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Friday, May 31, 2013

Attack Routines Using One Attack Roll

I don't use the "attack routines" from Greyhawk or the AD&D Monster Manual. You know: claw/claw/bite and stuff like that. For several reasons, including not wanting to roll more than one attack roll in most cases.

But let's say I really, really wanted to do so, but with a minimum of extra rolls. How could I eliminate the extra attack rolls, while keeping the extra damage?

Here's an idea:

  1. Make the attack roll. If successful, find the last digit of the d20 result (0 through 9, in other words.) This is the limit digit.
  2. Roll all the relevant damage dice. If a given damage roll is greater than the limit digit from Step 1, that attack didn't get through. Otherwise, it did. Treat "0" as "no limit".
  3. At least one attack will do damage. If none of the damage rolls are less than the limit digit, use the highest damage roll.
So: a 4+2 HD lion attacks an archer in leather armor. The d20 roll is 12, which (using Target 20) is an attack result of 23, enough for a successful hit. The damage limit is 2 (from the actual d20 roll.) In Greyhawk, a lion uses a claw/claw/bite routine that does 1-3/1-3/1-10 damage. If you roll 1, 3, and 6, the lion makes one claw attack, but misses the second claw strike and the bite. If you roll 3. 3. and 6, none of the attacks are below the limit (Step 2,) so you use the highest damage (Step 3;) the lion bites for 6 points of damage.

6 comments:

  1. Interesting concept... I wonder how much it changes the odds of combat.

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    1. I suspect it increases the odds for low HD beast and lowers the odds for high HD monsters.

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  2. I just roll different color d20's

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    1. Yeah, but I don't want the extra rolls. All at once, or in a series. Of course, the proper answer for me turns out to be "don't use attack routines". But this is an option...

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    2. If you roll several D20s at once (one by attack), but keep only the better result (and then roll 1D6 for damage), does it count as extra rolls in your eyes?

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    3. @porphyre77: Yep. I try to remove as many dice as possible during actual play. When rolling dice for generating details, I tend to use a lot of dice, but even there I try tricks like dice maps and reading dice in unusual ways to squeeze more info out of the dice without rolling extra dice.

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