What is the average length of a combat engagement, in your vision? To-Hit chance works better when there are longer combat encounters, because it gives time for the average damage of each weapon to stabilize between hits and misses. However, in short combat encounters, characters who wield high-damage/low to-hit weapons get shafted on a miss. They don't have the time for those big hits to start coming through every third or fourth attack or so, wheareas the characters who reliably hit for smaller damage still get their licks in.

If you're looking at it numbers-wise (and lots of people will), all that matters is average damage. And average damage will matter most when you can trust that average to actually appear.

1. Why is random chance mechanics better for skills that develop as the heroes level up?

because with random chance to hit and / or random damage, you can implement the most classic combat mechanic of all time: chance to hit and / or damage based on character / monster level. it not necessarily better than some other method, but is simple and works well - and has a VERY long track record, 50+ (?) years in video and tabletop games. new and different does not necessarily equal better. and new and different is a hell of risk to take on in a game design in a bid just to not be "yet another game in the app store" - as in YACC.

What about give the player the choice?

there you go!

multiple combat modes - problem solved!

give that man a cigar!

different bites for different likes. you get two games with the effort of building just one.

Heh, I think Norman is being sarcastic, at least I hope so, because it's not two games with the effort of one, it's two games with the effort of two. In general, it's a bad idea to try to attempt two very different game mechanics. Especially as a single designer, you'd have to test both paths and design for both.

I disagree with Norman also in regards to leveling up. If you remove the To-hit, you still have hit points going up and damage going up.

Norman was probably sarcastic, but I still don't think that giving the player the choice is building 2 different games. The mechanics are not different at all. One is simply more deadly, which leads to a different gameplay, not mechanic. It falls in the case of very very lucky players and foes who always hit (but dealing less damage). The mod in code can be as simple as a if statement.

Norman was probably sarcastic, but I still don't think that giving the player the choice is building 2 different games. The mechanics are not different at all. One is simply more deadly, which leads to a different gameplay, not mechanic. It falls in the case of very very lucky players and foes who always hit (but dealing less damage). The mod in code can be as simple as a if statement.

No, because a well designed game will take into account hit chance as a mechanic. A spell that depends on having a low hit chance to balance it's deadliness will no longer be balanced. Oops, it's now the best spell in the game in the other mode. Creatures that were designed to have a high miss chance become trivially easy to defeat, etc. And if the designer decides not to utilize any of those features of hit chances, then why bother having to hit chance at all?

Norman was probably sarcastic, but I still don't think that giving the player the choice is building 2 different games. The mechanics are not different at all. One is simply more deadly, which leads to a different gameplay, not mechanic. It falls in the case of very very lucky players and foes who always hit (but dealing less damage). The mod in code can be as simple as a if statement.

No, because a well designed game will take into account hit chance as a mechanic. A spell that depends on having a low hit chance to balance it's deadliness will no longer be balanced. Oops, it's now the best spell in the game in the other mode. Creatures that were designed to have a high miss chance become trivially easy to defeat, etc. And if the designer decides not to utilize any of those features of hit chances, then why bother having to hit chance at all?

well, i will discuss on the goodness of having such a high level spell which fails to hit 90% of the time... Anyway, my suggestion was to half the damage done, so such spell will continue to be, probably, a balanced spell. Ok, hits everytime, do half the damage, which can be high enough yet, but also consumes a lot of mana or whatever.

And I keep thinking that having a x% to hit chance is not too far from the same thing, only where x = 100.

But hey, different points of view

Sure, but then you end up with a spell that could very likely doing the same thing as another existing spell. If a game has two spells, one that is high damage but low hit chance, and another that is low damage, high hit chance, by ticking off an option to get rid of hit chance, we get two spells that are now essentially the same, except maybe in mana cost, so we'd end up with spells that are unbalanced. Either they cost the same mana, and we now have useless clutter, or we have one spell that's always better to use. Basically, designing for one set of parameters, and then changing those parameters, means that things will need to be rebalanced.

A good example of a game that attempts to do too much, and ends up an unbalanced mess, is X-com Apocalypse. They attempted to go with Real Time andTurn based combat, and ended up with creatures that were incredibly hard to kill in one mode, but easy in another. Weapons that were useless in one mode, and incredibly powerful in another.

Sure, but then you end up with a spell that could very likely doing the same thing as another existing spell. If a game has two spells, one that is high damage but low hit chance, and another that is low damage, high hit chance, by ticking off an option to get rid of hit chance, we get two spells that are now essentially the same, except maybe in mana cost, so we'd end up with spells that are unbalanced. Either they cost the same mana, and we now have useless clutter, or we have one spell that's always better to use. Basically, designing for one set of parameters, and then changing those parameters, means that things will need to be rebalanced.

A good example of a game that attempts to do too much, and ends up an unbalanced mess, is X-com Apocalypse. They attempted to go with Real Time andTurn based combat, and ended up with creatures that were incredibly hard to kill in one mode, but easy in another. Weapons that were useless in one mode, and incredibly powerful in another.

I gave you +1 because of the good arguments, which sure are true, but :) ...

... but our friend is going to design/prototype the game now, he has not an already made game, so he can be wise and think carefully on which spell to add and the like. Sure, this is all at the cost of a major effort for the dev side, but it's not impossible at all.

You almost made me want to try myself :)

Hah, you're not wrong either =). I do agree, that if he doesn't do anything interesting with hit chance, then marking it as an option will have little change. But if he doesn't do anything interesting with hit chance, then, I don't think he should bother implementing it =)