While "demand" wouldn't be the word I'd use, rolling 0 to max does have to go. Weapons, armor, and spells should have a minimum roll, and the stat modifier should apply to it as well. It's reasonable to always expect to do at least 1/3rd of the weapon's max damage, so say if a club can do 6 max, then your rolls are 2-6. The STR bonus then applies to both the low and the high, so if 2-6 is with 10 STR, with 20 STR you might have 6-18. Same should apply to spells, they need a base damage and use INT and shards (though now less than 100% bonus) as a modifier. Right now if you have a bunch of shards it pushes your top end damage up, so you end up rolling 0 - 70 and fun stuff like that. Should work the same as weapons.

I'm definitely behind this.  The current system just doesn't work well.

Check out my overhaul...

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393123

Though it doesn't exactly get rid of 1d rolls, it does address the problem in another way.

And my axe!

There's no reason to use 1dN unless:

1dN is your variance (STR + 1dN) 

You are using a result lookup table, like in a Hex-based Wargame (Str/Def = number of lookup table, table has 1dN possible outcomes)

You are doing a to-pass roll, where the target value is static and beatable (1dN > Defense, where Defense < N)

You are performing an opposed, modified roll (1dN + Str > 1dN + Def)

A 1dN roll without modification, is ridiculous.  I agree it is good to allow the user to understand the combat calculation, but we can add a number to a roll.  

And if you really want to make it easy to understand, remove random numbers from combat entirely (not that I recommend it here).

Except with 6d6 there is only a 1/46656 chance of rolling a 6 (1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6) whereas with a random number between 6 and 36 there is a 1/31 chance of rolling a 6.

THAT is why people are complaining.

I would actually prefer to have to-hit chance differentiated from the damage done. Almost every RPG out there does this, because it makes an awful lot of sense.

Have that huge Lordly Hammer? Doing gazillions of damage? Well, try to hit a small and agile goblin with it. Chances are, the goblin will have chewed off your toe by the time you manage to hit it.

Or in more technical terms, let's have agility define how many damage rolls you get, and strength define how much damage you do, combined with the weapon strength itself.

Additionally, allow us to specify bonuses to AGI, STR or HP when training troops, at the cost of longer training times. This would add more sense to barracks, command post, etc.

Here is repost of my thoughts https://forums.elementalgame.com/393270

Basically why not to try to do what MoM did once, it actually worked - 

By MumbaCraft Posted August 27, 2010 2:21:34 AM

I think it's clear the combat is quite volatile. Let's suppose we have 4 def 4 attack guy fighting the same guy. I suppose each attack or defence roll will get 0-4 result, (if it's 1-4 result will be simmilar but with lower damage potential)

Next will go some statistics: chance to hit for 5 - 4%, 4 - 8%, 3-12%, 2-16%, 1-20%, 0 - the rest(40%), As you can see it's almost a linear increase

Let's look at another guy, 7 att / 2 def

7-4%(1/24), 6-8%(2/24), 5-12%(3/24) 4-12%(3/24) 3-12%(3/24) 2-12%(3/24) 1-12%(3/24) 0-24%(6/24) - Here we can see a linear dispersion for the most part.

That's to put it blunt is a very bad mathematic formula for damae calculation, since it tends to create spikes (ie high chance of a very high or very low damage) and limits any potential tactics. Hero can be oneshoted especially with high attack.

Now let's look what happens if elemental will adopt MoM formula, but let's say not 30% to hit chance but 50%. (to those who does not know each rank in attack has 50% chance to hit) now chance to do max damage is only 0.2%. We are getting typicall bell curve here with 2.5 damage as an average. I do think it's a much better damage calculation formula since it creates predictable result but still allows variation.

And frankly I don't think it's that hard to change dmg formula.

UPD: what it mean - for example guy has 7 attack, thus he makes 7 times to hit test (so in case of 50% to hit chance) 3.5 damage on average, same goes to defense calculation.  BTW MoM had to 30% to hit chance, this allowed for an interesting mechanics when one thing is to increase attack, which is useful for low attack mooks, but for powerful ones another +3 was not so great, but +1 to hit (+10%) was really cool

Yes, and they work the same way. That's what compounds the problem so badly. You get situations where your 40 defense simply doesn't work for a hit, and you're eating whatever the attacker rolls. If he rolls high, the champion you just spent 100 turns powering up into a force is one-shot.

It makes combat feel very random, and very much like playing an FPS with headshots. Now and then in late game you'll have a unit just suddenly get flattened.

There's been a lot of suggestions to fix it. The one thing we all agree one is that straight linear distribution rolls for both attack and defense simply work badly as the numbers get bigger.

(They also worked badly in GalCiv 2, but it just didn't matter as much because everything was just another ship you build. It doesn't bug me so much when I lose a stack of guys I randomly trained. But when my sovereign gets one shot attacking a city despite being the strongest unit on the field simply due to a bad roll and that causes game over? NOT cool! )

My understaning is that it is currently 1dN for attack less 1dN for defense, but my solution is simpler we use the system as it stands, but we just have multiple attacks in a turn - that will require an increase to base hitpoints - but that will acheive the same result (and is a much simpler fix)

Just for reference, in Master of Magic, if you had 10 "attack" and 3 "to-hit", then it would roll 10 times, each with a 30% chance of hitting (before the defender's armor had its chance to absorb some hits).   Much more predictable, but still random enough.  And no noticeable delay even the machines of 15 years ago.  Works for me.

Well if you had +3 to Hit that it would make 60% to hit, since 30% was base chance

But even that musn't be a 4 +1D6 roll ! It's still a uniform distribution !

It's not only about range ! It's about what you roll !

Not 1D20 but 4D5