Combat – Melee and Dumb Luck

Combat in WAPLE worlds is chucking up to 10 6-sided dice based on each character’s strengths or weaknesses. Please keep in mind that this is a prototype and may change. The cards will look better later.

I’ve included two different examples here: Wally “Walla” Wapleburger, the giant manager of wrestler Biff Waple, and Spiff Waplespunk, the teenage son of Spanky, the Waple’s marketing guru. These graphics are WAPLE “HERO” CARDS

You can consider Wally to be somewhat like an ogre or troll. He’s big and slow, has a huge defense and a slow but strong swing. The first stat, in red, is his BASHING skill, which is for MELEE attacks. At level 0 it is a five, which is the highest you can start with. The one below that is DUMB LUCK, sort of like dexterity in other games, and is used for RANGED ATTACKS. You’ll notice his is only a 1, the lowest you can have. The third, in blue, is DEFENSE, and again he has a five.  The next two are ESCAPE and MOVE but that’s for another day.

Each of these stats can be leveled up to modify your Waple. The white boxes show where Wally can put extra points to increase the base stats. The grey boxes show that he can’t go any higher. So Wally can get up to 10 in bashing or defense but can only have a maximum escape of two.

Waples start at level 0, so let’s assume that for now. If Wally wants to hit an opponent, he will start with five dice, Unless otherwise noted, Waples always roll at least five dice for BASHING and DUMB LUCK. You can roll up to three times and freeze the numbers you want to hold.

Looking at the dice chart on the bottom in red you can see that Wally, if in melee range, needs to roll fives. The first row is how many need to be rolled for the initial hit, followed by the points of damage that hit does. Since Wally swings his two-pound turkey leg slow but hard he has to roll three fives and has three rolls to get it. If he doesn’t get three then he misses. If he does get three he does 15 points of damage to his opponent. If he gets any fives beyond the first that are required, he will do more damage. A total of four fives means 15 for the initial hit and then 10 more damage for the fourth five that was rolled. He then gets five more points of damage for any fives beyond that.

Let’s assume Wally is level five and has put all his points into BASHING so that all of the white spaces in the BASHING row are filled. He can now roll 10 dice. You always roll five dice for an attack but then add one more for each space you fill in for that stat. Rolling the initial three fives is now much easier, as is the next five and any thereafter.

The last die shown in his attack is a red six which is an exploding die. Each time Wally rolls a six he does an additional five points of damage and it can be rolled again. You can freeze sixes and add their damage and re-roll but remember that they don’t count at all if the initial hit, in his case the three fives, isn’t made, so be careful when you freeze these.

When in ranged position, further back from melee, Wally can try to roll three ones. Again, he has three tries to do this. If he gets the three ones he will temporarily blind the bad guy, who will have to roll two less dice on his next turn.

Now let’s look at another Waple, Spiff. He’s younger, weaker and faster than Wally so he has completely different rolls to make.  You can see his melee BASHING stat can only go up two more times, allowing him to roll seven dice, but his dumb luck can go to five which, when added to his default roll of five, means he can roll up to 10 dice, if he chooses.

Looking at his BASHING rolls he needs ones and twos. The first row shows what he needs to make the initial hit with his rubber sword: a one and a two. If he gets just that he will do two damage. After the first one and two are frozen, any additional ones and twos are added up to show additional damage. Therefore, if he rolls 1,1,2,2,4 you could reorder them like |1,2| for the first hit of two, then another |1,2| that sums to another three. The four doesn’t count. If he added two to his BASHING level and rolled seven dice, he could potentially roll 1,2,2,2,2,2,2 which would be |1,2| two for the initial hit and |2,2,2,2,2| summed up to another ten for a total of 12 damage.

Additionally, if he rolls any sixes he can freeze them until after the third roll, at which point he adds three more damage and re-rolls that six to see if he can get another one or two to add to the total, or another exploding six to add three and re-roll again.

If Spiff doesn’t want to get into melee range, he can stand a little further back and try throwing his plastic ax at the bad guy. In this case he needs to roll two threes for the initial attack and then each additional three adds three more damage. If he loaded up his dumb luck with another five skill points he would throw ten dice. if these were all threes he would do 27 damage, three for the first two threes and then three more for each additional three.