Thinking the Unthinkable: Changing Mechanics - combat

The Creature Economy

Since the very earliest days, D&D has had a middle-weight combat system.

You roll a d20 against the AC in some target number that depends on the armour they're wearing (the precise mechanics have changed but the underlying idea hasn't) and if you're successful you roll damage, they subtract that from their HP. When they hit 0, they're hors de combat and dying in some way. Again, the precise mechanics around that have changed too but that basic outline applies to every version. Every thing on the battle map has a turn, every character, everything they summon or animate, every monster that the DM throws at you, all using the same rules.

Now compare that to RuneQuest, which is heavier. In RQ, you have an attack skill, a parry skill (and a defence skill actually), an armour value and both locational and total HP. When you attack, your opponent parries. If you hit and they don't parry (or you hit and beat through their parry) you roll a d20 to determine where you hit, see how much damage you do compared to the armour there to determine whether you hurt them. You damage both that location and their total HP, so you can knock them out by reducing their Head HP to 0, or kill them by a thousand cuts (actually fewer than that) a few HP in every location but reducing their THP to 0. RQ has an integral system of critical hits, fumbles and special hits. Critical hits ignore armour, specials (loosely) do double rolled damage, fumbles cause you to roll d100 and small numbers are minor effects, large numbers can make you hit your nearest ally and automatically critically hit them or similar. Ouch. There are, as there are in 5e combat, extra subtleties, but as an overview it's clear that the RQ combat action is quite a bit more complex. However, everything on the map still has a go. 

And now lets compare it to Ironborn, which goes the other way. In Ironborn, everything is down to the player. The creature has a challenge track. While in practise this is always 10 boxes long, in effect it can be between 5 and 40 boxes long because for a harder challenge you fill in fewer boxes (or parts of a box) per success that you get. Only characters roll, and they roll 2d10 and 1d6+modifiers. If your d6+modifiers is higher than both your d10 results, you get a strong success - normally you get a success against the foe and that's it (you cross off successes on the progression chart depending on the level of the challenge). If you get a success higher than one, but equal to or lower than the other, you get a weak success. In combat that normally means you still cross off successes on the challenge track, but you also take a wound. If you roll equal to or lower than both, you fail, and in combat you take a wound. Unlike the RQ and D&D models, ONLY the PCs have actions, they make the rolls and they're the agents of what happens. Ironborn doesn't really go in for animated weapons, but it certainly has animal companions, they give you bonuses on certain rolls. If you have a hawk, it will give you +1 on ranged attacks, hunting rolls and scouting rolls for example. 

Should 6e move away from the current creature economy? It's quite a change but it's an idea. RPGs like the idea that the players have agency, and the GM, the DM in D&D, cooperates with the players to tell a story. The Ironborn system, and there are others with a similar approach, takes that to the ultimate extreme. If 6e went down that route, the DM wouldn't roll the dice, the outcome of the fight would be in the player's hands to a large extent. The DM would set the scene, create the encounters, but the players don't die because the DM gets a set of lucky rolls, they live or die because of how they roll. It has possibilities...

The Action Economy

In 5e we've got used to the idea of Move, Action, Bonus Action if possible, Reaction when it occurs. Pathfinder 2e, that bastion of complexity, said that's really complex, everyone gets 3 actions, you can do whatever you like with them, but a few things take more than one action. If you have ever played a wizard in 5e, who hardly gets to use their bonus action, in a party with a ranger and a monk, who get to use it pretty much every round, and a cleric who can be firing off healing word and something else too... or spiritual weapon and something else... the bonus action being optional can be a real pain as well. 

So, what do we do? This is not a definitive list but here are a few options:

1. Stay with what we've got.
2. Move to something more like Pathfinder.
3. Move away from rounds to a rolling time system. More on this below.
4. Completely rework rounds to a different model.

Rolling time systems exist in several games, but the idea is that every action has a cool down. If you attack with a fast weapon like a dagger or rapier it has a low cool down, if you attack with a slow weapon like a claymore it has a longer cool down. Spells in the current 5e model have a pre-cool-down called a casting time, but you can change the paradigm and say that casting a spell is the release of your will and focus, you have a cool down that is the time before you can recover to do that again. If you play just about any video game or MMORPG you're used to the idea of a cool down on your abilities.

You make these cool downs last a number of ticks (say 0.5 second ticks) and allow the character to move one space per tick as well. There are other approaches to it, but this idea works well. You don't need reactions, bonus actions etc. just to decide if your physical attack and magical attack cool down timers are the same or separate.

Again, I'm not recommending this, just musing aloud. 4e tried to move D&D towards a more 'video game' feel, but didn't go quite this far. It makes for a simple structure, there are hidden complexities but it feels quite natural once you've got used to it.

The Dice System

D&D has used d20s to determine success or failure since the beginning. Should it stick with that? 

d20's give you an even chance, and when you use 1's as an automatic failure, 20 as an automatic success, it's even weirder. When I'm bad at a skill I fail a lot, but when I'm good at it, I fail far less than 5% of the time. 

If we're moving to an Ironborn-like system with the need for strong successes, weak successes and failures, their system is nice, but you could have a single roll and two DCs.

If you want something that mimics the RL experience, you could have a 2d6 (or similar) system with modifiers against a DC, with modifiers. If I need to hit a DC of 10 for a strong success, 7 for a weak success, and when I'm bad I have a -2 modifier, I'll get a strong success only 1 in 36 of the time, (12) and a weak success 1 in 4 times (9, 10 or 11) so I'll succeed at all 27.8% of the time. If, when I'm good I get a +2 modifier, I'll get a strong success on an 8+ (41.7%) and a weak success on a 5-7 (52.8%) for about 94.7% successes, sometimes with a drawback.

The fudge dice system, in essence you roll 4d3, but they're labelled +, blank or - and you total the +'s and -'s then add this to a modifier and aim to beat a DC is a variant on this 2d6 version. One interesting change, if we move to the strong success, weak success and failure model, one possibility would be to tweak the fudge dice system and rather than totalling your +'s and -'s you calculate your totals with each separately against the DC. If you succeed with both, it's a strong success, if you fail with both, it's a failure, if you succeed with one, fail with the other, it's a weak success. Lets say the DC is 7, you roll 2+, 1 blank and 1-. and you have +8. 2+8=10, success. -1+8=7, success. So, strong success. Actually, with the blank, you could have strong, moderate and weak successes, and failure - in the previous example you'd work out 0+8= success and say strong. If we change the DC to 8, success with the +'s, success with the blank, fail with the -'s, so a moderate success. Perhaps that's still a wound to the enemies but a non-wound penalty to the players (delayed cool down, slowed movement, penalty to your next attack etc.).

Of all the changes discussed, moving away from a d20 system feels even bigger than moving away from combat rounds. But it feels like a discussion that perhaps we should have.

Conclusion

Where does the identity of D&D lie? Does it need a combat system where everything acts in a turn and the DM gets to roll dice to try and kill you? Does it need that middle-weight system where you roll against AC and if you hit you roll your damage? Does it need combat rounds? Does it need to keep the d20?

My gut feeling is that the real 6e, whenever we see it, will stick to what we're used to. I don't mind that to be honest. But a part of me would like to see them change. I like taking dice out of the hands of the DM and making the players responsible for their actions. I like the strong success, weak success and fail approach. I like bell curve systems over flat systems, rolling 2d6 or 4d3 rather than a d20. And I like constant action systems rather than rounds. 

I've got some more of these "Thinking the unthinkable" posts coming up. I'm going to mostly work on the basis that 6e will be round based and d20 based. But in each of them, I'm going to have a little section that will consider what it might be like with fudge dice, the DM not rolling and rolling actions rather than rounds. For that, I'll fully expand that system soon.