Captain Anorak's Guide to Gaming
Simple 'To Hit' Rolls
A lot of games, like Basic Roleplaying (the RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu system), have a melee combat system as follows. To determine whether a character hits in combat, a simple dice roll is made (in Basic Roleplaying, this is a percentile roll on the character's skill in that attack). This might be about 20% for an average peasant type, or more like 70% for a seasoned warrior.

If the roll is a success, then the attacker has hit his target, who may now make an attempt to avoid this by dodging or parrying. But if the attacker's hit roll fails, then he has simply missed.

Eh? What? Missed? What?

People do not miss in combat. It's that simple. I've done quite a lot of martial arts, and I've seen that people - even complete beginners - simply do not miss when trying to hit an opponent. It doesn't happen. The only exception is with fancy complex stuff like spinning kicks. But the simple normal moves that people use most of the time in hand-to-hand combat, such as punches, kicks and grabs, never miss. The only way that a target can avoid being hit is to use an active defence, such as a block or dodge.

My more limited experience of fighting with sticks suggests that the same is also true of armed combat using swung weapons (a stick is essentially like a sword in this respect).

Some people say that in the heat of combat, with combatants panicking and moving about, this would not be true. My experience is otherwise. I've done plenty of fighting with fast-moving people but neither they nor I were made to miss by the incidental body-movement of combat.

So, then, we must assume that this chance to hit given to us by the rules includes a certain amount of unspoken defence, or 'autododge'. This in turn assumes that all opponents have basically the same fundamental ability to dodge. That is entirely ludicrous - would a nimble duellist, a lame cripple and a largely immobile slug-monster all have the same autododging ability? Of course they wouldn't.

See also Transparency.