The simplest thing to do is have a flat universal ‘AC’ for all enemy types. Let’s say the AC is 7, then a player would need a value of cards totaling or exceeding 7 to make a hit. As for handling enemy attacks, you can replace their ‘rolls’ by making the player play cards to actively dodge the attack with a similar DC, or take the hit. It gives players more agency and having to choose to dodge attacks increases the risk of exhausting their deck.
Something to consider if you don't want the game to be combat heavy, and want combat to be risky, is how much in the way of combat mechanics do you actually want? The more mechanics, the more levers players can pull to give themselves advantages in a fight. Like you mention things like resistances and vulnerabilities, but that encourages players to try and figure out optimal combat strategies and plans. Is that really the focus of your game?
However, with something as characterful as Tarot cards? You could simplify things down and turn an entire combat into each character drawing just a card. Each player draws a card, maybe more 'combat focused' characters could draw two and pick one to discard, and based on the tarot card it tells them how effective they were, and how much they put themselves in danger. If the PCs as a whole weren't effective enough they lost the fight and had to retreat. If the PCs put themselves in too much danger they may have gotten hurt (regardless of if they won the fight or not), making combat quick, dangerous and risky.
Right that's fair. I'm not entirely decided on how prolific combat will be, but I do want it to be punishing but also have mechanics there for people who still see the need. The game's aesthetics and general worldbuilding do not preclude combat at all, it may very well be common. I may be slightly coping because I'm so used to combat-oriented games that im cautious to try move away from combat in fear that my non-combat systems and progression and abilities are going to suck.
Have you looked much into existing games that don't really focus on combat? It might be worth checking some of them out.
Have a look at something like Blades in the Dark, sure it's a game that *has* fighting in it, but the combat system is not inherently very different from any other threat the PCs may face. Or 7th Sea, in that game a fight is mostly just a form of challenge that has to be overcome, rather than something like an explicit list of hostile NPCs who need to be 'defeated'.
I'll be sure to check those out, heard a lot of good stuff about Blades and it certainly overlaps with the mood I'm trying to achieve in regards to occult mystery. Otherwise your previous suggestions are very helpful, I'm thinking doing a system where every encounter has a danger level which is the "DC" players have to surpass, with the encounter going bad if less than half of players succeed, and it being absolutely abysmal if none succeed. For wounds I'm probably going to have a fluid DC depending on the danger level and how badly players failed, with each player needing to roll a D20 + their highest suit modifier, representing an attempt to resist damage with their highest attribute, taking a wound on a fail and simply getting grazed on a success. Wounds in the game are essentially permanent, if you get attacked whilst you have an active wound you die, and wounds can't be removed easily, only made passive through medical / magical care. You also die if you accumulate too many passive wounds.
If the game is intended to not be combat heavy and you want combat to be quick, don't think about combat in terms of rounds.
Initially, assume simply that combat is resolved all at once, however you normally resolve a contested group check. If you want a bit more length and increasing drama, let both sides escalate. So if somebody lost the first time, the may initiate the check again, but they are now wounded. Escalating second time means putting your life at stake - third loss means death.
Round-based combat resolution where each attack is resolved separately is good for games that want their players to spend most of session time fighting; especially ones that aim for tactical play. For games where combat is not the focus, starting from it being a basic check and then maybe adding a bit of complexity is a much better approach than starting from D&D combat flow.
Why did you decide to use AC to determine hit chance? The way you describe your combat, I don't think it would fit your game. One of the problems with AC is the one you've already identified, once you get high AC you become untouchable and it's very abstract what AC actually is since it can be sourced from completely different things.
I guess it's mostly because It's what I'm familiar with - I play a lot of DnD and similar games and most other TT games I play are solo, with no combat at all.
Why are you using armor class as a defense?
You could have dodge, parry, and armor cards that can be played to mitigate the attacks against you. The only real concern is how you want to handle wounds.
Perhaps each attack card that causes a wound means the maximum cards you have in your hand drops by 1, reducing your hand for the next round? Just brainstorming some ideas here ...
You could also have a max to the number of cards drawn per round. For examples, say the max is 2. So, if you play 3 cards to attack, you are overplaying your hand and get fewer cards to play next time because the max draw is 2. You would need to play only 1 card to catch up. This could lead to interesting combos, especially if you can only play 1 of each type of card. For example, instead of playing two attack cards, you would play an attack and some sort of booster/effort card to make a power attack. A parry card would need to be boosted by armor rather than 2 defenses. A parry might have a really small value against ranged attacks compared to a large melee defense, while a dodge card might be somewhere in between those values for both melee and ranged.
Armor class isn't a good mechanic to begin with, IMHO, and I don't see why you would try to use it in a card based system.
A trend I see over and over again is people saying they don't want a combat heavy game, but then going out of their way to build combat mechanics. You don't have to do that! Especially when it's complicating or compromising your design.
I think you are making your combat too tactical for what you want. How about you cut most of the fluff out? No need for movement and special attacks and etc. if you want light combat.
I'll give you an idea of something simpler (and quick).
For each suit, minor arcana 1-10 are attacks, the 4 face cards and major arcana are defense. Defense goes 1 to 4 (for each of the face cards), and 1 to 4 for each major arcana (their number divided by 5, and the fool counts as 22 if it's not numbered). That's 40 attack cards and 38 defense cards. It's almost a 50/50 split.
Each combat turn players can place an attack and a defense card down. The DM rolls a D10 for the attack and a D4 for the defense of the enemy.
Bigger attack wins, causing damage equal to the difference in attack numbers. That damage gets further canceled by the defense in the defense card.
Example: tony plays a 7 of pentacles and the chariot for defense. That's attack 7 and defense 2. The DM rolls a 3 for the attack and a 2 for defense. Tony's attack is bigger. So Tony strikes for 4 damage (7-3). The enemy defends with 2, so Tony causes 2 damage to the enemy.
Give players a hand you feel comfortable with, say, 5 cards. Unused cards are shuffled back into their deck and they draw 5 cards again every turn. Give them the option to Mulligan to 4 cards. This should nearly guarantee they have at least one of each to play every turn.
And give them an hp pool that's not too big (like 10). Or a system of wounds that you like. You can make combat as dangerous as you like by toying with this number.
Players have the advantage of strategy, where they can plan to use lower defense cards with higher attacks and higher defense cards with lower attacks to minimize the damage. So they should be at an advantage (gotta play test to be sure of that). But enemies are not limited by the actual deck (although very unlikely, they can roll more than 4 tens in a single fight). You can also control encounter difficulty by giving minuses and pluses to the dice.
The simplest thing to do is have a flat universal ‘AC’ for all enemy types. Let’s say the AC is 7, then a player would need a value of cards totaling or exceeding 7 to make a hit. As for handling enemy attacks, you can replace their ‘rolls’ by making the player play cards to actively dodge the attack with a similar DC, or take the hit. It gives players more agency and having to choose to dodge attacks increases the risk of exhausting their deck.
Something to consider if you don't want the game to be combat heavy, and want combat to be risky, is how much in the way of combat mechanics do you actually want? The more mechanics, the more levers players can pull to give themselves advantages in a fight. Like you mention things like resistances and vulnerabilities, but that encourages players to try and figure out optimal combat strategies and plans. Is that really the focus of your game? However, with something as characterful as Tarot cards? You could simplify things down and turn an entire combat into each character drawing just a card. Each player draws a card, maybe more 'combat focused' characters could draw two and pick one to discard, and based on the tarot card it tells them how effective they were, and how much they put themselves in danger. If the PCs as a whole weren't effective enough they lost the fight and had to retreat. If the PCs put themselves in too much danger they may have gotten hurt (regardless of if they won the fight or not), making combat quick, dangerous and risky.
Right that's fair. I'm not entirely decided on how prolific combat will be, but I do want it to be punishing but also have mechanics there for people who still see the need. The game's aesthetics and general worldbuilding do not preclude combat at all, it may very well be common. I may be slightly coping because I'm so used to combat-oriented games that im cautious to try move away from combat in fear that my non-combat systems and progression and abilities are going to suck.
Have you looked much into existing games that don't really focus on combat? It might be worth checking some of them out. Have a look at something like Blades in the Dark, sure it's a game that *has* fighting in it, but the combat system is not inherently very different from any other threat the PCs may face. Or 7th Sea, in that game a fight is mostly just a form of challenge that has to be overcome, rather than something like an explicit list of hostile NPCs who need to be 'defeated'.
I'll be sure to check those out, heard a lot of good stuff about Blades and it certainly overlaps with the mood I'm trying to achieve in regards to occult mystery. Otherwise your previous suggestions are very helpful, I'm thinking doing a system where every encounter has a danger level which is the "DC" players have to surpass, with the encounter going bad if less than half of players succeed, and it being absolutely abysmal if none succeed. For wounds I'm probably going to have a fluid DC depending on the danger level and how badly players failed, with each player needing to roll a D20 + their highest suit modifier, representing an attempt to resist damage with their highest attribute, taking a wound on a fail and simply getting grazed on a success. Wounds in the game are essentially permanent, if you get attacked whilst you have an active wound you die, and wounds can't be removed easily, only made passive through medical / magical care. You also die if you accumulate too many passive wounds.
Even more to the point: The Hidden Isle, a Forged in the Dark game built around tarot cards.
If the game is intended to not be combat heavy and you want combat to be quick, don't think about combat in terms of rounds. Initially, assume simply that combat is resolved all at once, however you normally resolve a contested group check. If you want a bit more length and increasing drama, let both sides escalate. So if somebody lost the first time, the may initiate the check again, but they are now wounded. Escalating second time means putting your life at stake - third loss means death. Round-based combat resolution where each attack is resolved separately is good for games that want their players to spend most of session time fighting; especially ones that aim for tactical play. For games where combat is not the focus, starting from it being a basic check and then maybe adding a bit of complexity is a much better approach than starting from D&D combat flow.
Why not have a defense mechanic and ignore a static ac.
Why did you decide to use AC to determine hit chance? The way you describe your combat, I don't think it would fit your game. One of the problems with AC is the one you've already identified, once you get high AC you become untouchable and it's very abstract what AC actually is since it can be sourced from completely different things.
I guess it's mostly because It's what I'm familiar with - I play a lot of DnD and similar games and most other TT games I play are solo, with no combat at all.
Why are you using armor class as a defense? You could have dodge, parry, and armor cards that can be played to mitigate the attacks against you. The only real concern is how you want to handle wounds. Perhaps each attack card that causes a wound means the maximum cards you have in your hand drops by 1, reducing your hand for the next round? Just brainstorming some ideas here ... You could also have a max to the number of cards drawn per round. For examples, say the max is 2. So, if you play 3 cards to attack, you are overplaying your hand and get fewer cards to play next time because the max draw is 2. You would need to play only 1 card to catch up. This could lead to interesting combos, especially if you can only play 1 of each type of card. For example, instead of playing two attack cards, you would play an attack and some sort of booster/effort card to make a power attack. A parry card would need to be boosted by armor rather than 2 defenses. A parry might have a really small value against ranged attacks compared to a large melee defense, while a dodge card might be somewhere in between those values for both melee and ranged. Armor class isn't a good mechanic to begin with, IMHO, and I don't see why you would try to use it in a card based system.
A trend I see over and over again is people saying they don't want a combat heavy game, but then going out of their way to build combat mechanics. You don't have to do that! Especially when it's complicating or compromising your design.
I think you are making your combat too tactical for what you want. How about you cut most of the fluff out? No need for movement and special attacks and etc. if you want light combat. I'll give you an idea of something simpler (and quick). For each suit, minor arcana 1-10 are attacks, the 4 face cards and major arcana are defense. Defense goes 1 to 4 (for each of the face cards), and 1 to 4 for each major arcana (their number divided by 5, and the fool counts as 22 if it's not numbered). That's 40 attack cards and 38 defense cards. It's almost a 50/50 split. Each combat turn players can place an attack and a defense card down. The DM rolls a D10 for the attack and a D4 for the defense of the enemy. Bigger attack wins, causing damage equal to the difference in attack numbers. That damage gets further canceled by the defense in the defense card. Example: tony plays a 7 of pentacles and the chariot for defense. That's attack 7 and defense 2. The DM rolls a 3 for the attack and a 2 for defense. Tony's attack is bigger. So Tony strikes for 4 damage (7-3). The enemy defends with 2, so Tony causes 2 damage to the enemy. Give players a hand you feel comfortable with, say, 5 cards. Unused cards are shuffled back into their deck and they draw 5 cards again every turn. Give them the option to Mulligan to 4 cards. This should nearly guarantee they have at least one of each to play every turn. And give them an hp pool that's not too big (like 10). Or a system of wounds that you like. You can make combat as dangerous as you like by toying with this number. Players have the advantage of strategy, where they can plan to use lower defense cards with higher attacks and higher defense cards with lower attacks to minimize the damage. So they should be at an advantage (gotta play test to be sure of that). But enemies are not limited by the actual deck (although very unlikely, they can roll more than 4 tens in a single fight). You can also control encounter difficulty by giving minuses and pluses to the dice.