1) You add the roll to your to-hit roll. A 12 on the d20 and a 2 on the d3 means you actually rolled a 14 to-hit. Note that the Attack Die completely replaces the fighter's Base Attack Bonus. I.e. A 1st level warrior has a BAB of d3 rather than +1.
2) If your combined roll is a hit, you also get to add the same number rolled to the damage you do to the foe.
3) You can declare a Mighty Deed of Arms, which is basically the stunt system of the game. If you hit and if you rolled a 3 or higher on your Attack Die, you also pull off your Mighty Deed.
There's a bit more to the Mighty Deed rules we can ignore here, but overall there's some neat stuff happening with these rules. Clearly you could just bolt these rules directly onto other D&D type games with little difficulty. In general anything that makes the fighter types feel fresh and interesting seems to be worth investigating further, I think these rules need a little tweaking.
Second, I'm not sure I like stunt systems any more. I'd rather the players just declare awesome actions and we resolve them on the fly. About the only thing I like about codified stunt rules is that there existence suggests to players that stunts are possible, but there are other ways to communicate that fact,
So here's my idea for adopting the Attack Die to baseline D&D: Keep the normal to-hit progression for fighter types. Disallow weapon specialization or any other stuff that would give additional bonuses to fighters. Instead, all fighters get to roll a d6 with every to-hit roll. If the roll comes up a 6 then they get either +6 to-hit or +6 damage but not both. Call it a Mighty Strike or some similar nonsense and Bob's your uncle.
Yeah, a +6 modifier on either roll is pretty big and bad but keep in mind that there will be times when the d20 roll plus 6 will still be a miss. You could use a d4 and get a 25% chance of +4 to-hit or damage instead of a ~16% chance of +6, but I hate rolling d4s. Does anyone like those things?
my hatred of the d4 is the main thing keeping me from bothering with the d3, 5 etc.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a fun, crazy, swingy system.
what if you roll two d20s when you attack. If one hits, its normal damage; if both hit, stunt-time? makes stunt action against low AC plebs easy, and boss guys super hard.
ReplyDeleteAlternatively don't peg the Stunt20 on the enemy's AC, but say 10+lvl?
I hate rolling d4s. Does anyone like those things?
ReplyDeleteLol. And I thought I was the only one! I dislike d4s because dice are meant to be rolled. You can't roll a d4 -- it has to be flipped, like a glorified coin.
Otherwise, very interesting take on this mechanic for the fighter. So simple and straightfoward I could easily see myself adopting a rule like this.
Actually, most of the "rolling" action is supposed to take place in your hands. If your die rolls and rolls and rolls on the table it means one or two things.
Delete1) It has rounded edges
2) Its center of gravity is off
Sharp edges, what the community calls "precision dice", creates a more true random distribution than non-precision dice. The center of gravity issue has to do with how dice are made.
Basically, look at the way casino dice roll.
D4's are a bit awkward. I've been trying to find D8's numbered twice. A lot of the funky dice in DCC work better as normal polyhedral dice numbered twice: D3, D5, D7.
DeleteI do not like d4s. And on a related note, I want to like DCC, I really do. Asking my players to buy wonky dice for a single game...it's keeping me from playing DCC.
ReplyDeleteWhat you do is this: Use the dice you already have to “fake” the extra dice. d3 = d4 reroll 4s. d5 = d6 reroll 6s. d7 = d8 reroll 7s. (The Gamescience sets don’t come with d7s, so you have to do this anyway if you don’t by a separate d7.) etc.
DeleteThen, if everyone likes the game, is when they buy the extra dice.
(For that matter, after playing it once, I think you could also get by fine with only one set of the extra dice. They don’t seem to get used so much that it would be an issue. Especially if you’re just trying it out.)
Yeah, other than mighty deeds of arms, you really don't need the weird dice so often that you actually need to own them.
DeleteThese changes are awful. All of the low end Zocchi dice can be easily simulated with "normal" polyhedrons. I'm not sure what is such a hassle about it. Is it that hard to ask a player to divide by 2, rounding up?
ReplyDeleteWhile Mighty Deeds can be used as a stunt system, I see it as a streamlined, free-form feat system. Whirlwind attacks, trips, disarms, blinding attacks etc, all of this is handled by a simple mechanic.
The biggest reason I dislike these changes is how much you alter the math of the game, and not in the Warrior's favor. A 16.67% chance for either a +6 hit/damage is a really bad trade for a 33.33% chance for both +3 hit/damage and tactical effect. It also doesn't scale. A Level 2 DCC Warrior has a 50% chance for the tactical effect and a 50% chance for +3 hit/damage or a 25% chance for +4 hit/damage. Your level 2 Fighter is still stuck getting a bonus 16.67% of the time.
Consider higher levels of play. The average roll of a D10 (the highest deeds die you roll) is 5.5 At level 10 you add 4. That means the average roll at this level (the highest you can go in DCC), is going to be +9-10 hit/damage and you'll likely get some sort of tactical advantage. Your fighter, after a lifetime of adventuring and landing mighty strikes, is only going to hit them 1/6.
I wanted to amend this and say that I understand you're talking about importing the concept into other games, but tweaking it to make it fit.
DeleteMighty Deeds works as is because even if the deed doesn't go off, it still affects the roll. Your mechanic is cumbersome because that extra d6 you roll is not going to matter 83.33% of the time, and that's assuming you roll high enough on a d20.
I find rolling dice that will not impact rolls the vast majority of the time are more of a hindrance to the the pace of the game than having to do a little math.
"Your mechanic is cumbersome because that extra d6 you roll is not going to matter 83.33% of the time, and that's assuming you roll high enough on a d20."
DeleteI spent much of my high school gaming with a house rule that you rolled a d20 and a d10 for each strike, because the d10 checked for the possibility of a crit. You basically needed a 0 or a 1 on the d10 to go to the crit charts. No one complained of the extra roll because it was a chance to be extra awesome.
You're missing the point. You're complaining about the inconvenience of rolling 1d3 and offering an alternative that doesn't change the amount of dice rolled, but drastically affects how often the extra dice are going to be relevant. That's bad design.
DeleteThe inconvenience is having the funny die or doing extra math, not rolling an extra die.
DeleteYeah, my complaint was more that the d3 is a crap die comparable to the d4, only less widely available. Sorry if I wasn't clear earlier.
DeleteIf doing basic math is inconvenient, I'm not sure why you play these games at all.
DeleteI can understand complaints about the lack of ready availability of the Zocchi dice, but the d3 is already built into most D20 games. I do believe that Gamestation will be distributing Zocchi packs to FLGS soon.
DeleteOh Vanguard, you so crazy!
DeleteJeff: d4's
ReplyDeleteI took a look at the Warrior last week on my blog. I really liked the Mighty Deeds option and saw it much more like how Vanguard sees it. A free-form streamlined way to handle feats without needing to add in a whole feat system.
ReplyDeleteDoes the warrior want to do something cool? Declare it and let the Deed die sort it out. In the games I have run I have also adjusted results depending on how the Deed Die went. In a second level game where the warrior was rolling a d4, if it came up a 4 I described even better results of the warrior's actions. It worked quite well for us and let the players get creative and have some form of mechanic to resolve it.
As for the funky dice, they catch a lot of flak, but I also don't see the issue as pronounced as some make it out to be. First, there are several ways to roll without needing the Zocchi dice. I did an article on that as well. So for one-shots or intros the players don't need to come with the exact right dice as the rolls can be emulated with normal dice. Players that like the game likely will have no issue picking up the funky dice, but they aren't committed to do so initially.
As for online games, I actually find it easier to use the dice there than in face to face games. But that is because we use Tabletop Forge or Roll20, both of which can handle the dice rolling in the chat window. So everyone has the funky dice at their disposal through either one of those tools.
I like your system (and have pretty much the same thoughts about stunts), but why not just keep the warrior as written and round the attack bonus die up to the nearest standard polyhedral die? Even round up to d6, if you don't like to roll d4s. It gives a slight power bonus to the fighter, but not much, and is quicker to explain, as you can just say "like the book, but round up".
ReplyDeleteIt also makes the attack bonus progression a bit jumpier, like the original attack matrices, which I admit I like.
In essence, you end up with:
d4 -> d4 -> d4 -> d6 -> d6 ->d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d20 -> d20 -> d20 -> d30 -> d30
Rather than:
d3 -> d4 -> d5 -> d6 -> d7 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d14 -> d16 -> d20 -> d24 -> d30
In fact, the whole game can easily be played that way if people lack the funny-funny dice.
Very true. A little extra power to the warrior (and dwarf) at first level is hardly game breaking.
DeleteTake four funky marbles, glue them together and you have a groovy d4.
ReplyDeleteTake 3 first and make a triangle and superglue them. Pop the fourth nestling on top of the triangle. Glue it on.
You can paint a number on top of whichever sphere is on top of the triangle but since there are only four sides its better to colour code them.
They could be called Scooby dice.
For a Cugel d4, replace three light marbles with three steel balls.
I don't like the idea of having the players make a decision whether they want the +6 to go towards to-hit or damage every time they roll. Nor do I like the Idea of the DM having to make that decision any time an NPC fighter enters combat.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to use such a mechanism, I'd make it a constant bonus, +3 each way or something. Eliminating rulesy decision making of this sort makes the game a lot easier to handle.
I wholeheartedly agree that 4-siders are not to be trusted. Not a big fan of 8- or 10- siders either; I'm trying to develop a system that only uses d6, d12 and d20.
"I don't like the idea of having the players make a decision whether they want the +6 to go towards to-hit or damage every time they roll."
DeleteMy idea is that no decision is necessary: if you hit without the +6 added to the d20, then it applies to damage.
Ah, that makes sense.
DeleteI like the twelve-sided d4s.
ReplyDeleteOn stunts, I’m warming up to the Dragon Age mechanic where the dice tell you when you can stunt rather than whether your stunt succeeded. (It’s a 3d6 system, and if two of the dice come up with the same number, then you get to do a stunt.) On the one hand, it is annoying to not be able to stunt when you want to. On the other hand, you don’t have the disappointment of declaring a stunt and then failing it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty neat mechanic.
DeleteI can't see buying dice useless for other games.
ReplyDeleteI hate codified stunt systems like the plague. Players stop coming up with creative and unique things to do in that specific moment of the combat and instead look down on a list of predetermined boring and repetitive manoeuvres.
ReplyDeleteThey give the illusion of choice but in fact they only limit players' options.
One thing I noticed in every new iteration of the game is that imagination is less and less used as the source for players decisions in-character, and instead it is more and more used only to describe effects, if ever.
My non-gamer art geek of a better half on dice: d12 have the best shape, followed by d20. d4 are ugly and hard to use.
ReplyDeleteMy take on combat stunts, in a system hack where all classes have the same level + prime requisite attack bonus, but warriors, and circumstantially other classes, roll two dice and take the higher, selectively boosting the likelihood of critical hits: In the event of a crit, the lucky combatant gets to choose a special effect from the following list, or suggest their own:
target a body part or item
knockdown
disarm
push opponent in a direction of the player's choice
extra damage
perhaps also noteworthy: the special effects are also normal attack options. In the event of a critical while attempting a special attack, the lucky combatant also does damage.
DeleteDoes anyone know of a good Zocchi dice retailer (on-line) up here in Canada?
ReplyDelete