Boxing Matches

[Steve]

I'm working up a Boxing-based campaign as a personal project for myself, and one of the things I'm wondering is how I can make use of the speed chart and still have fights occur something like how real world matches do.

 

With three-minute boxing rounds, just one round translates to fifteen turns in Hero, which would make it an eternity to try and game out a six or ten round match. And the idea of fights ending in the first few seconds of the first round doesn't feel right for Heroic-level boxers.

 

Any suggestions on how boxing matches could work and still use Hero's speed chart? Maybe I could have only one action Turn happening per round of the match?

[massey]

Guys generally sit there and take recoveries in the middle of a fight. And you have turns go by where one guy says "I hold action to see what he does" and the other guy says "I hold action to see what he does." And then you have guys making their Analyze: Combat rolls trying to gain an advantage on the other.

[Ninja-Bear]

Gurps had a thing where you sorta skipped time and only rolled when the action happens. You could roll a 1D12 and see when the action starts on what turn. The skipped time would be descibed as moving and jabbing and blocking.

[Hyper-Man]

If you really want to model the details of trained professional boxers an argument could be made that they all have a Limited version of Damage Reduction or Negation that is built with some version of Costs End. I would probably try to make that LTE as well. Definitely a pretty deep 'rabbit hole' to go down no matter what way you do it.

 

HM

[Doc Democracy]

I think that the question you need to think about is whether you believe that two boxers, at the same level of competence, will have different speeds with respect to the system....?

[Doc Democracy]

having thought about this, I think that I would almost ignore SPD as a stat in this. You want a tactical match and there will be things that each boxer will have to advantage them over the other, some will be a bit more resilient, some will be more skillful, some will hit harder and other will duck and weave better.

 

The first thing I would do is a minute by minute match.

 

Each boxer should choose their stance for the first minute - aggressive, defensive, hustling, ducking and diving with each having its own profile as far as doing more damage, hitting more easily, defending against hits or defending against damage.  Am sure there are a few others you could do that would provide broad tactical choices.

 

Each choice should come with its own costs.  You accept STUN or END or even LTE as the cost of that action to gain the benefits.  Everything should wear down the boxer - you do not get fresher as the fight goes on.

 

Every minute each boxer will have the chance to also attack once.  Now you can go to town on manouevres - I would model them all with powers, looking to do damage, guaranteeing smaller amounts as long as you hit, doing less guaranteeing you hit, building up advantage by wearing down defences, tiring the other boxer by dragging them round or making them work harder.  Do not think simply in terms of STUN but also in terms of END and LTE as 'damage'. 

 

I am not sure how you work in the potential for KO, might be that there is a separate STUN suppress element  which, if it pushes one of them beyond 0 STUN generates a knockdown.  You might decide a threshold beyond which a knockdown becomes a KO.  I like the idea of there being CON rolls, modified by something that you have to roll to get to your feet and the margin of success - 10 showing how many seconds that was.  I would also have an LTE penalty when you are knocked down.  Again, something that adds to the wearing out.

 

There are all kinds of other stuff that can happen that you might want to model, such as cuts, swelling eyes, broken hands, torn achilles etc  :-)  All of those should be possible though some should be more remote than others.  

 

The ringcraft of the trainers should help boxers recover stuff or provide an advantage for the next round.

 

All that is left is to do the actual work of putting it together!!!

 

:-)

 

Doc

[massey]

Let's take two boxers. They're roughly equal in ability. Neither is a top tier professional (just to avoid arguments over where we rate those top tier guys), but they're both pretty good.

 

Str 15

Dex 15

Con 15

Body 12

 

PD 6

ED 3

Spd 3

Rec 6

End 30

Stun 30

 

They know martial strike, defensive strike, offensive strike, and martial block. They each have a 3 point level with boxing. Each has Analyze Style (boxing) at 11-.

 

They are wearing boxing gloves. +5 PD, hands only, applies reduced penetration lim to attacks made while wearing it, activation 15- (guys have still broken their hands while wearing boxing gloves, and some people have died from injuries inflicted with the gloves).

 

Bell rings, segment 12. Both guys have allocated their combat levels, both guys move toward each other. They make a Dex roll to see who goes first. Guy #1 goes first. He tries to Mike Tyson the fight and goes in with an offensive strike, trying to end things in one shot. OCV 5, +1 level, -2 for maneuver. Final OCV 4. Boxer #2 sees this and aborts to block. With his level in OCV, he has a final OCV of 8 and a DCV of 7. He blocks the attack by weaving his head out of the way and pushing his hands against Boxer 1's glove. End phase 12.

 

Phase 4, Boxer 2 goes first. He's not gonna repeat the first Guy's mistake, so he goes for a defensive strike. He puts his level in DCV and goes for a quick jab. OCV 6, DCV 9. Boxer 1 is DCV 6 from his maneuver, attacker rolls an 11, hits. 3D6, does 3 Body 13 Stun. Boxer 1 takes 7 Stun. Boxer 1 unloads with another offensive strike, OCV 4 vs DCV 9. Rolls an 8, still misses.

 

Phase 8. Both boxers roll off again. Boxer 2 goes first this time. He's worried because first guy keeps unloading with these huge swings, and a lucky roll could end the fight. So he leaves his level in DCV and goes for a martial strike. Try to do some more damage here and whittle the guy down. OCV 5 vs DCV 6. Rolls an 11, misses. Boxer 1 thinks he'll never hit if he keeps swinging wildly, so he goes for a martial strike as well. OCV 6 (w level in OCV) vs DCV 8. Rolls a 10, he misses too.

 

Phase 12. Both sides have spent some End, first guy is down 7 Stun. Boxer 1 hasn't hit yet, so he steps back and makes his analyze style roll, hoping to get a bonus to hit or something. Makes his roll, realizes that the other guy is fighting very defensively, leaving his level in DCV all the time. In the boxing ring, the GM rules that "leaving a level in DCV" means that he keeps backing away (not enough to count as a movement action, but a step or two whenever the attacker swings). The GM tells him that if he gets the other guy near the ropes, he won't be able to use his full DCV. Boxer 2 sees Boxer 1 back off, and so he decides to let him go and make his own analyze roll. He makes it and realizes what we already know, that Boxer 1 is intent on finishing this fight fast, and has left his levels in OCV. The GM tells him that since he made his roll by 2, the next time Boxer 1 misses a big swing, he'll get a +1 OCV for any counter strike.

 

Post-12 recoveries. Boxer 1 is down 1 Stun.

 

Phase 4, roll off. Boxer 2 goes first, and decides to hold action until Boxer 1 attacks. He thinks he might be able to catch the first guy with an offensive strike of his own if he gets lucky. Boxer 1 then moves towards Boxer 2 and is intent on backing him up towards the ropes. Boxer 1 makes a half move and throws a defensive strike, with a level in OCV. He hits, 3D6, 3 Body and 12 Stun. #2 takes 6. Boxer 2 now gets his held action. He throws a defensive strike as well, level going to OCV this time. Visually he pivots around and strikes with a jab. OCV 7 vs DCV 8. He misses.

 

Phase 8, Boxer 1 presses the attack, the GM has told him that if Boxer 2 makes 3 defensive moves in a row (def strike or level in DCV) then he'll be near enough the ropes that he'll get a penalty. Boxer 1 also suspects that he's been leaving himself open too much, so he goes for a martial strike. OCV 6 vs #2's DCV 8. He rolls a 10 and misses. Boxer 2 realizes he's starting to get close to the ropes, so he has to make an offensive move. He leaves his level in OCV and moves in with a martial strike. OCV 6 vs DCV 8. He rolls a 12 and misses.

 

Phase 12...

 

And so on. You can tinker with their stats. Maybe most boxers don't actually have offensive strike. An average hit from it would Stun an opponent. Perhaps the offensive strike maneuver represents some form of attack that would be illegal in modern boxing, hitting below the belt. This means something like a fast strike might be the big fight ending attack, if you roll well enough.

 

I can easily make a fight between two equally skilled martial artists take a long time. I don't know that it would be fun to play out a 15 round boxing match, blow for blow. Maybe something like Punch Out where every fight is 3 rounds max. If you use heroic rules where every 5 points of Str is one End, then you could reasonably see LTE use and maybe you get a lot of later rounds where the boxers really can't make more than one attack per turn. They'd circle each other and then when they got their post-12, they'd move in and go for an attack and then have to wait until the next recovery (being too scared to risk taking one during combat when the other guy may be holding an action).

 

You can make it work pretty well, I just think it might be kind of boring.

[Christopher R Taylor]

You can make it work pretty well, I just think it might be kind of boring. 

 

 

Yeah, the reason fights tend to be lightning fast in Hero isn't so much the combat system as the all-out, "it doesn't hurt me" attitude of players.  Enforcing 1 END/5 points helps tire guys out so they rest more (clinch and recover).  But the real reason boxing matches actually take longer is because they are spending 90% of the time blocking and dodging while they look for an opening.  Most of them roll with a punch so they suffer less damage.  Why?  Because they aren't character sheets; it hurts to get hit and the art is finding a way through defenses instead of battering your opponent down.

 

Fencing, real martial arts bouts, almost all real fighting is along these lines, rather than full-on offense at maximum power constantly, in real life. Which takes longer and is kinda boring.

[dsatow]

Just thinking out loud here...

 

It might be interesting in making a boxing multipower using the rules in 6th edition that make a boxing match more tactical.

 

Lets first assume that each boxes is about the same physically.  The multipower would look something like this

 

20 multipower (40) requires a skill roll each phase/use

4v +8 OCV

4v +8 DCV

4v +8d6 HA

4v 75% Physical Reduction

1u healing STUN and END 1d6 0 END

 

OK, so how would this work.  Instead of using maneuvers, the PCs would adjust their slots how they would want, adjusting their OCV, DCV, and Damage based on how they play.  They could go defensive and roll with the punches using the Physical reduction or maybe get into a clinch and activate the healing in the middle of the turn.  It would simulate a more tactical boxing game where the boxing matches would be pretty interesting.