A New Look at Combat (Part 8): Beyond Damage

Continuing from the last post (Building a Combat System From the Ground Up), the next step after establishing control of range is determining the result of offense and defense. Because there are already many methods there to handle this, I won’t waste time trying to convince anyone that what I like is best; just use your favorite. The only important piece is that the degree of success has some influence on the magnitude of the effect – having only pass/fail results diminishes the importance of everything before the roll and encourages all-or-nothing decisions. Instead, I’m going discuss the idea that putting out damage shouldn’t be the only viable goal in combat.