Musings: Dice Roll Mechanics

 Dice Rolling

Usually when you roll a die in a game you want the highest result. It makes sense, doesn't it? Of course you want the highest number, it feels good to nail that perfect roll. But here's a question: What if rolling the lowest number was better? Something that comes to mind is Thac0, where having negative AC is actually really good. Thac0 is perfectly viable, but not very intuitive. Let's also look at a general system that relies on lower dice rolls before delving into a Thac0 introspective.

 Warning: Math ahead

Lower Dice Rolls

Let's say you're playing a wizard wearing light armor. Instead of having 10 + your Dexterity as your AC, what if it was 4? As in a d4? Then someone attacking you would need to roll a 4 or higher to hit you. That significantly reduces the math needed for players and dungeon masters, and makes more use of all your dice instead of relying on the d20 to determine everything.

I really enjoy the idea of using other dice like this, but I'm not quite sure where to go with it. I know a few systems use it, but it can be challenging penetrating all that information just for a little bit of comprehension how it works. (Or maybe I'm lazy. Probably that.) Let's delve into this AC vs attack a little more.

Let's say you have shitty training with weapons, so your attack is 1d4. Thus you have a 25% chance to hit a wizard. But let's say you are "decently" trained in that weapon, so you get to roll a d6 for the attack instead. I believe the math is 1 / 6 = .016, or 16% chance to roll any number. We need a roll of 4-6, so 16% * 3 = 48% chance to hit the wizard. That's nearly double your chance. But what about higher levels of AC? If your AC was 6 for wearing say... light armor,  you'd never be hit by a weapon with less than a d6. What if light armor was instead 4 + 1? In terms of mechanics this truly feels like light armor, especially when faced with a greatsword (With a hit die of say d12), you'd be decimated, just as you would expect to be in real life when wearing padded armor.

Here's another interesting idea: What if touching someone was always a d4 unless they were wearing light armor? Or trained in Acrobatics? Instead of calling it touch, we'll call it Target DC (Target Difficulty Check), because you're targeting the body and not trying to bypass its armor. So say someone with Acrobatics has an Attack AC of d4 but a Target DC of d10? The system would need to cater to a reason why you would want a very high Target DC. Maybe a spellcaster could rely on that to bypass super high AC with touch attacks? What if shooting someone with an arrow was a Target DC? This would make Attack AC and Target DC an opportunity cost, which creates fun and interesting player choices. Then we add more dynamics of saving throws and create an interesting flow chart of what a player wants to specialize into and what their character class / trope is capable of. Paladins could have an incredibly high AC and great Spell Save, but very terrible Target DC.

Critical Strikes with low dice

I also had an interesting thought, what if weapons always hit against AC if they rolled the maximum attack roll? That would make d4 weapons very sexy, but they'd have terrible damage (probably a d4). So let's say in order to score a critical strike you need to roll the maximum attack roll twice. Suddenly it feels really good to play a dagger because your chance of a critical strike is (25 / 25) 12.5%. This would make the dagger damage an average of 3.125 almost each turn (depending on how many attacks you get), which is just a little under the average of a d6. So maybe if you critical with a dagger it does more damage.

 

Then for big swords, like a greatsword with a d12, would be 8.3% (1 / 12), or (8.3% / 2) 4.12% chance to critical. What if a weapon had two dice rolls, like a maul had 2d6? Your hit average would be higher and your critical strike chance would be marginally lower (16% / 4) 4%. Though marginally lower, getting a critical strike with either weapon is substantially lower than a dagger.

Reverse Desire

For the moment I'm going to call a system that requires rolling the lowest number for the best result as Reverse Desire. Let's take all our examples and put it to the test here.

Light AC

Light AC is 4. Someone needs to roll a 4 or lower in order to hit us. For the lower end of the spectrum (4 AC versus d4 attack rolls) this doesn't change, but it changes significantly the higher we go. For a d6 weapon this would be a (16% * 4) 64% chance to hit. For a greatsword that would be (4 * 8%) 32 chance? Hmmm, that's worse than a d6. What if it was instead your weapon attack roll - the target's AC? So 12 - 4 = 8. This is a 64% chance to hit. Much better. But what about a d6? 6-4 = 2. 32%! That's also better! But is it easier? It's more crunch, after all. If our target audience doesn't mind some crunch then this is okay. It would be easy for a DM to determine if it hits: Just subtract the roll from the AC - if it's greater than 1 then its a hit!

Going with the theme of rolling the highest number is always a hit, what if rolling a 1 always hits? This would still allow daggers to critically strike.

Target AC would remain the same, essentially. Your Target Attack Roll could be a d10 versus someone in heavy armor with an AC of 12 but a Target AC of 4 would be extremely easy to succeed.

What else?

It almost seems flawed that a dagger could always hit someone, but let's also consider that we want a better game feel rather than emulating real life perfectly. With a lower hit die we will hit almost everything each and every turn, and with a bonus to our critical we can match the average damage of other weapons. Absolutely incredible. But also a dagger could never live up to the damage potential of a greatsword. (From my glossary: damage potential is the maximum damage roll you could make with one attack without adding additional damage from other sources.) The damage potential of a greatsword will always be ludicrously higher than a dagger (3 times as much, in fact).

Conclusion

I feel both systems have an advantage and a disadvantage. One involves more crunch than the other but offers an interesting game feel that should be explored. I'd like to explore both and make something fun out of it using a one-page game.

The birth of Immortal

 Major Heading goes Here

    After multiple successes with my classes getting positive reviews I think it’s time to dive too early into creating my own ttrpg with little experience in ttrpg’s in general! Yes I have played them in the past but I find myself bored when playing DnD and finding little to get engaged in. But the larger part of my reason is I want to undertake my magnum opus: Creating my own game.

    The journey is going to be very long and difficult, but you know what? I think I have the right mentality going into this. I’m ready for the challenge and pain. I’ve been homebrewing for 3 years non-stop with only a few weeks of burn out. I think I have what it takes.

Let’s get into some worldbuilding. I’ll keep my world building posts short and digestible.

Immortal

    Why the name Immortal? I have taken the name from Immortal Universe, which is a location within my setting, but also to set player expectations. The journey you take will lead each and every player to immortality (should the campaign last). There is no afterlife within my setting - instead there are two major players: the Mortal Universe and the Immortal Universe. Mortal universes are where you would expect a journey to begin. Players start here and become so powerful that the universe ejects them into the Immortal Universe when they reach beyond 10th level. But the journey doesn’t end there. There are more grand and dangerous things to tackle in the Immortal Universe should the rare ttrpg group find themselves able to play beyond 11th level.

    Players who find themselves 7th level will become demi-immortal, where their aging slows and no longer impacts their performance. This is typically where most people find themselves plateau. Of course the people at the table can and will most likely exceed this limit and go far beyond. These types of people are extraordinarily rare in the setting.

Deeper Lore Ahead

    This is where you are free to leave the lore. It provides no benefit as a player, only for those who are hungry to know more.

    Why a mortal universe? A very long time ago a number of entities shattered themselves to combat the abyss which was quickly becoming a problem. They created countless smaller universes (about the same size as our real one) that are relatively protected from the abyss’s influence. The universes were created so people could shed their preconceived expectations and become stronger, wiser, through the tribulations of life. Life as we know it in real life does not exist in the same way in the Immortal Universe. But there is a second piece to this: Those pieces I mentioned earlier.

    Truthfully, those entities that shattered themselves were among the few beings in existence. They weren’t gods, they were people without a solution to the abyss. By shattering themselves and reconstructing their pieces into universes and creating the first souls they offered a chance for the universe to save itself. Those who find themselves imbued with a shard during their life will find themselves having an even harder life than those around them. But this is a spiritual alchemy: Trial by fire purifies them of any vice they have and open themselves to true humanity.

It's this humanity that not only makes them immune to the corruption of the abyss, but can even restore humanity to a corrupted soul. These people are known as…

Avatars

    Was that a good segway? Anyway; creating avatars is the goal of these universes. About half the people who willingly become mortal seek to become an avatar, but less than 1% of people in the universe become avatars, and even fewer ascend to immortality. An avatar is not special. They do not get special treatment, no plot armor, no protagonist powers. Their life is truly harder because that shard attracts that difficulty, forcing it upon them. An avatar will either swim or sink, there is no inbetween. There is another catch: No person who is deserving to be an avatar will become one, only someone who needs it will receive it. Example: Batman is not a viable vessel to be an avatar, but the Joker is.

    What about the other half? Turns out living a life and experiencing what it's like to live with restrained power then becoming immortal through ascension makes a person significantly stronger than one simply experiencing existence in the Immortal Universe. Kind of like training with weights to improve calorie burn.

That’s all I have. Thank you to those who reached the end!

Design Help: Negative Space

 Negative Space

I can't emphasize enough how important of a skill this is. When you are developing, the proper skill and utilization of negative space will allow you immense flexibility by taking aspects from one thing and incorporating it into what you're making without it being a complete rip-off.

Here is how I define Negative Space:

"Think in negative space. The warlock's spell slot resource is actually a short-rest spell point system, except the designers decided to "summarize" how many spell points you had at the given level and made them into spell slots that then scaled with the warlock. Imagine if they had spell points equal to their level that restored on a short rest that followed the rules of spell point cost (DMG, 288). While the power curve is wonky, its very close.

Another negative space is the paladin lay on hands. It's actually a per-level ability score modifier healing ability, like the Druid's Balm of the Summer Court is per level healing. The designers decided to instead summarize it as a 5, so the healing felt more impactful when used.

Thinking with negative space is by far the most powerful tool you can use to create new features, but is also the hardest skill to learn. This will help you take the feature of one class and splice it into yours without anyone ever knowing."

I created this concept when I started realizing what I was doing by looking at other people's work and using it for my own. Suddenly I went from struggling to create my own features to creating very original ideas, simply by parsing "negative space" from its design. It took me a few months to really develop this skill, and once I did it has become my strong arm. The level and speed at which you develop your design skills begins to skyrocket. I'm still learning new negative spaces to work with.

Example Designs

Okay, so enough talk, now let's do the walk. How do we create a new feature? Let's say you have a martial class or subclass but you don't want to use Extra Attack, but you have the "budget" for it. What is an extra attack? At 5th level most players will have around a +3 to their modifier for an attack (Spells, weapons, or otherwise). A d8 (die roll average: 4) is the average for martial weapons, and a d6 (die roll average: 3) is the average for simple weapons. Let's say we're making something rogue-ish, like a hunter taking an advantage of a weak point. We'll be safe and use the expected damage of a simple weapon with the expected attack score modifier of +3. I'll use an idea I've already come up with:

Spot Weakness

5th level Hunter feature

Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 2d6 as damage of the same type dealt by the weapon to the target.

(Wording of this feature borrowed by Cleric, War Domain)

 Let's dissect this. "Once on each of your turns" is basically an additional attack because you get this in addition to your normal attack. It also defines on your turn, so this doesn't apply to anything like opportunity attacks (Which it shouldn't, since extra attack doesn't affect those). The next part is an "extra 2d6" damage. The average of a d6 is 3, and the player is expected to have around a +3 at this level. Thus, "2d6" is really the average of a d6 weapon + the expected damage modifier for the attack.

Suddenly we have an entirely new extra attack feature without stepping out of line in terms of expected damage. This can also be used to control player damage for things like multiclassing; it creates a vacuum in the class (vacuum meaning it can't be used elsewhere). By having this vacuum we can safely improve upon it without it affecting too much power for multiclassing. Subclass features or core class features could potentially improve the amount of damage you deal, such as increasing the die size to a d8 or adding more dice. Alternatively the damage type can be changed, potentially allowing a player to take advantage of vulnerability.

Bonus "Proficiency"

Okay. Let's look at another negative space: Proficiency. Let's say the class had a class die that scaled with its levels from a d4 to a d12. If a class did this, look at the proficiency bonus at the same levels it improves in die size. It should match the levels your proficiency bonus improves. This is because proficiency bonus is actually a 1d4-1d12 summarized as its average die size (Rounded down).

Now I'll think of a new example I've never tried using this space:

So let's say we have a feature that grants proficiency in all saves. We could use that feature, but what if we used our class die? "You add your class die to all saves" is pretty exciting (Well to me it is. I love rolling more dice). What if you could, at will, give this dice as a reaction to someone attacking another target within 5 feet, adding it to their AC? Like a parry? That also sounds exciting. You're always reacting to the action each and every turn, giving you even more to do.

Conclusion

The power of Negative Space is extremely powerful. Learning how to use it with spells and spell-like features will allow you to make new classes with new features that seem completely original but in fact uses features from elsewhere.

Musing: My Dream and Development Skills

 How to Start?

    I'm struggling to think of a satisfying way to begin this post. This will be largely me rambling, but it's also about how I process game and idea development.

    Ever since my introduction to D&D 3.5 I've always  wanted to create my very own game system. I've been big on game development for literally my whole life, but I struggled to really think of a good way to tackle it until recently. Countless times in the past have I started and immediately stopped trying to develop my game creation skills. It wasn't until I discovered homebrewing for D&D 5e that I finally found my method of game development that's still going on about 5-6 years later. And now I want to achieve that goal, to create something people love to play.

What do I want to achieve?

    This is a question I've been slowly answering over the past few months. As a gamer you know what you enjoy, but when placed in the position to create it you have literally no idea where to begin. This has spiraled into the search for what I want from a game and how to achieve it. I've been doing 200 word games to help hash out smaller ideas, rather than aiming to make an actual game. It forces you to think of the raw essence of your goal and distill it into the purest form. It's my philosophy that if you can make a fun game in 200 words or less, then it's better than a large game with no flavor.

    This is going to be a really long journey. It took me 4 years of homebrewing for D&D until I was finally getting a grasp on development, balance, and flavor. Developing my own system is going to take just as long. Probably longer. But honestly that idea doesn't scare me. In fact I'm excited just typing this. Though this excitement wanes and waxes as it pleases. I'm not always 100%, and you won't either!

Learning to Love Challenge, and other skills

    This is what I consider a very important aspect if you want to seriously game develop. Learning to love a challenge will drive you harder than forcing yourself to develop something to meet a quota. It also allows you to gain motivation through more work. Being excited for the unknown is an extremely powerful tool that keeps you interested. Honestly I didn't have this at first - I had literally over 16 years of ideas trapped in my head, which allowed me to create an absolutely inhuman amount of content when I first started development (As stated within my first blog). 

    But once you hit a wall where you need to develop new skills is the right time to learn to love the challenge. Get excited for not knowing how to tackle an idea, because you don't know how awesome the end results will be. That's what truly drives me. Unfortunately not all ideas are winners, and it's best to accept they're okay, or bad, then move onto a new project. The idea is to keep the ball rolling, then tackle a bad idea again later. Be sure you save all your work, you'll need it later down the line, even if it's a really bad idea. It's my personal philosophy that no idea is inherently bad; it's the execution. Take the Diablo franchise as an example. Imagine if all it had was fighting monsters in a new environment every few hours. Not interesting or fun. But when you add skills, random potential, powerful and interesting loot, and a plot line, the idea becomes more grand. By exploring separate ideas, they can become a conglomerate and create a greater whole.

Collateral Inspiration

     Another skill to learn is to work on ideas adjacent to the first one when you're stuck and you will often solve two problems at once. I call this collateral inspiration. This is such a powerful tool and I didn't realize I had it until later. Once I realized its existence, I put it to practical use and suddenly jumped forward in progress. Sometimes you can create exploding collateral inspiration, where solving two problems you were stuck on creates new ideas.

    An example of collateral inspiration is you want to work on an ice themed warrior. You might be stuck with some mechanics or imagery behind it. Then work on something else ice themed, perhaps a monster, or create an ice priest. Another amazing idea is to invent a new character within a world you're familiar with and imagine how they interact with it. Creating a character more often than not creates explosive collateral inspiration.

Make something that excites you

     I can't emphasize this enough. If you aren't excited by what you're looking at then you should work on the idea more. An interesting idea doesn't mean it's fun, either. There's plenty of paved paths that are really fun despite never deviating from the normal, as in they're fun not just because it's interesting, but because it's fun and interesting. This is by far the hardest challenge you'll face. It's one I'm dealing with now. How do you create a meaningful mechanic fun and flavorful without making it too obtuse or have it weighed down by its own idea? The idea of a blood mage is really fun, but the issue is the mechanics are weighing itself down; it's defeating itself before it can even get out of the gate. Many blood mages I see are too complicated for their own good.

Make something for you, not them

    Don't make a game that'll interest hardcore players. Don't make something around a theme just because it sounds interesting. Make it for you, and if you find it fun and exciting, then other people will follow. You can't make something that pleases everyone. You are the first person that you should please. When looking for feedback, ask it only from people you trust and love. People are cruel and uncaring about how or why you arrived at a conclusion; if you start revolving your game around that, you are no longer creating something for yourself, you are making it for them.

    Once you have created something you love, and you have tested this idea to be as balanced as it can be, then you release it into the wild. The wild is full of animals that will rip and shred your material, but it's also full of civilized people. When reading criticism from an animal, treat it like a dog who has torn up its new toy immediately. Disconnect yourself from your work when looking at these comments, or ignore them entirely. Look for people who are interested in aiding you. Look for people who give you a how and why ideas work and don't work. You can usually tell when their words come from a place of love and or respect.

There are innumerous people that disrespect D&D 5e, but there are still thousands of players that love it.

Follow the Fun

    The last musing I'll post. Follow the fun. You find something that isn't a core part of your project, but find it very fun. Incorporate it, or rework your system around the idea and you'll arrive at a better place. There are countless ideas that changed drastically from the original idea because they found a fun idea that worked better than the one they were working on. I've done this several times for my game project despite having a dire attachment to my old ideas that no longer fit the project. You'll hate it at first, then you'll love it later.