TROS - Death Spiral?

[Durgil]

One should also note that 2 dice is only a fairly modest advantage.  It isn't all that unlikely for 10 dice to beat 12 dice.  The expected value on 10 dice is 6, on 12 dice its 6 (assumeing the easy TN of 6).

Sorry Ralph, I just have to chime in on this one :-).  The most likely number of successes rolled with 10 dice and a TN of 6 is 5, with a 22.6% chance.  The most like number of successes rolling 12 dice with the same TN is 6 with the same percent chance.  Rolling 5 successes with 12 dice is tied for the second most likely outcome at 19.3%, but the point you make is well taken.

I'm sorry I'm such a statistics nerd.

[Mike Holmes]

What you're not getting, Zil, is that getting hit in combat means one of two things in TROS.

1. The combat is over. Just like in real life, getting injured means that you've lost the battle if the injury overcomes your ability to fight. Which is the intent of injuries.

2. The injury is light. This means that you have to reassess your choice to fight. Do you continue, knowing that you're now much more likely to lose, or do you give up.

Now, to you, this sounds unheroic. The heroic part is getting into the combat, and doing well in the first place. Not getting injured, but instead injuring. You seem to believe that injuries in the game are the result of random chance to a large extent. But given the mechanics of the system, and good play, it's not all that random, actually. That is, in play, you often come in with a large advantage in terms of SAs, and this means that as long as you play relatively smart, you'll avoid getting injured, and you'll come out on top.

Meaning that as long as you can get that advantage, you can be as madly heroic as you like. It's the equivalent of gaining 20 hit points for the battle or something.

Play of TROS is all about making heroic choices. When looking at a particular conflict, the player uses his metagame ability (as you put it) to guage the opponent within a few dice of his total, and then he looks at what he's got available. What's his total CP with SAs that are applicable in this case? He looks at the difference.

+10 CP - he can take this guy without a sweat, no need to worry about the choice.
+6 CP - this is someone he can take with almost certainty, but the player will have to think a little in order not to get outwitted.
+2 CP - this is a combat that the PC should win, but it's by no means certain. The player should really consider whether his PC is really interested in this battle.
0 CP - even odds. Would you step into a fight in which you had even odds? I mean, in D&D if you're up against a mirror image of your character, he's got a 50% chance of losing, right? So a player chosing to do this is accepting that his character might get mangled, right?
-2 CP - the player should really rethink this fight. Unless he plays really well, or gets really lucky, he'll lose. Why is he fighting this battle? If the PC has SAs firing, then this means that the GM is cruel, because he pitted the PC against a vastly superior foe. The player's choice is to run or likely die.
-6 CP the PC should run. There can't be any good reason for him to be involved in this fight. Just like in D&D when the GM puts first level characters up against a giant.


See what I'm getting at? The choices are somewhat the same. In D&D, you only attack when you have the advantage. In TROS, you only attack when you have the advantage. The neat thing in TROS, however, is that your opponent might be equal in strength and skill to you - your advantage may be that you care more about the situation than he does. In fact, many here say that if SAs aren't firing, then the GM hasn't done his job right. There should never be a case where the PC ends up in a fight that he doesn't care about to some extent. What's heroic about beating up (or getting beaten up by) a randomly wandering bunch of monsters? What's heroic is saving you lady love from certain death at the hands of your hated enemy.

Try the game out. In actual play, if the GM follows he SA advice that we give here, PCs will only die when the player is senseless to involve his character in fights that he doesn't care about. Otherwise, if he pursues his character goals, he'll be able to be quite heroic.

On the subject of all out first attacks, your math fails to account for the fact that certain defensive maneuvers have a mechanical advantage to them that makes them more potent than attacks in terms of overall dice produced (and hence later damage). So the simple sounding analysis you put out doesn't hold. Counter is the most obvious example, as has been stated here repeatedly. Through a combination of real life experience with western martial arts, and vigorous playtesting, Jake managed to avoid there being any simple tactics of any sort that are automatically "best". In fact, it can be argued that simple tactics of these sorts, being predictable, are actually amongst the worst tactics.

Mike

[Valamir]

Heh...Tony, you caught me in a sloppy typo.

Of course its 5... 10 and 12 dice couldn't both be six.

whoops...

[Overdrive]

This text does not make it clear that you can buy initiative as a response to a combat move.  In fact, it seems to contradict that notion.  Initiative is determined (by whatever fashion), and then the attacker/defender throw dice.  I'll assume, since everyone seems to believe it to be true, that the full rules explicitly indicate that buying initiative is an allowed combat move.

I dunno about the quick start rules, but in the full rules the one who has the initiative (threw red vs white, won it during the previous exchange, etc.) declares his maneuver. The other then declares his maneuver; this has not be defensive maneuver, but may be an attack or other offensive thing. If the 'defender' chose an offensive maneuver, he'll go last in that exchange -- the original aggressor has the initiative. But it is perfectly valid to 'buy initiative' if you don't have it, so usually the 'defender' will do this.

Next question.  The TN's for the buyout.  What is the basis for your assumption that the TN's will be so different?

The mechanics really favor the buyer in the full rules, assuming he has extra dice to spend. For each extra die spent in addition to the activation cost (opponent's Per stat), the buyee's TN rises by one, up to some maximum.

So my favourite tactic against an all-out attack would be 1) ditch defence and attack an unarmoured part, and 2) buy initiative. I can use all my CP to do this, maybe divide 50/50 between 1 and 2. The enemy's toast.

Now you may be thinking that it really sucks to be the attacker, since at all times the defender can just buy the initiative and skewer you with an unopposed attack (once you've chosen your maneuver, you're committed to it). It isn't explicitly stated in the rules, but if the opponent buys your initiative, you can just buy it back if you have the dice. It becomes more interesting, and huge attacks just don't happen all the time.

[kenjib]

Instead of simply waiting for your attack turn in
order of Coordination, or defending as normal,
tell the Seneschal you want to buy the initiative by
spending CP dice equal to your opponent's Wits.
You may then roll a Contest of Presence against
your opponent's Wits, each against a TN equal to
the other's Coordination; the one who gains more
successes will strike first.

Once the actions of Initiative have been established,
the first Exchange takes place: the attacker
allocates a portion of his Combat Pool to an
attack and rolls; the defender does likewise with
his Combat Pool to defend.

This text does not make it clear that you can buy initiative as a response to a combat move.  In fact, it seems to contradict that notion.  Initiative is determined (by whatever fashion), and then the attacker/defender throw dice.  I'll assume, since everyone seems to believe it to be true, that the full rules explicitly indicate that buying initiative is an allowed combat move.

Yeah, the full TROS rules for buying initiative say that there are two situations for buying iniative.  The first is when you both throw red dice and you didn't win initiative.  You can buy it to go first.  The second is when you are defending and you decide to say to heck with defense and want to pre-emptively strike instead - which is the exact scenario I've recommended against a full pool attack.

Next question.  The TN's for the buyout.  What is the basis for your assumption that the TN's will be so different?

In the full rules the person buying initiative can spend extra dice beyond the initial cost to drive up his opponent's TN.  I assumed a 4 dice cost and each player with a 6 reflex score (which sets the TN).  So by spending 6 dice the person buying initiative can bump up his opponent's TN from 6 to 8.  His opponent does not have the same option.  These numbers can vary but this is fairly representative for starting power level warrior type characters.

Yeah, but your assumption of a 2 die advantage is a huge flaw in your theory.  You don't know how many dice an NPC has when the fight starts.

Not really.  If I don't know, throught dint of my marvelous metagaming powers, then I spend a few rounds trying to figure it out.   Please. I'm not stupid, just disillusioned with dice pool systems and cumulative damage effects. :)

I thought you were talking about going for a full out attack on the very first exchange.  If you're talking about doing this after you've spent several rounds sizing up your opponent, then I don't see how that's a bad thing in the game.  It's still a great risk though.  In my previous example of buying initiative it doesn't really matter if you have 18 or 20 or 25 dice.  Since you left yourself wide open for attack I will still do the same damage when I pre-empt you.  Part of the benefit of a large dice pool advantage is the ability to successfully defend against your opponent and still have extra dice for an advantageous offensive response.  By burning everything on one strike you are giving that huge advantage up completely and giving your opponent the opportunity to completely ignore your dice pool advantage with a strong uncontested strike.

Also, one more thing to be wary of is a nice trick that Jake pointed out and I believe several people use.  You are free to not use a couple of dice from the pool, keep them a secret, and pull them out as a surprise - "There's something I must tell you...I'm not left handed either!"

TROS combat can be a cool mind game...

That's what Spiritual Attributes are for.  They are the heroic part of the game, not the wound system.

So far as I have seen, SA's only provide extra dice to the pool.  This makes you a stronger fighter.  It does nothing to offset the game- and fun-related problems that arise from a death spiral.

Well, I think I misunderstood your argument as I thought you were talking about doing a full pool attack on the first exchange specifically.  So Mike Holmes probably has a better response in this regard than I.

Yeah, combat is fast and decisive in TROS moreso than some other game systems.  I can see how that would be a problem if you don't like that.  However, as I pointed out you have the option of full evading to escape if things look bad, just like you have the option of trying to flee when you see your hit points going down too quickly in D&D.  Either way you've sized up your opponent and decided to flee.  I think the design goal of this is to make you choose your fights more carefully, which supports the theme of the game - "what is worth dying for?"  What spiritual attributes do is give you a large advantage against your opponents when you are fighting for things that truly matter to you.  Heroism doesn't have to just mean super-heroic power.  It can also mean making tough choices and suddenly shining brightly when you are fighting for what is important.

[Durgil]

Since the topic that I originally posted to seems to have been taken up here, I thought I'd repost my idea here for fixing the affect of how condensing the Hit Zones causes problems with the use of armour.

...You could create an armour system like I suggest here.  The idea is basically a dice roll that determines how much damage the armour protects, which I got from The Burning Wheel Fantasy Roleplaying System.  It doesn't make much since with regards to any Quickstart Rules, but I like this idea of eliminating all of those tables.

[zilvar]

What you're not getting, Zil, is that getting hit in combat means one of two things in TROS.

Oh..no.  I get it. ;)  I just find the mechanic of getting worse as you take damage to be a generally un-fun way to play a game.  I've played this type of mechanic before, and I find it uninteresting in general.

Now, to you, this sounds unheroic. The heroic part is getting into the combat, and doing well in the first place. Not getting injured, but instead injuring. You seem to believe that injuries in the game are the result of random chance to a large extent. But given the mechanics of the system, and good play, it's not all that random, actually. That is, in play, you often come in with a large advantage in terms of SAs, and this means that as long as you play relatively smart, you'll avoid getting injured, and you'll come out on top.

I also understand the concept of smart play and only fighting the fights that mean something.  Somewhat foolishly, perhaps, I do have the expectation that the GM won't go out of his way to kill me without warning or merit.  However, I take issue with your comment that the element of randomness is minimized because of the SA's.  Throwing a lot of dice, you'll tend toward a given, easily calculated, number of successes, but this is just as affected by chance as anything else.

Try the game out. In actual play, if the GM follows he SA advice that we give here, PCs will only die when the player is senseless to involve his character in fights that he doesn't care about. Otherwise, if he pursues his character goals, he'll be able to be quite heroic.

It is unlikely that I will have the opportunity to try the game in actual practice.  You'd think that a town with 5 military bases would have an active gaming community, but I'll be damned if I can find it. :/

On the subject of all out first attacks, your math fails to account for the fact that certain defensive maneuvers have a mechanical advantage to them that makes them more potent than attacks in terms of overall dice produced (and hence later damage). So the simple sounding analysis you put out doesn't hold. Counter is the most obvious example, as has been stated here repeatedly. Through a combination of real life experience with western martial arts, and vigorous playtesting, Jake managed to avoid there being any simple tactics of any sort that are automatically "best". In fact, it can be argued that simple tactics of these sorts, being predictable, are actually amongst the worst tactics.

As I've said, counter seems to be a poor choice in this case.  You'll never match the number of successes.  Buying initiative seems likely, since it appears to allow the defender to completely negate the attack and cause those dice to be wasted.  Beyond that, I haven't seen a mathematically reasonable counter, and that was part of the reason I posted.

Thanks

[zilvar]

Kenjib, Overdrive

Thanks for the answer on the initiative buyout TN.  That clears up the situation nicely.

[Mike Holmes]

What you're not getting, Zil, is that getting hit in combat means one of two things in TROS.

Oh..no.  I get it. ;)  I just find the mechanic of getting worse as you take damage to be a generally un-fun way to play a game.  I've played this type of mechanic before, and I find it uninteresting in general.

Mike: wounding ends combat.
Zil: but I don't like to play after my combat ability has been degraded.

That's my point, you won't have to most of the time.

See, in a game like Shadow Run, the "fun" part of the tactics theoretically is managing your dice pools as they reduce due to wounding. Which isn't really fun, because you have less and less ability to do things as your pool goes down.

In TROS, the fun part is managing your dice pool so that you don't get hit, and still hit your opponent. Because once that happens, the combat changes. It's either over, or you're making a dramatic statement about your character continuing against all odds. The fun of TROS comes before anyone is wounded. After they're wounded, it's over, essentially.

Think of it this way, what if you were playing a combat to first blood (or palpable hit)? Then you wouldn't worry at all about the death spiral, because it wouldn't exist, right? This wouldn't be fun in SR, because it's only likely to last one roll or so, and not have much in the way of tactics to it. Just nothing to it. In TROS, this could be extrememly interesting to play out, because the tactics are such that they make it complex, even before the "wounding" game begins.

So, all TROS is much like a duel to first blood in this way. The damage is so telling on most wounds that it's over at that point, effectively. In practice you don't continue most of the time (you run if you can, or surrender, because you've lost the fight).

So, my point continues to be that these are not the same phenomenon. I retract my comment about there being a death spiral, because it's not so much a death spiral as a death sentence. That is, if you continue to fight, you're going to lose in most of these cases. It's the game telling you that it's time to reconsider your options. As opposed to actual death spirals which will allow you to continue to fight safely but with no chance to win. Which I agree is pointless. Two very different things.

I also understand the concept of smart play and only fighting the fights that mean something.  Somewhat foolishly, perhaps, I do have the expectation that the GM won't go out of his way to kill me without warning or merit.  

That's not foolish, it's common sense. If you don't trust your GM, then what are you doing participating in a social activity with him? Get another GM.

However, I take issue with your comment that the element of randomness is minimized because of the SA's.  Throwing a lot of dice, you'll tend toward a given, easily calculated, number of successes, but this is just as affected by chance as anything else.

Don't get me wrong, there are chances that things will go against you. In fact, you may end up wounded. But you'll rarely end up dead. Meaning, again, that the game has just informed you to run if you can, or surrender, because you've gotten unlucky and lost.

In the mode of play that TROS works towards, this isn't a bad thing. Heroes don't always win. And losing a battle doesn't neccessarily mean death. Especially if you surrender. Unless you're playing in a psychotically viscious world, people just don't kill people who've given up, even if murder was their intent in the first place. Killing isn't easy.

Moreover, losing your character isn't supposed to be an entirely bad thing in TROS. If you die fighting for something that you care about, that's pretty heroic. TROS supports that. Further, it rewards you on death with a bonus for your next character. So if you do manage to get that unlucky, then the game makes that a cool result, too. If death wasn't a cool part of TROS, it wouldn't be in there. Unlike many other designs in which character death is pretty dysfunctional.

It is unlikely that I will have the opportunity to try the game in actual practice.  You'd think that a town with 5 military bases would have an active gaming community, but I'll be damned if I can find it. :/

One of the principles that we like to espouse around here is that you should make your own groups. Gaming is social, and something that you should do with your friends, not with people who just happen to have the same hobby as you. When you form a team for softball, you don't just recruit from the general populace, do you? No, you get the people you know to share the fun.

Make a new TROS group, and try it out. Another thing you'll find is that if they don't have the "gamer" attitude that they'll be much more open to how a game like TROS works. It's another principle here that gamers get mired in "tradition" and when they do, can't understand innovations in design.

Lastly a group made of your own friends is going to be based on trust. So you'll never have that GM who's trying to shove his story down your neck no matter what his uppity players do. Or is just out to kill the players on some sort of power trip. (TROS doesn't protect you against this, nor can it or any other game - the problem is at a level more fundamental than the rules can fix).

As I've said, counter seems to be a poor choice in this case.  You'll never match the number of successes.  Buying initiative seems likely, since it appears to allow the defender to completely negate the attack and cause those dice to be wasted.  Beyond that, I haven't seen a mathematically reasonable counter, and that was part of the reason I posted.

We get in these mathematical circles. You're the one that points out that maybe a person with 10 dice might defeat one with 12. In fact, this is going to happen at some point. So if you keep doing this, eventually somebody is going to get to do a free five dice attack on you, which will do you in. It's not that the all out attack doesn't have some merit against the counter. It's just that there are tactics less likely to kill you in the long run. Remember that you should win if you have more dice, so even bad tactics are still somewhat likely to work. That doesn't make them the best tactics, however.

Mike

[greyorm]

Mike, it occurs to me that Zilvar is talking from a D&D-heavy (or pseudo-D&D) viewpoint/background...at least, that what a lot of his arguments sound based on to me.

That is, it seems to me like a clash of assumptions, the events of actual play against what the expectations of actual play are -- D&D functions with a wholly different paradigm than TROS.

"I don't like my effectiveness dropping when wounded," is an argument when referencing TROS that makes me scratch my head and ask, "Well, why WOULD you get wounded?"

Of course, in TROS, the point is NOT to get wounded -- this isn't D&D where every combat exchange is guaranteed to whittle down your HP lower and lower until you need to rest and/or heal or face death. In TROS, the expectation gamers bring with them is that combat must result in blows being traded and thus wounds being taken.

But that doesn't happen in TROS, wounds don't "happen" as a matter of battle -- the "resource" is set up NOT to go down, no matter how many fights you get into. And if it ever does, then you're in trouble.

It isn't a case of "At %HP you have a -X to hit" and %HP will be reached via combat -- I agree, that sort of effectiveness drop when the resource is guaranteed to drop isn't much fun. But it isn't TROS, either.

But that's the expectation of play with a lot of gamers, particularly long-time D&D players (but by no means restricted to them), that games tend to play a particular "way" beyond the rules. In this case, the expectation is that lots of action and lots of fights result in wounds (or rather, loss of a resource), because that's what happens in combat, you get "little wounds."

I think gamers have a hard time grasping the difference in play here, because of various expectations being trained in through play, and in comparing new systems against those unspoken (and, honestly, reasonable) expectations that have been developed, there's the reaction that "it won't work!" -- and of course it won't, if that's the way the game actually functioned.

[zilvar]

Mike, it occurs to me that Zilvar is talking from a D&D-heavy (or pseudo-D&D) viewpoint/background...at least, that what a lot of his arguments sound based on to me.
(...massive snip...)

Shadowrun, actually.  It has the closest parallel in dice pool and 'death sentence' mechanics to what I have seen.   Shadowrun combat, in games I was in, ran so fast that either you lived through the first turn, or you were dead when the combat was over.  There was no middle ground, because there was only one effective tactic built into the game.

I argue that it is a function of the dice pool mechanic.  TROS, based on some of these conversations, at least seems to make the attempt to do something about it.

[zilvar]

Mike: wounding ends combat.
Zil: but I don't like to play after my combat ability has been degraded.

Ouch.  That's a fairly uncharitable summation of the discussion to-date.  

See, in a game like Shadow Run, the "fun" part of the tactics theoretically is managing your dice pools as they reduce due to wounding. Which isn't really fun, because you have less and less ability to do things as your pool goes down.

In practice, effective characters in Shadowrun are those who can kill one or more opponents before the other side can respond in initiative order.  In my experience.  Again, in my experience, once a runner took any damage in a fight with an equivalent foe, they were usually dead within a few initiative tics.  The cumulative effect of damage was effectively impossible to overcome in a fight between equivalent foes.

I probably have more to say in response to this post, but Mother Nature seems to be barrelling down on me with the righteous fury of a thunderstorm ignored, and I am turning this baby off before it gets toasted. :)

[kenjib]

Kenjib, Overdrive

Thanks for the answer on the initiative buyout TN.  That clears up the situation nicely.

No problem Zilvar.  Sorry to hear about the lack of gaming community for you.  Have you tried play-by-post/email/chat?  Of course it's not the same as meeting up face to face with a bunch of buddies but it does have other merits...

[zilvar]

Kenjib, Overdrive

Thanks for the answer on the initiative buyout TN.  That clears up the situation nicely.

No problem Zilvar.  Sorry to hear about the lack of gaming community for you.  Have you tried play-by-post/email/chat?  Of course it's not the same as meeting up face to face with a bunch of buddies but it does have other merits...

I do free-form roleplay online regularly, and a college friend who is now several states removed has started a D&D campaign online, my first since 2nd edition was released.  We thought to use the WebRPG tool, but it is very .. I don't know, massive, perhaps.  The act of setting up a small encounter is very time intensive, and we often don't have more than a few hours per week in which to play.

[Emiricol]

This is an interesting conversation.  I've been quite interested in the game for some time, trying to talk myself into buying it mostly.  I will say that some of the people here are... a little elitist.  But hey, gamers everywhere seem the same regardless of system, so no surprise there.

I bought into D20 mostly because well, I'd rather have players available than not, and I would rather game than not game, and I view the mechanics as secondary to story. But that's just me. Part of what intriques me so about TRoS is that mechanics are *not* irrelevant to story!  The mechanics really are integral to shaping the story.

Anyway, this "death spiral" thing is something that my gaming friends mention every time I bring TRoS up, so this is a very useful thread.  Thanks!  Threads like this one might help me convince some people to try it out if I shell out the money for it :)