Some stolen combat options

[mhd]

I'm currently mining some other games for inspiration, mostly about easy things like powers/spells, but once in a while, a neat general rule crosses my way. And as my current group is getting larger (heh), I'm not averse to anything that could speed things up a bit. So, a few ideas that crossed my mind:

 

Two games (RuneQuest 6 and Novus) have special effects that are triggered by large degrees of success. So if you hit really well, you can decide to do what amounts to a special maneuver. This avoids having to pick one, calculate all kinds of modifiers, and potentially doing all that for nought if you miss anyway. I'm thinking about using this as some kind of alternative crit system, where instead of maximizing damage, you get to pick from a list of options. Things like disarm, AP, +X DC, +1 STUNx.

Not sure whether that could co-exist well with the usual mechanics.

 

Also, Novus has "scaled damage" where in addition to your base damage, you get a bonus depending on by how much you succeeded in your attack. I've seen this before and always liked the general idea, although in some implementations it gets rather deadly once the enemies are skilled enough (so it's either miss or major wound/dead). IIRC, HERO has a similar optional rule where you can adjust the hit location depending your degree of success, which quite often amounts to the same effect. Maybe reduce the base damage and then add. Or alternatively, let the player pick between the raw degree of success and a dice throw (raw can't be larger than max dmg). So a skilled knife fighter would almost always deal max dmg, whereas a skilled great word wielder might opt for rolling a bit more often.

Some versions of this rule certainly wouldn't scale well with more superheroic amounts of damage.

 

Hit locations. I'm seriously thinking about ditching them once 6+ players are at the table. It's not just the extra roll, but also the variable multipliers. My favorite part of hit locations in general isn't even the "realism" of head shots vs impaled feet, but more about sectional armor. And doing cover rolls isn't that much better...

[NuSoardGraphite]

For fast hit locations, have your characters roll their to-hit rolls AND their hit-location rolls at the same time.  3 Dice of one color, and 3 dice of another color.  One color designated as to-hit and the other color designated as Hit-location.  That makes it much faster.

[Lucius]

 

I may adapt some of these ideas.

 

I'm already considering ditching hit locations except when

 

- it's a really good to-hit roll

 

- a good damage roll and impairing or disabling is a possibility

 

- always, of course, the player may make a "called shot" and take the penalty.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Did the palindromedary eat my tagline?

[Christopher]

Two games (RuneQuest 6 and Novus) have special effects that are triggered by large degrees of success. So if you hit really well, you can decide to do what amounts to a special maneuver. This avoids having to pick one, calculate all kinds of modifiers, and potentially doing all that for nought if you miss anyway. I'm thinking about using this as some kind of alternative crit system, where instead of maximizing damage, you get to pick from a list of options. Things like disarm, AP, +X DC, +1 STUNx.

Not sure whether that could co-exist well with the usual mechanics.

Interestign approach. It would perhaps allow things to be more cinematic.

On the other hand it would take all the Disadvantage out of maneuvers: It's harder to choose a penalty to DCV if you are not certain if your disarm will hit.

The penalties are what makes meaningfull decision in combat possible. And meaningfull descision are what makes games fun, as I explain in detail here:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/index.php?/topic/87378-translating-characters-from-fiction-and-the-secret-of-having-fun-in-roleplaying/

 

Also, Novus has "scaled damage" where in addition to your base damage, you get a bonus depending on by how much you succeeded in your attack. I've seen this before and always liked the general idea, although in some implementations it gets rather deadly once the enemies are skilled enough (so it's either miss or major wound/dead). IIRC, HERO has a similar optional rule where you can adjust the hit location depending your degree of success, which quite often amounts to the same effect. Maybe reduce the base damage and then add. Or alternatively, let the player pick between the raw degree of success and a dice throw (raw can't be larger than max dmg). So a skilled knife fighter would almost always deal max dmg, whereas a skilled great word wielder might opt for rolling a bit more often.

Some versions of this rule certainly wouldn't scale well with more superheroic amounts of damage.

What I have seen is the inverted version: Barely dodging causes partial Damage.

Translated to HERO, Rolling only exactly the DCV would give you partial Damage (25-50%). Only at a 1-3 over DCV would you get full damage. This of course makes Martial Artist a lot tougher, but also removes thier "no damage or instant stun" problem

I think one of the APG's has something about Partial Damage from Blocking too, to remove the "all or nothing" aspect of Block.

 

Hit locations. I'm seriously thinking about ditching them once 6+ players are at the table. It's not just the extra roll, but also the variable multipliers. My favorite part of hit locations in general isn't even the "realism" of head shots vs impaled feet, but more about sectional armor. And doing cover rolls isn't that much better...

The way I see it the 1D3 STUN multiplier on KA is a extremely simplified Hit Location roll. For all intents it replaces the Result from the Hit Location table when determining STUN on KA's.

It's even clearer with 5E "1d6-1, minimum 1" Roll.

[Christopher]

Re: Partial Block

The APG's only have some thoughts, no actuall rules

APG I 167 has a Sidebar

APG II 60 has half a page with two ideas (percentile Damage reduction or Changing the Hit Location).

[mhd]

On the other hand it would take all the Disadvantage out of maneuvers: It's harder to choose a penalty to DCV if you are not certain if your disarm will hit.

The penalties are what makes meaningfull decision in combat possible.

You're still making decisions, you just didn't gamble on them.

 

Note that this isn't entirely new. Right now, I can sacrifice my chance to hit to decide where exactly I hit. But I can also hope that this location comes up on the random roll. I can put my CSLs into damage or do a high-dmg & low-hit/def maneuver or hope that I get a crit or simply roll very high. So regarding pure damage, we're already doing something similar. This would just extend this to other possible outcomes -- and the enemy being taken out or put int a bad spot isn't really any worse than being killed.

 

I don't see the two kinds of approaches as mutually exclusive. Let's say I want to disarm my opponent. Now I could really go for it, because I need it done *now*, but I could also be ready to exploit a momentary weakness. Again, just like hit locations: I'really like to put this rapier in my opponents heart, but I'm fine enough with perforating his limbs until the opportunity (=random roll) arrives.

 

So conceptually I'm fine with it, it's just that one might run into balancing issues regarding the mechanics, where people just put everything into attack to provoke the mechanism. Then again, they can do that right now for max damage...

 

I think this would add some flourishes to a combat and thus spice it up, and it's also good for players who don't like to plan ahead too much, but wouldn't mind the occasional bit of panache.

 

(Right now I'm not even using crits at all, as I changed to a roll-high system...)

[JasonPacker]

I like the idea (I'm a fan of some of the things that RQ6 brings to the table in particular), but it definitely is a different mind-set, and might need some extensive tweaking.

 

Hero is a very deliberate system. You decide to target a location; you decide to make an attack that puts you at risk of retaliation for greater chance to hit or damage done; you decide to disarm or grapple or trip an opponent. Then you roll to see if you succeed.

 

RQ6 is much the opposite. You attack an individual, and if you're successful enough you do more than just cause them damage, you may trip them, disarm them, impale them, hit a specific location of your choice, or sunder their armor or shield. It's a consequence of the successful attack, but not something you specifically set out to do before the dice were rolled.

 

Not sure if that actually influences things or not, but it might help in the discussion for those that aren't aware of how it works in RQ6.

[mhd]

Note that other BRP/RQ variants had explicit "front-loaded" mechanics for this, as far as I know this change was introduced in Mongoose RuneQuest. So it's not like either are tied implicitly to the general "gestalt" of the system.

 

Hmm, what about tying this to the weapons used? So a two-handed weapon would get a crit effect of max damage (or +X DC if you want to change things) as usual, but fencing weapons get something different (disarm/AP), clubs get +1 STUNx etc.

 

This would make the change less invasive, and differentiate weapons a bit more.

[JasonPacker]

Note that other BRP/RQ variants had explicit "front-loaded" mechanics for this, as far as I know this change was introduced in Mongoose RuneQuest. So it's not like either are tied implicitly to the general "gestalt" of the system.

 

Hmm, what about tying this to the weapons used? So a two-handed weapon would get a crit effect of max damage (or +X DC if you want to change things) as usual, but fencing weapons get something different (disarm/AP), clubs get +1 STUNx etc.

 

This would make the change less invasive, and differentiate weapons a bit more.

 

I'm actually fond of this idea, and don't tend to save it only for "critical" hits. Weapon differentiation just makes good sense to me, so if you wanted to tie it to a strong success roll, it wouldn't be a bad thing at all. 

[Lucius]

 

I have used these with swords:

 

+1 Level for every Level the wielder has usable with swords

+1 DC with Martial Manuevers

 

I'm currently not using those, but am using +3 DC on a to-hit roll of 8 or less, only if the wielder has at least one Level usable with swords.

 

Other weapons have other advantages (sometimes literal Advantages, such as +1 STUN for hammers, Armor Piercing for picks, Autofire for daggers, etc) but I wanted to make the sword the first choice of the professional warrior - a weapon that rewards skill.

 

I suppose that Autofire for daggers ties into "bonus tied to good roll" since it kicks in at a to-hit roll that succeeds by 2.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says I really got into detailing melee weapons, but it's still nothing compared to the obsession with guns and ammo on display in Dark Champions

[Sean Waters]

Hero does not have a critical system, but you can just buy skill levels and trade them for damage if you are hitting a lot already.

 

You can buy DCV levels that are limited "if this makes the difference between a hit and a miss you take half the damage you otherwise would have".

 

Hero: you don't need to ship in more rules, you can build your own.

[bigbywolfe]

Hero does not have a critical system, but you can just buy skill levels and trade them for damage if you are hitting a lot already.

 

You can buy DCV levels that are limited "if this makes the difference between a hit and a miss you take half the damage you otherwise would have".

 

Hero: you don't need to ship in more rules, you can build your own.

Hero has several optional critical systems (I don't remember if any of them are in the core rules but I know there is at least 1 in Fantasy Hero and I believe several in the APGs) as well as at least a 1/2 dozen fan made ones.

[mhd]

One problem I had when I wanted to customize my own weapon tables was the lack of granularity. Changing a whole DC is quite a lot, as are modifiers like +1 STUNx or AP. Especially in low-level games, where this is more significant.

 

So I'd probably tie it to a limiting factor. Critical hits would be one idea, as would be Martial Arts. Probably too much work and duplication if you've got separate ones for all kinds of weapons, but you could easily do some generic "medieval weapon combat" and just restrict certain maneuvers to certain weapons. So if you're going sword & board, you can do that Fast Strike, but you have to go for Mace & Board if you want an Offensive Strike.

[JasonPacker]

I'm a bit surprised that Killer Shrike's stuff hasn't been brought up in this thread:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/fantasyhero/HighFantasyHERO/shrikeArmsArmament_Weapon_Chart.aspx

 

That's some extensive differentiation.

[Christougher]

Let me plug my 5E Weapons.XLS file in the downloads section here, somewhat recently updated.  http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/57-weaponsxls/

 

Chris.

[Sean Waters]

Hero has several optional critical systems (I don't remember if any of them are in the core rules but I know there is at least 1 in Fantasy Hero and I believe several in the APGs) as well as at least a 1/2 dozen fan made ones.

 

Core Hero then.  Critical systems don't make much sense if you think about it in terms of the overall game build, unless you construct characters in a very unusual way.  In Hero defences work on threshold values you don't tend to have in many other games, and critical systems tend to overwhelm them.

 

Of course, arguably, killing attacks used to be the Hero version of a critical system, and possibly still are.

[Christopher]

Core Hero then.  Critical systems don't make much sense if you think about it in terms of the overall game build, unless you construct characters in a very unusual way.  In Hero defences work on threshold values you don't tend to have in many other games, and critical systems tend to overwhelm them.

 

Of course, arguably, killing attacks used to be the Hero version of a critical system, and possibly still are.

Killing Attacks=Critical System? Nope. Maybe if you include the 5E STUN Lottery. But that one was a bug that got fixed in 6E.

 

Hit Locations? Now those are Heroes Critical System. HL's are even designed to avoid the "overwhelming of defenses" somehwat because they affect damage after defenses (for BODY at least). You can even aim for a Crit (good hit location) in exchange for a decreased chance to hit.

 

But I did read of several Crit Systems. But since I don't think hero needs it (more randomness is always to the detirement of the Characters and gametime) I never really looked at them, so I cannot name any of them.

[Sean Waters]

Killing Attacks=Critical System? Nope. Maybe if you include the 5E STUN Lottery. But that one was a bug that got fixed in 6E.

 

Hit Locations? Now those are Heroes Critical System. HL's are even designed to avoid the "overwhelming of defenses" somehwat because they affect damage after defenses (for BODY at least). You can even aim for a Crit (good hit location) in exchange for a decreased chance to hit.

 

But I did read of several Crit Systems. But since I don't think hero needs it (more randomness is always to the detirement of the Characters and gametime) I never really looked at them, so I cannot name any of them.

 

 

Killing attacks: for 15 points you get 3d6 normal or 1d6 Killing.  1 in 36 of the normal attacks do 6 Body, 1 in 6 of the Killing attacks do 6 Body.  Even then we have not got rid of the Stun lottery: 1 in 18 hits with 1d6 Kill does maximum Stun, whereas only 1 in 216 hits with 3d6 does maximum stun.  We have mitigated the Stun lottery and done nothing about the Body lottery.  Both still exist.

 

The problem with hit locations in Hero is that it substitutes accuracy for power, and that is a double dip.  You hit more often and you do more damage.  Hero carefully separates damage and the chance to hit, because you have to pay for increasing each.  Adding hit locations to your system shifts the cost balance toward buying accuracy over buying power.

 

That is OK, I suppose, if everyone can do it, but that sort of system is objectionable in a RPG, even if it is fine in a combat simulation.  What few ever seems to get about critical systems is that there are always more enemies than heroes, and enemies are infinitely expendable, which means that there are always a lot more attacks coming in that matter than going out, and the bell curve favours the bad guys in that situation.  A fair and rational GM would play the NPCs as efficiently as he can: head shot every time.  That has two game advantages:

 

1. The NPCs hit less, which speeds overall game play.

2. Hitting someone in the head is likely to kill or seriously injure.

 

The first one is fine, the second one kills PCs.

 

You can also use the Haymaker and various combat maneuvers to simulate critical hits, making a hit less likely but increasing damage if you do.  These are already imbedded in the system and have a relatively marginal effect, which is as near to a critical system as I think we need.

 

I absolutely agree that Hero does not need critical systems over what we already have in the basic system.  Of course I've come up with dozens, but I'm not quite right in the head.