At first I just tried to shoehorn the same mechanics of Blood Bowl, but given the more ranged nature of combat it was pretty difficult to integrate it. I started making discombobulated reasons like focus fire between multiple characters to explain the assists and stationary mechanics for a reactive system, like "you entered my vision, you get shot" to explain tackle zones. But all I was doing was encouraging defensive play and that's counter intuitive to the goal of the project.
Then I went for the old trusted D6s ... but then the tables began. I understand that given the modularity of the system, tables would be a necessity, but I failed to see how much more data I had to incorporate. Values to hit, damage, amount of dice, requirements, etc etc
Tables are great, but, in my opinion, they have no reason to be consulted during gameplay. A more holistic experience was needed.
And so, the mermaid song of those pictographic dice was heard once again. Giving it more thought this time, I tried to delineate what mechanically those figures did in Blood Bowl.
Skull (Attacker Down) - The offensive character looses a turn, with the possibility of injury
Half Skull / Half Explosion (Both down) - Both the attacker and the attacked loose a turn, with possibility of injury UNLESS some skill negates it.
Arrow (Push) - The attacked gets involuntarily re positioned
Explosion with exclamation mark - Defender looses a turn with possibility of injury UNLESS some skill negates it. In both cases, the defender gets involuntarily re positioned.
Explosion (Defender Down) - Defender looses a turn with the possibility of injury and gets involuntarily re positioned.
Making the skull and half skull results as a gun malfunction on the part of the attacker gives credence to the salvaged and maintained beyond its expected use feel that I'm looking for. This then gets translated into a weapon stat I called scrappiness, the higher the value, the most probable the malfunction roll will be. Making this stat increase permanently upon failure, creates an encouragement for gathering loot and take more risks.
But how many dice should you roll?
The first roll: Roll to hit:
My first approach was a Borderlands (the video game) approach of being all about the loot, the character shoots better if the weapon is better. That would require an algorithm to generate weapons or manually create 1000 weapon profiles and that's not happening.
The alternative is then a character stat, 4 in fact.
The second roll: Roll to damage
My first approach was a Borderlands (the video game) approach of being all about the loot, the character shoots better if the weapon is better. That would require an algorithm to generate weapons or manually create 1000 weapon profiles and that's not happening.
The alternative is then a character stat, 4 in fact.
- Melee (Me): How good you can smack someone across the face in an adjacent square.
- Short Range (SR): How good you can shoot up to 3 squares.
- Long Range (LR): How good you can shoot farther than that.
- Science (Sc): How good you can handle science things.
These stats would only be 3 tiers (Novice, Skilled and Elite) and that tier would define how many block dice you roll.
Example: If an Elite melee dude is trying to slap someone with a crowbar, roll those 3 dice and pick the better outcome, the same dude is trying to handle a rifle from the other side of the map with a long range skill of novice, then good luck with that 1 dice roll.
It's kept simple and it's easy to quickly evaluate what you need to roll.
The second roll: Roll to damage
At this stage, no weapon stat is interacting in the outcome of a successful hit, and that needs to change, because if everything is hitting the same then there's no reason to upgrade other than for something less scrappy.
Keeping with the objective of making things easy, I nicked the simplicity of the injury roll of Blood Bowl and associated it with the capability of the weapon. Each weapon has a damage stat that defines how many damage dice (D6s) it rolls, and on any 5+ is an injury with repercussions at the end of the game, anything else just makes the defender go to the ground and lose an action to get up again.
Example: If an attacker was successful in hitting with a basic handgun, then it will roll one D6, and on a 5+ the defender is injured. However, if the attacker is handling a sniper rifle, then it will roll three D6, and on any 5+ result, the defender is injured.
So I guess my question gets ultimately answered with, why not both?
Keeping with the objective of making things easy, I nicked the simplicity of the injury roll of Blood Bowl and associated it with the capability of the weapon. Each weapon has a damage stat that defines how many damage dice (D6s) it rolls, and on any 5+ is an injury with repercussions at the end of the game, anything else just makes the defender go to the ground and lose an action to get up again.
Example: If an attacker was successful in hitting with a basic handgun, then it will roll one D6, and on a 5+ the defender is injured. However, if the attacker is handling a sniper rifle, then it will roll three D6, and on any 5+ result, the defender is injured.
So I guess my question gets ultimately answered with, why not both?