Zarban

Previously, I’ve posted about improving melee combat by introducing tactics. But I continue to try to innovate and simplify it. My latest idea returns to the concept of a hero die.

Previously, I’ve created systems where characters have a hero die that improves gradually over time. But in this system, you would also still have flat bonuses for both attack and damage. Here is an example for the fighter class.

Level	Attack	Hero Die	Damage
1	+1	—	—
2	+1	+1	—
3	+1	+1	+1
4	+2	+1	+1
5	+2	+1d3	+1
6	+2	+1d3	+2
7	+3	+1d3	+2
8	+3	+1d4	+2
9	+3	+1d4	+3
10	+4	+1d4	+3
11	+4	+1d6	+3
12	+4	+1d6	+4
13	+5	+1d6	+4
14	+5	+1d8	+4
15	+5	+1d8	+5

The greater difference is that you can now apply your hero die as a bonus in various ways. Here’s how.

Each round, you choose how you want to fight:

• Tactical: Apply your hero die as a bonus to your attack.
• Aggressive: Apply your hero die as a bonus to your damage.
• Defensive: Apply your hero die as a bonus to your armor class.
• Sweeping: Your hero die determines how many opponents you can hit for half damage, provided your attack roll hits their armor class and they are close enough together for you to attack them all in the same round.

I still like the tactics I created before, and you can more or less use them together, but I feel like these make it clear that the player has a choice to make every round, but that choice is simple: where do I want the bonus to go?

You might start off being defensive, then switch to aggressive when you decide the opponent isn’t too tough, then switch to tactical when you really want to be sure you hit. In fights against multiple weaker foes, you might switch between sweeping attacks to knock down multiple opponents and aggressive fighting to knock down a boss but fall back to defensive if the boss calls in several more minions that threaten to overwhelm you.

The earlier tactics would likely result in the player just choosing aggressive over and over except in fights where they are out-matched, whereupon they would just choose defensive over and over. This would, of course, be broken up by fights where they out-match multiple opponents, which would result in them choosing sweep over and over.

However, this is what it would look like with both sets of tactics together.

• Tactical: Apply your hero die as a bonus to your attack. If you hit for damage and your opponent misses entirely, you can force your opponent back 5 feet, if they are your size or smaller.
• Aggressive: Apply your hero die as a bonus to your damage. If you hit for damage and your opponent misses entirely, you can force your opponent back 5 feet, if they are your size or smaller. If you are also charging and hit for damage with your first attack, you deal an extra weapon die of damage.
• Defensive: Apply your hero die as a bonus to your armor class. If you choose to fall back 5 feet, and all melee hits against you from your front do half damage. You cannot also be forced back by an aggressive attack.
• Sweeping: Your hero die determines how many opponents you can hit for half damage, provided your attack roll hits their armor class and they are close enough together for you to attack them all in the same round.