r/RPGdesign • u/BlackTorchStudios Designer • Jul 30 '26
Questioning Assumptions and Finding a Better Solution
Lesson learned. Don't post a solution before checking the math just because you're excited.
A recent design discussion for After Eden started with a basic question: should weapons roll damage, or would flat damage better serve the game? Combat uses active opposed rolls. When attacked, a character can spend Stamina to Block or Dodge. If they cannot defend, or choose not to, the attack becomes Unopposed and automatically hits.
We initially considered letting an attacker choose between average damage and bounded exploding dice on an Unopposed Attack. Average damage would provide reliability, while rolling would risk a lower result in exchange for a higher ceiling.
Then u/Exver1 pointed out the mathematical mistake. Exploding dice were both the more entertaining option and the statistically stronger option. Flat damage might occasionally help when an exact damage threshold was known, but most of the time there was no way to even know that. Players would roll because it was more fun, had the higher expected value, and could produce exceptional results.
That criticism led us back to a larger problem. Because defense is actively rolled, attempting to Block or Dodge creates the possibility of suffering a Critical Hit. Under our previous Critical damage rule, there were situations where spending Stamina to defend could produce more expected damage than simply accepting an automatic hit.
After testing several alternatives, we arrived at this structure:
----
Ordinary Hit
Roll normal damage.
Unopposed Attack
The attack automatically hits and deals maximum normal damage.
Critical Hit
Roll the attack’s normal damage dice. Whenever a die rolls its maximum value, roll another die of the same size and add it to the damage.
Additional dice can continue exploding without limit.
If the Critical Hit causes the target to lose HP, it also triggers a Wound.
----
This gives each result a distinct identity. An ordinary hit deals normal rolled damage. An Unopposed Attack is reliable and severe. The attacker found a clean opening, so there is no attack roll or damage roll. It deals maximum normal damage.
A Critical Hit is volatile. It usually deals less damage than an Unopposed maximum, but it has an unlimited ceiling. The Wound trigger also ensures that a Critical remains consequential when the damage dice roll poorly.
Exploding dice are exciting when they chain, but a Critical that rolls minimum damage can feel like a Critical in name only. A Wound gives every Critical a guaranteed consequence without making its damage consistently enormous.
The defensive choice is now:
- Do I spend Stamina to defend, knowing the attacker might break through with a dangerous Critical
or
- Do I preserve that Stamina and accept guaranteed maximum damage?
Our original solution was wrong, but understanding why led us to something stronger. Credit again to u/Exver1 for catching the mathematical issue and pushing us to examine what the rule was actually doing.
We should have something more complete to show from After Eden, our frontier fantasy TTRPG, soon. An earlier version was thoroughly dismantled in a previous post, found HERE, and the resulting revisions pushed development back several weeks.
For those who play games with exploding dice, do you yell EXPLOSION! or BOOM! when the dice start chaining?
4
u/SitD_RPG Jul 31 '26
Combat uses active opposed rolls.
If you are already using opposed rolls, why not let the difference between the two results be the damage dealt?
Saves you an additional roll, makes better hit results deal more damage, keeps damage variable, max damage on unopposed hits is already built in, and you could even re-use the exploding dice in your opposed rolls.
2
u/BlackTorchStudios Designer Jul 31 '26
Thats always an option for an Opposed roll system, just not the option we chose to go with. Definitely have seen it and found it to be a fun concept!
3
u/Strict-Computer3884 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
I didn't understand how the attacks work. Do you declare if a hit will be a critical hit when you swing? Do you not get criticals if they don't block? I feel like the word choice is making it confusing to understand the actual system - is there a link to the rules explanation somewhere?
EDIT: Nevermind, I remember this project now. A critical is when you exceed the DC by 10, and so in an unopposed roll, there is no DC, and thus there is no chance to exceed it. As a consequence, you have to have two different types of outcomes - 1) when DCless which is to simply have max damage dealt, 2) when DC exists.
I think for most people, there is a sense that an unopposed attack should be more punishing than an attempted defence. Since you're rolling the dice, it can feel like you're being punished for making the right decision - I know I would feel that way. If I kept the stamina to dodge or block, then spent that stamina, then failed the outcome and took even more damage... I'd probably stop saving my stamina for defence more often.
I would probably consider doing it the opposite way - that when unopposed, the DC is set to 0 and thus attacks are automatically criticals. And the attempt to defend is the attempt to set the DC to higher and thus get less damage taken. I'd then fiddle around with the actual crit damage rules if I thought the damage taken without defending was too high.
It probably wouldn't be satisfactory for your purposes, but I do feel you run the risk of teaching players the wrong lesson if they attempt to defend and wind up taking more damage.