Double the fun?

[Finarvyn]

A couple of the players in my group are sons of one of the other players. Both boys are early grade school, maybe 3rd-5th grade or so. (I can't believe I don't know this. ) Anyway, one thing about kids that they love to roll dice. I had this idea, and I wanted to get some feedback so naturally I turned to the smartest gamers on the planet....

What if I double everything? Double the hit points, double the damage done by weapons and spells. Adjust AC numbers (for both the PC and monsters) so that armor works twice as well, but then magic swords could have twice the plus to counter this effect.

For example, consider AC:
OD&D - AAC - new AC - detals
9 - 10 - 10 - none
8 - 11 - 12 - shield
7 - 12 - 14 - leather
6 - 13 - 16 - leather & shield
5 - 14 - 18 - chain
4 - 15 - 20 - chain & shield
3 - 16 - 22 - plate
2 - 17 - 24 - plate & shield

Also, I think I would want to re-do the attribute bonus charts, but in LBB OD&D these don't come into play much so the effect would probably be minor.

My gut feeling is that it wouldn't actually change anything balance-wise, but folks would be rolling more dice. Two questions:
(1) Is there any real reason why it wouldn't work out?
(2) What other things need to be changed?

[inkmeister]

I wouldn't. That's just me. I'm also not really a very kid friendly person (had myself clipped at age 24 because I knew for sure I wanted to be child free for life). D&D has enough die rolling for those who like to roll dice. Rolling more dice and doubling everything would for sure be a negative for me - the game is plenty fiddly as it is, and tracking twice as many HP's would get very old. I want to draw attention to things other than the dice.

But it says a lot about you as a kid friendly person, and an accommodating person in general, that you would even consider doing this - I genuinely respect that. I bet you are a cool DM to play with.

Though you might consider using variable weapon damage (I bring this up because of the recent thread here) so that those kiddo's can enjoy rolling some of the funky dice.

[Deleted]

A quick once-over looks good to me. I'd have to run a few test combats to check it out but it seems a reasonable variant. If you try it, let us know how it works out.

[mgtremaine]

You need run a T&T game for them, make them dwarves and give them Double-Bladed BroadAxes and Plate Mail to start [6+3 / 14 hits] ;p

-Mike

[Porphyre]

First, a question: do you intend to make them roll two dices to hit? If so, I suppose that you had the bell-curve effect taken in consideration when calculating the new ascending armor class, but this doesn' seem obvious when looking at your charts.

Second, doubling everything makes more rolls , but it also makes more calculations; and that may be not so fun for young kids (pardon my ignorance , but I'm from the other side of the Atlantic so what age does 3rd grade correspond ?).

If I really wanted to increase the number of dice rolled, without heving more numbers to calculate, I would probably go for some kind of "pool of dice" mechanic: roll X additional dice, keep the better, or something like that.

[Finarvyn]

Jun 26, 2013 1:03:25 GMT -6 Porphyre said:

First, a question: do you intend to make them roll two dices to hit? If so, I suppose that you had the bell-curve effect taken in consideration when calculating the new ascending armor class, but this doesn' seem obvious when looking at your charts.

My main thought is mostly that everywhere they would roll 1d6, I would have them roll 2d6. Double damage, double hit points for monsters, etc. (e.g. a 6d6 Fire Ball spell would actually do 12d6.)

My plan was only a single attack because I'm not trying to totally overhaul game balance for OD&D. The added AC boost would be because stat bonuses would be higher and magic weapon plusses would be higher. (This is a secondary adjustment, not really part of my original concept.) It's possible that I made too much of an adjustment for this in my chart, however.

Jun 26, 2013 1:03:25 GMT -6 Porphyre said:

I'm from the other side of the Atlantic so what age does 3rd grade correspond ?

I think they are around 8 years old.

[zeraser]

My feeling is that if you have a bunch of players who love to roll a bunch of dice, tweaking the rules to allow them to roll more dice is a capital idea. The only thing that seems a little weird to me is that the party will be relying on magic weaponry for to-hit rolls - in other words, absent magic weapons (and especially at low levels), it'll be really tough to land a hit on the enemy. Maybe this isn't a big deal, but with kids in particular I'd be careful about making to-hit rolls any harder than they usually are, because a string of misses can be very frustrating for a young person who just wants to get in there and deal some damage.

[Finarvyn]

Yeah, that's the problem with two distint ideas smooshed into one post. I should have taken this process a step at at time.

1. Double the dice for HP and damage -- does it affect the game?

2. Other tweaks -- what about attribute bonuses, weapon plusses, AC, and the like?

The problem is that I can't totally seperate the two in my mind. Double the damage in itself sound like a problem, but then characters grow weaker compared to OD&D unless you double the damage bonuses for attributes as well.

But if I double damage bonuses, what about to-hit bonuses? Doing this would require that I tweak AC. The system starts to change. Perhaps I would need to keep to-hit bonuses the same and not adjust AC.

[zeraser]

Jun 28, 2013 10:37:29 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Perhaps I would need to keep to-hit bonuses the same and not adjust AC.

I think this is what I might do - double damage and HP but leave everything else alone. You could even give a bonus to damage equal to the attacker's HD if you want to compensate for the diminished effect of ability score bonuses.

[ffilz]

Rolling twice as many dice for hit points and damage will lead to more predictability and fewer wild swings. Characters will be more likely to have average hit points and deal (and take) average damage.

With young players this could actually have two beneficial results:

1. They perceive things to be more exciting because there's more dice to roll.

2. The actual risk is lower because a one shot kill is less likely.

On the other hand, they will see fewer instances of luck prevailing against odds.

Frank

[Finarvyn]

You are wise Frank, and I like your take on this. If I could EXALT you I would, so I'll have to settle for a "like."

[librarylass]

Jun 28, 2013 11:18:46 GMT -6 ffilz said:

Rolling twice as many dice for hit points and damage will lead to more predictability and fewer wild swings. Characters will be more likely to have average hit points and deal (and take) average damage.

With young players this could actually have two beneficial results:

1. They perceive things to be more exciting because there's more dice to roll.

2. The actual risk is lower because a one shot kill is less likely.

On the other hand, they will see fewer instances of luck prevailing against odds.

Frank

This... actually interests me. Hm.