The Battle System I Wish RPGs Would Stop Using

While I like my role-playing games and their combat systems as stat-heavy as possible, I can certainly agree with some of the issues raised in this new blog entry penned by Sinister Design’s Craig Stern that breaks down why the Dungeons & Dragons rules have turned many titles into “an opaque and frustrating slog”.

For the most part, D&D gets away with relying so heavily on die rolls because it is a role-playing game run by human beings. Players have the flexibility to improvise tactics during a play session and, just as importantly, the ability to nag the Dungeon Master to fudge the dice in the name of a fun play experience.

If you are designing a computer game, there is no Dungeon Master to fudge the rules for you. There is only a program that is going to execute every line of code you enter with exacting literalness. You do not have the luxury of designing an arbitrary or unfair combat system. Any factors that are going to tilt combat in the players’ favor have to be coded into the game itself.

Unfortunately, most games that use an D&D-style combat system fail to give the player enough tactical options to manage the risks imposed by a highly randomized combat environment. They adopt the Thac0, the randomized damage and the saving throws, but then fail utterly to give the player more than a small handful of real tactical options. The player’s only friends become superior stats and superior loot.

This is poor design. Giving the player better combat numbers merely amounts to weighing the dice in the player’s favor. Weighing the dice does not turn a game of luck into a game of skill. In a game with randomized outcomes in combat, you have to give the player some robust tactical tools to manage her risk, or else she might as well be playing this.

Some game designers have done a better job of introducing outside tactical considerations than others. Compare, just for a moment, two popular computer RPGs with D&D-based combat systems: Baldur’s Gate and Pool of Radiance.

Pool of Radiance implements a wide variety of tactical considerations which allow the player to mitigate the risks inherent to a highly random, dice-based battle system: distance, directional facing, different attacks (fighters can sweep groups of adjacent enemies), and large numbers of characters under your control with different strengths and abilities.

Compared to Pool of Radiance, combat in Baldur’s Gate is an unpredictable mess. The tactics you can use are highly limited due to 1) the small number of characters under your control; 2) the fact that they each have only a single attack (not counting spells); 3) the awkward non-grid-based movement system; 4) the fact that enemies close distance with you almost instantaneously; and 5) the fact that you do not have direct control over your characters.

(But Craig,) you protest, (Baldur’s Gate 2 and Planescape Torment are widely considered to be two of the greatest RPGs ever created, and they both used the Baldur’s Gate implementation of the D&D combat system!) This is true. However, these games are classics because of their engaging characters, strong writing, and player freedom.

They are not classics because of their combat. So far as I am aware, there is not a single person on this planet who has played Planescape Torment, then decided that it was the best RPG ever made because he just loved using D&D’s clunky combat mechanics to determine the outcome of enemy encounters.

Planescape: Torment, sure. But I loved the combat in the Baldur’s Gate titles, particularly because of the insane variety of spells, skills, feats, abilities, and items that your party could make use of before, during, and after battles. Show me a game with that same amount of variety that isn’t based on an existing franchise like D&D and I’ll be all over it.