"one die roll resolution (crosspost from Game design)" Topic

Here's a system I'm considering for combat in my fantasy mass combat rules:

units have a Combat score, say 1 (goblin skirmishers) to 5 (elven knights). Let's imagine a combat between orcs with C2 and Dwarves with Combat 3.

The Dwarf is attacking and rolls a d6. If the score is lower or equal to the defender's Combat, the defender wins the combat.

If the die roll + the attacker's Combat score is 6 or better, though, the attacker wins.

If the die roll is such that both win or nobody wins, the round is a draw.

In the example above, if the attacker rolls 1 or 2, the orcs win. If he rolls 3, the Dwarves score a 6 and win.

I like this system as it encourages aggressive behavior, charges and such. But probably d6 has too little granularity and I'll switch to a d10 if the manufacturer agrees. The problem now is how to model recoils and morale breaks in this one-die-roll system. Opinions anyone?

I hate single die systems. The reason why, especially with a d10, is that it leaves so much to chance.

Say I have my elite knights charge into the rear of your crappy kobold slaves. I roll a 1. The crappy kobolds have managed to hold the knights after being charged in the rear.

More dice are better in my opinion. If you want only one result roll two die and average them.

Pictors,
I think I'll do like this:

I roll two dice, one white and one red.
The white die is the combat die, it tells you who got the advantage.

The red die is the kill die.. it tells you what result the winner got. Basically the red die is a confirmation die -- if the same result comes up, the unit who won killed the other. If another result (a failure or draw) comes up, the unit just managed to repulse the knights.

In your example above, if you roll a 1 on the combat die AND a 1 on the kill die, the kobolds have managed to destroy the knights. If you roll a 1 on the combat die and a 2+ on the kill die, the knight must recoil (and being cavalry against foot they also have the option to run away in good order).

Sounds fair?

Besides, in my rules the Kobolds will either turn to face the knights (if they are not already engaged to their front) or will have to make a Morale roll or be disrupted prior to combat for being charged in the flank/rear while in melee (if they are already fighting another unit).
As you see, kobold slaves get no easy breaks :-)

So the kobolds would have a 1% chance of killing the knights but a 10% chance of beating them and driving them off?

It still seems a little unbalanced.

If you compare it to a few other games:

Warmaster:

Knights get 3 attacks a stand, with three stands charging they would get 4 attacks a stand.

Kobolds, who we'll say suck as bad as goblins but get a save, get two attacks a stand, if struck from behind that drops to 1.

So the knights get 12 attacks, hitting on 4+ they get 6 hits.

The kobolds get 1 save from their 6+ save.

Now they would get their possible three attacks and get 1.5 hits, which would drop to a .75 hit after the 4+ saves.

With just this second part, the kobold attack, if it were average, there would have to be some combination of the knights rolling 12 dice and getting no 4+ results or the kobolds rolling 6's for their saves for each of the hits. Almost impossible.

If the kobolds get both lucky with their hits and with the knights saves ( a 1.5% chance) coupled with the knights missing with all but three of their hits (I think about a .2%) chance. So the knights would lose there almost never and would never be able to be entirely destroyed.

In warhammer the kobolds that survived the attack would get something like 6 – deaders, attacks back. Say 3. They would hit on 4+, wound on 4+ and the knights would get saves on 2+. Again only a small chance of them even hurting a knight.

While the knights should probably kill about 4 kobolds and cancel their rank bonus and get charge in the butt bonus.

If the crappy kobolds, even with leadership 7 don't managed to kill a knight, the knights will almost run them down every time. The chance of them bouncing off must approach nothing.

I think your system would work better with more modifiers.

So like a combat resolution score based on unit so Dwarf warriors have a 3, dwarf crossbowmen a 2 and so on.

Plus situational modifiers, charged in the rear while in combat to the front +4, charged in the flank while in combat +3 and so on.

The problem with that is that it quickly becomes impossible for some units to beat the other side so the situation has flipped. It has gone from one where the near impossible happens one time in 10 to the situation where it actually never happens. Those kobolds have almost no chance and shouldn't but there should be some 1 in 10,000 chance that they could pull it out just to keep both people interested, I think.

What if you rolled 2d10 for combat resolution and averaged them so then you would have to roll two 1's for the knights to lose and then another 2d10 and averaged them for damage, so another 1% of the knights being wiped out if they do lose. That would keep things interesting.

Hmm, obviously I posted before your last post was up. I'm not totally ruling it out, it would have to be seen in cotext of the rest of the rules. But I have had bad experiences with single die systems in the past, especially when the die gets big enough.

Pictors
it's a fast system. A battle must be over in an hour or so. Think DBA or Hott with a morale system and more racial variations. Having separate rolls takes time -- I want everything to be over with one roll, so this is why I am color coding the dice.
As probably we are talking about 600 kobolds and 200 knights, a 10% chance of repulsing the charge (assuming the Kobs pass their lousy morale save -- they'll need to roll 3d6 and get all results of 3+ assuming they are in command radius) seems fair to me. After all, it's an heroic game. It will almost never happen and when it happens it will be remembered by the players with lots of laughter, I hope :-)

An assumption I am making is that all troops on the battlefield are significant -the really really lousy kobolds died out already or were left home to take care of their eggs.

A single die for an entire unit resolution is very bad design, because of the freak accidents that can occur. We roll a pair of d6's for each individual combat resolution; that way a whole combat turn is resolved with at least half a dozen dice rolls, and usually a lot more than that. The averaging smoothes out the occasional freaky roll.

1066.us

MerlintheMad,
well that's actually my system as it is now -- roll 2d6,one red one white. The red is a confirmation die.
if both are successes the opponent is destroyed, if only the white die is a success, the enemy is just repulsed.

This was thought of as an alternative to the DBX combat resolution-- yes this is a little more prone to freaky accidents than DBX but since this is an heroic fantasy mass combat system, I assume that players prefer it like that.

And since this game wants to be very portable (think DBA) and playable on a 2'x2' DBA table,a buckets of dice approach is not a viable option. I also want to speed up things to avoid wasting a lot of time rolling dice.

I like it. I usually like systems with single or few die rolls and some logical modifiers to make it all work together.
On the other hand I also like indie roleplaying games like Trollbabe and Over the Edge.
Don´t know if my opinion is worth anything :)

Cheers!!

On the other hand, we roll morale with a single 2d6 roll: make or fail! So we sort of take both sides in this: morale can produce a freaked out game. You are winning the combats: but roll a single failed morale check (say, for 25% casualties), which requires that other units which can "see" the failing unit also check: and just because it's your time to have crappy luck, you fail a string of unit morale checks in a row (the "snowball" or "domino" effect), and thus lose the battle! But we also smooth out the combat results by having all those individual 2d6 combat resolution rolls.

Golem, you could also consider having one "combat" be resolved by two or more "rounds" of die rolls. The odds of the kobolds winning twice or three times in a row are even less.

Or perhaps something like: the white die determines who wins (causes casualties), red die dtermines how many casualties (perhaps a multiplier to the margin that unit won by). So the knights may 'lose' to kobolds, but will probably only lose a figure or two. If they win (far more likely) they will also cause a lot more casualties.

This may mean that you do not need to separately account for 'armour saves' – a unit with armour will have a higher combat factor, and will tend to lose combat by less (if at all) and thus take less casualties.

Static Tyrant,
it is an element based system a la DBX, so you can only remove a stand, not figures.
Also: there are no "margins" one can win by, as the chances of winning the combat for Unit A and Unit B are expressed on the same die.
Well, actually it is most likely that a battle between two stands will often happen in more turns -- the odds are that troops repulse each other unless -- as in the kobolds vs knights example -- there is a big difference in combat value or a lot of tactical factors sum up.

Armor: as it is now, armor is figured out in the combat factor. I may have an extra "save" only for the general element (since losing it means losing the battle) and maybe for heroes.

MerlintheMad,
a morale roll on 2d6 is a weighted die roll -- predictable enough as most results will fall in the 6 to 8 range. The key here is avoiding morale negative modifiers, as only a -1 on a Morale save will mean a lot.

In my system, units have a quality rating, which is a number they must roll on a d6 to activate or to pass a morale roll. You make a Morale roll on 3 dice, and every failure means that the unit must make one routing move away from the opponent (also getting free hacks if it is disengaging from a combat and being automatically destroyed if the rout brings the unit too close to any active enemy unit).