Stargrave - too random?

[craigjwoodfield]

Played 4 games of Stargrave now, and I like everything about it. Except for the opposed d20 rolls. So much scope for wildly different results, particularly in shooting, and subsequent disproportionate outcomes.

I haven't played Frostgrave so don't know if it has the same issues, but the randomness and pure luck involved has tempered my enjoyment of an otherwise very neat game.

[fred]

Yep, a frequent problem for people with the Frostgrave / Stargrave engine.

Certainly in Frostgrave it was very much part of the game - but my group wasn’t a fan of it

[Grumpy Gnome]

Whilst researching the *grave series of games this very topic kept cropping up. There are numerous threads about the d20 mechanic of the *grave series but my understanding of the issue is purely theoretical since I have yet to play any of the games.

We invested in Ghost Archipelago but I have not painted up everything we need for that yet. So I am interested in whether anyone has found a suitable solution for the swingy, random feeling of combat.

I thought 2d10 might be a solution but that has had mixed responses in previous threads.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

All of McCullough's skirmish games use the same core mechanic and this topic has been endless discussed since 1st ed Frostgrave.  It's a matter of taste.  I neither love nor hate it, but the perceived randomness is nowhere near as extreme as most people make it out to be, and it certainly isn't hard to predict.

If your Shoot equals their Fight you have a 45% chance to hit, and every point of difference shifts the odds by 5%.  Makes modifiers far less impactful than (say) a d6 system would, and provides a little more granularity.  The amount of damage you do isn't really all that random either, it just isn't sitting at 10.5+your bonuses like some people seems to think.  Most low attack rolls will miss, while most high ones will hit, so the net effect is that your expected damage is probably somewhere around 14+Shoot+Dam bonuses, varying a bit based on respective bonuses.  Even the weakest soldier (the guard dog) takes 18 damage to one-shot, so that's 15+(5 x attack+dam bomuses)% of the time, minus a bit because sometimes that net 18 will still miss the target as they roll high.  More normal "support" soldiers need a net 22 result and actual combat types around 24-25, with the power armored guys needing 27.

Without advanced officer-grade stats it's extremely rare to one-shot even middling fighters although crits will manage it in almost all cases.  You can roughly calculate the odds of dropping damaged models with another hit using the same process and subbing in the lower health total, of course.  It's generally useful to think more about the odds of a shot stunning or wounding the target than dream about one-shot-one-kill fantasies, which is again pretty easy to get rough odds on.  Stun needs a minimum target armor+4 damage, wound needs target armor+health-4 - and forget about it if you're shooting a robot.

Now, whether you actually want to do this kind of prob & stat exercise at the table is questionable, but the plain fact is that the numbers are there if you want them, and while allowing for how much the opposed rolls generating unlikely results is a bit trickier, it's also more trouble than its generally worth.  Predicting outcomes within (say) 10% is plenty good enough for gaming until Vegas starts running big-money Frostgrave tourneys.

[snitcythedog]

For me I like the swing of the D20 system.  We play for fun and since I tend to roll very hot and very cold so my games are usually up and down.  Our games tend to tell a story and are always enjoyable.  My two cents.

[giles the zog]

The d20 mechanism does do a lot of swings but IMHO it is really good as it means your characters have to support each other, and there is no super killer combo at low to mid level.

We had a game of RoSD on Thursday evening.Mt Ranger carved his way through half a dozen cultists in one round, and then promptly failed his Will test for resisting a flash bang grenade (it was a scenario I wrote). The other Rangers having been KO'd managed to get up, so we went from utter disaster to victory in about 2 turns.

This made for much suspense and collaborative activity between 4 players.

I've played 2 opposed Stargrave games, the first I lost despite being a higher level, the second I won. We'd been doing the solo Dead Or Alive games as we were semi locked down and I only got my second jab Wednesday which hampered meet ups (outdoors in my mate's new gazebo).

It comes down to personal preference, but I find it better than the predictable grind of a d6 system, or even d10.

[fastolfrus]

Isn't it just the case that you only remember the instances where you roll 1s (or 20s)?

Presumably D6 games don't give so many memorable moments or you roll so many of them you don't notice?

[craigjwoodfield]

Some good comments there, but I will add that rather than focus on what is just required to hit, the probability of getting a wildly disproportionate outcome  - 1 player rolling 1-4, the other rolling 17-20,  for example, is quite high. It doesn't have to result in a kill to be influential, just a serious wound, and if it happens to the same player a couple of times, they could be in trouble no matter how good their strategy.

I don't think a d6 system is the solution, but I think d10 would have been a better design choice. I went with 2d6 in Ronin to avoid too much of this sort of thing. Ronin still has the chance of single shot kills, I might add.

But it's clearly a very successful game, and full credit to the author.

[Blackwolf]

Actually, I think the d20 system is very realistic. However I am biased since Runequest came out all those years ago

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Some good comments there, but I will add that rather than focus on what is just required to hit, the probability of getting a wildly disproportionate outcome  - 1 player rolling 1-4, the other rolling 17-20,  for example, is quite high. It doesn't have to result in a kill to be influential, just a serious wound, and if it happens to the same player a couple of times, they could be in trouble no matter how good their strategy.

Rolling exceptionally low has very little game effect whether it's on offense or defense.  A miss is a miss regardless of how much you missed by, and a hit with a medium or low roll (and your opponent rolling even lower) inflicts little or no damage.  It's the unusually high rolls that matter most, and those mostly on offense where the damage is significant.  IME very few people remember when they roll high on defense compared to the number of (say) 17+ attacks they got in the course of a game.

Melee is a somewhat different affair, since you're both at risk of taking damage during an exchange but you still compare the high roll to armor rather than each other's Fight rolls, which means your margin of victory on the opposed Fight test is meaningless - a 19 total hurts just as much against an 18 as it does against a 2 - and that does seem to bother some people a lot.  And people absolutely remember the slightly less than 1 time in 20 that you get a tie in melee and both sides get hurt.  But Stargrave de-emphasizes melee more than any of the other XXGrave games do.

 

[fourcolorfigs]

When considering the system the "swing" of the D20 is either a feature or a bug. I consider it a feature.

That being said, you can create mitigating house rules. For example, assign your Captain and First Mate each 1 Fate point. They can then spend those fate points to swap dice results on a D20 exchange. Once a swap is made, the Fate point is spent, and doesn't come back until next game.

[Sir_Theo]

Wasn't the D20 system in Frostgrave 1st ed a conscious decision to hark back to the days of oldschool D&D etc?

I agree though that its not as swingy as people make out, but there is the perception that it is if you aren't used to it

[Von Trinkenessen]

I like the fact that it is just one type of dice , rather than a whole hoard of polyhedrals. A lot easier for the old git to remember .

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I like the fact that it is just one type of dice , rather than a whole hoard of polyhedrals. A lot easier for the old git to remember .

Interesting.  I have to confess that while I like Stargrave I'd still rather play Stargrunt/Full Metal Anorak any day of the week.  The games are designed to do different things so it's a bit apples & oranges but I find I quite like all the polyhedrals in Tuffley's rules.

[Codsticker]

I don't think a d6 system is the solution, but I think d10 would have been a better design choice. I went with 2d6 in Ronin to avoid too much of this sort of thing. Ronin still has the chance of single shot kills, I might add.

I was wondering if you could explore trading the 1D20 for either 2D10 or 3D6 to get a less linear distribution of results? I do not own any of the Grave series or played the game so this might be unpossible or completely screw the game up.