I was reading through the ToA for a second time and pg. 21 gave me a lot to think about. Under the section on environmental complications, I found it odd that they describe different levels of 'difficulty modifier' and even use the (0d), (1d), etc. notation without actually meaning that it is the difficulty for doing something in a particular situation. For instance, "Easy (1d) complications may impose a misfortune dice to relevant checks, or require a manoeuvre to navigate. Examples: light rain, a short drop, thigh-deep water."

They did not mean that if you try to perform an action in thigh-deep water that you should increase the action's difficulty by <P>; so it was weird that they tacked the (1d) notation in there. Unless they mean to add 1 Misfortune to the relevant checks, but if you read the Daunting (4d) section they are talking about instantly fatal conditions and it has no bearing on how many dice you add.

It occurred to me that the difficulty you set is simply based on how difficult the base action is to perform. Stabbing someone with a sword is 'Easy.' If there's rain in your eyes, the stabbing part is still just as easy. The rain isn't making it more difficult for you to put your sword through someone's flesh, it just makes it harder to tell what you're doing. Hitting someone with an arrow at close range (conversation is no problem at this range) is easy; hitting someone at extreme range (they can't even hear you YELLING) is daunting, assuming your weapon can even shoot that far.

What would affect the normal ease with which you can stab someone? One of the only things I could think of in the last twenty minutes was trying to run someone through while preventing two of his buddies from getting to cut your arms off. I think fighting three opponents at once would be pretty hard (multiple Challenge dice) and I would grant those same fellows a Fortune on their attacks.

Thoughts? What other scenario would make an attack more challenging (Challenge dice), rather than just more difficult to succeed (darkness, rain in your eyes, engaged with a bonfire)

This could also extend to magic. Are you casting in a Winds of Magic heavy area, or, for example, a temple dedicated to Khorne (which would be Hard, I think, since he hates magic.)

I took the base 1 <p> in combat to represent 'real' fighting.

What i mean is that sparing would be 0 <p>, because it's not real. People traing without challenge. Then in the real world, they come to realize that it's insanely tough.

Personally I would alter the challenge rating based on the type of fight. Human and Large sized creatures are <p>. Dragons and huge daemons are <p><p>.

That's all well and good, but if you look at page 23 they give three examples of dice pools representing an attack against a Goblin. The second dice pool has 2 Challenge dice. It would be nice to know how that dice pool was constructed.

Further reading, though, showed me that being outnumbered would not add Challenge dice. Under the Misfortune section in the main rulebook it says among other things that it can be added for being "severely outnumbered."

So where do additional Challenge dice in combat come from? (Apart from some difficulty mods on action cards.)

size of the enemy, fighting up hill or on a stair case, using an improvised or damaged weapon... i dont have the game yet but these all all thing i would think to make it more difficult to fight someone compared to normal.

It's hard to hit someone with your sword when you can barely see them due to heavy rain, darkness, a heavy blizzard, thick snow etc...

I'm imagining physical hindrances. Combat is more dynamic than people standing still and swinging.

Imagine if your PC's heavy cloak is billowing about due to heavy winds, tripping you up, blocking your vision, getting in the way of your arms etc...

Yes, to all of those for adding Misfortune dice.

How about a Challenge dice is worth 2 Misfortune? 3? Every negative I can think of for combat can be covered by the Misfortune dice.

As an aside, Sarim Rune suggested Simple 0d for sparring, but then seemed to imply that Easy 1d was "insanely tough."

Another thing to consider is that these are starting characters who have only trained Weapon Skill a single time (if at all.) So the untrained characters are having a cake walk running around stabbing beastmen with their daggers. I don't think that's right. If you only use 1d for attacks then it's absolutely no challenge at all when you have a Rank four character rolling 4 Expertise dice on every attack. The rules even say that just using the base difficulty would be an attack made "in a vacuum."

It would be nice to know when they were playtesting if 85% of their attacks connected, like seems to be happening for me. I recall starting characters in 'lesser' editions could expect only about 33% success rate on unmodified (vacuum) attacks.

Mordenthral said:

That 33% SUCKED so hard. A few of my more casual players quit playing because they COULDN'T hit anything, and combat dragged on and on... ie- they got bored.

I'd rather have lots of hits (on both sides) and shorter combat instead of the opposite. Personally.

Well, I'd always aim for +10, all-out attack for +20, outnumber +10 - +20, attack from higher ground for +10, etc.

But yeah, just standing there swinging at 33% would suck.

With 1 Challenge dice you don't need any advantages to have 4 characters chop down a giant in a couple rounds.

Give thoughts on my latest question though: How many Misfortune dice = 1 Challenge dice? Two? So if you're fighting in mud in heavy rain you add a purple instead of 2 blacks?

To be honest, I don't have the statistical background to reliably suggest a conversion between misfortune & difficulty in combat.

I do tend to throw in misfortune (and fortune) dice for things I think make sense, and so far, our "sense" of the results aligns with our expectations. I seem to be following the thought that challenge dice are awarded for the sheer base level difficulty, i.e. if NO other factors were at play, how hard would it be to do X? And then all other factors are added as fortune/misfortune dice.

So hitting someone standing in front of you doing a moderate amount of counter-fighting isn't too hard to hit (1 die); getting good damage out of it is a different matter. So you throw in misfortune for their defenses, their active defenses, and other factors that go against the attack and then it becomes less about hitting and more about damage (i.e. you're likely to hit, but it maybe completely negligible). Seems to work for me.

An example that I would use for increasing the difficulty would be if the attacker wants to hit a specific location. For example, they wish to aim for the head. As a GM I would assign an additional <P> to the attack. Another would be if the opponent is significantly smaller, such as trying to hit a hummingbird or a wasp with a sword, etc.

You get <p> with advanced parry etc & also a few attack actions give more <P>.

I <p> is 3/4 challenge and is 1/3 so <P> are a little more than 2 . I think the strong correlation - the challenges & boons come in pairs on some faces - might make them a bit tougher, probably about 2 1/2 .

Those are good calls, dvang. But what if they do 'called shot - head' and hit. Would it do more damage?

I was playing with Sunatet's dice roller and I find that 2 Challenge dice is a good fit for me. There's really no reason other than I think an average attack should be average difficulty. That gives about a 70% success rate to a character with 4 Strength, 1 Reckless and an Expertise dice v. 1 or 2 Misfortune. With 1 Challenge dice they hit about 9 times out of 10.

Either way, once a combat character gets to Rank 3 and has 3 Expertise dice they have nothing to fear and will be hard pressed to miss 1 in 20.

Mordenthral said:

85% sounds about right for PCs. It was lower for NPCs, because only the PCs were using active defenses. The higher to-hit rates canceled out the additional time spent on die-pools, so all-in-all, combat seemed to last about the same amount of time as v2.

I guess I should apply my own points on abstraction from other posts. One roll could represent an entire exchange of several swings over 2 minutes of time.

The dice are more about telling how you hit or what made you miss, than if you hit or not. Someone will hit someone else eventually, the dice pool just tells you why they hit at that particular point in the battle.

Those are good calls, dvang. But what if they do 'called shot - head' and hit. Would it do more damage?

Not unless the enemy is particularly vulnerable in that location. As a GM, it's my call. If I describe an opponent as being helmetless, and my players want to target the enemy's head to avoid armor, should they hit I'll ignore most if not all the armor soak. If they are going up against movie-esque zombies that require head hits to put them down for good, then that's what happens with a head hit. So, it's situational, of course. Part is also what does the player think they want to get out of targeting a specific body part? What if an enemy is carrying some treasure/object, and the player wants to knock it out of their hand? I might add a <P> or two to the attempt, for example, with the bonus of success knocking the object out. If a player wants to target the legs to slow an opponent or knock them down, I might add a <P>, but if a successful hit force an Agi test (with difficulty based on number of successes, perhaps) or else the opponent falls down. And so on. I'd adjudicate it, primarily based on whatever cool thing the player wants to happen (as far as targeting specific locations).

It's part of the fun of being a GM, at least for me. Give the players freedoms. Try not to say no, just make it more difficult to succeed.

So everyone is OK with nearly every attack being successful and doing a set amount of damage (nearly)?

You can do some quick math after the first round and know if you don't kill the baddie in 2 rounds, someone will be unconscious.

I haven't played other than in the demo, yet, (and one mock combat) so I don't know if my fears are warranted. I assume most characters an monsters will have access to at least Dodge, and for weapon-wielders Parry. If you Dodge and use Guarded Position does it really make a big difference in how often you get hit?

Most players have found the pretty standard damage to be nice and easy. Don't forget, though, quite a few attacks have significant effects to damage. Adding a second weapons DR, adding another St, +2, +3, criticals, ignoring Soak, inflicting conditional effects, stress/fatigue (which often change to additional wounds), all make damage still somewhat dynamic depending on the number of successes and boons you roll.

So I guess my only concern (I do love the system mechanics) is that attack hit percentage seems to be about 90%.

I want more uncertainty in combat, so I suppose I will make attacks base Average (2d) difficulty.

Here's the official word:

Actions: Defaultault Challenge level
Unless indicated otherwise, the default challenge level for Melee
Attack and Ranged Attack actions is Easy (1d). Unless indicated
otherwise, the default difficulty for other actions, such as casting a
spell or invoking a blessing, is Simple (0d). The GM is still the final
arbiter of a task’s challenge level, and may adjust these to suit the
story and the particular task at hand.

Here's my only question. Why the hell wasn't this the first paragraph in the combat section?