Ok, I have an interesting combat mechanic I'm toying with for Digital, but I'm a little concerned because it's slightly odd. I'm worried it might be either too complex for people to grasp, or might result in unusual probabilities when put into practice. In general though I rather like it and I want to build the rest of the system around it. A separate system will almost certainly be needed for NPCs though.

1. On their turn during a round, each character involved can do one of three things: take an action (dealt with using normal rules), attack or defend.

2. To defend, take your defence pool of dice and roll them. Any that roll less than your armour rating become Soak dice. Any that roll greater than your armour rating become Dodge dice. Any that roll exactly your armour rating are Omni dice and can be used to either Dodge or Soak. While either type of dice works to defend against most attacks, some types of attack cannot be dodged and others cannot be soaked. Once defence is rolled, the dice remain on the table until they are spent as described below or until the character decides to refresh his collection of defence dice by making another defence roll.

3. To attack, roll your attack pool of dice and keep a number equal to your weapon's damage rating. The target may then spend dice from his previous defence roll to nullify your attack dice, but only if those dice show a higher value than yours and are of the correct type (dodge or soak). Any dice that are not nullified cause damage to the target.

(Note that while most armour ratings are a single number between 0 and 9 - the game will use D8s - some rare and expensive types of armour will grant ratings which encompass a short range of values, say 2-3, giving a proportionally higher chance of gaining valuable omni-dice.)

It follows that higher values of armour result in less efficient dodging, but more efficient soaking. Soak is generally effective against more weapons than dodging, but dodging covers the upper spectrum of successes and is more likely to succeed in blocking an attack die. Armour also costs cash to purchase. You can therefore choose to turn yourself into a walking tank, but be extremely vulnerable to the rare armour-piercing attacks, or to be a more nimble fighter vulnerable to fast moving bullet-like attacks which can't be dodged easily.

Ignoring the fact that this is impractical for large groups of NPCs (I have some ideas forming about that) what are peoples' thoughts on this system?

Ash