There is this magic moment when players trying to stop GM from making them pain. This kind of conflict on the table. This feeling when they have nothing to say, they don’t have dice in hand, this is the might beast, coming to get them.
As I’ve said - different approach.
In this one it is player, who owns the destiny, who with one move, one dash, can (or cannot) escape.
Check out Delta’s hotspot if you haven’t already, his Target 20 is basically what you’re describing but for od&d. I’ve considered changing to that system myself, just to become directly compatible with his blog which is super interesting. For those not familiar, he breaks down od&d and looks for first-hand sources to examine the plausibility of different rules. Like: how much should falling damage be?
Regarding making all rolls player-facing, it opens up a lot of neat possibilities. Especially for large groups and crunchier games, I think it’s weirdly underutilized.
One huge advantage of only player facing rolls, is the GM can cover their turn on a big group fast.
If the game wants to offer solo play…it’s very simple.
TN is always 20, Room is +5,
Player 1 you get 2 attacks on you,
Player 2 you get 1 attack on you.
Player 3, you don’t get any attacks…they can’t see you.
Player 4, you get 1 attack on you.
Player 5, you get 1 easy attack on you.
Player 6, you are getting 2 hard attacks on you from these bow men.
Player 7, you are still out of range of any of them.
Player 1 what is your character doing?
About as much time as it takes to say it is as much time as it takes to run a heavy GM combat turn.
That’s a great read! Thanks for sharing that link. And, yes, it’s very similar to what I’ve proposed here.
Reminds me of Xeno Dead Zone where the players roll to dodge Xeno attacks which I thought was nice to keep players engaged even more on the GM’s turn.
My question is why not just take the player’s armor bonus (example +4) and have them roll against the room target of 12?
Have boss enemies be HARD (So room DC of 15) to avoid which is what I assume people are already doing in the default method (when attacking enemies)
You definitely could. However, that does skew the numbers… a +4 AC should require a 14 to hit not a 12.
I see what you’re doing, but I would just substract the CR from the TN to get a 10 to 20 TN range, which is basically ICRPG CORE TN range. That way, you don’t have to make all the calculations when rolling.
Another approach (that meets a better compromise) Is rolling opposed checks. Maybe an attacker could try to hit AC while a defender might try to beat the attack roll with DEX (or another stat) to get a counter attack or something.
That is exactly my experience too: it makes combat feel a lot quicker on the players’ side since they don’t have to wait out the referee’s rolls. (The downside, in my experience, is that rounds become too quick if only one player is involved in combat).
Another cool thing you can do is offer a lot of combat options, like block, heavy attack, counter, what have you. Such complexity would be madness if it also applied to referee rolls…
Hmm not sure where you getting 14 in that example. I must be missing something.
I was referring to the default room DC rules with the example target of 12. When an enemy attacks a player character that player rolls a d20 and adds their armor bonus (+4) to the result to see if they beat 12 just like any other check in the game. The idea would just being removing the base 10 armor and just worrying about the bonus like the other stats.
Very interesting topic, I may have to try this.
#edit
Could see a player rolling a NAT1 on defending meaning the enemy scored a CRIT and adds ULTIMATE effort like normal
@Olav exactly!!! Except if you have only 3 players, player 1 may not be done note taking damage when the GM is done with their turn.
The GM can use that time to describe the sounds and smells of combat as he awaits.
Yes, the flexibility of moves is there, but it is also in standard ICRPG.
@Nimlouth having a fixed target number [20] makes it easy for the players to know their needed roll at all times, the Room bonus or whatever you want to call it, is the bonus number players add to their rolls, so a +10 room is typically easier than a + 5 room. You as the player roll your D20, add room bonus and stat bonus and gear bonus…is it equal or greater than 20? If not I miss or I take damage.
It’s not any harder since you are adding it all up. @Shadymutha I think mistyped in his first post about defense. But I could be wrong and I like my modification on the rule if I am wrong 
Yup. I initially came to this idea when thinking how to do Player facing rolls in OD&D where you have things such as parry, press, defensive fighting.
In normal ICRPG if the you as the player have 4 armor…the creature attacking you needs to hit 14 or better, not the room TN. Since these are all player side rolls, it’s all TN 20…and other things give bonus to adjust difficulty.
1 TARGET NUMBER TO RULE THEM ALL
And It’s a number that is quicker to grok. Regardless of what variables change, the Player always knows he has to beat 20. And as soon as someone starts playing they learn that a 20 is what we always want regardless of what roll over d20 System you’re using.
So either way you have to broadcast the room target bonus like you have to broadcast the room target vanilla style.
adding a bit more math benefits you +2 more armor in the said example.
There is no wrong way to play, but personally feel its adding a middle man here.
Technically, no. The DM could simply keep the rooms difficulty to himself, have the Player roll with bonus, and do the math himself. However, I prefer the more transparent approach.
Or, you may not have a room difficulty (each monster has a different AC difficulty). This still applies.
Consider mathmagically, it’s really no more difficult than traditional room targets changing target numbers on players. This room I have to beat a 12. Oh, now this room I need to beat a 15. Oh, now it’s a 13. With this approach, the constant is 20 no matter what room they’re in.
I like the idea of rolling against the room target to block/dodge attacks like a stat more vanilla style.
my 2 year campaign just ended last week and about to roll up another one.
Now considering adding this change.
thanks for the inspiration @Shadymutha
Yes but what’s the difference with just subtracting the CR for the room beforehand to get a standard TN between 10 and 20? We already use a huge number token to indicate what the TN is at, having to add half of it (CR 1 to 10) on every roll seems a little bit too overcomplicated for me.
This could be cool. But, what would it mean for a PC who has stat dumped into STR or DEX? Now that crazy DEX archer is a silver bullet offense wise that can be very hard to ever hit making him potentially OP. Similarly, the STR stat focused Barbarian may rarely ever get damaged in melee.
Also, it would make putting points into armor irrelevant. Players would then be more likely to stat dump into DEX/STR as doing so would have the twin benefit of offense & defense.
I guess playing this way you would throw armor out all together? What would that mean for all the various loot that affects armor?
It may also kill the idea of the proverbial “Tank” character, the Paladin type who focuses primarily on armoring up.
While I like the player facing rolls for various reasons, I’m just trying to think through what we’d be giving up.