Hi all,

This is my first time posting, i have been lurking around for a little while and i love what i am reading :)

Ok, to the point. My mates and i have been role players for going on 10 years now. Mainly using Hero System and a little D&D the last few years.
We wanted to runa Si-Fi game using the Hero rules and ended up making our own vehicle rules which have been a great success in our group for going on two years now. So decided to make our own rule system for our Si-Fi setting, that was a few months ago. We are now well into it. We have started play testing and character creation, but still a lot to do.

Ok, my main job in this project is to create the combat system (being that i am a now reformed power gamer and I love creative maths) :P
Here are the basics, please tell me your thoughts and where improvements could be made.

Basics cut down ideas with no fluff:
Static DMG on wepons that is increased the better you hit.
Our "HP" is a representation of a persons willingness and energy to keep fighting, called: Perservirence.
A persons "Wounds" stat represents dmg actualy taken.
Cover is to be VERY important!
We want there to be less fights (1-2) per session, but each fight to be dynamic (Hero System is great for that, tho four hours is a bit long to fight town guards :P )

Combat stats:
To Hit: (Level +Item(1-2ish) +Stat(3-5) +2D10)
Defence: 10 +Level -Encumbrace(1-2ish) +Cover(1-4)

Armour: Item(4ish) +Cover(1-3)
(only protects you from taking wounds DMG, not HP dmg)
Wounds: 10 + Stat(1-5)
Protection: Cover(1-4)
(reduces Perservirence dmg)
Perservirence(Hit Points): (Lv +Stat +Stat) x 5

Dmg: (3-6)

Lv: 1 Average Guy =
To Hit: 12 +Stat
Defence: 10 +Cover

Armour: 4 +Cover
Wounds: 13
Protection: 0 +Cover
Perservirence: 30

Dmg: 5

Damage system:
Every hit by "5" mulitplies the dmg by 1, eg: Dmg:5 hit by 5 = 10dmg, hit by 10 = 15dmg (calling this a Strong Hit)
Also if you hit by at least 5 you deal your base dmg (no multiples) to the targets wounds.
- This means that characters (and bad guys) can take damage without loosing all their HP first.
When you take Wound Dmg, roll a D10 (to determin what stat) and subtract 1 off that stat for each dmg taken.

One of many points i have dealt with is:
Often in rpgs you have the characters who: 1) hit often but less dmg or 2) hit less often but harder guys 3) Hit average, Dmg Average
- I have takled this by giving some weapons low base Dmg but increased effect when you get a Strong Hit (hit by at least 5)
Just for an example: Normal Gun hits on a 9+ for 5dmg, 14+ for 10dmg, 19+ for 15dmg, Other gun, hits on 9+ for 4 dmg, 14+ for 12dmg, 19+ for 18dmg etc...

What other issues come up with not using the standard dice roll for a weapons Dmg?
What other issues you can see with my system?

Ok, soz i have allready rambled enough :P

Thanks for your time :)

-Wade

I'm assuming Armor works like damage reduction?

Well, this combat system is similar to how my game handles things. The first thing I can point out from my experience is...

1) hit often but less dmg

What other issues come up with not using the standard dice roll for a weapons Dmg?

What other issues you can see with my system?

Hi Wade, welcome to the forge!

This is going to sound like an odd question, but in terms of standard board games that you like (chess, or whatever game you do enjoy), could you describe the part of that game that seems the most fun?

I'm trying to frame the question, so I can ask whats the most fun part of the system you made? Then I know what to look at and how to look at it, a bit better.

Hi David and Callan, Thanks for the reply.

I would love to have a look at your system, can you give me a link?

Ok, on your ponts:

Yes Armour is Dmg reduction.

I have noticed in play testing that often someone 'hits' but does no dmg because of soak. I find this to be ok, as people rarely take wounds (unless they have to Perservirence left) and armour (+cover) absorbs vs Wound dmg. And only Cover absorbs Dmg to Perservirence. Standard base Dmg is 5 and standard cover is 3 a good hit(which is common) does 10dmg. I have also tried to combat this 'dealing little/no dmg' by have characters hit more often. Average needed to roll on 2d10 (which is what we are using) is a 9+, which is very common guessing about 60% ... thats another point i need to find a program that does dice roll probability.

I like your idea of adding you "how much you hit by" to your dmg, simple and effective. How do you go for handling high dmg attacks? Are they allways harder to hit with? Or what weapons that do not much dmg or heaps? little middle range? Some ideas jump to mind, as in some attacks may add double what you hit by etc... I was hopeing to do more things than just dmg multiplication, eg: If you get a Solid Hit you may be able to pick a location to hit (what characteristic is reduced from the Wound Dmg you do)

As for the two HP pools.
The larger one is intended to go up and down more (mostly down during combat), expected to start each fight with it full.
The second one (Actual wounds) is intended to rarely go down (it can be nicked at while you still have your Perservirence, but once your Perservirence is gone you can take some major dmg). Damage to this pool is intended to carry on for long after the battle, even from session to session.
The major ideas are: To have some kind of wear and tear on characters carry on from battle to battle, even from session to session. But i want characters to still be able to start (mostly) fresh for most/all fights.
If it was all one pool, what rate do you get it back? Must you plan how many fights you can take each day? One day you might have one big fight, while another you have 6 fights? I dont want a system that defines the frequency of combat. (3.5 D&D was TERRIBLE at this... few fights good for wizards... lots good for fighters... stoping adventures part way through for a 8 hour sleep is BAD!... keep fighting on!!!) :P In a way the Wounds HP is there to register Crippling hits and Serious Dmg.

Also in play testing i have found villans/players are more able to retreat when their Perservirence gets low (i dont give minion Perservirence, they die fast)... which i think matches the feel we are going for (not suitable for all game types).

... I do think i need to simplify it more, i have a tendancy to think algebra a lot :P helps that i have others working on this that dont like maths.... but yet they still played Hero :P
A couple points on complexity:
I think a game needs to pick it points of complexity and do them well. Complexity does add and retain intrest to a degree, but it must be eased into.
After playing Hero for so long, we plan on having as much of the calculations for things to be able to be done on the character sheet, before combat. Currently we have only 2 dice rolls, 1 to hit, the other if a Solid Hit is scored to determine what characteristic is damaged (if enough dmg is delt).
Also I wish to balance complexity... if i add it... i try to take it away from another area.

Ok, Callan. Thanks for your intrest.
In games i love combos... sounds silly but i like to build up a combination of attacks/peices into one key strike. Even if the result is weaker than a straight attempt.
Shoot your question at me (Also note that i am one of about 3 people doing this project)

Thanks again,
Wade

Ok, I don't really have a readily available link to my game yet.  Here's combat in a nutshell

"standard skill+stat+misc" attack roll (once per turn.)
The number you hit by is how many attacks you succeed with, up to the maximum amount of attacks you have.

Damage rolls for every attack you succeed.

Damage is reduced by armor, then subtracts from HP.  Certain flags go up under certain conditions. The relevant one I want to mention is "Mortal Wounds." There's a thread on it here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27106.0.  The way it works is that every player has a toughness, if they take actual damage greater than that, they suffer a "Mortal Wound."  Mortal Wounds in my game are hard to remove, deal damage over time, inflict a universal -1 penalty to rolls and if you get 5 of them, they kill you.

If you applied it to your game, here's what I'd do.  I'd keep only Perseverance and get rid of using wounds as a pool.  Anytime a player gets shot at, they take damage to their perseverance. After all, even with sturdy armor, any one of those bullets might kill them! If they're under a hail of fire, they won't want to keep fighting!  If they take damage in excess of their "Armor" score, they also take a "Wound."  Here's an important difference, no matter how much damage in excess of your armor you take, it counts as only one wound.  After all, a bullet is a bullet.  Then, based on what you've told me, I'd say that anytime a character takes a Wound, they take damage to one of their stats, like if they'd suffer a "Solid Hit."  What I'd do to determine when a player "dies" from wounds is, once each stat reaches a certain value, they become "crippled."  Lets say your stats are Body, Mind and Spirit, on a range of 1-5, for example.  If my stats are 2 body, 3 mind and 5 spirit, I'd die if I took two hits to my body.  If I took 3 hits to my mind, I'd become a vegetable.  If I took 5 hits to Spirit, I'd become voiceless and thoughtless.  If this seems like too little, you make it so they have to get to -X of their stat, or increase the stats people get. 

One beneficial thing of doing it this way is that you don't have to worry about "critical hits" having special effects beyond doing more damage.  Critical hits are simply more likely to beat their Armor or "Toughness" score. 

As for weapons doing special effects, this is a great application of "Complexity is fine, as long as your players find it compelling." If I can do x3 damage with a sniper rifle, for each point I hit by, then I'm willing to do the math to get that extra damage!  One of the effects you can give a weapon, with the above system I gave you, is to do 2 or 3 wounds on a successful "Wound."  For example, if you are "wounded" by a plasma gun that vaporizes parts of your body, you might suffer 3 points of stat damage instead of the 1 point that a bullet deals...

Good luck!

Thanks, Wade!

How do combination of attacks into one key strike figure into your system, currently?

Thanks again David & Callan,

Nice ideas David. Does sound like our ideas are along the same lines.
I had a very quick chat with one of the other designers last night and we agree that the 'wounds' stat should be removed, as it is only realy there to say when people die.We were thinking that someone dies when any stat reaches '-5' (we are using 5's a lot to help simplify things).

OK my thoughts on compairing the two methods of increasing static Dmg
1) hit by 5 = x2* dmg, 10 = x3*            - If base Dmg is higher than Targets armour on a hit by at least '5' then target looses Stats equal  to extra Dmg delt (roll what stat)
                                                                                    - This bit needs to be changed... i dont like it, maths works, but it is not natural... i font think.. more play testing.
                                                        - When Perserveirence(HP) is gone, all Dmg is delt directly against targets armour, thus Massive stat loss on a Solid Hit.
                                                        - I want to attach other things to hitting by '5' eg: pick stat that takes Dmg, or other things.
2) +1* dmg per "extra that you hit by)  - If dmg delt is greater than Armour then target looses 'Y' to a stat ('Y' = a stat on the weapon, usualy 1) on every hit
                                                                                    - Average Armour will want to be a few points above average DMG
                                                        - What happens when Perserveirence(HP) is gone? Y is increased?
*just arbitary numbers

In play testing i have found that there is a great sence of excitent when people hit by '9' (just under x3 dmg) or just hit by '10'
I like this, but i do find it can take a little time to teach people what is a 'Solid Hit' (hit by 5)
... more play testing required :)

Progresion example of taking Dmg
(Method "1")
Perserveirence(HP) = 30
Armour = 4 +Cover(3)
Dmg of Weapon being hit by = 5

HP =30 (start of combat)
HP = 30 -(5(Dmg) reduced by 3(cover))
HP = 28 -(10(hit by 5) reduced by 3(cover))
        He takes no stat Dmg because the weapon base Dmg = 5 and the guys armour = 4(Armour) +3(cover)
"Guy now leaves cover"
HP = 21 -(15(hit by 10))
        He also looses "1" form a Stat (roll a D10 to determin what one) = 5(weapon base Dmg) -Armour(4)
Hp = 11
... and so on
till HP = 0 -(10(hit by 5))
        He takes (10(dmg) - 4(armour) -3(cover) = 3 stat Dmg

Primary characteristics we are using:
Strength
Agility
Resilience
Movement

Intelligence
Willpower
Perception
Charisma

For intrests sake, 2D10 hit probability:
(Average hit is to be around 9+, 14+ for x2 Dmg, 19+ for x3 Dmg)
2=100%
3=99%
4=97%
5=94%
6=90%
7=85%
8=79%
9=72%
10=64%
11=55%
12=45%
13=36%
14=28%
15=21%
16=15%
17=10%
18=6%
19=3%
20=1%

Summary:
MORE PLAY TESTING!!!! :P answer to everything :)

Ok, Callen.

As for Combination attacks etc... There are a few (not as many as i would like, but others are not as crazy about them as me)
Eg: Each character can take 2 actions each combat phase (shoot, shoot / run, shoot / dodge, shoot / etc...)
Plus there are 6 combat catagories (each character gets to pick 2):
Small Arms
Heavy Weapons
Mellee Combat
Kenetics
Leadership
Tactics

These have led to some interesting teamwork tactics in play testing (eg: one kenetic guy pushes a guy over, while another gun guy double shot him while he was on the ground, so that enemy ran away for a little while. Thus deviding the enemy forces a little).
Also i hope to encourage players to make difficult tactical choices as to balancing defensive actions and offensive actions, as HP is hard to get back.
Other combos like throwing grenades to force enemies to dive out of cover, the firing on them as they fall back.
.... all in all, i would like to have more, hopefully there will be. But i must be carefull not to make things to complex.
Hope that answered your question.

Thanks again,
Wade

Thanks Wade,

Perhaps you could draw attention to combinations somehow...perhaps a type of rule or guideline that grants some reward for combinations...

You've stated you want there to be less fights, and it occurs to me that there are two ways to do this; you can make fighting less palatable, via making it more likely you die, making combat boring, or so it is almost impossible to do it without cost. The third seems better to me, but in some ways works against your damage system. There are other ways, but those basically relate to social stuff, how easy it is to avoid fighting someone who wants to fight you, and the appeal of other elements.

So why does the constant cost idea go against your system? Well it seems to me that your system is designed to remove the persistent effects of combat that are not interesting; you don't really care that you lost 6 hp, you just want to know if you broke your leg.
Now your system makes GM encounter design easier, just as it makes player choices easier; before any battle, you can compare them to a single standard, except for memorable injuries. This inspires me though to consider a fourth option; uncertain enemy strength. Basically you could add a random component to generating enemies stats, so the players do not know how powerful someone is from metagame knowledge; they must find out within the game. It's all about adding uncertainty and fear to combat, coupled with good rules for running away!

Have you considered making wound damage textual instead of numerical? I love Rustbelt's system of injury, where you just make up an injury and assign it a difficulty class, in order to pay off the damage you are receiving. Now I think in a game like this it might be cool to make injuries something you can use, so if people want to fight dirty they can use your wounds against you. But I'm already sidetracking from my main point; effectively, it seems like your current system is sort of like a critical hit system, where either on a spectacular hit or when your weakened, you can get through armour to take people down. One possibility is to have much higher armour values, and a "weakened" condition when all your perseverance runs out, that gives a minus to armour. I suppose technically this is mostly the same as the current version, but by adding more variability and unifying the treatment of damage, I think it might help people get how it works. "Armour is good but doesn't effect weariness damage, when you are at full weariness, you get a minus to armour" seems more succinct. Basically if you can manage to beat the armour, the person has to get an injury appropriate to the type of strike, with some numerical relation to the leftover damage.
If I remember correctly Rustbelt also has the "die hard" style approach to injury, in that you only notice that the person is injured during normal situations, so someone can jump off a roof just as well, but they limp across the floor. In other words it adds a minimum difficulty to actions, but no more. Now the main point is that this difficulty class allows you as a player to know how big or bad the injury should be, but you just describe it yourself, and so pick scars you will be happy to keep.

So the purpose of HP is to keep injuries of the sheet, although sometimes even it will fail partially, and you'll get these nasty injuries from criticals.

What factor for armour? I'd times it by 3 from current to match up with strong hits, and then half it for weakening, so you get armour 12 for most of the time and 6 when in trouble.

As an alternative, you could look at A-state, which has such a juicy, if lethal, combat system. High crunch factor though.

Thanks Joy & Callan.

Firstly on the combo thing. I plan on there being intersting 'combos' but at the moment i must hold myself back to make sure that i get the base combat system working before i add to much fluff.
I realy want combat to be all about getting those "strong hits" (hit by 5 or 10). One guy in cover shooting against another guy in cover is going to have little effect. So i want to have lots of encouragement for players try and flank there foe, and use a combination of their (and team mates) abilities to try and get those elusive 'strong hits'.
Also if a character is caught out of cover then he is gana take actual wounds (not just HP loss) on a 'strong hit'.
- So those things should help with generating combos

Ok, JoyWriter,
Man u write lots :) not sure where to start.
I would like to keep my rules mainly numerical. Tho at some point i (and the others on the team) will have to have good text to go with the numbers to help set the feel and to capture peoples imagination.
As for armour, usualy you will have your armour value + cover value. This will absorb most dmg, even 'strong hits' but if you are out of cover then you are in trouble. And if you  have no "HP" left even good cover wont stop you from taking some major semi-perminent dmg or death.

Also i am seeing a real need to type up somthing that is easy to understand, so that others can critic it better.

Oh and where are some links to these games you mention?  I am new to the Indi-game arena, so i am not sure how to see what others are up to :)

Cheers,
Wade

Do you mean they 'should' do so, as in your certain designing this way will 100% include combos? Or do you mean 'should' as in your betting...gambling that it will?

If it's the latter, I don't know why your designing a whole system, yet you only hope it'll bring in combo play. To me, that's working against your own hope - you'll be designing stuff that actively works against combo play, because you only want to hope rather than rig the system to 100% chance of combo play. Do you want the combo play to naturally emerge or something, rather than be the thing the game system promotes out and out?

If i was designing a system just by myself then it waould all be about magic ninjas and cyborgs :P full of combos moves and giant explosions.... but this system is being designed by a few people and despite what i love i must make it to fit them (and everybody else) as well as me.... also as a not ther are ninjas, psychics and cyborgs in our world :P (not that it is dominated by any of them).

Combat must be dynamic and interesting... different abilities must interact with each other: Good combinations and combinations exsist.
Combos will naturaly come about, but will not be the centre.

Thanks again mate :)

God_Boy wrote:
If i was designing a system just by myself...

God_Boy wrote:
Man u write lots :) not sure where to start.
I would like to keep my rules mainly numerical. Tho at some point i (and the others on the team) will have to have good text to go with the numbers to help set the feel and to capture peoples imagination.

I kind of agree with Michaels point.

Writing a game system is like writing a story. You can co-author with people, but I don't think you can write someone elses story for them. Can you?