Let There Be Blood - An AFF/Troika Inspired One-Roll Combat System

Let There Be Blood

Melee Weapons
Each melee weapon has a small 2-row 1d6 table: one row Attack, the other Defense - similar to this post by Daniel Sell. For example, the reliable (albeit boring) Shortsword's table is like this:

attack/defense

1. 2/0

2. 2/1

3. 3/1

4. 3/2

5. 3/2

6. 4/2

When you declare an attack, roll 2d6 and assign one to each column. For example, you could roll a 3 and a 6. Knowing your enemies have poor damage, you put the 3 into Defense (giving you a Defense of 1) and the 6 into Attack, dealing 4 damage.

Attacks hit automatically, with Defense acting as damage reduction. Your Defense value stays active until your next round, where it reverts to zero.

Dual-wielding lets you roll on both weapon's tables, and take the Defense of one weapon and the Attack of the other. For example, an action with two swords would look like this: one sword rolls 4 and 5, the other rolls 2 and 6. So, you put the first sword's 5 into Defense (giving you a Defense of 2) and put the other sword's 6 into Attack (giving you an Attack of 4).

Ranged Weapons
Ranged weapons have no defense. Instead, they have an Aiming Time column. This value alters the initiative value. For example, the slow, high-damage Longbow's table is like this:

attack/aiming time
1. 3/-3
2. 4/-3
3. 4/-2
4. 5/-2
5. 5/-2
6. 6/-1

So, if you rolled a 3 and a 4, putting the 3 into Aiming Time and the 4 into damage, your Initiative would go down by 2, and you would do 5 damage. The Aiming Time penalty is removed after your turn, and you go back to your normal point in the initiative order.

Armor does not exist.

System Thoughts

This hasn't been playtested yet, but I think it'll have some advantages over the standard to-hit/damage system - it gives melee combat some inherent strategy, gives a similar effect to Oddomatic damage, and helps balance ranged weapons.

While it's harder to make weapons for this system (compared to just "uh... this does 1d10"), it's also easier to make weapons interesting - having axes as high-risk, high reward weapons with swingy damage and low defense, having spears give huge defense (because you're far away) but low damage, etc.

I plan to test this system, clean it up, and put it into my currently unnamed urban fantasy GLOG hack.

Sample Weapons

Melee

Axe - Swingy Attack, Low Defense

attack/defense

1. 1/0

2. 1/0

3. 1/1

4. 6/1

5. 6/1

6. 7/2

Spear - Swingy Attack, High Defense

attack/defense

1. 1/1

2. 1/1

3. 2/2

4. 2/3

5. 5/3

6. 5/4

Shield - Low Attack, High Defense

attack/defense

1. 1/2

2. 1/2

3. 1/2

4. 2/3

5. 2/4

6. 2/4

Dagger - Low Attack, Swingy Defense

attack/defense

1. 2/0

2. 2/0

3. 2/1

4. 3/3

5. 3/3

6. 4/4

Ranged

Shortbow - Low Attack, Fast

attack/aiming time
1. 2/-2
2. 2/-2
3. 3/-1
4. 3/-1
5. 4/-0
6. 4/-0

Crossbow - Swingy Attack, Swingy Speed

attack/aiming time
1. 1/-3
2. 2/-3
3. 2/-2
4. 2/-1
5. 6/-0
6. 6/-0