Some help needed on a combat mechanic

[Hituro]

Hi, this is my first post here and I'm straight into asking for help, go figure! :)

I am running a one-off game next weekend using a home-brew system and setting. The setting is one in which I have run a few games over the years (and features various supernaturals in the modern day world), but the rules I plan to use this time are a new itteration that has not been used in play before. While I was looking through them last night I realised that they had a flaw in the combat mechanics and I was hoping that someone could help me pick the best method of fixing it!

BACKGROUND

The central game mechanic involves rolling a STAT + SKILL + D10 against a target number, hoping to equal or exceed that number to succeed. Both stats and skills are on a notional 1-12 scale, although the human averages are 3-6, and both stats and skills are roughly equivalent numbers. The Scale of difficulties should be along the lines of

• 10 - Easy for competent characters (may not need a roll), achievable for anyone
• 15 - Somewhat challenging for a competent character, or easy in a specialisation
• 20 - A challenge for a competent character, somewhat challenging for an expert
• 25 - Impossible for a normal bod, very hard for a character, a challenge for an expert
• 30 - Impossible for a character, very hard even for an expert

Characters have around 20-40 hit points. The D10 explodes on a 10, rolling again, and can fumble on a 1.

COMBAT

The basics of the combat system involve rolling SPEED (the dexterity style stat) + Weapon Skill +D10 to try and equal or beat the same roll made by the defender. If you hit the target then makes a roll of RESISTANCE (the toughness style stat) x2 + D10 against the damage rating of the weapn. If they make the roll they take 1 poitn of damage. If they fail they damage equal to 1+ the margin of failure. Note that RESISTANCE is counted twice for this roll because no skill is involved and I wanted Stat rolls to use target numbers in the same range as skill rolls.

THE PROBLEM

The problem comes in calculating what the damage rating of a weapon should be. I had thought that the damage of unarmed attacks might be STRENGTH + Unarmed Skill (sounded good), while a melee weapon would be STRENGTH + Base Damage and a missile weapon would just be BASE DAMAGE.

Of course then I realised that the average Damage rating for an unnarmed attack was going to be the same as the base RES + RES, which means that in a fairly matched fight the target would never take more than 1 point of damage from each blow ... not as intended!

SOLUTIONS

I have at least three solutions, but I am undecide which to use

• The simplest solution is just to add a base damage to the unarmed attack, for example 5 + STRENGTH + SKILL, making an average damage value around 15, as opposed to a 10+D10 roll. Of course this would rather beg the question why other weapons didn't involve the skill level in the damage calculation. An easy solution to this is to change all the melee weapons to use the same rules, so a sword might be 10 + STRENGTH + SKILL, and a gun might be 15 + SKILL. This easily fixes the problem and makes skill an element of damage.
• An alternative to including skill in the damage calculation is to include the margin of success on the attack roll, as Ars Magica does. This replaces raw skill as an element of damage with the quality of the blow. Since the margin of success on an average blow in an evenly matched combat would be small it makes sense to raise the base damage a little to compensate. Some examples might be that a punch is 8 + STRENGTH + MARGIN, a sword might be 12 + STRENGTH + MARGIN and so forth.
  
  The downsides of this are that damage must be calculated anew for each blow, forcing the players to calculate the margin of success on every blow, and then to do it again for the damage. It is still only two rolls and two subtractions, but it is more than before.
• The third solution is a compromise between the two. In this solution the damage is rated at BASE + STRENGTH + SKILL but 1/5th of the margin of success is added to the rating as well. This means that weapons have a better base damage (making them more consistant) and that the margin only needs to be calculated on good looking rolls, and only in units of 5. Of course as a compromise it is hardly perfect, now we have two subtractions and one division.

Any views on which might be the best way? Any other suggestions that don't change the basic system too much (since I only have a week to go :)) Any help would be very much appreciated!

[Eero Tuovinen]

Welcome to the Forge. What a pleasure to have a well articulated an simple design problem to chew on. Here's my solution to the conundrum:

First, why is there no skill for resisting damage? Sounds like it would be completely reasonable to have some skill like "Courage" that could offset damage taken. Or, if combat is a major part of the game, just a "Tough biatch" skill that is used solely for this purpose. If it seems that nobody would develop a skill like this, well, nobody has to put their points into it. A reasonable investment like 5 points or so can always be rationalized as simple life experience; people learn to not break down so easily, after all.

But that's not the topic, let's look at unarmed damage and weapons: I think that either using the skill or not using the skill as a component of the damage formula should happen regardless of weapons used, because otherwise you run into a currency problem: unarmed skill will be proportionally more useful than weapon skills if it's used for both hitting and damage, while weapon skill is only used for hitting. This can be a feature as well! If you have a naturally lower damage value for unarmed strikes (which seems reasonable on the surface), then including skill as a damage factor can compensate for it. That will result in unarmed combat being a worse option for all except the most skillful practitioners; whether that's something you want or not, you have to decide.

For your damage formula: I think that having a base damage value is pretty reasonable, and it is clearly the simplest solution to have such a base for unarmed fighting as well. I also don't think that having the skill as a factor is a big loss of elegancy in this case; it's an elegant depiction of the fact that the martial artist's body is his weapon, and it's efficiency in all in how well it is used. So sign me up for 5+STRENGTH+SKILL in this case.

However, I think you could make it even more interesting by moving away from the idea of having one damage factor for one weapon, and instead focusing on the actual description of the fighting coreography. Like this: each damage resistance roll is made against attacker's STRENGTH + TECHNIQUE FACTOR, where the technique factor depends on what actually happens in the fiction:

Tech factor:	Examples:
+0	Both fighters at ready and in equal positions
+5	Attacker has better gear; succesful bluff; surprise round
+10	Attacker pins the defender; guard is down; defender disarmed; sand in the eyes
+skill	The awesome power of KUNG-FU!
+X	Player-described risky tactic, adds X to damage but penalizes attack roll by -X

This is fun, because this way players can think up all kinds of smart fighting tactics or cool fighting coreography, and have that affect the lethalness of their attacks. Weapons are subsumed into a general perspective of how the battle is going; one player is getting a big bonus for having a really effective weapon, while the other might be raking in similar bonuses from smart use of terrain, dirty tactics or some technique that goes around the big weapon.

How to make sure the bonuses don't degenerate into a shouting match and GM fiat? Easy: when the combat begins everybody is at tech factor 0, meaning equal positions. But after every damage roll that succeeds the attacker gets to describe how the situation changes to his benefit. So instead of that token 1 damage you get to narrate how you disarmed the opponent or jumped onto the table to better harass him or whatever. This is how the players can increase their tech factor and decrease the opponent's. There's also the benefit of a real death spiral with no whiff factor: at the beginning of combat it's pretty likely that the defender will not be taking damage from successful hits, but as the combat progresses, both fighters are breaking weapons, getting bruises, fall down, get sand in their eyes or whatever, and the tech factor keeps increasing. Thus, sooner or later one side or the other gets in a killing blow against a disoriented, scared and blinded opponent with their STRENGTH+20 bonus, accumulated through 5-6 rounds of fighting. Sound good? Your system as written seems to have a bit of a problem with succesful attacks becoming whiffs when the opponent resists the damage; much more interesting to have such attacks translate into tactical benefits, where the opponent might have avoided serious damage this time, but at the expense of worsening his position.

Also easy to take into consideration surprise attacks and those weapon bonuses: if somebody surprises another, give him +5 tech factor to start. If somebody has a big sword, give him another +5. And the other player can of course remove these benefits by winning a round and narrating how his character recovers from the surprise or disarms the opponent or whatever. Or he can take the risk and leave those bonuses in place, instead focusing on rising his own tech factor to match. Lots of interesting options.

[Mcrow]

I'm liking the 5+strength+skill idea. Its nice,simple, and makes sense.

However it depends on how tactical you want combat to be. If you want a more tactical combat, something on the lines of what Eero posted will suit you better.

[Hituro]

To Eero : Thanks for the welcome, it is much appreciated! :)

I am not sure exactly what you mean by Whiff, but I do get the gist of the increasing damage factor. In fact I had already been planning a mechanic for one on one bouts where the attack factors (and therefore damage if margin of success contributes to damage in any way) increase on every subsequent round until the bout is broken by one person successfully disengaging. This was intended more for sword duels though, which are a big part of the setting, but I am totally in favour of the principle :) (I also have a combat stance mechanic, all thanks to World Tree, for more aggressive attacks)

Given that suggestion I am surprised that you are not in favour of using the Margin of Success in the damage calculation. All the things you list seem more like attack factors to me, if your opponent is pinned on the ground then they are easier to hit and damage.

So was your suggestion that skill is a factor only in the damage calculation unarmed combat? Surely if being hit by a master martial artist is worse than being hit by a random bod off the street then being stabbed by a master swordsman is worse than being stabbed by a random bod off the street? That would make skill a factor in both unarmed and armed combat. Similarly being shot by a master marksman (who will shoot you through the heart) is probably more dangerous than being shot by a random bod with the same gun.

So I would lean towards having skill as a factor in all damage calculations, or using margins of success, whicch simiarly have the effect of making skill contribute towards damage.

Thanks again!

[Hituro]

I'm liking the 5+strength+skill idea. Its nice,simple, and makes sense.

However it depends on how tactical you want combat to be. If you want a more tactical combat, something on the lines of what Eero posted will suit you better.

I think I don't want to be too tactical, when it isn't needed. There are already a host of other possible tactical bonuses around (attack bonuses, stance bonuses, and so forth), so building more tactics into the damage calculation doesn't seem necessary.

base+strength+skill is nice and simple isn't it, I am leaning towards that over base+strength+margin. I still quite like base+strength+skill+margin/5 though :)

[Mcrow]

base+strength+skill is nice and simple isn't it

It also reflects that a stronger person who has better training/skill is naturally does more damage and is more likely to hit in H2H.

Base+strength+margin does the the same but requires more calculation.

base+skill+Strength+margin is just more math then if you get intp fractions that just gets tedious.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Guys, guys, this isn't about tactics... Including fight coreography directly into attack and damage rolls is a way of drawing interest into the fiction. It's only tactical insofar as tactical means "appropriate to what we're doing". I like it when players suggest things for their characters to do that would make perfect sense in a movie. And when I was playing the Mountain Witch a couple of weeks ago and a player just declared that his character is "going up to the throne and attack the witch", totally ignoring the hundred human-wolfs and white monkeys between his position and the throne... I hate that shit, players should care enough to bring in actions that make sense.

That's why having description bonuses for action is such a good idea in many games, it encourages creativity (because you have to make sense, you can't just use the same feat over and over again) and allows you to factor in all kinds of cool descriptions, whether they're purely aesthetic or actually solid tactics.

I am not sure exactly what you mean by Whiff, but I do get the gist of the increasing damage factor. In fact I had already been planning a mechanic for one on one bouts where the attack factors (and therefore damage if margin of success contributes to damage in any way) increase on every subsequent round until the bout is broken by one person successfully disengaging. This was intended more for sword duels though, which are a big part of the setting, but I am totally in favour of the principle :) (I also have a combat stance mechanic, all thanks to World Tree, for more aggressive attacks)

Ah, the whiff factor, the old enemy... you know how you have this great fight set up in a game with three read-headed knife-fighters, a tavern, a princess and a dragon? And you all go into the fight with gusto, describing the events in the fiction with much detail and colorful turn of phrase. Well, what happens when the dice tell you that your character didn't hit, or worse still, managed to hit his enemy but did no damage? "Uhh... I swing my sword futilely, but you bat it aside easily and I stumble. Your turn." Or "I strike a solid blow, but the dragon's scales are too tough for my sword, and nothing happens." That is the whiff factor, especially when you've invested in depicting the character as actually heroic, and the dice give you "nothing happens" as the result over and over again. Some games have this feature pretty bad, which usually means that you end up just rolling the dice and waiting to get the extreme results that actually do something.

That's why I think it'd be pretty smart to get rid of that "successful damage resistance means you only take nominal damage" thing. You'll simply get more exciting battles if you make sure that successful rolls mean something, always. One way to do that would be to not have a separate damage resistance roll, but there's no reason not to have one as long as you still ensure that the original success has some meaning. The player did succeed in his attack roll, I think it's pretty lame to make him just cause 1 point of damage as a result.

Given that suggestion I am surprised that you are not in favour of using the Margin of Success in the damage calculation. All the things you list seem more like attack factors to me, if your opponent is pinned on the ground then they are easier to hit and damage.

You could do it that way, too, but it's pretty common, and has been done several times. The novelty is much greater in putting all this stuff into the damage resistance roll, because it has interesting consequences for how fights will play out: the actual fighting skill will not be nerfed by minor things like not having a weapon or being temporarily blinded or whatever; those things will only affect the "stakes" of possibly winning or losing the roll. So you get situations where one player has massive damage factors on their side thanks to the tactical situation, but the opposing fighter still hangs on by superior skill, and slowly turns the factors to his side by winning round after round. The system is also self-balancing, because most fights will start with low stakes (= low tech factors) and escalate naturally, ending timely instead of dragging on. Seems interesting to me.

So was your suggestion that skill is a factor only in the damage calculation unarmed combat? Surely if being hit by a master martial artist is worse than being hit by a random bod off the street then being stabbed by a master swordsman is worse than being stabbed by a random bod off the street? That would make skill a factor in both unarmed and armed combat. Similarly being shot by a master marksman (who will shoot you through the heart) is probably more dangerous than being shot by a random bod with the same gun.

Heh, I was completely ignoring any kind of "realistic" consideration when writing that stuff. Having skill as a damage factor for unarmed combat only just seems like a fun way of emphasizing the difference between the different forms of combat (not commenting on the style of your campaign and all that; might be this is not a difference you're looking for). Because skill is still the deciding factor in who actually wins a round, the master swordsman and marksman will still manage to maneuver into a position for a killing blow during a couple of rounds.

Hmm... actually, this is how I'd do it in the context of these rules:
martial arts: STRENGTH+TECH+SKILL
weapons: STRENGTH+TECH+WEAPON
guns: TECH+WEAPON+SKILL
Just to mess with different sources of effectiveness. I can imagine that working for a Hong Kong action movie kind of game. I'd also probably make these overlap, like you could use a sword with either the "weapons" formula or the "martial arts" formula, depending on character background.

(I should note that I'm fully aware of the real world historical relationships of unarmed and armed fighting and how abused the term "martial arts" is on roleplaying. This is just riffing off the typical roleplaying convention of making "martial arts" somehow separate from "normal" fighting, like using a sword weren't a martial art.)

So I would lean towards having skill as a factor in all damage calculations, or using margins of success, whicch simiarly have the effect of making skill contribute towards damage.

It'll work, certainly. I don't think you can go too much wrong in that regard, as long as you're happy yourself with the level of detail and elegance of the overall system.

[Hituro]

To Mcrow : Yes I do agree about the extra maths involved in the 1/5th Margin, the only reason I suggested it is that it allows for the effects of critical hits to be rolled into the attack roll without further charts or lookups. If my exploding D10 rolls a 25 then I get a superb hit, with no contribution of margin to the damage, however, then my marvellous attack doesn't actually do anything without some other mechanic.

So in favour of the margin of success contribution : It models the quality of the blow, it allows all sorts of attack factors (such as stance, bonuses to hit, surprise etc.) to affect the damage as well, and it manages criticals automatically. Ars Magica (and by extension World Tree) work on that principle.

Against the use of margin of success : If I use base+strength+margin then damage becomes very variable, and base has to be raised to give good damage where skills are even, and there is extra maths to be taken into account (reducing the roll and shout factor). If I use base+strength+skill+margin/5 then damage is more constant, though the attack factors have less effect on damage, and there is still extra maths.

I suspect I will try the +margin/5 version for the one-off, as a bit of a playtest, and see if it works :)

[Hituro]

Wow ... I think this forum has special powers, that is twice someone else has posted while I was typing a reply :)

To Eero : Now I understand what you mean by Whiff ... I guess I tend to not be as narrative as that, I do sort of object to people taking over the result with the description :) However I am entirely in favour of supplying descriptive bonuses, and I have no problem with the fact that many other games have done the same. There are some unique (or I think unique) elements to my rules, but they are not really in the combat sections.

I guess we are looking at making sure that a successful bout of combat (and I am thinking of passes at arms, rather than single blows) takes into account

• skill of the attacker
• strength of the attacker
• quality of the blow
• skill of the defender
• toughness of the defender

Putting a margin of success into the damage does seem to take account of all of that ... :P

[Mcrow]

To Mcrow : Yes I do agree about the extra maths involved in the 1/5th Margin, the only reason I suggested it is that it allows for the effects of critical hits to be rolled into the attack roll without further charts or lookups. If my exploding D10 rolls a 25 then I get a superb hit, with no contribution of margin to the damage, however, then my marvellous attack doesn't actually do anything without some other mechanic.

So in favour of the margin of success contribution : It models the quality of the blow, it allows all sorts of attack factors (such as stance, bonuses to hit, surprise etc.) to affect the damage as well, and it manages criticals automatically. Ars Magica (and by extension World Tree) work on that principle.

Against the use of margin of success : If I use base+strength+margin then damage becomes very variable, and base has to be raised to give good damage where skills are even, and there is extra maths to be taken into account (reducing the roll and shout factor). If I use base+strength+skill+margin/5 then damage is more constant, though the attack factors have less effect on damage, and there is still extra maths.

I suspect I will try the +margin/5 version for the one-off, as a bit of a playtest, and see if it works :)

I didn't mean that having more complicated math is a bad thing, but not my preferred way. If detail is one of your design goals, then there is no problem with 1/5.

The real difference bewteen using margin and not is margin will add more detail. Obviously not all blows are of the same power, even from a well trained fighter. The other part is that adding margin (on surface) appears to make the difference in skill level and strength even more important.

As far as what Eero was saying about fiction in combat, which I like to refer to as narration:

What he means (I think) is thata player tells the GM exactly what they are going to do each turn like "I'm going to run across the backs of the white monkeys, dodging human-wolves with my quick feet, and slam a flying spin kick into the witch's skull!"  for describing in full detail ther character gets some sort of bonus.

[Hituro]

Yes, to which I totally agree, if someone wants to suggest a wonderful way of doing something (and I've had characters run through a battle, leap onto the shoulders of another character and use that as a springboard to try and chop the head off a giant) then I am very happy to give them a huge bonus, indeed often as a GM I will forgo the roll entirely in a situation like that. What I don't like is when they tell me the result as well. I know some systems embrace that idea, but I guess I have too much simulationist in me for that :)

I am glad that you pointed out that adding in margin helps to underline power difference, that is indeed one of the tenets of this setting. The supernatural characters really are better than humans, and should have a real edge, even if the numerical range of the mechanics has been flattened from my original system (which was a D20 roll less than a stat+skill - modifiers sort of thing). So obvioulsy I am on the right route here :)

Still doesn't answer a quite different question I had of whether human characters are built on the same points as supernatural ones, with the supernatural ones then having bonuses to stats, or whether the humans should be built on less points. I lean towards the Space 1889 idea of having spear-carrier NPCs built with much lower scores.

[Mcrow]

Yes, to which I totally agree, if someone wants to suggest a wonderful way of doing something (and I've had characters run through a battle, leap onto the shoulders of another character and use that as a springboard to try and chop the head off a giant) then I am very happy to give them a huge bonus, indeed often as a GM I will forgo the roll entirely in a situation like that. What I don't like is when they tell me the result as well. I know some systems embrace that idea, but I guess I have too much simulationist in me for that :)

Nothing wrong with that, I just wanted to make sure I was on the same page as you.

I am glad that you pointed out that adding in margin helps to underline power difference, that is indeed one of the tenets of this setting. The supernatural characters really are better than humans, and should have a real edge, even if the numerical range of the mechanics has been flattened from my original system (which was a D20 roll less than a stat+skill - modifiers sort of thing). So obvioulsy I am on the right route here :)

That's what it sounded like you were after, so this fits perfect for your purposes.

Still doesn't answer a quite different question I had of whether human characters are built on the same points as supernatural ones, with the supernatural ones then having bonuses to stats, or whether the humans should be built on less points. I lean towards the Space 1889 idea of having spear-carrier NPCs built with much lower scores.

hmmmm...... Are supernatural characters and humans meant to played in the same party?

Just curious how important power levels are among PCs in your game. If supernatural characters dominate because they have better overall stats to start, there is less incentive to play a human. You don't want players sitting around with nothing to do because their character is inferior almost every way.

Sometimes that can be the toughest part to work out.

[Hituro]

I have run 3 or 4 one offs in this setting, and 2 short campaigns, in none of them were there ever human PCs, so I guess you have your answer.

On the other hand in most of them one or more of the players have believe that one or more of the other players *were* playing humans. I did one game at Conpulsion in Edinburgh a few years back (hmmm ... maybe make that quite a few years back) where everyone was playing a con-attendee and all of them started out thinking that they were the one supernatural amongst a group of normal humans. Of course in the end all of them were proved to be supernatural (although a lot of them pretended very very hard not to be for most of the game) and so were all the con staff!

So relative power levels of the various supernatural races are important, humans are not so important. They should be able to pose some danger to PCs in the right circumstances (i.e. you still care if the security guard in the museum spots you opening a case and hits you with his nightstick), but should be outmatched in a fair fight.

[contracycle]

How widely do characers vary?

I ask becuase you say that the problem arises when two matched opponents face each other.  How big a deal is this?  Maybe that can be a feature rather than a bug.  I'm thinking of the recent habit of Woo-esque cinema to produce these fights tat go on for ages without anyone sustaining appreciable injury, or the long battle in They Live between the two main characters over whether one would put on a pair of glasses.

If the situation improves significantly for anything other than matched opponents, it may be that its a feature you can keep; matched opponents need some other decisive factor.
--
Alternately, you could vary the base damage by the type of unarmed combat skill.  5 points for karate, 3 points for judo sort of thing, in the same way that weapons have ratings.

Or you could say, unarmed combat rolls a d10 for its damage rating instead of having a fixed bonus like a weapon, and make up explanations for that ni play.  That is, rolling a high damage for this particular atack may indicated grabbing an opponent and banging their head against the wall, that sort of thing, the improvised furtinure-breaking chaos that does so well on screen.

[Hituro]

In practice the characters have been fairly balanced with each other, but then PC to PC conflict has rarely been physical so that wouldn't have come up.

Mostly PCs will be confronted by humans of lower power than them if they get into actual fights, the challenge is not in killing them, but in avoiding the conflict in the first place. Other suppernaturals, however, form the lead NPC roles, and will often be of similar power level.

Combats that go on for ages between evenly matched opponents do look cool in movies, but they don't tend to be so much fun in games! In a movie you can sit back and watch the choreography, in a game you feel frustrated that you aren't doing anything. I wouldn't want to encourage something like GURPS' endless hit-parry, hit-parry nightmares! :)