I'm looking for tips on developing a system, based almost entirely on fighting, (preferably 1v1)

After getting through alot of my ideas, and 86ing the ones that didn't work well I've came to a major problem. What is the real idea behind a special attack of some sort? I have multiple character types, Dealing with all sorts of weapons. I just can't seem to come up with ideas for how a special attack would be worth anything. Each character would have 4 or 5 special attacks. So I can't just UP the DMG of each. That would be pointless. 5 Different degrees of damage. I feel like I'm missing something. Also, I have a combo system, so multiple attacks wouldn't hold any value. Any help?

Just off the top of my head, without knowing much about your system:

If your game allows for tactical movement, special attacks that allow "free" movement in addition to doing damage, could hold some value for positioning and "getting the drop on" adversaries.

If your game has two separate means of measuring hitting and damaging, then have high accuracy low-damage attacks and vice versa. You need to run a lot of math on these to make sure that they're balanced (ie. they do similar levels of damage overall) especially as your game is all about combat, but these attacks can be implemented well and give a character different levels of effectiveness over different types of foes.

If your game has non-damage conditions like "immobilized" or "distracted", have some special attacks that inflict those conditions on another.

Having attacks which end up boosting a character's stats for a short time, like a "defensive" attack that's lower damage but that grants a bonus to avoid or resist damage, or a "set up" attack that provides a bonus to a future attack.

Having attacks which allow you to "bend the rules" of the system. Perhaps the game has a cover system, but only lets you use allies and terrain as cover, this attack could allow you to use enemies as cover. Or perhaps you gain some sort of immunity or resistance to a terrain feature or damage type after using an attack.

Just some ideas really quickly-without knowing more about the system, I can't give you much more than that.

Lol, sorry for the brief description.

The idea I have is to keep the game focused on mainly action. Less of this "REAL" stuff I keep seeing everywhere. Wall Running, Devil May Cry style multi-aim. Things like that are possible.

I have came up with a few different "Status ailments" lol

Thank you for the High Accuracy / Low Damage idea. You said it would require alot of math to balance. I have the worst time with math. If you could link me to an example, or give an idea. That would be great.

Basically in my Idea. The max stat is a 10.
HP max would be 10,000 thought to keep things interesting.
Atk */10
Combo */10
Def */10
Break */10
Balance */10

Those are the basic attributes for battle. More may come, some may go.
A friend and I put together an rpg on the most basic stats and basic concept just for jokes. My players also aren't the best at math. So I try to keep the players from calculating anything. Stats are determined by a D10.

I have a feeling someone is gonna throw a fit about the simplicity being a waste of time....

Forgot to say thank you for the help! Sorry!

Hi there,

I think your question about a special attack's purpose is very important. I suggest that you examine whether you're falling victim to a legacy rule.

Most RPGs have critical hit rules. It may interest you to know that "natural 20!" with special damage effects was not actually a rule in early forms of D&D and related games; it was found in the (roughly) 5% fumble and 5% critical rules of RuneQuest and a few other games. It was ported into D&D play as a house-rule and may have first appeared textually in the Arduin Grimoire. (I do not know the precise history of the rule; if someone has researched it, I'd love to know about the results.) Since then, it's been included rather slavishly in many systems.

However, what about a combat and damage system which already accounts for high, possibly lethal or maiming damage? When I played Champions, we often rolled upwards of 12d6, even 15d6 for damage. With that many dice, the strong bell curve produced consistent results - but sometimes, just enough to notice, you'd get a balls-out damage roll that produced, say 60+ STUN on 12d6. To hit in Champions, you roll 3d6 seeking to equal or be under a target number. I noticed in discussions with many players across many groups that few, if any, treated 3 as a mechanical critical or an 18 as a mechanical fumble, i.e., directly affecting the damage roll. We almost all house-ruled special Color into such rolls, but since the damage roll already operated as its own "critical" or "just a graze" via the magnitude and curvature of the roll results, there wasn't much need to shoehorn in a connection to the to-hit roll.

It may be that you already have a desirable, dramatic, and consequential damage system in place. In that case, the best way to look at "special hits" is to say, if you end up with a highly-effective damage effect through the existing system, then you got a special hit, with no need for further designated mechanics.

Best, Ron

I might be terrible at math, but I had a teacher explain the bell curve back in high school. Thank you for the info.

My damage, unfortunately, is a set number. There is no rolling for damage. Again, my friends are not the best at math and eliminating as much counting for them will improve the experience for them.

Also, The NAT20 rule isn't the case of a special attack being unleashed. Special attacks would use Spirit (mana of a sort) just like a magic spell of some sort. Special attack/Technique whatever you would call it.

So far I have things like Flash Step and wall running for movement techniques. I just feel like I'm really missing a reason for players to bother getting special attacks all together. What is their drive, what makes the attack worth the exp to buy it? I was hoping for some kind of idea. I honestly think I'm asking for something that doesn't exist. I can't quite grab the words from the air to better explain myself either.

Thank you for the bell curve info though. I will find more and learn to use it to improve my system. Thank you so much!

This sounds like you're taking inspiration from anime and maybe some video games, so I'd say look to these sources and see what these attacks are used for in these cases. What DO these special attacks accomplish, and do the conditions exist in your game, or are the outcomes possible in your game, mechanically or narratively?

What are some examples of these attacks, from before the attack, to during, and then after, to post here, and then maybe look at your system and typical situations players will find their characters in, and decide how far away from the source situations the RPG situations are and if the two ever shall meet.

You may be looking for a narrative-based concept and not know it - have you checked out Dan Bayn's Wushu Open RPG? You might be wanting to implement something similar in your overall game but feeling restricted by game mechanics rather than "coolness" factor of player creativity, and I admit, it is hard to stay "up" all the time to keep up the action on games like those.

Wushu! JEEEZ! I couldn't remember what it was called. I was going to try to see what it was like and get some ideas. Thank you!

Also, Anime Video games, Yeah. That hits the nail on the head. lol. I've been watching alot to see what ideas I could get. So far, things have been a semi-challenge, but it's starting to pan out after I came up with a system to make the attacks balanced, along with give a few different ideas on how to fight.

I've introduced Balance/Juggling/Crumpling

A method of knocking your opponent off his feet and either beating him up, or beating him down.

A Grip idea, for knocking the players weapon out of their hand.

Only things I need to figure out now are some more mechanics of fighting, I'm going to look up different fighting styles and see what their methods are. I.E. Disarming an opponent, ground fighting, other styles

I'm also going add in, Offensive and Defensive fighting.

I'll feel stupid for asking this - is this game shooting for a gamist direction? Or atleast were talking about player skill playing a significant part?

Are the players actually choosing from amongst these special attacks?

Each character would have 4 or 5 special attacks. So I can't just UP the DMG of each. That would be pointless.

Legend of the Five Rings and Seventh Sea both have very well developed special attack systems.  Seventh Sea is probably the better example, in which many of them work by manipulating things other than damage or hit probability.  So they influence when you can act, within the framework of initiative, or they allow the benefits of holding on to an action for later, or piule two attacks in together, that sort of thing.  Other effects mnight be achieveing a wrestling type hold, or trapping a weapon, or being able to strike multiple targets, etc.

As a general observation, I would suggest that the simpler your overall combat system, the less space there is for special attacks.  The more moving parts in the basic system there are, the more angles there are for special effects to be introduced.

While Damage seems to be a key component I would say look t other game variables. When I think of a fighting game I generally think tactics. Thinks like Trips, Knock Back, Reduced mobility, immobilization, stunning the foe etc. Another thing to consider is Risk versus Reward. This is where damage can be reintroduced as a factor, bigger damaging hits suffering a penalty to hit. Also there is a style component, while you might have a character with a devastating single attack that is slow but hard to land, you might also have an attack that does little damage but lets the character keep attacking until he misses (each hit resolved separately and with a increasing difficulty to land, yes I summoned up my inner Chung-Li for that statement). However, these kind of difficulty factors should not just apply to how a damage is applied, an attack with multiple status effects should be more difficult to deliver than an attack with a single effect. 

What you may consider is listing out all the possible conditions that may affect a fight. Then create a list of special moves based on them. Possibly followed by a second list with multiple effects. Take that and bump it up against normal attack damage and use that to create your damage focused special moves. Hope this helps you.

Certified!

That is what I've started doing. After I sat down two nights ago. I really started thinking, and researching. So far so Good. It's coming out quite strong! Ideas are getting there. And I'm coming up with more and more ways to tweak it. I'm adding good mechanics that are easy to glance at for ideas without over complicating it. Plus theres always play testing!

Very nice. As I read your post I saw you mentioned:

I'm adding good mechanics that are easy to glance at for ideas without over complicating it.

I call my Systems "Gauges"

They basically work as if you have a gauge on how well your holding your sword.
How well your balanced.

When they run out, Like a life bar, your penalized. I.E. dropping your weapon, falling over,
I was going to work on a guard break gauge or some other ideas, but the steam is slowly rolling out.

Twztd,
  If you are not feeling up to doing the maths, there is another approach.

  Have Special defenses and Special attacks. Then you just have to balance the Defenses and the Attacks.

  A cheesy example of this might be something like this:
Special Defense: Low Guard
Benefit: Character is immune to Low attacks.

Special Attack: Low Onslaught
Damage: Normal
Special: Double Damage vs Low Guard

Both of these moves provide a benefit, and a risk. they balance each other and have almost no effect against most other attacks.

Does that make sense? does that help any?

Dindenver.

I like the idea. But I'm afraid that it would complicate it more than the math. I was trying to keep the math simple as attackers Aim vs defenders (Block or Parry) and Then Damage - Armor on hit.

So given the advice you've gotten and your time to work on it since then, what DO you have now, and what do you feel you're still lacking. This last post by you pretty clearly outlines exactly what you want - why is that NOT your system? What is missing? What is making that not feasible?

You were asking earlier why players would want to invest exp in a special technique.  Damage values aside, could you think of ways that would give each movement a unique trait that cannot be found in the others?

BINGO! thats what I'm looking for. Creative, Uniqueness. I just can't think of what exactly. I don't want the creativeness to be just descriptive, I was hoping someone had some mechanical ideas. Status effects were good! I've started using those. And now I've started moving things around besides Damage. I.E. attacks that effect an enemys Balance and Grip on their weapon. I finally started writing out my attacks, But now I'm on to trying to make each character class differ from one another. My char classes are.

Gunslinger
Large Weapon
Standard weapon
Angellic Host
Demon Host
Hand 2 Hand
Cybernetic
Spiritual

I just bought Star Ocean So I'm getting ideas. I've added diffrent types of character descriptions also that kinda handle not only the look, but traits of a character, like

Large Char - Strength max 20 Speed max 5
Small Char - Strength max 5 Speed max 20

along with a blocking system of Parry or Block roll vs Aim roll.

I think I'm worrying myself a little much. but things are panning out.
I appreciate all the help! I will still check back here for any other ideas someone may throw at me, but I am starting to work things out!

Can you give us some examples of some status effects you have come up with? 

Of Course.
Things like

-Crippled- * (*)
  Enemys attacks to * less damage for (*) turns

-Blind- * (*)
  Enemy has -* aim for (*) turns

-Terrified * (no more than 5) (*)-
  Enemy must make a roll against * when he attacks for (*) turns. If the result is under * then he may proceed to attack. If the result is above * The attack is an immediate failure and loss of turn.

-Weakend armor- * (*)
    Enemy suffers -* to his armor

-Nervous- * (*)
    Enemys Block or Evade is -* for (*) turns

Shaky Hands *(*)
    Enemys Grip is reduced by * for (*) turns

Weak Knees * (*)
    Enemys Balance is -* for (*) turns

Thats about it. I was also thinking of adding elemental turn damage. So that way a character could also pick an element, or even learn an elemental version of their attacks. Ohhh! Maybe I could add in elements in the stats, which could buff up certain elements. Then, when a player learns an attack, they have the option to upgrade it later by adding an elemental value to the damage too! But If I do this, I want a A is weaker than B but stronger than C type deal.

I.E.

Ice is Weak against fire (Half damage)
But strong against say Water (Double Damage)

Then I could even add in elements to the armor.

Gosh, I wish there was an easy way to add in attack location....Maybe a D6 roll with locational properties?  Or I could get a blank D6 and draw the parts lol.

In what situations would it be advantageous to use one special attack over another?  For example, when would be a good time to use blind rather than nervous, terrified, blind, etc.?

*Typo; I meant to say, "rather than nervous, terrified, crippled, etc."

I guess in all situations, It would really depend on who your fighting. Like some characters that Hit easier, but have a lower damage. So in that case, you lower their Aim and their not hitting you to easily, and when they do, it's not for much damage.

I think I'm going to do Max stats, and change them for each character type, I'm just afraid that would mess things up when you mix two characters types.

So what you're saying is that your tactics will be largely dependent upon an opponent's attributes?  Does the environment influence these tactics in any way?

The only way the enviroment could play a part would be through gun fights. Which would only make use of cover. Right? Thats the only thing that comes to mind to me.

Oh, and not quite their attributes, but more their playing style. Counter attacker, Ranged fighter, In your face melee. Theres the possibility with those, Some Character types prefer mid to long range, so they have knockback attacks.

Also, some players will want to round their character out. So they pick a ranged and a close combat type and try to do the all round thing. I just don't want the rounded characters to be overly powerful.

OKay, scrapping the "combo" and "spirit" stats on the char sheet. Replacing them with Action Points. To allow movement and everything else in between.