Hey all, lately I've been hammering away at a system for a fantasy RPG. The system is designed to be quick to play, easy to understand and highly lethal if you're not careful. So with those in mind I've placed the entire combat system so far here for people to look over and provide feedback regarding  balance, ease of play and general feedback overall. I'm particularly interested in feedback on the two-weapon fighting rules, equipment damage and reach rules.

Task resolution: Character roll 1d10 and add their attributes, skills and misc modifiers to the roll. This is compared to a target number (TN). Every 1 by which the TN is exceed is one margin of success (MoS).

Basics: In combat the attacker and defender roll opposed skill checks. Melee attacks are Weaponry opposed by either Weaponry or Dodge while ranged attacks are Archery opposed by Dodge. If the attacker succeeds they add the damage rating of their weapon to the MoS of their attack roll and deduct the DR (damage reduction) of the targets armour. This is the damage total and is subtracted from the targets HP. When HP reaches 0 the character moves down an injury level and is restored to half HP (NPCS are simply incapacitated).

Injury Levels: Each character has five injury levels. The first is Fine and is the default starting position of most characters. Below that we have Minor, Moderate, Serious, Critical and Crippling. It should be noted that each level imposes a cumulative -1 on all actions attempted. Once the character reaches Crippling injury level they are at very real risk of death, if they are reduced to 0HP at this point they die of their horrific injuries. Note: NPCs usually don't keep fighting beyond their first injury level, this speeds combat up somewhat.

Healing: Character regain HP equal to half their Stam rating (rounded up) each day. This is doubled if they undertake no strenuous activity that day. Characters may also attempt a Heal check to restore a number of HP equal to the rolls MoS. The TN of this roll is 7 and can only be attempted once per injury level.

Weapon Rules
Damage Boost: Characters may elect to double the damage of their weapon for a single strike by damaging the weapon. This imposes a -1 to rolls with that weapon until it is repaired.

Reach: All weapons have a reach rating; this reflects the distance from which a character can strike in melee. Mechanically the character with higher Reach gains a bonus to defence equal to the difference in Reach between he and his attacker. This reflects it being more difficult to get within striking range. However in place of an attack an opponent may make a Athletics or Weaponry roll to get in under the weapons reach, if this happens they may move 1 Reach per MoS. If a character manages to get closer than a weapons Reach they gain an attack bonus equal to the difference between the lower and higher Reach. This reflects the difficulty of getting a larger weapon in to strike a closer opponent.

Reach Example: Emelia is armed with a longsword (Damage 3, Reach 3) and is in combat with Kamila who is armed with two daggers (Damage 1, Reach 1). This means Emelia has a +2 on rolls to defend against Kamila's daggers. However, Kamila decides to duck under the reach of the sword and rolls a MoS of two, this allows her to move from Reach 3 to reach 1. Now Kamila has a +2 to attack as her daggers are better suited for close in fighting.

Armour and Shields

Armour: Armour reduces the incoming damage according to the DR indicated under the armour entry. Armour also impairs rolls requiring flexibility, freedom of movement and physical agility. This is the penalty listed under Encumbrance. A character may elect to double the DR of the armour for a single hit, this increases the armour encumbrance by 1 each time this is used. This penalty lasts until the armour is repaired.
Shields: Shields are used to protect the wielder against incoming attacks, mechanically this means they add the bonus listed under their Defensive quality to defence rolls. Shields can also be used as quite effective bashing weapons, however using the shield to make an attack prevents them being used to defend that round. Like armour a character may choose to have their shield damaged in order to increase their defensive bonus. This doubles the defence bonus for that roll but reduces the defence bonus by 1 until the shield is repaired.

Special Combat Rules

Defensive Fighting: From time to time a combatant may find that they're better off focusing on keeping their flesh intact rather than inflicting damage themselves. To do this the defender may elect to take a -1, -2 or -3 to attack rolls in favour of gaining a +1, +2 or +3 to defence rolls.

Multiple Attackers: While a defender may make a defence roll for all incoming attacks the more incoming attacks they must fend off the harder it becomes. Each attack beyond the first imposes a cumulative -1 penalty. So to defend against 3 attacks imposes a -2 on defence that round.

Reckless Attacks: Sometimes an attacker may wish to hurl caution to the winds and neglect defence in the hopes of landing a strike. This attack imposes a -1, -2 or -3 on the attacker's defence rolls but grants a corresponding bonus (+1, +2 or +3) to attack rolls.

Two-weapon Fighting: Fighting with a weapon in each hand is at times effective despite the difficulty of manoeuvring two weapons at once. Wielding two weapons allows the character to roll twice and select the higher result when attacking and defending.

Test stats
Melee Optimised PC
Strength: 4, Stamina: 3, Reflex: 3, Dexterity: 2, Logic: 2, Intuition: 3, Charisma: 1, Will: 2,
HP: 13,
Skills: Athletics +3, Block +3, Dodge +3, Melee +3, Notice +3,
Gear:  Chainmail (DR 4, Enc: -2), Heavy Shield (Damage 2, Defence +3), Longsword (Damage 3, Reach 3),

Average Combatant NPC
Strength: 3, Stamina: 3, Reflex: 3, Dexterity: 2, Logic: 2, Intuition: 2, Charisma: 2, Will: 2,
HP: 13,
Skills: Athletics +3, Block +3, Dodge +3, Melee +3, Notice +3,
Gear: Brigadine Armour (DR 3, Enc: -1), Medium Shield (Damage 1, Defense: +2), Dagger (Damage 1, Reach 1), Longspear (Damage 2, Reach: 5), One-handed Axe (Damage 3, Reach: 3),

* 1d10? Very low grain.

* I don't like the PC vs. NPC injury rules. I would suggest defining an ability to resist wounds, which either PCs or NPCs may or may not have at different levels.

* I don't like the mechanic where there is a single generic injury level (of 5) caused by losing HP. Aside from seeming clunky, it also seems overly generic, and grindy. Seems appropriate for a game where all damage should be minor, but no possibility for really deadly hits - every PC needs to be hit 5 times to die?

* I don't like the abstraction of "injury levels" as they map to the damage and healing system. Levels of injury seriousness make sense, but I don't get what HP vs. injury levels are supposed to represent, why there is one healing roll per injury level, and my brain sees it as an abstract game mechanic that doesn't match the real world in a way that makes sense to me, so I don't like that.

* I don't like Weapon Boost for the same sort of reason: it looks gamey and doesn't match my idea of reality. I can't imagine how someone would really have an option to damage their weapon for double damage unless it were some weird thing like a spear with a button-activated gunpowder charge in it. It seems gamey and not something that makes sense to me.

* Reach - your rules & example are unclear to me, particularly about how the value of distance tracks from turn to turn, and if someone opting to try to get inside gets to attack on the same turn, or for how long it applies. Can the opponent do something similar to get back to a good reach for them? Is the starting reach assumed to be the highest weapon reach being used by anyone? What about combats with more than two fighters?

* Who strikes first?

* The armor doubling rule seems as surreal as the weapon doubling rule. My imagination is having a fun time trying to imagine the cartoon-like action as someone ducks deeper inside their own armor to avoid a blow, but then messes up how they're wearing it, and needs to go see a tailor later. What?

* I think your numbers want a bit of work. What about unarmed attacks? Are they Damage 0, or something negative? Come up with stats for being completely unarmed, armed with improvised bad equipment (chair, fire poker, beer mug) versus nothing, then rate a dagger compared to that. Are single points really enough difference between weapons?

* Overall, this seems like you're trying to combine realistic detail (appropriate weapon stats that reflect how things are rather than coolness) with abstractions like the hitpoint grind and some options that don't map to reality. I'd drop one or the other, because I don't think they mix well. Personally I'd drop the abstract things that don't make literal sense, because that's my preference. I'd also add an actual map because that's what I want with my combat systems, and it would make the reach aspect make more sense, as well as making it clear who can attack whom, adding tactical depth, etc.

Quote from: Flashfire07;907839Basics: In combat the attacker and defender roll opposed skill checks. Melee attacks are Weaponry opposed by either Weaponry or Dodge while ranged attacks are Archery opposed by Dodge. If the attacker succeeds they add the damage rating of their weapon to the MoS of their attack roll and deduct the DR (damage reduction) of the targets armour. This is the damage total and is subtracted from the targets HP. When HP reaches 0 the character moves down an injury level and is restored to half HP (NPCS are simply incapacitated).

Sounds a bit complex for my liking, and the fact that every attack becomes an opposed roll seems to me like it would slow down combat a lot. (Having a static to-hit number frees up the GM to a certain degree; he can let the players roll and if they know the to-hit value they can tell him hit or miss. With opposed rolls you lose this advantage and get a lot more dice rolling.)

I'd largely echo what Skarg said in regard to the armour doubling and weapon damage. The reach rules seem OK.
I think the weapon damage rule leads to too much weapon degradation. You may end up with people carting several longswords around so they can switch them and avoid the penalty. I presume you wouldn't allow degradation for intrinsically one-shot weapons like arrows, but things like javelins and hand axes need more specification.

Other than that:
Two-weapon fighting (take-highest roll) is very hard to evaluate from a balance perspective without knowing specifically what weapon damages are. As you have MoS adding to damage, a higher roll leads to more damage as well. I'd also note that the way you're running it (take highest instead of rolling twice separately) makes the off-hand weapon size/base damage (whether its a dagger or a second longsword) irrelevant - presumably you'd just take the highest damage.

The MoS adding to damage is a defensible design decision but it is slower than many other options, given that you have to know the defender's defense rating, and do a subtraction.  Compare D&D and 'I hit AC 17 for 9 damage', etc.

The injury levels intermixing with the Hit Points I presume is to give wound penalties which is fair enough, but slightly clunky. I'd probably recommend ditching the hit points and basically have injuries worked out per-wound, rather than accumulating HP between stabs in different areas. So instead of having say 14 HP, give a character a damage threshold of 1/2 that [7] and every 7 points on one injury is an injury level or wound. I've been playing a lot of Savage Worlds and similar lately and am finding that works well for GMing, as opposed to tracking minor aches and pains for every orc in a battle.

Thank you all for the responses so far, they've been quite helpful!

Quote from: Skarg;907878* 1d10? Very low grain.

* I don't like the PC vs. NPC injury rules. I would suggest defining an ability to resist wounds, which either PCs or NPCs may or may not have at different levels.

* I don't like the mechanic where there is a single generic injury level (of 5) caused by losing HP. Aside from seeming clunky, it also seems overly generic, and grindy. Seems appropriate for a game where all damage should be minor, but no possibility for really deadly hits - every PC needs to be hit 5 times to die?

* I don't like the abstraction of "injury levels" as they map to the damage and healing system. Levels of injury seriousness make sense, but I don't get what HP vs. injury levels are supposed to represent, why there is one healing roll per injury level, and my brain sees it as an abstract game mechanic that doesn't match the real world in a way that makes sense to me, so I don't like that.

* I don't like Weapon Boost for the same sort of reason: it looks gamey and doesn't match my idea of reality. I can't imagine how someone would really have an option to damage their weapon for double damage unless it were some weird thing like a spear with a button-activated gunpowder charge in it. It seems gamey and not something that makes sense to me.

* Reach - your rules & example are unclear to me, particularly about how the value of distance tracks from turn to turn, and if someone opting to try to get inside gets to attack on the same turn, or for how long it applies. Can the opponent do something similar to get back to a good reach for them? Is the starting reach assumed to be the highest weapon reach being used by anyone? What about combats with more than two fighters?

* Who strikes first?

* The armor doubling rule seems as surreal as the weapon doubling rule. My imagination is having a fun time trying to imagine the cartoon-like action as someone ducks deeper inside their own armor to avoid a blow, but then messes up how they're wearing it, and needs to go see a tailor later. What?

* I think your numbers want a bit of work. What about unarmed attacks? Are they Damage 0, or something negative? Come up with stats for being completely unarmed, armed with improvised bad equipment (chair, fire poker, beer mug) versus nothing, then rate a dagger compared to that. Are single points really enough difference between weapons?

* Overall, this seems like you're trying to combine realistic detail (appropriate weapon stats that reflect how things are rather than coolness) with abstractions like the hitpoint grind and some options that don't map to reality. I'd drop one or the other, because I don't think they mix well. Personally I'd drop the abstract things that don't make literal sense, because that's my preference. I'd also add an actual map because that's what I want with my combat systems, and it would make the reach aspect make more sense, as well as making it clear who can attack whom, adding tactical depth, etc.

Could you please explain what you mean by low grain? I'm unfamiliar with the term sadly.

In regards to injury levels I have two possible solutions. Firstly getting rid of it all together, this makes combat much more dangerous and really gives monsters a huge advantage but if you're a behemoth of claws, fangs and fury that's understandable. This means that if you get take four hits with a basic weapon you're incapacitated. This makes armour much more important and avoiding hits even more so. I am a big fan of injury systems however so might include it in a supplement later down the line.

Weapon damage boost might be taken out but I'm not so sure, it gives characters a good chance to inflict damage and is more of a narrative effect than a pure realism one. I used to have a weapon durability system but it was a nightmare in bookkeeping, I'll probably whack it in a supplement for those who want more complicated and detailed combat later down the track. However you can simply justify it as being more... your sword bends while delivering a more powerful blow, I may cut this one from the core book anyhow as it feels slightly unbalanced.

Reach is... well to be honest I came up with a more workable solution because I was having such difficulty writing it out. Under the changed system a weapon has reach Long, Medium or Short. Long reach weapons grant a +1 to defend against Medium and a +2 against Short, if a character make a successful Athletics or Acrobatics or Weaponry roll instead of an attack they may move in to more advantagous reach. Combat begins at the highest Reach amongst the combatants... er... that is to say that if you have a longsword at reach Medium and you face an attacker with a spear at reach Long the fight starts at Long, if they had a dagger with reach Short combat would start at reach Medium. Does that make sense? I'm not sure how well I'm explaining this.

Combat order is determined by d10+Reflex rating. I forgot to include that before, thank you for pointing that out

As for the armour rule... well that actually reflects things like narrowly avoiding an attack but having the straps cut, a dent knocked into the shoulder or some other sort of damage to the structure. Yeah it's more narrative than realistic but it allows character to survive a lot longer at the price of damaging your equipment and armour. Which kinda becomes more important with the increased lethality from the HP changes.

Weapons are rated from damage 1-5, unarmed strikes are damage 0. Improvised weapons are not something I thought about but I've come up wit a quick set of rules. Decide upon the damage a weapon should have, usually 1-3 depending on size and construction of the weapon. Then decide on the Durability, Weak, Average, Tough. Weak weapons break after one hit, average break on two and Tough break after three. Does that sound good or is it too much bookkeeping or irritating or...?

The intention is to have a game that combines verisimilitude and speed of play. It needs to have plausibility but sacrifices are being made to make the game easy to play.

Quote from: finarvyn;907924Sounds a bit complex for my liking, and the fact that every attack becomes an opposed roll seems to me like it would slow down combat a lot. (Having a static to-hit number frees up the GM to a certain degree; he can let the players roll and if they know the to-hit value they can tell him hit or miss. With opposed rolls you lose this advantage and get a lot more dice rolling.)

The GM rolling is primarily there to keep me from getting bored during combats. However I will provide an option for static numbers. Instead of rolling the d10 you simply add 5. Thus if you have an attack total of +6 the defender needs to roll an 11 or higher in order to avoid damage, does that seem like a good alternative?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;907940I'd largely echo what Skarg said in regard to the armour doubling and weapon damage. The reach rules seem OK.
I think the weapon damage rule leads to too much weapon degradation. You may end up with people carting several longswords around so they can switch them and avoid the penalty. I presume you wouldn't allow degradation for intrinsically one-shot weapons like arrows, but things like javelins and hand axes need more specification.

Other than that:
Two-weapon fighting (take-highest roll) is very hard to evaluate from a balance perspective without knowing specifically what weapon damages are. As you have MoS adding to damage, a higher roll leads to more damage as well. I'd also note that the way you're running it (take highest instead of rolling twice separately) makes the off-hand weapon size/base damage (whether its a dagger or a second longsword) irrelevant - presumably you'd just take the highest damage.

The MoS adding to damage is a defensible design decision but it is slower than many other options, given that you have to know the defender's defense rating, and do a subtraction.  Compare D&D and 'I hit AC 17 for 9 damage', etc.

The injury levels intermixing with the Hit Points I presume is to give wound penalties which is fair enough, but slightly clunky. I'd probably recommend ditching the hit points and basically have injuries worked out per-wound, rather than accumulating HP between stabs in different areas. So instead of having say 14 HP, give a character a damage threshold of 1/2 that [7] and every 7 points on one injury is an injury level or wound. I've been playing a lot of Savage Worlds and similar lately and am finding that works well for GMing, as opposed to tracking minor aches and pains for every orc in a battle.

Ammunition would be consumed after being fired, thrown weapons are treated just the same as any other weapon however. They can be retrieved and re-used after a battle.

Two-weapon fighting originally was as follows: "Wielding two weapons allows the wielder to split their skill total between two attacks". This was then changed to this "Wielding two weapons allows the wielder to make on attack per weapon. This is not an easy task and so these attacks take a base -2 penalty. This is increased to -3 if the weapon is a one-handed weapon. So a character who fights with a dagger and longsword may attack with the dagger at -2 and the longsword at -3." Do you prefer those options or is there another alternative I haven't thought of yet?

The injury levels rules was more of a "You reach 0HP, to keep fighting you take a penalty and are back in the fight with half HP. It'll take a while to recover but your friends are probably gonna struggle without you..." rather than anything more advanced. I could use a rule like "If you take damage over your WT (Wound Threshold) you take an injury, each injury imposes a -1 on all rolls" with WT being half your HP. Which means with an average of 12HP you have an average WT of 6. So... does that seem sensible or are there some tweakings that are needed or...? If I use this system should I remove HP or keep them to allow a death by a multitude of small injuries thing?

Quote from: Flashfire07;908010Ammunition would be consumed after being fired, thrown weapons are treated just the same as any other weapon however. They can be retrieved and re-used after a battle.

Two-weapon fighting originally was as follows: "Wielding two weapons allows the wielder to split their skill total between two attacks". This was then changed to this "Wielding two weapons allows the wielder to make on attack per weapon. This is not an easy task and so these attacks take a base -2 penalty. This is increased to -3 if the weapon is a one-handed weapon. So a character who fights with a dagger and longsword may attack with the dagger at -2 and the longsword at -3." Do you prefer those options or is there another alternative I haven't thought of yet?

The injury levels rules was more of a "You reach 0HP, to keep fighting you take a penalty and are back in the fight with half HP. It'll take a while to recover but your friends are probably gonna struggle without you..." rather than anything more advanced. I could use a rule like "If you take damage over your WT (Wound Threshold) you take an injury, each injury imposes a -1 on all rolls" with WT being half your HP. Which means with an average of 12HP you have an average WT of 6. So... does that seem sensible or are there some tweakings that are needed or...? If I use this system should I remove HP or keep them to allow a death by a multitude of small injuries thing?

Well, on the HP, I'm more enamoured of not having fine-grained HPs, but YMMV.

On the TWF, I don't mind the (-2 to both rolls option). I'm just a little bit disturbingly addicted to two weapon fighting, as far as other options go I'll direct you to a post I wrote on that.

Spoiler

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;497810*Two Weapon Fighting (TWF):
A skill rating in 'offhand' or two-weapon fighting might determine chance to hit with offhand (Recon), # of actions with the offhand ("HDL" system), or size of offhand weapon (LegendQuest).

TWF is not always a form of multiple attacks - some systems use other options i.e. in 4E the basic 'Two Weapon Fighting' feat just adds +1 to damage, or in Tunnels and Trolls each character's combat roll represent a whole round of combat abstractly - TWF just adds extra dice (a 3-die shortsword in each hand lets a character roll 6 combat dice, same as a greatsword; ST and DEX requirements for both weapons are cumulative). Swords and Wizardry adds +1 to hit for using two weapons, dealing average damage. 'World of Dungeons' lets a character using a secondary weapon re-roll their damage roll with the offhand weapon's damage die, the 'Holmes companion' lets a TWF character roll twice for damage and take the best.
However, TWF is usually represented by an additional attack with the offhand weapon, which is the best way to make damage/description of the offhand weapon relevant - whether you're using a lit torch or a magic artifact sword in your offhand is irrelevant if an extra weapon just gives a flat +1 to damage (4E D&D). A system can also just let a character with multiple attacks already hold two weapons and divide their normal attacks between them, but in most cases this is at best a 'flavour' effect which likely just penalizes the character for using small weapons instead of a two-handed sword. [White Dwarf #19 Berserker class; similarly someone early in 4Es run once suggested re-skinning the Cleave power for fighters to represent dual wielding, before 'Tempest' options were added in its Martial Power accessory.]
 
In the normal cases where TWF gives multiple actions - a game may treat TWF as just a normal use of a 'multiple actions at a penalty' rules (Savage Worlds, ORE perhaps?), or TWF may have specific rules which make it possible. This first option is more integrated with other subsystems, but note that TWF has intrinsic penalties (i.e. one-handed weapon / no shield) which make it inferior to attacking twice with one weapon, if that is also allowed. TWF itself may also count as a specific combat option e.g. the 4E 'Twin Strike' power (which actually does get two attack rolls unlike normal 4E TWF) or Feng Shui's "Double Tap" manuever, or it may just provide a bonus combat action which might be used for other actions - in this case a 'shield punch' may actually use the TWF rules, for instance, or an offhand action might be useable for a trip, disarm, or to pin an opponent's weapon (leaving them exposed to a hit from the main weapon).
 
Games with multiple attacks often limit TWF to a single extra attack - for instance 3.x limits TWF to a single extra attack unless multiple feats are taken, while SenZar allows an extra attack on only one Action Phase (characters start at one, but can get up to 5 or so phases per combat round at higher levels). AD&D 2E likewise limits characters to a single extra attack per round (a change from 1st edition, where higher fighter levels granted extra "attack routines" i.e. two weapons doubled attacks).
TWF often incurs some sort of to-hit penalty (like -2/-4 on d20 in D&D, or having to split a dice pool), with penalty sometimes reduced by an Ambidexterity ability, though depending on system this ability may be required to fight with two weapons at all.

TWF is often Dexterity intensive e.g AD&D reduces the to-hit penalty by Dexterity adjustment, while 3.x requires a high Dexterity to qualify for the appropriate Feat. It is also sometimes Strength intensive in systems that use Strength requirements for weapons (e.g. Tunnels & Trolls, LegendQuest where Str requirements for two weapons is cumulative - in LQ this also reduces the weapon's damage bonus from Str, which is calculated from the difference between total Str and Str-required). In other games, TWF multiple attacks can often allow a character to leverage multiple uses of their STR bonus to damage, making it more appealing to stronger characters - this is sometimes balanced by reducing the damage bonus for offhand weapons (3E), reducing the damage bonus for light weapons, or prohibiting Str bonuses on TWF actions entirely (4E did this on most lower level TWF powers; 5E limits both weapons to being light barring a feat, and doesn't add a Str bonus to the offhand weapon unless the character has the "two weapon fighting" fighting style).

Miscellaneous:
-Palladium has the interesting drawback for TWF that a character forfeits their normal Automatic Parry when using paired weapons. A significant balancing factor, it has the odd effect of making TWF particularly attractive to heavily armoured characters who can rely on armour in place of parrying. TWF in Palladium is inconsistent with its rules for multiple limbs - usually extra limbs adds +1 attack per round instead of extra attacks like that gained from paired weapons, as does 'ambidexterity' (from Heroes Unlimited mutation abnormality/Aliens Unlimited racial trait).
-An old D&D houserule was sometimes to roll a chance of for 'ambidexterity', before a character could use two weapons: one variant (White Dwarf #18) being to roll a dice for each hand (d6 for left, d12 for right for instance) with the higher roll determining handedness and equal rolls meaning ambidexterity. A sub-variant of that is to separate partial ambidexterity (can use either hand) from full dual wielding (can use both at once) i.e. full ambidexterity might only occur on a roll of 6/6 on d6/d12, with lower ties meaning the partial version. ROAR used various advantages, with 'coordinative' ambidexterity giving no hit penalty but making the off-hand not as strong.
-Gangbusters (1E) Boxing skill is used to attack with both fists; the skill check if successful means a double hit with both fists, if it misses normal skill is rolled separately for a single hit. (This gives the same number of attack rolls as rolling twice for each weapon, but the second roll doesn't specify which weapon hits; it does let chance of a double hit be adjusted directly, instead of being determined by multiplying the individual probabilities together [rule of intersection]).
-deadEarth has a Moves score rolled on 2d6 which is basically action points a character has; 'paired weapon' skill reduces the action point cost of one-handed weapons by 1/2. (interacts oddly with the defend rules where a defender needs to spend the same # moves to defend, unless the GM houserules that).
-13th Age has a ranger at-will 'double melee attack' power where damage dice drops one size (d8 to d6), and a second attack can be made as a free action only if the first attack roll on d20 is a natural 'even' roll.
-TWF attacks may be staggered instead of all at once: LegendQuest deliberately rolls separate initiatives for each separately (a largely unfair advantage), while 2E D&D adds a weapon size adjustment that can make weapons land at slightly different times.
-Available off-hand weapons can be limited to smaller weapons based on size (e.g. 3E D&D 'light weapons'), specifically defined 'offhand' weapons (4E D&D), or by weapons adding their Strength-required (Tunnels and Trolls).
-3E D&D has 'double weapons' which are two-handed but let a character make an attack with each end e.g. in core the quarterstaff, two-bladed sword, orc double-axe, dwarven urgrosh, gnome hooked hammer, and dire flail.
-5E D&D limits TWF to 1/round by costing a bonus action to TWF (equivalent to a swift action in 3E); meaning using two weapons can prevent use of some other abilities like fighter's 'healing surge' type power, or rogue free Disengage. It doesn't require giving up movement a la 3E/Pathfinder however. (An earlier version of TWF in the 5E playtest instead let a character attack twice, but with both dealing 1/2 damage - making the ability most useful against 'minion' type creatures).
-FGU games often penalized offhand tasks by having an "offhand dexterity" attribute, generally lower than normal Dex but trainable. Original Recon as noted in Weapon Proficiencies had characters learn left-handed and right-handed weapon skills separately.
An 'ambidexterity' type ability obviously may affect non-combat use (writing a letter) as well as combat use. Potentially other sorts of multiple actions could be affected as well, e.g. casting a spell with one hand while attacking with the other.
Notes:
See also Initiative for notes on combining TWF with high initiative rolls granting multiple attacks.
See also the post on Monsters for discussion of multiple natural weapons.
In games where # attacks is based off DEX, TWF could be treated as a bonus to DEX - though there could be problems with breakpoints where some characters get an extra attack dual-wielding and others with a higher score don't.
Defense action rules also interact with TWF - e.g. if each attack requires an action to block it can 'overwhelm' defense (cf. DeadEarth). T&T sort of models this as well.
In the common 'extra attack but both weapons have less damage' version, TWF characters will consider extra attacks or rerolls less valuable that 'great weapon characters', and suffer or benefit more from per-attack damage adjustments (damage reduction or vulnerability, if non-proportional, as well as ability modifiers to damage and damage bonuses for a particular good attack roll)..

Quote from: Flashfire07;908010...
Could you please explain what you mean by low grain? I'm unfamiliar with the term sadly.

"Grain" refers to the range of possible values, and the finest difference between things your system can distinguish. 1d10 ranges from 1-10, and the increments are all 10%. I'm used to 3d6, where the values range from 3-18 and more importantly, the distribution is a bell curve with increments between values varying from 12.5% to 0.46%. That's important because it allows various fine points to be represented. One thing is that the most-certain and most-unlikely events can be small, whereas if you're only rolling 1d10, the most unlikely result will happen at least 0% or 10% of the time, and the least-unlikely result will happen 90% or 100% of the time. Grain also applies to the range of possible values you can give things, such as damage and armor values. The number of distinct values that you can assign is the range of things you can distinguish from each other, unless there are other ways to distinguish them. There are in your system also other effects of weapons, but as far as damage goes, you've so far got dagger at +1 and longspear at +2, where long sword and axe seem identical in damage and reach. Unless there's a functional difference, a player like me starts to get nonplussed that an axe and a sword are functionally the same, since I like to play games about swords and axes where there is some gameplay distinction between them, or else I stop relating to it as a game about swords and axes.

Notice though that by using an opposed roll for attack vs. defense, you actually have increased the grain from 1d10 to 1d10 - 1d10, there the range is -9 to +9 and the exteme values actually have an increment of 1% rather than 10%, which I would say is much more interesting than 1d10. You should at least be aware of the difference when considering eliminating the defense roll. Also note that converting it to 1d20 is not the same - the distribution has flat 5% increments between values, which is partly why there is a popular joke meme about D20 D&D players rolling 1's and 20's and having the GM interpret it as an amazing success or catastrophic failure - because if you play a badly-considered D20 design and make 1 and 20 automatic crit hit/fail, then you get extreme results for everyone a wacky 10% of the time.

So that's grain. 1d10 is very low-grain IMO, but 1d10 vs 1d10 is much better. Another option is "open-ended" or "exploding" die rolls, where for example rolling some value means you actually roll again and add that roll, possibly even rolling a third time and adding that. You have to work out the math and understand it to get intentional results, but it can lead to more control over a wider range of possible probabilities.

QuoteIn regards to injury levels I have two possible solutions. Firstly getting rid of it all together, this makes combat much more dangerous and really gives monsters a huge advantage but if you're a behemoth of claws, fangs and fury that's understandable. This means that if you get take four hits with a basic weapon you're incapacitated. This makes armour much more important and avoiding hits even more so. I am a big fan of injury systems however so might include it in a supplement later down the line.

I'm a big fan of injury systems too, but I like them to seem accurate to me. If a monster or guy with a battleaxe or even a really nasty dagger really nails someone, I want there to be a chance that can take a human out of combat, and not have it be "I'm a PC so you have to nail me at least 4 times", because that doesn't match my understanding of how injury works. Especially if it applies to all PCs, even the unarmored non-fighter types. One idea that I feel can work well is to make it so wound severity is about how extreme the level of attack success/effect is on a single wound, rather than a cumulative total. So for example, the wound level and its effect is based on the most extreme wound inflicted, and/or is applied based on the number of wound inflicted at that level. There could still be a pile of endurance points that get worn down for cumulative hits, but something like the system you have, with just one pile of endurance hitpoints (which could be a larger number than you have) after which someone collapses when it reaches 0. However each specific wound also has effects based on how severe the hit was. Maybe give the victim a penalty equal to half the damage taken last turn (round up), with a permanent penalty equal to 1/3 the damage of the wound (round down). So if you get hit for 1 or 2, no lasting effect, but 3-5 gives a -1, 6-9 a -2. Or more elaborate, or whatever.

(Of course, this is mainly just what I'd find most likable - tastes vary - many players LIKE grindy predictable combat where hitpoints are a major measure of how formidable someone is; personally it seems to me that being able to absorb damage isn't a metaphor that makes sense to me, even if HP fans like to think of it as representing dodging - in reality people don't have a punch card of successful dodges they can rely on that gets used up, and the whole healing situation with abstract hitpoints is also an immersion-breaker for me).

QuoteWeapon damage boost might be taken out but I'm not so sure, it gives characters a good chance to inflict damage and is more of a narrative effect than a pure realism one. I used to have a weapon durability system but it was a nightmare in bookkeeping, I'll probably whack it in a supplement for those who want more complicated and detailed combat later down the track. However you can simply justify it as being more... your sword bends while delivering a more powerful blow, I may cut this one from the core book anyhow as it feels slightly unbalanced.

The unrealistic part isn't needed, though. You already have the concentrated attack and defense. If you want another level of exertion that has a lasting penalty, that's cool, but why make it something that doesn't map to reality? GURPS for example has extra effort rules that result in a bit of fatigue or injury (i.e. a hitpoint cost, not less sensical equipment damage). Another option that might make sense for weapons and shields is concentrated defense that exposes the weapon to attack. I.e. you get a further bonus to defense, but the weapon or shield used is vulnerable to the opponent choosing the attack the weapon or shield at an advantage rather than going for your body. An added chance of having your weapon or shield damaged or disarmed by an actual enemy action seems much more like reality than a voluntary automatic damage done by yourself (especially in the case of armor - I keep imagining Buggs Bunny ducking his head into a breastplate like a turtle). Especially if the opponent's equipment makes a difference. I.e. interposing your shield is more likely to damage or twist your shield out of position if the enemy has something like a mace or axe than if the enemy has a spear or dagger, though they might give the dagger person an option to grab your shield, or the spear person a chance to pull back to his optimal reach.

QuoteReach is... well to be honest I came up with a more workable solution because I was having such difficulty writing it out. Under the changed system a weapon has reach Long, Medium or Short. Long reach weapons grant a +1 to defend against Medium and a +2 against Short, if a character make a successful Athletics or Acrobatics or Weaponry roll instead of an attack they may move in to more advantagous reach. Combat begins at the highest Reach amongst the combatants... er... that is to say that if you have a longsword at reach Medium and you face an attacker with a spear at reach Long the fight starts at Long, if they had a dagger with reach Short combat would start at reach Medium. Does that make sense? I'm not sure how well I'm explaining this.

That makes sense... though I am used to playing on hex maps where you get two dimensions and multiple figures, so I'm also thinking about how the system only seems to be oriented for one-on-one fights rather than melees with multiple figures, terrain, ranged attacks, etc.

QuoteCombat order is determined by d10+Reflex rating. I forgot to include that before, thank you for pointing that out

As for the armour rule... well that actually reflects things like narrowly avoiding an attack but having the straps cut, a dent knocked into the shoulder or some other sort of damage to the structure. Yeah it's more narrative than realistic but it allows character to survive a lot longer at the price of damaging your equipment and armour. Which kinda becomes more important with the increased lethality from the HP changes.

The problem isn't that armor couldn't be degraded (although I think it would be quite unlikely), nor that there be some way to do an all-out defense, but that the player is given voluntary control over something that has a certain chance of having what seems like in reality would be a chance event and almost never an intentional one. It makes players think "should I choose to have my straps cut, to defend myself more this turn", which seems to me very not like the situation it is trying to represent. That's where the clash between specific detail and abstract game mechanics stands out. Why not have an "avoid damage at all costs" option that reflects something that makes more sense? Like "run away" (no attacks for two turns, roll a contest or relevant values to evade attack and set reach to maximum, and get a bonus to your defense = speed - encumbrance), or "stand and protect self" (no attacks and -2 to attack next turn, and +6 to defense this turn, enemies get to freely choose to extend reach, or something).

QuoteWeapons are rated from damage 1-5, unarmed strikes are damage 0. Improvised weapons are not something I thought about but I've come up wit a quick set of rules. Decide upon the damage a weapon should have, usually 1-3 depending on size and construction of the weapon. Then decide on the Durability, Weak, Average, Tough. Weak weapons break after one hit, average break on two and Tough break after three. Does that sound good or is it too much bookkeeping or irritating or...?

For the damage weapons can do, 1-3 seems like a small range to me. If you care enough about differences between weapons to have reach ratings, maybe more possible values would be good. If a sword is 3, wouldn't a two-handed battleaxe, halberd, or two-handed sword rate at least a 4? How about a charging cavalry lance? Also having a dagger seems like it should make someone far more damaging than an unarmed non-kareteka than +1, no?

Consider that the amount of the numeric values correspond to their weight in play. The weight of your die roll is currently -9 to +9 from average, or possibly a 19-point swing, though thanks to the bell curve, the extremes are rare.

Another thing to be aware of, is that combining all the factors in an attack into one addition/subtraction puts them all on the same axis, so they combine directly, since they are not independent chances for anything, not even the damage. Unless I'm forgetting something, aside from the reach consideration, players can pre-compute their total attack and defense values, and just roll (2d10 - 11 + attack - defense) to get damage. This speeds play but makes different types of things have the same type of effect. e.g. +1 to attack skill has an identical effect to +1 to weapon damage, and +1 to defense skill has an identical effect to +1 to armor rating. Makes it simple, but also impossible to have a qualitative difference between evasion and armor. Many games have that issue or similar though, and you do have the two-trait equipment to make it a little more meaningful, which is cool.

For damage to weapons, I prefer it not to be a regular occurrence that commonly get tracked. I prefer uncommon effects that happen sometimes. So most weapons are just OK, and some weapons may get damaged or broken sometimes. Some weapons are just harder to break than others, also depending on what the weapon is.

QuoteThe intention is to have a game that combines verisimilitude and speed of play. It needs to have plausibility but sacrifices are being made to make the game easy to play.

Ok, but please question whether some sacrifices are necessary or even actually do speed/ease play, and if there are alternatives that sacrifice much less.

QuoteThere are in your system also other effects of weapons, but as far as damage goes, you've so far got dagger at +1 and longspear at +2, where long sword and axe seem identical in damage and reach. Unless there's a functional difference, a player like me starts to get nonplussed that an axe and a sword are functionally the same, since I like to play games about swords and axes where there is some gameplay distinction between them, or else I stop relating to it as a game about swords and axes.

Well at the moment in my system there really isn't much difference between axes and swords. However in my previous version weapons dealt differing damage types. So an axe would deal 3 cutting (4 vs shields) and a longsword would deal 3 slashing or stabbing damage depending on how you use it. This was put aside because it made things a bit messy it terms of armour, but I'll put that in the advanced combat addon.

QuoteNotice though that by using an opposed roll for attack vs. defense, you actually have increased the grain from 1d10 to 1d10 - 1d10, there the range is -9 to +9 and the exteme values actually have an increment of 1% rather than 10%, which I would say is much more interesting than 1d10. You should at least be aware of the difference when considering eliminating the defense roll. Also note that converting it to 1d20 is not the same - the distribution has flat 5% increments between values, which is partly why there is a popular joke meme about D20 D&D players rolling 1's and 20's and having the GM interpret it as an amazing success or catastrophic failure - because if you play a badly-considered D20 design and make 1 and 20 automatic crit hit/fail, then you get extreme results for everyone a wacky 10% of the time.

Hmmm... those numbers seem fine by me, I like combat to be a bit swingy and unpredictable in play but easy enough to understand mechanically speaking.

QuoteI'm a big fan of injury systems too, but I like them to seem accurate to me. If a monster or guy with a battleaxe or even a really nasty dagger really nails someone, I want there to be a chance that can take a human out of combat, and not have it be "I'm a PC so you have to nail me at least 4 times", because that doesn't match my understanding of how injury works. Especially if it applies to all PCs, even the unarmored non-fighter types. One idea that I feel can work well is to make it so wound severity is about how extreme the level of attack success/effect is on a single wound, rather than a cumulative total. So for example, the wound level and its effect is based on the most extreme wound inflicted, and/or is applied based on the number of wound inflicted at that level. There could still be a pile of endurance points that get worn down for cumulative hits, but something like the system you have, with just one pile of endurance hitpoints (which could be a larger number than you have) after which someone collapses when it reaches 0. However each specific wound also has effects based on how severe the hit was. Maybe give the victim a penalty equal to half the damage taken last turn (round up), with a permanent penalty equal to 1/3 the damage of the wound (round down). So if you get hit for 1 or 2, no lasting effect, but 3-5 gives a -1, 6-9 a -2. Or more elaborate, or whatever.

Well the four 'lives' kinda thing was because in your average fight a PC will take quite a lot of damage, and adventuring is a combat heavy profession so they'll likely be fighting more than once or twice per day. Characters only recover a small amount of HP (average 2) per day so if you took say three injury levels in the system as written you'd need to recover 12+6+6+6 HP. So for a character with 2 Stamina that'd take them about 15 days. It's hard to kill a character but easy to damage or maim them in this system. So a character who gets hacked up enough to take multiple injury levels is going to have a hard time later on down the track.

Quote(Of course, this is mainly just what I'd find most likable - tastes vary - many players LIKE grindy predictable combat where hitpoints are a major measure of how formidable someone is; personally it seems to me that being able to absorb damage isn't a metaphor that makes sense to me, even if HP fans like to think of it as representing dodging - in reality people don't have a punch card of successful dodges they can rely on that gets used up, and the whole healing situation with abstract hitpoints is also an immersion-breaker for me).

HP in this system represents the body taking actual damage from an attack, so if you took 3HP worth of damage you'd be losing about a quarter of your total HP and taking a nasty hit. This might mean bruising, a large but shallow cut or whatever other description the GM comes up with.

QuoteI'm also thinking about how the system only seems to be oriented for one-on-one fights rather than melees with multiple figures, terrain, ranged attacks, etc.

Well the system does support ganging up on one target with the Multiple Attackers rule, terrain provides a situational bonus of +1-5 or - 1-5 depending on the exact conditions and ranged attacks are functionally the same as other attacks as outlined in my first post. Unless you meant something different to that?

QuoteFor the damage weapons can do, 1-3 seems like a small range to me. If you care enough about differences between weapons to have reach ratings, maybe more possible values would be good. If a sword is 3, wouldn't a two-handed battleaxe, halberd, or two-handed sword rate at least a 4? How about a charging cavalry lance? Also having a dagger seems like it should make someone far more damaging than an unarmed non-kareteka than +1, no?

Improvised weapons are by nature not quite as effective as an actual manufactured one, hitting soeone with a mug or big stick isn't quite the same as a dagger or sword but I'll have a poke around with improvised weapons anyhow. Two-handed weapons do deal higher damage, the weapons provided as example here aren't the sum of the options available in the final product but are more to see how the rules work, I've got quite a few other options ready to go but didn't think it was important to put it up, I can provide more examples if you'd like though.

QuoteFor damage to weapons, I prefer it not to be a regular occurrence that commonly get tracked. I prefer uncommon effects that happen sometimes. So most weapons are just OK, and some weapons may get damaged or broken sometimes. Some weapons are just harder to break than others, also depending on what the weapon is.

Yeah I'm removing the option to damage your equipment from the core rulebook, I'll slap it into the combat supplement I keep mentioning

Quote from: Skarg;908089"Grain" refers to the range of possible values, and the finest difference between things your system can distinguish. 1d10 ranges from 1-10, and the increments are all 10%. I'm used to 3d6, where the values range from 3-18 and more importantly, the distribution is a bell curve with increments between values varying from 12.5% to 0.46%

It's funny, because I was thinking the exact same thing... until you brought up the bell curve distribution. The range of possibilities on 3d6 that fall within 1 standard deviation is really no different from d10. It's about 6 possible points of differentiation. Which I agree is far too coarse for my liking.

My thought was to just double everything and use a d20. Then you've got more than twice as many points of differentiation within one standard deviation.

Quote from: Flashfire07;908483...
 Hmmm... those numbers seem fine by me, I like combat to be a bit swingy and unpredictable in play but easy enough to understand mechanically speaking.

I like swingy & unpredictable too, but I like the chances to have something to do with the characters and the situation. If you just take 1d20 and have a 1 be a crit fail and a 20 be a crit hit, then Muhammad Ali is equally likely to do something brilliant or inept as Doofus the Drunken is.

QuoteWell the four 'lives' kinda thing was because in your average fight a PC will take quite a lot of damage, and adventuring is a combat heavy profession so they'll likely be fighting more than once or twice per day. Characters only recover a small amount of HP (average 2) per day so if you took say three injury levels in the system as written you'd need to recover 12+6+6+6 HP. So for a character with 2 Stamina that'd take them about 15 days. It's hard to kill a character but easy to damage or maim them in this system. So a character who gets hacked up enough to take multiple injury levels is going to have a hard time later on down the track.

Unless your combat system is one of the rare ones where you can actually do things so that you aren't inevitably going to get wounded in every fight.

Quote... Well the system does support ganging up on one target with the Multiple Attackers rule, terrain provides a situational bonus of +1-5 or - 1-5 depending on the exact conditions and ranged attacks are functionally the same as other attacks as outlined in my first post. Unless you meant something different to that?

I'm used to playing on maps where the location and facing and reach and terrain and so on determine who can attack whom in what circumstances. So if there is no map, I wonder what will replace those causes, and whether I am going to need to track everyone's reach versus everyone else without a map, and whether there may be situations that happen that could never happen in actual geometry, and what the situation is going to be like for ganging up and avoiding getting ganged up on. With a map, the main thing to do in combat can be to figure out how to move so as to gain the advantage in terms of who gets attacked decisively or not. So with no map, I wonder what's going to take the place of that and what the tactics (or at least the cause & effect) will be like.

QuoteImprovised weapons are by nature not quite as effective as an actual manufactured one, hitting soeone with a mug or big stick isn't quite the same as a dagger or sword but I'll have a poke around with improvised weapons anyhow. Two-handed weapons do deal higher damage, the weapons provided as example here aren't the sum of the options available in the final product but are more to see how the rules work, I've got quite a few other options ready to go but didn't think it was important to put it up, I can provide more examples if you'd like though.
...

I was just trying to prompt you to consider the numbers you had plugged in, so that you get effects you want. How does the typical swing of random numbers compare to the typical range of skill values, compared to the range of effects of weapon reach, of armor, and of damage values? Does that reflect the relative effects you want? How much of a role should those things compare to each other? The numbers you assign to those values are like how much effect you think they should have on outcome, especially if you are just adding them up and subtracting to get the damage amount.

Maximums:
Maximum effect of luck: 18
Maximum effect of injury: 5
Max armor difference (naked vs plate + heavy shield): ~7
Max weapon damage difference (unarmed vs heavy weapon): ~4
Max reach penalty: ~4
Agressive/Defensive: 3
Skill: Not sure - your examples had characters at equal skill, maybe ~4?

Typical:
Typical effect of luck: +/- 4, = 8
Typical injury difference: 0-1
Typical armor difference: 0-3
Typical weapon damage difference: 0-1
Typical weapon reach difference: 0-1
Typical skill difference: 0-3?

So my expectation is results will be fairly unpredictable, that unarmored people will suffer, and that it will be hard to avoid taking damage while defeating someone, unless you have strong equipment and a good skill advantage, and/or you outnumber and gang up, or shoot the enemies with ranged weapons. I tend to think you might want to increase the difference between unarmed, improvised, dagger and heavier melee weapons, to help represent (what I at least perceive as) the major advantage of superior equipment type. I.e. I might have:

Unarmed/unskilled: -4
Unarmed/competent: -2
Knife/improvised: -1
Dagger: 0
Light melee weapons (hatchet, shortsword): +2
Medium melee weapons: +3
Heavy melee weapons: +4
Very heavy melee weapons: +5-6

or something.

Quote from: Skarg;908654I like swingy & unpredictable too, but I like the chances to have something to do with the characters and the situation. If you just take 1d20 and have a 1 be a crit fail and a 20 be a crit hit, then Muhammad Ali is equally likely to do something brilliant or inept as Doofus the Drunken is.

I don't see any mention of crits. It's simply one MoS per point exceeding skill number. Even though Ali's personal best is equally likely as Doofus's, I'd imagine Ali would have a much higher MoS from the same roll compared to Doofus. So I'm really not seeing where this point is applicable at all to this system. As I read it, Ali's "crit" may very well be 8 MoS while Doofis's crit is lucky to get even 1.

I find it interesting how often this comes up, almost as if scripted, especially in light of, say, 3E which introduced a confirming roll for crits which handles that simply enough. I rarely ever play games with a "bell curve" core mechanic, or any other curve for that matter, and I have never encountered the problem you cite, except maybe back when I played CyberPunk run by a mediocre GM.

Quote from: Flashfire07;907839Hey all, lately I've been hammering away at a system for a fantasy RPG. The system is designed to be quick to play, easy to understand and highly lethal if you're not careful. So with those in mind I've placed the entire combat system so far here for people to look over and provide feedback regarding  balance, ease of play and general feedback overall. I'm particularly interested in feedback on the two-weapon fighting rules, equipment damage and reach rules.

Well, as far back as old school D&D, we've had combat systems that are quick to play, easy to understand, and highly lethal if you're not careful. So what in particular do you hope to accomplish with your two-weapon fighting rules, or what are you looking to improve on over the tried-and-true ways that are already out there? Or to even take a step back from that, what was your inspiration for this combat system in general? Is it just something scrapped together to fill the void of an otherwise complete roleplaying system? Or is this your starting point to the game?

Quote from: Lunamancer;908667I don't see any mention of crits. It's simply one MoS per point exceeding skill number. Even though Ali's personal best is equally likely as Doofus's, I'd imagine Ali would have a much higher MoS from the same roll compared to Doofus. So I'm really not seeing where this point is applicable at all to this system. As I read it, Ali's "crit" may very well be 8 MoS while Doofis's crit is lucky to get even 1.

I find it interesting how often this comes up, almost as if scripted, especially in light of, say, 3E which introduced a confirming roll for crits which handles that simply enough. I rarely ever play games with a "bell curve" core mechanic, or any other curve for that matter, and I have never encountered the problem you cite, except maybe back when I played CyberPunk run by a mediocre GM.

I was explaining the concept and the math, not saying this nor any particular system has crude crits like that - I was referencing the joke memes. However there certainly are games that do have the min and max rolls be auto-crits or auto-hit/miss. In computer games in particular, I've often found myself having to explain this point of math do game devs using e.g. a flat 1d10 and not noticing the issue.

Of course, as soon as you add a second die, like a "confirming roll for crits", it's no longer a flat chance.

QuoteMy thought was to just double everything and use a d20. Then you've got more than twice as many points of differentiation within one standard deviation.

There's actually a reason I'm not using a D20 for this. I don't want people to go in expecting to play this like D&D. There are already a great number of very well done D&D clones out there but I'm not really attempting to make one myself. I haven't played the old D&D however so this might be an accidental retroclone.

QuoteUnless your combat system is one of the rare ones where you can actually do things so that you aren't inevitably going to get wounded in every fight.

Aside from fighting defensively, wearing good armour and maxing out Dodge combat is very dangerous. If I were to go out and get into a swordfight I expect I'd be coming away with at least a minor injury or two. Unless I severely outclass my opponent that is, and strike him from ambush after poisoning him and shooting him with an arrow or two. Do I need to work the numbers a bit more to allow characters to escape unscathed when facing an equal opponent or is the lethality ok as it is?

QuoteI'm used to playing on maps where the location and facing and reach and terrain and so on determine who can attack whom in what circumstances. So if there is no map, I wonder what will replace those causes, and whether I am going to need to track everyone's reach versus everyone else without a map, and whether there may be situations that happen that could never happen in actual geometry, and what the situation is going to be like for ganging up and avoiding getting ganged up on. With a map, the main thing to do in combat can be to figure out how to move so as to gain the advantage in terms of who gets attacked decisively or not. So with no map, I wonder what's going to take the place of that and what the tactics (or at least the cause & effect) will be like.

Ah. Yeah this system is a bit more narrative based than maps and miniatures focused. Basically yeah the GM is gonna have to track the reach of every combatant in relation to every other. It might help to break each combat into multiple smaller one on one fights if it would help with tracking. As for terrain advantage well that'd be slightly more narrative, I can put in rules for movement distance if it'd make things easier for you. Like a character can move a number of meters equal to Reflex+Strength each round and still perform other actions. They can double this if they do nothing but move.

QuoteSo my expectation is results will be fairly unpredictable, that unarmored people will suffer, and that it will be hard to avoid taking damage while defeating someone, unless you have strong equipment and a good skill advantage, and/or you outnumber and gang up, or shoot the enemies with ranged weapons. I tend to think you might want to increase the difference between unarmed, improvised, dagger and heavier melee weapons, to help represent (what I at least perceive as) the major advantage of superior equipment type.

It does seem like it's a system that strongly discourages combat due to the lethality and risk involved. Which I kinda like. I''m not entirely sure I need to re-work damage as it is because a warrior in plate mail armed with a greatsword is going to be a much harder fight than a peasant with a rock. Would it work better if I had a damage system like this: Base damage of an attack is d6+MoS+Weapon damage rating. Small weapons (daggers, hatchets, etc) add +1, medium (longsword, shortspear, battleaxe) add +2 and large (Greatsword, war axe, halberd) add +3. I could keep the damage rating as 1-25. This option means base damage is 3+Weapon damage+MoS. Assuming a skill rating of 3 that means a character with a longsword is set to deal about 9 or 8 damage depending on which option would be used there. So HP would probably be set at a base of... 18+(Stamx3)... Ouch I gave myself a headache there and didn't really adress the equipment issue grrr.

QuoteWell, as far back as old school D&D, we've had combat systems that are quick to play, easy to understand, and highly lethal if you're not careful. So what in particular do you hope to accomplish with your two-weapon fighting rules, or what are you looking to improve on over the tried-and-true ways that are already out there? Or to even take a step back from that, what was your inspiration for this combat system in general? Is it just something scrapped together to fill the void of an otherwise complete roleplaying system? Or is this your starting point to the game?

With the two weapon fighting rule I was attempting to both make it simple and effective in combat without either nerfing it or making it overpowered. I'm trying toa void any 'optimal' combat styles but am pretty sure I didn't succeed there The game as a whole is intended to replicate combat seen in the Witcher, Game of Thrones, Mount and Blade and Darkest Dungeon. It's designed to be a brutal, quick and simple system that lets you get into the action fast and ensures that combat isn't treated lightly or entered without a plan and preperation. I also wanted to include a variety of tactical options so combat isn't just "I attack until he falls over". So... this is my attempt to make a fully independent system that replicates the tone and style I'm aiming for.

Quote from: Flashfire07;908873There's actually a reason I'm not using a D20 for this. I don't want people to go in expecting to play this like D&D. There are already a great number of very well done D&D clones out there but I'm not really attempting to make one myself. I haven't played the old D&D however so this might be an accidental retroclone.

So, triple everything and use d30, lol

QuoteWith the two weapon fighting rule I was attempting to both make it simple and effective in combat without either nerfing it or making it overpowered. I'm trying toa void any 'optimal' combat styles but am pretty sure I didn't succeed there The game as a whole is intended to replicate combat seen in the Witcher, Game of Thrones, Mount and Blade and Darkest Dungeon. It's designed to be a brutal, quick and simple system that lets you get into the action fast and ensures that combat isn't treated lightly or entered without a plan and preperation. I also wanted to include a variety of tactical options so combat isn't just "I attack until he falls over". So... this is my attempt to make a fully independent system that replicates the tone and style I'm aiming for.

That's understandable. That's what I aim for as well.

One way I see this achieved in some RPGs I play, and I guess this would be a "tried and true" way is to actually allow for separate attacks for each weapon and apply a penalty to each. Now a lot of CRPGers like to boil this down to "damage per second," and if that's your measure, you're not going to find your goal achievable. It's pretty simple. For any given skill set, the dps is either going to be greater or less than ordinary attacks for two weapon attacks. Allow me to suggest that "DPS" isn't really what counts.

Imagine, if you did 40 damage in one attack against an NPC (13 hp). The best you can do is kill the NPC. The excess damage is essentially wasted. Whereas if you did two attacks for 15 damage each, you could potentially kill two NPCs, which is better than just one. Even though the total damage you dish is less than the 40 you could have done from a single attack. Against a single tough monster with, say, 39 hit points (triple that of an average NPC), you can take him down in one round with a single attack, while it takes a round and a half with the two attacks. So you can begin to see that neither is strictly optimal. It depends on the situation, and it can depend on information that the player just doesn't have.

So something like that fits the bill. Just be aware, there are four different stat ranges to consider. At the lowest end, the penalty might be so hefty it's difficult to imagine many instances where using two weapons would ever be viable. The second range is like what I described above, where some instances two weapon fighting is better, some one attack is better. A third range is where either one works; suppose in the example above, the minor NPCs had 20 health instead of 13, and the big bad monster had 30 instead of 40--then no matter what you do, it takes a full round to dispatch each enemy. The fourth range is for those so highly skilled the penalties for two-weapon fighting are not very significant, and so it's difficult to imagine many instances where using two weapons isn't the clearly optimal strategy.

Me, personally. I'm happy having all four of the ranges as possible within the system. By making two weapon fighting always inferior for low skill levels, always superior for extremely high skill levels, it emphasizes that the nature of the task itself is one dependent upon high skill. But also favorable sit mods can move someone from the first range to the second, while disfavorable sit mods can move someone from the fourth range to the third. So to me, it's all good.

But if you don't like the extremes? You can simply design the system so that bare minimal skills are always above the first range, and max out below the fourth range. Also, it doesn't have to come straight down to killing NPCs. Since your system is dependent on MoS--rolls above and beyond the target number--a penalty applied to two-weapon fighting not only reduces the hit probability, but also the damage. So you should find it a lot easier to design the system to fit what you want.