Anyway the concept is this, okay first let’s back up a bit. As a DM (and probably a player) when it’s the DM’s turn players tend to ‘turn off’ during combat. My wife knits for example when it’s not her turn. They only wake up when its their turn or you (the DM) say “Okay Bissae you take 9 points of damage” and most times they either say “What? From who?” or think about saying it but don’t want to let on how much they weren’t paying attention.
So this variant rule is designed to keep some small modicum of interaction going on between the players and the non-players even when it’s not their turn. It won’t help when it’s other player’s turns and the monster’s aren’t hitting on them directly but smaller breaks might help keep their attention from wandering too far.
Standard procedure is the DM rolls a d20 + bonuses to hit a fixed DC on the players. This used to be AC but under 4th it’s now Fortitude, Reflex and Will as well as Armour Class but that’s irrelevant.
What this variant does is reverse that system. The players will roll a d20 + bonuses to beat a fixed DC. In this case the DC is based on the monsters attack bonus with an attack.
If you’re familiar with True 20 it’s very similiar to that system’s Toughness roll but it’s only for the players although you could reverse it completely but the point of this is to keep the players interested not just swap jobs.
With the standard attack roll, the monster is using their offense to try and beat the player’s defense. Under the variant the Player is trying to use their defense to beat the monster’s offense.
Numerically and statistically it can be made so that both methods will yield identical results.
The mechanics of the system are as follows. For the player for their ‘defense roll’ when attacked they will get their base modifier for the defense plus any bonuses + a d20. What they won’t get is the base 10 that all defenses start with. So a player with a 17 AC under the standard rule will instead have a 7 AC under the reverse variant rule.
The monsters are the one that gets a base now and the number is 12. So a monster with an attack that reads something like “+8 vs AC” has a value of 20 (12+8). The player has to equal or beat that. A 1 rolled by the player indicates the monster got a critical.They critically fumbled their defense in other words.
This does take die rolls away from the DM and makes it very difficult to fudge so that has to be considered if it’s something that’s important to you. Your players will very quickly zero in on the number they need to roll to avoid an attack and at that point you can’t change it without it being obvious you are fudging things one way or another.
Example under both rules:
Petra has defense of AC: 18 (base 10 + mods+Armour Value), under the variant she has AC: 8 (mods + armour value).
Whosit has attack of 3, variant 15 (base 12+3)
Monster attacks under standard rules:
Monster rolls d20+3 versus 18.
Monster needs 15+ to hit, -14 misses.
15+ = 30% hit rate
-14 = 70% miss rate.
Monster attacks under variant rule:
Petra rolls d20+8 vs 15.
Petra needs to roll 7+ to BE missed, -6 to get hit.
7+ = 70% miss rate.
-6 = 30% hit rate.
As you can see the percentages are the same either way. The player will get hit just as often and missed just as often. But the variant might get your players back in the game when it’s not their turn to roll dice.
Recent Comments