Opend20: Combat

Combat

One of the major goals for the OpenD20 project is to create a much more streamlined combat system. Slow combat is one of the major deterents from gaming, because it minimises the amount of time that can be spent on social interaction. It is also important to design combat in such a way that players are (almost) always engaged - there is no point having an initiative system that leaves gaps in time where players feel 'useless' because they can only attack half as often (and thus, only 'play' for half as long) as other players.

OpenD20 proposes to 'combat' (sorry, couldn't resist) this problem by defining the key issue as 'combat duty'. Here, the term 'combat duty' refers to the delegation of responsibility over action during play. In the standard OGL d20 system, almost all of the 'combat duty' lies in the hands of the GM. It is the GM's job to add up all the numbers given to them by the players, and the GM's job to calculate the initiative order - as well as playing the part of all the enemies!

It is intrinsic to the GM's part to play the enemies, so the most important changes in OpenD20's combat system must be to:

• The initiative system.

• The total amount of dice rolling

Abstract Defense

Because of Elegant Simplicity, defense is left as abstract as possible in combat. In some games, such as the tri-stat system, every single attack becomes a multi-phase opposed check as there is armour to consider, a defense roll... In OpenD20, Players decide what elements consitute their defenses thematically, and the mechanic incorporates everything into a single score.

This does mean that the GM might grant circumstance modifiers to defense based on the situation: for example, if characters expresses their defense as being dodge-based, and they're probably not going to be able to 'dodge' a fireball of immense proportions, then the GM might weaken their defense by 3 or 4 points. This is entirely situational, however, and not always neccessary. There is a point where realism gets in the way of fun gaming, so be careful not to cross the line.

Combat Score

Base Combat Bonus no longer exists in OpenD20, replaced with the Combat Score. This is derived from the synergy from all the 'combat family' of skills. Every five ranks in a combat skill gives a +1 bonus to the Combat Score. This means that if characters specialises in combat, their abilities will grow exponentially, which puts them much more on par with spell-casters, and improves game balance.

Characters hardly ever use just their Combat Score, however, because they must have spent some points in skills in order to get a Combat Score (although a wizard might have a very low combat score by only purchasing ranks in Defense). See the Skills Section for more information.

Let's say Rungkor is fighting with his bastard sword. He has 5 ranks in Weapon<Bastard Sword>, 3 ranks in Manoeuvre(Trip) and a Combat Score of 3, for an overall score of 8 when fighting with his sword, and 6 when trying to unbalance an opponenet.

Because of the new 'exponential' growth possible with the Combat Score, there are no longer multiple attacks per round. Instead, if characters have enough initiative ranks (see below), their players can choose to split their combat score - so Rungkor might choose to make two attacks at +4 each, or one attack of +6 and one of +2. It's all up to the player, although some exceptions are noted with regard to individual skills.

The Combat Score can also be 'invested' into defense. This functions almost as if every character had the 'combat expertise' feat. For every 2 Combat Points invested, characters receive a +1 bonus to defense for that round.

Finally, the Combat Score can be spent on improving initiative ranks (but only for the round in which the points are spent). For every five Combat Points, characters get +1 to their initiative rank. This allows OpenD20 to simulate the varied pace of combat without re-rolling initiative every round.

Incorporated Damage

Incorporated Damage means that the 'damage roll' is incorporated into the 'attack roll', for purposes of simplicity. The amount of damage done is amount that the attack roll succeeds by. This means less dice rolling, and it also means that all warrior-style characters can do exponential damage. Let's look at two versions of Rungkor:

At fifth level (equivalent to about 1st level in D&D), Rungkor has 5 ranks in his bastard sword, 5 ranks in defense 5 ranks in grapple, 3 ranks in manouvre(trip) and 2 ranks in heavy weapons (costing 25 Character Points). This gives him a Base Combat Score of +3, and +8 to hit with his Bastard Sword (he only weilds one handed at this stage, because his AC is too low). He attacks a character with a defense score of 15, and rolls a 10 on the die. That adds up to 18, which means he succeeded the 'attack check' by 3 points - take 3 vitality points from the victim.

At tenth level (equivalent to about 5th level in D&D), Rungkor has 10 ranks in bastard sword, 8 ranks in defense, 10 ranks in grapple, 5 ranks in manoevre (trip) and 5 ranks in heavy weapons (costing 46 Character Points). His Base Combat Score is now +7, and he has +22 to hit with his 'Holy Avenger' (Bastard Sword). In one mighty attack, Rungkor attacks a character with a defense score of 20, and rolls 10 on the die. That adds up to 32, which means he succeeded the 'attack check' by 12 points - take 12 vitality points from the victim (though see special rules for wounding with heavy weapons).

This compares quite favourably with standard d20. Rungkor is a warrior build, and at 10th (5th) level he caused 12 damage after succeeding with a roll of 10 to attack. If he had rolled a 20, he could have done 23 damage, which is a sizable portion. And this doesn't include complications like Rungkor's Rage power, which improves his Combat Bonus, or the rules for Heavy Weapons that allow Wound Point damage (much more debilitating). So all up, Rungkor is starting to become pretty powerful.

The more you specialise your character, the more potent they become - at the expense of flexibility in other areas. But this example shows how Incorporated Damage allows combat to flow much faster and much more smoothly, while at the same time allowing fighter characters to become much less weak when compared to the spell-casting character builds.

Initiative

All players declare intended actions at the start of each combat round. Each round is broken down into ten ticks, representing ten seconds passing in the game world. During combat, the GM calls each tick out from ten to one, and then the process begins again. It is the player's responsibility to determine how many ticks will pass before they can act. Variations on this system can be found in the RuneQuest and Hero systems, for those interested in exploring further.

On each tick, players can move one hex (two if charging). This movement does not count when determining which tick a player may act/attack on, but running or dodging (moving two hexes per tick) will delay the character for as many rounds as they continue the additional movement.

Use the following variables to determine how long it takes a character to complete their action:

• Size - small -1(disadvantage), medium 0, large +1, huge +2...

• Reflex - +1 for each synergy point in reflex

• Weapon Modifier - see Weapons, below. The maximum weapon bonus is +4.

• As noted above, for every 5 combat points invested in a round, characters get +1 initiative.

The maximum score is +8 (which a huge character with specialised reflexes and a fast weapon could have at 1st level, but they would be spending 40+ points to pull it off). With a score of 8, you would be able to attack on the 8th tick, and if you wanted to you could attack at each 2 tick interval, for a total of five attacks per round! However, you would have to split your combat score up amoung those attacks, so it would not always be practical.

Rungkor is large, and he has +1 reflex synergy. His bastard sword gives him a +2 to initiative at prime range, for a total of +4. This means that Rungkor can act on the 4th tick, so he only gets one attack this round. However, because the party is fighting kobolds, Rungkor's Player would like to be able to invest her Combat Score in order to be able to increase initiative, but since his Base Combat Score is only three, she can't do that yet. If Runkor had an initiative rank of +5, then he would have been able to act on the 5th and 10th ticks, spliting up his total Combat Score as she saw fit.