19. Player Facing Combat

[Ironnerd]

Player-Facing (Optional)

In Player-Facing Rules, the player, not the DM, rolls for Monsters in combat. This helps keep the players in the action while reducing the burden on the DM. In Player-Facing Combat, the player rolls to have his character avoid damage from the attacking monster. In essence, it is assumed that the monster has made a successful attack roll, and the player is rolling to see if the character can parry it to avoid taking damage. In a weird way, it is just THAC0, but re-tuned a little.

To roll a Parry (a Save vs an attack), the player must roll d20, subtract the attacking monster’s To-Hit Adjustment, and consult the table below.

So if a character with an adjusted Armor Class of 16 were attacked by an Ogre (HD 4+1 = +4 To-Hit Adjustment), she would have to roll a 9 or more on her d20 roll to parry the attack

* 16-4=12

* On the table below, an adjusted AC of 12 parries on a roll of 9 or more on 1d20.

On a roll of 20, the monster has rolled a critical fail and the attacking character gets a free attack.

PLAYER A.C. .. Parry
>20 ........... 0+
20 ............ 1+
19 ............ 2+
18 ............ 3+
17 ............ 4+
16 ............ 5+
15 ............ 6+
14 ............ 7+
13 ............ 8+
12 ............ 9+
11 ............ 10+
10 ............ 11+
9 ............. 12+
8 ............. 13+
7 ............. 14+
6 ............. 15+
5 ............. 16+
4 ............. 17+
3 ............. 18+
2 ............. 19+
1 ............. 20
<1 ............ AUTO HIT

Note: When using Player-Facing rules, players should also roll for treasures using the “RAND ROLL” column on the Treasure Table


Idea Stolen From: Professor Dungeon Master

[Ironnerd]

In order to keep track of the monsters they are battling, players need some information. The file below can be filled out with combat stats for most monsters, and can accommodate multiple monsters of the same kind (like a gaggle of Kobolds). They do have a HP max of 43 per line.  When combat starts, the DM can just hand the appropriate card to the player(s) and they can keep track of all the half-dead Orcs and Zombies.

These cards print out to 3x5 and can be placed inside a recipe card protector to allow players to mark off damage using a dry erase marker

Monster Card D.xlsx (12.1 KB)

[Ironnerd]

Of course it is possible to go directly from BECM Armor Class to Parry Value; just add 2 to the BECM AC.

BECM
 AC ... PARRY
-1 .... 1+
 0 .... 2+
 1 .... 3+
 1 .... 4+
 3 .... 5+
 4 .... 6+
 5 .... 7+
 6 .... 8+
 7 .... 9+
 8 .... 10+
 9 .... 11+