Re: (TFT) Combined Offensive/Defensive Action

[PvK <pvk@oz.net>]

You do generally want to limit the amount of defensive ability someone has, or else you can have something like someone using all of their DX 8 to make themselves -8 to hit, so even someone with low ability can sacrifice their low ability to hit anything anyway, to become nearly unhittable. On the other hand, people who created their character with a lowish DX may find that compared to base TFT, they are now fairly hopeless fighters if it is often harder than 3/DX to hit anyone.

GURPS manages to effectively get multiplication into the odds, so not only does skilled defense has more effect, but all defense has less of a relative effect against people who are low-skill anyway, which I think works rather well (but still has the problem with effective skills near 15-16). It does this by having two rolls - one for attack, and one for defense, where the attack roll is on the attacker's plain skill (DX in TFT) and the defense roll is on the defender's plain skill. But if many people here were willing to do that much rolling/comparing per attack, they'd likely be playing GURPS. I eventually realized that for some types of NPCs, I could make an abstracted combat table that was about equivalent to playing out combat, but involved only a single die roll, but that took a lot of familiarity with the system and math and work in advance.

As for the "if a figure defends and his attacker then fails to attack" clause, how would you then treat situations where two or more people defend against the same person, who then may not be willing/able to attack each of them? It answer could have balance implications for outnumbered people, that wants consideration too. 

PvK

--- mejobo@comcast.net wrote:

... the main problem with the "splitting" DX thing by basically capping the amount of DX spent at 4 (more or less) and giving it a slight disadvantage in that its possible that the defense doesn't work at all.

... if a figure defends and his attacker then fails to attack, the defender makes a 3d6 roll against his DX. If he succeeds he puts the enemy out of position, who will be at -4 DX next turn (or something along those lines)...
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