So, I know WotC released some D&D Diablo supplements.

What I mean by this thread title is:

How to replicate the fast feel of point-and-click killing in an RPG? Keeping the action fast and furious. The very opposite of most RPGs that I've played.

I'm thinking something like a single die resolution, where one roll tells you, who hits first, if you hit, or if YOU were hit, how much damage you did, or how much damage was done to you.

So far, I'm thinking a flat damage number and a to-hit roll.

Anybody got some other ideas?

Add the Ranger's "get +1 damage on certain monsters per level".  Keep in mind the "attack more than 1 sub 1hd monster per level" for fighter types, maybe allow it for all classes.

At 3rd level, you're going to be killing kobolds (1-4 hit points each) and goblins (likewise), rats, etc. left right and center.  If it's just one of the example creature, roll a # of d20 equal to the number of attacks, then a number of d6s or 8s or 10s depending on the weapon.  You'll be blowing through low-level monsters like there's no tomorrow.

Here are sub 1 HD creatures from 1e:

Brownie (1/2 HD)
Centipede (1/4 HD)
Ear Seekers (1 HP)
Eel, Weed (1-1 HD)
Gas Spore (1 HP)
Goblin (1-1 HD)
Jackal (1/2 HD)
Kobold (1/2 HD)
Leprechaun (2-5 HP)
Men, Bandit or Brigand (1-6 HP)
Men, Berserker (2-7 HP)
Men, Buccaneer or Pirate (1-6 HP)
Men, Dervish or Nomad (1-6 HP)
Men, Merchant (1-6 HP)
Men, Pilgrim (1-6 HP)
Pixie (1/2 HD)
Rat, Giant (Sumatran) (1/2 HD)
Rot Grub (1 HP)
...

There are more in the MM2 and Fiend Folio, but you get the idea.

A variant of Chainmail could work for this using 2d6, one hit kills but for heroes and tough enemies, some added rules for regen and healing, maybe a table for side effects on doubles or whatnot... could be done IMO.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;557175Add the Ranger's "get +1 damage on certain monsters per level".  Keep in mind the "attack more than 1 sub 1hd monster per level" for fighter types, maybe allow it for all classes.

If you really wanted to throw it all to the wind and go fast and furious, opposed rolls to hit/block, and you need to roll a certain amount over your target to kill them. No hit points, hit dice or any of that. So lets say
Goblin: 1
Armoured goblin: 2
Rock troll: 6

etc.

So you want to kill an armoured goblin, if you roll more than 2 over him, he's dead. You roll a 9 and he rolls a 6 to block, bam, dead. To emulate levels or higher skill, just add bonuses to your attack roll. Level 1, +1, level 2, +2, adjust according to the dice you want to use or classes or whatever.

So a combat would be like you roll to hit/enemy rolls to block, he's either dead or not, then he rolls to hit/you roll to block, you're either dead or not. You could give the PCs hit points if you wanted to make it a bit less deadly. Only a few though, like 2 or 3, plus one per level, and subtract 1 hp per successful attack against them.

Any simpler and its getting into one roll per battle territory, which I'm not overly fond of. As it stands, that's a one-stat combat system, which is still reasonably balanced. Excluding magic, special powers and so on of course.

Quote from: 1989;557169How to replicate the fast feel of point-and-click killing in an RPG? Keeping the action fast and furious. The very opposite of most RPGs that I've played.

Have you looked at Savage Worlds?

Quote from: daniel_ream;557186Have you looked at Savage Worlds?

I was under the impression that Savage Worlds was into the minis/wargamey side of things . . . .

Much like D&D, Savage Worlds started out as a miniatures wargame system (Rail Wars) and was then expanded into an RPG.  The "difference", depending on how you feel about the speed of D&D combat, is that it was a design goal to allow for very fast resolution of combat and many combatants on the table at the same time.

While the most recent editions have paid some lip service to minis-less combat, the default combat system does assume them.

There's a tabletop boardgame/minature game hybrid that I'm a fan of which works on a single die-roll resolution mechanic; it's called Legions of Steel. It's long out of print, but it goes something like this:

• D6 is used for all rolls
• Every weapon is represented by a table of Kill Numbers
• That table has different range bands (PB, S, M, L, X, etc.) associated with a number (2+, 3+, 4+, 5+, 6+, etc.) to achieve a Kill on D6 at that range band.
• Below the Range Bands/Kill Numbers for that weapon are actual distances those bands refer to on a given weapon (5", 10", 20", 40", 55", etc.). Some weapons may not have distances under the lower bands, as they cannot score a Kill with that number, ever.
• Some weapons have a Rate Of Fire (ROF) greater than 1, which refers to the number of dice rolled when attempting to score a Kill
• Individual figures have a number of Kills they can take (almost exclusively 1, but a few larger ones have 2) before they are removed
• Figure types have a General Modifier representing how tough/agile they are (mostly 0) that is added to the Kill Number (not the roll). So, a figure with a GM +1 is harder to score a Kill on as a weapon's normal requirement of a 3+ to Kill would become 4+ against that figure

There's obviously lots more to the system than that, but that's the crux of it, and it can be resolved very, very quickly. Those few options also allow for a surprising amount of variation amongst weapon types. There are only a handful of weapons with special rules beyond these "charts" that make up a weapon's description.

I could see modifying this for a Diablo style clone, first by changing to a die with a wider range (i.e. D12), and then giving the "PCs" multiple Kills with most "monsters" having 1 Kill but varied General Modifiers. Different spells, weapons and melee attacks can be modelled with variations on weapon values.

Get ahold of some of those old MB games that had battle dice (Lionheart, Heroquest...I think the fantasy version of Commands & Colors would work, too) with swords or shields on each face.  Both sides roll; the attacker scores one for each sword they roll, the defender scores one for each shield they roll.  Subtract defender's shields from attacker's swords.

Quick, visual.  And all those games had a special face or two that would allow for special results like crits, etc.

Minion rules!

(trollface.gif)

(though actually, why not, and 3 people have suggested it already without calling it by its currently popular name)

Yeah, I was thinking one of the WotC editions would probably be the best starting point.  Tweak combat to simplify it.  You'd want:

• Feat/Ability Tree for the characters
• Limitless "basic attack" even if you're a mage (e.g., endless magic missiles)
• "Christmas tree" approach to magic items
• Rapid healing
• "Mow down the mooks" or "minions" combat rule

Quote from: 1989;557190I was under the impression that Savage Worlds was into the minis/wargamey side of things . . . .

Never used them.

If you want fast combat which still allows for some tactical complexity and stunts, SW is a great choice. It does a particularly good job of portraying big damn heroes mowing through hordes of mooks. If you want badass protagonists with overblown powers like the Diablo III heroes, start them at Seasoned or maybe even Veteran; if you prefer zero-to-hero, Novice is great.

Shifting from system to setting, though, the RPG I think of when I play Diablo III is WFRP. Diablo III's storyline is crap (no effort has been made to link the chapters together), but the basic scenarios -- small town assaulted by unded, powerful city-state threatened by demonic corruption, a fortress out in the borderlands under assault by hordes of monsters -- just scream WFRP to me. I'm trying to wrangle a campaign from the I Ching-like vague impressions I get from the game. I might start a thread on this later.

Good thread, and it is worth looking past individual Diablo mechanics to get a feel for how they drove pacing, item economy, drops, etc. Nicely done so far.

So, if you hand a player a ring and tell them that it has a +5% chance to dowse magical items (for example)... WHOA, every player wants it. See also: figuring out why gold and potions randomly spawn off of the dead (Did Death sign a contract with a Mad God? What exactly is metaphysics behind this....).

Swarms of things surrounding a leader/caster type. Then independent lagre-ish things.

Instead of having 20+ swarms of goblins, each with a 'goblin king' get gonzo mythological with it.

The goblin king has 20 "extra lives". Each time you kill him, he bends space-time in some strange fae knot, and you've really just popped a balloon wearing his clothing, or you find yourself holding a live chicken (impaled on the end of you spear, fried to a crisp by the magic missile) with his costume flying apart as confetti, or he explodes into a cloud of large soap bubbles which make musical notes when they pop, etc. He is bound by the ritual to then reappear within eye-sight of those that "killed" him, make eye contact and taunt them. He doesn't have to stick around mind you, and he's constantly spawning the goblins you've killed back into the action (instead of having a bunch of clutches of goblins around the level). Their corpses fade from the scene with trailing photo-negative afterimages.


(LOL, Jareth in DiabloD&D).

I'll chime in and vote for Savage Worlds, as well.  I was playing Diablo 3 at lunch today and I think that Savage Worlds' Gang Up rules would be great for simulating the hordes of enemies, and the Named/Wildcard rules would be a good fit for Elite creatures.  
You can check the test drive rules here: http://highnoonstudios.com/downloads.html

And see if they seem like a match before dropping any money.

Playing a game set in Sanctuary would be pretty easy. Take your generic fantasy game of choice, add the Book of Cain, and go at it. Simples and fun. If your system is good at dungeon crawls and accommodates medium-power characters, bam, you've got emulating Diablo 1 sorted as well, which is basically a straight dungeon crawl. Or use WFRP, but don't expect characters to survive.

The problem with emulating Diablo 2/3 (And most action-heavy games) is the amount of work that's going on behind the scenes. Stuff like AoE attacks are trivial; as a standard attack, the barbarian (For example) is simply cleaving through hordes of grunts and wiping them out in one click. To represent that feel, your system needs to seemlessly accomodate minions and real monsters in the same encounter, and it needs to be fast. Massively fast.

"Always fighting orcs" is also a design strength, because the PC's and monsters should usually be about the same level, with tactics and gear determining the outcome.

There are two places I'd start: the combat engine that I think is closest in feel is 3:16, if you want a system about killing lots of hellspawn. The encounter system neatly represents the "successive small waves" feel of Diablo combat (Vary token stats to represent different creature and pack types; maybe add multiple coloured tokens to represent multi-pack fights), range bands represent the ranges classes optimally fight at really well, token hits replicate the amount of sheer carnage characters can inflict, and boss loot drops map nicely to end-of-mission upgrades (You'd need to add in a system for "special" enemies in an encounter, with tokens that count as 0 kills except the last token to be removed). The why of characters being there, the thing that RPG's are really good at, is there too, as flashbacks build up to Hatred for Diablo.

The other system I'd hack from would be Advanced Fighting Fantasy. The system already copes with mobs of enemies being represented by one "opponent" with it's own combat stats (And possibly multiple attacks so it can fight an entire party), and has simple outnumbering rules (Your combat result is applied against every opposing entity in the fight, but you can only score one "hit", beating the others just means you don't take damage), so you can represent a pack of Fallen, for example, as:

Fallen Pack - SKILL 5, STAMINA 10, x ATTACKS, roll two dice for damage
(Maybe multiple) Fallen Shaman - SKILL 6, STAMINA 6, restore 1 STAMINA to a Fallen Pack or Shaman each combat round

So the party can cleave through as many Fallen grunts as it takes to wipe out the entire encounter, describe attacks as epic cleaves or steadily beating down on small packs, depending on the minionness of the targets.

Elite packs become a conventional encounter with multiple single-entity opposition, and bosses are single large opposition. I'd also nab the spite rule from Tunnels and Trolls (For every combat result die you roll that scores a six, your opposition takes 1 damage), which becomes even more vicious in AFF.

But either of these methods is still closer to a board game than an RPG. I think you'd get a better game through just nabbing the Diablo setting.