Free Form Dice! (Hear me out)

[Kable Syranos]

So, it can be really fun to Free Form Combat, but sometimes it would be nice to have some form of moderation to steer the results of Free Form attacks without relying one's own ego to properly determine when/if/how one should be "hit" and how hard. One might point to the current Dice systems in play as clear and obvious alternatives to the wide open nature of Free Form, but those systems can tend to reduce combat to rolling dice back and forth with a heavy focus on numbers, while RP posts are designed to simply frame the numerical dice results IC'ly.

Free Dice would offer a middle ground between the two worlds: Taking the results of attacks out of the players hands (and egos) while at the same time leaving it to the players to determine the meaning of those results and just how it impacts their character. Free Dice also allows two characters of disparate levels to fight on a completely even playing field.

First rule of Free Dice: If an attack seems impressively made or cleverly chosen, or one simply wishes it so, one may always take a hit, even if the attackers roll has resulted in a miss.

How to post with Free Dice: Attacks should be posted before rolling to see if they hit and how hard. This avoids the potential for what has traditionally been called "godmoding" where one includes the results of their own attacks and how it hits/affects their opponent within the attacking post.

How Free Dice would work:

The potential results for any Free Dice roll would include:

Grazing Hit (20% chance): Your character is cut or bruised superficially, perhaps painfully, but without taking any real damage.
Solid Hit (25% chance): A gash, slash, burn, or more serious injury that, while painful, allows one to continue the fight. Players may choose to agree, before battle, upon a set number of "Solid Hits" taken before becoming incapacitated.
Critical Hit (3% chance): A devastating blow. Results in the inability for the receiver to continue the fight without risking permanent injury or death.
Lethal Hit (2% chance): Just what is sound like. A lethal hit results in the immediate death of the character. In combat that has been determined to be non-lethal in nature, treat Lethal Hits as if they were Critical Hits.
Miss (45% chance): A whiff or an attack that the opposing character is able to dodge.
Narrow Miss (Attack again!) (3% chance): A close hit, perhaps leaving a scratch or minor bruise in its wake. If one rolls a Narrow Miss, the defender loses their ability to attack on their turn and must commit their post to evading or otherwise defending against it.
Blunder (Take a Solid Hit) (2% chance): A badly missed attack, giving the defender the ability to counter-attack for an automatic Solid Hit.

Any and all of this potential system is up for debate and adjustment. Interested to know what people think.

[Tehya]

Since we use Des even for free form (well some of us do) isn't that sufficient?

[Tawny]

Well I have seen this idea mentioned before and I have said nothing about it, but I am going to say something this time.Free from fighting does have a few problems like when a few players have been known to seldom if ever never allowed their char to be hurt badly no matter how much stronger or faster, or older the one they are fighting is. That being said I, and I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way... didn't spend years building up my char in all ways, only to have dice of any kind, make my char now be on a completely even playing field with a char that has been around only maybe a few weeks to months. When you start doing that the theme of { Might Makes Right} is thrown right out the window. There is rules to free form combat ... http://belariath.com/combat/freeform.html And if they are followed then there is no need for dice of any kind to be used.

[miyuka]

We already have multiple "level the playing field forms of dice. Free Form is the essence of not using dice. If people can't free form after reading the free form rules as far as people god-moding goes, then that's what we call bad RP. With free form, you can already come up with what kind of damage your character hits, you can already read your opponents' post and decide what it is happens to your character, you can even do a !choose with des with varying results if you want a little more dice-like thing added to it. we do not need anything more with Free Forming.

[Kable Syranos]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not even as in love with the idea as I was at first thought. It's true !choose can accomplish much the same.