Monday, 23 July 2012

To strike with buckets of dice formula.


I’ve taken Zhu’s profile and used it to come up with the following formula. I figured that the base chance to strike your opponent should be stepped rather than linear. Not sure why I thought this but it proved tricky to come up with a formula. Therefore by necessity, unless anyone can prove me wrong, the base to strike value is calculated in two stages:

First, if the attackers CS is odd then +1 on to the defenders CS if also odd. If the attackers CS is even then +1 onto the defenders CS if also even.
Then:
(DCS-ACS+9)/2

Now add modifiers.

A 1 is always a miss and numbers over 6 need a 6 followed by 11-to strike value.

To target =7-RS

Now add modifiers

To damage =R-F+4

Also a few possible changes to the stat line, should R be resilience rather than resistance? Should Stoopidity be Br Brains?  How about Tm Temperament instead of Kl.

Finally how about B.O.D. Buckets of Dice as a name?

21 comments:

  1. Okay... I'm a little lost with your new 'stepped' method of strike/damage resolution, I'm no good with mental arithmetic. Are the resulting numbers still the same (I do recall there being a provision for 'rolling better than a 6')?

    I'm right behind you with Resilience and Brains for the new Statline, although I would argue for Discipline (Dn) rather than Temprament, especially if we can swap out Distance (D) for Speed (Sd or Sp) to avoid confusion. Maybe even go further and swap Quickness (Q) for Agility (A). My reasons are mostly to keep stats well defined from each other and, well, the cool factor as well. Agility just sounds so much more... tidy/neat than Quickness to me (sorry Zhu).

    Buckets of Dice... I Lol'd. It does seem that way sometimes, doesn't it?

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    1. OK. When "inventing" my statline I tried to avoid duplicating anything in the current statline. A for Agility conflicts with A for Attacks. But yesh -
      Warbucket!

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    2. I didn't spot that. I did try to avoid conflicts while coming up with alternative stat names but for some reason I managed to miss the whole A=Attack... derp. Thanks for calling me up on that.

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  2. Its stepped because if your CS is 3 then it is 4+ to strike an opponent with CS1 or 2, 5+ to strike an opponent with CS3 or 4 and 6+ to strike an opponent with CS5 or 6.

    That is to say every two DCS share the same to strike value for every one particular ACS.

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    1. Gotcha, well done working that out so neatly, it tallies up beautifully.

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  3. About the stat lines, isn't dexterity (D) a good replacement for initiative (I) and intelligence quotient (IQ) for intelligence (Int).

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  4. Very awesome. Erny haz good brainz . I scratched at that for ages before giving up.

    Howzabout: To Strike = (DCS-ACS+KAOS)/2

    Where KAOS = 8 if DCS and ACS have the same parity, or 9 if unmatched.



    Bucket-Loads Of Ordinary Dice.

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    1. Almost, Kaos=10 when DCS and ACS are both either odd or even, 9 when not.

      Its harder to strike in the old school.

      BLOOD

      Bucket loads of ordinary dice.

      British legacy original old-school document.

      British legacy old-school options document.

      Brilliantly legal organised oldhammer derivation.

      Ambiguity over what BLOOD stands for could be cool.

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  5. Right got my head round all that - just been doing algebra with the kids and all!

    Very nice work Erny - it works a treat and BLOOD standing for anything suits me too.

    As for stat lines, I like:

    Dexterity and IQ
    Also Discipline and Speed

    Mind you Brains, Stoopidity and Kewl have a certain charm.

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  6. It's a matter of style or flavour as much as anything else, I think. Provided we don't duplicate the stat acronyms (is that right?) or step on the original statline's toes...

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  7. OK I'm going to have to be a right stick in the mud here. These are only my opinions but here are my reasons for not liking some of the recent suggestions.

    Discipline for Cool is no good. Ill disciplined barbarians may keep their cool in battle whereas drilled legionaries may at the scent of easy victory go into a blood frenzy. I see overlap but Discipline would be a perfect name for command or Ld. I like temperament or even, as cool is mainly used for frenzy, temper?

    IQ sounds too modern for a fantasy game never mind its subjective nature in the real world.

    Dex or Agility for I is not a good swap. For one thing Dex is brought into the WHFRP stat line and it measures something different. A dim witted person could conceivably be quite dexterous or agile with their hands but slow to react. Indeed how about Re for Reactions. Could clash with R Resistance/Resilience, perhaps swap these for Sn, Sinew?

    Who would have thought a stat line would be so hard!

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  8. Fair points!

    I think temperament fits better than temper somehow.

    What about intellect or acumen instead of IQ?

    I'd make reactions into reaction time (Rt) or responsiveness perhaps?

    Could reilience then be changed to endurance or durability?

    Know what you mean about it being tricky - there don't seem to be the one word that completely encapsulates each attribute.

    Got the made-up word Nimbility knocking round my head - nimbleness and agility combined - to use instead of initiative.

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  9. I think the second to Strike roll should be 3 - to Strike, with the negative number being the target score.

    Cool is used for all the psychology tests, so what about... "Psych!" or just Psychology, if you're not quite ready to rumble.

    It is tricky, especially when we're so used to the BRR (Bryan, Richard, Rick) version. Perhaps defining some design-goals for BLOOD might help reach a decision. As much as I like Kewl and Brainz, as they do have something of the knock-about attitude I associate with Oldhammer, I think aiming for a quirk-free 'scientific' / universalist / utilitarian system is more in keeping with the ideals of a retro-clone.

    Also, do we need to be talking Creative Commons licenses for BLOOD? Make it clear from the outset what we're putting our efforts into.

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    1. Yes Creative Commons could be the way to go, I do believe that this one is good for our project : http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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  10. I do really like how things are going ! (oh, and could you please add me to the team ?)

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  11. If there is a team I guess you are on it already. If you want to be able to author posts I'll need a blogger email adress.

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    1. There you are : bruno (dot) galice (at) gmail (dot) com

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  12. Zhu et al,

    On creative commons I guess I don't know enough about it to comment so much. How about you set out your thoughts on this, if you get time, in a different post. There are a number of discussions occurring here that are all worth pursuing perhaps separately and we are in danger of drowning out good stuff with new ideas.

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  13. That got very official very quickly (that's what I get for discussing mechanics and terminology I suppose)!

    Wasn't the whole point of the whole clone idea to maintain ownership of any other stuff the community makes and not get slapped with all kinds of legal BS for the trouble? As to a CCL... I honestly have no idea. My understanding of the law extends about as far as "don't kill folk".

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  14. Yes. I'm not sure the blog-format is really the most condusive to an organised discussion. We're already discussing statline naming that really belongs under the original statline post, and a name for the retro-clone which doesn't quite belong with a discussion of re-expressing combat-mechanics. C'est la internet...

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  15. I agree, we need some way to organise discussion properly and Blog pages just aren't intended to facilitate long discussions. I know I've mentioned this before elsewhere but a forum for the Oldhammer (or BLOOD, whatever) community would really help keep things on-topic by segregating different areas of conversation into discreet and self-referential units.

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