[Spearhead] Choosing tactics in combat

[klapton]

I'm designing an rpg around the idea of choosing tactics in combat, with the temporary name of Spearhead (until I find a better name). I would like to know your opinion on these guidelines:

CHARACTER CREATION

A character has 4 characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Willpower, which can take values from 1 to 20.

There is also a Combat Factor, equal to Strength / 4 (rounding down). Thus, a character with Strength 15 has a Combat Factor of 3.

The Attack factor is the combat factor plus the weapon rating.
The Defense factor is the combat factor plus the armour rating.

Characters have skills ranging from 0 to 100. 1d100 is rolled to check success. If the roll is less than 10% of the skill value (rounding down), the character gets a critical success.

COMBAT

Sequence of play during combat is as follows:

1. Choose tactic
2. Roll weapon skill
3. Determine who has the Advantage
4. The combatant with Advantage rolls for injury

Further details:

When fighting, each combatant chooses a tactic between four possible: Strike, Counterstrike, Block and Feint. The choice is simultaneous for everyone, and is revealed immediately.

If both choose Block, nothing happens this round.

Otherwise, each character checks the weapon skill. Counterstrike and Feint tactics have penalties, larger for the latter.

If one gets a critical success and the other doesn't, the former has the Advantage.
If one gets a success and the other fails, the former has the Advantage.
If both get a critical success, or a simple success, or a failure, the tactics determine who has the advantage, as follows:

   A Feint gives Advantage over other tactics.
   A Counterstrike gives Advantage over a Strike.
   Other combinations give no Advantage to anyone.
   
Only the fighter with the Advantage rolls to injure; if nobody gets the Advantage, there are no injury rolls this round.

Injury is determined rolling 1d10 and adding modifiers that depend on the odds ratio of the Attack factor and Defense factor: 1:2 -2; 3:2 +1; 2:1 +2; 3:1 +3, and so on. The ratio is rounded in favour of the Defense.

There would be other modifiers: for rolling a critical success, for using a Block tactic (negative) etc.

Result of the Injury roll:
1-4 nothing
5-6 minor wound
7-8 serious wound
9-10 critical wound
11+ kill

Any thoughts? Does it seem too complex? Would you be interested in playing something like this?

[FzGhouL]

Interesting. Pretty cool.
Now, would the damage for a CounterStrike be less than that of a Strike?
What if one player CounterStrikes and the other Blocks?
What is the bonus of blocking?

It's not complex, fairly flowing and straight forward.

[klapton]

Thanks for your interest.

When designing the game, my idea is that, in combat, a fighter does several moves in the same round: strikes, feints, blocks etc, although one type of tactic would be dominant. With a counterstrike, the player waits for an opening in the opponent's defense, but if it does not develop, she would attempt to strike anyway.

That's the reason for a counterstrike working against a block, and also for a block doing damage against another tactic.

Now, would the damage for a CounterStrike be less than that of a Strike?

A counterstrike not, but a block would do less damage.

What is the bonus of blocking?

I guess I would give a bonus when blocking with a shield.

I forgot to mention that blocking is the way to disengage from combat. If both fighters block, there is no damage and they become disengaged. If one wants to withdraw from combat, a block tactic must be chosen in the previous round.

It's not complex, fairly flowing and straight forward.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[LordSmerf]

Hey Klapton!  Welcome to the Forge!

Have you looked at The Burning Wheel or The Riddle of Steel at all?  Both games use a sort of matched moves system.  I'd suggest taking a look to see how they do things so that you can get a better idea of what you do and don't want to do in your own system.

Thomas

[klapton]

I have read a couple of reviews of ROTS, and what I could figure about the system is not exactly what I want to design. About the Burning Wheel I have read nothing.

I will try to look deeper into both games. Thanks for your suggestion.

[Valamir]

Not to side track your thread into a discussion of ROS by any means, but since many of us are VERY familiar with that game, it might help to mention what about that game doesn't meet your desires for this one.

On the surface the ability to choose maneuvers like Feint, and Counterstrike that give players an advantage in combat depending on how they match up sounds like a very similiar goal.

[klapton]

Not to side track your thread into a discussion of ROS by any means, but since many of us are VERY familiar with that game, it might help to mention what about that game doesn't meet your desires for this one.

I'm not much interested in dice pool mechanics. Also, I had the impression that ROS makes the first to strike almost invariably the winner. But I have just read reviews; probably there is more inside the book.

[LordSmerf]

I recommend taking a look, not necessarily because either game does what you want it to do, but because it might.  And even if it doesn't do what you're looking for, I think that it does something close.  You can get a better game by stealing the good parts from these guys and then changing what doesn't work for you.

You can check out http://www.burningwheel.org/">The Burning Wheel which I'm really jazzing on these days...

Thomas

[Valamir]

Both of those games are die pool based, but the principles of combat could be adjusted to other mechanics.

Moving past that for the moment, what are the specific goals of the tactical choices for you?  I can think of three possibilities...yours may be one of them or something different entirely.

1) Primarily flavor:  Give the players something more interesting and colorful to other than "I attack" without requiring the effort or commitment to more open narrative based combat.

2) Primarily for character differentiation:  A lot of combat rule chrome boils down to a desire to make the small quick knife guy work differently than the big strong two handed sword guy.

3) Primarily for players to match wits against each other or "the system".  Mastery of the combat rules may well give character a level of effectiveness beyond their actual stats.


I have some comments I could make on the rules you've presented them, but I'd like to know more about what you're hoping to accomplish in order to better tell what's a strength and what's a weakness.

[klapton]

You can check out http://www.burningwheel.org/">The Burning Wheel which I'm really jazzing on these days...

Thanks for the link. There are interesting reviews there and yes, it seems I could take some ideas.

Moving past that for the moment, what are the specific goals of the tactical choices for you? I can think of three possibilities...yours may be one of them or something different entirely.

The goal is to have the players choose the degree of risk they want to assume in a combat, so it would be more or less your third option.

The whole purpose of the design is a game able to run personal combats, skirmishes, battles and wars easily, allowing for changing the scale smoothly as the need arises. Thus the system must be scalable, with similar mechanics for each scale. That's one reason to include at this level the concepts of Combat Factors and tactical choices; these will be useful at the skirmish and battle scales.

Thanks for your interest. I'll post soon the rules for ranged combat, in case you are still interested.

[Valamir]

Cool.

Given that reason I'm seeing some problems with the system that you've outlined above.

Namely your tradeoff for the various tactics is dependent for both the pro and the con on skill level.

The advantage of a feint or counterstrike is in the event of a tie in success level (dependent on skill) the "faster" (so to speak) tactic wins (feint beats counterstrike, beats strike).  The problem is that the down side is then a penalty to skill.

So if I choose feint I get the advantage if I tie...but I'm less likely to tie due to the penalty...so is that really an advantage?  If the roll I would have gotten would have beaten my opponent anyway...how did choosing this tactic at this particular time benefit me?

I think what you need is to keep the tradeoffs seperate.  

One way would be to make each of the "faster" moves do less damage.  That way your trade off is between speed (winning ties) and landing a meaningful blow.

Another way would be to give special downsides to each.  For instance maybe you can't use a Feint twice in a row thereby letting your opponent know for certain one move you won't be using.  Or maybe if you use the Counter and lose your opponent does more damage because you left yourself open.

[klapton]

After doing some tests and calculating probabilities, I realized this system won't work. The only meaningful tactic is feint, and in some cases the probability of a stalemate is too high for my taste. I have reworked this as follows:

Before rolling each combatant chooses a tactic: Strike, Counterstrike, Feint, Block. These tactics have the following effects.

If both fighters pick Block, there are no rolls.
A Feint is superior to a Counterstrike.
A Counterstrike is superior to a Strike
A Strike is superior to a Feint
Other combinations don't give superiority.

The fighter that chooses an inferior tactic has his skill halved.

There are four possibe outcomes in a roll:
Critical (10% of succes probability, rounding down)
Success
Failure
Fumble (10% of failure probability, rounding up)

A player gets the Advatange, and then rolls for damage, if he gets a better outcome than his opponent; if both rolls are similar, nobody gets the advantage  and no damage is rolled.

If someone picks Strike, damage roll has a bonus of +1; if both pick Strike, the bonus is +2.

If someone picks Block, damage rolls has a malus of -1.

If someone picks Feint, the one that loses the Advantage cannot pick Feint the next round; if both pick Feint, the loser cannot choose neither Feint nor Strike.

Does this makes more sense?

[Valamir]

Truthfully no.  All you have is rock paper scissors.  There isn't any strategy to rock paper scissors.

You essentially have a normal skill based simultaneous combat system with a random chance of one of the characters getting screwed.

I say random chance because that's basically what R/P/S is...that's why people use it.


What did you think of my suggestions above?

[contracycle]

I say random chance because that's basically what R/P/S is...that's why people use it.

I'm not sure thats entirely true - that is if the RPS elements are "physically" embodied, and thus limited in frequency of use, strategy and tactics re-emerge.

Medieval: Total war works this way: spears kill cavalry; cavalry kills blades; blades kill spears.  But of course in any given force you only have so many of each type, sometimes disastrously so.  In practice this means that you have to manoeuvre, or even sacrafice, to get the optimum match of RPS as the two lines zip up.

[klapton]

What did you think of my suggestions above?

Actually, they made me to examine closely the system and discover its shortcomings. I used your ideas of limiting choices for the next round, and having the opponent do extra damage if you fail, although in a different way. So, I'm very grateful for your comments.

I believe the second version is worth playtesting. For a third version I could add something like combos: doing a series of maneuvres in a row allow for a special move with extra damage. Or link tactics with weapon types; I guess you can't do a lot of feints with a spear or pike.

In practice this means that you have to manoeuvre, or even sacrafice, to get the optimum match of RPS as the two lines zip up.

Sure, the problem is if I can arrive to something similar in personal combat. In principle, a player has all the options available at any time.