Here's the question:

How accurate, in general, should physical attacks be in RPGs?

For example, suppose a newly created character is attacking an enemy that such a character is expected to be able to kill (You have to start somewhere, right?) How likely should it be for the player character's attack to hit the enemy, and how likely should it be for the enemy's attack to hit the PC?

(This question can be applied equally to TTRPGs and CRPGs.)

I always found it really odd when a melee attack misses. Maybe for a character with 0 skill, or at most the equivalent of <10%, with the kind of attack / weapon used, but otherwise, the opponent is right there in front of you, how the heck can you miss?! The opponent may dodge, or armor/resistances (including natural) may result in dealing no damage, but missing? Of course, if there's no way to see whether you missed or the opponent dodged, that changes, and it all depends on the opponent's ability to evade.
Way I'd do it, programming wise, would probably be first with a check on the defender's chance to evade a "standard" attack. If that check fails, hit. If it's successful, check whether the attacker's attack would be good enough to counter "standard" dodging. If not, no hit. If yes, compare the relevant defensive and offensive skills in use and see which comes out on top, most preferably with degrees of success, so not just full hit or full miss but covering the span, from barely a graze to near full hit, and if targeted strikes are possible then the chance of hitting a different body part than intended.

Your idea sort of resembles Wizardry 6-8, where the game first checks if an attack hits (ignoring armor), and then checks to see if the attack penetrates (which does take into account armor); the attack only does damage if both rolls succeed. With that said, this still leads to attacks missing too often for my tastes.

I happen to like the way Final Fantasy 5 handles accuracy:
* The attacker makes a roll to hit, if the weapon type requires it. This roll is usually successful (90% accuracy isn't that unusual), and is only required for a minority of weapons (daggers and swords, for example, always hit).
* The defender makes a roll to evade, and certain pieces of equipment can provide extra chances. It's only a minority of targets that have significant evasion; many of them have 0 evasion, meaning that a weapon that doesn't need to make an attack roll always hits that target. Party members have 0 evasion unless a shield is equipped, though at least you may have access to the special pieces of equipment that give separate dodge chances. Also, some weapons (like knives and bows) pierce evasion; the target only gets half their evasion against such attacks.

One good thing about this approach is that it differentiates the weapon types a bit more than is typical (along with the other damage formula differences present). Another good thing is that missing isn't commonplace, and in fact, at the start of the game your attacks are *guaranteed* to hit the enemies you'll be fighting at the start. (Fists, swords, and daggers (the only weapons you get this early) can't miss, and the enemies encountered this early have 0 evasion.)

Also, there's the "Aim" ability, the Archer's Job Command (but can be learned and then equipped to a different job if desired), which can be used to force your attacks to hit.

I think in melee action RPGs (Skyrim, etc.) it's better to have 100% hit and let stats influence damage. I love Morrowind, in fact I often say it's my favorite game, but whacking something and having nothing happen just looks silly and would look sillier with modern graphics and physics. I'm not a huge fan of whacking something 10 times with an axe before they die because of stats either, but it's surely better.

Action RPGs with shooting though, like Fallout 3 or Deus Ex, I am okay with stats influencing aiming a good bit. I especially liked how Deus Ex had stats effect how quickly the target reticule would get small and precise after moving. I know some complain about this as well, Alpha Protocol for example got a ton of flack for it because I guess people forgot highly praised games had done the same thing before. However I think it's way better to miss a lot than to shoot an enemy 20 times when your stats are low.

As for more tacitcal CRPG games, PIllars of Eternity and Divinist OS and whatnot, I think they mostly handle it fine. The more DEX you have the more likely you are to hit, but the more STR you have the more your hits hurt. It's worked for decades and I don't see much reason to change it up. I will say though some games take it a bit far when you're low level. I recently played Pathfinder: Kingmaker and sometimes you're standing there for what feels like 5 minutes waiting to finally roll high enough to hit an agile enemy.

Honestly, those sort of games I would consider to be action games for purposes of this discussion. In an action game, the "to hit" mechanic is radically different from what I would expect in an RPG; an attack hits iff the weapon's sprite/model collides with the target's sprite/model.

As for your final sentence (from what I quoted here, not of your entire post), I would rather have to hit an enemy 20 times rather than miss a lot; this way I *know* I'm making progress.

Edit: In the Morrowind case, I think it would be much better if the game actually gave the feedback if an attack collided without a successful attack roll. I can think of two examples of games that require both collision and a dice roll to see if they hit, but which handle the feedback issue better:
1. Secret of Evermore (SNES): If the attack collides but doesn't hit, the word "Miss!" will appear over the target. (I note that Quest 64, which is (mostly) turn-based but also requires both a collision and an attack roll, displays the word "Miss!" as well in this situation.) Note that these games actually show damage numbers when attacks hit, something that seems to be missing in WRPGs in general.
2. Fighting Fantasy DS (Nintendo DS): If an attack collides but doesn't hit, the enemy will show a blocking animation to indicate that fact.

With that said, I do agree that it's silly to require *both* a collision and a dice roll to hit.

Genre definitions are pretty nebulous at this point, with all of them influencing each other. However games like Deus Ex and Skyrim are absolutely considered RPGs by the vast, vast majority of people who classify such things. They're also always listed as RPGs when sites do "top 100" lists and whatnot. I'm big on immersion and shooting a dude in the head 5 times because he's level 20 just kills it for me. I'd much rather games in general go with a more lethal approach for both enemies and the player, leading to tense but fast shootouts. If stats need to be a factor, I think to-hit is better than damage buffed enemies, personally.

I've been thinking that maybe having a stat determine accuracy is maybe not the best idea.

One example where this leads to problems is SaGa 2, which has a rather significant balance issue in this regard:
* AGI determines the chance of hitting and of dodging attacks. This applies to most weapons that use a stat to determine damage. In particular, I note that weapons that use STR for damage still use AGI for accuracy. (The only weapons that have STR-based accuracy are guns and the ChainSaw.)
* To increase a stat, you need items associated with that stat; Humans and Espers need to actually use the item (and the growth is too slow for my tastes, to be honest), while Robots merely need to equip the item in question. Naturally, weapons that use a specific stat for damage are associated with that stat.
* Hence, a character who uses only STR-based weapons (which would appear to be a sensible strategy) will never gain AGI. This means that the character is going to have serious trouble hitting the enemy in the first place.
* On the other hand, that robot that's equipped with 7 lightsabers (which do AGI-based damage) will be acting quickly (barring a certain initiative overflow bug) and killing one enemy each turn before the enemy gets a chance to act. (This is not as game-breaking as it sounds, because encounters can often have lots of enemies; the bigger encounters can easily have over a dozen enemies in them, or as many as 50 in the DS remake's chain battles.)
* Magic ends up being the dominant form of attack except for a couple boss fights because spells can hit multiple enemies and never miss, unlike physical attacks. There's also sub-machine guns, but those don't scale with your stats and as a result you need stronger weapons to hurt stronger enemies (not to mention that this game has weapon durability).

I could also point out that many WRPGs, particularly those based on (A)D&D and other early games, use STR to determine melee accuracy as well as damage, which doesn't make a lot of sense. (With that said, maybe SaGa 2 should have used STR to determine accuracy of STR-based weapons?)

Another thing that never made sense to me is having armor boost your evasion instead of boosting your defense; this is seen in (A)D&D based games, the entire Wizardry series, Might and Magic (at least up through 5), Ultima 1-4 (Ultima 5 changed armor to damage reduction), and perhaps many other older games. On the other hand, some games (Final Fantasy 1 and 2, for example) actually make heavy armor *penalize* evasion, and that's not really a sound mechanic either even if it makes sense (see FF2 for a cautionary tale). In some cases, the definition of RPG can be related to the specific context we're talking about, and in this context, I think it's best to treat them as action games, as accuracy is determined by collision rather than by dice rolls (which is really what I'm interested in here). One problem with the more lethal approach is that it devalues healing; why should I bother to heal a character when the character will be taken down from full HP to 0 in one successful hit? Why should I even bother with healing living characters, as opposed to just stocking up on resurrection spells/items and using them as my sole means of preventing a party wipe? The other problem, of course, is that the more lethal approach makes things too RNG dependent, to the point where it feels like the player has no control over what happens, and just a little bit of bad luck can result in a significant loss of progress.

75% base. Mods per skill, weapon, and status.

Which makes games like Eschalon extra baffling by deciding to go for 50% base!

Don't forged Dungeons and Dragons, where the base is about 50%. (A level 1 character with no bonuses has about a 50% chance to hit a target with 10 AC.)

As I sort-of said though, I'm thinking that a better approach would be:
* Attacks hit by default, and only an ability (whether active or passive), equipment effect, or status effect (on either attacker or target) can cause an attack to miss.

I don't think that there is one universal approach that all RPGs should take; different games will benefit from different systems, and different players will prefer different game-feels, I think.

That said, for my own preference I think that I generally prefer to have little or no randomness in the effects of my actions as the player.

(To be clear, however, this applies to video-game specifically. While I haven't done much tabletop-style RPGing, I suspect that it would be a very different experience, and one in which those random outcomes might be much more palatable to me.)

Thus, if I use an ability (and I don't aim at the wrong spot), I want that ability to land. I don't like being told that an action of mine, done properly, didn't work simply "because the dice say so".

In place of randomness-induced variation in outcomes--that tension of "will this attack land?"--I think that I prefer tactical variation--a tension of "which ability would be best to use in this situation".

So, for myself, I prefer 100% accuracy I believe.

Personally for me: Always hit, with reduced damage (like 30%) to replace miss/critical miss. Getting a missed attack always feel like a wasted round, with a 30% at least you're still getting something.

THAC0 is perfection. THAC0 is love.
https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/THAC0

But it does make sense, how would heavier armor NOT hinder evasion? And you make a choice in that case, want a better chance to evade blows (completely or partially, if the game supports that) but risk full damage if you fail, or accept getting hit most/all the time but for reduced damage. Also depends on character skills, whether they are likely to evade or not.

As for the messed up D&D mechanic of armor boosting evasion, always baffled me, yes, though I've had some explain it to me as in effect making no difference between not being hit and taking no damage, and a miss caused by armor means that the armor blocked all damage, while what's listed as completely resisting damage means that it made it past the armor but something else (natural or magical resistances) stopped it from harming the body.
Still looks messed up to me though. No kidding...
Pretty much...

Have you played Final Fantasy 2? Armor slowing you down and hindering evasion may soom like a realistic mechanic, but in practice it gives armor a significant drawback that can make heavy armor worse than useless.

In the FF2 example, heavy armor lowers your Evade % drastically (as in, you can lower it from 99 to 0 with the right set), and this is bad for several reasons:
* Evade % affects the chance of dodging hits. When fighting enemies that steal a portion of your HP with each hit, this is *bad*, and the defense provided by the armor will not help you here.
* Evade % affects the chance of ambushing the enemies or being ambushed. So, if your party is wearing heavy armor, expect to be constantly ambushed, which will make the game quite annoying to play.
* Evade % affects initiative. Heavy armor will cause your characters to consistently act *after* the enemies, so the enemies will frequently act twice before you even get to act (and against those HP draining enemies I mentioned above, you might already have dead characters, or even an all-dead party, by that point).
* Evade % affects your chance of running away. So, even if you get to act, there is no way that you're going to run away wearing heavy armor.
* Furthermore, Evade % affects your chance of gaining AGI at the end of battle, so heavy armor not only lowers your evasion for the short term, but it also prevents it from improving as you fight enemies and win battles.

In any case, in FF2, the drawbacks of heavy armor are so severe that it makes the difference between winning a battle without taking damage (without heavy armor) and being wiped out without getting a chance to do anything. In fact, this is *so* bad that, of all the balance issues this game has, this one is the worst. It's *not* having to hit your characters to gain HP (which isn't necessary and can actually be detrimental when fighting those draining enemies), and it's not the many ways to become extremely powerful early on, but rather the heavy armor issue.

In other words, the "choice" you mentioned isn't really a choice; the obvious solution of wearing the strongest armor available will make the game difficult in a way that is definitely not fun.

FF2 is a great game for any RPG designer to play; it does some neat things (like how some of the mechanics are self-correcting; if your HP is lower than it should be, expect it to increase, for example), but also contains some serious flaws.

accurate? as in with a bit of luck anyone could kill a highly experienced swordsmen standing against him while you are equiped in rags handling a rusted knife while feeling ill? chances would go up of course with the swordsmen being up all day fighting maybe..... you run around the area staying out of reach of sword literally not being able to come even close to the resemblance of a strike... i mean it is your turn the game seems to point out but is it really? then after a long lost, you jump on top of a pile of rubble turn around and with a scream fueled by the fear of death you jump into the suddenly surprised look of the swordsmen who readies his sword automatically piercing you through the kindneys the tip of the sword emerging from your back, you are in a bit of luck though since the crash topped of his helmet hitting a the point of a rock with the back of his head while the swordsmen hit the ground with you on top of him.....

ya know