Well, my current view is a variable attack roll vs a static defense.

both can be increased by various stats (strength for attack, dex for defense) ... and I also think that Dex bonus should be different, with say, for instance, Dex bonus being (1/(Armor Penalty + 1))*(Dex-10) as an example.

In this way, various armors have associated Armor Penalties ... so that at first the Armor simply gets "higher" while also having Armor Penalties, and then later Armor stays the same value while lowering Armor Penalty (like Mithril, or Elementium armor for instance)

In this way, maybe use Elementium to buy such "Elementium Armor" which has High End armor value with very little (or no) Armor penalty. This would allow for very high static Defense (AC) for high Dex Heroes.

If your looking at attack roll as X + 1DN, it'd be nice if X would increase for high level heroes (regardless) and also for high strength heroes. Therefore, Strength will increase your base attack (regardless of random chance), and Level will act the same way. Weapons, however, should probably not affect Attack. (certainly not giant hammers, I should think). Like, maybe a "sword of awesome" gives you a +1 attack. However, possibly rare weapons (maybe requiring you to kill something that's actually really hard to kill), such as a "legendary sword of awesome" could give you a +10 attack.

Regardless though, you're probably looking at Weapons ONLY affecting your damage roll. And even then, your gonna add your base "Strength Bonus" to total damage. So high Strength Heroes, if they land a successful hit (dependent on their 1DN) will do more damage consistently.

// and switching out Strength for Dex with ranged attacks ... and assuming Regular units have 10 in all stats, your making heroes have a bonus which makes some sort of sense, at least to the Player of a Game.

Now, the biggest concern for such a system is to make X (attack bonus) and C (static defense) relevant while NOT making the 1DN attack roll IRRELEVANT.

Therefore, as a "safety-net" its usually nice to have an Y% chance to ALWAYS HIT, and an Y% chance to ALWAYS MISS ... regardless of base attack or AC. These would probably be values determined by the 1DN. For instance, if it was 1D100 and you wanted only a 3% chance to always hit or always miss, you could make 1-3 an always miss and 98-100 an always hit.

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Question: Do we Add a Parry??

We could certainly add a parry, before the attack roll even begins (or anywhere if you feel it belongs somewhere else)

In my opinion, this would be a very simple system (consider Diablo) separate from the X+1DN vs C system (yet at the same time ...)

Here, you could have all Shields and most Weapons have a parry stat (1 - 25 for instance)

you could also have certain traits, abilities, etc affect this parry stat (like some attacks ignore your opponents parry)

you could also have certain stats increase your own parry stat (like each point of Dex beyond 10 increase your parry by 5%)**

** you could do this by having (ParryValue * (1+(Dex-10)/20)) ... and then having that as a static C ... vs a Math.Rand(100), and if the Random number is C or lower than its a successful parry ... even before the attack roll begins.

So for instance, if you had a really good shield you had a 25% chance to parry each attack (regardless of their strength or attack roll), and if you had 20 Dexterity that would jump to 37 (or 38)%

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Question: How can a Hero survive 10 attacks, or assuming we use Regiments of 80 soldiers, 80 attacks??

Answer: If you limit a units effectiveness vs vastly smaller unit sizes, Heroes may still matter if they are good enough.

Obviously you Don't want to make a hero able to kill 80 soldiers in one hit, but its not exactly nice for 80 clearly inferior soldiers to kill a hero in 2 seconds. While a Hyperbole, this is quite possibly (currently) in elemental. While HP scaling will help, I don't think HP scaling will ever make BOTH heroes AND large units valid choices.

Instead ... first you have a hero unable to kill more than one soldier in an attack. Obviously with *cleave* or something, he will hit more soldiers, but its not like he is going to hit 10+ soldiers with a single engagement/ single swing. A Dragon could do that ... not a hero.

Your also not going to see 10 soldiers be able to surround a single person and all be able to attack to the best of their ability. Sure you can try to mob the guy and get 3-5 people surrounding him ... but not if your keeping rank and file. And allowing units to break rank and file VASTLY increases combat complexity ... so lets just assume they have to keep rank.

While Keeping Rank, not very many soldiers will be able to hit the hero. Lets assume 2 or 3. So each time the unit of 80 soldiers attacks  the hero, 3 soldiers attack the hero. Every time the hero attacks the unit, he attacks a single soldier (or multiple w/ cleave).

The simplest part of this is making only 3 attacks possible for each individual in the Unit your targetting. With your max attacks obviously being the number of individuals in your own group (this is completely separate from combat speed, this is simply all within a single "unit attack")

Making a Hero only able to kill 1-3 soldiers in a single attack (no matter how strong and deadly) is a bit trickier, but probably still possible.

Then, of course, you can have FireBalls and Dragon's Breath that are Decent Spells but can hit A LOT!!! of people, while there are Lightning Bolts which are devastating attacks but can only hit 1-3 people.

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Question: But, ranged units have no such limitations! Wouldn't using all archers completely nullify the increased effectiveness of small unit sizes??

Answer: If we stopped there, then yes. And if we arbitrarily gave ranged units the same restrictions, we wouldn't really be helping anyone. Instead, we can give a "Unit Size Modifier" ... but unlike the "Size Modifier" from a D20 system, Attack Modifier is completely different from Defense Modifier.

For instance ... do 80 people have a better chance of hitting 1 guy, than 1 person (of equal skill) trying to hit one guy? Yes. But is most of that just because they get more rolls?? Yes. Still, I think there is also some merit in trying to dodge a "WALL OF ARROWS".

Therefore, assuming large squads will eventually be possible, UnitSzAtkModifier = 0.5 x MobIndex  ... (MobIndex = # of soldiers currently in unit)

Now, for UnitSIze DEFENSE Modifier .... = 8 - Log(MobIndex) x Square Root (MobIndex)

In this way, 1 guy has a natural +8 ranged defense, and 80 guys have a natural -9 ranged defense. The X-intercept is around 30 soldiers ... so 30 soldiers ends up being the baseline of +0 ranged defense. If using a rounded Integer, 32 soldiers is the first to give a -1, and 27 soldiers is the first to give a +1

ALSO!!! Maybe you want to make Nimble Heroes better at dodging Arrows than the average Joe. Assuming your C (Static Defense) includes a Dex Modifier ... for ranged defense you can double the effective Dex Modifier.

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Optionally, you could also give a distance modifier to Ranged attacks in general ... so that the longer the distance, the less chance of hit, and possibly even the less damage ... (like 75% attack and 75% damage for X tiles away type of thing), like you could have X tiles away be the "sweet spot" or something, and each tile farther than that would give like -5% or -10% ... probably scaling though so that you don't get negative percents.

You could even have "max range" for certain ranged weapons, and you could have some weapons be really good but very short range, and others be only decent but have a lot less Distance Penalty. Of course, these types of things would only make sense in a LARGER tactical battle map.

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Question: Would any or all of these changes make Heroes unbeatable??

Answer: No, especially considering the X% chance of Always Hit and Always Miss ... if it was a decent percentage (say 5%), then regardless of bonuses there will ALWAYS be an "impossible" attack landing. And, even though my suggestion didn't mention any sort of "damage reduction" and assumed that damage was always fully applied, you could have a Minimum Damage of 1. So that, no matter WHAT sort of god-like abilities a monster or hero had ... you could always get 5% of attacks to hit, and those attacks would do at least 1 damage.

With this system, an infinite number of peasants will always defeat a finite number of Supermen/Gods/Dragons

Is it perhaps more cost effective to send your highly levelled Hero (probably also a Healer Mage Hero) backed with Archers to attack the Dragon?? Probably so. Even if sending 10,000 peasants with sticks might also kill the Dragon.

AND YET!!! The option is there ... so assuming large cities and large armies and large empires are possible, you never are REQUIRED to send a certain type of Hard Counter. However in such a system there are also Game-play mechanics at work which will reward a player that considers the Circumstance at hand and tries to counter with the best possible defense /offense (strategic move) within his means.