Its meant to be a fantasy rpg that allows a wide array of races and classes. But that's not the point of this thread. All that you need to know I guess is that races and classes are simple so that I can create races and classes relatively quickly.

This is something I just tossed together. Right now, there's only 4 races (elf, dwarf, halfling, and goblin) and 3 classes (warrior, thief, and wizard). And for the record, my wizard doesn't bear much resemblence to a D&D wizard, actually it was more influenced by wizardry in Talislanta than anything else.

Anyway, I decided to test it out a bit just to see how combat worked. I pitted two characters with identical stats against each other. I think the lethality is a bit too high, but looking at the math it appears to be less than what you see in D&D.

I'll describe the rules of combat:

All rolls in the game are 2d6+modifier. There are no damage rolls, there is only an attack roll, with the margin of success being the damage. Characters have two options for defense: they can 'block/dodge', which simply has the attacker rolling against their defense roll. The second is to parry, in which case both characters roll attack, and the winner deals damage equal to his roll minus the opponent's armor.

Here's what their stats looked like:

Dwarf, warrior

str 2, agi 0, int 1, per 1

Health: 4
Reflexes: 1
Will: 2

Stamina: 3
Hit Points: 9
Movement: 3

Magic Resist 10

Equipment:

Axe (medium weapon), +2 attack
Medium Shield, +2 defense
Chainmail, +2 defense

Combat stats:

Melee Attack Bonus: +3
Armor+shields: +4 defense
Defense: 11

Note that some things, like their magic resist and movement speed, didn't factor into this combat. I just had them standing toe-to-toe beating on eachother. I imagined they were two soldiers practicing against eachother. Anyway, here's how the combat turned out:

The two dwarves are standing face to face when they begin to fight. Let's say the dwarf who goes first is A, and the second is B.

Dwarf A attacks. He rolls an 8. Adding 3 to that gives 11. Close, but Dwarf B manages to block just in time.
Dwarf B then attacks. He rolls an 11, nice! This adds up to 14, dealing 3 damage to dwarf A. Dwarf A is now at 6 hit points.
Dwarf A tries again. He rolls a 6+3=9. Dwarf B casually blocks the attack.
Seeing that he can't get past the other dwarf's defenses, dwarf A decides to attack when dwarf B opens himself up. Dwarf B attacks and rolls 8+3=11. Dwarf A attempts to parry, rolling 7+3=10. Its a close call, but dwarf B strikes dwarf A for 6 damage, knocking him to the ground. Dwarf B triumphs without taking a single scratch.

As we see, combat ended rather quickly. My intent was to have damage be high, but the chance of hitting be low. Thus why hit points are so low (dwarves get a free +2 to hit points, and also they get a bonus to strength which also factors in, thus their hp is actually higher than the average) and their defense is so high compared to the attack roll. According to any dice, each dwarf had about a 1/3 chance of beating each other's defense score. I think a level 1 D&D fighter would typically have an attack bonus of +3 and an AC of 16. Though its been a long time since I played D&D (I'm going off of 3.5 rules btw to give you an idea how long). With that, a fighter would have about a 35% of beating his own AC, and I think a longsword does d8 damage? This means that in D&D, the fight probably would've been a lot more lethal.

Anyway, I kinda don't like this, but I haven't really played any tabletop rpgs besides D&D (and that was through a computer game, NWN to be precise) and BASH, a superhero rpg.

What do you think of this? Is this okay? And just so we know, it would not unusual for characters to have similar stats in my system. Npcs might have less optimized stats and poorer equipment, but other than that. Though these dwarves didn't have optimized stats either. I just gave them a 1 in everything, which was modified by their racial modifiers.

Oh, and both damage and hit points scale at the same rate, meaning that fights like this would be normal as long as the opponent's level was equal to your own.

edit: Looking back at their stats, I apparently miscalculated their hit points. Normally a charcter's hit point points is 5+str+level. Warrior however gets additional hit points equal to their level, so the formula for them is 5+str+level*2, but I forgot to add the dwarves' +2 from their race. So they should've had 11 hit points. Oops. Doesn't matter I guess. It would make them compare better to the other races anyway. If I had made an elf warrior with a 1 in each stat before racial modifiers, he would have an hp of 7.

I noticed I botched several of their stats. This is what they should've looked like:

Dwarf, warrior

str 2, agi 0, int 1, per 1

Health: 4
Reflexes: 1
Will: 2

Stamina: 3
Hit Points: 11
Movement: 3

Magic Resist 10

Equipment:

Axe (medium weapon), +2 attack
Medium Shield, +2 defense, +1/level
Chainmail, +2 defense

Combat stats:

Melee Attack Bonus: +5
Armor+shields: +5 defense
Defense: 12

I tried the test bout again. This time, it took much longer. They missed a lot, and often hit glancing blows. They went down to 2 and 1 hp before one finally fell, when his opponent rolled 1 damage lol. I then used anydice to see what the probability would be. Actually, the probabilities were the same since all I did was add 1 to their attack bonus and defense (for their level which I forgot to add before). They actually have a 41% chance of hitting eachother for 1 damage or more. The most damage they could deal was 5, which only had a 3% chance of coming up. I guess Dwarf B just got lucky the first time.

Its not quite what I envisioned, but I think I like how the match took a while to play out. I guess the lethality isn't too high after all. Though if I was to make an optimized character, that might be different. I guess I'll look into that next.

Oh just forget it. I've miscalculated stats twice now, and even miscalculated a damage roll! The dwarf I mentioned should only have an attack bonus of +3. I have no idea where I got that extra 2 from. His attack bonus should be agility+2+level. That's it.

I think I have way too many formulas, I can't even remember them all myself.

Well, that would be the first thing.  What do these stats actually refer to?  How are hit points calculated?  Do you want this to be a "realistic" game where one good hit on an unarmored person will probably take them down (and even three hits would defeat an armored person) or do you want characters to get enough HP with experience levels to where they can fight off platoons?

JG

Here's what I typed up for how attributes are determined:

Characters are defined by four main attributes and 4 derived attributes.

Strength (str)
Strength determines carrying capacity, what kind of equipment the character can use, adds to hit points, and adds to the health derived attribute.

Agility (agi)
Agility adds to movement speed, melee attack rolls, and the reflexes derived attribute.

Intelligence (int)
Intelligence determines the number of non-class proficiencies and competencies a character has. It also adds to the willpower derived attribute.

Perception (per)
Perception determines alertness, adds to ranged attack rolls, and adds to the reflexes and willpower derived attributes.

Health
str+agi

Reflexes
agi+per

Will
int+per

Stamina

3+agi

Hit Points

5+str+level

Movement

3+agi

A beginning character has 4 points to spend on attributes. All attributes must be between 0 and 4, before racial modifiers. For npcs, assume their attributes are all +1 before racial modifiers.

As for skills, to put it simply, all characters are either proficient or competent in a skill. The skills a character has is mostly determined by their class. In the case of a warrior, they are proficient with melee weapons and shields, and competent with ranged weapons. Proficient skills get a bonus equal to the class level, while competent skills get a bonus equal to half the class level, rounded down. And yes, I realize the flaw in giving armor scaling only to shield users. It actually allowed my 'optimized' warrior to get one-shot from full hp by the warrior build I posted here. Seriously.

Also, parrying is rediculous. The damage you take is just way too high. It was meant to be a high risk, high reward tactic. Well, poor Brognar got one-shot from full hp by a character with inferior stats all because he failed his parry roll when he only had an armor of 2 (he was using a two-handed weapon).

Yeah, my combat system is a complete failure. I need to re-think it. I may just remove the parry option all together. It just feels too complicated for me, partially because its to different from the D&D-like method you can also choose.

As for what I was aiming for? I was hoping to make the system realistic, but now I kinda think I won't like that. I don't like my characters getting one-shot by something obviously inferior to them just because of one bad roll.

I decided to do a bit of math.

Brognar (my optimized warrior) has an attack bonus of +6, defense of 9, and 12 hit points.
The generic dwarf has an attack bonus of +3, defense of 12, and 11 hit points.

Doing the math, their chances of hitting each other are identical, and the maximum damage they can deal is also the same (if they rolled a 12, they would both hit for 6). I don't quite understand what happened. Brognar has a strength of 3 and an agility of 1, both higher than the generic dwarf. The other two stats serve no benefit to them as far as their combat skills go. But despite this, Brognar is practically equal to the generic dwarf. The only difference being that Brognar has 1 extra hit point, that's it.

Well, they're equal in a duel anyway. If they were attacking a target with the same defense, Brognar would obviously hit harder while the generic dwarf would be harder to hit because of his shield.

But really, I'm thinking attributes don't make as much of a difference. I mean, a dwarf's strength can only go from 1 to 5, which means that each point should make a huge difference, but it doesn't. All it did for Brognar is give him 1 extra hit point.

Maybe I shouldn't be testing them against each other, I should test them against the same target and see how each performs.

Honestly, I've been trying to develop my own tabletop rpg for over 10 years now (yes, indecision and perfectionism is quite an annoyance). Now, I decided to just toss something together so I would have something to playtest. Testing it out, I think its a complete and utter botch.

I may have to just start over from scratch. Oh well. Sorry for wasting everyone's time, even though I only got one comment on here.

Quote from: BlackHeart;909370Honestly, I've been trying to develop my own tabletop rpg for over 10 years now (yes, indecision and perfectionism is quite an annoyance). Now, I decided to just toss something together so I would have something to playtest. Testing it out, I think its a complete and utter botch.

I may have to just start over from scratch. Oh well. Sorry for wasting everyone's time, even though I only got one comment on here.

I don't think that you are wasting our time. It's always interesting to tinker with rules systems and watching you tinker is an interesting process. Clearly you have figured out that your system may be too complex or that you need to be careful in how you define things. At the very least, to double-check calculations before you post.

I'm curious, however, about why you want to create something from scratch? Pre-existing RPG systems have the benefit of many folks doing playtest prior to publication, so starting with one of their rules sets and tweaking it to your liking may be easier than trying to design from the ground up.

Quote from: finarvyn;910003I don't think that you are wasting our time. It's always interesting to tinker with rules systems and watching you tinker is an interesting process. Clearly you have figured out that your system may be too complex or that you need to be careful in how you define things. At the very least, to double-check calculations before you post.

I'm curious, however, about why you want to create something from scratch? Pre-existing RPG systems have the benefit of many folks doing playtest prior to publication, so starting with one of their rules sets and tweaking it to your liking may be easier than trying to design from the ground up.

I'll echo that this is not a waste of time. Lots of us buy RPG books just to see how they solved certain issues. So it is good to see more solutions and trains of thought.

I'll answer the "making your own" question with: because nobody has quite the setup concerned with things in quite the way I'm concerned with them. And because I can.

Quote from: Tod13;910030I'll answer the "making your own" question with: because nobody has quite the setup concerned with things in quite the way I'm concerned with them. And because I can.

Although in this case the OP stated that this wasn't part of his long-term tinkering, but something he threw together on the spot. I've done that before and my results are often just like his were -- there are always factors that I hadn't considered, the dice odds are out of whack, or whatever. There are dozens of solid RPG systems out there, and I often have a lot more success if I start with one and then adjust it to suit my needs.

Maybe it's just me, though....

I've looked at other rpgs for years and years. Mostly free ones, demos, and occasionally I purchased one. I've never found one that was completely to my liking. Besides, even if I did use one I'd have to devise my own magic system since its so different from the typical 'every mage can do everything' approach you normally see.

Have you looked at Dragon Warriors?