On BASH And Dice-Rolling Philosophies (long!)

[Nestor]

For those who haven't been following it, I've been playing in a one-player game in the Play By Post forum here, run by the illustrious Dustland. I went into the game to learn the BASH system, having come across it a month and a half ago.

I came across something in the game that I felt I needed to discuss with other folks more experienced with the system to help clarify my understanding. Please let me be clear that this is in no way shape or form a slam of Dustland's deft GM'ing, or the BASH system in general. I'm just trying to work this out in my head.

The situation that sparked this was a combat between my character and a NPC. After two or three rounds of whiffing every shot I threw, I attempted to spice up the combat by trying the old "throw dirt into the other guy's face" trick. Dustland informed me that doing so would require me to achieve a success + 10. My thought was that if I couldn't hit the guy outright, trying to go 10 over what I needed was even less likely.

Allow me to digress a moment to explain: while I understand that a certain amount of abstraction in combat is needed, I generally don't favor having it turn into just a bunch of rolls (y'know, "I hit, you hit, I miss, you hit" ad nauseum). In fact, one of the things that attracted me to a Certain Well-Known Superhero RPG way back in the early 80's was the fact that it included a combat maneuver chart, providing players with options in a fight.

Now, I'm not saying that BASH needs more crunch in the combat rules. It's more that the blanket "success+10" concept seems to discourage creativity a little too much, IMO. Here, follow my logic and let me know if and where I'm going wrong.

Let's take two characters, both with Agility 2. Assuming an average dice roll (7) for Defense for a total of 14, the attacker would need to roll a total 24 (12x2, or boxcars) to manage the +10 threshold. If both characters have Agility 3, the attacker would still need to roll 10 or better to do anything else but just hit the guy. Essentially, the only way for a character to have a decent chance of doing anything clever is having a stat at least 2 above the opponent's.

What if the attacker uses a Hero die to add to the roll? Well, the problem is that it doesn't really help. A die gives you an average of 3 in a roll (well, 3.5 to be exact, but go with me on this). So again, you need a stat of more than 3 to get close to an even chance to succeeding in doing anything else than just hit the guy.

And yes, I'm not considering doubles because both characters have an equal chance of rolling them, so they don't really provide an edge to the attacker.

I would humbly suggest that, while Called Shots (i.e. aiming for a specific body part for increased damage/effect) should have some sort of modifier to make it harder (although a +10 might be a bit much), performing a trick or some other non-damaging effect (i.e. tossing dirt in the other guy's face, causing a pile of boxes to land on him) shouldn't be.

Otherwise, I might as well just keep mindlessly bashing and hope I finally get a hit in, someday.

Thanks for listening to my ramble.

[BASHMAN]

A Hero Die *doubles* your chance of rolling doubles though from 1/6 to 2/6. So that does provide an edge where doubles are concerned.

I think what you were trying to do is find a way to make use of the "Benefit/Hindrance Chart", so that you could get a bonus or give the other guy a penalty. There were probably ways you could do it that didn't involve you having to make an attack roll, though. You could role-play one out.

Maybe you move to a position where the sun is in his eyes, or to a place in the room where you are on stable footing, but the enemy is not, etc, to give you that situational +2 dice bonus you needed. Maybe it could even be a role-play thing where you manipulate the guy, pushing all his buttons till he makes mistakes.

If you were more strong than fast, you could have tried to grapple him, and once he's grabbed, you can either do automatic damage or get a +2 dice bonus to hit and damage with ordinary attacks.

[BeardedDork]

I would have called it a power stunt for confusion. 1 hero die = you do cool thing, merry christmas, that was actually my thought when I first read that encounter as well. I think the bash system does a very good job of allowing you to do cool cinematic things and avoiding the back and forth slug-fests that some other games seem to encourage.

[Nestor]

Thanks for the quick response, Chris!

A Hero Die *doubles* your chance of rolling doubles though from 1/6 to 2/6. So that does provide an edge where doubles are concerned.

Good point, and one I realized after posting. 2 in 6 is still only a 33% chance though, so I'm not sure how much of an edge it gives. Besides, there's also the fact that the defender can use a Hero Die too.

I think what you were trying to do is find a way to make use of the "Benefit/Hindrance Chart", so that you could get a bonus or give the other guy a penalty. There were probably ways you could do it that didn't involve you having to make an attack roll, though. You could role-play one out.

Maybe you move to a position where the sun is in his eyes, or to a place in the room where you are on stable footing, but the enemy is not, etc, to give you that situational +2 dice bonus you needed. Maybe it could even be a role-play thing where you manipulate the guy, pushing all his buttons till he makes mistakes.

That's sort of what I was going for with the trick. I guess it becomes a judgment call for the GM to decide if an action is an actual resolvable task (i.e. roll dem bones!) or a benefit/hindrance maneuver.

If you were more strong than fast, you could have tried to grapple him, and once he's grabbed, you can either do automatic damage or get a +2 dice bonus to hit and damage with ordinary attacks.

I thought about that after the fact, but I wasn't sure if it fit the character concept. Then again, I suppose biting and hanging on wouldn't be too farfetched for a dog to do!

[Dustland]

I was actually reading over the wrestling rules last night because of another post on here and I was wishing I had been more familiar with them before we started that encounter (for Kerbi's sake, old Redtooth was doing just fine )

It didn't occur to me to use the Hero Die for a power stunt (Confusion), that's a great idea BD! Using power stunts to simulate combat maneuvers is worthy of it's own thread!