A new method for combat?

[J. Scott Timmerman]

My understanding of the original post was that an attack will always hit, unless the defender defends. So, you can basically always hit someone who stands still and does not put up a guard. The reason you need skill in the attack is because of the defenders skill at defending.

One could just say that this logic is a single case of a broader statement: that no roll should be required unless there's some sort of difficulty to the situation.

My point was that different fighters have different levels of capability in attacking a given defender consistently.  This doesn't mean that the attacker should necessarily be the one making the roll; just that the attacker's skill should be taken into account when it's possible the attacker might not hit.  It may tend to be represented as a number added to the attack roll, but in this case, it might just be applied as a number subtracted from the defense (roll). 

When a strike is faster, less "telegraphed", and tougher to deflect, then it is harder to defend.  Some would say that an attack that sweeps out more area is also harder to defend, because it forces a dodge to move further.

[Noclue]

Noclue: Your first sentence sounded like it was going to be helpful, but the second kinda took the edge off it. Mind elaborating?

Sure thing. Well, when I read "everyone's actions take place at the same time. Instead of rolling for attack or defense, characters locked in combat would both roll their combat skill, declaring what their goal was. Whoever rolled higher wins that round of combat, realizing their goal." I thought it sounded like something awesome that would differ from other combat resolution systems I have played. I didn't have much to go on from the description, but it sounded like everyone was setting some kind of stakes, not just rolling to hit. My imagination was fired up and was interested to see how this would play out in the system. What are these goals? How does this one combat skill roll decide who gets their desired result? What does this mean mechanically for the characters involved in the actual combat? I got no idea, but it didn't sound like stuff I've played.


However the part where players have "a list of Actions they can take, which can modify their roll or create different effects" sounded like any number of combat resolution systems that are currently available. It may be that it is still a unique idea and I just can't see it, and the system will probably be wonderful and playable, but taking turns making attacks or other maneuvers, like a feint, or jumping out of range didn't seem to ooze newness. I want to know about the goal setting and the resolution, not about rolling my dodge, or whatever.

Hope that helps clarify my comment.

[Callan S.]

Callan, it seems like you're saying something but I have absolutely no idea what exactly it is. This isn't an insult, but could you try to be a little less arcane in your responses. What exactly does it matter the intentions behind the combat. That's left up to the players etc. The point is not why or when combat will happen, but that it has and a system should be in place to accomodate the outcome, unless I'm simply too befuddled to understand what you're saying.

Bold mine.

Well you have the players intentions for starting combat and you also have what your designing. My opinion is further designs that ignores the players intention for starting combat is, except in occasional fluke situations, doomed to fail. The players are going in one direction, the design in another. You sound like you don't intend to line up player intention and design, or even think that's a relevant thing to do. Anyway, that's it in a nutshell and for what it's worth.

[Noclue]

  It may tend to be represented as a number added to the attack roll, but in this case, it might just be applied as a number subtracted from the defense (roll). 

I don't think we're disagreeing. In this case the defense would be penalized due to the difficulty.

[contracycle]

I think you can go a long way toward designing a whole game by designing combat mechanics in isolation, becuase so many boardgames are just representations of combat.  They can work on their own level without necessarily being full-blown RPG's.  And you may, in the course of discussing mechanical ideas, also come across some device that cries out to be realised in some broader RPG context.

One of the issues around systems which employ a loose initiative structure such that players choose freely when to act, is that nobody chooses to act.  It would seem to me resolving that would require addressing gamnetime beyond the immediate combatants in someway, so that events compel action, force decisions, and circling forever is not optimal.  From that problem, we might then construct a solution, such as the fight taking place in a Roman arena, where cowardly circling may turn the crowd against you and result in your ultimate demise, or amidst Indiana Jones style collapsing architecture, giving you other places to be in a hurry.

[Sovem]

One of the issues around systems which employ a loose initiative structure such that players choose freely when to act, is that nobody chooses to act. 

It's a difficult balance, to be sure. I want the action to be cinematic, so I'm going to encourage the use of "stunts", as White Wolf calls them. But I also want it to be more realistic than a lot of RPG combat systems out there. In that regard, I don't see any problem with players/characters circling, waiting to see who will strike first. In real combat, it seems to me, this is often the case. Combat's "initiative" is usually decided by outside forces, such as the booing gladitorial crowd you mentioned, or the helpless villagers getting masacred right on the other side of these troops... 

If a player doesn't want to act first, that's fine. Let them be known in game as a coward or wise, depending. Although, in a game where attack and defense happen in the same roll, I'm not really sure why someone would be afraid of acting?

[contracycle]

Well then the problem may appear in declaration, for the simple reason that only one person gets to speak at a time, and any subsequent speaker may then react to prior statements.  Initiative among the real players can be more important than among the characters.

I mean the way to examine that would be for you to describe a series of interactions as you envison them occurring; at the moment I do not see where declaration occurs.

The resolution of who hits whom will be the easiest thing to mechanise, the meat will all lie in the order of action.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

If a player doesn't want to act first, that's fine. Let them be known in game as a coward or wise, depending. Although, in a game where attack and defense happen in the same roll, I'm not really sure why someone would be afraid of acting?

One of the issues that many games I've played in or run seem to have is that players feel compelled to attack.  There is no hesitation, just instant escalation.  It tends to make fights boring because it's only a matter of killing something.  When playing with a lot of D&D fans, I always get drawn into the mentality that "to win = to kill the monster."  It even happens in Exalted games I ST, where I've prepared an enemy with goals and a personality, and given several implicit options to the players other than combat.  Exalted even has a well-developed "Social Combat" system, and I can't seem to get the players interested in talking. 

It's sad that after several minutes of hearing a DM trying to explain in-character reasons that the PCs might not want to kill the NPC, I often hear the DM break down and have to say, "OK, guys, this NPC is not for killing."

I'd be happy to see a system that provides a better tactical advantage to avoiding combat, other than just high risk of getting arrested or death.  I suppose I'm just trying to say here that I agree with Sovem, that non-action is not a problem.

As far as order of declaration, since both combat rolls are made simultaneously, perhaps one way to model it would be that "the best defense is a good offense."  So that unless a defender declares otherwise, they're willing to do whatever it takes to defend themselves.  In that sense, it's implicit that when one player declares a melee attack, a win on the defender's part would mean that the defender acted to disarm/disable/attack the attacker.  The defender can choose to describe exactly how the offensive defense works, or let the roll just decide how much damage the attacker is going to take for getting too close to the defender.

-Jason T.

[Sovem]

As far as players getting hung up on who acts first, I was a little concerned about that at first, but other games I've played without initiative, like Wushu, seem to have gone fine without any hitches. Players were respectful, allowing each other to take turns describing their actions and working their own actions off of other's. I'm hoping it will be the same with this game.

[boswok]

Since you're going for a vastly simplified rolling mechanic with a great deal of expressed sympathy for situational modifiers determining degrees of attack and defense... I think what would be best to start this fledgling system out on a high note is a stream-lining of what is possible during combat actions.

For example, while ignoring initiative is fine and perhaps even fantastic, some players will wish to flavor their characters as being "fast and light on his feet" or "slower, but more powerful" or any number of other possibilities.  Rather than thinking up a sheaf of rules to govern these different ideas, perhaps you could unify things a bit by saying that during combat one may choose to spread out their emphasis over several areas of combat ability such as:

Speed-this is useful if the character is trying to cripple his opponents before they can act, use one to block another, disarm, evade, etc.  Any action where it would be essential to move first.  Or...

Power-good for high damage probability, though over-emphasizing it will lead to more misses than hits.  Still, if it does hit, it should be worth it.  Anything involving attempts to stun or stagger opponents could fall under this focus.

Accuracy-maybe a character has a poisoned weapon or a taser, but for whatever reason, inflicting raw damage is less an issue than being certain to connect.  Also, great for hitting specific targets for special effects.

Defense-naturally, this is a priority for anyone expecting to survive the fight, or go more than a couple of rounds.  Plus, it can be done in a multitude of fashions from simply taking the hit to skillfully parrying or just outright dodging.

Why these four?  Well, why not?  Each has the potential to give its own specific options to a combat action and if one decides to rank them in order of performance one can perhaps get a partial success.  Say Mr. Aa and Sir Bb are going at it and Mr. Aa decides to focus primarily on Power, followed by Accuracy, Defense and Speed.  Mr. Aa wants to do copious amounts of damage, first and foremost, not minding too much if he is hit back and caring even less if he hits first.  Sir Bb, on the other hand, doesn't really want to hurt his opponent at all; he focuses on Defense, then Speed, Accuracy and finally Power, hoping he can embarass Mr. Aa by anticipating his moves and easily defending against them while giving him a few love taps in return (with his rapier, let's say).

In this scenario, the roll is really all that matters and will determine who meets his goals, but if Mr. Aa succeeds amazingly well, he'll not only powerfully hit, but he'll also manage to defend himself and even get the first move in.  Say you want to downplay a certain one of these four traits... go for it!  Mr. Aa completely ignores his Speed, thus making his probability of accomplishing his other goals that much higher!  Likewise, Sir Bb could disregard damage entirely, going entirely for the insult factor.

So assuming I haven't already sent you to nap-land, we come to difficulty, which to me is the fun part.  Let's say for the sake of argument you're using a single d20 modified by a combat aptitude numeral.  You could say that your order of priorities has an analogue, such as 1-5 for defense, 6-10 for speed, 11-15 for accuracy and 16-20 for power (the former Sir Bb example), so the higher you roll the more of your priorities you meet if you win the combat round.  Say Sir Bb has a +5 modifier and rolls a 16 on his die for a total of 21, pretty spiffy.  This allows him to meet all of his goals and even deal damage to Mr. Aa whose roll only netted a 5 (he has crappy stats and worse luck).  Here you'd subtract the loser's attack roll from the winners to determine which affects he managed to carry out.  Fulfilling these tasks would be a lot easier if the player resigned his character to two out of four, right?  One could do something very similar with a multiple dice mechanic such as d10s or d6s, allowing for multiple successes to net multiple effects.  Maybe you could throw in a rule to allow one of the priorities as a given in the case of success, I don't know I'm really tired and this is all off the top of my head.

Anywho, do you think this would be simpler or more useful for your purposes than a (seemingly) random assortment of modifier rules?  If so, please steal my model and improve upon it, by all means; or ask me or the others how to reconcile it with your own vision.  I hope to hear more on this.

[Sovem]

Wow... that's a really fantastic idea, actually. It's cool because right now we're talking about a "4-point system," which I intend to post on here when we iron it out a bit more. It's basically about having 4 "points" each round that you can assign to different things; a regular attack would cost 2 points, a regular defense would cost 2, so the most vanilla action you could take would be a simple swing and a dodge. But if you wanted to get more complicated, you would start to sacrifice offense or defense to accomplish those goals.

I don't want to go into too much detail now, but it seems like your suggestion of Power, Speed, Defense, and Accuracy might mesh quite well with our idea of the 4 points... give me a little bit to mash it together and see what we come up with.

[hix]

Hi John,

I'm still trying to get a clear picture of how an exchange could go in this system. I've tried to pull together a list of questions from everyone's comments (based on Brainwipe's example).

In that script I was asking about, these are some of the questions I'm interested in. As for the logic behind why I'm asking for a script, I'm not sure if you've read the Structured Game Design thread, but I've found it a useful technique to visualise the games I've been working on.

After all that, I've asked some bigger questions - because I'm still not sure what you're trying to do here

--- HOW DOES AN EXCHANGE PLAY OUT?

Is there any narration about the situation each exchange starts in?
Is there room for players to negotiate with each other about who their characters will target?

Do you make secret declarations about your actions?
Do you adjust your combat priorities before each round ((Power, Accuracy, Defense, Speed, for instance)?

Can you use the environment to affect your effectiveness in combat?

Each player declares their actions ...
Player #1. Punch player #2.
Player #2. Kick player #3.
Player #3. Be a whirling bundle of legs and arms and hit both the other players with massive boots to the head!

Can you target more than one person at a time?
Do you think there's even a limited list of Actions to choose from, or is it all far more generic (Power, Accuracy, Defense, Speed)?

Do you reveal declarations and work out who's targetting who?

Do you adjust the difficulty level of your Action, based on declarations?
Is there a GM to adjudicate difficulty levels?

Do characters get bonuses based on 'why' they're fighting? For example, if something's particularly important to them, does the system give them an advantage?

Do you roll?
It looks like you do, so how is that roll modified by your combat score?
What happens if two dice rolls tie?

What effect does success have?
Do you take damage?
Can you be prevented from participating in the next round?
Can you be killed?

If PC 2 hits PC3, can PC 2 then defend against PC 1 (in the same exchange)?

Do you get any rewards from fighting if you win? Do you get any rewards if you lose?
Do you get stronger from taking damage?


--- BIGGER PICTURE QUESTIONS

Does fighting have any consequences in the rest of the game?

What are your intentions for this idea? Are you just jamming around with it to see what comes up? Are you thinking of developing it further? Is this more of a card game than a RPG?

Do you have a game setting or situation in mind that this combat system takes place in?

If so:
- what is your game about?
- how is it about that?
- how does it reward that?

---

I like how you're developing the system, John. Please consider these as thinking points and ideas to throw into the mix.

[Sovem]

--- HOW DOES AN EXCHANGE PLAY OUT?

Is there any narration about the situation each exchange starts in?
Is there room for players to negotiate with each other about who their characters will target?

Yes and yes.

Do you make secret declarations about your actions?
Do you adjust your combat priorities before each round ((Power, Accuracy, Defense, Speed, for instance)?

The answer to the first is "sort of." I don't forsee a lot of PvP action, but the GM will be playing the "bad guys," so obviously they will want to make their action choices in secret before the Players make theirs', for fairness' sake.
To the second, I don't know. That's one thing we are considering now.

Can you use the environment to affect your effectiveness in combat?

As much as one might in Exalted or D&D

Each player declares their actions ...
Player #1. Punch player #2.
Player #2. Kick player #3.
Player #3. Be a whirling bundle of legs and arms and hit both the other players with massive boots to the head!

Can you target more than one person at a time?

Yes, at higher levels of skill.

Do you think there's even a limited list of Actions to choose from, or is it all far more generic (Power, Accuracy, Defense, Speed)?

That's one thing we're trying to decide right now.

Do you reveal declarations and work out who's targetting who?

Yes, keeping into consideration what I said about secret declaration above.

Do you adjust the difficulty level of your Action, based on declarations?
Is there a GM to adjudicate difficulty levels?

I'm not sure about the first... probably. And, if so, then the second question's answer is Yes.

Do characters get bonuses based on 'why' they're fighting? For example, if something's particularly important to them, does the system give them an advantage?

Absolutely! Passion will be important in the game, but I haven't said how yet, because I need to know how combat works before I can say how Passion will benefit it ^_^.

Do you roll?
It looks like you do, so how is that roll modified by your combat score?
What happens if two dice rolls tie?

Yes. Right now, I'm looking at a variant of the d20 OGL system (basically, the only things the same are the six abilities, and the fact that you roll a d20 and add a number to it. Pretty much everything else is different). So, to answer your question, yes you roll a d20, and you add your combat modifier to the result. If there is a tie, then both combatants acheive success (that means if they both included defense in their actions, then neither would damage the other).

What effect does success have?
Do you take damage?
Can you be prevented from participating in the next round?
Can you be killed?

Success depends on what your stated goal was. If it was to do damage, then you do that. If you do enough damage to kill your opponent, they die.
We are considering actions that can affect an opponent's next combat round... sort of like Justin's idea (in another thread) about Leverage.

If PC 2 hits PC3, can PC 2 then defend against PC 1 (in the same exchange)?

Probably not... but maybe with a higher proficiency at fighting.

Do you get any rewards from fighting if you win? Do you get any rewards if you lose?
Do you get stronger from taking damage?

Not specifically, no.

--- BIGGER PICTURE QUESTIONS

Does fighting have any consequences in the rest of the game?

I'm just making a system, right now! The answer to that question would depend on the world in which the game took place.

What are your intentions for this idea? Are you just jamming around with it to see what comes up? Are you thinking of developing it further? Is this more of a card game than a RPG?

Do you have a game setting or situation in mind that this combat system takes place in?

I am just wanting to expand on this idea for a new way of combat I had.

If I make it work, the first thing I will do with it is apply it to my Divinity Horizons world... I just couldn't make it work with Wushu. But exposition on that, and your last questions, belongs in another thread. See the link in my sig for the Power 19 on that world, minus the Wushu talk.


Thanks for the questions, hix, and I hope that makes things clearer for everybody.

[hix]

Thanks for the answers, John.

Characters are to become the legendary heroes (or, if it suits your troupe better, villains) of this world. They are the Achilles, Odysseuses, and Beowulfs--except with the power of the gods. At first, characters will make names for themselves slaying monsters, fighting for one nation or another, and defeating rival Amalga (thus, taking said Amalga's power).

Divinity Horizons sounds fun. What is it about this combat system that you particularly like for creating this epic power-level style of fighting?

[Sovem]

Divinity Horizons sounds fun.

Thanks ^_^

What is it about this combat system that you particularly like for creating this epic power-level style of fighting?

Well, I'm not sure, really. I'm just looking for a way to make combat more strategic and fast paced.

I'm not sure, yet, how to really impliment this Accuracy/Speed/Power/Defense thing; though I still really like it. So far, I'm thinking, perhaps, of a setting priorities; as in, if Accuracy is your 1st priority, add X to your roll, if it is your 2nd priority, add W, and so forth. But, I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, but that seems kinda bland, at first.
Any other ideas?