Adapting TRoS Combat to Burning Wheel

[Valamir]

Perhaps a quick and dirty example.

You and I face off.  You have Reflex 5 (an attribute) and Proficiency (weapon skill) 7 for a total Combat Pool of 12.  I have Reflex 6 and Proficiency 8 for a total CP of 14 (cuz its my example ;-)

First we select the stance we will start in.  You decide to go aggressive stance I decide to go defensive

Then we decide to either attack or defend.  This involves secretly selecting either a red die (signalling intent to attack) or a white die (signalling intent to defend)  The die is not rolled.  If you attack from an aggressive stance you get +2 dice if you defend from an aggressive stance you get -2 dice, etc.

If we both drop white then we are circling with no attack.  If we both drop red then its simultaneous.  We see whose blow lands first and the other guy is generally in big trouble.

Lets say you attack and I defend which means we both get +2 dice to our pools.  

Since you're attacking you select how many of your 14 dice you want to sink into your attack.  You decide to do a basic 8 die attack swinging vertically down.  In TROS target number is based on weapon (typically 6 or 7 on a d10) so you roll 8 dice against a TN of 6.

I decide how to defend before you roll.  Instead of doing a basic defense I select the Counter Maneuver.  The Counter comes with a 2 die charge so I lose 2 of my 16 dice.  I elect to be a bit balsy and only throw 10 dice into my counter.  

You roll 8 dice and get 4 successes.  I roll 10 dice and get 5 successes.  If I were doing a regular old defense, I would now take the initiative because I beat you and would select the next attack.  Because I Countered and paid a 2 die penelty and it worked I now get a bonus for the counter.  I get to use your successes against you to boost my next attack.  In other words if you roll alot of dice and successes but yet I beat you anyway, you're overextended and I take advantage of it.

So, your attack failed, and I now have the initiative.  I started with 14 dice, +2 for defending from a defensive stance, -2 for the counter cost, -10 for the dice I rolled leaves me with 4 dice (all of that is simply added and removed from a bowl'o dice so its easy to track).  However, I get your 4 successes as a bonus so my counter attack against you is coming at you with 8 dice.  Ordinarily I'd choose my target hit location zone, but with a counter you take whatever opening you can get so target location is random.

You started with 12 dice +2 for attacking from an aggressive stance and -8 for your attack, so you have 6 dice left to defend.  Now might be a great time to think about Full Evade (i.e. get the hell outta dodge), but for example purposes you choose a basic defense and hope you get lucky.

I roll 8 dice and get 4 successes you roll 6 dice and get 2 successes.  That leaves me with a 2 success edge...I hit you (of course I do...its my example).

We now go to damage.  My weapon is Strength+1 and my strength is 5 so my total damage is 8.  Your Toughness is 4 but you have 2 points of armor on the location I hit so 8 is reduced by 6 to 2.  You suffer a Level 2 wound and now look up the Shock, Pain, and Blood loss for that wound on the table.

Assume Shock was -3 and Pain was -1.

We then go to the new round and pools refresh.

Your pool of 12 is reduced by 3 for the shock to 9 (and by 1 going forward by Pain in later rounds).  Stance only matters on the first engagement.  Unless we seperate (as with a Full Evade) and choose Stance again niether of us will get the +2 die bonus.  The Red Die / White Die choice is also not made again unless we seperate.  We are already engaged and already know who the attacker and who the defender is.

Since I successfully hit you, I keep the initiative.  My undamaged pool is 14 dice.  This will be a decisive exchange.  The conservative choice would be to attack with something like 10 dice and keep 4 in reserve for defense in case you get lucky.  However, in order to have a reasonable shot at defending against my 10 dice, you'd need to use at least 8-9 of yours.  Even if you only use 7 and get super lucky and beat me to take initiative you'll only have 2 dice to attack and I have 4 dice to defend.  Not a good choice for you.  You *could* try a counter like I did but that would leave you with only 7 dice to counter and if you didn't get lucky and succeed not only would I hit you but I'd have another 4 dice to smack you with while you had 0.  So most likely what you'd do is defend with all 9.  But if you do that and succeed, you won't have any dice left to follow up with so initiative would revert back to me and my 4 dice.  So if you're going to have to use all of your dice anyway, you might as well Full Evade and break off the engagement.  This gives you a real good Target Number (4 I think instead of 6) making you quite likely to evade.  Evading ends the round and goes straight to refresh.  That means you won't be suffering the -3 Shock, you'll only be suffering the -1 Pain and so you'll have 11 instead of 9 dice.  It also means we'd return to stances and red/white.

So, me...knowing that you're probably going to Full Evade, and knowing that if you do you're likely to succeed, and if you do the round ends and we go immediately to refresh, and if that happens my saved 4 dice would be wasted has a choice to make.

I might just throw all 14 dice, knowing that the only way you have a chance to beat that is with a full evasion with all of your dice so that even though I'm leaving myself wide open you won't be able to capitalize on it.

Or I might throw a lesser number of dice, hoping to bait you into trying something that I can then smack you down for.  Etc.

That's the psychology of TROS combat.

[Claymore]

A very fine example Ralph :-)

There are many other great things about combat, such as using terrain to your advantage when facing multiple foes. When fighting a battle outnumbered, you have two options, split your dice pool against your adversaries (not the best thing) or expend a few dice from your pool and make a terrain test, with a TN based upon your surroundings (which could be converted to obstacles easily enough). If you make the test, only one opponent can engage you during the round.  


Claymore

[Claymore]

The tables are hit location tables.  You aim for a particular zone (like diagonal swing from the left) but you randomly roll on a d6 which location you hit in that zone.  Damage is a function of how well you hit.  Basically, Number of Successes from the attack roll + Weapon modifier (usually in the form of Strength + X) minus opponent's toughness and armor on the location hit.  

The result translates to a level of damage 1 through 5.  Cross referencing the location with the level of damage (on the table for the appropriate damage type...thrust vs slash etc) gives the combination of the above 4 damage types that you suffer.

Level 1 is largely of the "just a flesh wound" variety.
Level 5 is largely of the "spectacular death" variety.


Pretty involved, but flows really smoothly in play.  Hits are actually fairly rare, so unlike D&D where you do a little damage each round, in ROS you do no damage most rounds and then you finally land a nasty blow that ends the combat.

Just a quick note, When determining damage, you take the attackers strength (if a melee attack) + the damage modifier of the weapon (usually+1 to +3) and add your level of success over your opponent's. Your opponent gets to subtract his toughness+armour protection. The difference is the level of wound inflicted.

Claymore

[Luke]

Alright, this all sounds feasible. The hitch would be ROS variable DN which BW doesn't much like. So something's going to have to give. But before I retreat to my mountain cave to ponder the situation I have just one more question for you specifically Claymore.

What is it that you REALLY like about the ROS combat mechanics? What flavor or feel needs to be there for you want to play it? What absolutely cannot be lost in the translation?

-L

[Anton_Duelant]

What i really like about TRoS is buying manuevers out of the dice pool and the fact that i have so many options.  Its not your basic attack, defend or counter.  And the strategy is as close to real time as a pen and paper rpg can get.  The scripting(in Burning Wheel) is a cool idea but that's not how real combat goes about.  I don't like having to pick my action before the events unfold.  (yes i know you can change them after the fact but its the concept not the mechanic that i'm not a particular fan of).  

If i was going to merge the systems, you must put the manuevers from TRoS.  I have a slight favorite with the TRoS dmg system also but that is probably more from familiarity rather than anything else.

I don't like the way either of system does armor.  But then again i've never found an armor system i like.  With armor rules you usually have to put yourself into one of two schools of thought-"armor absorbs blows" or "armor deflects blows"  The fact is some armors deflect, some absorb and some do both.  Its hard to make good armor rules I know this and I'll never be happy but hey a guy can dream.

Burning wheel is a great system with skills and character creation being my favorite part.  I just want a more fluid combat mechanic in my games.

I really like the combat in TRoS(obviously).  It adds gritty realism to the game.  I am not however a big fan of the magic system-its a little too powerful for me.

-Anton Duelant
Recovering Power Gamer

[Claymore]

Alright, this all sounds feasible. The hitch would be ROS variable DN which BW doesn't much like. So something's going to have to give. But before I retreat to my mountain cave to ponder the situation I have just one more question for you specifically Claymore.

What is it that you REALLY like about the ROS combat mechanics? What flavor or feel needs to be there for you want to play it? What absolutely cannot be lost in the translation?

-L

Hmmm.......

Well, the first thing is of course the maneuvers. I love the way RoS handles them. I see your point about variable TN vs. Obstacle, and I'm inclined to agree with you, changing the TN greatly affects TN, where raising the obstacle is more subtle, provided the dice pool is large enough. I would go with adding either a stat or an attribute (reflexes is the front running IMHO) and not vary it as you suggested earlier based upon the maneuver, it wouldn't work well with RoS mechanics (you pool carries over during 2 exchanges it would be a real pain to recalculate it mid round because you have decided to go for a power maneuver when your first maneuver wasn’t).

In TRoS, you method of defense determines your TN. If you sword block, your TN is usually (varies on weapon), a 6+, while a shield block is a 5+. If you all out evade, you can get it down to a 4+, but there are restrictions (you cannot all out evade if in the previous exchange you made an attack). This could be handled easily by adding additional dice to your pool, which could only be used in certain circumstances, either attack or defense (add +2 dice to your pool when using a shield, can only be used on defense, or perhaps when making a shield bash). Their are also some maneuvers that will raise your TN, changing over to an obstacle progression won't be a problem as long as you are adding Reflexes or another stat to increase the pools.

Definitely keep in the terrain rules, they work very well.

TRoS and BW each have approximately the same combat round (3 seconds). TRoS breaks up the round into 2 exchanges. After the two exchanges occur all pools refresh. The interesting thing that I would certainly keep is the flow of battle simulation that RoS performs so well. If you hit your opponent (whether he is damages or not), the attacker retains the initiative (during the next exchange he may attack should he wants, or forfeit the initiative to the defender), provided he has at least 1 die left in his pool. I would keep this system in place, it works well and is easy to do.

TRoS has a quirky way of handling bow fire. You don't have access to all your pool at once, each round you add up to your aim score (a derived attribute) to your dice pool, not to exceed your total skill. You can fire before your pool fully refreshes, but your chances of hitting things are pretty slim. While I like the approach, I (and several others) think missile weapons are way underpowered in the rules. The pools take too long to fill up (a minor quibble), the missile weapons do too little damage, and the range increments (each increment raises the TN +1), are way too small.

The Hit Location rules are a MUST! In TRoS, there are no random hits; you declare a zone that you are aiming for. There are no penalties for a called shot (unless you are trying to hit the hand or head with a missile weapon). Each zone has several locations. If you hit your opponent, you roll a d6 and consult the zone chart (it's very easy and can be memorized in an hour). For example if you declared a body attack with an edged weapon (zone IV) on a 1-2 you would hit the upper arm and shoulder, on a 3 you'd hit the chest, on a 4 the neck, on a 5 the lower face, and on a 6 the upper head.  You should be able to find the charts in the introductory rules, if not the RoS screen will have them.

Damage rules I'm iffy on. Either BW or TRoS could be used. In TRoS, you add toughness+armour, the numbers are fixed. The problem is that during character creation characters can jack their toughness up to an 8 and become practically invulnerable to attacks if he has any decent armour. It has been suggested on the RoS forums to cap Toughness at 6, and since the max fort a character can have is 6, BW could accommodate these mechanics easily. For each success the attacker has over the defender (after Strength & weapon -Toughness & Armour), a level of wound is inflicted. A level 1 wound is a scratch, a level 5 would is usually a mortal one). To determine the effect of the wound (how your dice pool is penalized, how bad the injury is in game turns), a chart is referenced (which is not as easy to memorize)

If you were to use BW damage rules, I'd suggest adding a die or two to each protection location, as characters will always be making called shots, as opposed to attacking the suit as a whole.  If this approach is taken I will modify the armour loss rules so that a majority of the dice have to come up 1's to lose a point, but that's my preference (as you know I am not a fan of the armor loss rules as they currently stand, but that is my own opinion). I'd include an option that if you get so many successes over your opponent, the armor TN or obstacle goes up, which could possibly replace the VA rules or work with them.

Also, I'm also not fond of the minor wounds increasing the TNs in BW, so I would not play with those in my campaign, I would just cause a brief die/dice penalty for a round as opposed to a lasting one for more major wounds (again, my personal taste, take it with a grain of Salt :-)


Whew, that was all a mouthful! If you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to ask, I've been poring over both sets of rules the last few days coming up with my own ideas on how to make this work.

Claymore

[Luke]

okee dokee.

i can see it working.

some things i am thinking about:

If you like the ROS combat system you should probably stick to their wounding system. Use the Shock, Pain, BL and Death rules. Don't bother with the IMS stuff from Burning Wheel.

Burning Wheel works best when it is an additive system. A difficult action? Add to the obstacle. A more powerful character? Toss on more dice.

Combat dice pools = Ref+Skill+FoRK+Weapon.
Rather than increase/decrease TN/DN, Weapons and equipment should just throw more (or less) dice into the pool. Perhaps it could also be relative to the weapon of your opponent? I dunno. ROS seems to chalk full of combat weapons experts, perhaps they can offer some advice. Either way, the weapon should add dice to the pool. Shields should add to the Def pool. Or perhaps add more to Def Pool and less to Agg Pool.

Armor. Why not take Anton's suggestion? In the new Simplified Melee mechanics rules Armor can be used "Offensively" or "Defensively".

Offensive armor can be added to your combat pool for the exchange, but it doesn't help you shrug wounds. Basically you are going in heavily relying on your armor to take a few hits before you get your shot it.

Whereas Defensive armor doesn't add to the Pool, but can be used to add to "Toughness" or to shrug damage. (Depending on which school of thought we decide on, BW or ROS.)

As for actually doing damage...

Average Pool based on BW dice would be 8 or 9 dice (Ref B4, Skill B4 with no FoRKs and a +1D weapon.)

Average Forte of your target would be 4.

That means on an average to hit roll (4 successes vs Forte 4) there would be no damage.
Is that right? Wait, no. You add your Weapon Power to your successes over when you hit. So let's say it's a +2 P weapon, so that would be 2 over the Forte/Toughness. And would be a decent wound, right?

Armor could be simplified to a simple +1 to +6 (quilting through metal plating) for adding to Forte for determing damage.

I don't know how these successes translate on the charts. I'll dL the QS rules again and take a look. But the simplest way to do this would be to ignore the hit-loc rules and charts (I know: HERESY!) and just say X amount over your opponent's successes is so much Shock, so much Pain and so much BL. Perhaps if you can get successes-over equal to their Forte+Armor they are instantly killed. Also, perhaps players can choose where their successes go? 1 success= 2d of Shock, 2 successes=1D of pain or 1D Shock + 1 level of Blood loss. (Or something along those lines). That way they could control something of the suffering of their opponent.

I am fumbling around in the dark, but I can't help myself. I LOVE tweaking mechanics.

suggestions?
-L

[Claymore]

I like your suggestions, and I think I can work with them. Your strength and weapon add to your overall success level against your opponent, so If you beat your opponent's defense roll by two dice and you had a strength of 4, +1 for your weapon, and he had a fort (toughness) 4, you would inflict a level 3 wound (4+1+2-4). Pretty nasty. If he was wearing quilted (+1), he would only suffer a level 2 wound, and if he had full plate he wouldn't take any damage at all (however the attacker would retain the initiative during the next exchange if he had kept at least a single die in his pool)

Armor. Why not take Anton's suggestion? In the new Simplified Melee mechanics rules Armor can be used "Offensively" or "Defensively".

Offensive armor can be added to your combat pool for the exchange, but it doesn't help you shrug wounds. Basically you are going in heavily relying on your armor to take a few hits before you get your shot it.

Whereas Defensive armor doesn't add to the Pool, but can be used to add to "Toughness" or to shrug damage. (Depending on which school of thought we decide on, BW or ROS.)

-L

This would not work as armour and toughness represent guaranteed successes. If you add the dice to defense you now only have a 50% chance of getting a success (assuming black shading).

Overall I think this is coming along very well. I will be running ideas to my group this weekend. Any further comments from this group over the next few days would be great :-)

Claymore

[Luke]

So I read over the QSROS rules again last night.

Going from ROS into the BW dice/mindset, I would definitely use all the ROS bonuses and penalties to just add and subtract dice from the pools.

Weapons should add dice for their "optimum uses" and subtract dice for their lesser uses (like an axe on the thrust). I wouldn't however, give damage reduction penalties for weapons vs certain moves. I think the reduced dice would reflect the ability to get that damage and it seems like another level of complexity that isn't completely necessary.

Maneuvers should add and substract dice from the pool as well.

Armor can be used as "auto successes/soak" to reduce the incoming power of a weapon (just like in ROS). That works fine in the translation.

Shock and Pain dice should be "doubled up" against the combat pool for the translation. When a sorcerer takes a Midi Wound in Burning Wheel he loses a die from his Will AND his Sorcery. I think this should carry over for RO-BW for consistencies, sake. Because with Pain you are going to be losing dice against other non-combat skills and stats that have a range of 1-8--and BW is built to handle penalties like that (important for incapacitation purposes and other penalties).

Hm, I guess Shock dice should only come out of the Pool total, not off each skill. But when you take a point of Pain then you lose a die from your Reflexes and your Skill.

I am very interested to hear how this goes!
let me know!

-L

[Luke]

wait a minute...

so all this talk is great for sword fighting.

How does ROS handle stuff like Get Inside, Lock and Throw?

From what the QS rules say, it is only possible knock someone down if you wound them.

curious,
-L

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

0ne thing that tends to get missed in discussing The Riddle of Steel combat is that maneuvers are a minor add-on, not a core piece of the system. I highly recommend playing without them for a while - they are not much more significant than a formalized color mechanic with (usually) minor bonuses. I also recommend avoiding thinking of them as a "what I can do" list.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Heh, Ron and I disagree a bit on the significance of the maneuvers.  It really depends on how free form you want to be with it.  Virtually any kind of manuever with virtually any kind of impact can be done with ROS by creative use of the Terrain Roll rules and a willingness to allow the GM to assign bonuses based on stated intent and the quality of the roll.

The maneuvers do, however, set the tone for the scope of what effects are possible, the scale of any costs or penelties and some limitations on what weapons are capable of.  Playing without them is good as a beginners training excercise but really pretty bland after awhile.  Feint and Counter are particularly important to the effective psychology of play, and Hook, Bind and Strike, and Simo block and strike are quite useful and go a long way to differentiating the combatants capabilities.

Luke, I think you'll appreciate the way TROS does reach, because it acknowledges the same sort of thing you did with Get Inside.  Basically each weapon has a reach which is a simple number, longer being higher.  Initially the longer weapon has an advantage.  Trying to attack someone with a longer weapon results in a penelty to your die pool equal to the difference.  So if I had a Reach 3 weapon and you had a Reach 1 weapon, every time you tried to attack me you'd lose 2 dice.

However, once you did manage to land a blow (even an ineffective no damage blow) you're now "inside" and the penelty is reversed.  It would now be the longer weapon that had the penelty, so I'd be motivated to actually drop the longer weapon and draw a shorter one.

There are some quite interesting Grapple moves, including grapple to throw and grapple to trap.  The hook maneuver is also a useful way to get someone down.  

Also, I'm not sure how the QS rules may have simplified knockdown.  But in the full rules you roll for knockdown any time your combat pool is reduced to below 0 by shock (or shock + pain).  This does not require a wound per se, just someone whose spent their die pool down to nothing who then suffers a minor level 1 hit.  The level 1 hit may be too trivial to actually "wound" but it can trigger a knockdown check.

[Claymore]

wait a minute...

so all this talk is great for sword fighting.

How does ROS handle stuff like Get Inside, Lock and Throw?

From what the QS rules say, it is only possible knock someone down if you wound them.

curious,
-L

TRoS has decent rules for knockdown and stun. Weapon reach gives the character with the advantage bonus dice that can be used until his opponent is inside; at that point the penalties reverse (I think, I need to reread the rules).

The only thing I'm not sold on is the weapons adding dice to attack; I don't think it's needed (unless the weapon was of quality or magical). Most weapons in TRoS have an attack TN of 6+, with the exception of a few such as a flail, which could be simulated with a higher obstacle. I'll need to look it over some more.

One thing I was considering (but am not sold on) was to keep BW damage system. The easy thing would be to just use TRoS Toughness and Armour rules, which would work well with BW, but I like challenges. Also, I'd like a unified damage mechanic, I don't want to use TRoS damage rules for combat, BW rules for falling and Magic, etc.

My thoughts were to use the hit location charts of TRoS, but use BW weapon stats and Injury scale. I'd probably add an additional level of severity past Superb, doubling the damage of the attack.

What I'd change are the armour rules. I'd give each location 3 dice with a TN based upon the type of armour. Each success rolled on an armour die reduces the severity of a wound by 1 level, so you'd need 2 successes to negate a Mark result, or 3 to negate a Superb result. Since a success also reduces the severity, 1 success for an armour check would reduce a mark result to an Incidental hit. I'd also say that armour degrades if 2 of the 3 dice rolled come up ones (but this is to simulate my own personal feelings towards armour degrading and is not needed for the mechanic to work). I like this system because the severity of the hit affects your armour's chance of absorbing the blow.

If players or GMs want to know the exact effect of a wound, you could equate BW damage levels to TRoS wound levels (i.e. I took a minor wound, which equates to a level 2 wound for shock, dice penalty, and descriptive effect).

I'm not sold on anything yet, so please feel free to chime in. One thing I will say however is that while BW is a very sound system in its own right, I am VERY impressed with the level of customization it allows Game Masters who may want to make a tweak here or there.

Claymore

[Luke]

hi claymore,

BW and ROS have two different paradigms for dealing with damage. ROS is exact and detailed, while BW is more general and abstract.

Weapons relate to the world by how they effect it. A sword is what is it because of the way it cuts. Thus a sword represented in one game is going to be different the other. I know this seems overly simplistic, but I am just trying to make a point that before one can really determine how a sword does its job and how a swordsman uses it, one has to define the body that is its target.

So IMS vs Shock and Pain.

BW and ROS are mechanically quite similar in this effect. (from what I can tell).

In BW you have 3 levels of potential hits that you can do with a weapon. These hits then translate onto the opposing character's body/physical tolerances. Each character has slightly different physical tolerances. So a Mark result hit from my sword might lay you low, while it would barely pierce Ralph's tough hide.

Mechanically, in BW, this means that you want to meet your obstacle for Incidental hits, get two over your obstacle for Mark hits and 4 over obstacle for Superb hits. (Those hits are then essentially translated into damage by the receiving character's stats)

In ROS (from what I can tell) your weapon plus luck and skill determine your best possible hit at that moment, and your opponent's skill, armor and inherent toughness can possibly reduce this. The severity of the hit comes from the weapon's strength plus your strength plus your skill/luck over the target's toughness and armor. The greater the difference between your final result and your victim's the great the damage.

Damage, in both systems, is reflected in lost dice (and raised TNs). With an option for instant death.

Pretty darn similar. It just depends on how you want to do it.

Of course, you could keep either system in its entirety, ignoring the other. Success over your opponent's defensive moves translate right into IMS. Same thing for the ROS damage levels. (But if you are going to use the BW skill and magic systems, it's easier to stick with the IMS/PTGS.)

You could keep the three-tiered IMS system, but use the ROS damage system. Your weapon damage/IMS would translate right into so much Shock, so much Pain and so on.

Or you could use the successes over to read right into the ROS charts. As opposed going through a Strength vs Toughness mechanic. This would, of course, require weapons and strength to add dice.


another thought, you could scale all this back a bit dicewise. Use the ROS combat structure/mechanics but only draw the combat pool from skill+FoRKs+stance. This would make combat very tight and very nasty. You could incorporate into this the Terrain Test rules and the Advantage mechanics from the simplified melee mechanics. Keep all other damage and weapons mechanics as per BW. (You can use any old armor system that pleases you.)

I actually like that armor system you came up with. If I ever get a chance to playtest it, I might actually endorse it.

rambling...
i think we could hash something out in the course of a night's playtesting.
-L

[Claymore]

I actually like that armor system you came up with. If I ever get a chance to playtest it, I might actually endorse it.

-L

Thanks, when I get it worked up a bit more and playtested, I'll make sure to post it ;-)

The thing I'm not as crazy about in TRoS is the absolute damage values. Attack and damage is combined into one roll, so many a time will a player hit his opponent with +2 successes, but will know it's not enough to penetrate the Toughness and Armour. I like the concept of armour providing a variable. Of course, many others would likely disagree..... :-)  

The key thing here to remember is that there are many different ways to skin the cat, depending on the style of the GM.

Claymore