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 total amount of dice rolling that takes place
• The initiative system.