Yeah, that's right. No 'missing'.

The only reason that you roll is to see if you've caused considerable hurt.

In games with an abstract health statistic, hit points, endurance, call it what you will, there is really no need to specify between a hit and a miss in a melee situation. The roll itself is normally abstract and suggests many blows attempted rather than one attempt that hits or misses.

I say - get into melee combat and you get hurt.

Take a short sword. Say it does 3d4 damage on a 'hit'. On a 'miss' is does 2 points of damage.

Something like that might well have a measurable impact on the game and the players reaction to combat and dangerous situations.

I wonder what sort of genre it is best suited to? Gangland or medieval war springs to mind.

Fight & you get hurt.

If there are any options in combat, the effect will be that every PC does an all-out attack every round, since parrying and dodging leads to them being slowly whittled down anyway.

Depressing.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;304441If there are any options in combat, the effect will be that every PC does an all-out attack every round, since parrying and dodging leads to them being slowly whittled down anyway.

Depressing.

I think that if you have something like stances as combat options that affect both the roll and the damage and get the interaction right it might work as long as everyone realises that when you get into combat, you get hurt. Which is a depressing truth.

What about armors? Do they make you harder to hit, or do they reduce damage?

This makes sense to me. It would be nice though if the damage mechanic included 0 damage as possible outcome.

In FUDGE (and by extention FATE and SotC) the 'to hit' and damage are all incorporated in the same roll. Basically you damage is you margin of success + a fixed amount given by the weapon. It's nice because if you roll really well for attack you automatically get good damage, if only just hit your damage is equally modest. Also, it means one less roll to make, which multiplied by numnber of players and rounds of combat is pretty significant.

Tunnels and Trolls has a combined damage and attack roll. It uses a simultaneous combat model in which all the combined attack roll of one side is compared to the combined attack of the other side (which could be the entire party vs the entire grould of monsters) and the difference between the two attack rolls is the damage suffered by the losing party. Cute as this idea is I found this made for very one-sided fights.

Quote from: One Horse Town;304442when you get into combat, you get hurt. Which is a depressing truth.

I don't think it's true.

There are many modern examples of fights with fist or firearm which end in the death or serious injury of one, and the other suffering nothing worse than sweating and guilt.

It may have been different with melee weapons in earlier times, but I don't see why.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;304447I don't think it's true.

There are many modern examples of fights with fist or firearm which end in the death or serious injury of one, and the other suffering nothing worse than sweating and guilt.

It may have been different with melee weapons in earlier times, but I don't see why.

Sure. This is where the abstract i mentioned earlier comes in. If health, hits, endurance whatever are an abstract grab-bag of luck, hardness, exhaustion etc, then it still simulates this in an abstract fashion. The guy sweating suffered a few hits of damage, whilst he mullered the other guy.

It may be abstract, but I've yet to meet a player who really feels that during play. When you say, "you've lost 4 hit points", players do not imagine luck oozing away (what would luck running out look like, anyway?) nor do they imagine their character getting winded, etc. They imagine bruises and cuts.

Given that players will be imagining bruises and cuts, having a "miss" cause damage anyway will make players have their characters do all-out attacks all the time. "Got nothing to lose, I'll be hurt anyway!"

Try it in play and see.

Personally, I'd love to see more games do away with abstract numbers in general and just go straight for specific injury.  You get hit, you get really hurt, not just lose some imaginary numbers, but rather, take a slug in the arm or get it hacked off.

I like Dark Heresy's combat for just this reason.  Yes, technically you do have the "wounds" stat in there, but the average value vs. the average weapon damage, gets it pretty close to the mark, and makes the wounds stat more about how many of those actual injuries you can take before you drop like a stone.  Take them away entirely, or make injury rolls for all damage, not just that over the wounds threshhold, and you'd be right at what I'm talkin about.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;304451It may be abstract, but I've yet to meet a player who really feels that during play. When you say, "you've lost 4 hit points", players do not imagine luck oozing away (what would luck running out look like, anyway?) nor do they imagine their character getting winded, etc. They imagine bruises and cuts.

Given that players will be imagining bruises and cuts, having a "miss" cause damage anyway will make players have their characters do all-out attacks all the time. "Got nothing to lose, I'll be hurt anyway!"

Try it in play and see.

Depends how it's done, doesn't it?

An alternative is to have a 'miss' ablate exhaustion, but not the character's health.

Melee is particularly draining.  It might be interesting to try a system which wears all combatants down a little each round, with actual hits increasing the rate of depletion.

Quote from: Claudius;304445What about armors? Do they make you harder to hit, or do they reduce damage?

this is normally one of the most pertinent factors in terms of hit/not/what happens of a combat system.

In this system, they could only reduce damage.

Quote from: One Horse Town;304454Depends how it's done, doesn't it?

An alternative is to have a 'miss' ablate exhaustion, but not the character's health.

For me, this seems the most sensible measure.

I started working on a game, awhile ago that was of a similar, though not identical, philosophy.  

The combat system was a direct opposed roll between the attackers.  The winner of the exchange gained the advantage and decided what to do with it, damage his opponent, set himself up for an even bigger advantage next round etc...   There was no chance of missing someone was doing something progressive every round.

Wyatt Earp would disagree with the fundamental concept behind the OP.

Even beside things like cover and armor, there is also a lot to be considered for tactics and plain crazy-luck as far as avoiding being hurt in a fight.

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