When I revise the rules.
Right now counters only occur when rolling low on the damage roll. I might've considered it if the roll had been like 2 vs 8+5 or 1 vs 8+5, but 7's pretty good. ^^
Speaking of which, I've already asked Krath about it; the rest of you in favor of simplifying the rules? It would mean some downtime while I worked on them but on the plus side combat would run faster and your movement skills would be worth a little more than they are now. ^^; I'm not going to do it until after this mission is complete because a boss battle is, um, not the optimal time to be learning new combat rules. Anyway I have two ideas, I'll list them here and you can say yay/nay, suggest other options, etc.
1. Move to the d10 system. Probably the easier change.
2. Simplify combat to (attacker roll+accuracy bonuses - defender roll+evasion/movement bonuses = result+attacker damage bonuses - defender defense bonuses = damage.) This would help out everyone, pretty much. Darvi and Dwarmin would get a slight bonus to evading attacks, for example, and while Ahra would be slightly easier to land blows on he would be REALLY hard to hurt because of all of his armor. I'd probably change it though where enemies used different dice based on how STRONG they were.
In either case I'm probably going to change leveling to something a little less random, which I'm sure is frustrating you guys a bit.
Probably make it when the total amount of enemies killed - quick note, who gets the kill doesn't matter, it would help all eight party members - passes a certain amount, everyone gets a skill. When certain milestones are reached, everyone gets a class-up. Lampshade would simply be that as Dracula's forces weaken the forces of good get stronger. :3 Anyway, I'm also going to try to add more combat tactics for you guys to try and pull off, like disarming, disabling, backstabbing, so forth... although enemies could try it too...