Analyzing Tabletop RPG Combat System, Part I

The Art and Science of RPG Combat Systems

Role-playing gaming was once described as “a half hour of fun packed into four hours.” For some RPGs, this is certainly true, especially those with clunky, slow, and dull combat. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Risk vs Reward

It is a principle of human psychology that the gratification felt by the recipient of a reward is inversely proportional to the likelihood of the reward being won. This principle of risk versus reward is evident everywhere. Everyday examples include:

• If an investor puts $1000 into a stock that pays a 3% dividend, he will receive some gratification from collecting his $30 payment but he’s not likely to make a Facebook post about it. But if the same investor took $1000 to Las Vegas and came home with $1030, he will almost certainly brag to his wife or friends about his success as a gambler for “coming out ahead.”

• In a charity match-up between MLB’s New York Yankees and the Minor League Durham Bulls, fans of the Yankees will take a small amount of pleasure in the event of the virtually-inevitable Yankee victory. But fans of the Bulls will dance in the streets and set off fireworks in the event of the incredibly-unlikely Bulls victory.

• In asking someone out on a date, a would-be romancer will feel enormous gratification upon hearing “yes, I’ll go out on a date with you,” if the subject of their affection was deemed “hard to get.”

In the context of tabletop role-playing game combat, the principle of risk versus reward means two different things at two levels, the tactical and the operational.

• At the tactical level, it means it’s more fun to succeed in doing something that’s hard to achieve. Rolling a natural 20 to hit an enemy that otherwise cannot be harmed is cause for great celebration. Players will leap out of their seats and cheer in exultation. Nobody leaps out of their seat in exultation when they hit on 2+.

• At the operational level, it mean it’s more fun for the party to win a battle they were likely to lose. If a party of 1st level adventurers defeats an adult dragon against desperate odds, the players involved will bore their friends with stories of their triumph for decades to come. If a party of 10th level adventurers defeats an adult dragon, the players involved will vaguely remember that happened like three months ago at the session where Bob brought nachos I think.

That leads to our first maxim. The more that an RPG exposes its players to risk-laden challenges that lead to improbable successes, the more fun it will be for them.

Despite this maxim, many tabletop RPG battles have very little risk. Indeed, designers make great effort to explain to gamemasters how to stage battles that will lead to mathematically pre-determined outcomes. The idea of high-stakes win-or-die outcomes is largely anathema to modern play. (And the desire for high stakes battles is one of the draws of old-school play.)

However, the new school designers aren’t necessarily irrational in their approach. Mathematically the improbable victory… probably doesn’t happen. That’s a problem because of a second maxim: The more often an RPG causes players to fail when acting, the more frustrated they will be by the system.

At the tactical level, the effect of failure is frustration. In a role-playing game, attention is the most valuable currency, and when the spotlight falls on a player, they want to do something meaningful. A low probability of success makes for enormously gratifying success — but the more likely outcome is failure. The player loses their moment in the spotlight. In a group setting, the usual outcome is then that another player gets the success they hoped to achieve, which can regrettably lead to resentment between players.

This leads to our third maxim: The less frequently a player gets to act, the more likely it should be that their action succeeds. Otherwise, the second maxim will be routinely violated.

But this poses a problem!

If the gratification of a success is inversely proportional to the chance of success; and the chance of success is inversely proportional to the frequency with which a player acts; then… the less often the player gets to act, the less gratifying it will be to succeed when their turn comes up! The less time you spend in the spotlight, the less fun your time in the spotlight will be.

Fortunately, RPG designers have devised a way to circumvent this problem, which I will discuss later.

At the operational level, the effect of failure is defeat. Defeat can manifest in a variety of ways in an RPG, but the archetype of defeat is the “TPK" or total party kill, also known as the “party wipe.” The amount of consternation caused by defeat can vary massively by game and even by campaign. This leads to our fourth maxim: The harsher the consequences of defeat, the more likely it should be that the party’s operations succeed.

For instance, in old-school D&D, a 1st level party’s risk of being wiped out is very high. However, the consequences of defeat for the players are very low. It takes just a few minutes to roll up another 1st level character and the campaign can simply resume with new PCs.

Now let’s move on from risk and reward to….

Attrition and Maneuver

Let us imagine two hypothetical opponents, Athelstan and Bombor, with the following identical D&D characteristics: Armor Class 20, Attack Bonus +1, Damage 1d6+4, Hit Points 4.

With a +1 attack bonus vs AC 20, Athelstan needs a 19 or 20 to hit Bombor, giving him a 10% chance to hit. If Athelstan does hit Bombor, he’ll deal 5-11 damage, more than enough to incapacitate his foe. Therefore Athelstan can expect to defeat his foe in 1/.1 = 10 rounds. The same, in turn, is true for Bombor vs Athelstan. At some point, one or the other will emerge victorious and unharmed, having defeated the other in a single blow without being hit. Let’s call this the maneuver paradigm, since it resembles the doctrines of maneuver warfare. The maneuver paradigm is more-or-less the model for RPGs like Boot Hill, Cyberpunk 2020, RECON, and Twilight 2000.

Now let’s imagine that Athelstan and Bombor instead have the following characteristics: Armor Class 15, Attack Bonus +10, Damage 2d6+3, Hit Points 80.

With a +10 attack bonus vs AC 15, Athelstan now needs a 5 or more to hit Bombor, giving him a 80% chance to hit. On each hit, Athelstan will do an average of 10 damage. He will need to hit eight times to incapacitate Bombor. Therefore Athelstan can expect to defeat his foe in 8/.8 = 10 rounds.

Again, the same is true for Bombor vs Athelstan. At some point, one or the other will win, but before it happens, both are likely to be quite heavily damaged. Let’s call this the attrition paradigm, since it relies on reliable but gradual attrition of enemy hit points. The attrition paradigm is more-or-less the model for RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons 5E, Pathfinder, and RIFTS.

In both the attrition and maneuver paradigm, each combatant expects to defeat his opponent in 10 rounds. If were designing a computer wargame simulating a battlefield of 10,000+ combatants, these two paradigms would be interchangeable to us. But at the scale of a typical RPG campaign, these two paradigms feel very different.

• In the maneuver paradigm, every roll matters. Each time a player tosses the dice, victory or defeat is at stake. This creates excitement and stress.

• In the maneuver paradigm, the game is stateless. The likelihood that Athelstan defeats Bombor in any combat round is 10%, regardless of how many combat rounds have already occurred. The outcome of the battle remains unpredictable throughout its course. According to the first maxim, this makes the maneuver paradigm more fun than the attrition paradigm.

• In the attrition paradigm, the game is stateful. The likelihood that Athelstan defeats Bombor in any combat round depends on how well Athelstan has done in prior combat rounds. The outcome of the battle becomes increasingly predictable as it proceeds. According to the first maxim, this makes the attrition paradigm less fun than the maneuver paradigm.

• In both paradigms, a missed attack is experienced as failure by the attacker. There is no benefit to missing. However, misses are 450% more common in the maneuver paradigm (90% of the attacks are misses) than in the attrition paradigm (20% of the attacks are misses). According to the third maxim, this makes the maneuver paradigm less fun than the attrition paradigm.

Which is better? The answer actually depends on the number of players that the RPG expects to be cooperating in battles!

Remember our second maxim: The less frequently a player gets to act, the more likely it should be that their action succeeds. The more players there are, the less frequently each player gets to act.

In an RPG played with several players on the same time, the players take turns each combat round to make their contribution. If they attack and miss, they have contributed nothing at all to the fight that turn. Under the maneuver paradigm, 90% of attacks are misses, so 90% of the time, a player contributes nothing to the outcome of the battle. Given that a player might only get to take one turn every few minutes, that leads to a lot of frustration. “Why did I bother to show up tonight to just miss every attack?” Conversely, under the attrition paradigm, reliably hitting for moderate damage allows players to feel they have contributed to the overall success of the party round after round.

In an RPG played one-on-one, or played competitively between the players, a player succeeds or fails independently. In this case, the maneuver paradigm creates excitement. Every die roll matters. Unlike a game played in a group, in a one-on-one RPG the player who misses on rounds 1, 2, 3, and 4 will still be responsible for the victory in round 5, or 6, or whenever it occurs.

That leads to our fifth and final maxim: The more players that are expected to cooperate in battles, the more attritional the overall combat paradigm should be.

In Part II of this essay, we’ll show how the contradictions inherent to these maxims frequently yield boring combat, and how game design can circumvent these problems and make combat fun. For now, let’s finish with a restatement of the maxims:

1. The more that an RPG exposes its players to risk-laden challenges that lead to improbable successes, the more fun it will be for them.

2. The more often an RPG causes players to fail when acting, the more frustrated they will be by the system.

3. The less frequently a player gets to act, the more likely it should be that their action succeeds.

4. The harsher the consequences of defeat, the more likely it should be that the party’s operations succeed.

5. The more players that are expected to cooperate in battles, the more attritional the overall combat paradigm should be.

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