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Combat and Chargen in my RPG, for context

Started by beejazz, July 17, 2012, 10:19:29 AM

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beejazz

#15
So, on zone and point traits, I'm thinking the following (so far):

Zones

Cover/Concealment: I figure these could come in multiple forms. There's full or partial cover/concealment. There's also "low" cover/concealment, which means that characters have to crawl (effectively stay prone) to take advantage of it. There's also cover/(zone) or concealment/(zone). Sometimes cover and concealment don't affect all attackers. Sometimes it just means you've got "full cover against the balcony" or what have you.

I haven't hammered out the precise effects of cover and concealment. But in this system both of those things can help melee characters close with ranged characters before they get peppered with arrows.

Difficult Terrain: Difficult terrain reduces movement speed by one zone as long as you remain in it. So you can't move two zones away, just one. If movement is penalized down to 0 but you can still act, you can move within your zone or double move into the next zone.

Difficult terrain benefits ranged characters by allowing them to shoot melee characters before they close.

Tight Space: Tight space makes larger weapons difficult to use, and can prevent movement by larger creatures.

Low Ceilings: Low ceilings force people to crawl.

Corridor (steps): Corridors force people to move past other people to move through. They're also broken down into five foot steps to make pushing people through peripheries easier to track.

There may be more, such as traits for water hazards or being on fire. Needless to say a zone can have more than one of these.

Points

Cover/Concealment: Being adjacent to a point can often give you cover or concealment, in pretty much the exact same way zones can.

Choke Point: Sometimes to move from one zone to another, you have to move through a choke point. Choke points include things like doors and windows and short stairways.

Drop: Stairs and bridges sometimes present the danger of an imminent fall. People forced to disengage (such as by knockback) will fall, suffering damage and being moved to wherever the fall goes. Long narrow bridges or stairs may be handled as zones rather than points, and the edges of some zones may also have this trait.

Hidden Points: Doors and traps are sometimes hidden.

Traps: Traps are typically handled as points.

Set Dressing: Truth is a lot of points are just set dressing outside the above categories. Players can improvise uses for them or use them to describe movement.

beejazz

#16
The wound table I'm going to use will have both categories and intensities of wounds. You'll roll category on a 1d8 and intensity on a 1d6.

Intensity:

1-3: Low
4-5: Medium
6: High

Category:

1: Left Leg (hurt>broken>severed*)
2: Right Leg (hurt>broken>severed*)
3: Left Arm (hurt>broken>severed)
4: Right Arm (hurt>broken>severed)
5: Bleeding (1d10>2d10>3d10)
6: Stun (stunned>staggered>KO)
7: Knockback (prone>stunned>disengaged)
8: Bonus Damage (+5>+10>+15)

*Slashing weapons only. Otherwise, treat as broken.

All of this will be charted out on two axes on the character sheet for easy rolling. Any continuing status will have a checkbox for easy tracking.

EDIT: On limbs, hurt applies a penalty while broken implies that a limb can't be used at all. Everything on the stun track includes stunning, which lasts one round. And being staggered means losing your move action every round (though you can still use your main action for that).

beejazz

On the mass combat rules, I'm not entirely certain how to handle area attacks.

Firstly, should I apply area attack damage multiple times? Multiply it by the members? Just x2? In any case, I have to specify that you compare damage to WT before multiplying which just seems weird.

In any case, members all roll saves and if the damage was enough to break WT, the group loses as many members as failed their saves.

There may or may not need to be rules for cases where spells and such deal damage even on a successful save. Or rules for the evasion-equivalent rogues are likely to get.

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And then there's how and when and whether groups bring area effects into play. As it stands, groups would likely spend all their attacks on each other. And how many attacks they get will be a key factor in determining how quickly combat moves and who wins. If groups use area attacks that goes out the window in group vs group.

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Last thing is how and whether to incorporate commanders into groups. Allowing PCs to attach themselves to groups could help to speed things along a bit in mass battles, and avoid the potential instant death of allowing groups to pile all their attacks on one individual. I'm already working on systems to allow characters to grant mechanical boons to their armies.