It took me a couple of reads to understand what you are trying to convey, Archonsod. As it stands now, (if I AM understanding this correctly), you have an Accuracy vs Dodge roll, followed by a Strength vs Defense roll.
If I grasp your concept correctly, the second roll would simply determine penetration of the armor, with the third (Damage) roll being a set value (DWeapon Strength, plus strength bonus).
Hmmm... interesting.
Anyways, I got a little off track in my probability discussion. I think that Weapon/attack strength versus defense hasn't been adequately thought out. It seems to me that as more powerful creatures/units come online, defense strengths became disproportionatly huge, which has required weapon strengths to be similarly huge. So if you have the 'necessary' equipment to be effective against said huge defense strengths, anything with even a 25% lower defense strength becomes a pushover, unless it has a LOT of hit points.
This would track with some things Brad said about the development of the game. Several groups were involved in the initial design, and apparently they weren't exactly on the same page. A good example of this is city building costs versus weapons costs, and how slowly your cities initially produce gold versus the huge caches in the goody huts. Standard levels weren't quite adhered to in this case, and subsequent patches have been slowly cleaning up the mess.
I'm sure the developer guys are evaluating combat values at the moment (note the recent reduction for bows). What I'd suggest is that we establish some Norms, that all creatures and units must follow regarding attack & defense. Then all weapons, defenses, and creatures would have to meet these norms.
As an example: Say the 'average' weapon attack strength chosen is 6. This means that the average defense strength would also be 6. So an attack of 12 should be considered huge, and 18 would be legendary/rare. Everything in the game has to be designed against this scale (i.e. you'd better have a REALLY good reason for something with a 12, and 18 would be seen maybe once or twice in game, that's it.
BTW, my reasoning for 12 being strong versus 6 being average is that the high value has around 87% chance of winning under square/square root, so Full Plate only having double the value of leather actually means it is 87% effective against a strength 6 attack, versus the leather's 50% or so effectiveness.
Also, using the 18 'uber rare' max versus the 6 average, the 6 only has around a 5% chance of beating the 18. A 1 in 20 chance of your average dude having a chance of damaging that Lord Dragon with the 18 defense sounds about right to me. If said Dragon also had a 18 Dodge versus a 6 Accuracy, that 1 in 20 becomes a 1 in 40, i.e. probably NOT going to happen, and even if it does, said dragon has better than a 95% chance of hitting you back, with likely a LOT more damage in return!
Same for armor. Say 6 is a full leather suit/tough hide, 9 is a full chain suit/armored hide, and 12 is full plate/rock hard hide. That 'Armor of Azor' suit might grant you a 15 with some other defense bonuses in play as well. Only the biggest baddest dragon in the game gets to be eligible for an 18 defense.
These values mentioned above assume resonable application of stats. So that 18 attack would involve a high Strength characteristic along with an appropriate, artifact level sword.
Stat bonuses to these values would be targeted as a balance/mitigator to the low and high values, say avg. 3 to the above values (10/4=2.5, round up to 3), with 6 involving a rather high str/dex (say 24). That way, everyone gets at least a 3 attack/defense from stats (unless they have less than 10 in a stat), even if they are unarmed - no D-zero rolls allowed. This becomes more important with the square/squareroot in play.
So that 6 'average' attack becomes a 9 with an average strength. The average leather armed unit would need to be close/equal that 9, with perhaps a higher minimum armor value as well, say defense starting at 2 instead of 0. I actually like the 9 avg attack versus 8 avg defense, as that 1 point difference means, in an average situation, damage happens more often than not. I'm talking about the damage roll here, not the 'to hit' roll. Perhaps the 'average accuracy versus average dodge' should be 9 versus 8 as well, so again hits happen more often than not (allowing successful penetration of both dodge and defense/armor to happen around half the time).
Note that Leather Greaves, Helm, Armbands & Cuirass could each be worth 1.5 instead of 2, to get to that '6' average. The game uses decimals anyways, so as long as all armors are adjusted similarly, it's all good.
Higher base numbers could be used, but the point is that 'Average' needs to be adhered to strictly, especially with square/squareroot in play. The farther values get away from the average, the more skewed combat results are going to be. Auto-kills get boring after a while, you know! And a 2 attack versus a 36 defense is just pointless, no matter HOW many times you try...
