Chartspedition: The RPG

We’ll make it brief. The Expedition playtest is underway, getting eyeballs and I’m getting emails. One major thing is concerning me right now. I’ve looked at some of my inspirational material, thought about things a bit, and here we go.

Problem: I’m noticing from three sources (might not be enough really, but I feel it in my gut myself that it’s right when they tell me): Strikes and Edge are not really equivalent. Nobody really wants to make a Strike attack, though they like spending Strikes to make them into debuffs. But if they have to use an action, they’ll generate Edge to spend it on stuff. They will not of their own volition make Strike attacks unless they explicitly have a Perk that makes them really attractive.

Solution: Class Combat Charts. Let’s go back to the House That Gygax Built and remodel that a bit.

*A Fighter cannot normally make magical attacks.

This is a mockup of a “Fighter Attack Chart” for an Expedition revision. I REALLY need to hear some opinions on this though. The idea is that combat (at least – I might be looking to revise the task system as well) would not have a reliance on roll-high bonuses versus Protection Ratings and so on. There would be no “failed” normal attacks and no base attack bonus or base attack bonus math. There would be no target number. Rather, every attack has a curve of desirable outcomes based on the 3d6 bell curve and balanced around each class’ schtick. Outlying results on the bell curve would yield more desirable results than the average results, but at the end of the day, rolling high (to get the Edge to deal damage) is still better.

This reduces the trifecta of attack types to two: attacks and damaging attacks. It also reduces the “do I have a bonus to Strikes or to Edge or to damaging attacks?” confusion I’m noticing.

There’ll also be another option. You can attack without rolling anything. If you do, you deal 1 Strike. Simple. Next in line please. Like I said, there is no 100% useless combat roll. Your combat roll will always do something. So if the average result is gonna be scoring a Strike – then you can skip the roll and deal a Strike. Then you can convert that into a debuff if you want, or use it to gain a buff for your next attack so you might gain some Edge, or if you have enough Strikes you can convert them into Edge. Still a lot of different options for fiddling around with the points, just like before, but less whiffing.

For the record, that’s a Fighter. A Wizard might look more like this maybe:

(Magical attacks have goodies weapon attacks don’t, this is why even a Wizard’s magical attack chart is still marginally inferior to the Weapon Attack chart a Fighter is using. Oh the joy of charts. Chartity chart charts.)

The downside is you have to look at the attack chart on your sheet.

People HATE looking at charts for some reason, but I feel like this is a nice solution.

Now the question is: do you prefer this to the current system? This is simpler, still retains about as much tactical depth as it once had, there’s no frustrating “YOU DO NOTHING, HAW HAW” failed rolls, and everyone can still deal damage and debuffs. It sounds good to me. But some people look at a chart on their character sheet that they have to reference, and they get mad. I’m not sure whether I want to embrace this solution and forget those people (for the record, I really like the look of this, but I’m not doing this just for myself) or try something else to have both Strikes and Edge really matter.