RB is a very solid system where Sean has had to make some abstractions in order to make it streamlined, but as a reasonably experienced wargamer I miss a bit of the 'granularity' of more complicated systems.
So, I was thinking of how to introduce som complexity within the core system without changing the stats and the first thing I came up with was the idea of Tiered Combat: The idea is to introduce some difference in the 'to hit'-difficulty between different classes -it seems to me that a trained Knight would have an easier time hitting a Witch in melêe, than maybe hitting a veteran Fighter or a seasoned Pig
The following is a rough draft and not playtested, comments are encouraged and welcome!
Character classes could be divided in the following with a descending order of combat prowess:
Melêe Chart:
Tier 1: Knights, Fighters, Barbarian, Warlord, maybe Pig: +1 to combat actions against lower tiers, +0 against other Tier 1
Tier 2: Cleric, Holy, Scout, Bone, maybe Pig: +0 against Tiers 1 and Tier 2: +1 against lower tiers
Tier 3: Thief: -1 against Tier 1, +0 against Tiers 2 and 3, +1 against Tier 4
Tier 4: Wizard, Witch, spellcasters: -1 against Tiers 1 and 2, +0 against Tiers 3 and 4
Beasts would be unchanged perhaps
Characters belonging to more than one tier would be placed in the 'best' one!
As a compensation Tier 4 would have Armor 3 against damaging spells to represent greater fortitude, while Tier 1 would have Armor 1 against spells as they're as likely to get cooked in full metal plate armor as saved!
An attacks 'to hit' can never be better than 3+ (Magic Weapon would not grant a Knight a 2+ Long Sword attack against a Thief)
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Another mod I would suggest is a change of combat resolution, the idea being to rein in some of the range of damage while still being deadly -as it stands an Elf Druid could conceivably kill a Knight with her staff in a single round of combat given some min/max dice rolling -'unrealistic' in so far as any of this is realistic!
I would make the damage bonus the 'actual damage' (Knights Longsword is damage '4', omit the Challenge Roll altogether and grant the receiving part an Armor Save instead: Roll a die for each damage received and save on your armor value or lower.
'Dodge' would grant you a re-roll on an armor save, maybe just rerolling the failed ones of each batch. Alternatively it could give you +1 armor instead, as it maybe would favor the Armor 3 Knight too much...
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Combat Example with the above poorly outlined rules:
A Knight Charges a Bone Stalker and attack with his Longsword using only the Charge die, as his attack now connects on a 3+ (Bone would be one tier lower on the Mêlee Chart).
He gets a '5' (success!) on the die and deals 4 damage to the Bone Stalker, unless it can make its Armor Save. Rolling four dice (or one die four times!) the Bone Stalker saves 1 damage for each die that is equal to or lower than his Armor (Armor 1). He rolls '1, 3, 5, 5' saving 1 damage and receiving 3 thereby being critically wounded.
I hope this could be of some interest to others and maybe start some debate about mods to Relicblades
