Melee history and character builds

I played Melee with Vivit yesterday and have some thoughts on charop.

Box art of the most recent edition of Melee

Why melee? A history of the game

Melee is an early game by Steve Jackson, published by Metagaming in 1977. (I'm playing the 2019 3rd edition, published by Steve Jackson Games.) He intended it to work as a standalone combat board game, or to function as a drop-in replacement for D&D combat.

It is the first combat ruleset to work on a small timescale, to bring the regimented action ordering from wargaming into roleplaying, and to require actual combat tactics. (D&D on the other hand focuses on operational matters.) It also introduced the conceit of point-buy character creation.

Moreover, Jackson kept developing the game, making a sequel, Wizard, the next year, and a full-fledged RPG, The Fantasy Trip, in 1980.

Later that year Jackson left Metagaming and founded Steve Jackson Games. He couldn't afford the rights to The Fantasy Trip. Thus in 1985 he published a generalization of TFT combat as Man to Man: Fantasy Combat from GURPS, and Basic GURPS in 1986.

Overview of character creation options

When you make a character you have to decide on your distribution of stats, weapons, and armor. Some options are clearly better than others.

Starting characters in Melee get 8 Str, 8 Dex, and 8 more points to distribute as they please. Str determines what weapons a character can wield, and how much damage they can take. Dex determines the target number for the attack roll (3d6, roll less than or equal to) and the order in which you can act. Dex gets modified a lot so we write a second stat down, adjDex, which is its current adjusted value.

Armor reduces damage but also lowers Dex and movement.

Weapons that require high Str do more damage, but make you less likely to hit, as there's a zero-sum tradeoff between Str and Dex. 

Stat breakpoints

adjDex 5 or lower: equally (in)effective, as every roll of 5 or lower will always hit. If your adjDex goes to 5, you may as well pile on more armor and take it as low as you can.

adjDex 15: highest effective Dex value for attacks; above this point you only get insurance. Shoot twice with a small bow

adjDex 17: insurance against high damage hits, which lower your adjDex by 3 next turn

adjDex 18: insurance against low strength, which lowers your adjDex permanently

Str 9: can use small bow

Str 11: can use mace 

Str 12: can use broadsword

Str 13: can use halberd

I recommend an adjDex of at least 11.

Weapon choice

Since every additional point of Str directly reduces your accuracy via Dex, and each weapon requires a certain Str. We can easily calculate the expected damage of the weapon.

I have calculated the average % of a weapon's damage done as a function of the wielder's adjDex. The results are displayed below.

% of a weapon's average damage done per attack as a function of the attacker's adjDex

As I said above, adjDex of 3, 4, and 5 are identical; I did not calculate adjDex of 16+, for the same reason.

Having made these calculations, I found:

• Small bow is the ideal ranged weapon. 9 Str, 15 Dex, 1d-1 damage, 95.37% chance of hitting per attack, can shoot twice per round, expected damage output per shot 4.884, expected damage per round 9.768
• Broadsword is the ideal melee weapon. 12 Str, 12 Dex, 2d damage, 74.07% chance of hitting,  5.3466 expected damage per round
• Halberd is the ideal pole weapon. 13 Str, 11 Dex, 2d damage, 62.5% chance of hitting, 4.5367 expected damage per round, not counting circumstance bonuses to damage or adjDex

(Expected damage is not quite average damage * odds of hitting, because of the low chance that a weapon will deal double or triple damage.) 

Why would you use anything other than a small bow? Because the small bow has a very low damage per hit, which will quickly be eaten up by enemy armor. If they're shooting someone with cloth armor and a small shield (-2 damage), they are barely better than the broadsword (5.768 damage per round) and if the enemy is genuinely armored, with mail and a small shield (-4 damage), you'll be dealing a pitiful 1.768 damage per round.

Why would you use a pole weapon instead of a broadsword? They give bonuses to adjDex and damage under various circumstances to do with charges, and they can attack from an extra hex away. These differences are too circumstantial for me to evaluate them numerically.

Figures can only carry two weapons, including a shield, plus a dagger or main-gauche. I suggest using broadswords with shields, and halberds with light crossbows.

Optimized small bow users are advised not to get involved in melee! Thus it doesn't matter much what second weapon you bring.

Armor choice

Now things are tricky. I haven't done the math for optimizations here, I'm just going off of gut instinct.

A small shield is a no-brainer "weapon" choice for melee combatants other than halberdiers. +1 armor and no reduction to movement or adjDex.

Cloth armor is the next most obvious addition; an additional -1 to damage, with no penalty to movement, and only -1 adjDex.

Following that, adjDex penalties are one-to-one: +1 armor, -1 adjDex. The three best armors (mail, half-plate, and plate, -3, -4, and -5 respectively) reduce your movement to 6.

I can't tell you what armor to wear without knowing what your opponent is like. If your opponent hits rarely but hard, you probably want lots of armor, while if they're very accurate but do little damage, only a little armor will suffice.

I've thought of a goofy tactic, and sort-of tried it but didn't commit hard enough. If your adjDex falls below 5, you might as well bring it as low as you can, as you'll still have the same chance of hitting the enemy. Thus you might have a figure with 16 Str, 8 Dex, 2 adjDex, who takes -7 damage from every hit. This figure is practically useless as a damage-dealer, hitting only 4.63% of the time, but they can pin the enemy down and tank hits effortlessly.

Wizard

I haven't played it yet. Skimming the rules tells me that for wizards, like for melee fighters, Dex is all-important; wizards cast spells just like fighters attack, by rolling 3d6 <= adjDex.

I don't know the spell list well enough to say that any particular spells are all-important and thus represent breakpoints. Actual play is needed here.

Where does this lead the game itself?

It seems like I've optimized all play out of the game. But not so! In play, position, especially flanking and engagement, are critical, as is the construction of a team. I have only analyzed the construction of one character.