Troika, Let there Be Blood, B/X and what else?

Here's a great idea by Archon's Court

Troika has a great initiative system (or so I thought, but the real thing is too fiddly for me. But read on).

B/X is simple enough.

I'm gonna mash them all together for a test drive this coming Saturday. Here's what's gonna happen:

Initiative is done through a Troika-ish system. Instead of initiative values (PCs having double tokens, monsters having Initiative values) each PC gets 1 token, each hench gets 1 token, and each monster gets 1 token, and the extra End Round token is added, too.

So at the start of the combat round, tokens are pulled one by one until the end round token comes up. Maybe some didn't get to act, that's how combat is.

However, on a PC token, any player character can "activate." PCs can still only activate once.

AC disappears. All attacks automatically hit. -1 roll, that is nice.

Each weapon has both an attack and a damage reduction value. Ranged weapons do not have a defense value, but added Piercing Damage instead.

Armor gives DR according to the following: Leather 1, Chain 2, Plate 3. The same goes for monsters.

Spellcasting is declared at the start of the round and the spell goes off at the spellcaster's activation.

Monster damage is upped by 1 die across the board because 1d3 and 1d4 will rarely touch PCs. So in Hole in the Oak, for instance, a monster doing 1d3 + paralyze will be consistently useless against a plate-wearing PC.

I'm also going to be using a Death & Dismemberment table for downed characters. If a healer gets to the PC before the scrap is over, there's a larger chance the PC survives.

Alright, so the idea is to give the players meaningful choices. To summarize Archon's Court's post, when it's your turn you roll 2d6 for your weapon and assign 1 die to the Attack column and the other to the Defense column. That's a choice the player gets to make. Maybe it will slow down combat, but it's a lot more interesting than "roll 1d20, yeah you hit, roll damage" (I usually roll my d20 together with the damage to speed things up, but it's still bad), at least on paper.

But, not only that, by hacking the Troika initiative slightly we're giving the group meaningful choices as well: when a PC token comes up, who goes first? Is it the spell caster, in order for the spell to fire? Is it the frontline fighter, so that they can boost their DR? What about the ranged PCs, they can pack a punch. Maybe the healer/support guys need to move in and drag the downed fighter away?

Maybe it'll turn out that it's all bad. But maybe it won't. I think there might be slightly slower combat than the slogfest that is B/X combat, but I think there will be more activity, or maybe the word I'm looking for is more focus within that combat.

Let's get on with the modified weapons:

Sample Weapons

Melee

Shortsword

Roll	Attack	Defense
1	2	0
2	2	0
3	3	0
4	3	1
5	4	1
6	4	1

Axe - Swingy Attack, Low Defense

Roll	Attack	Defense
1	1	0
2	1	0
3	1	0
4	4	0
5	6	0
6	7	1

Spear - Swingy Attack, High Defense

Roll	Attack	Defense
1	1	0
2	1	0
3	2	1
4	2	2
5	5	2
6	5	3

Shield - Low Attack, High Defense

Roll	Attack	Defense
1	1	1
2	1	1
3	1	1
4	2	2
5	2	2
6	2	3

Dagger - Low Attack, Swingy Defense

Roll	Attack	Defense
1	2	0
2	2	0
3	2	0
4	3	1
5	3	2
6	4	2

Ranged

Shortbow - Low Attack, Decent Pierce

Roll	Attack	Pierce
1	2	2
2	2	2
3	2	1
4	3	1
5	3	0
6	4	0

Crossbow - Swingy Attack,  Good Pierce

Roll	Attack	Pierce
1	1	3
2	2	3
3	2	2
4	2	1
5	6	0
6	6	0

I am not completely sold on the Shortbow, to be honest, but this is a starting point. I also think the tables need to be reworked. I want to keep the Damage Reduction on the lower side, but that also means that there's not much choice between a roll of 3, 4 on the Shortsword table -- you'll always put the 4 on Defense in that case, since 3 has the same damage but no defense.