I''m writing a text RPG. It''s very simple. The way the battle works, the attacker''s to hit % is the only thing that effects their chance to hit, and the oppontnt''s to hit % is taken into play when they attack. I think this is a good system for a simple game. What do you think? I could make your opponent''s to hit % affect your chance to hit in battle, but that makes things too complex, doesn''t it?

try this:

you have a attack% and defend%. attack% tells you how likly you are to hit the creature when you attack. just like you have now. if this misses, you write something along the lines "you missed" or "your strike was true but your aiming off"

the defend% is a bit funkier. it is the chance of a successful attack to hit. so once you do the attack% and find out if it hits or not, you then use the defend% to determine if the creature can dodge the attack or not. this number should be extremly low (ie less then 10%) unless the player is fighting some special creature that is really fast. in this case you write things like "the creature dodged your attack" or "your attack was swift, but the monster was swifter.

if you want, you can also assign a "level" number to each creature and the player. this number is used to create a factor to increase the higher level persons stats when fighting lower level creatures. you do monster_level/player_level*0.5 thne multiply that number times the monster. you do player_level/moster_level*0.5 and multiple that by the player stuff. this is designed to help the player breeze through lower level monsters in earlier areas, and make higher level monsters in later areas tougher. so that the player is even more likly then normal to hit lower level creatures. and lower level creatures will have a harder time hitting the player. this make sure also that you dont have to increase the attack/defend percentages too much making it a bit easier to balance things.
for levels, you can start the match with a message like:
"this foe looks liek a worthy challenge" or "the monster appears to be frightened" or "the creature looks formidable". so the player has an idea to the degree of skill they have copared to the creature they fight. this way you dont have to show the level of the creatures at all.

remeber, not all the numebrs need be visible to the player. so things like attack and defend percentages can stay hidden and the player knows only their level.

you dont need levels, defend percentage or anything fancy. your attack percentage idea is fine and very acceptable (in fact many text rpgs use that technique). i only am giving you some more ideas so that you can get an idea how complex things can get and how to handle it.

If you want to have a progressive difficulty, i.e. the enemies get increasingly harder, having just a singular hit% would exist outside of that difficulty. In other words, trying to hack away at a group of bees wouldn''t be anymore difficult then hitting sleeping livestock. You could however have a reverse system where each as its own Evade% and hit accuracy is never taken into account. However, then the player will never be able to advance to the point where hitting those bees is a piece of cake. One last idea is to have some counter that indicates your physical legerity or agility, and then pit these numbers between fighters to see wether or not you strike. A quick alg. can help display this.

RAW = Actor.Agility - Target.Agility
RAW = RAW + Random(0, 25)
IF RAW > 0, THEN HIT, ELSE MISS.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

Diablo II uses Attack and Defense values...

Chance to hit = Attack / (Attack + Defense) 

The system works pretty well, as long as players and npcs have balanced Attack and Defense values. It scales automatically at higher levels.

I will try what a person said, with a small evade %.

you can also look at some pen and paper games (like Dungeons and dragons) for ideas.

Dracoliche''s idea seems pretty good as well.

Missing tends to fustrate as it tells you that your only wasting your time, so what you could try is having a chance of reducing damage. Say, you have some Avoidance number, and do one of these.

X = RANDOM(0,99)
IF X < (AVOIDANCE / 2), MISS
ELSE IF (X < AVOIDANCE), REDUCE DAMAGE BY HALF

Its another idea to play with, since the battling probably wouldn''t be all that fast, just a mud-like YOU SLASH AT THE THINGEY''S HEART, you probably wouldn''t want to toy with the player''s diminishing patience by having an enemy with a 97% miss rate...

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.