Armafer Development Blog: Key Questions of Attack Sequence
How I came to my plan for attacks in Armafer: engagement, tactics, and making the table come alive without leaning on the crutch of magic.
Why I Focused on Attack Rolls
I am naturally more drawn to the martial classes in roleplaying games. When I started my first adventure in a self-created world, I wanted a low magic system. But the problem with using a low magic D&D system is that the system doesn’t place much emphasis on making melee attacks (or melee combat in general) interesting.
Attack rolls have always felt low effort and strategically an afterthought in almost any tabletop game. If an attacking class makes a decision during an attack, it’s generally flavor-related, tiered entirely by level, and often still involves magic (for classes like Paladin). But why is there an assumption that a melee combatant isn’t interested in making tactical decisions in battle? Isn’t melee combat in many ways a more tactical interaction than casting fireballs?
When Attacking: Who Rolls, Who Doesn’t
When an attack is initiated, there are two basic kinds of systems: hit rolls and opposed rolls.
A hit roll generally takes place by when the attacker rolls to attempt to hit a fixed number, usually representing a fixed defensive ability. Failing to hit this number means a miss, and generally, a null turn. A great example of this system is D&D 5e.
An opposed attack roll means whenever a player initiates an attack, both players roll. Typically they roll a modified number or a pool of dice representing their proficiency in melee combat—the result of which being better engagement (as the defensive player involved in the combat action) but still a dualistic outcome. An example of this system would be Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.
Both these methods of attacks typically involve a roll for damage which is either fixed or tied to the success of the hit roll.
MCDM is mulling a system where the default outcome of the attack is success, and players have a fixed defensive response which can help them avoid the attack or reduce its damage value—although it appears that this can only happen once a turn in most cases.
Armafer (working name for my project) operates on the principle that all attacks should not be created equal. As important as the weapon you’re wielding is your positioning, how hard you swing, how many times you swing, and even with what additional intent you swing. Defense is present, yes, via a roll. But in the vast majority of cases, defense will not prevent the attack. The default action is success, and the opponent’s defense can marginally reduce the damage or have a low percentage of avoiding it altogether. More on this below.
On Randomness
I took a class on probability in college—this is not a brag, it was the kind of course you take as an English major to fulfill your math requirement because the assignments are essays and mathematical proofs rather than in-class tests. One of the assignments was to write an essay defining randomness. It seems simple enough, explaining an unpredictable variable in an equation.
But when you break it down you start to look at the uncertainty of the distribution of randomness (is it truly random if the distribution sways in a certain direction?), the mathematical certainty of regression toward the mean, black swan events… suffice to say I got lost in the weeds and got a C+. So much for the easy math class.
For TTRPGs, when we’re looking at randomness, we’re looking specifically at unpredictable elements of the game, and in most cases it’s inserted via a dice roll. So why insert randomness? Because in a system where attacks perform with 100% predictability, you can predetermine the outcome based on the attributes of the players ahead of time. You can try to insert strategic elements to vary attacks, but even these can over time be broken down in most cases for optimal outcome. A bit like chess, with limited number of responses, and no randomness, you start to see predictable outcome trees.
We like randomness because the unexpected is where our sense of excitement thrives in any competition. And randomness, rather than determinism, feels more realistic to us. Anyone who has ever watched an athletic competition knows that the most exciting moments are built on places where the predictable outcomes break down. We like being thrown into a moment where playing the smart odds gives way suddenly to the whims of randomness and unpredictability. Those unknown or unaccounted for variables are what makes sport worth watching.
In a hit roll system, randomness is inserted by the player’s own dice. The very nomenclature, “miss” is an indictment of the attack itself. The miss falls at the feet of the player and their dice. This feels bad because if you swing a sword and miss because of your own dice roll, you’re literally saying that your character missed. Even if we try to narrativize that it was the effectiveness of the attacked enemy’s Armor Class, or Dexterity or Wisdom save, we still feel that the opponent didn’t participate. It feels a bit like whiffing at a target dummy. The opponent’s input was predictable; ours was at the whims of randomness.
This is why I like the idea of opposed rolls. But part of the problem of opposed rolls is that they are still extremely binary. If you’re a fan of fight sports, you know that even if you land your strikes at a high percentage, the percentage of landed strikes that are “clean” enough to do perform the intended outcome is even smaller. And in most opposed roll systems, you still don’t have a variety of damage outcomes, or ways to differentiate attacks. Most outcomes are either hit, at full value, or miss, leading to the null outcome. Or worse, roll, then stop combat to go look at a table to figure out just what the hell the dice sitting right in front of you mean.
Even MCDM’s outcomes treat most attacks as “the same.” You may gain or lose bonuses based on modifiers you can apply at regular intervals, but ultimate you’re not making any decision about how you attack.
The Genesis of Armafer: How to Marry Engagement, Unpredictability, and Choices in a System of Attacks
Obligatory disclaimer: this is a system in development and will in all likelihood change based on feedback and testing.
When I created Armafer, I realized that in order to give players control over the default outcome of their attack, I had to do away with the exclusive binary of attack/miss. In order to do that, I took a page from video games and realized that I wanted Action Points. But how should I satisfyingly represent an Action Point pool in tabletop game? I started by saying that I wanted players to have multiple attacks per turn. By doing this, it would allow for multiple small attacks, or combined large attacks. Ability attacks, mobility moves, reloads, position, minor actions, and movement all have to share the same action dice pool. And by rolling your dice pool and expending the dice therein, you create a circumstance where you don’t have the same options with your pool each turn.
In Armafer, players roll a dice pool of five D6 dice (the pool expanding occasionally with levels and feats) which represent the actions they can take each turn. The dice can be used to perform any action available for that roll value or any the numbers below, so rolling a one gives you more limited options than rolling a six.
Weapons, for purposes of attacks, are rated as 1+ (can be used with any roll), 2+ (can be used with a roll of 2+), or 3+ (can only be used on a roll of 3+). Attacks can be performed sequentially (as a series of small attacks) or combined into a power stack (combining multiple dice into a single attack—with different weapons having different capacities for how many dice can be stacked). The first dose of randomness comes from the composition of your dice pool, as well as what other actions might be beneficial enough to use at the expense of your attacks.
Since armor (determined with high variability by a the roll of a single die) subtracts from each attack performed, being able to stack attacks is powerful against armored foes. But if an enemy’s defense is focused around dodging, swinging everything into a single attack gives you a higher chance of the null outcome and also presents the chance of overkill (landing an attack with substantially greater damage than necessary to defeat the foe). So right off the bat, weapons function differently, and you’re making different decisions about how to use them.
The second dose of randomness comes from defense. Because of the importance of player engagement in my system, any attacked player gets either an Armor or a Dodge roll for each attack. Armor consists of a single die of increasing value depending on how good your armor is (from D4-D20, varying from an expected value of 2.5 reduction to 11.5 at high levels). Dodge consists of a roll of a single die succeeding in dodging the attack when rolling the maximum value (From D12 down to D2—a coin flip—going from 8.3% chance up to 50% chance).
So even if just rolling a basic attack, each attack is infused with decisions, and includes an appropriate amount of randomness, but ultimately flows from your own choices—whether to stack damage to overcome armor, or attack in a fusillade of blows to overwhelm their dodges. If your attack misses, or is ineffective, it is driven by your own choices—or by your opponent’s active defensive actions causing you to miss or become ineffective.