Matt said that since everything hits they just added more hit points to the monster. So rolling low damage is essentially the same as missing in d&d. In time rolling low will also feel like a wasted turn.

@Jhakaro

4 ай бұрын

Also I keep hearing people say it speeds up combat but if they give more hp to make up for the extra hits, it still winds up as a hp slog. And not getting your best abilities until later in a fight, depending on how late, incentivises longer combat and makes other battles unfulfilling because you never reached your top potential or had the chance to.

@TheOneRioji

21 күн бұрын

After running the FF14 TTRPG, I can attest that removing misses just turns monsters into sponges. They’re just chunks of HP.

I think a very important point that gets missed a lot is how ingrained the d20 has become as part of a lot of tables' culture. I've played a few different systems, and the only one that's felt as good as a Nat 20 is Savage Worlds' exploding dice, but even then, there's a completely different type of underlying math that's not really what you're going for. Love this kind of insight into your process

It's funny. I started playing D&D (etc) in the mid-80's. In the last 10 or so years especially, it's felt like the world has finally learned to speak my language. They still don't fully understand all its nuances, but they're getting there. And I don't mind if they bring something new or do things their own way. Like this topic. To me, missing and feeling like you did nothing is a perfectly legitimate outcome, if you want to maintain your suspension of disbelief, your sense of immersion. But that doesn't mean there's only one way, or there isn't a more productive way, to fail. There's always room for improvement and innovation, especially in this hobby. It's one of the cornerstones of its existence. Good video!

This was one of the most pleasant discussions on the topic I've seen from "defenders" of the attack roll. I enjoyed it. I know this comment is really late to the discussion, but I thought it'd be fun to add. I'm not up to date on Daggerheart, but MCDM, I think, has addressed most of the issues presented here and in the comments through playtesting, and I'd be interested to see your thoughts on the removal of the D20 to hit roll with their current (or final, in the future) iteration. They've changed the term hit points to stamina. So, rather than the fantasy being several minor hits wearing you down until you take a devastating blow that reduces you to 0hp, and misses being literal misses, the fantasy is now that each attack made by a competent attacker will require some effort on your part to avoid, negate, or otherwise nullify. So your stamina is a measure of how long you can fight before you mess up and get hurt. In this fantasy, its unnecessary to have a roll specifically to see if you hit, because even your hits aren't "landing" until you reduce them to 0. This, I think, also really fits the sword fantasy where a single hit SHOULD be the deciding factor. In D&D, you have to be more careful with narration, such as "The arrow hits you...did it kill you? No? Then it hits you in the arm, and you're losing blood. But there's no impact on your performance, because it didn't bring you to 0." In this system, its "The archer looses an arrow at your chest. It'll take 8 stamina to avoid. You don't have 8 stamina? The arrow hits, piercing your armor and bringing you to your knees." They address the critical hit issue by having 2 natural 6's on 2d6 be a critical hit. Statistically, this makes them slightly less likely than a crit on the d20, and visually its still clear. In the MCDM game, a crit gives you an extra action! So their solution actually fixes the issues with crits in 5e (where you roll a crit, but then your damage roll is still terrible), and makes the crit more powerful, while simultaneously making it less common, and therefore more memorable. The time saving aspect of removing the to hit roll isn't really found in the fact you have one less die roll. Instead, its based on the time saved on a given turn by not having to consult the gamemaster to continue your turn. Currently, the 2d6 roll result is compared to a table, which is then broken down into 3-4 tiers. Some effects (such as having two negative circumstances affecting your attack) may increase or decrease your tier, and modifiers to the roll scale more nicely with the bellcurve than on a d20. Because of this system, the player declares their action, makes their roll, consults their table, and dictates the result. "I use cleaving strike against the goblin...[rolls a 9, gains a +2] 11! [Everyone now knows his turn is going to be really impactful, as 11-12 is a tier 3 result] I deal 7 damage to the goblin, and an additional 3 to the goblin adjacent. I also get to push 3 against the first goblin." The player is done. Now the GM responds; apply the damage and factor in any effects, apply any resistance to the forced movement while moving the goblin on the map, and taking any reactions that they may have. They don't need to consult the player, and the player never needed to consult them. As a GM, this frees me up to think about other things while the player is taking their turn. I only need to respond if something would interrupt their turn. In 5e, I'd have to reference the goblin stat block after the attack roll, compare the roll with the goblin's AC, tell the player if they hit or not, and if they DO, THEN they can continue to the rest. Since you can remove this step without any statistical effect on how many rounds the combat or monster lasts, it literally just shaves off a few seconds from every turn. If you have 10 goblins and 5 players, that's 1 minute per round, assuming you're pretty quick with the AC checks. The real effect this approach has on the game that most detractors miss is that this isn't removing "bad" turns from the game. Its just removing "nothing happens" turns. In a real fight, even a toddler goblin throwing rocks will have SOME effect on the heroes, even if their aim is awful. Removing the to hit roll, and changing hp to stamina makes it so that a "bad" turn is "I have only a very tiny effect on the battle, but we made a tiny bit of progress. Its not like me being here was a waste of a turn, I just rolled bad so I didn't have the effect I was hoping for." You'll still, just as easily, have combats where your roll dictates the outcome of the encounter. A bad roll is still a bad result. Its just not a waste of time, and it fits the fantasy better. The types of results are important to consider, too. You may have an attack that shoves and damages opponents. If you roll bad, maybe you deal no damage, but you can still shove, or vice versa. If you roll good, then you can have crazy cool results. Roll a crit, and you get a whole second action. Further to that point, because of the 2d6 bell curve, average (tier 2) results are actually more likely without modifiers. So instead of things averaging out over the course of the encounter, its actually averaging out on a turn-by-turn basis. Besides these points, the benefit of having no contradictory rolls cannot be overstated. The pain of rolling a 19 on the attack roll, and a 2 on the damage roll is so stupidly frustrating for my players, and it doesn't really add to the fantasy. "My aim was perfect, and...the arrow barely scratched them?" "I barely hit them and...I guess I completely wreck them anyways?" It means that the whole table can celebrate the big roll right away, instead of needing to wait to see what happens with the second, equally important roll. In reality, its not that they've removed the to-hit roll. Its that they've combined the damage and to-hit rolls into a single roll, where chance and fate still determine the outcome, but the results feel tighter, more consistent with the fantasy, and don't nullify one another. Lastly, they actually payed really close attention to feedback from their playtest with thousands of responses, and to the feedback from their internal testers. And it seems like they got very little if any complains about the lack of a to hit roll, or a d20. From an audience made up primarily of former 5e players, that would seem to indicate that the culture surrounding the d20 is less important than it may seem. Could be tilted because its their audience. Time will tell. But it does make it an open question. Anyways, thought your video was great, and your points were interesting, and wanted to engage in the discussion. Happy gaming!

@WrelPlays

2 ай бұрын

Hey, all good points! I was glad when they started calling it stamina, for the reasons you mention. I'm an MCDM backer and patreon member, so I get all of this information, as well, and think they're doing a great job addressing the feel of the game as time goes on. I'm glad that they don't mind totally upending their die mechanics just to try something different (James Introcaso was kicking around the idea of moving from 2d6 to 2d10 recently, and then there's the introduction of the power roll) which is what you should be doing in alpha, anyway.

I totally agree that "always hit" IF the resource is still hit points I just can't narratively present it as a "you dodge" or "you miss" or "you get more tired". It's impossible. In all heads of my team it's just "you were hurt". And agree that this introduce some kind of interesting tension which needs to be proper replaced if you want to make an "always-hit" mechanics, and what MCDM for instance is not doing at the moment (it's just - everyone got more hp...). Secondly, you forget that "always hit" mechanics require someone to track hit points and substracting it CONSTANTLY EVERY TURN. If you miss an attack roll "nothing happens" is "noone need to track nothing" as well, which here is replaced by an accountant-slog.

Ive been running Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland for the last few years and I've been loving the feel of no to-hit rolls. Combat is much faster in this system since you only look for the highest roll of the dice you roll (a very quick operation at the table). You only ever do no damage if you roll under the enemies armour (which reduces the incoming damage), which is very intuitive for my players. There are still Crits too, as whenever damage bleeds over a character's HP there's Ability Score damage, after which the characters need to pass a Str save or take a Crit (usually something bad like being KO'd or be turned to stone or some such). It's not for everyone since this system is much more a survival game -- there arent many super powers and definitely no builds other than RPing your background, but if you like games like Call of Cthulhu or Mothership I'd highly recommend it!

Good discussion and great points. In favor of the dropped Attack Roll - instead rolling for damage. It's not about speed - if the player doesn't do damage in the system I'm building with no attack rolls, you don't feel cheated because you missed. You'll instead have the enemy actively react in a manner to deny the player. While I understand this quantification has existed in D&D, results vary by DM. In the game I'm developing, Attack Rolls are dropped. The response isn't to add more hit points to everything to offset - in fact I reduce to a small pool of wounds. This increases danger in game, but you have to give players tools to choose from when playing. They should have agency on what their characters can and cannot do. Players have the ability to move, block, or cast spells in a tactical manner to survive encounters. This method has play tested extremely well so far. As it matures with additional special abilities and classes, I'm hoping it'll continue to support the initial findings - the attack roll may be necessary depending on the game but it should make sense for your system. For mine, it's ok not having it.

Look at games like The black sword Hack. They are player facing rolls. You roll to hit. It feels good…and you get to roll even more with player facing rolls when an enemy attacks because you get to roll that d20 again as a “reactive roll” to Dodge or parry. It also incorporates a usage die, that works as a “push your luck” sort of die. On a 1 or 2 the die drops until you have no more and are “Doomed” but if it is a success you get a cinematic melee effect you can apply to your attack (Extra damage, Shoving, grappling, break weapon or disarm ect).

It's a very interesting topic, and the devil really is in the details. I liked the tangent about turn length because it was a good example about how you really can't make concrete cost-benefot statements about high level systems because the implementation of them and the surrounding context is so important that it changes everything I like the idea of being able to react to failure, it solves that core problem of "wasting your turn" inome way that I like. The only worry is that it also fails to solve it in another. Specifically, you're just solving the problem by adding more dice rolls, which can still just fail. Investing important resources to curb the pain of a failure on an important roll is something thay feels really impactful, but if that rerol ends up just being a 1 it feels worse than starting out. Obviously, every system is gonna have An Issue, there's no such thing as perfect, but I thought I'd bring it up. Cheers, nice to be hearing your voice again Wrel.

@WrelPlays

6 ай бұрын

You bring up a great point, letting people roll more doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to roll well. And while I think the calculation of risk is exciting in its own right, I'm sure not everyone finds the same kind of joy in it as I do.

@RisingChaosWriting

6 ай бұрын

@@WrelPlays one system I played let you tailor how many resources you spent to how much more comparative advantage you got on the reroll. It wasn't a d20 system, so the comparison isn't perfect, but it was 1 resource for a simple reroll, 2 for a reroll with a larger die, and 3 for a guaranteed success. It was an interesting idea (and had wider implications, since resource availability and thematic components played into it), and helped handle the issue of disappointing rerolls. That being said, wanting to preserve that element of risk is just as valid as anything. That's why we love dice

In WH40K Mechanicus i liked the "no to hit roll" as opposed to the XCOM "miss an 90% to hit shot" BS Because in XCOM the end game was never to succed within the to hit system, but to circumvent it with movement and flanking so ultimately it was a system to punish the player and that felt bad (game punishing you for engaging in its systems) In Parhfinder WOTC you are rewarded for enganing in the roll-to-hit system you can stack advantage get skills or get a caster to cast a skill check spell (Fireball!) I do not like the "1= always fail" rule there is many videos about it and it boils down to: mellee is underpowered and is hurt more by this rule since they attack 3/4 times a turn. also by leveling up their chance of experiencing a failure grows (cuz more attacks) and thats dumb the level 20 Fighter just sometimes stabbing his own foot every session is just ridiculous

I think not having an attack roll in order to prevent players feeling like they lost their turn isn't the best use of "one roll resolution" - I think it's better used to allow a more designable space as well as a faster resolution For example, Fabula Ultima does a great job with one roll attacks because the highest dice of your attack roll is added to the damage

Can't wait to play this ♥

My preference is the Year Zero style of combat. Where there is no damage rolls, only attack/defence rolls. And depending on how you roll you can do less or more damage with that roll. It reduces a roll just one that's less important imo. I don't like the idea that you cannot dodge.

I think hit based systems (Rolling multiple d6s, d10s etc and results above Y number usually greater than 2/3s of the max are a success or hit) with resource limited rerolls are a good middle ground. They're less swingy than a d20 as there are more dice, so you will feel like you are consistently good at that which you are good at, and rerolling to either double down on successes or save a botched roll, and this makes it so that super dodgy evasive ninja #4 isn't consistently getting decked. What do I mean? I find the idea that if our party scouts out this dive bar that is a front for a Mafia group against whom we plan to fight, and then we check for optimal 2nd storey positions in businessses across the street, ingratiate ourselves with the patrons, and set up our archers in those buildings. But they're still getting hit/hurt as much as if we kicked in the doors and started swinging. Removal of a to hit mechanic without a lot of work on the "how damage is dealt," side could really give disincentives to prep work because "I'm going to get hurt anyway,"

Having a reaource to gain advantage on miss is interesting.

I hope MCDM watches this so they can consider your points!

For an example of a game going all in on swingy d20, look at DCC from Goodman Games. Crit fail/succeed attacks and spells, with class specific level based tables for both. Wacky stuff. From an arm chair perspective, different dice curves seem like they'd have a different feel. Swingy d20 vs a 2d6 vs dice pools. Though maybe i just like graphs lol.

Rolling a nat 20 is good but I still dislike D20s in most situations. When your bonuses and the DC are around 20, it feels fine to miss the DC by one or two thanks to a poor roll. However when the bonuses and DC are between 5 and 10 it feels way worse to get a low roll on a D20, even of the probability is the same. Were I designing a system, I would have characters still use attack rolls, but they would progress through dice as they levelled up, instead of their bonuses increasing. That way martial characters can attempt to bite off more than they can chew, but are more reliant on luck as they get stronger.

Not trying to be a dush, but... I would suggest AI using a phone will make it possible for the creation of an app which would do all the math for people... Besides that, I want to say there is a way to reduce the number of rolls much easier which has been always there and is to roll the D20 along the damage dices... And then only counting damage if we hit... Though unfortunately this wouldn't reduce the arithmetic opperations for damage.

have these younger folk that are attempting to cut corners ever watched a boxing match or MMA or even an action movie??? Not every swing of a weapon or punch hits.

What is it with kids these days who can not understand that not every attack will land, or that you are going to fail sometimes. What, people cant handle missing occassionally...or even a lot against a powerful foe above their weight class? Come on....this is silly. Its certainly NOT a time saver. I dont even want to put the "qualifier" you did on failure...it should happen as much as it happens. If Level 2 adventurers are going to go into the Swamp to confront the dread Black Dragon that has terrorized a local village, than strap up your big boy pants cause you might just get wrecked. the 5e monsters are VERY underwhelming compared to many of their 3 ed counterparts, esp past CR 2, and personally, I actually use the 3.5 versions with some tweaking.....much better...but that all comes from the idea that ya, players CAN be hurt, miss, even killed.....its part of the game folks....

As a long time fan of yours I'm very disappointed to see all this AI "art" in use with this project. Please, please consider commissioning some actual artists, because I just can't support you or this project like this.

@WrelPlays

6 ай бұрын

I totally respect that. Just know that nothing that I'm doing now is being sold (everything is free,) and any money we raise from livestreams or through the project Discord goes toward paying for "real" art. I'm not employed at the moment, so art is the greatest hurdle in front of me.

That's why I prefer to use d10 instead of d20, in systems like the white wolf system, more dices make your character more consistent while still retaining a possibility to fail. Critical fails can still happen to very good characters, but usually only in rare cases when they try something other characters wouldn't dream about. As you add more dices, the progression of the character is also more visible, and even if a character has good stats, he can still roll low or high, where a D20 with a +25 bonus has less and less impact on the game, unless balanced perfectly, which also makes the game frustrating as it's not much more interesting to roll a d20 +15 against a 25 AC, than to roll a D20+2 against a 12 AC. The D20 to me is the same as a d100 and both systems are highly perfectible at best.

@WrelPlays

6 ай бұрын

I hear you about the modifiers. That's something that doesn't sit well with me in DnD, as well. Since the modifiers increase so dramatically as time passes, it diminishes the value of the rolling altogether and you get stuff like -- "Does a 32 hit?" Which, yes... of course it does. I like the idea of building dice pools for your character, but I haven't played a system that does it. Do you only build the one pool for your character, or do you have to keep track of multiple pools for different skills/abilities?

@seijhik

6 ай бұрын

@@WrelPlays I usually go for systems that keep track of it yeah, like for Vampire the mascarade, or Scion, 7th sea, etc... There's a lot of them. I find this kind of system simple : You keep track of a certain number of attributes (between 5 and 9 often) and of various abilities (around 20 or 30), some of which will be used for attack roll, initiative, etc. For example, let's say in our system our character plays a melee fighter. He will use dexterity (4 dices) and melee (4 dices also) to know if he will hit. On each dice, he must beat a value to consider it a success. Let's say he must beat 6, so on a roll of 7, 7, 8, 4, 3, 1, 3, 10, he gets 4 sucesses. If the enemy wishes to parry, he will make his own roll with something like dex 3 and melee 4 (7 dices) and get something like 9, 5, 4, 9, 2, 2, 1 and only get 2 successes. The attacker wins here by 2, and will add this value to his damages. Damage can be a flat value (a longsword does 4) or can also be rolled, depending on the system. Our same fighter, if he has to sneak past a guard, will use dexterity (4) and stealth(3) against the guard's perception (3) awareness (3). Once past the guard, he has to find a hidden door in a room, and will roll perception (3) investigation (2) against a higher difficulty (8) as the room is not lit. One success can mean he finds the door in less than 15 minutes, 2 in less than 5, and with 5 successes also notices the small amount of dust missing in front of it : Someone was there recently. Etc. This way, a very good character will roll more dices (like 10 or more for some systems) where a beginner will only roll 3 or 4. The progress is visible and real, and if you factor in things like "10 count for 2 successes" actions can become more epic quickly. Granted, this kind of system can make fights longer, as people throw more dices on average for each action than in D&D, but it's more used in games where progression has nothing to do with killing monsters. So for games that use differents pools of dices I can tell you about from the top of my head : Vampire the mascarade/dark ages, Werewolf the apocalypse, Exalted, Legend of the 5 rings, Scion, Capharnaum... There's a lot of them :)