A common feature of combat systems is accepting a lower chance to hit in order to do more damage. I'm looking at this in particular in Savage Worlds, but it features in a lot of systems. In Savage Worlds, Called Shot to head or vitals can bypass armor and add to damage. In D&D3, Power Attack has a similar logic but more abstract.

The problem I have is that this is a tricky optimization problem, and players will often lower their average damage by taking the penalty. In general, I want the game to reward smart play, but this choice isn't interesting to me because it's fiddly math rather than bigger picture thinking.

I like the idea of accurate hits doing more damage, by striking at vital areas and such - so in Savage Worlds, I'd favor more raises in the hit roll adding more to damage. But there isn't a penalty to select. Instead, more accurate hit always gets a smaller bonus to damage.

In general, I want players to be able to decide on the best move by in-game logic rather than system mastery. Any thoughts on this or other maneuvers?

Quote from: jhkim on June 14, 2024, 01:45:05 PMIn general, I want players to be able to decide on the best move by in-game logic rather than system mastery. Any thoughts on this or other maneuvers?

The furthest I got is tying weak spot attacks to some kind of lore. But when I come up with specifics, I just wind up thinking that called shots work better in video games than TTRPGs.
You're welcome for this totally unhelpful reply.

I thought about this quite a bit for my current project and concluded that striking with a weapon in slightly different ways to produce moderate differences in damage was more trouble than it was worth, but I still wanted to do something because melee's "I hit him with my sword" every round is pretty boring.  Instead I came up with a list of 30 or so "combat maneuvers" like "furious attack" (strong, but limits defense), "light attack" (easy and minimal damage, but breaks momentum), knock down, drive back, disengage, trap weapon, and so on.  None of the maneuvers are complicated enough to slow play, and they're generally situational.  Still testing them out, but I'm hoping they add some depth to melee without slowing things down too much.

Neat, keep us posted on the progress of that project.

I quite like the idea of spending margin of success to choose hit locations.  You don't even need to drop the modifier option.  Just allow that much margin to be used to pick a location after the roll.  It's good if you have a few other options to juggle like extra damage, disarms, and other special effects.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 14, 2024, 02:18:21 PMI thought about this quite a bit for my current project and concluded that striking with a weapon in slightly different ways to produce moderate differences in damage was more trouble than it was worth, but I still wanted to do something because melee's "I hit him with my sword" every round is pretty boring.  Instead I came up with a list of 30 or so "combat maneuvers" like "furious attack" (strong, but limits defense), "light attack" (easy and minimal damage, but breaks momentum), knock down, drive back, disengage, trap weapon, and so on.  None of the maneuvers are complicated enough to slow play, and they're generally situational.  Still testing them out, but I'm hoping they add some depth to melee without slowing things down too much.

30 different maneuvers sounds like a lot to internalize. Most of my preferred games have around 5-15, with some exceptions.

Could you explain more about "light attack", for example? How would a player decide to use light attack instead of normal attack? I wonder about the optimization issue.

Quote from: jhkim on June 14, 2024, 04:42:43 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on June 14, 2024, 02:18:21 PMI thought about this quite a bit for my current project and concluded that striking with a weapon in slightly different ways to produce moderate differences in damage was more trouble than it was worth, but I still wanted to do something because melee's "I hit him with my sword" every round is pretty boring.  Instead I came up with a list of 30 or so "combat maneuvers" like "furious attack" (strong, but limits defense), "light attack" (easy and minimal damage, but breaks momentum), knock down, drive back, disengage, trap weapon, and so on.  None of the maneuvers are complicated enough to slow play, and they're generally situational.  Still testing them out, but I'm hoping they add some depth to melee without slowing things down too much.

30 different maneuvers sounds like a lot to internalize. Most of my preferred games have around 5-15, with some exceptions.

Could you explain more about "light attack", for example? How would a player decide to use light attack instead of normal attack? I wonder about the optimization issue.

Sure.  Just by way of information, there's about 15 melee actions, 10 grappling, and a few just for missiles and mounted combat.

Light attack has a couple of uses.  It only does one point of damage but it gets a big to-hit bonus.  (I'm putting this in D&D terms, the actual engine is different)  Probably the most important use is to counter momentum.  There's a mechanic where you get a +1 to momentum every round you make a successful attack, up to a limit, and it all goes away if you take damage or do not make a successful melee attack.  Momentum is added as a bonus to melee attacks.  If you get in a hit with light attack, your opponent's momentum goes away.  There are also certain extended actions that can be stopped or given a penalty if the character takes damage.  It's good for that too.

Like light attack, most of the actions are useful in particular circumstances.  What I'm hoping will happen is that melee types will usually have a couple of useful options each round.

I allow simple maneuvers in my OSR games - say, -4 to-hit and +4 to damage - but it rarely comes up.

For me, called shots are important when they make sense in-fiction, like trying to blind the cyclops or targeting an specific head of the chimera.

I have a tough time conceptually reconciling called shots with hit point.  In the case of the Cyclops, if you hit a called shot on his one eye, he's out of the fight.  Hit points already covers that situation.  If an orc gets a called shot on a PC's throat does he also get an instakill?  Hit points and called shots are very different ways of handling damage, and they don't work well together. 

I thought of a couple of ways to work this.  An example of the first would be that if the Cyclops loses his eye, he is 90%  incapacitated, so if after your successful called shot he's lost 90% of his hitpoints, then he's blinded.  A second way would be to assign hit points to body parts, with a random hit location unless a successful called shot is executed.  A third would be to say that if your called shot takes him down to zero hit points, then he's out of the fight in the specified manner.  All of these have issues, which could probably be worked through, but I haven't had any reason to try to do it.

Yeah, the big underlying problem with combat maneuvers and called shots in most RPGs is that players tend to gravitate towards whatever maximizes efficiency and reliability, because in a game decided by RNG the skill challenge is in setting the odds in your favor.

I think designers often fall into the trap of being so afraid to make their combat maneuvers better than the basic attack that they end up making them reliably worse, and so people don't use them. They really need to be better than the basic attack, at least in the right circumstances, and then if you want to impose a limitation on them it needs to come from somewhere else. A couple of potential alternatives to penalizing the attack roll:

--You could take advantage of SWADE's alternate damage system: So maybe a called shot is easier to "shake" an enemy with, but doesn't wound them, or vice versa. Or maybe instead of a wound (or a limitation to number of wounds caused), a called shot instead applies one of the effects on the injury table to the target.

--Instead of an option taken before rolling an attack, the called shot is an option that becomes available if the player gets a certain number of raises. That way they aren't taking the cost of a less efficient attack to go for it.

At their core, called shots are about applying narrative tags when the underlying system isn't meant to do that. An eye-shot to blind, a leg shot to slow someone's pace down, etc. Considering how many of these options there are, it's almost impossible to NOT go straight from underbuilt minimalism to a ten page glossary which makes player's eyes roll back into their skulls.

At the end of the day, I think the goal with a subsystem like this is for inexperienced players to not feel like they're missing out on too much, but for experienced players to occasionally go, "I know what to do here." That sounds to me like the best course of action is to intentionally overcost it.

My own game is a modern game; melee weapons offer very important DR buffs for tanks, but characters on the offensive are almost invariably armed with a firearm, and firearms mean players want to perform trick shots. So I've thought about this a fair amount.

By default, shooting a gun to hit a target the size of a human torso at 15 feet or less during combat requires 2 successes. Each additional success you spend on the action lets you shrink the target size by half or to ignore a penalty, like hitting a moving target or firing from a moving vehicle. Then to perform the Trick Shot, you have to forfeit a minimum amount of damage the GM sets.

So say a player wants to shoot a gun out of an enemy's hand. They are at normal range, but the gun is roughly one eighth the target area of a torso, so the player has to roll 3 extra successes to hit it. Then the player must forfeit enough damage to actually knock the weapon out of the enemy's hand, which I will say is 4 damage.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 17, 2024, 04:15:22 PMAt their core, called shots are about applying narrative tags when the underlying system isn't meant to do that. An eye-shot to blind, a leg shot to slow someone's pace down, etc. Considering how many of these options there are, it's almost impossible to NOT go straight from underbuilt minimalism to a ten page glossary which makes player's eyes roll back into their skulls.

At the end of the day, I think the goal with a subsystem like this is for inexperienced players to not feel like they're missing out on too much, but for experienced players to occasionally go, "I know what to do here." That sounds to me like the best course of action is to intentionally overcost it.

My own game is a modern game; melee weapons offer very important DR buffs for tanks, but characters on the offensive are almost invariably armed with a firearm, and firearms mean players want to perform trick shots. So I've thought about this a fair amount.

By default, shooting a gun to hit a target the size of a human torso at 15 feet or less during combat requires 2 successes. Each additional success you spend on the action lets you shrink the target size by half or to ignore a penalty, like hitting a moving target or firing from a moving vehicle. Then to perform the Trick Shot, you have to forfeit a minimum amount of damage the GM sets.

So say a player wants to shoot a gun out of an enemy's hand. They are at normal range, but the gun is roughly one eighth the target area of a torso, so the player has to roll 3 extra successes to hit it. Then the player must forfeit enough damage to actually knock the weapon out of the enemy's hand, which I will say is 4 damage.

I like your system.  If I were to go this direction I would be tempted to to focus more on the desired result.  Suppose I want to immobilize my opponent so I try to shoot him in the leg and hit.  Is that hit really going to immobilize him or will it just make him limp and slow him down?  If I hit him in the head is it a graze that will knock him out, a scalp wound where the blood impedes his vision?  Or is it an instakill?  So maybe I would say 3 successes on a leg shot to cause a limp, and 4 to immobilize, frex.  On the other hand, maybe there are too many possible results to be practical in a system.  Have you looked into this?

FWIW I just updated my OSR minimalist document, found in the link blow (free). Here is a bit:

Combat maneuvers. Combat maneuvers (tripping, shoving, disarming, etc.) can be
performed by any character. Make an attack against the target's HD+10. The target
does not get a save usually, and suffers no damage, only the effect of the maneuver.
The GM may rule that the target resisted the maneuver by exposing itself to damage,
thus taking maximum damage from the attacker (or double damage on a critical hit).

Combat maneuvers (II). If you have +4 AB or more, you can give yourself a -4 penalty
to get one of the following options: +4 damage.; +4 AC against a single foe for their
next turn (provided you have a weapon/shield that could reasonably parry the attack);
+4 AC to an adjacent ally (with proper equipment, as above); A second attack, also at -
4 (or -2 if you're carrying a secondary weapon); Cause your enemy some setback in
addition to normal damage (as combat maneuvers, but in this case the enemy can save
against paralysis to avoid).

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VxpFwpY9QStimbPI5Gnc3XXovJqPhNBg

I've ran various games in the past where I apply a negative modifier to attack for specific hit locations. A lot of the times it was for zombie games, where shooting them in the head dropped them. For something like that, it requires a length of time to aim as well, so if there's several zombies approaching it might open you up to attacks. There was definite trade off between aimed attacks and "spray and pray" tactics.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 17, 2024, 04:43:52 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 17, 2024, 04:15:22 PMAt their core, called shots are about applying narrative tags when the underlying system isn't meant to do that. An eye-shot to blind, a leg shot to slow someone's pace down, etc. Considering how many of these options there are, it's almost impossible to NOT go straight from underbuilt minimalism to a ten page glossary which makes player's eyes roll back into their skulls.

At the end of the day, I think the goal with a subsystem like this is for inexperienced players to not feel like they're missing out on too much, but for experienced players to occasionally go, "I know what to do here." That sounds to me like the best course of action is to intentionally overcost it.

My own game is a modern game; melee weapons offer very important DR buffs for tanks, but characters on the offensive are almost invariably armed with a firearm, and firearms mean players want to perform trick shots. So I've thought about this a fair amount.

By default, shooting a gun to hit a target the size of a human torso at 15 feet or less during combat requires 2 successes. Each additional success you spend on the action lets you shrink the target size by half or to ignore a penalty, like hitting a moving target or firing from a moving vehicle. Then to perform the Trick Shot, you have to forfeit a minimum amount of damage the GM sets.

So say a player wants to shoot a gun out of an enemy's hand. They are at normal range, but the gun is roughly one eighth the target area of a torso, so the player has to roll 3 extra successes to hit it. Then the player must forfeit enough damage to actually knock the weapon out of the enemy's hand, which I will say is 4 damage.

I like your system.  If I were to go this direction I would be tempted to to focus more on the desired result.  Suppose I want to immobilize my opponent so I try to shoot him in the leg and hit.  Is that hit really going to immobilize him or will it just make him limp and slow him down?  If I hit him in the head is it a graze that will knock him out, a scalp wound where the blood impedes his vision?  Or is it an instakill?  So maybe I would say 3 successes on a leg shot to cause a limp, and 4 to immobilize, frex.  On the other hand, maybe there are too many possible results to be practical in a system.  Have you looked into this?

I have.

First, for context, I am pretty sure that I am going to drop pace and movement rules outright in favor of pure theater of the mind. Fantasy games can like minis, but they feel redundant in a modern setting. Everyone except the tank is using a ranged weapon, and the tank is probably packing one as a backup, the monsters are at minimum the size of a large dog and if you were to pace them they'd have movements of 60+ feet per turn, and the maps tend to be indoor spaces like an office or mall or museum where the range is 30 feet or less for practically the entire engagement. There's no point messing with minis and range tokens because you are always in range. I am thinking of dropping the idea of range entirely in favor of the GM turning melee weapons off.

Basically, things affecting movement will do virtually nothing.

That said, there are a variety of status effects a trick shot could inflict. Stun, Prone, and Paralysis come to mind. These are useful control abilities because they deny the enemy action economy, but players needing these effects are supposed to be using tranq guns instead of called shots. I can see value in a party being able to improvise without a tranq gun for an encounter or two, but there should be a pretty strong power disparity between improvising the effect with a handgun and the actual weapon intended to do this stuff.