Melee vs. Area spells

I like both of Orangebeard's suggestions. The "stack" approach (#1) is used in Heroes of Might and Magic (the computer game) and other games as well, I'm sure.

QuestCCG, now that I think about it, don't you have the same problem even with melee-only combat? For example, if you have 2 fighters and each is fighting a different monster, don't you need to keep track of the damage dealt separately? With the "stack" approach, of course that problem goes away - everyone is always fighting the "first" monster on the stack.

Another approach is to track damage individually, but as you noted, this is typically done using pencil and paper in RPG's, and you'd want a very clean/easy method for your game. If you replaced the wooden cubes representing monsters with small 6 sided dice, you could then track between 1 to 6 hit points for each. The pips on the dice could be skulls or blood drops or something like that to help keep the theme, but it is still a bit of a pain.

Good luck with your game!

- Qwib

In this example, an *area effect* does the same amount of damage to each monster that is affected. However, the total damage done to the monsters is distributed to kill as many as possible. For example, 3 Goblins (2 Health each; 6 Health total) are targeted by my Blizzard spell. Blizzard can inflict up to 3 damage per monster so I roll for damage and get the following results (Goblin #1 = 3 damage, Goblin #2 = 1 damage, Goblin #3 = 1 damage). The total damage to the group is 5 so I remove 2 Goblins from the board (4 damage will kill 2 Goblins, but 1 damage is not enough to kill the 3rd Goblin).

Can a powerful melee attack kill more than 1 monster?

Correct

I like your idea of Magical Resistance. I think this gives you the ability to have more variation in monsters and encourages players to think more about how best to kill the monsters. If Magic is a major element in your game, you might also consider resistance to certain types of Magic (Fire, Ice, Poison, Shadow, etc.)

If I'm understanding your setup, you have multiple monsters fighting the players, but they are fought by melee and ranged characters in a stack, so they are damaged one monster at a time. The monster being fought has HP that are tracked somehow until it takes enough damage from multiple attacks to be killed, leading to the next monster in the stack.

Once you introduce area effects, you must be able to track that damage on multiple targets, or make the area effects binary, in that they either kill the monster or they don't affect it at all. If there is the potential for anything between those two choices, the game needs to keep track of it.

Have you considered treating the monster stack as a line instead? If you line up the cards, the Melee fighters still have to fight the first one until it's dead before moving on through the line. Your Ranged players could attack any monster in the line, as many cards down the line as they have range for (a set amount or different for each ranged character). Mages would then affect a set grouping of monsters in the line, such as 'target monster and each adjacent monster', "all monsters" or 'the last 4 monsters in the line', or somesuch. This way each monster can be tracked, and ranged and magic players can soften up the upcoming monsters the melee players have to take on.

Hope that helps.

That's a good way. Like I mentioned, if you can't track damage individually, then a yes/no on monster death was the other option. Accumulating damage all together is a great way to do that.