Randomization in Combat

[jasonpickering]

Hey guy so I am thinking about different ways to do whether a hit is a hit or not. I wanted to do something with a bit of random chance instead of doing deterministic like I usually do. One of the ideas I had was a dice based system like in boardgames. I actually wanted to show the dice, but it might slow down combat a bit much. I could also do a simple thing like a regular dice with an added bonus. I just want to show the player their chances and I want all equipment to add bonuses to that, but a simple +1 can be a bit boring. Any ideas?

[Darren Grey]

There's an android game called Elder Signs: Omens that is based on a board game, and uses a nice dice-based system. But it doesn't look like dice... It's only by knowing how many board games work that I realised it was using dice. Maybe give it a check...

Another system to use is a fruit machine spinner thing. You see exactly what all the possibilities are, how they're spread, etc, in the brief animation. You get a sense of the randomness and the chances of good and bad, and potentially something visual for any effects like a curse causing extra possibilities to miss.

[Gr3yling]

Hey guy so I am thinking about different ways to do whether a hit is a hit or not. I wanted to do something with a bit of random chance instead of doing deterministic like I usually do. One of the ideas I had was a dice based system like in boardgames. I actually wanted to show the dice, but it might slow down combat a bit much. I could also do a simple thing like a regular dice with an added bonus. I just want to show the player their chances and I want all equipment to add bonuses to that, but a simple +1 can be a bit boring. Any ideas?

If you like board games, what about incorporating other elements from them?  Like, periodically drawing cards to activate random events, or semi-linear movement around a board?

How abstract do you want the game to be?

[Vanguard]

One thing to consider is how strong you want the RNG's influence to be.  Randomness is great for encouraging reactive play, but it also means the player isn't full in control of their own success or failure.  A game with randomized damage is generally more predictable than a game with random missing.  Crawl has random damage, random missing, and random spell failure and it's really excessive.

I just want to show the player their chances and I want all equipment to add bonuses to that, but a simple +1 can be a bit boring. Any ideas?

Brogue tells you stuff like your chances of hitting an enemy and the minimum number of hits they'd need to kill you.  It's a nice feature.

[guest509]

I found that to be a problem with my roguelike card designs. It becomes a game of randomness, a sort of press your luck thing, with little strategy really. Still fun, you do get to decide what stuff to use and whether to fight or flee, but not procedural as much as it was straight random.