Setting the DC

[alex]

Some ideas of formulating the DC for an attack:

The DC represents how difficult it is. What makes an attack difficult?

1. The nature of the attack. Some weapons/moves are easier/harder to hit with. This is separate from the skill of the attacker.

2. How well defended the enemy is. This is both the particular region (perhaps it's small or armored) and some general measure of the enemy's defendy-ness.

3. The circumstances of the attack. Higher ground, prone, flanking etc.

So, breaking down each one:

1. The nature of the attack. I think the two major factors here are the weapon and the move. Weapons have a base "difficulty", weapons with a smaller "difficulty" are better (say perhaps 1-5). Additionally, moves/modifiers could impact it up or down. So one component of moves/modifiers is there diff adjustment, such as +1 diff, -2 diff etc. This gets added with the weapon difficulty to give us the ATTACK DC

2. How well defended the enemy is. This comes from the region and the overall enemy. Each region has a base (smaller things like heads are higher) and then perhaps armor and other mods. The enemy itself then has some defensive value that he adds to the DC of every attack. So it would be region + overall = DEFEND DC

3. The circumstances of the attack. This is again simple mods up or down depending on what's going on. Call the sum of these bits MISC DC

so DC = ATTACK DC + DEFEND DC + MISC DC

Example:

Attacking with a sword (difficulty 3), but i'm doing a powerful attack (+2) so attack DC = 5. I'm attacking the enemy chest region (DC 1), but he's armored (+2) so defend DC = 3. Additionally, i'm attacking from higher ground so that's -1. We have:

Attack DC = 5
Defend DC = 3
MISC DC = 1

So DC = 7. Of the seven, most of the things are static and known ahead of time (sword DC, defend DC). The base DC is 6 (without +2 powerful or -1 higher ground). The things that generally change from attack to attack are the moves used and circumstance.