Path of Exile does it, Diablo 2 does it, Torchlight does it, Last Epoch does it, Titan Quest does it, Grim Dawn doesn't do it but kinda but that's game weird so who cares. Basically; these games have miss/hit chances when you attack enemies and when enemies attack you. (And also Morrowind and pretty much all CRPGs and every roleplaying game which shares its DNA with the you-know-what dragon game.)
Characters with a lot of Dexterity; Rogues, Archers, Amazons, Tricksters, Assassins, and so on tend to primarily build their PASSIVE defense around increasing the chance to avoid hits. This makes sense both in universe (dodging attacks meaning you don't take any damage at all instead of just reducing them the way a heavily armored warrior might endure enemy attacks) and also acts as a mechanically different form of defense then simple damage mitigation in the form of armor. But there's a few issues with it. Mechanically, this defensive type is inherently less reliable then the other types as it relies on randomness. On top of this, other base systems heavily skew this system to being either overpowered or very weak, such as a minimum hit chance percentage. In a properly balanced action game this may not be an issue, but in your typical ARPG with a huge amount of character build, gear, enemy, and encounter variance this quickly falls apart. While running into a monster with a "attacks always hit" modifier should be scary for a Dex character regardless under this system; it uniquely screws over this character worse then a "purges your defensive auras" monster or a "penetrates your armor" monster since rarely do these characters have a secondary form of defense and there tends to be less secondary forms of mitigation to offset this. This makes the game for these characters much more like rocket-tag; you either kill everything in one hit or they kill you in one hit with no inbetween.
This contrasts to the other characters with their own stats and defensive schemes. In PoE, which is the one I'm most referencing in and building from; Strength based characters use Armor which reduce incoming damage by a percentage, Dexterity uses our Evasion rating described above, and Intelligence has energy shield, which simply acts as a second health bar that recharges quickly when not in combat. Hybrid classes that mix two primary attributes use both of their attribute's defenses but to a lesser extent then a pure class. ie; Strength/Dex equipment grants Armor and Evasion but less then a pure Armor value then a pure Str piece of equipment would in that slot.
Side note: While writing this post I had a sudden sense of Deja Vu and then I remember I did write this exact same thing before. This really is the autistic hyper-fixation blog. Doesn't matter, I have new ideas to add to the pile. I won't go into detail about high Evasion characters should have it easier in dodge enemy attacks though since I covered it there and I still think it's a decent mechanical idea- for video games, of course. While I cover a lot of tabletop stuff this mechanics heavy stuff isn't as viable at the table in my opinion.
While mechanically making Dex-based evasion mechanics more interesting is the goal, passive defense is inevitable in this genre and also important for the stat and character building side. How do we make this system more interesting while keeping its theme and making it distinct from the other forms of defense, like Health tanking, armor, block, or magical shields?
Definition of Terms- Accuracy Ladder
In most games with these systems, attacks either miss or hit in a very binary system. It has its roots in tabletop gaming; which is represented on a d20 attack roll. Crits are usually a secondary calculation with its own statistic; though sometimes it can be a factor. Roughly you can think of it like a ladder of different outcomes based on the roll and possible results.
(Critical Fail -------- Miss ---- Hit -------- Critical Success)
Increasing your To-Hit, Attack, or Accuracy rating essentially weighs this table towards successful hits, where as increasing your Defense weighs enemy attacks towards missing. I should also mention in this example, "Critical Hit/Fail" doesn't necessarily mean it's enhanced in any way; just that it's the guaranteed hit or miss hard boiled into the system. Path of Exile in particular engages towards this basic system more, since crits require a "confirmation" hit roll behind the scenes to activate. This means having high Dexterity & Evasion makes crits harder to land on you (Defensive) and having high accuracy and crit chance makes your attacks hit more and are more likely to crit (Offensive). However, this basic ladder concept can be applied to more then a binary hit/miss system. A good example of this, and the exact mechanic that inspired this post, is the Pillars of Eternity accuracy vs defense ladder or Attack Resolution system.
(Miss - Graze - Hit - Critical Hit)
In Pillars; a Graze means an attack or spell deals -50% damage or has -50% reduced duration, and the opposite applies to a critical hit. This heavily incentivizes Accuracy as something to build for any character, including spellcasters. Narratively this makes sense; highly agile characters dodging attacks and magic spells at close range so they are only grazed by them and are less phased by them as a result. But having a form of mitigation that reduces the incoming negative effects is a bit of a problem for our schema; as this is very similar to what our potential concept of Armor (strength) characters already do. At this point if included in the game; the difference between a chance to negate 50% damage or having a set amount of damage reduction becomes a math puzzle and is far less interesting to me then three complete, different defensive mechanics. It's still a useful starting point for our ideas.
As you can see, this small addition of mechanical depth can change a lot about the binary pass-fail system. But what should we actually do with it?
Alternate Concept #0- Fumbles & Counterblows
Whenever you are attacked, the enemy has a chance to hit based on your dexterity score and evasion. Very high difference of scores unlock the worst result, in which case the enemy fumbles their attack.
(Fumble - Miss ------ Hit ------ Critical hit)
Whenever an enemy fumbles an attack against the player character; they not only miss but also slow down considerably, and become vulnerable to a counter-attack. The next time the player hits the enemy within a short window they take increased damage. Ideally, this would also be animated and shown in the game, either with a whiff or stumble animation, to further sell the illusion the player-character dodged or tricked the enemy so much they lose their balance and open them up to a counter.
This concept allows for more depth and increased reward for Evasion-based builds. It also indirectly helps with avoiding damage by increasing damage output; you can kill enemies quicker to avoid them hitting you again. This concept also fits with the general theme of Dex-based character fantasies; duelists or rogues striking enemies down in a glass-cannon playstyle. However, this doesn't actually change the core mechanic being chance-based. There are other mechanics that could make it deterministic, such as the first enemy attack each enemy makes against you always misses or fumbles with an increased chance to fumble; not to mention abilities or skills that can force an enemy fumble/stun animation and so on.
The other issue with the fumble mechanic is that it gives the player-character a special mechanic or advantage the enemy doesn't have (or if you did implement it the other way, attacking certain enemies would be suicidal or just really annoying to deal with; much in the way enemies with really high evasion already are). This increases the feeling of disparity between the player and monsters in the game; a nice thing about the Hit/Miss/Crit scale concept is that the player and enemies are essentially playing by similar rules, making it a sliding scale of combat. But this isn't universally true and lots of games already don't really have enemies with random chance to crit on attack; so thinking of a fumble just as a "defensive crit" in the context of the miss/hit random chance system it's more reasonable to think only players get access to it. Obviously once again this is only counting the passive defense aspect of the game; special enemy attacks could always make a player fumble or enemies could enter a guarded stance which automatically parry a player attack is a given as a possible mechanic to spice up the combat.
Alternate Concept #1- Active Defense Enhancement
More detailed in the other rant post; essentially allowing Dexterity focused characters more mobility & active ability to dodge attacks or telegraphed AoE zones of damage is another form of damage mitigation that is unique and separate from other forms of damage reduction. However the issue with this is the implementation. If every point of Dexterity just gave you +1% faster move speed and you could use that to dodge attacks; it would quickly be totally out of control with the character either zipping around the map so fast or every other type of character being almost unplayable in terms of speed. But you can't make the investment too small; if a max level Archer or Rogue is only 10% faster then everyone else and that's all the benefit you got from Dexterity then it would feel like a massive investment for just a chance to dodge enemies more often. Of course, given how insanely powerful movement skills seem to be in every game, maybe it'd be a fair trade off, but for average players I think it'd feel weird. It also has to do with scaling and impact; for an entire game's worth of content, a system like this would only be able to increase whatever movement speed or animation speed by a tiny fraction of fraction; meaning your gear upgrades would do almost nothing as you move through the game. For standard Accuracy/Defense rating however it works well since these values can scale off each other; so small dex/evasion/attack bonuses early in Act 1 can feel impactful while still needing constant upgrades throughout the game. If these stats were just "+X% chance to dodge all attacks" they'd need to be highly constrained or limited by certain hard caps or else you'd literally be increasing your modifiers by 1% per item swap throughout the campaign by the end or can't even get this gear until way later. There's a reason why games don't really set these as passive stats you can just grind for with level.
Second? This isn't really what we're talking about. This is kinda supposed to be... passive mitigation, right? Like armor, shields, stuff like that? Plus rarely is movement speed or mobility tied to a single stat like this; it tends to be a part of an overarching character design and part of the "power budget" of a character. Like Archers already tend to have moves that either keep enemies at distance or let them get back, and being ranged means they naturally have to be weaker in melee to make them not just straight better then a melee character.
One semi-simple solution is to have this archetype have multiple levers. Perhaps every point of Dexterity does increase your movement speed, but only when using the rush skill or dodge skill every character, has, giving a slight advantage (like PoE's dodge roll), that way Dex characters aren't literally able to just freely avoid every single slow predictable enemy attack. But this is just one mechanic; you can also stack evasion to increase your block/stun recovery time, making you less likely to get stunlocked. While this mechanic is usually thematically reserved for warriors, having it for agility-type characters also makes sense. Then on top of that; you have resistance to status effects, but especially slows. ARPGs seem very hesitant to actually put slows on the characters unless from very specific enemies (curses) or elemental types that you're meant to protect yourself against (cold dmg). As such, in this hypothetical scenario Dexterity could do a little bit of all of these. Increasing your resistance to slows, decreasing the size of enemy slam attacks or reducing the amount of damage you take from them (treating you as farther from "the center" for damage calculation), increasing your general action, attack, move, and stun recovery speed; and maybe enhancing your other movement based skills like dodge rolls, sprints, dashes, and so on. Tying this all to one stat or ability score is probably not ideal for game progression but might be interesting from a design perspective. And ALL of this, just to mechanically equal a passive chance to avoid attacks because I don't like the RNG engine. Yikes.
Alternate Concept #2- Damage Threshold
The higher your "Defense" or "Evasion" rating is, you avoid all attacks that deal damage underneath that value. Any attack that does over that amount of damage, you take the full amount of damage. Effectively means weak attacks from minions or spam spells won't do anything to you and you just dodge them, but big powerful attacks from stronger monsters or AoE damage spells and slams still hurt you. Extremely simple.
Unfortunately, I don't see this one really working in practice. These types of games tend to have random damage numbers or alternate damage types (elements, magic v physical, pierce that ignores armor, etc.) and would come out to be very difficult to predict how well defended you really are. While slightly less random then Evasion rating, it would still feel very "random" in that you suddenly take big hits from enemies if enemies have randomized damage enough to slip past your DT. Secondly, becomes a huge balancing nightmare as if you can raise your DT too high enemies will just literally not be able to do anything to you, or you can still take one shots when enemies stack multiple modifiers or amplify damage curses or what have you. However, I do think it thematically fits these types of characters well; and fits with the theme of scoundrels, bards, and assassins being cocky and untouchable until they just get slapped for a million damage out of nowhere causing sudden panic and being less reliable or as tanky as an armor user who presumably has more normal damage mitigation. The argument could also be made that this actually fits armor thematically better; so perhaps switching roles (evasion reduces damage by a percent, armor has a DT value) might fit these defense classes more. Though maybe in a perfect world, PoE style the class that specializes in the Damage-Threshold-Evasion would actually be the Duelist or Str/Dex hybrid; but this category has gone on far enough.
While we're treating this damage type as an absolute value, it also doesn't have to be and could be roped in with another defensive layer or schema. Like the accuracy ladder from before;
(Miss/Bonus DT --- Hit v Damage Threshold --- Hit v Damage Reduction --- Pierce)
Your absolute threshold only applies to "good" defense rolls vs enemy attacks (equivalent to a accuracy/evasion miss), where as a smaller Damage Threshold is applied to normal attacks that "hit" you successfully or instead just reduce the damage by that flat amount (maybe these could be swapped effects?) Finally, the equivalent of an enemy crit with this system would just deal full damage regardless of how large your threshold is. However writing this out, I'm basically now realizing this is basically what hit chance vs evasion is but the "damage threshold" is just the defense vs attack rating lmao. All in all I don't like this one; the absolute nature of it means that partial investment is almost useless you make even super late game enemies have very weak attacks that can still fit under a character's normal damage threshold that doesn't specialize in evasion, and it doesn't stop the pass/fail nature of random hit chance just offloads it to a slightly more predictable outcome just based on how strong an enemy is or whatever. Still, I have to include it in this list.
Alternate Concept #3- Potential Damage & The Vulnerable State
Instead of taking the damage directly, you receive "potential" damage. This could still be tied into a Dexterity system, like a percentage of the damage you take becomes potential damage or a certain type of hit you can take (between a miss/hit/crit etc.) deals a portion of the damage immediately and the rest is deferred in this way. Think of this as a secondary form of delaying damage but instead of being over time and guaranteed its a big lump of damage you could take at some point in the future.
While this sounds a little strange at first given the fiction of the game I think it fits pretty well. It contextualizes the combat system as being slightly more story based or requiring suspension of disbelief as when the skeleton hits your character you don't actually take the damage from the hit, but instead you are put slightly off balance, or reeling, or being pushed back and starting to feel doubt essentially, to the point that the next hit may be the lethal one that ends your adventure. I also think this well fits the leather clad "dex fighter", archer, rogue, or other similar archetypes often associated with this defensive stat.
There are then a few possibilities on when this potential/stored damage can actually hit you then. Without a reliable means for this type of damage to actually hurt you, it'd essentially then be no different from damage reduction. I actually have a really fun idea on how to represent this too given the genre staples; represent it as a crack in your character's life orb that slowly creeps towards the top as you have more and more of this "stored" damage. When the amount of potential damage is equal to or greater then your life total; you enter a "vulnerable" state, where the next solid attack that hits you will kill you instantly (because you take all the potential damage at once). Of course if this could be any random generic skeleton sword slash attack it would be no different then eating a high damage crit with a chance-based dodge rating; which is why instead I would have it so regular monster attacks become potential with Dexterity or evasion scaling, but area of effect or dodgeable spell attacks can pop your potential damage. As an addition visual indicator, a DbD Terror Radius like heartbeat appears in the center of your character with a loud heartbeat sound, which acts as a useful indicator you need to back off an use a recovery ability or wait for your potential or stored damage to disappear.
Thematically, I like this potential form of damage a lot. It gives a more active form of defense and also fits with the general aesthetic of "Dex based" characters; like thieves or rogues who run in an bite off more then they can chew, and will suddenly get put in their place if they try to get too fancy with it. And it also allows you to stay in combat longer if you take the risk; perfect gimmick for a arrogant rogue type character like PoE's Shadow. I also think, contrary to first opinion, that it may actually be fine to have this NOT as a character-specific passive ability or active "smoke bomb disappear risky ninja defense skill", but as a game-wide mechanic. Why? Because characters who aren't stacking evasion/dex won't have this vulnerable state happen that often and will more likely die from normal damage; but when it rarely does happen it'd make for an interesting gameplay moment of the Warrior going into their defensive block stance to avoid taking a critical strike or a Sorcerer quickly teleporting away or using their bubble shield to avoid getting one-shot through their defenses. Certain enemies could also specialize in this kind of damage; like if you walk through spider webs or let invisible rogue enemies stay behind you too long and now have to deal with them over any other enemies to avoid getting one-shot.
The issue with this concept is twofold though; firstly being something that may be useless for characters who don't build into it (if too low-Dex can't turn damage into potential damage then splashing a little evasion doesn't do anything for you; where as in PoE even a small amount of evasion will reduce some of the damage you take sometimes at least), or even worse it could actually be MORE beneficial for character who don't specialize in it then those who do. Like imagine if a heavily armored warrior gets enough evasion that 50% of the damage they take is deferred as potential damage; but they don't convert enough that they ever reach the "vulnerable state", meaning they essentially get a form of damage mitigation better then the evasion character who might reach multiple "vulnerable" points during a single combat encounter with a boss and therefore has more chances to actually die in the fight. Part of avoiding this is just how the vulnerability state is mechanically implemented; for example I'd have the vulnerability state only activate when you mitigate a hit large enough to actually chunk your hit points, which causes the heartbeat visual and audio warning, which then beats faster and louder if it grows to be capable of killing you in a single hit. So midway through a fight you might mitigate enough that a single hit will put you at half HP, which you have to worry about a bit, but full "balls to the wall one hit will kill you" moments are more rare and not something you get often with this form of damage resistance. The second problem I have with it, which is more nitpicky, is that this just the PoE Energy Shield in reverse. Instead of getting out of combat to recharge your temporary defensive shield, you are getting out of combat to avoid a large hit, but if this potential damage is deferred after a few seconds of safety then it's exactly the same as an ES build just more complex and harder to make a build around imo. With all this in mind; I'd keep this as a special character power or rare mechanic for certain mobs; like rare mobs with a "Heartseeker" modifier that lets them charge up a lethal crit on you if you fight them for a long time, or a method for an lifestealing vampire dexterity character to avoid death by entering a vulnerable state for 3 seconds whenever they reach 1 HP IF they can manage to lifeleech all their health back or w/e within the time limit. But this leads perfectly into the last concept...
Alternate Concept #4- Damage Deferral
The simplest, and by far my favorite of all alternate defensive stats for Hit/Miss systems is simply damage deferral. You still take some or all of the damage from the attack, but instead of taking it all at once, you take the damage over time. At first glance, this may seem really bad. Why would anyone use this? You still have to take the damage, right? Yes, but the rate of taking the damage is reduced significantly, which means you don't have to take it all at once. Instead of dying to a single bit hit or rapid series of hits, your health drops but you now have a safety net of time to use to recover your hit points, complete the combat encounter, or both.
Most of these kinds of games have some form of healing; like potions, flasks, lifesteal on attacks, life gain on kill, and so on. With damage deferral, you can simultaneously survive hits while also undoing the damage of those attacks through healing. Most of the time there is also a base health regeneration rate, which already helps greatly reduce the amount of damage you're taking, but this fully depends on the interval of time. This would have to be adjusted for the speed of the game; with slower games naturally having slower damage deferral timers, and fast paced games having much shorter ones. While this depends immensely on the theme of the game; Dexterity characters often have a lifesteal or life-gain-on-kill focus, or a focus on alchemy and self-healing. Path of Exile's claw weapons, which are a Dex/Int hybrid weapon, have a base ability of restoring life or mana on hit. Already the ability to defer damage would go hand in hand with this archetype; but it's even better with the Armor/Evasion/Energy Shield scheme as you could essentially be taking damage to life while regenerating or blocking damage with energy shield acting as an extra barrier. Same as all games with healing; healing over time with a shield is doubly effective since you are essentially restoring the health and preventing further health damage with the ablative effect of a barrier or bonus HP or whatnot.
Of course, the exact amount of damage deferred and how/when it is applied is important. If evasion is a pure damage deferral tool; then all attacks would be damage over time which for whatever reason rubs me the wrong way. Instead you could use the accuracy ladder, but instead with damage being deferred or immediate being the outcomes instead of attack roll. For example, you could still have misses, but a very high evasion role could mean enemies hit you with a slower damage over time effect (100% of the damage taken over 12 seconds) where as a medium hit or lower evasion score results in taking half the damage now, and the other half over a shorter time period. (like 50% and the rest of the damage over 4 seconds). In this protocol the player is less actively managing the damage deferral in the shorter term, instead more relying on the life steal/regen/other damage mitigation effects to sustain them. You could also apply a secondary reduction of damage to just the overall amount as a new modifier to items, character skills, or to other abilities. Like "75% of the damage taken is taken over 4 seconds" with whatever is leftover just being lost, but this is starting to get back to the realm of pure mitigation and damage reduction, which is more armor's thing. I think having a character with just a flat amount of damage mitigation built in to their evasion mechanic is fine though, since it helps a lower HP/armor character survive who doesn't have those sorts of magical/ranged defenses Wizards might get in our potential game.
(Miss - Graze (100% deferred) - Glance (50% deferred) - Hit - Critical)
I also believe this concept really thematic fits the Dexterity characters and their style of defense; they "dodge" attacks to make themselves bleed or avoid the damage for a short time, but still have to mitigate the damage as a high risk/reward kind of defensive mechanic, and adds a decent amount of active management to the system. If you see your life draining from hits, drink a health potion or use your defensive options; perhaps even moves that delay the damage even further, though once again this could be more of a character-building thing over an active part of the combat system.
However there are a few negatives to it. Firstly; it's much harder to tell exactly how dangerous or to differentiate monster types if they're all dealing delayed and mitigated damage. For example, in an RPG where you can go to high level areas early, your first warning sign to leave is usually coming up to an enemy that deals half your life in a single hit or something similar. Even if you manage to defeat the opponent or run away, this subtly tells the player they need to improve their gear or level up more. While rapidly losing all your health from a powerful enemy attack is similar, I don't think it has quite that punch. In the same vein, running into a pack of enemies in Diablo 2 and being chain smacked by several powerful melee enemies reminds the player to keep their sorceress or whatever back and reinforces the combat style; where as an Evasion character might wade into big groups of enemies not realizing they're "playing it wrong" since they're mitigating the damage and not seeing the immediate effect of their actions. These are just gut reactions though, and I think players could learn to adapt to this new system. Along with this; I do think a game where almost every enemy deals damage over time could be really annoying just from a player perspective, but hopefully this would mostly only matter to our evasion/dex player and they'd see it as a positive and a result of their hard work building their character.
Secondly; what to do with lethal damage over time damage? This is trickier then it seems. I can easily see a situation where a player has frustration over running into monsters, killing them easily, but taking a lot of deferred damage and dying right after because they don't have the healing or lifesteal to sustain their build. Or even worse, standing there awkwardly watching their health tick to zero as they realize they have nothing in their inventory or try to rush to open a town portal scroll and go back to town before they die (this could also be extremely fun however).
If you do something like make healing more effective for "overflow" damage to your life total or make it so healing always ticks before damage (ie; you can't die from damage over time while you have a healing effect active) then it might be too easy to cheese. However I feel like this might be completely fine, since presumably players have limited healing resources. The second solution to this is to just make the damage from mitigated hits nonlethal; which means you can't actually die from pure deferred damage. Similar to poison in a lot of games; this means it just lowers your survivability but won't actually kill you. I also like this solution from a possible action game perspective, as this would also fit the character fantasy of high risk high reward Dexterity rogue archetype we like; but once again this might be too easy to cheese encounters by just getting really high evasion and disengaging from packs and waiting for your deferred damage to go away or returning to town after every fight for a heal; which is certainly not what is intended. Still, I think this solution is a really interesting way to represent a Dex-build evasion type character in a game that doesn't have to rely on a static hit/miss chance.
