"My combat rules" Topic

Without getting into too much details I been working on a set of rules and was wondering what people thought about my combat scheme. Basically both sides are considered the attacker so both roll a d6 and add any modifiers present with that round of combat, the highest score wins and is then subtracted by the armor amount of the loser, the result is the number of wounds inflicted. I am not sure of any systems have done combat like so, atleast none of the games i played done it like this. The game is geared towards skirmish and small unit combat

If you are assuming that both sides have similar armor (passive defense)then with reasonable unit sizes and modifiers it should work all right. I did this for Epic 40K with various polyhedrals- to avoid the 'after die rolling modifiers' but I found it I could not get enough granularity to represent all the different armor grades in 40K.
What period/setting are you writing the rules for?
BTW, keep us posted!

It's been used Dozens of times before, some as way back as Featherstone. As Acharnement said, it works only when the armor values are fairly close. My caveat is that it only works when the total POSSIBLE modifiers are within 1 to 5.

The key to the process is not the modifiers but the die used. With a d 6 you have only a 5 point variance allowable because if one side rolls a 1 and the other a 6 6-1= 5. Thererfore one side with say an total modifiers of 0 facing a side with a total modifiers of 5 can only tie. 0+6=6 5+1=6. If the "0" modifiers faces a guy with modifiers of 6, the "0" can never win.

The same disparity will do the same thing on the high end.

For example a side with total modifiers of 30 versus total modifiers of 36 likewise can never win, but by your system would have AT LEAST six turns till he was eventually killed. It may be more.

The problem is that it would be as boring as a hammer driving a nail. Eventually the nail will be driven and the hammer will be free to nail another day.

This however does not disqualify the system from utility provided you add a few catches to it. For example you could make a rule that if the side rolling is SUPERIOR in modifiers rolls a 1, regardless of the disparity in modifiers, it loses one armor factor, and the other side looses nothing and if the side roll is INFERIOR in modifiers and it rolls a 6 then it dodges and gets no damage that turn, and if the superior side rolls a 1 and the inferior side rolls a 6 you have an inversion and the inferior side inflicts damage as if it were the superior side.

You can do any amount of these "catches" to break the straight mathematical dictate of the die roll.

For example in my rule set (admittedly for the 18th century and historical units) "Oh God! Anything But a Six!" units at times must "test" to do various things, -- move, fire, rally, charge, sand, etc. A unit has an ability of 1 to 5 in any of these areas. If they roll less than or equal to this ability they can do it. Officers have abilities of 1 to 4 which they can add to these raising them. For example, if an officer has an ability of 2 he can add it to a unit with an ability of 3 in a specific area, to make it a 5, so that unit can do the action on a 1 to 5. However the rules state (as the name itself shows) that regardless of how many modifiers you have you cannot modify the ability of a unit to more than 5, so a six is always a fail, nor modify it to less han 1 so a 1 is always a pass.

That'll work, though REMEMBER, if you you have large numers of modifiers, it will frustrate such things as overwhelming superiority.

To smooth out the issue with armour differences, would it help to say that if the winner fails to get cause any wounds – they are allowed to inflict an automatic '1 wound' on the loser, just so the weakling units have some sort of presence and to reward their winning in the first place?

If you're rolling simultaneous combat, why not have simultaneous damage? Each side subtracts opposing armour from their roll to calculate damage awarded. In general, rolling higher leads to dealing more damage.

Acharnement, Id like to create this for a variety of periods and also allow the game to be played in a fantasy setting as well as other settings. Iam no historian so iam sure it won't be a hundred percent accurate but I want it to be fun and play able.

Etotheipi, that was one of the other possibility i was looking into trying out.

Normsmith not a bad idea but iam omitting the needfor armor saves and substituting it with the armor value against the amount of damage. Ill have to be sure that its balanced enough that even a tough unit is capable of being wounded by a weaker unit.

To incorporate differences in troop types, why not go down the DBA/DBM route and have different combat outcomes for different types of troops (as well as the die modifiers) with more extreme results on double/triple scores.

It is a tried and tested system and works well. Essentially you end up with a simple CRT, so it can include negative effects on the 'winner' as well.

It is more easily controllabel than simply inflicting the score difference in hits (a system originally used in Tunnels and Trolls in the 1970s, and as poor a representation of combat then as now!).

Would it work with each side rolling 2D6 instead of 1D6? Just a thought….

the result is the number of wounds inflicted

That means that a character dies only after receiving a (high?) number of wounds. It means you have to keep tracks of the number of wounds, off-table, for all characters, during the whole game. Personnaly I prefer to avoid this and to have clear melee results where characters are either uninjured or killed; but that's just me.

Patrice, there won't be many characters maybe a general and a couple heros leading a couple small units. It may just be a little record keeping but not much.