The Gaming Den

FF books were pretty cool and its only when you look at other gamebooks fighting/combat mechanic that you realise that its quite neat but could be improved

1 - critical hits and critical misses...easy to implement double 6 for a critical hit doing 4 damage, maybe even 8, double 2 for the critical miss - take away a similar amount...maybe less to tilt the balance in favour of the player

2 - more damage for better weapons

3 - armour to decrease damage

sadly the more bits you add on the worse it gets but I know from memory some fights were just grinds...

I like the idea of the battle system in Cretan Chronicles

1. There are already critical hits/misses in Fighting Fantasy, it's called Testing your LUCK in combat. But if you want something nicer than that, there are a few things:

In Creature of Havoc, you are a monster that auto-kills opponents on a natural 12. There was also a crystal club you could use to auto-kill one opponent before the combat music began, which leads into 2.

2. Some weapons have this; for example, the Heatsword from a book I'm currently running here on the Den, the Sword of Gravalan from Portal of Evil can double damage for a combat if you use one of its charges in combat, there's a few weapons like that in Beneath Nightmare Castle (IIRC there's a mace that does 4 damage but has -1 to attack since it's bulky but powerful and an artifact weapon that does +2 SKILL/+2 damage versus humanoids and +4 SKILL/damage versus unnatural or magical creatures.) There's also a throwing knife in Citadel of Chaos that automatically deals 2 damage. This is ignoring all of the weapons that just give +SKILL or +Attack Strength. So this rule sort of exists, too.

3. Armor does that in Space Assassin, there are shields in Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Forest of Doom that have a chance to reduce or negate damage, and your scales in Creature of Havoc halve damage taken in combat. Swords-Ease in Portal of Evil halves damage for one combat. There's also a breastplate in Citadel of Chaos that gives your opponents -2 Attack Strength. House of Hell has lemonade (yes, lemonade) that allows you to ignore the next 2 hits you take in combat.

These are all just examples off the top of my head that I happen to remember, there are more and all. And you could use any of those (or something better, probably) for new gamebooks.

Nice handle, JackLuminous. I approve.

What most of the Fighting Fantasy books really need is a method of backtracking.