I've been messing about with dice mechanics in the d10 DAV system.
The game is normally set up to have a flat 6 difficulty for both to hit and damage, and both are opposed by dodge and soak rolls. I wanted to speed things up somewhat and eliminate the dodge and soak rolls.
I tried making the difficulty to hit be the target's Dexterity + Dodge + Shield (Every success on the attack roll translated to additional damage dice on a 1 to 1 basis.), and the difficulty to damage be the target's Stamina + Fortitude + body armor rating. Whatever got past that soak difficulty was damage that had to be healed later on.
However, I learned that for some unknown reason, offense was wildly blowing defense out of the water. Couldn't figure out why. Whoever went first hosed over the defender to the point where said defenders couldn't really make much of a comeback.
The way the game works, a 1 on a given d10 negates a success. A success is whatever number meets or exceeds the difficulty number, and the greater the number of successes, the more impressive your roll. A 10 on a d10 doesn't do anything special, other than always counting as a success.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to speeding up the game mechanics somewhat? And why did the offense so greatly overpower defense when I messed with the difficulty ratings?
(It was long since I looked on DA mechanics)
You might want to try following:
Attack pool is rolled normally (successes scored on 6+).
Defense pool (Dex+Dodge/Melee in case of parry+Shield) is halved and subtracted from successes scored by the attacker instead of rolling (this is just replacing roll with average).
Damage pools and soak pool instead of being rolled are just halved an applied as direct values.
Every two successes scored on attack roll adds one point of damage.
This hastens combat because you can pre-calculate and note down defense value, damage value and soak value and make single roll and just add and subtract. It has the (dis)advantage of not having spectacular overkills or very weak attacks.
Then if every 2 attack roll successes grant 1 of damage, what would be the point of Strength and Potence?
So far, I was thinking of having the difficulty to hit be the target's Dexterity + Dodge + 1 (if a shield is used) and the difficulty to damage just be 6. That at least eliminates one roll.
This is a totally different idea you've posted. Gotta think about it.
Then if every 2 attack roll successes grant 1 of damage, what would be the point of Strength and Potence?
Damage from successes would be in addition to regular damage from damage dice pool - which is based on Strength and Potence in case of Brawl an Melee...
Ok, I don't remember how Potence worked in Dark Ages Vampire - was it adding successes or dice to damage rolls? If it was adding successes to damage roll it would not be halved.
Maybe I'll give an example. (note it was quite a long time since I saw DAV - if I mixed something from another incarnation of Vampire or World Of Darkness in general let me know)
Grigor, Brujah with Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Brawl 4, Dodge 3, Fortitude 2 and Potence 3 fights against Raul, inquisitor with Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Melee 5, Dodge 5, 2-dice armor and a relic sword that inflicts Str +5 damage.
Normally Grigor has attack pool of 7 dice, defense pool of 6 dice, soak pool of 5 dice (2 against aggravated) and unarmed damage pool of 4 with 3 more automatic successes from Potence.
Raul has 8 dice in his attack pool, 8 dice in his defense pool, rolls 8 dice of damage and soaks bashing and lethal damage with 4 dice. Lots of rolling but it could be worse.
Under the simplified rules Grigor still rolls seven dice. Instead of rolling his eight dice in defense pool, Raul subtracts a fixed number of 4 successes. If Grigor has at least 1 success left, he inflicts 5 point of damage plus 1 per two successes minus Raul's soak value of 2. Note that without automatic successes from Potence Grigor's unarmed attack would inflict a net of zero damage (2 regular damage minus 2 soak) plus any additional damage from successes.
Method I suggested just replaces roll with assumption that exactly half of the damage and soak dice rolled successes and still operates within the basic mechanics and general probabilities assumed by the system. Of course Storyteller has to decide which pools will be rounded down and which rounded up.
Potence is automatic successes. Think of them as phantom dice that always pop up "10's".
hmmm. I think I will try my simplified version first, and then try yours, and see which works best.