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Just idling through the TROS book recently and thinking about something which I think is usually off kilter in most 'more successes equals more damage'.

And that is that even if you get just one success, all your strength or what have you is applied. Hit or miss systems like D&D get away with it because they don't judge the quality of the hit...if I get dead on the AC it can still be considered a dead on ninja punch if you want, since hit or miss is so abstract.

But when the quality of the hit is judged...well, let me give an example (an extreme one, to make things clear). Imagine a dragon manages to miss a character by one success...all that incredible strength but none of it got applied because it just missed, although it was close. But what if it was that bit closer, and got that one extra success needed to hit? Okay, the opponent explodes. One success and ALL of the strength is applied? All of it? One success less and none of it's applied.

And from a story point of view, can't something that big only nick something smaller in such a killing attempt? Just the knuckles of that big fist clipping the enemy, hurting him like hell but the majority of the force misses, because it just wasn't aimed well enough to apply every ounce of force. If it were a sword, does one success mean you always get a solid strike in with most of the blade connecting after a full swing, or can it mean only hitting with the tip, or hitting before putting in enough swing to use all of ones strength?

I get the feeling most 'quantified hit' systems do this, stuff like bullets either missing or appling all their strength/power AND the users accuracy as well.

Anyway, if you got this far you can see some blarney house rule suggestion will be coming, so here it is.
Okay, successes tell you how much of your strength you can use. For example, each success might let you use 3 points of strength. So if you get three successes, you can use up to 9 points of strength (obviously if this is higher than your strength, just use your normal, full strength score. It doesn't add anything when its higher than your strength)

In fact you might want to consider strength as being the users strength and the current weapon added together (and how much you can use of that total), rather than just applying this to the users strength alone. Because the swords with a bonus to strength will continue the problem if they aren't taken into acount (very extreme example, sure I can only use three points of my strength, but I got one hit and that's enough for my strength plus ten points weapon to kill ya, ha!)

I had a look in the directory but I couldn't find a category where something like this might have been covered  (or covered and easy to find).

Anyway, the main prob with it is that its a new rule that takes but doesn't really give anything, except more of a chance against high strength foes. Any other thoughts out there?

Quote from: Noon


But when the quality of the hit is judged...well, let me give an example (an extreme one, to make things clear). Imagine a dragon manages to miss a character by one success...all that incredible strength but none of it got applied because it just missed, although it was close. But what if it was that bit closer, and got that one extra success needed to hit? Okay, the opponent explodes. One success and ALL of the strength is applied? All of it? One success less and none of it's applied.

Well, we are talkinga bout a FREAKING dragon. If they barely hit you you SHOULD be splattered all over the countryside. What the crap were you doing fighting a dragon in the first place! See the monsters/ufo thread for more on this!

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And from a story point of view, can't something that big only nick something smaller in such a killing attempt? Just the knuckles of that big fist clipping the enemy, hurting him like hell but the majority of the force misses, because it just wasn't aimed well enough to apply every ounce of force. If it were a sword, does one success mean you always get a solid strike in with most of the blade connecting after a full swing, or can it mean only hitting with the tip, or hitting before putting in enough swing to use all of ones strength?

see level zero wounds, what I consider to happen with a tie in teh margin of success.
and one success does mean you connect solidly, 0 margin means you just nick.

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Anyway, if you got this far you can see some blarney house rule suggestion will be coming, so here it is.


In fact you might want to consider strength as being the users strength and the current weapon added together (and how much you can use of that total), rather than just applying this to the users strength alone. Because the swords with a bonus to strength will continue the problem if they aren't taken into acount (very extreme example, sure I can only use three points of my strength, but I got one hit and that's enough for my strength plus ten points weapon to kill ya, ha!)

Strikes me that the system already does this in that one margin of success means a solid hit, anything less a miss/parry and a tie being almost but not quite. The amount of damage you do is based on how well that strike was placed ie margin of success adding to strength for damage.
the Margin of Success aspect already accomplishes what you are aiming at.

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Anyway, the main prob with it is that its a new rule that takes but doesn't really give anything, except more of a chance against high strength foes. Any other thoughts out there?

Just like real life, don't mess with stuff bigger than you.

Or, just use the Soak system, assuming you don't mind a bit more rolling. Have the MOS+ST+Dam roll as a pool with a TN of 4. Compare that to the result of TO+AR rolled against a TN of 4.

The fun thing is that you can adjust these TNs to represent different sorts of combat. If it's just a fistfight, then use a 6 or 7 for sparring. If it's fists against armor use a TN of 8 for the fists. If it's swords against naked dwarves, use a TN of 8 for the dwarfs TO.

This way there's always variability, it's always based on all the data points, and you can consider the combination of armor and weapons more closely if you like. Lots more complicated, but it takes care of the problems.

Tony (Durgil) has a post with better details somewhere around here.

Mike

The damage vs armor vs toughness rules are the weakest link in the combat system.  They are only weak because the range of things they were modeled on were pretty narrow and so some of the assumptions that make them work (such as the range of ST & TO scores) don't scale well.

The soak concept works exceptionally well without needing to rewrite any rules, although it does add a fairly significant level of additional die rolling (significant enough to be a negative to my mind).

An alternative is to make successes and damage state multiplicative instead of additive.  Meaning instead of taking an STR+1 weapon (call it 7) and adding it to the number of successes, multiply it by the number of successes.  Then subtract the opponent's TO and divide by his Armor.

Take the above weapon with 3 successes against an opponent with toughness 5 and armor 3.  

Currently this would be a level 2 wound:  6+1 + 3 - 5 - 3 =2
Using the alternate it becomes:  (6+1) * 3 = 21 - 5 = 16/3 = level 5.

This would thus require fiddling with the numbers to bring the range for the "normal" situation back in line, but once done the extreme situations would scale much better.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether the added math is quicker or longer than the added dice.

which requires more math than I would ever want to do for a recreational game.

Play it as is first, then as seneschal make any adjustments necessary for the game to be fun through cheating/narration.

By cheating, I mean telling the players that the one margin of success hit was actually a level zero tie because you mis counted the successes and the dragon nicks him, leaving a nasty gash but he's still alive and well.

and narration would be the last part obviously.

If the rules make sense use them, if not, use your common sense to make whatever changes you think will make the game more fun through narration/cheating.

Works for me but as brian says "YMMV" or whatever it was, I forget...

Ashren Va'Hale: I knew someone would say 'ITS A DRAGON' and miss the point. I wont be looking at that monster thread wherever it is as its not the point, its an extreme example. Quite frankly just a really strong man could have been used in my example, but the principle extends to 20 strength as well, and should be clearer there. As long as the focus doesn't end up in the wrong place!

As for zero level wounds, where do I see that? Search or what? I'm not sure what your talking about.

As for one success being a solid hit...are they? I thought this was a 'miss/quality of strike' not a 'hit or miss system, with extra damage for a good hit'. Whats the general perception on this?

I mean, the current system does operate in the 'one success is a solid hit' principle. And that's the entire point of my post! It has struck me that the books portray a world (in their texts) where even a strong guy can fail and only do a level one wound one someone, even a weakling. Well, technically he can't, that's my point. Can you imagine a big strong guy only just getting through the superb sword defence of a little guy, and only slashing him lightly for a level one wound (in this example, a level one...lets not try to stick in what you call a zero level wound. That changes the example). I can imagine it quite easily. But technically it can't happen.

Mike Holmes, Vallamir: Ouch, the dice rolling or math seems a bit more complicated than mine (Each success means you can use another 3 points of your strength, eg 2 successes means you could use up to 6 points of strength if you have it).

Basically the idea is like this: If someone is hit by a car, their not 'hit completely or not at all'.
Now, if they get hit dead in the middle of the front bumper and go under the car, man, they got hit. That certainly is being hit completely.
If they got hit but went over the car, man, they got hit but atleast a car didn't go over them.
If they got hit at the edge of the front bumper, near the head lights, that's even better than going under or going over.
If they got sideswiped and hit by a rear view mirror, it could still break bones but that's better than any of the above accidents. And its pretty clear they weren't hit completely.

A full strength plus successes system says that they get hit right in the middle of the front bumper and go under every time, even on one success. I think a few systems use this all or nothing mechanic, just as many use hit or miss systems. It could do with some industry change.

Quote from: NoonAshren Va'Hale: I knew someone would say 'ITS A DRAGON' and miss the point. I wont be looking at that monster thread wherever it is as its not the point, its an extreme example. Quite frankly just a really strong man could have been used in my example, but the principle extends to 20 strength as well, and should be clearer there. As long as the focus doesn't end up in the wrong place!

DUDE: I knew someone would miss the point and realize that my comment was pointing out that it was an unuseful extreme example and really a bad way of getting your point across. in fact it was counter productive. And it served instead to validify my point that if you get knicked by something huge, be it a giant, a man, or a freaking dragon, and you are a pansy little wuss (or mere mortal as case may be) then you should be a case lesson for your companions on the exact appearance of the human spleen.

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As for zero level wounds, where do I see that? Search or what? I'm not sure what your talking about.

Its a nifty book called, "The riddle of steel." Of course, I don't know if its in the quick start or not... so if you haven't read the core book then I cant really rough you up too much on that...

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As for one success being a solid hit...are they? I thought this was a 'miss/quality of strike' not a 'hit or miss system, with extra damage for a good hit'. Whats the general perception on this?

There are varying degrees of "quality of strike" and I consider "solid hit" to be the base from which you begin.  Basically, if you do damage, End Of  story, then its a "solid hit". My opinion though.

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I mean, the current system does operate in the 'one success is a solid hit' principle. And that's the entire point of my post! It has struck me that the books portray a world (in their texts) where even a strong guy can fail and only do a level one wound one someone, even a weakling. Well, technically he can't, that's my point. Can you imagine a big strong guy only just getting through the superb sword defence of a little guy, and only slashing him lightly for a level one wound (in this example, a level one...lets not try to stick in what you call a zero level wound. That changes the example). I can imagine it quite easily. But technically it can't happen.

Thats the whole point of the level 0, or tied margin of success thing I mentioned earlier. If the big bad ass gets a tie with wimpo-the-swordsman then you can rule that he gets in there and knicks the bugger. The defense kept him from getting creamed across the room but didn't keep him unscathed.

And that was intellectually dishonest when you say, "(in this example, a level one...lets not try to stick in what you call a zero level wound. That changes the example)."

Thats like saying, "since your argument can counter mine, please don't use it as I am going to simply ignore it." So pardon me for ignoring that bit of advice you gave.

beyond that, I recommend that you remember that armor was worn for a reason.

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Basically the idea is like this: If someone is hit by a car, their not 'hit completely or not at all'.
Now, if they get hit dead in the middle of the front bumper and go under the car, man, they got hit. That certainly is being hit completely.
If they got hit but went over the car, man, they got hit but atleast a car didn't go over them.
If they got hit at the edge of the front bumper, near the head lights, that's even better than going under or going over.
If they got sideswiped and hit by a rear view mirror, it could still break bones but that's better than any of the above accidents. And its pretty clear they weren't hit completely.

of course, if the car is going 80 MPH, then even a knick from the bumper is gonna smear Sr. Dumb-as-rocks-pedestrian-who-walked-in-front-of-a-speeding-car all over the road. ANd in sword play, if the guy is swinging his sword with intent the analogy holds. If the swords man is pulling his punch then he isnt using full strength. Thats what gets me with your whole point, why should the strength ever not be fully applied assuming I connect? I was sparring with a freaking behemoth the other week and he only knicked me but he was swinging full force and this was sufficient to break my finger and jack up my hand. even if it was only a margin of one his strength was enough for a can of whoop to be unleashed.

your example is also poor since it ignores the fact that the variations you describe are accounted for with the hit locations and damage tables. Basically, in your example the differences are getting hit all over, or in the leg, or in teh arm with the mirror. You will notice that a level 4 wound varies in terms of ingame effect depending on the location.

Anyways, I just don't see a problem where you do, and after two years of playing its never been a problem for my players either, perhaps I just see the scale of variations differently than you do.

Let's ask this another way: what are the chances that a person gets hit by a <dragon><cannonball><car> and doesn't suffer major damage? I think the math involved to describe this tiny chance of getting hit without taking major damage isn't worth the trouble - just narrate zero dice different, or consider this the result of spent luck points, etc.

IMO, the weakness of the game is that humans can be made of platemail e.g. tough 10, or even 11 from certain homelands.  That's where the silly end is, IMO.  But I don't worry about it, just limit the max tough on characters.

-Jeff

I'm a moderately-sized guy.  My target is a moderately-sized guy.

I take an overhand vertical swing at him with a sledgehammer.  I'm an inch to his right.  Whoosh.

If that same swing is an inch to his left, I shatter the ball-and-socket joint of his shoulder.  His arm is probably dislocated, at least, and is entirely useless.  The pain will be excruciating enough that I can take ten seconds to do the next thing to him that I plan on doing.

When the damage values (an attacker with high STR, a weapon with a big damage bonus, a defender with pitiful TO) get really big, the damage on the tiniest hit gets really big.  Grazing someone on the forehead with a claymore does more damage than grazing someone on the forehead with a putty knife.  That's just the way physics works.

Okay, my TO for my character started at 7. It would take quit alot of SA points being spent to make it into an 11. And I hope you guys don't go out of the rules on character creation... there are limits to the maximum stat points at the start of a character's adventuring life you know... as well as maximums for his race, etc. etc etc.(At least there was in the character generator)

-Ingenious
Shit, having TO at 11 and 6 for platemail still sometimes wouldnt block someone with even a putty knife and all of their SA's going.
One time I rolled 14 dice, and 10 were sucesses. That was WITHOUT any SA's firing... so the possibility of an even bigger hit is possible.
However, my character has at one time blocked a 19 damage rating attack, with 20 defense points. However we discovered that using a shield to absorb damage like that was not in the rules. But that's in retrospect...

Quotehaving TO at 11 and 6 for platemail still sometimes wouldnt block someone with even a putty knife and all of their SA's going.

Sometimes? Yup, you're right, but how much is sometimes?  A PC with very good armor is very, very tough.  Since most encounters (at least in my campaign) don't involve NPCs with SAs, there isn't much that can stand up to a PC with heavy armor.  I shudder to think what would happen if the PCs in my group had a toughness of 7, let alone 10 or 11.

I'll tell you this, a friend and I put the system through its paces fighting a number of duels, and I've done further toying with the combat simulater.  While no expert, I'm willing to pit what I'm saying with the experts - at the outer limits, super toughness is much more a game-breaker than super-strength.

-Jeff

Regarding the "no glancing blow from dragons is possible" (as minimum damage is str + weapon + hit quality which has a minimum value of dead).

I think this comes down to the hit quality adding to the successes when it should multiply. However the maths behind that would slow the game down somewhat. But it should be something like damage = (weapon + strength) x (hit success / 4) or something (so a 4 success hit = 100% damage, 2 successes = 50% and so forth).

Okay, let me clarify and re-iterate some common sense logic here.
Weapon strength(size, shape, composition, how it is used etc) combines with strength(you can and probably should opt to allow the use of strength lower than the PC's current str score, to show for 'holding back' where applicable in a game), but normally when you're aiming to kill someone with a sword.. you're using full strength. Hit successes to me tells me how well I hit someone. The number of successes should not dictate percentiles of damage.
If I were to hit someone and get 5 sucesses... I would have hit him extraordinarily well. I would not have just 'hit' him.

I hope you see my point here.
Now, as to the dragons. They're magical, and their strength has to do with their size and possibly having some magically enhanced strength. So of course if the thing took a swing at you with its tail and 'barely' hit you, you'd go flying or be broken in half. A glancing blow in that situation would still hit you like a ton of bricks. Think momentum, force, velocity/speed and then impact. That makes for a pretty clear interpretation of that IMO.

Quote from: Ashren Va'Hale*snip*

DUDE: I knew someone would miss the point and realize that my comment was pointing out that it was an unuseful extreme example and really a bad way of getting your point across.

Well then you just say 'I believe this is too extreme an example to be useful, perhaps we should just talk about a strong human or somthing like that'. The 'I believe' point is important because I myself don't see the difference between a one number (strong man) and a higher number (a dragon). So when you talk about it being a FREAKING dragon etc, it doesn't make a point to me at all. It's important to you that the subject is a dragon, it isn't to me.

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in fact it was counter productive. And it served instead to validify my point that if you get knicked by something huge, be it a giant, a man, or a freaking dragon, and you are a pansy little wuss (or mere mortal as case may be) then you should be a case lesson for your companions on the exact appearance of the human spleen.

The only way it it could validify you point is if a subject being a dragon makes a difference to what it's strength score can do. I would have left off mentioning dragon strength and just said a high one, but then someone would say 'why mention that high a strength, no human can get that strong. That examples pointless'. I was putting it into some context. Regardless, I don't think it being a dragon as well as having high strength matters. I'm only interested in the high stat. If being a dragon does matter, were pretty divergent in opinion already and I don't know what productivity could result.

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Quote from: Noon
As for zero level wounds, where do I see that? Search or what? I'm not sure what your talking about.

Its a nifty book called, "The riddle of steel." Of course, I don't know if its in the quick start or not... so if you haven't read the core book then I cant really rough you up too much on that...

Oh, I do have the book. It's page 80, and it says zero level wounds are the result of soaking all damage. They aren't the result of both parties getting an equal amount of successes and thus doing poor strikes on each other and thus doing zero level wounds. I didn't remember them because their flavour text, much like other systems like blue planet that describe scratches and bruises that have no system effect. Having read it now, though, its clear that it occurs during soak only and can't be said to say anything about sword strike quality. To use perhaps another invalid example, I'm sure a normal man could lay in a perfectly swung blow on a dragon...and during damage soak, it'll become a zero wound. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good swing though.

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*snip myself*

There are varying degrees of "quality of strike" and I consider "solid hit" to be the base from which you begin.  Basically, if you do damage, End Of  story, then its a "solid hit". My opinion though.

And I in turn and in my opinion, don't think that. I think getting one success higher means a pretty weak slip through of the other mans defence. I don't know which is really the superior view, but obviously I think mine is the best and I'll keep pimping it. Unless you want to try and convert me, and I'm not asking for that or going to really try to do so on you, I wonder where that leaves us.

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*snip myself*

Thats the whole point of the level 0, or tied margin of success thing I mentioned earlier. If the big bad ass gets a tie with wimpo-the-swordsman then you can rule that he gets in there and knicks the bugger. The defense kept him from getting creamed across the room but didn't keep him unscathed.

The system uses a zero wound to represent a full soak, ie one which hit but did no system significant damage. You CAN use it to represent a poor strike, but the system doesn't use it that way and its as much a rule change as my suggestion was, yet quite different from the intent of my suggestion.

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And that was intellectually dishonest when you say, "(in this example, a level one...lets not try to stick in what you call a zero level wound. That changes the example)."

Thats like saying, "since your argument can counter mine, please don't use it as I am going to simply ignore it." So pardon me for ignoring that bit of advice you gave.

No, I was dodgey in using my intuition in feeling what you refered to as zero level wounds wouldn't matter. In researching it I found they are part of the soak process, which at least in my mind does make them something that doesn't apply to accuracy. You'll have to forgive the use of intuition...since posting board talk can easily go on a tangents otherwise.

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beyond that, I recommend that you remember that armor was worn for a reason.

Likewise, a huge swing from behind the right shoulder forward is more frightening than a small, 30 degree chop made after getting around a parry (which is still scary, but relatively is less so)

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Basically the idea is like this: If someone is hit by a car, their not 'hit completely or not at all'.
Now, if they get hit dead in the middle of the front bumper and go under the car, man, they got hit. That certainly is being hit completely.
If they got hit but went over the car, man, they got hit but atleast a car didn't go over them.
If they got hit at the edge of the front bumper, near the head lights, that's even better than going under or going over.
If they got sideswiped and hit by a rear view mirror, it could still break bones but that's better than any of the above accidents. And its pretty clear they weren't hit completely.

of course, if the car is going 80 MPH, then even a knick from the bumper is gonna smear Sr. Dumb-as-rocks-pedestrian-who-walked-in-front-of-a-speeding-car all over the road. ANd in sword play, if the guy is swinging his sword with intent the analogy holds. If the swords man is pulling his punch then he isnt using full strength. Thats what gets me with your whole point, why should the strength ever not be fully applied assuming I connect? I was sparring with a freaking behemoth the other week and he only knicked me but he was swinging full force and this was sufficient to break my finger and jack up my hand. even if it was only a margin of one his strength was enough for a can of whoop to be unleashed.

Because the more your sword get's in the way of his, the more energy it expends on your sword instead of you. For example, if you were using combat swords and you laid out your hand on a chopping block with no defence, he could cut it off probably quite easily with a full swing. I assume he might be holding back during your fight a bit, but still, when he did connect, why didn't you hand come off entirely?

After all, a parry is either absorbing his kinetic force with your sword and/or redirecting it away from connection with you. Surely it stands to reason that the more energy you deflect or absorb with your sword, the less you take? In my mind the extra damage that extra successes do in the current system doesn't represent this, it represents taking what remaining kinetic damage you have and putting it somewhere where it'll really hurt. My suggestion is that it also means having gotten more kinetic force through and then also applying that to somewhere it will really hurt.

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your example is also poor since it ignores the fact that the variations you describe are accounted for with the hit locations and damage tables. Basically, in your example the differences are getting hit all over, or in the leg, or in teh arm with the mirror. You will notice that a level 4 wound varies in terms of ingame effect depending on the location.

All I can say is that it stands for me as much as a metaphor might, though of course you can only stretch a metaphor so far before it doesn't work. That doesn't mean their useless though.

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Anyways, I just don't see a problem where you do, and after two years of playing its never been a problem for my players either, perhaps I just see the scale of variations differently than you do.

It's something that seems to come up in most 'more hit's equals more damage' systems. So that's a few other designers who have gone to the effort of putting out books who didn't recognise it because no problem was percieved. So it's not surprising even after two years you find yourself still with the same outlook.

It's more an abstraction issue, much like D&D doesn't care about quality of hits (barring crits, which aren't a scaled quality system either). And what you abstract and how much you do so is based on personal belief of what is important. So yeah, I believe this exists and is important. Hope I didn't sound preachy in my original post, as one might with beliefs.