Die drop or drop dead

19 Jun, 2025

Let's get physical!

Here's a combat system where you drop dice onto a grid to determine hits. Your opponent can then cast their dice to knock yours away.

This is all ashcan. Don't pay too much attention to the numbers, everything is liable to change.

I haven't played a game with this yet, but I'm enjoying working on it. I like its granularity, its tactility, its modularity. There are a lot of loose design threads here that are fun to pick at.

Like it? Hate it? Played it? Hacked it? Let me know on Bluesky!

Weapon Grid

Each weapon has a weapon grid: an A4 sheet of paper with a 5 x 8 grid of cells. Each cell of the grid is either empty, or contains a technique. Different weapons come with different techniques reflecting their capacities.

Techniques

Techniques have a short description, a cost, and an effect. Some example techniques:

• Thrust
  • Cost: 0
  • Effect: Damage (SUM) + 2
• Heavy Chop
  • Cost 4
  • Effect: Damage (SUM) + 10
• Knee Kick
  • Cost 3
  • Effect: Knock opponent prone
• Sidearm Sweep (Bonus Action)
  • Cost 2
  • Effect: Damage 2

Progression

The grid starts mostly empty. As you learn, you fill it, making your character's grid unique.

• Learning in combat allows you to fill a blank cell with an adjacent technique.
• Learning through training allows you to upgrade a single cell's damage or reduce its cost.
• Learning from a master allows you to place a new technique in a new region of the grid.
• Longer-term upgrades (levels?) increase your dice pool.

Dice Pool

Each player has a pool of six-sided dice to spend. Let's say 10 in total. These should be of a different colour for each player. Each round, players secretly allocate dice between initiative, offence and defense.

Initiative

Initiative dice are counted for all players. Play goes in order from highest to lowest. Roll initiative dice to break ties.

Attack Resolution

Note: throws must be made from a height of one handspan. It is recommended to place the weapon grid in a box or tray. Any dice that exit the rolling area are counted as a fumble.

1. The attacker throws all their attack dice onto their weapon grid.
2. Any die that falls on a blank space is removed from the grid.
3. The defender selects any number of their defence dice and throws them all onto the weapon grid. Any defence die sitting on a cell adds to that cell's cost. It is legal for defence dice to knock an attack die out of position.
4. The attacker picks one cell on the weapon grid to activate. The cell must have one or more attack dice on it. If the sum value of the attack dice is greater than the cost, the effect is triggered.
5. Any Bonus Action cells with a die on them may also be activated, following the procedure in step 4.

Example Attack

The setup: A grid in an A4 paper carton lid. I didn't have any problem keeping the dice in the box. This is an example of a grid for a starting player, with only a few boxes filled with techniques. (Thrust, Chop and Leg Sweep.)

The attack roll: The attacker has rolled six dice. They are able to activate either a Thrust (cost 0, damage 3) or a Chop (cost 4, damage 16). Nothing landed on the Leg Sweep.

The defense roll: The defender has decided to target the chop. Rolling their 4 dice, they successfully knock the attack die out of the way. They will still take 3 damage from a thrust.

Reflections

• This feels promising! Actually tossing the dice is quite fun.
• Defense feels powerful, easily able to sweep away a lucky roll from an opponent. But of course you have to dedicate dice to it.
• I set up the grid with gutters to reduce the incidence of dice landing across 2 boxes.
• There's a bit of kit involved, but it's not too bad. I work near printers, so A4 printer box lids are an easy find for me. When you're a nerd for a long time, dice seem to accrue (seriously, do they multiply?), so that's not too bad. 10 dice in 2 colours is a bit of an ask for civilians, but I wouldn't like to use a lot less.
• My first couple of test throws didn't land on anything, but I think it would work better with practice. We could always stock the grid with more starter techniques too.
• This system really needs a better name.

Variations

• Rolling initiative: This could be determined by rolling initiative dice, rather than just bidding them. This would incentivise at least spending one die, just in case.
• Dice differentiation: Different classes could use different dice. For instance, rogues could have a pool of 13 x d4, while barbarians could have 8 x d12. (Note though that this could be burdensome due to the sheer number of dice required).
• Grid differentiation: Currently weapons are differentiated by the techniques that fall on their grid. Potentially different weapons could use different shapes on their grids.
  • Daggers could have a small target area surrounded by blank space. It would have low cost, but be tricky to land on, to represent a crit.
  • Wands could have a large target area with a high cost to empower a spell. It would require a lot of dice. A hazard area can also be activated that causes misfires, blowback, collateral or other badness.
  • Qi attacks could have a map of the human body. Their dice have to target pressure points to be effective.
• Armour: Armour provides damage reduction of up to 3 points. One die is sacrificed from your pool for each point of armour you wear. Helms may be discarded in battle to recover a die.
• Riposte: If the defender rolls the exact cost on a cell they land on, they may counterattack.
• Minions: There is no limit to the amount of cells that may be activated when targeting minion-type enemies.

#ashcan #combat #dice #mechanics