AWW: Combat update, updated.
Jun. 3rd, 2013 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerin...had the random insight while I was showering that all the unwanted complexity of applying attack bonuses to the multi-dice system comes from my desire to preserve the old scale of bonuses as much as possible; that is, to make "+5 to attack" meaningful in a way that doesn't add five dice to the table.
But that's a poor approach to game design. The possibility of having +5 to attack comes from a now-discarded set of assumptions about how an attack roll works. If there's no way to naturally and gracefully integrate it with the new assumptions, it needs to be discarded. At the very least, I shouldn't be starting with the assumption that all abilities that intersected with the old combat system should intersect with the new one in the same way.
The only reason I tried it this way is... laziness. I mean, it's a lot more work to re-do everything that gave an attack bonus than it is to figure out how to make "attack bonuses" that make sense in the new system. But it's a false savings, because it'll be easier and less of a hassle on every level to fix it now than to test a game with crumbling foundations to see which way they break and then try to fix it.
The good news is that one of the last things I did with the basic character guide before I had to drop everything and get ready for WisCon was to deprecate attack bonuses by getting rid of as many escalating attack bonuses as I could, which makes the task of converting the remaining ones easier.
The end result may be that some options that simply gave attack bonuses may disappear and that things which make a character a better fighter may become more diverse in their effects (because the new generic "+1 to attack", adding another die, will be comparatively rare), and I think both of these things will make the game stronger and characters more interesting.
But that's a poor approach to game design. The possibility of having +5 to attack comes from a now-discarded set of assumptions about how an attack roll works. If there's no way to naturally and gracefully integrate it with the new assumptions, it needs to be discarded. At the very least, I shouldn't be starting with the assumption that all abilities that intersected with the old combat system should intersect with the new one in the same way.
The only reason I tried it this way is... laziness. I mean, it's a lot more work to re-do everything that gave an attack bonus than it is to figure out how to make "attack bonuses" that make sense in the new system. But it's a false savings, because it'll be easier and less of a hassle on every level to fix it now than to test a game with crumbling foundations to see which way they break and then try to fix it.
The good news is that one of the last things I did with the basic character guide before I had to drop everything and get ready for WisCon was to deprecate attack bonuses by getting rid of as many escalating attack bonuses as I could, which makes the task of converting the remaining ones easier.
The end result may be that some options that simply gave attack bonuses may disappear and that things which make a character a better fighter may become more diverse in their effects (because the new generic "+1 to attack", adding another die, will be comparatively rare), and I think both of these things will make the game stronger and characters more interesting.