Currently, combat in Elemental works in the following way: Each unit has an attack score. When it attacks it generates a random number between 1 and that score (aka, rolls a dice with that many sides) and subtracts the defence value of the unit it is attacking to determine its damage. Groups of men are displayed as having the same attack and defence values as 1 man, multiplied by the number of men in the unit. This means that when a unit of three guys is described as having 60 attack, it is slightly disingenuous. But i'll get back to this later.
We also have, by popular demand, a to-hit system. The problem is that no one really cares about it because attacks rarely miss. The system was set up so that misses rarely happen because that would make combat slow and unsatisfying. Hence the accuracy system is very half hearted and no one really cares about their unit’s accuracy.
More importantly, going back to the first point, giving groups multiple attack rolls and monsters and champions just one gives us two very different kinds of unit which are difficult to balance against each other. Currently champions are very powerful because they are now capable of getting huge attack scores. This was the only way to make them competitive against large units (in comparison to WoM). But the problem with this is that it quickly gets out of hand: a unit with One Big Attack Dice is better than a group of men with lots of small ones, because the enemy unit’s defence score is only subtracted once.
So I propose the following: instead of giving monsters and champions huge attack values, give them multiple attack dice, like units have. Champions would start at 2 attack dice and rise to about 5 as they gained more through traits. The attack stat should be renamed “damage” and every unit should have an “attackS” stats instead, displaying the number of attack dice each unit rolls when it attacks.
Reasons for doing this:
1 – It more accurately represents the way the combat system actually works
2 – It’s how most other game systems, from dungeons and dragons to warhammer, work: individual powerful units rolling multiple attack dice in a single turn.
3 – It reduces the potential for monsters and champions to overtake units in terms of damage output, by putting them on the same playing field (champions and monsters will have the defence rolls of enemies subtracted more than once from their damage, moderating their damage ouput).
4 – It allows accuracy and to-hit to be implemented properly. Currently, you can’t have half the attacks missing, because that means 50% of turns are wasted and unsatisfying. But if every unit has multiple attack dice, EACH DICE CAN ROLL TO HIT INDIVIDUALLY, and the resulting scores added together. So Damage is done even when some of the to-hit rolls fail.
5 – It adds depth and character to units. Units with low damage and lots of attacks (like spearmen) can do lots of damage to units with low defence values like other units, swarms, and weak monsters. But Monsters and Champions, with higher attack values and less dice, might be the only units capable of defeating enemies with high defence values. So you use your units to hold off their units, while your hero takes on their dragon. This isn’t a rock-paper-scissors type thing: good units of any kind remain competitive against each other.
6 – It reduces randomness. As every child knows, rolling a 7 on 2 dice added together Is much more likely than rolling a 12. Currently, randomness is reduced by an “under-the-hood” normal distribution curve. Doing it this way would remove the need for the maths to be “fixed.”
I attach the caveat that this post is based on my less than perfect understanding of the increasingly arcane combat system (and this in itself is a good reason for reforming it). Secondly, this would also require a wide reform of the attack values for heroes and monsters (something which I believe needs to be done anyway).
