Firstly, I'm not having a go at Kurt, I'm just expressing my views on thee topic....
I really dont understand the issues about Percentile Math...
In EVERY DnD game I've had people who couldnt figure out what 18-2 was...... Yes its sad... so How are they going to like Percentile? They're not, Obviously!
But run one combat in a standard group with a few rules:
* Print out a table of the combat actions and bonuses. Or even better everyone buys their own book
!
* Everyone figure out what you want to do in your turn and precalculate the bonuses you can.
(OB + Cover penalties + Magic weapon bonuses+ spell bonsues, etc)
* Roll 1d100 and add your Total Bonus.
* Tell the GM your roll. He subtracts the DB of the Bad Guys and either: A) tells you the critical result, or B) tells you what the critical is. (Sure you can reverse engineer the DB but its up to you).
Alternatively, the GM can tell you what the bad guys DB is and you can factor this at Step 1. Then all your doing is adding "73(1d100 roll)+104" during your turn. Anyone should be able to calculate that.
There are all sorts of ways to speed up combat that can be used with a few simple ideas.
- Precalculate your attack bonuses
- GM tracks Defense Bonuses for the bad guys and can tell the players what this is beforehand (Base DB).
- Other players (who have had their go?) can read out critical results - we always fight for this job!
)
Saying "I'm bad at maths" is a bit of a cop out IMHO.
Anyone who has tried any couple of game systems knows that what the book says is rarely how the game runs.
You need to try it out with your gaming group to see how its true colors shines.
I think this is why ICE has its loyal customer base - they have tried it and found it to be great system!