need to reduce handling time of my combat system

[Marshall Burns]

David,

I have a game called The Rustbelt with a complex combat system that used to take *forever*, so I simplified it.  Now it merely takes *almost forever*.  I can't really give you advice about your system, because I don't know what its components are, but I can tell you how I worked it out for my own game.

This is the solution that I came up with:

1. Attacker announces the attack and where he intends to hit (seriously, swinging wildly at someone is not how you fight; it's how you get killed.  You always target a specific area -- but you don't necessarily hit there).

2.  The "Attack Rating" is calculated:  Attacker's Performance minus Defender's Performance

Attacker's Performance = roll [d100, in my case] + skill - Performance penalties [losses of footing, situational awareness, nerve, and/or endurance, and Injury to any part of the body being used; tracked on a "Character Status Sheet"]
Defender's Performance = roll + skill [either "Brawl" used to block or dodge or a weapon skill used to parry] - Performance penalties

The Attack Rating is a percentage representation of how well it went, essentially.  If it's 0 or under that's a miss, if it's 100 then it's perfectly executed.  If it's over 100 then it hit somewhere especially nasty, a nerve cluster or artery or some other vulnerable point that would injure the defender more.

3.  Roll [d100 again; all my rolls are d100] for "Target Deviation" and consult the "Target Deviation Chart," indexing this roll with the Attack Rating and the intended target to see where the blow actually hits.  [if the Attack Rating was 100 or over, this is skipped]

4.  Subtract the "Armor Rating" at the hit location from the Attack Rating [because armor functions by either absorbing force or diverting it].  If this reduces the Attack Rating to zero or less, the armor has stopped the attack.

5.  Divide the new Attack Rating by 100 and multiply this number by the force behind the blow [derived from a Strength attribute and how much "oomph" you want to put into it].  Multiply the result by the weapon's "Attack Multiplier."  This result is the "Damage Potential."

6.  Modify "Damage Potential" by dividing it by the hit location's "Fortitude" [secondary attribute derived from a Constitution attribute and the hit location itself, written down on character sheet; represents how easily that area is injured.  For instance, the head, neck, and hands are easily injured, but the torso, arms, and legs are tougher, due to bone & muscle structure and locations of arteries, nerve clusters, and other vulnerable areas].  This result is the actual "Injury," expressed in terms of 1-100, with 1 being the mildest scratch and 100 being an catastrophic wound that renders the afflicted area entirely useless and mangled (and probably bleeds the character to death shortly).

7.  Apply changes to Performance Penalties (ex: Endurance is lost equal to amount of "oomph" used in attack; Footing is lost based on awkwardness of weapons and the Performance rolls; Awareness is lost when guns or explosives are used, or if the character becomes angry, confused, etc.; Nerve is lost at the sight of horrifying or disturbing things, including severe injuries and bleeding.  These 4 things are protected by "buffer values" equal to certain stats -- Constitution for Endurance, Dexterity for Footing, Cleverness for Awareness, Willpower for Nerve).

And there's a few other rules, like optional "Response Checks" (a roll against Response, a secondary attribute equal to the average of Agility, Cleverness, and Perception), which if successful can allow a defender to pre-empt an attack with something (diving out of the way of gunfire, or shooting someone in the hand before they can attack, using psychokinesis to redirect an attack, etc.).  (If a character is attacked from behind, he doesn't even get to Defend unless he can make a Response check), but that's the main flow of it.


I went with this method because there are only 3 total rolls involved, 1 chart, and all the math is simple arithmetic (more importantly, all the stats and factors are represented in terms of their actual numerical impact on the math, with everything tied to a percentage standard), yet it factors in a great deal of "realism."  Once the GM has enough practice at it, the players only have to say what their characters do and then roll once apiece, and the GM (aided by a calculator) can have the results in a minute, easy.

But what's appropriate for my game might be different from what's appropriate for your game.  I just hope that my system can give you some insight.

-Marshall

[Callan S.]

What actually establishes "feeling like you're really there" to begin with?

No, that's a great question.  I have a feeling, though, that the answers that come to mind are of the wrong class -- i.e., not covering it in a way that can be used for resolution.  Can you whittle down the "what" in "what actually establishes" to anything more specific?

First answers that come to mind:

• GM describing my character's sensory environment in detail
• having something interesting to do in the imaginary environment; this encourages me to investigate the environment further
• the GM answering all questions as if the answers are gameworld fact (as opposed to GM ad-lib)
• my fellow players playing characters that make sense within the setting
• my fellow players playing their characters consistently (as opposed to occasionally dropping some trait when it's inconvenient, thus reminding me "this is my buddy here")

The first point gets me most of the way to "really there"; the second gets me the rest of the way; and after that it's largely just a long-ass list of "dont's" in order to allow me to remain "really there" (provided Point #2 persists).

That's a good answer and I think it will be very useful to you as is.

Now, in relation to your bulleted points above, why is the player rolling/calculating the following?

players roll to hit on 2d6 (color 1)
players with adds* to hit, roll 1d6 (color 2)
players with adds to defend, roll 1d6 (color 3)
players roll for hit location on 1d8 (color 3)
*snip*
players tells GM whether they were hit on armored or unarmored locations**
*snip*
players hit on armored locations consult the "weapon type vs armor type" chart and roll armor on the appropriate number of d6
*snip*
players make TUF rolls to soak SHK, then determine if this renders them unconscious or dead

Any of that could be done by the GM, for example. Yeah, it'd be alot more work for him, but we can get to that latter. More importantly, it could be taken off the players hands. From my perspective that would assist the feeling of 'really being there'. Are those rolls there for the player to 'have something interesting to do'? I'm gunna jump the gun on that and say there's only the illusion of doing something - there are no choices involved (as far as I can tell, its all just bookwork).

Can we lift those rolls off the players hands? I know that brings up a similar subject 'reducing handling times for the GM'. But since the feeling of 'really being there' is vital, it looks like it'll really help that.

[David Berg]

Marshall,
Wow.  Now I seriously want to playtest your system.  That sounds fantastic.  Thinking through the steps in my head, it seems to me like it'd be just as slow as my system (not because of number of rolls, but because of number of mental operations), but I'd have to try it to find out. 

I've never seen a stat that measures how hard different body areas are to injure, and I've never seen target deviation used in melee combat.  I may get back to you with some questions after I've thought about this more.


Callan,
You are completely correct, I'd like to have the GM do as much of the work as possible, and let the players just make their decisions and see what happens. 

However, I think it's nice to see the "to-hit" rolls for two reasons:
1) to know the GM isn't fudging things.  I could just ask players to trust the GM, but I'd rather not, for reasons I can go into later if necessary.
2) to distinguish between "this is hard" and "I am unlucky".  A player rolling well on his attack and missing anyway nicely generates the in-game occurrence of, "What the hell, that was a great swing!  My opponent is fucking badass to have evaded it!"

It's also nice to see the "Shock soak" roll because:
1) same as reason (1) above, only moreso.  If someone's character is going to die, they need it proven to them that this is just "what would happen".  Same goes for not dying when they might have.

As for the other items you listed (location, armor, etc.), I think I'm fine with having the GM take over those responsibilities.  My main worry then is that, for the players, you replace immersion-breaking staring at numbers with immersion-breaking staring at the GM while the GM stares at numbers.  (Although, honestly, that is an improvement... it at least gives the players the option to remain focused in-game, even if the in-game reality is in an odd "paused" state...)  Did you have any ideas to improve on that?

Finally, I must admit, I don't wanna scare GMs off this game by making it even more demanding on them than it already is.  But maybe that's an issue I shrug and bite the bullet on.

[contracycle]

I suspect you may have hit the point at which die-rolling is more hassle than a chart lookup and that it may be time to take another look at a good old fashioned CRT.  Take some of the calculations out of peoples heads and embody them in a physical prop.

My old homebrew used 1d10 to determine a colour on a chart lookup (as a measurment of relative success), and the colour was then exploited both for hit location and for damage effect, both of them also on chart lookups.  It wasn't super fast but it was only 3 or 4 die drops end to end, which appears to be less than you have at the moment.

[Callan S.]

Hi again David,

One bit at a time...

1) to know the GM isn't fudging things.  I could just ask players to trust the GM, but I'd rather not, for reasons I can go into later if necessary.

I think there's some merit to this, but not in the way you describe. In a traditional model, the GM's just deciding the difficulty target of the roll anyway (or chooses a monster with the difficuty he wants). It doesn't prove anything to know the roll.

However, in my experience of play high rolls are often asserted to be good somehow, especially stuff like natural 20's. The player expects something of it. An actual play account from my own history, I was playing D20 modern and a player got a nat 20 on a jump check. He expected to just clear the whole jump automatically without further rules consultation - while the rules explicitly say a 20 on a skill check doesn't do anything special at all. At the time I let it go that way.

Do you perhaps want the skill roll known to the player, so the player has...lets call it the right of assertion on a 'good' roll?

[David Berg]

Contracycle,
I'll think about charts, but I'm having trouble un-randomizing things.  The multiple rolls are just so various outcomes aren't 100% correlated with each other.  Hmm.  I'll think about whether I'm okay correlating "damage dealt" with "damage getting through X type of armor", that's at least a possibility...

Callan,
Right of assertion?  Not sure what you mean, or how it relates to the "GM fudging" issue.  Let me clarify by saying this: the GM can pick a monster with whatever stats he wants, as long as those stats don't change.  Treating the consistency of the gameworld like the GM's plaything -- that's what the players need to know is not happening.

Let's say a PC gets hit once by a monster and it nearly kills him.  For whatever reason, he keeps fighting.  He gets hit again.  He thinks, "Fuck, I'm dead."  But the GM, doing his calculations without rolls visible to the player, says, "Whew, lucky you, your armor somehow took all the damage!"  Now the player is wondering, "Did the GM just keep me alive to be nice?"  I don't want that possibility to ever cross players' minds.  The sense of danger in a world that does not behave for your convenience is a primary game goal.

As for the issue of correlating good rolls with good outcomes, I do not wish for any number rolled to have any "automatic" expectations attached to it regardless of in-game circumstance.  In-game circumstance is the alpha and the omega of this resolution system.  Attaching a high roll to an imagined quality effort (see my previous point #2) is cool, but not all quality efforts succeed.

[Callan S.]

Fair enough, ignore the 'right of assertion', it was a guesstimate.

Let me clarify by saying this: the GM can pick a monster with whatever stats he wants, as long as those stats don't change.

But...haven't you realised you can manipulate the overall situation without changing a monsters stats mid combat? Lets say you as GM want to be nice (or more accurately, make sure the players get to the ending you wrote up). Okay, they have a fight with a monster - lets say it puts in some heavy hits. Okay, as GM just choose a weaker monster for the next one. Or throw in some healing potions under the guise of 'Oh, of course you'd find some treasure at some point'. Or lets say the monsters hardly puts any hurt on - okay, to keep pressure up make the next monster a tougher one.

If there was only one fight before the important objective, yes, verifying that the rolls weren't fudged would be worth it. But in traditional play there are usually several fights before any important objective can be completed. That leaves ample room to manipulate the situation so as to be 'nice to the player'.

If such manipulation is occuring (and it's bloody easy to do - I've done a bit of it without even half trying), believing everythings perfectly legit cause he didn't change the monsters stats during one battle will just further reinforce that manipulation.

What might support your idea is if we ditch the ancient (and not that interesting) strategic model and instead after every battle health, spells and whatever all recharge to full. That way the GM can't manipulate any strategic level and veryfying stats in one battle is worth it. Or between battles the rules can say it's up to the group to assign any level of health/spells they want, right up to full. But say its okay if players just ignore the option to decide and leave it up to the GM (which they might want to do so as to keep the 'I'm in the world' feeling). This also dispels the strategic level, as each combat is explicitly an arranged one, rather than an emergent result of previous battles (though players can selectively forget that for their own benefit, if they want). Again it's worth keeping track of rolls.

But...if you'd say it's not possible to manipulate the strategic level, that some sort of game world causality would prevent that...I'm gunna be bummed.

[contracycle]

I'm a little unclear on your to-hit roll.  You specify it is made with 2d6, is this aimed at exceeding a target number or similar?

I wonder if you can change that to a roll minus the number, with resulting positives being hits.  Then you could break it down by the degree to which the roll exceeds 0 for other effects such hit location and damage effect.

[David Berg]

Heh, we're on the same page there.  Number by which the roll exceeds the target # = additional damage.  ("Additional" means "plus the weapon's base damage".)

[contracycle]

Cool, that was a suggestion I was going to make as well.

So then, if x = roll - Tn, then
If x =
1: roll 1d8 for hit location
2: nominate 8 position, roll 1 d8
3: nominate 7 and 8 position, roll 1d8
4: nominate 7 and 8 position, roll 2d8 and choose

Essentially you can keep rolling more d8's for location to quite some degree; even rolling 8d8 is no guarantee you will roll the one number you want.
And linked to damage already, this makes for a dynamic in which good, overpowering attacks go heavily towards your chosen target, and poor attacks are unlikely to go where you want or inflict much damage.

Something like that anyway.  I should mention though that nominating the 7 and 8 positions is essentially meaningless if you are simply rolling one die with no modifiers, as you cannot do anything to influence whether you will roll those numbers.  It might as well be a fixed assignment, the odds are the same.  And I predict that some people will start nominating feet for 8, on the basis that they are personally unlucky.  So that may be another problem, or it may be that not all of the system is available to see how you deal with that.