say he gets a 1, two 2s, a 3 and a 4. Four untrained light armored dudes are now dead. Only one remains. Fails morale. Flees.

A unit of 5 untrained light armored dudes attack a hero in heavy armor. They are 1HD each but acting as a unit. So they roll 5d6. Let's say they roll a 2, two 3s and two 4s. No dice. Time for the hero to clean up. Or, perhaps they are luckier with a 6, two 5s and two 4s. That is still only one hit for them. The hero still have 4 HD and sets to cleaning up.

Does that make more sense? The chart is to determine what it takes to hit a given troop type based upon two factors: relative skill and relative armor.

Thanks for interacting.

[hedgehobbit]

I was chopping vegetables for tonight's dinner when it hit me how this chart was supposed to work. I rushed over here to delete my previous comment but I'm too late.

Anyway, since I'm already posting, there's the point about lethality for a chart like this. Now in D&D, a low level guy has about a 50% chance to hit a regular dude and, doing d6 damage versus d6 hit points, will kill his opponent half the time. The other half requiring two hits. So, assuming 1.5 average hits per kill, this means that, on average, it will take about 3 attacks to kill an unarmored opponent. That's equivalent to about a 5+ as a single d6 roll. This doesn't really give us much wiggle room for adjustments. WFB gets around this problem by requiring multiple rolls but that's probably not something your interested in doing.

One possible "solution" would be to make the target numbers 4, 5, and 6, for Light, Medium, and Heavy respectively. High level characters can rely on their HD to survive whereas conscripts and weak troops only roll 1 die per 2 combatants.

[tetramorph]

hedgehobbit, okay, yes, all good points. Again, thanks for the interaction.

I think I was moving back over from mass combat stuff (Delta's book of war) so the time scale is different. We are talking about averaging out about 3 rounds of the alternative combat we are most used to.

That is a bit much.

So now I see why they started using a d20! Well, my lesson is now complete. But it was a cool thought experiment.

I think what I was really going for was that I wanted to:

a.) simplify the combat process (one roll instead of two; no keeping track of HP)
b.) come up with a combination of skill and armor to define "defensive capacity" rather than AC, making armor even more abstract and acknowledging the importance of skill in defense
c.) come up with a combination of weapons that were meaningful in terms of attack that did not yield "variable" damage, and acknowledged that a shield is actually a weapon, not a piece of armor

Thanks for helping me clarify my ideas.

I wonder if there is another more simple way to do all of the above that manages the lethality and time scale better.

Maybe use a d8, d10 or d12 instead? Hmm.

[waysoftheearth]

You probably already figured this, but some quick back-of-beer-coaster calculations show that a normal hit (1-6) is 21 in 36 likely to kill a 1 HD figure, 58.33% probable.

The ACS has it that a 1st level or otherwise normal tier player-type will hit AC9 on 55% of swings, AC2 on 20% of swings, and ACX (average of all ACs, or theoretical "middle" protection) on 37.5% of swings.

Combine these and we find normals will kill AC9 on 32% of swings, ACX on 22% of swings, and AC2 on 12% of swings. This is pretty close to 2/6 vs AC9 and 1/6 vs AC2 assuming 1) exactly one swing per combat-period, and 2) a fresh opponent on each swing.

Neither of these assumptions is realistically true though, so the math goes off the edge of my beer coaster

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 8, 2015 10:33:44 GMT -5 merctime said:

Oh, but how I adore DD's tier system!

I'm glad you like it, but the credit lies elsewhere. DD merely emulates D&D's implicit tier system.

[The Red Baron]

D6 score required to hit:

Light 4
Heavy 5
Armored 6

Light units fight out of formation. Cannot be flanked by infantry. Cannot brace for cavalry charges (all count as flanking). Faster, weaker in combat. Light and disorganized units cannot be bloodied or destroyed by missile fire, but still make a morale check if hit.

Heavy units fight in formation. Have specific flanks, and slower movement.

Armored units are heavy units wearing armor. Men with cotton cuirasses and jacks are unarmored (simply "heavy"), men in heavy steel are armored. Other than a combat advantage, armored units behave as heavy infantry.

Horses are formidable (extra dice, typically double but depends on sinister/dexter/rear flank of unit and unit arms/shield) when charging and flanking, but are no better than infantry in a prolonged melee. When charging, horses force a morale check.

Troop training determines morale instead of raising to hit probability.

Edit: formatting

[merctime]

darn RedBaron you shot straight for the eyes on that one. Nice post!

[tetramorph]

The Red Baron, very nice. It kills my matrix for the combination of skill and armor, but maybe it needed to be killed.

What about recognizing shields as a part of weaponry, rather than armor?

What about rock-paper-scissors?! (That probably really needs to die!)

[tetramorph]

waysoftheearth, can you show me the math for figuring out the chances that a normal hit will kill a normal?

I trust you, I am just no mathematician and I want to learn!

[The Red Baron]

Jul 10, 2015 13:20:36 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

What about recognizing shields as a part of weaponry, rather than armor?

Shields protect the sinister flank from flanking attacks (treated as front flank), and act as mobile cover vs missiles (same bonus as a forest, wall, or other cover would provide).

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 10, 2015 13:39:11 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

waysoftheearth, can you show me the math for figuring out the chances that a normal hit will kill a normal?

The definition of a "normal-type" varies. Depending on which rules/rulings you choose to include, EGG's normal-types include up to 1 HD man-types, or up to 1+1 HD man-types, or (by AD&D) opponents with fewer than one (now eight-sided) HD. Meanwhile, Arneson's flunkies and mortals include man-types equivalent to up to 2 HD, and this carries over to AiF wherein the basic elves and dwarfs etc. have 2 HD. OD&D is a mashup of these authors' ideas, so there is no simple definition of normal-type that is unambiguously correct.

However, assuming we are talking about a normal hit that deals 1-6 hp, versus a 1 HD type with 1-6 hp, then we can draw ourselves a simple matrix of the possible outcomes of a hit, like this:

	1 dam	2 dam	3 dam	4 dam	5 dam	6 dam
1 hp	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!
2 hp	1 hp left	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!
3 hp	2 hp left	1 hp left	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!
4 hp	3 hp left	2 hp left	1 hp left	Kill!	Kill!	Kill!
5 hp	4 hp left	3 hp left	2 hp left	1 hp left	Kill!	Kill!
6 hp	5 hp left	4 hp left	3 hp left	2 hp left	1 hp left	Kill!

We see there are 36 possible outcomes, with (6+5+4+3+2+1=21) 21 of them resulting in a kill.  21/36=0.5833 therefore a kill is 58.33% likely.

[finarvyn]

Want a really simple combat system?
1) Use the AC scale from OD&D. (9 = none, 2 = plate and sheild)
2) Roll 2d6 to hit; hit if you roll under or equal to the AC.

That's it. You only hit an AC=2 guy on snake eyes, you hit an AC=9 guy quite a bit. I often wondered if pre-OD&D combat looked something like this anyway. Otherwise, why have such an oddball AC scale?