I was on usenet with the very a naive intention of promoting my new D20 book, and needless to say, like a tourist straying off the path in a visit to HELL, I got sucked into a billion different ridiculous and bitter arguments about literally everything.

One of the stupid arguments I got sucked into against my will (I am helpless here) was this ridiculous debate about the DnD combat system, which I personally find both complicated AND unrealistic. (Perfect example of the wrong way to do it, IMHO.) Though it's ok for what it is, it does not do realistic combat.

Anyway, as an example of a better way of doing things, I cited TROS. As soon as I explained there was a dice pool mechanic they all started screaming "Death Spiral" at me. I tried to explain that the two exchanges per melee round (especially) the SA's, the way armor works, and the various combat options all prevented this from being the case, but they don't believe me and spit numbers at me, claiming that the system encourages "kamikaze" play, i.e. spending all dice in one attack.

As an instinctive min-maxer I remember actually trying this in the few TROS I have played and I got creamed. So I don't think it really has a death spiral mechanic at all. Injuries do have a cumulative effect, so the first person hit is at a disadvantage, but even when that happens the fight isn't over. IMHO. Anyway, please explain this so I can enlighten these DnD heretics. I am out of my depth on TROS having only played a few times so far, but I this death spiral thing is just a cop-out, an easy way to claim that no other system but THEIR system could possibly work. Why I feel the need to argue this even further, I can't explain, hell is hot, but you love the burn... and the defeat of wrongheaded evil! Hell, they are never going to buy my stupid book anyway, I might as well have fun with them...

DB

One word my friend.
Counter.
That typically f**ks up people that do full CP attacks.
I mean, you *DO* get to use the opponent's successes on the next attack.. and they'd be defenseless. (assuming the counter was successful..)

Also, take any D&Der's neurotic zealotry with a grain of salt. Often-times they are too feeble-minded to notice that they're missing out on something a HELL of alot better.

And since when the hell isn't D&D a game that encourages kamikazee play? Nuhhhmmmm?? Last time I played, our group went up against what I beleive was a level 20 demon. It couldnt kill us. I remember being eaten by a gigantic worm.. and I carved myself out of it's stomach. I also remember killing a giant turtle of some sort.. as it was trying to chomp me in half..

What I really think, is that they don't like a game where their skill as a player(and hence, their character's skill and strategy..) is potentially fatal to their characters. If their skills/strategy fails, character is dead.. etc..
D&D players also seem to be heavy into the character longevity issue.

I was all of the above and more as a D&D player... Pathetically much more.. :-\

Put those comic-book playstyle loving idiots in their place. The 'kewl powerz' shit is for fantasy settings.. and TROS *might* just be too realistic for their tastes. And, like a liberal that thinks everyone is wrong but them...well, you see my point.

-Ingenious

1. If someone throws all dice in an attack at you, you can buy initiative and hit them first. Since they overcommitted, they don't have any dice to buy it back. Your first hit could decide the fight before they even get their turn.

2. You don't usually know how big your opponent's dice pool is. If someone throws all dice against a superior opponent, they will be left wide open in the second exchange and probably get killed. If they had been more cautious they would have been able to take advantage of the TN 4 full evade to get the heck out of there when they realize in the second exchange that their opponent's dice pool is bigger than theirs and they are probably going to lose if they stay in the fight.

3. You are increasing the number of dice in play by not splitting the pool, so the margins of success either way (from your hit, or from an opponent using a counter) become potentially larger. This means that instead of injuries, hits will more often result in immediate deaths. In the long run this is worse for players than the GM, since a PC death is much more significant than an NPC death. In general, increased variability works against the players.

This was also a major point in the discussion of the recent TROS 'review' on RPG.net

funny, my players who all where all DnD munchkins type players, really love the change that TRoS has giving them, the love the fast and deadly way TRoS, and all the freedom it gives when making your character type, instead of classes and levels and such, they like they way how "human" there characters are.

Anyway there are a few die-hard DnD players and Rolemaster fanatic's in my club, and the all cry that TRoS is to complicated, my players has actually defended the game, saying that then they are simply to stupid to play.

Ingenious wrote: One word my friend.
Counter.
That typically f**ks up people that do full CP attacks.
I mean, you *DO* get to use the opponent's successes on the next attack.. and they'd be defenseless. (assuming the counter was successful..)

I'd noticed this trend in our Midnight to TROS game... the character who got into combat the most tended to dump all his dice into the first exchange and throw red. We're talking 20 dice (a regular feature in our games.. they're SAs run hot all night sometimes). So i sat on it for a while.. let him get in some "easy kills" (kills are never easy in TROS i say)...

then tonight I pulled both a Counter (he was lucky we both scored 10 successes each) and I bought initiative. THe initiative buying screwed him good though... scared the bejeezus out of him .... funnily enough after that he started to hold back a few dice ;)

cheers

Jason K..

bottleneck wrote:
as for buying initiative - well, they can spend dice from their attack to buy it back. If you are agile, perceptive and wielding a rapier, sure - but if that description fits the other guy better, you have poor odds.

bergh wrote:
Anyway there are a few die-hard DnD players and Rolemaster fanatic's in my club, and the all cry that TRoS is to complicated, my players has actually defended the game, saying that then they are simply to stupid to play.

TROS does have a death spiral. Intentionally. And thank goodness.

See, the D&D players' complaints are all based around the idea that the strategy of play is based on resource management - Hit Points, most importantly. If you put a death spiral into that sort of game, then you lose all ability to plan based on HP, and there goes half of player tactical choice - when to fight, and when to flee.

TROS, OTOH, has it's tactics in the selection of maneuvers and use of dice pool. Basically, getting hit once is a failure that's likely to make you lose. Not always, and that's cool that one can come from behind. But it realistically handicaps the injured. Thus most of the real tactics occur before the death spiral strikes.

Now, the death spiral usually strikes early, relative to D&D where you may have to wait hours to be out of HP. Which is the better case?

TROS gives you more tactics, more realism, and more drama. Most of the D&Ders won't consider the SA effect. That is, they're used to character plot immunity coming in the form of Hit Points. In TROS it comes in the form of SAs firing when the character is involved in what's important to them. So you get the same effect in terms of survival (I could even argue that for an experienced player that TROS is more survivable), but you get it much more dramatically.

So, most of the claims come from a missapplication of assumptions from D&D players of their game's ideals to TROS. As such the analysis can be ignored. Teaching people this is very difficult, OTOH, and I don't advocate attempting it. Trying to convince happy players of one game of the merits of a very different game is likely to end up with nothing but misunderstanding. Because they don't really want to understand.

Not to mention that this is very much the Usenet condition. People are there to socialize and decry things they don't understand for the most part.

Mike

kenjib wrote:

bottleneck wrote:
as for buying initiative - well, they can spend dice from their attack to buy it back. If you are agile, perceptive and wielding a rapier, sure - but if that description fits the other guy better, you have poor odds.

Hi bottleneck, where is the attacker given the option of taking dice he's already declared on attack and using it to buy initiative instead? I thought that once you declared your dice you were committed to following through.

Give TROS hit points!

No, not really, but I'm sure that got your attention!

I'm sure most of you are wondering where I am going with this thought. I'm the first person in my group to slam hit points. I have trouble wrapping them around my brain. When I have run games with hit points, I find they interfere with my suspension of disbelief.

On the flip side of things, not everyone wants heavy detail in damage systems. While the TROS system is a fascinating depiction of wound theory, looking up the individual wound on a chart and rolling the die and figuring out what the impact does is slooooow. TROS has an amazingly fun duelling system which in some opinions (that of my gaming group, at least), can get slow in the actual clash of arms. And that is 99% of the time because of the chart-based damage system that the game uses.

Also, not everyone wants a death spiral system. While it can be fun, I have to admit that sometimes I prefer more heroic battles. While the spiritual attributes can often help an injured player make that last gasp of effort, the cumulative penalties can be overwhelming.

So... telling a player to drop 25 hit points does go faster than looking up the damage location IV chart versus crushing and rolling a d6 to determine effect, then adding or subtracting bleeding or shock values. Is the TROS system more realistic than the hit point system? Definately! Does the tedious nature of determining injury ruin the exciting tempo of battle after a while? It does for me (your own mileage may vary).

Recently I've had the pleasure of running Mutants and Masterminds, a D20 superheroes game. Hit points have been nixed, and you just have a damage save. As you fail your damage saves, the difficulty of saving against future damage goes up by one. Also, if you fail too much in the first place, you can be stunned, injured, KO'd, or even killed. Its much faster than hit points, ten times faster than my college era Champions preference, and about 10 times as fast as taking injury with TROS.

So... considering the excellent job done with TROS when it comes to trading and defending against blows, and quantifying the effect of armor and weapon damage styles, is it not possible that a leaner TROS damage system could be created? Not necessarily the M&M system, but a new novel approach? One that does not have the admitted depth of the current TROS damage system, but that accelerates play?

And the nice thing about a leaner, simpler system is that simpler systems are easier to modify. So if you wanted to run a heroic game where the question wasn't what is worth dying for, but rather who can nab the greater glory, then that would perhaps be easier to create.

For the TROS Wuxia game I've thought of running I've had a couple ideas in this respect. I'll print them here.

1. Have every point over your toughness + armor (or toughness *2) for the Wuxia game) subtract 1 from your dice pool. When you run out of dice, you collapse. This is my death spiral method.

2. You can take as money points over your soak value as you have total in Spirit Attributes. This makes battle a contest of will.

Thoughts? Comments? Personal Attacks?

While the spiritual attributes can often help an injured player make that last gasp of effort, the cumulative penalties can be overwhelming.

May you take dice from the pool you already have "signed" for full attack, to buy initiative? or may you not?

bergh wrote: May you take dice from the pool you already have "signed" for full attack, to buy initiative? or may you not?

I have to agree that, much as I like TRoS' sombat system, the actual mechanics for determining and assigning damage are kind of tedious. Well more than kind of...

I'd love to see a more elegant solution that retained as much of the realisim as possible, but was a tad quicker. I've thought about just dropping the D6 location roll adn using the simplified damage tables from the quickstart rules, but since I've yet to actually play TROS with my full group I haven't made any conclusions...

Basically I'm waiting to see how much the more accurate damage system really adds to the enjoyment of the game. I found it plenty fun and scary just fighting duels with the QS damage tables so...

bergh wrote: May you take dice from the pool you already have "signed" for full attack, to buy initiative? or may you not?

Thanks Brian!

That is a very clear answer, wow! doing full out attacks are dangerous!
i think i got confused becsoue in the Combat simulator you have programmed, you can take dices from the pool you already have commited for your attack.

sorry for confusing everyone.

I guess I played too much on the combat sim, too.
but thanks for clearing it up for me!

kamikaze is quite stupid, then! (and thus tRoS is not a death spiral that encourages kamikaze play).

Uhhh whoah. He's right. Whatdya know!
Also, Brian, your combat simulator is busted. It can't calculate reflex + proficiency. 6+6 does not equal 6...if ya know what I mean. I found a solution though by upping my proficiency to 12 lol.. which results of course in a CP of 12...

Ambrose Marchais gains +2CP for his aggressive stance
Ambrose Marchais must pay an additional 2 dice to attack because he's out of range.
Ambrose Marchais takes a swing at Gol Captain's arms/hands with 13 dice...

Gol Captain gains +2CP for his aggressive stance
Gol Captain tries to hook his weapon under Ambrose Marchais's legs, tripping him with 5 dice...

Determining who gets to swing first...

(TN 6) 2, 2, 2, 2, 17, 7 - Result: 2
(TN 7) 8, 5, 23, 8, 2, 8 - Result: 4
Gol Captain attacks first...

Ambrose Marchais can attempt to steal initiative if he wishes...
(TN 6) 3, 6, 6, 1 - Result: 2
(TN 9) 5, 2, 3, 4, 4, 1 - Result: 0
Initiative successfully stolen!

Ambrose Marchais spends some dice from his attack pool, and doesn't get as many to attack with...
(TN 6) 7, 15, 2, 19 - Result: 3

Ambrose Marchais rolls and gets 3 successes.
---------------------------------------
Attack successes: 3
Strength: 7
Weapon Damage: 3
---------------------------------------
Toughness: 7
Armor: 2
---------------------------------------

Ambrose Marchais hits Gol Captain with a total damage rating of 4... (Arm broken, lots of blood)

So, in all actuality.. Brian's words are like John F'in Kerry's. He says one thing here, but his software shows something else. Which way is correct though?
Oh, did you vote for that 87 billion before you voted against it too Senator Leybourne?? :-D hahahahahahahahahahha
you all might not be laughing.. but I am.

Political jokes aside, red/red or kamikazee or pre-empting in TROS is always risky.. some might call it dumb. Only if you fail.. if you succeed.. you're either lucky.. or smart.
-Ingenious

Mike Holmes wrote:

While the spiritual attributes can often help an injured player make that last gasp of effort, the cumulative penalties can be overwhelming.

I think that the point is that, in play, SAs are in force usually from the first blow - it'd be somewhat uncommon for things to change mid-battle so that SAs would only be available at the end.

The point is that with SAs the PCs should usually outclass their opponents, meaning that even injury will be pretty rare. So you don't have to worry about a death spiral because you're not getting wounded. This allows for very heroic play. Claims that players shy away from combat in TROS, or that they die too often are just unfounded.

As for the speed, well if the PCs have lots of SAs firing, then they'll tend to go through their enemies very quickly, no? Yes, the handling time for TROS may be higher for a round, but when you only have to do one fifth of the rounds, TROS can be substantively faster. When TROS is long, it's dramatic enough that most people think that it supports itself.

If you're playing out "balanced" battles that are taking forever as "sample" fights to see how the system works, you're not seeing how it works in play. If you are playing, and SAs aren't coming up, then consider that you may want to change your GMing tactics so that they do. Because when they do, the game flies.

Mike

I just went and read the threads that spawned this discussion over in rec.games.frp.dnd and man.. i remember why I left that place. such an insular vicious mob aren't they?

anyways FWIW I don't really have that much of an issue with the time combat takes or the death spiral thing. Sure when you're wounded you get worse at doing things. And sure you can dump your pool on the first exchange.. but as a GM i'm learning new tricks every session on how to combat that and people are learning how to fight smart in the process..

i'd call it artefact of coming from D&D that htese people are concerned with that sort of thing. play it by the rules and within the spirit of the rules and the game is sublimely cool...

Eamon wrote: 1. Injuries are not just delivered to the players. Injuries delivered by the players to others also take up time.

2. The issue with wounds has little to do with long combats in TROS. The combat system is exciting enough that people like combats. The problem is a matter of looking up in what we consider tedious charts what happens when weapons hit meat and bone.

And I think that having two damage systems, one called 'Dramatic' and one called 'Realistic', would only serve to increase the sales of the game and the size of the fan base.

The discussion on Usenet has been at times interesting, if uncivil. Evening folks. I thought I would come here and see if anyone would answer the one or two questions that I posed, hoping Bob would offer an answer from the complete rules. I apologize for coming in late. I've been pretty busy keeping up with the original thread, but it seems to have moved back into subjects I'm not good at ;)

As a caveat, the only rules that I have to work from are what is available in the downloads section of the TROS website, which includes the 2002 quick start PDF, and the full damage tables.

Drifter Bob wrote:
As an instinctive min-maxer I remember actually trying this in the few TROS I have played and I got creamed. So I don't think it really has a death spiral mechanic at all. Injuries do have a cumulative effect, so the first person hit is at a disadvantage, but even when that happens the fight isn't over.

Mike Holmes wrote:
See, the D&D players' complaints are all based around the idea that the strategy of play is based on resource management - Hit Points, most importantly. If you put a death spiral into that sort of game, then you lose all ability to plan based on HP, and there goes half of player tactical choice - when to fight, and when to flee.

Once people started to take damage, it became progressively harder to continue without fatality. Even a light wound turned a minor gunfight into a difficult encounter due to the loss of skill and increased target numbers.

As long as the game pits success against success, it's mathematically fairly silly to not attack all out once you have enough of a CP to punish someone who doesn't block all out.

Jaeger wrote:

Once people started to take damage, it became progressively harder to continue without fatality. Even a light wound turned a minor gunfight into a difficult encounter due to the loss of skill and increased target numbers.

You speak as if this is a bad thing????

As a long time TROS player I say YES to the death spiral!

It is a wonderful mechanic that punishes players from continueing to fight when they should be running away!

This is IMHO, an issue of wanting different things out of your game. And an issue of player PRIDE (my PC never flees from battle!)That in TROS will get your PC killed - fast.

Jaeger wrote:
Q1&2: Yes, shock is immediatly subtracted from your current die pool - with any extra subtracted from your new pool when pools refresh. Pain starts on the next round and is a constant diepool minus.

Jaeger wrote:
Q3: yes asuccessful counter give you those extra six dice to attack your opponent with immediatly. Throwing all your dice into an attack looks good on paper, but against those who know how to play your basicaly gambling with your PC's life. (you may have a run of luck, but in the end the house always wins.)

Jaeger wrote:
see also the above posts on buying initiative.

Jaeger wrote:
Once you wound your opponent of course it's silly not to finish him off??? and if they aren't wounded and don't block/evade/counter/buy initiative, then they deserve what they get!

Jaeger wrote:
I'm actually now quite confused - how is this "death spiral" a bad thing???

Hello Zilvar,

If you attack me with a full out attack and a 2 die advantage, I basically have two options.

First option is to buy initiative. In your example above with a 12 die CP, I could spend 6 dice on buying initiative. The odds will be in my favor since some of those dice will probably be buying up your TN for the opposed roll - I'll probably end up with an 6 TN versus your 8 TN. So now I, the supposed defender, more likely than not have initiative and half a tank full of gas - a free and clear 6 die shot on you.

This means an average of 3 successes with the bastard sword in your example. Assuming strength and toughness cancel each other out, if you have any unarmored spots that's a level 5 wound - game over. If you have light armor I still get a decent wound in and hurt your combat pool enough that your attack will be severely weakened (you might have even dropped your weapon or been knocked out/knocked down too). If on the other hand you have full heavy armor coverage to cancel this out in addition to a die pool advantage, then it's clear that I'm very much outmatched and now I go to the second option...

The second option is to full evade and bail out in the face of a vastly superior opponent. I have a TN 4 for full evade versus your TN 6 for a thrust with a bastard sword. Even with a 2 die advantage you'll have to get pretty lucky to hit me. If I am clearly outclassed - why stick around for the slaughter? More importantly, I could tell I was outclassed before getting injured, and have a chance to make a break - so the death spiral hasn't kicked in yet.

zilvar wrote:
This is why attacking all out works. I won't deny that there are situations when it's a bad idea. That is one of the things that make statistical comparisons of games difficult: there are often a lot of different circumstances. Anyway, with the way the system is built, all I need is average luck vs. average luck and a 2 die advantage in order to make an all-out-attack successful. Even one level of damage is enough to make sure that 'a few' held back dice are likely gone. If the defender holds back more dice, they take more damage, and lose more of the dice. The only offsetting factor that I am seeing so far is that the defender wins ties...which just means I need the two CP advantage in order to feel safe in the attack.

zilvar wrote:

Jaeger wrote:
see also the above posts on buying initiative.

This appears to be a risky move that takes quite a bit of your CP to even attempt.

zilvar wrote:

Jaeger wrote:
Once you wound your opponent of course it's silly not to finish him off??? and if they aren't wounded and don't block/evade/counter/buy initiative, then they deserve what they get!

You misunderstand my point. If you ever have, as a character, a higher CP than your opponent, by at least two dice, you will probably win any exchange if you attack full out. If your opponent does anything but defend, the margin of dice becomes even larger, and the chance of doing anything successfully becomes that much lower.

zilvar wrote:

Jaeger wrote:
I'm actually now quite confused - how is this "death spiral" a bad thing???

Because it is tremendously un-fun and un-heroic in any implementation I've ever seen. If game circumstances force me into a fight, I don't want to be crippled for the rest of the night if luck is not on my side during an exchange.

kenjib wrote: Hello Zilvar

kenjib wrote:
If you attack me with a full out attack and a 2 die advantage, I basically have two options.

First option is to buy initiative. In your example above with a 12 die CP, I could spend 6 dice on buying initiative. The odds will be in my favor since some of those dice will probably be buying up your TN for the opposed roll - I'll probably end up with an 6 TN versus your 8 TN. So now I, the supposed defender, more likely than not have initiative and half a tank full of gas - a free and clear 6 die shot on you.

QuickStart Rules wrote:
Instead of simply waiting for your attack turn in
order of Coordination, or defending as normal,
tell the Seneschal you want to buy the initiative by
spending CP dice equal to your opponent’s Wits.
You may then roll a Contest of Presence against
your opponent’s Wits, each against a TN equal to
the other’s Coordination; the one who gains more
successes will strike first.

Once the actions of Initiative have been established,
the first Exchange takes place: the attacker
allocates a portion of his Combat Pool to an
attack and rolls; the defender does likewise with
his Combat Pool to defend.

kenjib wrote:
The second option is to full evade and bail out in the face of a vastly superior opponent. I have a TN 4 for full evade versus your TN 6 for a thrust with a bastard sword. Even with a 2 die advantage you'll have to get pretty lucky to hit me. If I am clearly outclassed - why stick around for the slaughter? More importantly, I could tell I was outclassed before getting injured, and have a chance to make a break - so the death spiral hasn't kicked in yet.

kenjib wrote:
Yeah, but your assumption of a 2 die advantage is a huge flaw in your theory. You don't know how many dice an NPC has when the fight starts.

kenjib wrote:

zilvar wrote:
You misunderstand my point. If you ever have, as a character, a higher CP than your opponent, by at least two dice, you will probably win any exchange if you attack full out. If your opponent does anything but defend, the margin of dice becomes even larger, and the chance of doing anything successfully becomes that much lower.

Again you are assuming that you will always have a two+ dice advantage. To me that's a character with hubris - a fatal flaw. He thinks he's the biggest kid on the block and gets overconfident until someone bigger smacks him down. ;) Suddenly he tries this on a major enemy, who has a few more dice and pulls off a counter. Now the enemy gets an uncontested attack with 18 dice...

kenjib wrote:
That's what Spiritual Attributes are for. They are the heroic part of the game, not the wound system.

One should also note that 2 dice is only a fairly modest advantage. It isn't all that unlikely for 10 dice to beat 12 dice. The expected value on 10 dice is 6, on 12 dice its 6 (assumeing the easy TN of 6).

You're going to bet your life on that thin margin on a regular basis?

Valamir wrote: One should also note that 2 dice is only a fairly modest advantage. It isn't all that unlikely for 10 dice to beat 12 dice. The expected value on 10 dice is 6, on 12 dice its 6 (assumeing the easy TN of 6).

You're going to bet your life on that thin margin on a regular basis?

Valamir wrote: One should also note that 2 dice is only a fairly modest advantage. It isn't all that unlikely for 10 dice to beat 12 dice. The expected value on 10 dice is 6, on 12 dice its 6 (assumeing the easy TN of 6).

What you're not getting, Zil, is that getting hit in combat means one of two things in TROS.

1. The combat is over. Just like in real life, getting injured means that you've lost the battle if the injury overcomes your ability to fight. Which is the intent of injuries.

2. The injury is light. This means that you have to reassess your choice to fight. Do you continue, knowing that you're now much more likely to lose, or do you give up.

Now, to you, this sounds unheroic. The heroic part is getting into the combat, and doing well in the first place. Not getting injured, but instead injuring. You seem to believe that injuries in the game are the result of random chance to a large extent. But given the mechanics of the system, and good play, it's not all that random, actually. That is, in play, you often come in with a large advantage in terms of SAs, and this means that as long as you play relatively smart, you'll avoid getting injured, and you'll come out on top.

Meaning that as long as you can get that advantage, you can be as madly heroic as you like. It's the equivalent of gaining 20 hit points for the battle or something.

Play of TROS is all about making heroic choices. When looking at a particular conflict, the player uses his metagame ability (as you put it) to guage the opponent within a few dice of his total, and then he looks at what he's got available. What's his total CP with SAs that are applicable in this case? He looks at the difference.

+10 CP - he can take this guy without a sweat, no need to worry about the choice.
+6 CP - this is someone he can take with almost certainty, but the player will have to think a little in order not to get outwitted.
+2 CP - this is a combat that the PC should win, but it's by no means certain. The player should really consider whether his PC is really interested in this battle.
0 CP - even odds. Would you step into a fight in which you had even odds? I mean, in D&D if you're up against a mirror image of your character, he's got a 50% chance of losing, right? So a player chosing to do this is accepting that his character might get mangled, right?
-2 CP - the player should really rethink this fight. Unless he plays really well, or gets really lucky, he'll lose. Why is he fighting this battle? If the PC has SAs firing, then this means that the GM is cruel, because he pitted the PC against a vastly superior foe. The player's choice is to run or likely die.
-6 CP the PC should run. There can't be any good reason for him to be involved in this fight. Just like in D&D when the GM puts first level characters up against a giant.


See what I'm getting at? The choices are somewhat the same. In D&D, you only attack when you have the advantage. In TROS, you only attack when you have the advantage. The neat thing in TROS, however, is that your opponent might be equal in strength and skill to you - your advantage may be that you care more about the situation than he does. In fact, many here say that if SAs aren't firing, then the GM hasn't done his job right. There should never be a case where the PC ends up in a fight that he doesn't care about to some extent. What's heroic about beating up (or getting beaten up by) a randomly wandering bunch of monsters? What's heroic is saving you lady love from certain death at the hands of your hated enemy.

Try the game out. In actual play, if the GM follows he SA advice that we give here, PCs will only die when the player is senseless to involve his character in fights that he doesn't care about. Otherwise, if he pursues his character goals, he'll be able to be quite heroic.

On the subject of all out first attacks, your math fails to account for the fact that certain defensive maneuvers have a mechanical advantage to them that makes them more potent than attacks in terms of overall dice produced (and hence later damage). So the simple sounding analysis you put out doesn't hold. Counter is the most obvious example, as has been stated here repeatedly. Through a combination of real life experience with western martial arts, and vigorous playtesting, Jake managed to avoid there being any simple tactics of any sort that are automatically "best". In fact, it can be argued that simple tactics of these sorts, being predictable, are actually amongst the worst tactics.

Mike

Heh...Tony, you caught me in a sloppy typo.

Of course its 5... 10 and 12 dice couldn't both be six.

whoops...

zilvar wrote: This text does not make it clear that you can buy initiative as a response to a combat move. In fact, it seems to contradict that notion. Initiative is determined (by whatever fashion), and then the attacker/defender throw dice. I'll assume, since everyone seems to believe it to be true, that the full rules explicitly indicate that buying initiative is an allowed combat move.

zilvar wrote: Next question. The TN's for the buyout. What is the basis for your assumption that the TN's will be so different?

zilvar wrote:

QuickStart Rules wrote:
Instead of simply waiting for your attack turn in
order of Coordination, or defending as normal,
tell the Seneschal you want to buy the initiative by
spending CP dice equal to your opponent’s Wits.
You may then roll a Contest of Presence against
your opponent’s Wits, each against a TN equal to
the other’s Coordination; the one who gains more
successes will strike first.

Once the actions of Initiative have been established,
the first Exchange takes place: the attacker
allocates a portion of his Combat Pool to an
attack and rolls; the defender does likewise with
his Combat Pool to defend.

This text does not make it clear that you can buy initiative as a response to a combat move. In fact, it seems to contradict that notion. Initiative is determined (by whatever fashion), and then the attacker/defender throw dice. I'll assume, since everyone seems to believe it to be true, that the full rules explicitly indicate that buying initiative is an allowed combat move.

zilvar wrote:
Next question. The TN's for the buyout. What is the basis for your assumption that the TN's will be so different?

zilvar wrote:

kenjib wrote:
Yeah, but your assumption of a 2 die advantage is a huge flaw in your theory. You don't know how many dice an NPC has when the fight starts.

Not really. If I don't know, throught dint of my marvelous metagaming powers, then I spend a few rounds trying to figure it out. Please. I'm not stupid, just disillusioned with dice pool systems and cumulative damage effects. :)

zilvar wrote:

kenjib wrote:
That's what Spiritual Attributes are for. They are the heroic part of the game, not the wound system.

So far as I have seen, SA's only provide extra dice to the pool. This makes you a stronger fighter. It does nothing to offset the game- and fun-related problems that arise from a death spiral.

Since the topic that I originally posted to seems to have been taken up here, I thought I'd repost my idea here for fixing the affect of how condensing the Hit Zones causes problems with the use of armour.

Dúrgil wrote: ...You could create an armour system like I suggest here. The idea is basically a dice roll that determines how much damage the armour protects, which I got from The Burning Wheel Fantasy Roleplaying System. It doesn't make much since with regards to any Quickstart Rules, but I like this idea of eliminating all of those tables.

Mike Holmes wrote: What you're not getting, Zil, is that getting hit in combat means one of two things in TROS.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Now, to you, this sounds unheroic. The heroic part is getting into the combat, and doing well in the first place. Not getting injured, but instead injuring. You seem to believe that injuries in the game are the result of random chance to a large extent. But given the mechanics of the system, and good play, it's not all that random, actually. That is, in play, you often come in with a large advantage in terms of SAs, and this means that as long as you play relatively smart, you'll avoid getting injured, and you'll come out on top.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Try the game out. In actual play, if the GM follows he SA advice that we give here, PCs will only die when the player is senseless to involve his character in fights that he doesn't care about. Otherwise, if he pursues his character goals, he'll be able to be quite heroic.

Mike Holmes wrote:
On the subject of all out first attacks, your math fails to account for the fact that certain defensive maneuvers have a mechanical advantage to them that makes them more potent than attacks in terms of overall dice produced (and hence later damage). So the simple sounding analysis you put out doesn't hold. Counter is the most obvious example, as has been stated here repeatedly. Through a combination of real life experience with western martial arts, and vigorous playtesting, Jake managed to avoid there being any simple tactics of any sort that are automatically "best". In fact, it can be argued that simple tactics of these sorts, being predictable, are actually amongst the worst tactics.

Kenjib, Overdrive

Thanks for the answer on the initiative buyout TN. That clears up the situation nicely.

zilvar wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: What you're not getting, Zil, is that getting hit in combat means one of two things in TROS.

Oh..no. I get it. ;) I just find the mechanic of getting worse as you take damage to be a generally un-fun way to play a game. I've played this type of mechanic before, and I find it uninteresting in general.

I also understand the concept of smart play and only fighting the fights that mean something. Somewhat foolishly, perhaps, I do have the expectation that the GM won't go out of his way to kill me without warning or merit.

However, I take issue with your comment that the element of randomness is minimized because of the SA's. Throwing a lot of dice, you'll tend toward a given, easily calculated, number of successes, but this is just as affected by chance as anything else.

It is unlikely that I will have the opportunity to try the game in actual practice. You'd think that a town with 5 military bases would have an active gaming community, but I'll be damned if I can find it. :/

As I've said, counter seems to be a poor choice in this case. You'll never match the number of successes. Buying initiative seems likely, since it appears to allow the defender to completely negate the attack and cause those dice to be wasted. Beyond that, I haven't seen a mathematically reasonable counter, and that was part of the reason I posted.

Mike, it occurs to me that Zilvar is talking from a D&D-heavy (or pseudo-D&D) viewpoint/background...at least, that what a lot of his arguments sound based on to me.

That is, it seems to me like a clash of assumptions, the events of actual play against what the expectations of actual play are -- D&D functions with a wholly different paradigm than TROS.

"I don't like my effectiveness dropping when wounded," is an argument when referencing TROS that makes me scratch my head and ask, "Well, why WOULD you get wounded?"

Of course, in TROS, the point is NOT to get wounded -- this isn't D&D where every combat exchange is guaranteed to whittle down your HP lower and lower until you need to rest and/or heal or face death. In TROS, the expectation gamers bring with them is that combat must result in blows being traded and thus wounds being taken.

But that doesn't happen in TROS, wounds don't "happen" as a matter of battle -- the "resource" is set up NOT to go down, no matter how many fights you get into. And if it ever does, then you're in trouble.

It isn't a case of "At %HP you have a -X to hit" and %HP will be reached via combat -- I agree, that sort of effectiveness drop when the resource is guaranteed to drop isn't much fun. But it isn't TROS, either.

But that's the expectation of play with a lot of gamers, particularly long-time D&D players (but by no means restricted to them), that games tend to play a particular "way" beyond the rules. In this case, the expectation is that lots of action and lots of fights result in wounds (or rather, loss of a resource), because that's what happens in combat, you get "little wounds."

I think gamers have a hard time grasping the difference in play here, because of various expectations being trained in through play, and in comparing new systems against those unspoken (and, honestly, reasonable) expectations that have been developed, there's the reaction that "it won't work!" -- and of course it won't, if that's the way the game actually functioned.

greyorm wrote: Mike, it occurs to me that Zilvar is talking from a D&D-heavy (or pseudo-D&D) viewpoint/background...at least, that what a lot of his arguments sound based on to me.
(...massive snip...)

Mike Holmes wrote:
Mike: wounding ends combat.
Zil: but I don't like to play after my combat ability has been degraded.

Mike Holmes wrote:
See, in a game like Shadow Run, the "fun" part of the tactics theoretically is managing your dice pools as they reduce due to wounding. Which isn't really fun, because you have less and less ability to do things as your pool goes down.

zilvar wrote: Kenjib, Overdrive

Thanks for the answer on the initiative buyout TN. That clears up the situation nicely.

kenjib wrote:

zilvar wrote: Kenjib, Overdrive

Thanks for the answer on the initiative buyout TN. That clears up the situation nicely.

No problem Zilvar. Sorry to hear about the lack of gaming community for you. Have you tried play-by-post/email/chat? Of course it's not the same as meeting up face to face with a bunch of buddies but it does have other merits...

This is an interesting conversation. I've been quite interested in the game for some time, trying to talk myself into buying it mostly. I will say that some of the people here are... a little elitist. But hey, gamers everywhere seem the same regardless of system, so no surprise there.

I bought into D20 mostly because well, I'd rather have players available than not, and I would rather game than not game, and I view the mechanics as secondary to story. But that's just me. Part of what intriques me so about TRoS is that mechanics are *not* irrelevant to story! The mechanics really are integral to shaping the story.

Anyway, this "death spiral" thing is something that my gaming friends mention every time I bring TRoS up, so this is a very useful thread. Thanks! Threads like this one might help me convince some people to try it out if I shell out the money for it :)

Keep in mind that most people who cry out "death spiral" (what a goofy term, if I have to make my own judgement) have never played the game, or haven't played it the way it's meant to be played...

In the end, however, some people may simply not like TRoS. Yes, it's possible. ::Waits for the gasps of shock to die down:: It's got a very steep learning curve. It's got a deadly, realistic combat system which really is superior to any other if the goal is realistic modeling of actual swordplay.

Mini-rant:
Am I elitist? Probably. But I don't think that anyone should play TRoS if it doesn't suit them. I do, however, believe that you should play TRoS before you give any sort of value-judgement, and play it properly before you make any sort of decision. If you are inclined to do neither, then, with all courtesy, keep your mouth shut on the topic. It's your right to not play, and though I might prefer otherwise, it's your right to sound off whether or not you should.. But it's also my right to consider you an ignorant jackass if you do.

Note that the above rant is not aimed at anyone in particular, nor was it inspired by anyone in particular.. It's just the recent rash of threads here mentioning opinions based on ignorance being spread across the internet like so much sewage.

Welcome to the Forge, Emiricol!

Emiricol wrote: . . Threads like this one might help me convince some people to try it out if I shell out the money for it :)

Wow, Wolfen. People really come here, to the TRoS forums, to bash the game? That would be asinine, yeah... Or do you just mean the opinions of people less knowledgeable than you? :)

Thanks for the welcome, bcook! I've gone through the quickstart rules and rummaged everything else I could get my hands on. The more I see, the more I want to buy it. I guess if I can't get my tabletop group to try it there's always OpenRPG.

Sorry for going off topic - just enthused about picking up the game as soon as I have the money.

No, they generally don't come here.. 'cause, yanno, the Forge is a bunch of elitists.

But there have been a couple recent threads, like this one, mentioning people bashing it elsewhere. There are several games I don't like. Most of them, I've not tried, or played "badly". Some of them I've played the way they're intended to be played, and I still don't like them. If I wanted to sit here and talk about why I didn't like a game that I understood how to play, I'd feel qualified. If I wanted to go to a site where this game is worshipped as the Game God Would Play if He Were a Gamer and tear it apart, detail by detail, I would feel qualified. On the other hand, if I sit here in my comfortable little TRoS niche, and bash a bunch of games that I've never played, or not played properly, talking about how TRoS is better than all of them and how much they suck because of this bit of nonsense I picked up from someone else who did a bad review, or because of this other tidbit I decided I hated on a brief read-through of the rules, not only would I be asinine, I'd be a coward. If I went to those other boards to nitpick their games with this premise, I'd be asinine, and a jackass for going to cause trouble.

Basically, any judgement made in ignorance is a losing proposition. I admit that some of the judgements I've made are totally ignorant, but I keep my mouth shut about them, and usually freely admit that my prejudice is entirely unreasoning. So long as I don't go running off at the mouth, either here or elsewhere, about some game I don't know enough about to be qualified, I'm good, and feel justified acting elitist toward those who decide not to keep their mouths shut.

And yes, I do tend to rant a bit. But I'm generally a nice guy.

I should have done the welcome to the Forge, and I feel an incredible boor for missing it. I hope you can forgive me. ::grins::

Ingenious wrote: Uhhh whoah. He's right. Whatdya know!
Also, Brian, your combat simulator is busted. It can't calculate reflex + proficiency. 6+6 does not equal 6...if ya know what I mean. I found a solution though by upping my proficiency to 12 lol.. which results of course in a CP of 12...