Combat and Magic in the Roguish System

There will be two methods for resolving combat in Roguish: Contested or targeted.  Each is simple to execute and it comes down to dice rolling and whether you love it or hate it.  Personally little simple tweaks that make combat feel more competitive add to the immersion in the game and the sense of "danger." 

Contested combat works like this:
Attacker adds Attribute bonus, class bonus, and any particular weapon bonus to the roll of 3d6.
Defender adds Attribute bonus, Armor Defense, and then rolls 3d6. 

If the attacker's total is higher he hits, if it is equal to or lower then the defender's total, he misses.

Very simple, but contesting the combat rolls leads to a much more dynamic feeling in combat.  Yes its more dice rolling for the referee, but it has not slowed the game play down and instead made combat quite a bit more tense and fun.

For those who prefer a targeted combat system it is very simple: just add 10 to the Defender's defense total.  The attacker rolls 3d6, adds their modifiers, and must roll higher than the target number.  Very simple and traditional, but for me not quite as interesting in application.

Magic uses a mix of contested and targeted rolls depending upon spell.  Every spell has a target number the caster most roll equal to or higher than to successfully cast the spell.  The more difficult the spell the higher the target number.  A wizard's level is applied as a bonus to spell casting.  You can continue to cast a spell so long as you are successful in doing so.

Failing to cast a spell means it is no longer available for you to cast unless you get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.  That is unless you want to pay with blood.  A Wizard can continue to attempt to cast failed spells by sacrificing hit points for the attempt.  The blood price is paid whether the spell is successfully cast or not!

I do not arbitrarily classify spells as level 1 or level 3.  Magic is a knowledge and if a referee allows a 1st level character to take raise dead or summon greater devil that's fine, but chance of success will be quite low, and there could be some nasty side effects for failure to cast one of these types of spells...