Conceptual Combat Mechanics

[Ben O'Neal]

I know this topic probably won't be particularly interesting, what with Lumpley's proposition of psychological combat, but this mechanic came to me last night and I had to write it down. I'm using the Forge as my notebook, mainly because I can't lose it, but also because this notebook talks back and tells me if what I write is crap. :)

Basically my thinking was this: now that I've satisfied my desire for "blow-by-blow" duelling with my Eclipse mechanics, how could I conceptually reproduce the exchange-based duel in The Princess Bride (you all know the one I'm talking about ;) ? The answer came to me in parts. The first thing I noticed was that each exchange is not 1, 2, or 3 moves, but instead was a varying amount of moves, each met by the opponents own moves, and often follwed by a slight pause. So I considered covering this by measuring combat in rounds (really, I've yet to see a better measuring tool), and making players roll once to cover the events of the entire round. One round would probably be 2 seconds. So here's what I got:

Skills define the number of die you roll for your round of attacks. So if my skill was 4, I would roll 4 dice.

Attributes increase the type of die you use. An attribute  of 1 would mean a 1d4, an attribute of 2 would be a 1d6 etc. I would probably have different attributes for different hands, and maybe different skills too. You know, to get that whole hella cool "I'm not left-handed either" thing.

Ok, nothing revoltionary. I might consider not specifying whether attribute or skill gives number or type of die, but instead combine them both to give a number which players can use to choose these things. For example, if they had an attribute score of 3, and a skill of 4, then they would have 7 to work with. They could either roll 7d4, or 3d6 and 1d4, or 2d8 and 1d4. I dunno, just a thought.

In a given attack round, both players roll their die at the same time, and arrange them in order of highest to lowest. The higher numbers represent actions that occur earlier in the round than lower numbers.

Players then compare their rolls with each other, comparing highest to highest, and lowest to lowest. So if player 1 rolls 6431, and player 2 rolls 5532, then they would compare thus: 6-5, 4-5, 3-3, 1-2. Still with me? Good.

If a given roll is 1-2 points higher than the opponent's roll, then this mean that for that exchange, you pressed, and they defended. If both rolls are equal, then both combatants made no attack (a slight pause). So from the above example, from the perspective of player 1, he pressed, defended, there was a pause, and then he defended again. I'd probably tie in some kind of footwork rule to the results, such that when you press, you move 3ft in one direction, and during a pause, players can move in another direction (like left or right or whatever).

To deal damage, your press must beat the opponent's defence by 3 or more, and you then deal that difference as hit point damage (so the minimum damage able to be dealt would be 3, and the maximum would depend on what dice you are using, which is given by your attributes).

Actually, I'm now liking the idea of letting players decide how to split up their dice, because it would allow a player to roll, say, 7d4, against an opponent who they think will roll 2d8 and 1d4, thus ensuring they can make 4 attacks that can't be defended against, giving them a 50:50 chance for each of those 4 attacks dealing damage (rolling 3 or 4 on each die). Of course, this would leave them very susceptible to taking damage from the higher die of their opponent. Yeah, I love tactical decisions like that mixed in with a bit of gambling.

So in short, each round would require 1 roll per player, which would include all the actions and resolution of both players. It's far from perfect, but I think it's nifty in mechanically conceptualising that wonderful duel between Wesley and Eniego Montoyez (does anyone know how to spell his first name, I don't have much experience with Spanish).

What are your thoughts in it? Does it achieve my goals (recreate that duel)? Am I missing something important (besides terrain, which is a very hard thing to mechanise with dice)? How do you spell the Spaniards first name?

-Ben

[Akamaru]

I'm not familiar with the duel you want to recreate, but I think your mechanic gets one point slightly wrong, if you compare it to "real" fencing duels:
Being on the offense all the time doesn't mean you're winning. I've been fencing for a few years and I've seen lots of fights where the winner defends for many "exchanges" until finally making one counter-attack and defeating the opponent. Meaning that making a good roll shouldn't stand for whether you attack or defend, but rather how you succeed in doing whatever maneuver you're concentrating on.
But as I said, this is the case only if you're trying to model "realistic" fencing duels. From the sound of it, your system might work really well in RPG's.

[Ben O'Neal]

You haven't seen The Princess Bride??? Dude, you are missing out! It's a classic, and an excellent movie on many levels.

But you are right, I'm not really trying to model "realistic" combat, only so-called "cinematic" duels.

You're also right about counter-attacks and such, but I don't see how these mechanics say that being offensive means winning. Causing damage means winning, but these mechanics really only model the cinematic exchanges between opponents. In other words, they represent the visual outcomes, not intent and tactics. In theory, one could play-out the "defend for a number of exchanges, counter with a devastating offensive" with luck (it is a fortune mechanic after all) and some tactics as to how to divide your 'number' between number of die rolled (number of actions made in 2 seconds) and die type (effectiveness of such actions). In fact, you just sparked an idea of exactly how that might happen:

What if you could choose to not spend some of your 'number' (heck, let's call it combat pool from now on, I'll think of a better name later), in order to save some up for later. So let's say we have a combat pool of 7, and in the first round against mystery opponent 1, we choose to spend only 4 of this, in the form of 4d4. So we make 4 half-arsed actions (attacks or defence depending on outcomes) because we are testing the opponent. Now maybe next round we have 10 in our combat pool. This was a bit of a gamble, because the opponent could have easily chosen to go all out and hit us as hard as they could, which we would not have been prepared for. So as well as the decision as to how many actions should be made and how good the actions should be, we have another layer of how much effort we should put in overall, and how much we should save (I could probably fit in some fatigue mechanic here somewhere, but that's for later).

Hmmm. I dunno. I think I like this idea. I might have to put some sort of logical limit on it, like you can't have a combat pool greater than double its natural size, to avoid weeny unskilled people delivering massive damage in one round. I think I'd also state that any extra combat pool gained this way would dissapear after the first round that you don't use it, so that people can't save up early in the day for fights later on (which doesn't make much sense).

Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Thanks for inspiring that addition Akamaru!

Does this do what you describe effectively? Does it seem "realistic" or better yet, "cool"? Does this seem like too much tactical information for what is supposed to be a fun and fast cinematic mechanic? Or could these concepts be easy to understand and quick to implement?

Thanks,
-Ben

[Akamaru]

I feel I can only add something to this conversation by staying in the realism-department, as I don't have too much experience in RPG Theory. So here goes.

but I don't see how these mechanics say that being offensive means winning

The way I understood your first post was:
"Whenever you have a higher value than your opponent, you are pressing (being on the offensive". Right? So this leads to "whenever you roll high = you attack" and "whenever you roll exceptionally high = you attack and do damage". Correct?

As I said, this mechanic leaves out the situation or style of some fencers to press on by letting the other side attack to find a weakness and strike. Particularly when fencing with heavier swords, it's a good technique to parry your opponents weapon in a way that it makes his weapon go off balance, giving yourself more time to strike back. So if we have a character who is very skilled and rolls higher than his opponent, he can't implement this technique because "rolling higher" = "being on the offensive".
But, taking this into account when doing RPG mechanics makes everything more tactical and probably very time-consuming.

About dicepool mechanics. I'm assuming that we're talking about a system in which "the more points you spend, the higher your chances are to hit your opponent":
Basically, if you try to bring the RPG dicepool into the real world, it'd probably be called the "how-suicidal-are-you-value". This is because you can't spend different amounts of skill at different times in combat. The idea of "I'll parry this next attack half-assed in order to attack with more skill after that" is totally ridiculous. It should go "I'll try to concentrate extra hard to parry the next blow with minimal movement so I can strike faster and better after that". (BTW this is the fact that makes TROS combat just as unrealistic as D&D. It's just as much fun tho :) )
Thinking of dicepool values as speed, or time points or whatever is illogical also since speed does not equal skill in the real world. And more than often the dicepool value is derived from a weapon skill or similar attribute.
So what remains is really just how close to the opponent you're daring to lunge in order to get a hit through. And the closer you get, the higher the possibility that your opponent will mangle you while you're swinging.

So because of the nature of the dicepool mechanic (when it's values are representing the amount of skill or amount of relative time a character can use) I don't think it's very well suited for "real" realism-striving RPG's.
When I'm fencing in real life the only thing I might be "saving up" for the next exchange is energy if I'm tired. Otherwise it's trying to give 100% of your skill 100% of the time.

Hope this stuff went through to you, english is not my native language :)

[TonyLB]

Especially, any mechanic that is setting out to model the Princess Bride duelling must be able to model the following action:  "I defend myself while he throws everything he has at me, forcing him to increasingly desperate attacks until it is clear by his desperation that I am victorious, and he surrenders."

That is, after all, the way that duel ends.  The Dread Pirate Roberts does not win by attacking Inigo Montoya.  Quite the contrary, he dominates the battle more and more with each opportunity he gives Inigo to attack and fail.

[Sydney Freedberg]

The idea of "I'll parry this next attack half-assed in order to attack with more skill after that" is totally ridiculous. It should go "I'll try to concentrate extra hard to parry the next blow with minimal movement so I can strike faster and better after that". (BTW this is the fact that makes TROS combat just as unrealistic as D&D. It's just as much fun tho :) )
.... So because of the nature of the dicepool mechanic (when it's values are representing the amount of skill or amount of relative time a character can use) I don't think it's very well suited for "real" realism-striving RPG's. When I'm fencing in real life the only thing I might be "saving up" for the next exchange is energy if I'm tired. Otherwise it's trying to give 100% of your skill 100% of the time.

Now that's interesting. I take it you've done some real life armed martial arts? (I've had about six months of weekly fencing classes, and that's it; by the second month, I was the worst student who hadn't dropped out).

This may be a separate thread, but I'd love to hear more informed analysis of why dicepool mechanics don't simulate reality very well. (I've always been annoyed by the big handfuls o' dice myself, but that's a separate question). In what way is, say, TROS inherently unrealistic?

[Akamaru]

Yes, I've been to a swordschool. I've mainly fought using a longsword and rapier, but also have some experience in japanese armed martial arts tho I've only used a bokken (basically a wooden katana). But I strongly feel that people would understand these things better by just picking up a light stick and trying to hit a friend who is also wielding a stick. It's enlightening. You realize so many new things about timing, "initiative", movement, maneuvers and whatnot. Anyone creating a combat system should try it out, even if the intent is to create cinematic mechanics.

I wrote a small mistake in my last post. The inherent unrealism factor in TROS is not directly caused by the use of dicepools but rather that the pool's points can be divided by the player in a course of two rounds (after which the pool refreshes). This leads to a system claiming that the best way to parry a blow is at the same time one that leaves you the smallest possibility for counterattack.

Anyway, I don't want to go too deep into TROS mechanics because I'm not that familiar with them. (Played one one-shot scenario with GM making most of the rolls)

[Ben O'Neal]

Yes, I too have done about 6 months training in japanese swords, having done most with a bokken, but also having the oppurtunity to train with "real" katana and wakizashi ("real" = metal, not sharp :). Also, my best friend is a 2nd dan black belt in karate, and he has given me the same sort of advice as you have, which can be summarised thus: bigger plus stronger plus more skill equals going to win.

Here is why "I" think no fortune mechanic can successfully recreate the full realism of combat and still be challenging and fun:

The more skillful you become, the less random things become. This means that every mechanic must have a limit to how anti-random you can get (ie: a probability of 1 is the best you can achieve). Now, no-one likes to loose, but winning everything becomes boring too... so I hear.

Another problem is that without some sort of trade-off (ala TROS with parry-attack, and the mechanic I've described with the "save up combat pool for later"), there pretty much becomes only one tactic: defend awesome and attack awesome. This could be done with one dice representing the whole of your exchange, ala D&D. In fact, if they incorporated "AC" into the attack roll, they'd pretty much be simulating exactly what you are talking about, and any further breaking down of actions would necessitate confusion. However, that level of abstraction is unappealing to me.

In short, "real combat" is not fun. Games are supposed to be. I think that any mechanic that actually perfectly duplicates the realism of combat would be rather not fun, either because of complexity or the concepts, dangers, and overwhelming or exceedingly easy challenges. What makes games fun is the suspension of disbelief and intuition, and also the freedom from the nasty parts. No-one would like their character to break down under the pressure and huddle in the fetal position whimpering (unless that's exactly what they want to do), but this sort of thing is "realistic".

"I defend myself while he throws everything he has at me, forcing him to increasingly desperate attacks until it is clear by his desperation that I am victorious, and he surrenders."

I wouldn't say it's simply a matter of "I defend myself"... rather a matter of "I have the skill to defend myself". I don't see just anyone being able to defend against Inigo (thanks for the spelling). So really, there's nothing in the mechanic so far that makes this first part impossible (except the luck part that is inherent to using dice). Sure, you could roll really crap and actually take damage, or roll exceptionally well and unintentionally kill him (if your intention was not to). What's missing is the desperation and fatigue that overwhelms Inigo.

I could implement stress a number of ways, but I'd want it to be simple. Stress would represent physical and mental fatigue/frustration. I'd also want some freedom on the parts of the players as to the interpretation of Stress and how their specific character responds to it (some might run away, some might surrender, some might "fall on their sword" with a final desperate suicidal attack, etc.). I'll have to think a bit more on how to make it simple and integrated. One option might be to have a Stress attribute which contributes to your combat pool. Taking stress would reduce it, thus reducing your combat pool. Perhaps this could be the only type of damage. Any suggestions?

Finally, I might as well note that I'm not trying to prefectly duplicate the Wesley/Inigo duel, because I'd be much more successful just writing a script. Instead I wanted a mechanic that could recreate such duels with ease. The idea is to use it in a game, not play the movie.

-Ben

[Mulciber]

A word on Wound States: what do you want to model? If all you want is 1. Thank you Lord, I'm Okay, 2. Aargh! My Effectiveness Dropped, and 3. <Gasp>, you got me, kid OR "I surrender, you clearly could kill me at will," let me offer the following:

Each combatatant has 1 Wound dice. (It may be d4, d6, etc.; I'd suggest d8 to d10 for humans in condition) Each time there is a difference, the difference is added to the wound dice (i.e., if it was on 1 and there is a difference of 2 on compared rolls, change it to 3).  This is assumed to be incidental wounds, fatigue, strategic gain. Whenever one exceeds the dice (i.e., one has a d6 that is one five and there's a difference of 4 in the compared roll, one loses a dice for the rest of this combat [the proprietor of the character losing the dice chooses which one]).


---
So much on wound states. Next post: attack/defense dice and the question "What do we want to model?"

[Ben O'Neal]

Each combatatant has 1 Wound dice. (It may be d4, d6, etc.; I'd suggest d8 to d10 for humans in condition) Each time there is a difference, the difference is added to the wound dice (i.e., if it was on 1 and there is a difference of 2 on compared rolls, change it to 3). This is assumed to be incidental wounds, fatigue, strategic gain. Whenever one exceeds the dice (i.e., one has a d6 that is one five and there's a difference of 4 in the compared roll, one loses a dice for the rest of this combat [the proprietor of the character losing the dice chooses which one]).

Well, I apologise in advance if I am misinterpreting your suggestion, because it's 6am here and I haven't slept yet. But...
I'm uncertain what you mean my wound dice, and how they are affected. Is this dice part of the combat pool? Is it like a seperate measure of hit points? I just can't wrap my head around it.

However, the last part, that about loosing dice, I can understand, and I can say that it wouldn't apply to the mechanic I've described. Why? Because the combat pool is not made up of dice, it is just an abstract number, which you can use to "buy" the dice for your exchange. e.g: a d4 costs 1, a d6 costs 2, a d8 costs 3, a d10 costs 4 and so on. So that if my combat pool was 11, I could spend that on 2d10 and 1d8, or 11d4, or 5d6 and 1d4, or any combination of the dice, and this would then become my exchange. I could choose to save some of this for the next round too. So you see taking away a dice is impossible because they aren't eally relying on any dice, only the combat pool. However, subtracting from this would give a penalty.

So what I was thinking was this: The combat pool would be the sum of your Cool, your Hate, your Strength, and your Skill, all added up and divided by two. Hate would be gained through social interaction, so fighting someone you hate is better than fighting just anyone. Cool is your psychological calm, confidence, discipline etc. Strength is both power and constitution. The most static of these components would be Skill.

Ok, so there are two types of damage: that to your Cool, and that to your Strength (come to think of it, you could also probably damage someones Hate through social interaction, but that's not applicable here yet). When there is a difference, the winner gets to choose whether their damage will be to the opponents Cool (representing deliberately frustrating them, as suggested by Akamaru and TonyLB) or their Strength (representing physical damage). Obviously, both types of damage have the same mechanical effects during combat, that of reducing their combat pool, but are qualitatively different, and would affect different things outside of combat (like Cool damage (Stress) would penalise social interaction, and Strength damage would penalise physical based checks). This seems cool to me, but what are your thoughts?

Actually, coming back to Hate for a tick, I reckon that's actually pretty cool that you can really reduce their effectiveness by lowering their Hate. I would likely make this possible by "sweettalking", and taunts would damage Cool.

How does this sound? Does choosing to damage their Cool make sense in the context of what you have described Akamaru? ie: choosing to defend constantly, in which case "defend" would be how you would interpret your win and damge of their Cool (another way could be to interpret it as being sufficiently at ease that the opponent becomes frustrated at your lack of exertion). Does this allow surrending due to frustration?

On that last note, I think I would definately include some sort of penalty for killing someone who has surrendered when it is clear that their surrender is sincere and resolute, but allow such killings when the risk of letting them live and/or the posibility didn't exist. The penalty would be to some attribute measuring honour or esteem or reputation or whatever.

[M. J. Young]

On stress:

You might consider a sort of fatigue/self-assurance score that is a limiter in combat. I'm thinking that every time a character attacks, he ticks off two from this score; if he lands the attack, or if he successfully defends against an attack, he gains one.

This would mean that in Inigo Montoya's situation, every time Wesley parries, Montoya has launched an attack which was blocked, and he loses two points. Wesley never attacks, so Montoya doesn't gain points back either for hitting or for blocking, and Wesley never spends points. In the end, Montoya is out of points and surrenders, having exhausted all his options, if not his physical ability to continue.

I'm not sure, though, whether this would lead to an ideal strategy of defending. Probably it would for someone like Wesley, who has the skill to defend consistently; but if your attacker can hit you sometimes, then the question is whether you can survive long enough to wear him out.

--M. J. Young

[Ben O'Neal]

You might consider a sort of fatigue/self-assurance score that is a limiter in combat. I'm thinking that every time a character attacks, he ticks off two from this score; if he lands the attack, or if he successfully defends against an attack, he gains one.

This might work, and would be an interesting idea, except that players don't "attack" with this mechanic. Only roll to determine the outcome of the exchange. So if I was fighting you, neither you nor I would say "I'm going to attack you", instead we would use our combat pools to determine the dice we will use for the exchange (which represent the number of actions (nimber of die) and effectiveness of the actions (die type)). Then the outcome of our simultaneous roll would determine the successes of our exchanges, and then the winner of each individual dice comparison would decide if they were attacking or defending, which would determine if they dealt Strength or Cool damage. So in Wesley's case, he would be winning most exchanges, and simply deciding to have all his wins deal Cool damage.

So in a way, combat is not two participants saying "I''m going to attack now, I'm going to defend now", but instead is purely reactive. You don't know what they are going to do, so you don't know what you ae going to do, and you react to openings almost without pause for thought. At least, that's how I see this "roll now, decide later" mechanic.

But here's a question: as it stands, I am kinda lumping fatigue/stress/and frustration all into Cool damage, and Strength damage is getting cut/stabbed/whatever. Would it make sense to include fatigue into Strength damage? Or should fatigue be tracked seperately, so that even Wesley could become fatigued?

Thanks for the idea though M.J., it's tactical and has an element of coolness, and I do love both those things... it just might get thrown around in my head for a while and surface at some stage ;)

-Ben

[Hereward The Wake]

My own system uses, picture cards shxing the areas being attacked or the reactions to an attack. I also use dice to reflect any modifiers basd upon the weapons, injuries etc.
The attcaker lays a card, showing a strike to the head, they also assign a number of dice from their combat pool, which are placed in to a cup or similar near their card. The other person must now show a card that allows this to be parried, avaoided etc. If they have no card to do that they may randomly draw one from the top of the deck otherwise, they get hit. If they do have an appropriate card, they then assign a number of dice from their combat pool., the dice are now rolled to decide whther the attack actually affect the opponent, if the atacker wins then they are considered to have gotten though the parry or caught up with the person trying to avoid the attack. If the defender succeeds then the parry has been successfull, and if a mjor success these affects may carruy over into a counter attack etc. Ie the defender defends their head with their shield, they do this so well that they actaully knock the oppoenents swrod out of their hand.
Numbers of dice in the poll and the numbers of cards that can be held increase with skill, therefore goingtowrd the affect already mentioned that the more skill full one become the more contolled they become. There is no refreshing of cards or dice until someone is hit or the fighters part. This means that there is a element of not wanting a bout to go on too long, but also not wanting to make an all out attack to start with unless you are very skill full as you don't want to use up your dice pool and have nothing left.

It seems to work well as it covers several bases as it can be narative based upon the action cards, the judgement of when to lay crads and how much of your pool to assign.

Jonathan

[Olibarro]

So I considered covering this by measuring combat in rounds (really, I've yet to see a better measuring tool), and making players roll once to cover the events of the entire round. One round would probably be 2 seconds.

That's right... I'm skipping all the other mechanical stuff and focusing on your definition of rounds.

What I use for most of my games now is the idea of decision points. A "round" of combat lasts until the next decision point. Depending on the nature of the combat and the pace of the action, a round can be anywhere from a split second to minutes.

So Inigo decides to use a particular offense. The next decision point is a half second later when Westley recognized the style and chooses his defense. Now this will continue for 30 seconds to a minute, until Inigo realizes he is outmatched and decides to use his right hand. Next decision point comes when Westley realizes HE is outmatched and then switches to HIS right hand and goes on the offense. Another minute, and Inigo loses his sword. Decision point as Inigo decides to swing on the little bar there and leap to his sword. That takes just 2 seconds, etc.

Sometimes, there really are new actions to be taken every four or five seconds (or more often), but sometimes, a particular exchange goes on for several minutes. Limiting yourself to a set length of a round means that to realistically simulate that exchange, you need 50 rounds of both characters doing the exact same thing they did last round with neither gaining much advantage til the end. Not much fun there. Easier for me to sum up the entire exchange with just one or two die rolls and stating that it's a furious back and forth with neither gaining or losing until suddenly... etc. You get the idea.