Robert Fisher
Just thinking out loud
Against multiple attacks
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It is my considered opinion that giving a character multiple "to hit" rolls in a round is not a good way of modelling anything in D&D. A modifier to the "to hit" or damage roll is nearly always more desirable.
Here's a simple example to illustrate the point:
Let's say Fafrd needs to roll a 7 or better to hit a bravo he's battling. Let's say that if he chooses to attack with two weapons, he gets two "to hit" rolls, but that he suffers a -4 penalty to both attacks. That means he needs to roll an 11 or better to hit, but he gets two attempts.
With one weapon, Fafrd has a 70% chance of hitting.
With two weapons, Fafrd has a 50% chance of hitting, & two chances to do so.
| attack 2 | attack 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| miss | hit | |
| miss | 2 misses | 1 hit |
| hit | 1 hit | 2 hits |
That means he has a 75% chance of hitting at least once & a 25% chance of hitting twice! He'd be crazy not to always attack with two weapons.
The thing that's really screwy, though, (& that's hard to illustrate without lots of boring analysis) is that as you adjust Fafrd's THAC0 or the bravo's AC, the changes in the chances of hitting with two weapons v. one weapon do not change in an intuitive fashion. Playing with the penalty for two weapon fighting can "fix" a particular case, but you'll just end up throwing off other cases. The problem isn't the "offset"; the problem is "the shape of the curve".
One exception is the 3e "iterative attacks". The purpose of the iterative attacks, however, is gamist rather than simulationist. (See The threefold model)
The idea behind the iterative attacks is that at high level, a character's chance to hit is so high, he almost always hits. Such consistancy is boring. So, by giving the character an additional attack at a penalty, we restore some of the fun of not knowing every attack is going to hit.
This is dealing with an artifact of the game (that attack ability keeps going up while AC tends to level off) rather than trying to model something like two weapon fighting.
(Depending on how you handle high level play, Classic D&D may or may not have this problem.)
What about multiple attacks by monsters in a round? Yes, the same reasoning should apply. Their multiple attacks are less an attempt to model a change in technique & more a design choice. The design has been proven in play. If I were to redesign the game from scratch, this is probably something I would change. As it is, though, it isn't the same sort of problem that insufficiently thought out two weapon fighting rules are.
last updated 1 year ago #
