Aisling combat

[taalyn]

I'm making slow but steady progress on Aisling, and hope to have something good enough for playtesting in a month or two. That will be the bare basics with a little bit of setting (which is going to take a good long while to have everything I want in it). I've been moving along, at least a page a day (pretty good considering I have papers and such to work on). The mechanic is mostly explained, and so is Chargen. I've moved on to Combat, and I'm having problems that I hope you can help with.

I'm aiming for a sense of realism (it's deadly) without complicated mechanics, and even minimal ones. Mass combat with mooks will be like in Underworld - highly abstracted.

Basically, it seems to me that where you hit is more important than how much damage you do. A carefully placed strike with a pencil can kill, and a porrly placed shot with a gun will be merely annoying.

My thoughts have run like this: Power of the attack gives an equal number of motes to divide between location and deadliness. This can then be looked up on a hit chart, or converted into damage points of some kind.

Example:

Sonja the cop fires on a Black Meg approaching a kid frozen in fear. She draws against her Firearms 7 (precision-cyan), drawing RCCCGMM. Each cyan counts as 2 (=6 Power), and the green counts as 1, for a total of 7 Power. The Black Meg has very tough skin, subtracting 2 motes. Sonja's player now has 5 motes to divide between location and deadly.

She could go 4-1, possibly enough to drop her in pain (a Graze to the sternum); 3-2, maybe enough to kill, but likely not; 2-3, perhaps enough to sever a limb or at least make it useless; or 1-4, poor location, excellent deadliness, which would most likely remove a hand or foot.

If I go with tables, I just need to create them, and that will also mean accounting for kinds of damage and relative damaging-ness of various weapons, but this seems like it complicates things I'm trying to keep simple. On the other hand, it might be easier and simpler than I think.

If I go with conversion, I need to account for weapon damage, whether Strength is involved or not, and location. For guns, perhaps a base gun modifier * deadliness / location {using opposite order from above}  (basically, D/L as a fraction 8 base). If a basic 9mm does 3, then Sonja's possible divisions would result in (3*1/4=.75=)1, (3*2/3=)2, (3*3/2=4.5=)5, or (3*4/1=)12 points of damage, which can then be correlated with health levels (ala FDUGE et al.).

The questions:

- Is there any obvious problem I'm missing here?
- Which method (tables or calc.) feels easier to you?
- Do you have any other ideas on how to handle this, accounting for the need for simplicity and a mechanic using colors?

Your thought are appreciated, folks.

Oh, and if anyone has good basic info that will help me figure out damage and range for various weapon types, I'd appreciate it.  I'm gun-clueless, but still recognize that a shotgun gan be potentially more deadly than a handgun. I'm not going to worry about individual models of firearms, but an idea of what general classes there are (i.e. handgun, shotgun, rifle, etc..) would be helpful.

Also, I'm aware that the ammo used is really the source of damage, and that the gun merely provides range, and clip size, accuracy, and such like. Damage will probably go with ammo alone, and not with the gun (as in the example above).

Aidan

[Shreyas Sampat]

It seems like you're saying that hit location can be more important than {insert abstrast idea of damage here}, and that daedliness derives straightforwardly from hit location. but you're still letting the players set a parameter for deadliness.  Sin of redundancy.

I'm thinking that you can discard location for the more abstract deadliness, and use the second parameter for something like painfulness or advantage-derived-from-that-action.

Then you don't have funky problems like deriving different hit location tables for different body shapes, etc.

[taalyn]

Well, yeah, location does seem the most important to me. Deadliness would be an abstract measure of the damage of the weapon itself. I can use situational modifiers to limit the max of Deadliness or Location, depending on the situation. Together, the difference between the two can be seen in some examples:

- an excellent location with poor damage (a poke in the eye)
- poor location, excellent damage (blowing off a toe)
- poor location, poor damage (papercut)
- excellent location, excellent damage (knife through the orbital socket into the brain - instadeath)

What I'm trying to avoid is a pencil only inflicting dinky damage (i.e. it should be deadly when used properly), and a gun that always kills (they don't). I don't like the hit point system and it doesn't feel appropriate to the style I've got going.

If I continue with what I've proposed, I can determine zones of damage easily enough. I imagine an outline, with an outer zone (location 1) encompassing wings, feet, hands, and tail. Each subsequent zone would be smaller and more specific, down to (say) location 6+ covering the heart and the head (or something).

Tables would be easy to do, with this scheme. But lookups slow everything down - blech. But you can do cool things...

Calculation - I'd have to have some way of equating a # to quality of wound, essentially requiring a separate value for each zone. That is, location 1, damage up to 5 is a scratch, but for zone 2 a scratch would be a damage of 10 or less. Or somesuch. It still appeals, though...

Your suggestion of replacing location with pain or advantage - well, advantage wouldn't work (how is poking him in the eye more advantageous than blowing away his head?). Pain has potential, but introduces another scale/attribute to keep track of, making combat overall more complex.  

I'm walking a fine line here, I think, which is really difficult. It's hard to decide which complexities to add and which to excise.

[Thomas Tamblyn]

I'm not clear on why you need to determine location at all; as an example, is there any difference between your:

- poor location, poor damage (papercut)

and

- an excellent location with poor damage (a poke in the eye)

After all, both have exactly the same effect, right?  As it stands the location just seems to add unneeded complexity.  I agree with Shreyas, if you really want hit location to be important in aisling have that be the sole factor that determines damage and get rid of variable deadliness - Unless I'm missing something, you have an unecessary step there that just complicates matters.

[clehrich]

It sounds like you've really got a small set of factors: location, damage, and perhaps some small modifier for weapon.  If you keep it all in nice even integers, you could just multiply:

Location 1 x Damage 5 = 5 damage
Location 6 x Damage 5 = 30 damage
and so on.

Then just scale the output numbers to whatever tally system you're going to use.  You could also add in some pluses or whatever for particularly lethal weapons:

Location 3 x Damage 4, with a +5 weapon = 17 damage

If location is more important than damage, just don't allow damage to spread over as wide an area, so you have (for example) a six-sider for damage and a ten-sider for location.

Another possibility, if you don't mind granularity, would be to have the damage just be a set number, and always multiply it by the location die.

So if damage is always 3,
Location 1 x 3 = 3 damage
Location 6 x 3 = 18 damage

And scale from there.

I have the sense that I'm missing something important in your system; what is it?

[taalyn]

clehrich,

Multiplying seems like a better idea (multiplying is easier than dividing!).

You are missing a big piece of the system - it doesn't use dice! So rolling for damage doesn't happen. You draw colored tokens from a bag, aiming for certain colors. Each correct color=2 power, each adjecant color is 1 power. If I have a skill that's green-5, I draw 5 tokens, and every green token gets me 2 power, each blue or yellow gets me 1 power. These power points are what get split among location and damage.

Location is more important, in my mind. Damage may be limited by weapon type, or perhaps it's just a mod like you mention. I'll have to play with it a bit.

Thomas,

I feel that location is very important. You can kill with a pencil. In one hit, if it's well placed. The difference between a papercut and a poke in the eye may not mean much number wise, but there's certainly more going on pain and distraction wise. Maybe I should account for the difference...

The reason I want to keep deadliness is because it makes a huge difference at the extremes. In the middle it's not so important, but if it's very deadly or really un-deadly is important.  But, as both you and Shreyas point out, it is extra complication.

New proposal:

Power divided among location and damage, max damage limited by weapon. Wound level corresponds to location crossreferenced with location*damage(*weapon damage?).

Example:

Sonja shoots the Black Meg. Gets 7 power, -2 for Black Meg tough skin.

Her options:
(L = location)
L1: 1-4 = (1*4*3 for gun) 12, 12 on loc 1 scale =medium wound
L2: 2-3 = 18, 18 on L2 scale = light wound
L3: 3-2 = 18 on L3 scale = medium wound
L4: 4-1 = 12 on L4 scale = light wound

or somesuch. Perhaps the first option isn't available (gun limits deadly to 3,  
or something). Obviously need to tinker some... I'm also wondering whether making location choosable is a good idea - but then I'm introducing more complication if I want to determine a way of determining hit location...Arrgh!

Aidan

[Green]

taalyn> I read in an article or post somewhere around here that makes a great observation regarding combat in RP design.  Basically, how much do you want combat to be a focus?  If it's a big part of the game, it deserves more thought.  But if it isn't, don't worry about it.

[clehrich]

You are missing a big piece of the system - it doesn't use dice! So rolling for damage doesn't happen. You draw colored tokens from a bag, aiming for certain colors. Each correct color=2 power, each adjecant color is 1 power. If I have a skill that's green-5, I draw 5 tokens, and every green token gets me 2 power, each blue or yellow gets me 1 power. These power points are what get split among location and damage.

Location is more important, in my mind. Damage may be limited by weapon type, or perhaps it's just a mod like you mention. I'll have to play with it a bit.

Well whack me upside the head and paint me purple.  Oops.

Okay, so it seems like any token that's Red, Orange, Indigo, or Violet (assuming ROYGBIV) is going to be worth 0 or less.  So do they just not count at all, or are they somehow negative factors?  See, I think if they don't count at all that makes sense, though I don't know what the probabilities would be, but if they somehow factor in as minuses you're going to have a very unwieldy system (fractions, minuses, who knows).

I'd make weapon damage a plus or minus, not a multiple, and keep the numbers pretty small.  If you want location to be the biggie, then you don't want a factor of three between being stabbed in the eye and being shot in the eye.  So if pencil is -2 and pistol is +2, then you've got a 4-point differential anyway.

I don't love the "pick your location" thing, frankly.  I could see trading in green tokens for improvement, but if the focus is location then that's where the effort should go.  So suppose you draw your tokens to determine location, and then can trade appropriate-color tokens for higher damage (base is 1).

So assuming 4 location types:

Draws 5 tokens, R Y G B V = L:4 @ Dam. 1 = 4 total damage in a nasty spot, OR
(trading 1 G for damage) = L:2 @ Dam. 3 = 6 total damage in a not-nasty spot[/list:u]Then you'd want to think about how (determined or free) a nasty-location hit may influence the victim in the future more than a less-nasty-location hit.  So 4 damage in the kneecap may be less life-threatening than 6 in the arm, but the guy's still not going to be walking any time soon.

I think you'd need to calculate out some probabilities, though.  I mean, with 7 choices, a skill of 5 could pretty easily draw a flat-out 0.  What happens then?

Incidentally, for tokens you might look around and see if you can find old Pente stones.  They come in a zillion colors, and I think you could buy a bag of 50 or something for not a lot.  Now that the game is pretty old, you might be able to find your 7 colors for cheap.  Throw them in a cloth bag and you're gold.

[Lance D. Allen]

Incidentally, for tokens you might look around and see if you can find old Pente stones. They come in a zillion colors, and I think you could buy a bag of 50 or something for not a lot. Now that the game is pretty old, you might be able to find your 7 colors for cheap. Throw them in a cloth bag and you're gold.

Clehrich, that's essentially what he's already using. Great minds think alike? ::grins::

I don't think your proposed system is by itself too complicated, Aidan. Your implementation might be going a little overboard, though. Perhaps something like so:

Weapon does X damage level on a hit. 1 success (or whatever you want to call it) will be a grazing wound, or a fleshwound, base damage. As the successes stack up, the hit location is "walked in" to a more dangerous location. A single success with a knife might be a flesh wound, 2 might be a bleeder, 3 might be somewhere more vital, and 5 might be a slit throat.

Basically, the only variable is the location, rather than the damage. So the chances of a harmless poke in the eye are unlikely, but in a real combat situation, you're not generally trying to inconvenience your opponent, so much as hurt them. I'd allow some sort of rule for lesser damage, if the PC chooses to do so, though.

I can share my "combat system" for Recoil with you if you can't seem to find something that works for you. My system is notably more abstract, but it's got potential to be very deadly, or no so deadly, depending on the intent of the characters.

[taalyn]

Hey Clehrich,

 Lance said it right! Look here  or here  for more detail on the system.

Lance,

The way you've explained it, it now makes sense to me why there's only one 'factor'.  Shreyas and Thomas were going there, but I got stuck on the name. Whether I call it location, deadliness, or sdfhuw, it's still one factor that is the most "damaging", and the other factors are just minimal. You get me to see it, though. Thanks!

 I like your proposal gets more where I'm trying to be. You're right, I got stuck in the figgerin'. I'm going to go play with your suggestion now...

 I would like to see Recoil's combat. If I look around here, will I find it discussed at all?

 Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

No you won't, as I've not totally put together the mechanics.

The base mechanic will be something like this:

Xd10, where X is the rating of the appropriate trait, -vs- a TN, with each result equal to or better than the TN is a success (a real success). Each success means that the player will be able to declare an effect/result. For instance.. I am fleeing pursuit down a dark alleyway. I roll my appropriate trait, and get 3 successes. the first success I use to keep running. The second I use to jerk a trashcan over, to foul my pursuer. The third I use to go jump on top of a dumpster so I can start climbing the fire escape. Sometimes you may not wish to have additional effects, so much as better effects. In that case, you might use the additional successes simply to run faster.

It works the same way in combat. A single success in an action intended to damage someone will be a level one damage effect, Wounded. You can use additional successes to do other things (shoot other people, or whatever) or to enhance the effect to level two through four.

There are 4 damage levels. Wounded, which has no in-game effects, Incapacitated, which means you're out of action in some way or another, Critical, which means you're Fucked up and are likely to die without immediate aid, and D-E-A-D Dead. The range includes such things as a fleshwound, a shattered knee or being knocked unconscious, a sucking chest wound, or having your brains being converted into a sort of organic graffiti. Combat is meant to be brutal, and quick, and emphasize the relative helplessness of mortal beings against the abilities of agents.

Note that there is no damage rating for weapons. If I want to fling a pencil through the air and have it pierce your head entirely, then I can do that with 3-4 successes. If you want a combat system with more realistic effects, you'd probably want to heavily modify this, or use something else entirely (such as the suggestion I made earlier, or the suggestions made by others).

[Felix]

Hi. Interesting mechanic. Two comments/suggestions:

1) Do you want to subtract armor before hit location is determined? It sounds as though the Black Meg's tough skin is making it harder to shoot in the eye. It also means that carefully aimed pencil might snap in two before hitting a vital organ.

2) Just a brainstorm: How about having the close colors determine deadliness of the hit and the cyan determine location? Cyan represents precision, which sounds like accuracy to me. If green and blue represent intelligence and intuition, that means judging how to make the shot really hurt when it hits.
In the above example, the three cyans would mean Sonja got a pretty accurate hit, but the one green would mean it didn't do a lot of damage. That could mean a grazing shot to the head or something similar, distracting and painful in the short run but no long term damage.

Felix

[taalyn]

Felix, now that I've worked through some issues, I've figured a way to mae the Tough skin thing work. I'm about to post a summary of the system with an example combat, so you'll be able to see then how it works.

On your second part, the idea is incorporated already! Great minds keep thinking alike today! I call them singles, and had decided to apply them to combat petty much the way you say. It's in one of the other threads I referred Clehrich to.

Lance, your system is great, and helped me a lot in getting through the damn trees that were obscuring the forest. I am basically using the same system, but with damage ratings, because there are more wound levels (I give you one guess to figure out how many - think colors in Aisling).

Aidan

[taalyn]

Health

For every character there are 7 wound levels. The damage value that corresponds with any given wound level is determined by simply multiplying out the character's Strength by the number of the level. Sonja has a Strength of 6, and the Black Meg (a 'species' of Fae) has 7, giving them the following thresholds:

L1 - S: 6    M: 7
L2 - S: 12  M: 14L3 - S: 18   M: 21
L4 - S: 24   M: 28
L5 - S: 30   M: 35
L6 - S: 36   M: 42
L7 - S: 42   M: 49

The deadliness of each level also depends on Strength. Each level is associated with a wound type, which provide penalties to draws. The breakdown:

Str 1-2: SLMHIDD
Str 3-6: SSLMHID
Str 7-9: SSLLHID
Str 10+: SSLLMHD

(I'm not sure how to break these down - they could use tweaking)

S= scratch, no biggie
L = light wound, -1 power
M=medium wound, -1 Hand
H=heavy wound, -2 Hand
I=incapacitating wound, -3 Hand
D=dead

The wound types are associated with the wound levels

Sonja: S:6  S:12  L:18  M:24  H:30  I:36  D:42
Black Meg: S:7  S:14  L:21  L:28  H:35  I:42   D:49

Example of combat:

Sonja
STR: 6
P:Beat Cop 5
T: Karate R4
Gun: dmg 6

Black Meg
STR: 7
N: Urban Fae 4
T: Club M6
Tough Skin R2
Club: STR (7, in this case)


Sonja has finally found a murdering Black Meg near the river. The two face each other in a small clearing just off the bank.

Round 1:

Initiative: Sonja's player, Amy, throws out 2 fingers (defense), and the Seanchai throws out 1 (offense). Black Meg (hereafter Meg) acts first, with a + 1 bonus, and Sonja with a +1 bonus to defense.

Meg charges and attempts to club Sonja into next week. She will draw 7 motes, 6 for the club, 1 for the offense bonus. She gets RAGCCCB,  providing 2 power (1 for red, 1 for blue - obviously, I'm using adjacency rules here).

Sonja attempts to dodge, drawing on her cop skills (5) and with her defense bonus, pulls 6 motes total. Dodging is an athletic skill: Red is the target. She gets GGCCBM, 1 power.

Meg's club hits Sonja squarely in the side, doing 7 damage for the club multiplied by 1 power (2 - Sonja's defense 1) - 7 damage. That's a scratch for Sonja, luckily. Amy marks off the second Scratch.

Now it's Sonja's turn to attack, but instead she just stands up and pulls out her gun. Meg turns in her direction and prepares for another swing. That's it for the exchange.

Round 2:

Init: Sonja goes for offense, while Meg is neutral (3 fingers), worried about this gun she's up against. Sonja first.

Sonja draws 5 for her cop profession, +1 for offensive stance, or 6 Motes. She gets: RAMMCC, 5 power, a nice hit!

Meg draws to see if her skin (aka armor) helps: Hand of 2 - green and magenta, 1 power.

So Sonja's damage is 4 (5 power - 1 for Meg's success) times 6, or 24. This is a Light wound, with a -1 power penalty. (note that this hit would kill a normal guy, STR 3, outright).

Meg grabs her neck to staunch the bleeding and with a wild roar lunges at Sonja. Draw is just 6 (no bonus for offense this time): AAGM, and 2!!! Fates, a Curse and Wyrd. Her Power stands at 2, but with her wound, it's only a 1.

Sonja dodges- 5 for copness, -1 for offensive stance. Gets: RCMX (X = clear), power 3 (2 for M, 1 for R). She dodges handily.

Together with the Wyrd Curse, Meg swung and tripped on a root, managing to hit herself in the head on the way down. She's face down on the ground, bleeding and concussed - the Seanchai rules she took another Light wound. The previous light wound marked off her second (Sonja's damage was above the lower threshhold of 21), so this wound increases to a Heavy wound, with a -2 penalty to every Hand.

Round 3:

Init: Sonja takes offensive again, and Meg can only defend.

Sonja shoots again, with a bonus for the offensive stance and for a prone, concussed target - she draws 7 motes: RACCMM, and a Blessing! As it stands, that's 5 power.

Meg can't depend on her skin here: the 2 hand penalty effectively nullifies her skin's Hand.  

Sonja does 5*6 damage = 30. The seanchai rules that the blessing allows 2 more power, so she actually does 7*6=42 damage, an incapacitating wound.

Meg is out for the count. Sonja now has to figure out how to get the Meg to the proper authorities, not the police in this case!


There are probably errors (ooh, why didn't she dodge with her karate! or get a bonus for it...oh well), but you should be able to see how it works.

Is the system simple enough? I overexplained, just in case... Does it fit the rest of the game?

Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

Okay, gonna run through some "hits" and make sure I understand the damage system..

Sonja: S:6 S:12 L:18 M:24 H:30 I:36 D:42

She's hit by a 5, that's the first S. If she's hit by a 3, that would also be the first S, but because that's taken, it bumps up into the second S, correct?

She's hit by an 11 on the first hit, which would take up the second S, then is hit by a 6, which would take up the first S, not bump up from the highest wound, correct?

Now, looking at the numbers/levels...

If I happen to have a Str 2, it looks like I'm utterly screwed.

Peewee: S:2 L:4 M:6 H:8 I:10 D:12

A hit that wouldn't really phase Sonja (12) would be the death of Peewee here. That's quite a difference. He also, effectively, only has 6 health levels because anything over the 6th health level is overkill.

Joe Average: S:3 S:6 L:9 M:12 H:15 I:18 D:21

This demonstrates a fairly serious breakpoint as well. Only a single point higher, and a hit that wouldn't phase Sonja, but would kill Peewee would hurt Joe Average, but hardly knock him out of the fight.

I think part of the issue with your damage levels is that you have 7 damage slots, but only 6 levels of damage. Someone with 7-9 Str can't even be moderately wounded, and Str 10+ can't be incapacitated, but can be killed. I see your intent is to make it harder for tougher critters to take higher levels of damage, but their increased threshold numbers do that anyhow.

My suggestion would be to make 7 levels of damage, and have them be uniform for all Strength levels, and have a sort of diminishing returns as you get tougher, rather than set doubles.