I'm designing an rpg around the idea of choosing tactics in combat, with the temporary name of Spearhead (until I find a better name). I would like to know your opinion on these guidelines:

CHARACTER CREATION

A character has 4 characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Willpower, which can take values from 1 to 20.

There is also a Combat Factor, equal to Strength / 4 (rounding down). Thus, a character with Strength 15 has a Combat Factor of 3.

The Attack factor is the combat factor plus the weapon rating.
The Defense factor is the combat factor plus the armour rating.

Characters have skills ranging from 0 to 100. 1d100 is rolled to check success. If the roll is less than 10% of the skill value (rounding down), the character gets a critical success.

COMBAT

Sequence of play during combat is as follows:

1. Choose tactic
2. Roll weapon skill
3. Determine who has the Advantage
4. The combatant with Advantage rolls for injury

Further details:

When fighting, each combatant chooses a tactic between four possible: Strike, Counterstrike, Block and Feint. The choice is simultaneous for everyone, and is revealed immediately.

If both choose Block, nothing happens this round.

Otherwise, each character checks the weapon skill. Counterstrike and Feint tactics have penalties, larger for the latter.

If one gets a critical success and the other doesn't, the former has the Advantage.
If one gets a success and the other fails, the former has the Advantage.
If both get a critical success, or a simple success, or a failure, the tactics determine who has the advantage, as follows:

A Feint gives Advantage over other tactics.
A Counterstrike gives Advantage over a Strike.
Other combinations give no Advantage to anyone.

Only the fighter with the Advantage rolls to injure; if nobody gets the Advantage, there are no injury rolls this round.

Injury is determined rolling 1d10 and adding modifiers that depend on the odds ratio of the Attack factor and Defense factor: 1:2 -2; 3:2 +1; 2:1 +2; 3:1 +3, and so on. The ratio is rounded in favour of the Defense.

There would be other modifiers: for rolling a critical success, for using a Block tactic (negative) etc.

Result of the Injury roll:
1-4 nothing
5-6 minor wound
7-8 serious wound
9-10 critical wound
11+ kill

Any thoughts? Does it seem too complex? Would you be interested in playing something like this?

Interesting. Pretty cool.
Now, would the damage for a CounterStrike be less than that of a Strike?
What if one player CounterStrikes and the other Blocks?
What is the bonus of blocking?

It's not complex, fairly flowing and straight forward.

Thanks for your interest.

When designing the game, my idea is that, in combat, a fighter does several moves in the same round: strikes, feints, blocks etc, although one type of tactic would be dominant. With a counterstrike, the player waits for an opening in the opponent's defense, but if it does not develop, she would attempt to strike anyway.

That's the reason for a counterstrike working against a block, and also for a block doing damage against another tactic.

FzGhouL wrote:
Now, would the damage for a CounterStrike be less than that of a Strike?

What is the bonus of blocking?

It's not complex, fairly flowing and straight forward.

Hey Klapton! Welcome to the Forge!

Have you looked at The Burning Wheel or The Riddle of Steel at all? Both games use a sort of matched moves system. I'd suggest taking a look to see how they do things so that you can get a better idea of what you do and don't want to do in your own system.

Thomas

I have read a couple of reviews of ROTS, and what I could figure about the system is not exactly what I want to design. About the Burning Wheel I have read nothing.

I will try to look deeper into both games. Thanks for your suggestion.

Not to side track your thread into a discussion of ROS by any means, but since many of us are VERY familiar with that game, it might help to mention what about that game doesn't meet your desires for this one.

On the surface the ability to choose maneuvers like Feint, and Counterstrike that give players an advantage in combat depending on how they match up sounds like a very similiar goal.

Valamir wrote: Not to side track your thread into a discussion of ROS by any means, but since many of us are VERY familiar with that game, it might help to mention what about that game doesn't meet your desires for this one.

I recommend taking a look, not necessarily because either game does what you want it to do, but because it might. And even if it doesn't do what you're looking for, I think that it does something close. You can get a better game by stealing the good parts from these guys and then changing what doesn't work for you.

You can check out The Burning Wheel which I'm really jazzing on these days...

Thomas

Both of those games are die pool based, but the principles of combat could be adjusted to other mechanics.

Moving past that for the moment, what are the specific goals of the tactical choices for you? I can think of three possibilities...yours may be one of them or something different entirely.

1) Primarily flavor: Give the players something more interesting and colorful to other than "I attack" without requiring the effort or commitment to more open narrative based combat.

2) Primarily for character differentiation: A lot of combat rule chrome boils down to a desire to make the small quick knife guy work differently than the big strong two handed sword guy.

3) Primarily for players to match wits against each other or "the system". Mastery of the combat rules may well give character a level of effectiveness beyond their actual stats.


I have some comments I could make on the rules you've presented them, but I'd like to know more about what you're hoping to accomplish in order to better tell what's a strength and what's a weakness.

LordSmerf wrote:
You can check out The Burning Wheel which I'm really jazzing on these days...

Moving past that for the moment, what are the specific goals of the tactical choices for you? I can think of three possibilities...yours may be one of them or something different entirely.

Cool.

Given that reason I'm seeing some problems with the system that you've outlined above.

Namely your tradeoff for the various tactics is dependent for both the pro and the con on skill level.

The advantage of a feint or counterstrike is in the event of a tie in success level (dependent on skill) the "faster" (so to speak) tactic wins (feint beats counterstrike, beats strike). The problem is that the down side is then a penalty to skill.

So if I choose feint I get the advantage if I tie...but I'm less likely to tie due to the penalty...so is that really an advantage? If the roll I would have gotten would have beaten my opponent anyway...how did choosing this tactic at this particular time benefit me?

I think what you need is to keep the tradeoffs seperate.

One way would be to make each of the "faster" moves do less damage. That way your trade off is between speed (winning ties) and landing a meaningful blow.

Another way would be to give special downsides to each. For instance maybe you can't use a Feint twice in a row thereby letting your opponent know for certain one move you won't be using. Or maybe if you use the Counter and lose your opponent does more damage because you left yourself open.

After doing some tests and calculating probabilities, I realized this system won't work. The only meaningful tactic is feint, and in some cases the probability of a stalemate is too high for my taste. I have reworked this as follows:

Before rolling each combatant chooses a tactic: Strike, Counterstrike, Feint, Block. These tactics have the following effects.

If both fighters pick Block, there are no rolls.
A Feint is superior to a Counterstrike.
A Counterstrike is superior to a Strike
A Strike is superior to a Feint
Other combinations don't give superiority.

The fighter that chooses an inferior tactic has his skill halved.

There are four possibe outcomes in a roll:
Critical (10% of succes probability, rounding down)
Success
Failure
Fumble (10% of failure probability, rounding up)

A player gets the Advatange, and then rolls for damage, if he gets a better outcome than his opponent; if both rolls are similar, nobody gets the advantage and no damage is rolled.

If someone picks Strike, damage roll has a bonus of +1; if both pick Strike, the bonus is +2.

If someone picks Block, damage rolls has a malus of -1.

If someone picks Feint, the one that loses the Advantage cannot pick Feint the next round; if both pick Feint, the loser cannot choose neither Feint nor Strike.

Does this makes more sense?

Truthfully no. All you have is rock paper scissors. There isn't any strategy to rock paper scissors.

You essentially have a normal skill based simultaneous combat system with a random chance of one of the characters getting screwed.

I say random chance because that's basically what R/P/S is...that's why people use it.


What did you think of my suggestions above?

Valamir wrote:
I say random chance because that's basically what R/P/S is...that's why people use it.

Valamir wrote:
What did you think of my suggestions above?

In practice this means that you have to manoeuvre, or even sacrafice, to get the optimum match of RPS as the two lines zip up.

contracycle wrote:

Valamir wrote:
I say random chance because that's basically what R/P/S is...that's why people use it.

I'm not sure thats entirely true - that is if the RPS elements are "physically" embodied, and thus limited in frequency of use, strategy and tactics re-emerge.

Medieval: Total war works this way: spears kill cavalry; cavalry kills blades; blades kill spears. But of course in any given force you only have so many of each type, sometimes disastrously so. In practice this means that you have to manoeuvre, or even sacrafice, to get the optimum match of RPS as the two lines zip up.

Thinking about this problem, I came with a few conclusions, which may seem obvious, but sometimes one needs to write down these things in order to become fully aware of them.

-. The choice should have a meaningful object, a reason to be there, a function in the game.

-. There should be neither an obvious choice, nor a range of choices that are equally good. Otherwise choosing becomes irrelevant. A way to do this is, as Valamir suggests, having penalties and benefits for each choice that affect different things.

-. Choosing the proper tactic shouldn't be a matter of calculating, but rather of guessing.

-. The choice should be based more on external circumstances than on the mechanics of the system.

-. Each tactic should be appropiate for a purpose and under certain circumstances. The player has to decide what he wants to do, guess if the circumstances apply and choose the most appropiate tactic.

For this game, I want risk in combat to be the object of the tactical choice. That is, a player should be able to choose how much physical risk she wants to assume in order to defeat an opponent. The tactics should imply varying chances of defeating an opponent and of being injured in the process.

Based on this, the consequences of choosing a particular tactic could be: increased or reduced chance of hitting, more or less damage inflicted, opening or restricting options in future rounds.

Am I taking here the correct path?

I think that's a smashing set of parameters. I'd modify your "...but one of guessing" to be "...but one of making informed estimates based on experience but not being certain of the outcome". But I suspect that's actually what you meant.

I'm going to add the game Swashbuckler to the above two recommendations for you to check out. Its available at http://jollyrogergames.com/swash.html direct for $18.00

It is the single best execution of

opening or restricting options in future rounds.

Burning Wheel, Riddle of Steel, Swashbuckler... definitely, I should look for inspiration in other people's work. Any other game that can help me?

My own system makes use of maneuvers, but they come from a deck of cards and as such this restricts the possible options. I also make use of knock on effects, so that manuevers do not operate in isolation.

JW

Your basic approach to get something that would work on several levels is similar t things that I have looked for games. The concept is not new, Musashi talks about using the same approaches whether it is one on one, skirmishes of pitched battles. Have you read the book?

JW

Just to toss something into the debate on the R/P/S structure:

In an essay on his site David Sirlin writes about the randomness of RPS, and how it can be turned into strategy with a minor tweak. The essay focuses on video games, but it still applies here I think.

Basically, use a classic RPS game, feint beats counterstrike, counterstrike beats strike, strike beats feint. But have different damage values. I.e. strike deals by far the most damage, counterstrike deals only minor damage and feint deals moderate damage.

That way, your most obvious choice would be going for a strike, except if your opponent does that too, you'll be better off with a counterstrike despite it's apparent weakness. But if you can predict that your opponent thinks you'll be going for a strike...

It's quite simple, and yet it can still become very strategic, especially once you get a feel for the other player. It fits with your parameters, and I personally think it sounds more desirable than a web of moves, countermoves, advantages and disadvantages. You could even say that if both participants make the same move, it's a tie and there's no damage whatsoever (RPS style). With a bit of tweaking, I think it could become both very quick, and very interesting.

The link to the RPS society site was taking it to its extreme, but gave some nice thoughts and ideas!

jw

The David Sirlin article has added some interesting options to my own idea. I liked the idea of adding a certain number of extra options beyond the basic three.
In this case I would have,
Attack
Defend
Counter Attack
Throw
I am playing around with several options for different tactics and then adding in actual techniques to the equation.

JW

Hereward The Wake wrote: Musashi talks about using the same approaches whether it is one on one, skirmishes of pitched battles. Have you read the book?

JW

My own system makes use of maneuvers,

It is called The Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi. There are many t5ranslation out there but a good one is the annotated version by Hidy Ochiai. It is a work along the lines of Sun Tzu or Machiavelli he also talks about how the same tactics stratagies can be applied to single combat, larger actions and other aspects of life. Hence it being big in business stratergy circles.

My own game has gone through many variations. As well as being a long time wargamer and RPGer, a grew up with WMA and archery, and have long wanted to get a more convincing approach to combat in my games. The probelem is making a reasonable simulation of real combat, without getting bogged down in the multitude of miner factors that all go toward actuall fighting.
My ideal would be to have a system that could work as a stand alone duelling game, but would work as well in skirmish games and as part of larger scale war games where, major personailites clash.

The major problem is giving enough tactical decisions with our bogging the actual mechanics of the game.


JW

On a semi side not does anyone know of the plain label games? and the expansion compact combat, that can be found and the URL below
http://www.microtactix.com/newsite/ccmain.shtml

It sounds interesting but would like to know more detail?

JW

Hereward The Wake wrote:
My ideal would be to have a system that could work as a stand alone duelling game, but would work as well in skirmish games and as part of larger scale war games where, major personailites clash.

It sounds interesting but would like to know more detail?

True enough, but using a feint in one on one, would be the same as making a decpetion attack by a small unit of your force! or you might use an attack specifically to make the opponent react, while you hit them hard somewhere elese with another weapon.

I was more interested specifically in compact combat, as they say it all that good, but I have learn't to believe only 1st hand accounts 8')

JW