Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[silverwave]

EDIT :

So here's what I came up with.

Instead of a Parry and Thoughness scores, you have a single Defense stat.

Also, instead of making a check to hit and another check for damage, you do a single check. If you beat target Defense, he gets shaken. For each raise, you inflict 1 wound.

Note that this house rule doesn't take into account Weapon damage. I personnaly feel like the precision of the attack is a lot more important than the type of weapon used. For example, you'd get hurt a lot more with a baseball bat hit in the face than a 5.56mm bullet in the arm.

If you'd still want to use weapon damage, I invite you to look at this house rule instead : http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27816
You could also probably just add 4 to Defense and add weapon damage dice to your attack but I didn't test the effects of this.

The formulas to calculate your scores go like this :


Defense = ½ Fighting (min. 2) (against melee only) + ½ Vigor + armor/shield + edges

Attack = ½ Fighting, Shooting or Arcane + linked attribute (Str for Fighting, Agl for Shooting and Sma or Spi for Arcane) + Wild die

For example, a character that has d6 in all abilities and skills who wears a leather armor and wield a shield would have :

Attack : 3 + d6 + d6 (wild die)
Defense : 8 (3 + 3 + 1 armor + 1 shield)

===============================================

Apologize if already posted, I couldn't find anything about this in the search.

So, I like my fights to be a little bit quicker and don't like much to make 2 checks for a single attack (one for hit, another for damage) so I'm looking for an alternative, possibly removing the "Parry" stat (and boosting a bit the Thoughness to compensate).

Any thoughs on this and the extend of removing such a big chunk of the rules?

I know purists tend to dislike every change in their beloved rules so, please, keep an open mind about it!

Thanks a lot!

[ogbendog]

so, the idea is, one hit, which includes hitting and damaging?

you'd need to include Fighting for to hit, Strength and wpn for damage, vs some combination of parry and toughness.

maybe roll Fighting die and Strength die for to hit (no wild) and add a flat bonus based on weapon (similar to the old damage rules) vs 1/2 fighting + 1/2 vigor+ armor

so joe average with short sword:
rolls d6/d6 for fighting/strenght, +2 for shortsword, vs 6

instead of d6/d6 vs 5 to hit
and d6+d6 vs 5 damage.

maybe give extra's a penalty, or wild cards a bonus or something.

dunno. almost all games have two rolls.

[blacksunvigo]

I keep my mind open especially when it comes to making things faster, but I think it would be hard to do effectively using SW mechanics.

Have you looked at Ubiquity? It shares some features with SW and a lot of people love it. It has a single roll (or no roll if you really want it )

I just prefer SW.

[silverwave]

I do like SW. I'm not interested in learning/buying another game. I'm more game to make some house rules to better fit my style and still use SW.

[The One]

Stripping out one of the two rolls will create huge balance issues for the game, and remove a lot of the versatility for combat options (such as called shots, wild attacks etc.)


I'd suggest that you get different coloured dice, one set to cover your hit roll and wild die, the other for your damage dice and roll the whole lot together if you find two seperate rolls slow. Alternatively, consider stripping out some of the modifiers to speed up the maths involved.
_________________
Life: Past trends are not an indication of future performance

[Pfr_Fate]

nothing you can do.... both rolls require an actual roll to check for raises or aces. The closest thing...off the top of my head right this second...is to add a characters parry to his toughness and just roll damage adding the attack skill die.

so roll your "attack" of a sword would be like d6 (weapon) + d6 (Str) + d6 (Fighting) ...3d6

vs. a "defense " of. 13 (toughness of 5 + armor of 1 + parry of 5)....

then do everything else normally....like it was a damage roll with 'no effect ' being a miss /parry...

Of course things like Wild Attack are weird....
_________________
The eternal struggle takes time, Max.

[silverwave]

It isn't much about the time it takes to throw more dice but more about the whole process it takes to look what dice you'd be throwing for attack, throw the dice, look up the sheet to see what's your parry, see if you get a raise and then do the same whole process again with Thoughness.

What I have in mind would be that all bonus/penalties for combat options and situational modifier would still apply but you'd be making a single roll against a "Defense" stat boosted accordingly by your fighting skill, vigor stat, edges and equipement that normally boost parry or thoughness.

I don't care much about weapon damage (I'm more leaning toward the gritty side of combat) as I don't buy an assault rifle does more damage than say a sub-machine gun (ballistic is WAY much complicated than that) or even an arrow/bolt or a dagger thrust in the guts for that matter. It's really more about where you get hit. You'd likely be less damaged by a 5.56 bullet in the arm than with a baseball bat up the face.

I just need to figure out how to make this "Defense" stat still counts all bonuses granted by different parry and thoughness boosting mechanic and still get decent probabilities so it doesn't lead to making it too hard or too easy to hit/damage opponents.

[silverwave]

[Zadmar]

Related discussion: Combined attack & damage rolls in Savage Worlds?

I particularly recommend looking at Jordan Peacock's suggestion.

[ValhallaGH]

[silverwave]

I also tought about making damage static. I'll have to make some test to see if it's too much of an imbalance to the game, considering what you said (all or nothing syndrome).

I know Warhammer Fantasy RP 3rd edition works that way. It works pretty well in this system but characters have more "HP" than in SW. Also, it's a bit like you mentioned. Some characters are armored tanks while others are squishy like slugs. At least, WHFR as a rule that say you still take 1 wound even if you soak all damage. I don't know if it would work well in SW as you don't have this kind of rule.

[silverwave]

[silverwave]

So, in the light of the reading of the Combined attack & damage thread, I've made up something that could fit more my liking and seems okay statistically.

So, if you take an all average dude using standard SW rules.
He got d6 in fighting, d6 in str, d6 in vigor, use a +2 armor.
His parry is 5 and Thoughness is 7.
To get a 5 or more out of d6+d6 (both exploding) is 55.6%
To get 7 or more with added 2d6 (both exploding) is 58.3%
Average between 55.6 and 58.3 = 57%
So that means in 57% of cases, you'd at least shaken an ennemy.

Now, what I came up with is this :

You get a Defense stat that merge Parry and Thoughness using this formulae (remove ½ Fighting against ranged) :

Defense = ½ Fighting (min. 2) + ½ Vigor + armor/shield + edges

And your attack would be calculated as so :

Attack = ½ Fighting/Shooting/Arcane + Str/Agl/Sma/Spi + Wild dice

So in the above example, the same character would have :
Defense : 8 (3 + 3 + 2 for armor)
Attack : d6+d6+3

Probabilities to get 8 or more is the same : 55.6%
Since there's no second check for damage that up the odds a bit, overall you lose 1% chance to hit in the final, which is more than fine by me.

You lose weapon damage in the process, wich is a feature for me, not a flaw.
Verssimilitude between high agility/dodgy guy vs super though brute would be achieved by narrative.

Wild attack would only give +2 (not +4 from added bonus to hit and damage) since both are merged, it's effectively the average that needs be factored in.


Does anybody see any caveats?


EDIT : I've just seen that statistically, a character with a +1 shield and +1 armor is harder to shaken on average per RAW than one with +2 armor because :
Parry 6, Thoughness 6

Getting 6 or more on d6+d6 = 30.56%
Getting 6 or more on added 2d6 = 72.22%
Average is : 51.4% vs 55.6% with my system

Though, standard SW system also doesn't do difference between shield +1 or shield +2 in this particular example since 6 is unattainable with an exploding d6 (because you reroll and add when you get a 6, which is minimum of 7) whereas my system does because your Defense would go up. So in my mind, this evens out.


EDIT EDIT : Found a caveat which is very specific.
The minimum with my system is slightly bellow the one you get with RAW.
RAW minimum = Parry 2, Thoughness 4 (without armor)
To hit 2 with d6+d6 = 97.22
To damage 4 with 2d6 = 91.66
Average is : 94.44%

With my system, the same dude would only get Defense 2 which is sadly 100% chance to hit even with Fight and Str d4 (because it translate to +2 to atk). So I guess the minimum defense would need to be at least 4 (which gives a probability to hit of 96%). I could easily go and say that you add ½ Fighting (minimum 2) to defense.

[Zadmar]

[silverwave]

Meh...

So far it was working... until I noticed that if you give straight bonus for ½ str/agl/sma/spi in the attack roll, your odds of scoring a hit increase drastically more if you increase your ability than your skill.

Against Defense 8 :

d4 Fighting, d4 Strenght = 32%
d4 Fight, d6 Str = 50%
d4 Fight, d8 Str = 63%
d4 Fight, d10 Str = 83%

d4 Fighting, d4 Strenght = 32%
d6 Fight, d4 Str = 31% (yup... it's lower, that's inherent of SW dice probabilities, not from my house rules. Sometimes your better off with smaller dice because exploding dice; you have better chance to get a 4 on a d4 than a 6 on a d6)
d8 Fight, d4 Str = 48%
d10 Fight, d4 Str = 58%

It's too much of a difference for being viable now.
I'm not sure how I can fix this.
I might need to use combined atk and dmg idea on the end.

EDIT : Well, considering that it is not optimal that characters increase their skill above their linked attribute, if I got the other way around and use ½ Fighting/Shooting/Arcane to add to the Attack formulae it kinds of make more sense. After all, you get a lot better at Fighting when learning how to fight than just making more muscles, which translates with better probabilities when increasing your skill than your attribute. Then again, if you want to be optimal, you'd still need to increase your attribute if you don't want to pay all the extra advancements for increasing your skill beyond your attribute.

[silverwave]

So I just did extensive testing using Archetypes to compare against each others and so far it works! You even feel the difference between archetypes in the statistics.

For example, if you pit a Fencer vs a Fighter, Great Weapon (statistically, not actual playthrough since the number of factors are illimited).

Fencer
- Atk : d6+d6+6
- Def : 10 (6+3+1 armor)

Great Weapon
- Atk : d10+d6+5
- Def : 10 (5+3+2 armor)

Fencer got 75% to hit because well rounded but skilled in Fighting, and 26% to get at least 1 raise
GW got 73% to hit (less skilled but stronger) but 29% to get at least a raise.

If you factor in Wild attack (gives +2 to Atk, not +4) you feel that even more.
Fencer : 97% to hit / 31% to raise
GW : 93% to hit / 50% to raise

Another example : Marksman vs Leader both ranged attacks.
Marksman got 97% to hit (would be 100% but snake-eyes is 3% chance with d6+d6), as have the Leader (less skilled but more armor because a bit stronger).
If you factor in modifiers (that happens a lot with ranged).

Marksman | Leader
-1 : 97% | 97%
-2 : 98% | 89%
-4 : 85% | 56%
-6 : 58% | 26%

So here, the penalties affects a lot more the Leader as he's less skilled with Shooting than the Marksman.


So far so good!

[Gylthinel]

Silverware: I like the idea and I like where you're going. I've mused on such an idea myself. I would like to profer a though for you, which I keep in mind when writing house rules: don't Change rules just to keep them the same. That is to say, I wouldn't get caught up in keeping your attack/damage scheme statistically the same as RAW. Do what feels right, let the rule flow naturally, then change the peripherals to match.

That's my approach anyway.

[silverwave]

Yeah, thanks!

That's what I told myself when I did tests and found that I really liked where it was going.

But that's a great tip. Some people will tell you not to change anything so I guess I try too much to stay as close to the actual rules I don't like. Heck, if I don't like them, why should I try to stick to something similar?

That being said, even if I don't post in here to receive blessings from other players (far from it), I'm sincere about asking other people (even purists) if they think it's broken or not. I just know I can't see every impact a house rule can have on the game, overall.

[Zadmar]

[silverwave]

By the way, don't misunderstand me. When I say purist, there's no bad connotation to it!

Also, I shouldn't have said "Everybody will tell you...". Let's say : Some people.

Also, Zadmar, I do understand what your saying. I'm not totally "newb" to SW, even though I've only played it half a dozen times by RAW. I still have to admit I might not have grasped all its subtleties. That said, I know having to roll for touch and then rolling for damage isn't doing it for me. I think what I came up with will work for me (even though I can't be sure until I actually test it at the table) and I don't agree it makes me play an entirely other RPG. I'm changing a single mechanic. Even though it probably has repercution on other mechanics, I'm not reimagining the whole thing and appart from combat rolls, which is at most 1/4 of my games, everything else will stay SW.
Heck, I play Skyrim with nearly 50 mods and I consider I still play Skyrim

As for verssimilitude between "agile" vs "though", like I already said, it's nothing I can't share to the character with narration. Because, let's face it, even though the RAW mechanics have a distinction between them, in the end what you want to know is : do I shaken/wound my ennemy or not?