Thoughts On A Fencing Mechanic

[Gurnard]

I've been working on a new game for a few weeks. The core concept is low fantasy, analogous to Early-Mid Mediaeval Europe but with many of the technological advancements of the Renaissance. Think petty little kings, feudal lords who constantly change allegiance, along with chaotic dynasties of church leaders. Common foot soldiers are poorly equipped, poorly fed spear-serfs, in stark contrast to the wealthier kings’ elite forces consisting trained swordsmen (cyclones of Toledo steel,  like a swashbuckler-knight dealy), muskets and full-plated heavy cavalry.

So far, after some testing with mates and a few revisions, I've got a basic fencing mechanic that seems to work pretty damn well. I'm wondering if anyone would like to chuck a few d10s around and give me some feedback, especially on how to implement heavier weapons and missile combat into the turn structure.

Each combatant starts with (by default) two Weapon Dice and two Balance Dice.

Weapon Dice reflect the reflexes and readiness of a character with a weapon in hand, while Balance Dice reflect the character’s agility, balance and footing. These will be used not just as dice but as counters to expend on various manoeuvres.

Roll some sort of die each to determine who gets first initiative and plays attacker in the first phase.

The attacker can choose whether to Open or Suppress his opponent, and can choose whether to stake one or two weapon dice on the attempt.

The defender then chooses whether to parry or dodge and whether to stake on or two weapon or balance dice respectively.

The players then roll their dice. The defender's dice must equal or surpass each of the attack dice and in the case of multiple dice being rolled at once, the defender gets to choose which matches to which. For example, if the attacker and the defender both staked two dice each, and the attacker rolled a 6 and an 8; while the defender rolled an 8 and a 7, the defender can match with the 8 with the 8 and the 7 with the 6 and thus completely defended the attack. But, for every attack die that wasn't defended, the defender loses a die from the pool targeted (Weapon if it was Open, Balance if it was Suppress). And that's in addition to the dice staked to defending the attack. If there are no dice of the targeted pool left, the dice loss carries over to the other pool.

If 10s are rolled, things go a little differently. For ever 10 rolled in the attack, an additional dice is knocked off the defender (spilling over still applies).

If the defender is parrying and rolls a 10, they make a riposte and steal initiative and become the attacker in the second phase.
If the defender is dodging and rolls a 10, they get a free move, which in this one-on-one duel example doesn't matter a whole lot, but suffice to say a single 10 on a dodge will beat all attack dice and if they choose to step back, ends the round immediately (without a second phase) and initiative is rolled anew for the next round.

If an attack die and a defence die both come up 10, the additional effects above cancel each other out and it's treated as just a single successful defend.
In the second phase, if the attacker still has any weapon dice left, they continue with another attack. If this one gets through their opponent's defence (which would cause some sort of injury in a full game, but for the moment let's call it scoring a point).  If the defender has no Balance Dice left, they are off-balance and vulnerable and the attacker can instantly win a match by performing whatever manoeuvre they like uninterrupted (which in a full game would mean being able to freely choose damage location, bypass armour and generally guarantee a kill/cripple).
If only the defender has any weapon dice left, they get to attack instead as if they were the attacker.

At the end of the round, if a character has no Balance Dice remaining they forfeit initiative in the new round.

That's basically how the combat mechanic works, at least between two swordsmen of equal calibre.

[Abkajud]

Very interesting, Gurnard! Nice to see a fighting system that's a bit more graceful than swinging swords, cudgel-like, at one another.

It's a bit hard for me to give a full appraisal of your system, since it seemed a couple of details were left out for the sake of getting the basics out there. But it does sound pretty cool - the back-and-forth sounds like it definitely captures the rhythm of fencing, which is awesome.

To answer your questions: first, for heavier weapons, someone who brings a broadsword or a mace to a fencing match should be pretty limited on defense, only able to dodge, not parry, but at the same time, if you bring to bear a weapon that could snap an epee or a saber, you reduce the defenses of your opponent, as well. So a heavy weapon is a riskier proposition for everybody involved - you're more likely to get skewered casually, but you might also get a lucky hit in and snap your foe's ancestral sabre in half, and then smash his head in with a follow-up. But you might also just get stabbed when you try to close; it's up in the air Then again, weapons of an equal weight class should even out the stakes again - since any weapon can kill a man, it's arguable that two broadswords (or heck, two claymores) are no more or less damaging than a couple of well-handled epees, but when they're paired against one another, the heightened danger levels out again.

Ha, imagine bringing a zweihander to a swordfight. Such a thing would definitely snap an epee right in half, and probably the arm behind it, but goooood luck nailing down your opponent long enough to do it. 

Second, for ranged weapons, I think a sort of shoot-then-close approach might work best - call the distance between the fighters either one or two rounds' worth of movement (taking a cue from Donjon, I believe), and then let the bowman (or what have you) only use his ranged attack when there's still at least one round worth of movement between them. When they close further than that, there's too much chance of getting stabbed to risk nocking another arrow.

A couple of other things, which I don't know if you've covered yet - multiple combatants simultaneously, which would totally rock and give the genre some lovin', and how the system works if you have multiple duels going on simultaneously. Are fighters limited to two action dice, no matter what, or could a more experienced or skilled fighter get some more of them? It would be pretty awesome for a master fencer to fend off two or more men at once.

[Gurnard]

Cheers for the feedback,

I think I may have left some bits out, that was a summary out of the 20 or so pages of design notes stacking up, so I came up with that basic version just go get something out for someone to get their teeth into. I do have a damage system fairly developed already, but I'm leaving it out until the general fencing works perfectly.
I like your idea of the risk involved trying to parry a heavy weapon with a duelling sword, I'd kinda thought to make it just impossible for simplicity's sake (force opponent to dodge, which then involves the risk of forfeiting initiative due to "hard" dodging), but I might take your idea on board and let someone in desperation sacrifice their blade on a last-ditch parry.

I haven't specifically covered multiple opponents in great detail, beyond a two-on-one test match, where basically a character fighting two opponents has to allocate Weapon Dice to each opponent, and/or can hold a die back to use for parrying, but can only attack with the dice allocated to an opponent. It works for two-on-one, but it might get muddled with two-on-two or other skirmish compositions.

I know there's a dedicated forum for playtesting, but since it's here, would someone like to give a shot at a basic die-rolling test? And if the version of the rules I posted aren't clear enough to do so, it'd help me get my notes in order to know what missing in an instructions-to-play sort of sense.

And as to your last question, the two-of-each die thing was just a simplification, or example of a bog-standard character. The die pools will certainly be variable to an extent. A particularly nimble swordsman would have 2/3, someone with only a knife might be 1/2 and a well-trained but not necessarily experience fencer might be 3/2. In a full RPG context a sufficiently experienced character may have five or six WD, giving the power and options to pull off all sorts of manouevres against several opponents all Errol Flynn style.

[LandonSuffered]

Neat.  I have toyed with different ideas to model the art and science of fencing in the past with little success. Your system appears to be going in a good direction.

Joe vs. Jill<AND <Thoughts on the system: I think the defender needs more options than simply avoiding damage if he beats the attacker.  In my example, Joe was lucky enough to roll a 10 and dodge away, but a 1 in 10 random chance of retreating seems a little slim.  As a fencer, distance <Also:<in quartata or passata-sotto <Regarding other weapon integration:

[Gurnard]

My wording could be a bit clearer I suppose. Dice that are "staked" in an attack are lost regardless of success, so I should have said "spent on an attack".

I also neglected to mention that both die pools are restored each round (that is, after the second phase), and initiative is rolled afresh (unless one fighter has balance dice remaining and the other doesn't, so one fighter can begin a manouvre while the other is still getting their feet back in order).

As far as further options for the defender, I based the 10s for a riposte/backstep on a defender just happening to spot and react to an opportunity by sheer chance. An artful riposte would require a bit more technique than a basic 2/2 student (as these rules should reflect).

So a lot of the things you brought up about the core mechanic I've already planned to address with an array of skills (so each fighter has their own particular combination of learned techniques to keep every duel a little different and add a lot more tactics to the game than just picking from one of two attacks/defences and trusting to luck of the dice). The very first skill on my draft list is an improved riposte that grants the defender a counter-attack (in the form of stealing initiative) by either a 10 OR a matching result, which would put the odds of a riposte closer to (but not exactly) 20%. Is that still too narrow odds?

I'm not sure, I'm not a fencer. I've been studying historic fencing documents trying to get it fairly right (enough to understand what Inigo and Westley were talking about in that scene everyone knows) - even to the point of considering taking up a bit of renaissance fencing, but maybe just as an excuse to buy a sword (Hanwei SH1032, look it up, it's beautiful). But getting back on topic.

As you seem to know a lot more than me about fencing, what are the differences between a "straight counter attack" and a riposte? I'd kind of thought riposte and counter were synonymous, but I'm as I said I'm just getting my head around the subject.

As for other weapons, two-handed swords should be able to parry a fencer (not as elegantly, so maybe a cap on how many dice they are allowed to stake), since from what I've been reading, larger mediaeval swords still weren't as heavy or cumbersome as they're often portrayed. But a two-handed sword would still be able to deflect a parry and hit regardless, forcing the defender to use dodges. Which might perfectly suit a Diestro-style fencer who would be countering off dodges rather than parries regardless (and I'll need to work in a skill-set for La Destreza anyway).

Again, I appreciate the responses greatly, I don't believe that realism and playability in an RPG system are mutually exclusive, but getting both right takes a bit more thought and work and I'm grateful for any and every bit of help.

If I can ask a huge favour from someone, to do a dice test and also describe how they feel the fight is going, kind of blow-by-blow narration, just for me to see if the die-rolling and narrative work similarly in someone's head besides mine? It'd be a marvellous help to see.

[LandonSuffered]

RE Fencing in General<On Fencing and The Living Sword<Science of Fencing<in quartata (as I mentioned before) is turning your body a quarter-turn while leaving your blade in place, hopefully impaling your opponent even as his blade slips by. A passata-sotto <The Princess Bride<YOUR <fleche <YOUR <WANT it to emulate? Do you want to model sport fencing? Cinematic (Errol Flynn) fencing?  Do you want to answer that old theoretical question of what weapon is better, a katana or a rapier (or a claymore or an arming sword or whatever)?  You might take a look at The Riddle of Steel

[Hereward The Wake]

As was said, weapons and fighting styles evolve based upon various things, and not always on their combat effectiveness. Bear in mind that the rapier and its development in to the smallsword of the 18th -19th centuries was less to do with effectiveness in combat, they were civilian weapons and not generally used on the battle field where cut and trust or cutting swords were more popular/effective. Rather it was as much to with the social dictates of fashion, and how was favouring what kind of weapon, who was the latest trendy teacher of style to follow etc. There has often been the view that there was an inevitable move towards the use of the point of the sword over the edge as it was more effective, this remains to proven but is generally upheld by modern sport fencers, more specifically foilists and and eppeeists, who use only the point, historically both style remaind active as long as sworrds were used in life and death situations.

In a more gernaeral weapon combat sense I woul define a counter attack as one that is done at the same time as that of your opponent, your own safety being maintained by avoiding their attack with movement as you strike, or by controlling their attack with your own as you strike/thrust through, or generally a combination of both.
parry/riposte as was said, is a defence with your weapon of your opponents atttack, having it in a position so that is can make an effective/efficient attack after the defence.
From a timing point of view, parry reposte would be a two beat action a counter attack of either type is a one beat action

Oh and returing to the history. it is often said that the rapier a thrusting weapon,  arose because of the reduction in armour, the reduction armour being due to gunpowder weapons, there is far more to it than that and so really is not true. Thrusting swords were very popular when armour was at its most complete, its was more effective to thrust for the gaps in the armour, than strike ineffective blows against the armour. if you wanted to strike an armoured opponent then use a mace, war hammer, poll axe etc.
Best
Jonathan

[LandonSuffered]

Thrusting swords (like the estoc) were indeed popular prior to gunpowder making its way onto the battle field, but the rapier and small sword weren't developed until the 16th and 17th centuries, after the advent of arquebus (15th century). The Italian fencing schools developed around the same time as the rapier. Fighting an armored opponent with a thrusting sword used very different techniques for piercing armor than what is generally though of as "fencing."

[Vulpinoid]

I haven't specifically covered multiple opponents in great detail, beyond a two-on-one test match, where basically a character fighting two opponents has to allocate Weapon Dice to each opponent, and/or can hold a die back to use for parrying, but can only attack with the dice allocated to an opponent. It works for two-on-one, but it might get muddled with two-on-two or other skirmish compositions.

Once you get to two-on-two conflicts, or larger scopes of melee,you could always use a tried and true method that has appeared in a number of miniatures battlegames.

When the conflict get large, simply split it up into smaller conflicts, such that every fight is reduced to a single combatant on one side while one or more combatants oppose them.

2-on-2 easily splits into two combats of 1-on-1.

2-on-3 splits into a combat of 1-on-1 and a combat of 1-on-2.

3-on-3 could split into a three combats of 1-on-1, or a conflict of 1-on-2 with another combat of 2-on-1.

2-on-4 could split into a pair of 1-on-2 combats, or could split into a combat of 1-on-3 and a combat on 1-on-1.

The side with the strategic advantage would split the conflicts as they see fit. Strategic advantage would change from round to round, to reflect the fluid nature of the combat. It would probably come from on of the following sources.

a) Tallying up total initiative scores.
b) Taking the highest initiative score from each side.
c) Adding together a static strategy trait (or similar skill) among all combatants on each side [then maybe adding a randomising factor].

Look at the three way sword-fight in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It very rarely comes down to three solitary swordsmen fighting each other, it usually splits into 1-on-2 combats, but the distribution of those 1-on-2 combats change during each segment of the combat.

This shouldn't change the actual swordplay mechanics in your game too much, it's just a metamechanic that comes into play when distributing larger melees into smaller duels.

It's just an idea.

V

[Gurnard]

Thanks Vulpinoid, I hadn't thought of doing it that way, and the game could then incorporate specialised skills for manipulating the melee to their advantage. Would be very interesting to see how a team of master fencers would go against a team of decent swordsmen with a tactical background, it'd really round out characters.

And thanks again Landon, I don't think it would be too difficult to implement the techniques you described. Both passata-sotto and in quartata

It might be a bit ambitious, but I really want to cover all bases on the GNS spectrum. S because I want a fair degree of realism in the specific mechanics; N because I want the actual playing to evoke a sense of cinematic Errol Flynn combat; and G because (later) the characters should have wide scope for tailoring (the players will decide how much to funnel a character into a particular fighting style, but also how much to put into techniques for defeating other styles).

I haven't decided yet if that will be achieved by characters freely choosing their skills, techniques and manouvres or whether a character belongs to a particular school as a novice fencer (the rank of Scholar in the Elizabethan fencing academies and also the modern ARMA) and chooses from their skills, but can learn basic techniques from other schools when they reach the rank of Free Scholar. Provosts can learn advanced techniques from anywhere in the world and also teach basic skills, and the rank of Master perhaps can start their own school based on the combination of techniques they've learned throughout their career.

Or something

[Hereward The Wake]

I wasn't disputing that rather the statement that rapiers came about because of the dimishing role, of armour because of gunpowder. Rapiers we civilian swords and descended from civilian swords of the late medieval period.
The development of the rapier has nothing to with armour, or lack of but rather the development of the use of a civilain sword and an associated fighting style
Best
JW

Thrusting swords (like the estoc) were indeed popular prior to gunpowder making its way onto the battle field, but the rapier and small sword weren't developed until the 16th and 17th centuries, after the advent of arquebus (15th century). The Italian fencing schools developed around the same time as the rapier. Fighting an armored opponent with a thrusting sword used very different techniques for piercing armor than what is generally though of as "fencing."

[JoyWriter]

I think it might be quite cool to keep the system very streamlined, and just do comparisons like runslayers or warhammer:

Compare the stats of the fighters, and the one with the highest stat has the advantage, and if he has double all his opponents then his has an overwhelming advantage.

Then you need only make the system balance for the effects of different weapons/styles, and for the effects of advantage or overwhelming advantage.

I would try the attack system both ways, both as "spend" and "stake", because I suspect the second may be better suited to 2 on 1 combat, allowing the person still to parry the other if he has succeeded in his swing. But that's a guess, it needs testing obviously.

I love the way you cannot even attack until you have taken his balance, although you could have a special attack (or two) that only succeed on 10s.

[Gurnard]

To Joyrider: You might be onto something with differentiating between spend and stake. Like maybe degree of success could determine whether or not the staked dice are expended or not.

Like for instance a lunge attack could stake reflex dice and give some advantage to the weapon dice roll (maybe an extra free die to roll that doesn't count from your pool) but if the attack was unsuccessful you've lost those reflex dice you staked.

I definately want some way of getting past someone's defence completely in the first strike, particularly to speed up combat between opponents with a huge disparity in skill (so a badass character might be able to run a few petty guards out in the same time that two evenly-matched characters would still be circling and blocking).

Maybe those two ideas should tie together and have moves that stake a lot of dice (when an experienced character has bigger pools to play with) and can potentially disable an opponent with very little die expenditure, but at the same time risk putting themselves at a significant disadvantage if it all goes pear-shaped.

Soon I'll have a list of techniques of which every character has a handful from, so some more testing can be done.

I agree about keeping the core mechanics streamlined, that's what all this is about, and then expand the characters' options to give tactical depth to gameplay so that even a one-on-one duel takes a bit of thought.

[Hereward The Wake]

Somethings that you may want to consider is that during the period late 1500-early 1700s there was much bedate amoungst the master on the actual effectiveness of the skill in a life or death situation, especially against someone who was NOT skillfull. The problems was that if fencing, by that i actual fighting, not school play, against a trained aopponent both parties were playing by the same rules and using similar movements etc, so generally the more skillful sowrdsman had the advantage. But when one of them had little or no skill, or threw their skill out of the windo because fo fear they would not be playing by the same technical rules and would often just steam in and charge at their oppoenent and run them threw and do serious damage. A notable school fencer in the style called Hale wa so disturbed by the fact that MAster were getting beaten by novices when it actually was important, i.e. life or death that he completely rewroked the use of the smallswords style to become effective in self defence. George Silver talks in a similar way about the Italian Rapier Masters of his time as opposed to the English style that he advocated.
This may be against the theme of your game. But IMO make for an interesting slant so that, dependng on your style, you maybe fanatstic against styles similar to your won but in a street fight or an unskilled oppoentent you can be out matched. Of course the fancy style wins you cred a court and with the ladies and other nobles, the street style doesn't, but then the street style may just save your life!!
It can also open u the chance that in even the most seemingly unbalanced fight things can and perhaps often did go wrong, so no highly skill PC should feel same, or low skilled PC should give up when faced by an apparently skilled opponent out fo their league, they can gammble and wind big.
A good analogy, is if you have ever paly the Virtua Fighter, fighing games, the game is skillfull an dtechnical and each fighter has a style and there is a good learning curve.  However it is often the case that a completely ingnorant of foghting games newby comes in and starts moving forwards with no judgement of timing distance or technique and just pressingbuttons as fast as they can, they beat the highly skilled player just by shear fury and relentlessness. Of course over all the skillfull player will demolish them and then they start to learn skills and so slow down. But if it were life and death..welll one win is all you need.
Best
JW

[Gurnard]

Haha, I know exactly what you mean when you put it in videogame terms. Or laser tag. Once went to a mate's birthday dealie at a laser tag place where he was in a league team, and it was us untrained scallywags against his squad. We owned them up and down all night, and they cracked the shits because while they were using squad formations and tactics, we just ran helter-skelter around the maze taking shots whenever an opportunity arose. Let me to gloat afterwards, "if your tactics were beaten by sheer random aggression, how good can your tactics be?"

And if I ain't misinterpreting your post, the same can apply to fencing. Especially in the sense of the Italian style, which is one of the reasons I've gotten more into the Spanish theory because it's a little more based on actual combat than sport swordsmanship.

So I'm hoping that in my game, skills will take effect when an opponent over-extends themselves and a skilled swordsman can leverage advantage from that. Against an untrained and desperate opponent who goes hell-for-leather, those opportunites will come up more frequently (but failing to act on them successfully could have a lethal result), while against another trained fencer those situations will be less common.

But again, that'll have to be addressed with the skill system that's in too early a draft to post or test, mostly for the reason that I want the core rules a bit more polished before expanding.

I have a pretty neat damage/injury system that I've used in another game I wrote years ago, and with minimal tweaking it should transplant straight into this game, so every duel will be quite potentially risky.