Super Simple Attack Rolls

Some comments people made elsewhere about Chainmail and D&D got me thinking. I actually have no intention of learning/using Chainmail, but I have occasionally considered a pseudo-Chainmail-ian approach to large combats where it’s needed: 1d6 per combatant on a side, kill or incapacitate opponents for every die result that beats a target number based on armor class:

• No Armor = 3+
• Light Armor = 4+
• Medium Armor = 5+
• Medium Armor 6

But that’s not as simple as using 5+ success for everything, so I started thinking: how could I do that?

Roll 1d6 + {HD/2}d6 (round up) for the attacker, discard one die if opponent is wearing Light Armor, two dice for Medium, three for Heavy, four for Extreme. Every +1 on a magic weapon adds a d6, every +1 on magic armor discards an extra d6. As long as one die result of 5+ remains, the attack is successful.

A table to illustrate:

Attacker’s Dice	Dice to Roll
9+	6d6
7 to 8	5d6
5 to 6	4d6
3 to 4	3d6
1 to 2	2d6
less than 1 die	1d6
Ineffective	Auto Fail

On this table: Shift up 1 row for each magical +1 on a weapon, shift down 1 row for each degree of armor or each magical +1 on armor.
Unless I’ve miscoded something when using Anydice.com, the base level (2d6) gives a 1st level fighter about the same chance to hit an unarmored opponent as in the 1d20 alternative combat system, but wearing armor provides better protection than the standard. A 3rd level fighter has a much better chance to hit under this system, but the bonuses start to fall off at even higher levels. I’ve capped the attack dice at 6d6, but 7d6 or 8d6 really doesn’t provide much of a benefit except against magic armor.

It’s a very simple system, and as I said it has the benefit of making everything “5+ on 1d6”. It would even be easy to explain to 5e players: think of it as advantage and disadvantage.

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