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I want to err on the side of skill over AC abstraction in discussion - but I know it'll go everywhere.

So, working on some design stuff. To Hit task resolution. What is your preference and why?

1) Roll to hit AC based on Armorclass (So gear + Dex mods like D&D)?
2) Roll to hit vs. Static Defense value based on derived stats (Parry = Fighting Stat /2 +2 like Savage Worlds)
3) Roll to hit vs. Static Skill modifier. (Defense = opponents skill as a direct penalty like Talislanta)
4) Roll to hit vs. Opposed check. Winner take all.
5) OTHER

If you have an alternative favorite - PLEASE let me know and tell me how it works. But I'd like to know WHY as well (for any/all responses).

Don't have a strong preference, and interested in the responses you will get.

For D&D or very similar games, prefer the D&D method.  It works.  It is fast.  Most people get it relatively quickly, even if the idea behind it is a little abstract for them.

When I'm playing something else, I don't want the D&D method--usually.  Exceptions would be unabashedly D&D clones/derivatives that aren't monkeying with combat in general, to focus the game design on other areas.  Where as if the game is moving away from D&D combat specifically, then I want something else.

I'm distinctly not 100% satisfied with my approach so far in my homebrew system.  I think it qualifies as "Other" for this question, though:  

- Rolls to attack defend are mostly independent--as much as I can make them without breaking things.  It's a deliberate design goal for including some complexity without inflating handling time more than necessary.  Originally, it was roll attack and defense (both d100 roll under, not that it matters for this discussion), with neither directly opposed.  Instead, what is opposed is the attack and defense effects, which a combination of static and rolled values.
- Complicating things are critical hits, fumbles, and the fact that a defense "simple fail" still allows some defense effect.
- However, I found that in practice this created a math problem except in a very narrow range of competency ranges.  To solve a similar problem in other parts of the system, I already had a set of static adjustments to the roll based on difficulty (e.g. Easy, Moderate, Hard, etc.).  Applying those to combat seems to help, in that now making a defense roll doesn't directly oppose the roll, but does shift the difficulty up the chart.

In more abstract terms you can think of it as mixing your options #3, #4, and something else.  Characters have a static defense (just for being active and alert).  They can improve that with their defense skill (#3), which affects the chances that their opponent will miss and also helps their opposed effect (a little of #4).

Edit for why:  Had twin goals from the outset:  To emulate some of the feel and range of Dragon Quest (but simplifying as much as possible the complexity of that system), while basing the power ranges on something about halfway between the DQ, Rune Quest, GURPS lower-end versus the upper end of D&D, Hero System, etc.  Working within the constraints of a DQ feel is challenging.  I also wanted more uncertainty at the moment of player decision.    By default, DQ is your option #2 (defense based off of the Agility stat and shield skill).  It's clunky in practice, and the decision points are awkward in the flow of the fight.

Yeah Talislanta actually does #3 and #4. Where #4 is an overt defensive action Parry or Evade.

MSH - does something like that too (as well as some other things - technically they have mechanics for damage ablation as actions etc.) But ultimately they use a static resolution table. The closest example being the SWINGY d100 version of the Talislanta Universal Table + granular modifiers by Stat. Which is a pretty amazing piece of design considering most modern design uses small numbers and blows them outward to abstract for scale.

The funny thing is d100 games were a LOT more prevalent relatively, back in the day with Rolemaster, Runequest etc. MSH, as usual, is a fantastic outlier that sits like a boogeyman of design genius mocking us. MOCKING! US!

Hm, GURPS seems like a bit of an edge case here I guess? You roll vs. static skill # which you must succeed at, and the target ALSO gets an opposed dodge/parry/block roll (which are derived stats).

In any case, I don't have any real strong preference. I've enjoyed variations of all of the above in the past. I will say that I enjoy the defender getting a choice of defense and a roll, as it makes combat feel slightly more engaging when I'm on the receiving end of the attack (feels like having a little more control over my own fate).

The simple system:

Each figure has an Attack score and a Defense score, which are derived from their attributes, traits, talents, skills, equipment, conditions, and how they are fighting. i.e. you can fight aggressively or defensively to trade some points between Attack and Defense.

To hit, each figure rolls against their Attack skill minus their target's defense skill (or reverse, if you prefer high rolls to be better).

Armor tends to slow you down so it actually reduces Defense, but provides damage reduction if/when hit.


The more advanced system:

As above, but the attacker rolls to hit, and if he succeeds, the defender may (unless they're unable for various reasons) then be able to choose a defense where they roll to see if they can avoid the attack.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1118700... I will say that I enjoy the defender getting a choice of defense and a roll, as it makes combat feel slightly more engaging when I'm on the receiving end of the attack (feels like having a little more control over my own fate).

Yeah. TFT had no active defenses, and after playing GURPS, I see that as a huge mistake and miss it a lot when I play TFT.

I voted 1. While I've tinkered with other resolution systems, I think to hit versus AC is simple and elegant for what it accomplishes.
Now, if you want to model armor piercing, and staged protection (which I sometimes do) then other systems are more appropriate.

Everything in the whole game can be greatly simplified; by using rolls of 5, 10, 15, or 20 on a d20.  Incorporate Advantage and Disadvantage, too.

People tell themselves that such an idea is too simple, for it to work well; but it makes the game move, pure and simple.

Is the thing you are attempting Fairly Easy, Moderately Difficult, Difficult, or Extremely Difficult?  5, 10, 15, or 20.  Who needs books and books of rules, to play D&D?

Quote from: Razor 007;1118707Everything in the whole game can be greatly simplified; by using rolls of 5, 10, 15, or 20 on a d20.  Incorporate Advantage and Disadvantage, too.

People tell themselves that such an idea is too simple, for it to work well; but it makes the game move, pure and simple.

Is the thing you are attempting Fairly Easy, Moderately Difficult, Difficult, or Extremely Difficult?  5, 10, 15, or 20.  Who needs books and books of rules, to play D&D?

Well because you know in today's tribalist gaming circles, someone is going to say "No way that goblin could ever hit my 10th-Degree Samurai Musketeer Ninja Fencer from the Don Juan School of Battle-axery!" with a simple static roll. Or something like that.

I'm curious as to what "feels" right the most for you - regardless of the genre. I err less on "realism" than I do on Cinematic flair. I like my gun-fu like John Wick, or Hard Boiled, but there are times where I'm REALLY into Heat-style tactical gunplay. The D&D AC system is a problem for me, mainly because I don't like Armor being the determining factor as to whether I actually "hit". It's a pure abstraction (I know... not really interested in debating the 'why' vs. other task-resolutions, but I will if you press me). I mean I could JUST as easily play D&D and say AC = 10+To Hit bonuses + Dex Stat. THAT would work perfectly fine. But most purists would say "That's not AC". Like I said, it's about what represents actually *attacking AND hitting*.

The funny thing is - your array above is a basic form of Ranged attack for Interlock, and in some respects Talislanta's system (which also encourages players to try Stunts for effects with a GM added bonus/penalty for effect.) The only difference is the Universal Table is strictly static, with ALL modifiers coming from Stat + Skill +Modifiers with results on the one simple table. I still maintain it's a damn good design.

Harnmaster by far. Brutal, fast, and realistic. Basically opposed rolls followed by damage saves. Accumulated injury result in lower skill and harder damage saves.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4068[/ATTACH]

Quote from: estar;1118716Harnmaster by far. Brutal, fast, and realistic. Basically opposed rolls followed by damage saves.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4068[/ATTACH]

That looks pretty damned cool (and brutal!).

Quote from: tenbones;1118710The D&D AC system is a problem for me, mainly because I don't like Armor being the determining factor as to whether I actually "hit".

You read my posts on the history of AC, it doesn't represent the chance that you will be hit by a weapon it represent the change that you will die when somebody swings at you with a weapon. Later changed to a 1d6 damage roll. The closet that D&D has an actual to hit chance is the roll versus an unarmored target.

Quote from: tenbones;1118710It's a pure abstraction (I know... not really interested in debating the 'why' vs. other task-resolutions, but I will if you press me).

I think people would had less trouble if it was properly explained in the first place.

Then the general reaction wouldn't 'huh? OK I guess', to the one where you like having defense rolls or not. Defense rolls are intuitive but there are several equally good way to represent the odds of not being hit like Fantasy AGE's 10 + Dex + Defense Bonus.

Attack Skill vs Defense Skill

I prefer skill-based systems overall, and probably prefer passive defense to minimize rolls (Defense Skill = Difficulty). I would also probably make everything a modifier and eliminate Target Numbers. Instead, everything that improves your chances of success is a bonus, and anything that reduces your chances (such as Difficulty or opponent Skill Level) is a penalty. A total roll of 10+ means some degree of success.

This approach would also allow diceless GMing, since the GM can just have players roll Defense using the opponent's Attack value as a roll penalty.

For poll purposes and I would say #3 is the closest.

I don't think options one and two are mutually exclusive. I have an Armor defense for attacks armor helps with (ex. swords, arrows) and a Dodge defense for things it wouldn't (ex. 500 lb. boulders, dragon fire).

However, if your Dodge defense ends up higher than your Armor defense (hard, but by no means impossible) you can use your Dodge defense in place of your Armor defense (if you can dodge lightning bolts, an arrow is no more difficult).

More accurately though is that, depending on how you calculate it, AC is already a derived stat so it's really just a subset of option two. Base Value + Stat mod + item mod is the definition of a derived trait.

The derived trait could also be used for an opposed roll (roll + stat + item).

* * * *

A better question might be how to resolve the damage after you beat the target numer, because that's where there's more options and can help direct what your defense value will be based on).

D&D uses independent variable damage (other than crits, the quality of the hit has no effect on damage dealt) deducted from a health pool.

Mutants & Masterminds uses a save vs. damage DC of the attack with a margin of failure determining the effect.

The Silhouette system multiplied the margin of success by a multiplier (based on the weapon used) and compared it to a threshold to determine damage.

New World of Darkness added skill and weapon value into a dice pool and each success past the target's defense did a level of damage.

How you want to have damage dealt will probably give a better sense what you want to use for your attack target number (ex. For a margin of success based damage system, adding armor to your maneuverability to create a defense target number has the same effect as armor being damage reduction because the lower the margin of success, the lower the damage taken).

For me I prefer going simple.  If the wicked demon has +3 dex modifier, then that means in my game that should be a -3 to the TN for your d20 roll to hit the enemy.  So if your heroic paladin wants to smite that agile demon with his Strength 14, then that is a strength check of TN 11.  Maybe you got some energy/luck/fate points to improve those odds.

Yes my vote went for Roll vs Static Skill Modifier.

Quote from: estar;1118721You read my posts on the history of AC, it doesn't represent the chance that you will be hit by a weapon it represent the change that you will die when somebody swings at you with a weapon. Later changed to a 1d6 damage roll. The closet that D&D has an actual to hit chance is the roll versus an unarmored target.

Sure. But I've run into precisely ZERO people that look at it that way without having to explain it to them. And we both know that most discussions trying to explain what AC represents, regardless of the perspectives of the individuals engaged - intended by design or not, usually leaves them both unsatisfied. The history may be accurate - I take your word for it! But in the minds of most people, it's roll the die, do I hit? Roll damage. The natural logic is that Armor worn *has* something to do with actually being hit. We don't have to like it, that's just how it feeeeeeels.

I'm not even sure how long your version of the development of AC as a system was maintained in the minds of TSR? Any idea? Is that what all the TSR staff in the early days thought too? Because the moment Unearthed Arcana dropped with Field Plate and Full Plate - I think those two things forever made the Armor-to-hit notion cemented in the minds of people for time immemorial. The graveyards of internet forums are rife with the casualties of those Nerdzerker Crusades, heh.

Quote from: estar;1118721I think people would had less trouble if it was properly explained in the first place.

Then the general reaction wouldn't 'huh? OK I guess', to the one where you like having defense rolls or not. Defense rolls are intuitive but there are several equally good way to represent the odds of not being hit like Fantasy AGE's 10 + Dex + Defense Bonus.

I completely agree. I rather like the Fantasy AGE method. It's clean. But of course all the downstream stuff has to work with it too. I'm not Fantasy AGE-proficient, but this description is nice.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118727I don't think options one and two are mutually exclusive. I have an Armor defense for attacks armor helps with (ex. swords, arrows) and a Dodge defense for things it wouldn't (ex. 500 lb. boulders, dragon fire).

However, if your Dodge defense ends up higher than your Armor defense (hard, but by no means impossible) you can use your Dodge defense in place of your Armor defense (if you can dodge lightning bolts, an arrow is no more difficult).

More accurately though is that, depending on how you calculate it, AC is already a derived stat so it's really just a subset of option two. Base Value + Stat mod + item mod is the definition of a derived trait.

The derived trait could also be used for an opposed roll (roll + stat + item).

That's why you can make more than one choice. Talislanta uses a static roll vs. skill rating penalty. BUT if you want to actually actively parry/evade, it's an opposed check, which on their universal table also includes Levels of Success. It's quite sophisticated for its time. Still a very strong mechanic if you want medium-grit to your combat.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118727* * * *

A better question might be how to resolve the damage after you beat the target numer, because that's where there's more options and can help direct what your defense value will be based on).

D&D uses independent variable damage (other than crits, the quality of the hit has no effect on damage dealt) deducted from a health pool.

Mutants & Masterminds uses a save vs. damage DC of the attack with a margin of failure determining the effect.

The Silhouette system multiplied the margin of success by a multiplier (based on the weapon used) and compared it to a threshold to determine damage.

New World of Darkness added skill and weapon value into a dice pool and each success past the target's defense did a level of damage.

How you want to have damage dealt will probably give a better sense what you want to use for your attack target number (ex. For a margin of success based damage system, adding armor to your maneuverability to create a defense target number has the same effect as armor being damage reduction because the lower the margin of success, the lower the damage taken).

Don't you do it! Don't you derail my To Hit thread, you dirty wanker! Damage is a different monster altogether! LOL. We'll get to that later. Yeah I know they're related, or at least they're plenty of games that marry both rolls. I'm trying to keep things "simple" (we know how that goes!). Your point is well made and being taken into consideration. :)

Opposed Rolls are fine too.  A d20 Roll Off, if you will.
 Offense vs Defense, etc.

I use alternative #3. The defender's Target Number (T#) is derived from Size and Agility and improvement in T# replaced HP increases as a core idea.
There are options for the defender to parry or use an acrobatic dodge but they have costs associated with them. Most ducking, flinching and weapon blocking is subsumed in T#.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732Sure. But I've run into precisely ZERO people that look at it that way without having to explain it to them.

My experience that is true of most RPG combat systems. None of them are naturally intuitive and depend on reading the text or somebody teaching the group.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732The natural logic is that Armor worn *has* something to do with actually being hit.

I don't think that the case, more common point of view is that Armor mitigates damage as in it subtracts from the damage you receive. Is this a mistype? As it is at odd with the overall sentiment of your post.

What I encountered with most hobbyists is the following.

The to hit roll represent a swing of the weapon and determines whether it impacted the target.
You roll damage to see just how hard you hit.
You armor protects you from damage by reducing it.

D&D looks counter intuitive because it folds the above into a single roll. So let's break it down

You have a certain chance of impacting a target.
You have certain odds of inflicting X damage
The armor will absorb Y damage.


So say I have a 50% chance of hitting the target with my sword.
Let say I roll 1d10 damage
Let say the target is wearing armor that absorb 5 points of damage.

So if I hit there is a 50-50 chance of me doing any damage. If I roll a 1 to 5, the target will take nothing because the armor absorb 5 points. If it roll 6 to 10 then the target will suffer damage in the range of 1 to 5 points. (1d10-5).

So we take the 50% chance of hitting, the 50% chance of actually doing damage and multiply them. So we have a 25% chance of dealing 1d5 damage.  So I can have the player roll a d20 and if they roll a 16 to a 20 they hit for 1d5 damage.

Two different procedures both a reflection of the same reality.

A wrinkle as far as RPGs goes is that they are not compatible. Because if I going to do the latter than the weapon damage has to reflect the damage done IF the armor is penetrated. Which means the weapons will be less than if I use the former 3 step method.

In addition specific to D&D, damage is not a representation of an impact but rather a hit to kill. And hit to kill was expanded out to 1d6 damage and what a person could take was expanded to 1d6 hit points.

Why? Let's look at Runequest vs D&D.

D&D first draft was written by Gary Gygax and incorporated his experience with chainmail at set of mass combat rules. The basic combatant in chainmail had the same skill level as any other basic combatant. So when it was reduced to the man to man level the only fact Gygax and Perren considered was the odds of killing the opponent with a given weapon versus a specific type of armor. Giving us Chainmail's man to man chart.

When writing D&D Gygax did away with weapon and substituted experience in the form of level. Presumably to avoid the issue of the Fantasy Combat Matrix. The matrix was fine for a fantasy miniature wargame but D&D had a different focus. So instead of weapons being the primary factor in determine whether a target was killed, it was the amount of experience or level one had. One hit to kill became 1d6 hit points and 1 hit became 1d6 damage and we have our initial version of D&D.

In contrast Runequest reflect Perrens experience with medieval reenactment. Perrin's approach it from a bottom up perspective. Breaking down what he did while fighting in the SCA into discrete actions like a to hit roll, a parry in some case, then dealing damage. Then defining armor the way most people naturally view it as damage reduction. Being in the SCA undoubtedly taught him the importance of proper straps and how that helps to spread the impact of a blow around along with other details that found their way into Runequest.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732We don't have to like it, that's just how it feeeeeeels.

I am not asking you like AC. I don't contend that it is a superior abstraction (or inferior). It works if explained which it wasn't.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732I'm not even sure how long your version of the development of AC as a system was maintained in the minds of TSR? Any idea?

It was never maintained, Gygax and crew were to busy having fun and they accepted the abstraction because the community of the time was familiar with chainmail. Slightly the business of TSR reared it head, D&D was spreading, and they just got overwhelmed by the huge response to consider writing about the finer points. From all my reading, they were happy to get just the basics across like with the Holmes boxed set.

And there was arrogance as the counterpoint from people from St. Andre, the Runequest crew in California as far as system design wasn't exactly polite.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732Because the moment Unearthed Arcana dropped

The moment was well passed by then. Nobody dug into it rigourously until Peterson, the collectors, and other RPG historians started in on it in the mid 2000s. With their work, we can see what they actually said in the form of manuscripts, zines, newsletters as well collected anecdotes.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732I completely agree. I rather like the Fantasy AGE method. It's clean. But of course all the downstream stuff has to work with it too. I'm not Fantasy AGE-proficient, but this description is nice.

One thing to consider with Fantasy AGE that the hit points scale is similar to that of later edition D&D. It also uses a level system. There is no reason you can't start defining Defense as 10+Dex mod+Defense Mod (usually shield). Keep the same to hit roll. Give armor a reduction and keep the damage roll the same.

You can also go to sites like this
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm

And read up what been done with the d20 system.

The main issue with classic D&D is that monsters don't have attributes. You will have go through every monster and decide what their defense is. With later addition monsters have a dex stat and make this much easier and convertible on the fly.

Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition made the TN be 8+ no matter what, with some maths for modifiers.

Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition made the TN be the difficulty, with less maths for modifiers.

Anything that speeds up dice rolls is a plus in my book.

Quote from: tenbones;1118734Don't you do it! Don't you derail my To Hit thread, you dirty wanker! Damage is a different monster altogether! LOL. We'll get to that later. Yeah I know they're related, or at least they're plenty of games that marry both rolls. I'm trying to keep things "simple" (we know how that goes!). Your point is well made and being taken into consideration. :)

Silhouette - Roll to hit vs their defense roll. The difference is then multiplied by the weapons damage. Say 8 for a sword and you beat the defense roll by 2 = 16 damage. Foe has three thresholds (Flesh wound, Sever wound, Dead) Which ever you exceed is what is applied. Flesh -1 to all actions per flesh wound, Sever -2 to all per sever, Dead is dead. You die when you get a total of -5.

Estar, that explanation of why they DO make sense was spot on. Should be mandatory reading for anyone new to the game.

Quote from: amacris;1118771Estar, that explanation of why they DO make sense was spot on. Should be mandatory reading for anyone new to the game.

TBH, I disagree. I've often come up with this type of explanation throughout the years every time that this sort of topic comes up, with people trying to defend overly abstract D&D mechanics like HP, Initiative or AC as written by appealing to "what the rules actually mean" in theoretical framework and attempt to rationalize them as "making sense" if only people would consider what the designers were attempting to do, under the apparent assumption that it's just that people don't know and they just have to be educated on this stuff so they understand. But the problem is that people do know, they simply disagree that the rules truly accomplish what the designers theoretically were trying to do and would prefer to handle it another way.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118792But the problem is that people do know, they simply disagree that the rules truly accomplish what the designers theoretically were trying to do and would prefer to handle it another way.

You are talking about two different things, preference versus what a system mechanics is capable of.

I have no illusion that my explanation will change people's preference. However it does illustrate more clearer what AC is capable of then the default explanation most edition have.

As for what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do, they both felt that as you leveled and gained experience you ought to be able to do damage easier and more often. That the better armor you wear the less often you will take damage. The system they developed does this.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118792in theoretical framework and attempt to rationalize them as "making sense" if only people would consider what the designers were attempting to do, under the apparent assumption that it's just that people don't know and they just have to be educated on this stuff so they understand.

Did you or did you not understand my explanation? Note I am not asking whether you liked it, I am asking whether you understood it.

Do I need to walk through the various source material that supports my thesis?

Do you find a flaw in the math I presenting showing how a AC system can reflect the same odds of suffering damage and the same amount of damage suffered as a armor reduces damage system?

It not like other system don't have a history to their genesis. For example people learning about the role of D&D and the SCA in the development of Runequest. Or in the 90s the early use of the internet by SJ Games led to their authors and staff talking more about the underpinnings of GURPS than it was usual case.

Actually I think it does make sense in how you present it. I, personally, don't like how it "feels" as a mechanic designed to to express what is being abstracted. Rather - I don't hate it or anything, I just think my sensibilities about the degrees of abstraction-to-narrative assumptions have shifted.

Much like the ballyhooed negativity about FFG's "Narrative" die mechanics - which are only as narrative as you want them to be, since they have tables that give you static values for just about any/every roll you can make - as a parallel example.

I think there is a very good reason why people don't look at AC in the manner you're explaining - though after consideration I kinda get it. I just think it's an odd view of how to express it in Task resolution. But in fairness, i've always thought that about AC - especially, ironically, once I started playing Stormbringer and Palladium Fantasy and Talislanta back in the day. AC felt weird to me for decades as a concept. EVEN though I was perfectly fine with the math behind it.

Quote from: lordmalachdrim;1118753Silhouette - Roll to hit vs their defense roll. The difference is then multiplied by the weapons damage. Say 8 for a sword and you beat the defense roll by 2 = 16 damage. Foe has three thresholds (Flesh wound, Sever wound, Dead) Which ever you exceed is what is applied. Flesh -1 to all actions per flesh wound, Sever -2 to all per sever, Dead is dead. You die when you get a total of -5.

HMM! Interesting. I'll look into it.

Quote from: estar;1118793You are talking about two different things, preference versus what a system mechanics is capable of.

I have no illusion that my explanation will change people's preference. However it does illustrate more clearer what AC is capable of then the default explanation most edition have.

As for what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do, they both felt that as you leveled and gained experience you ought to be able to do damage easier and more often. That the better armor you wear the less often you will take damage. The system they developed does this.



Did you or did you not understand my explanation? Note I am not asking whether you liked it, I am asking whether you understood it.

Do I need to walk through the various source material that supports my thesis?

Do you find a flaw in the math I presenting showing how a AC system can reflect the same odds of suffering damage and the same amount of damage suffered as a armor reduces damage system?

It not like other system don't have a history to their genesis. For example people learning about the role of D&D and the SCA in the development of Runequest. Or in the 90s the early use of the internet by SJ Games led to their authors and staff talking more about the underpinnings of GURPS than it was usual case.

Part of it is a matter of stylistic preference, but there are also mechanical issues as well. Armor as "Defense" (i.e. evasion or reduced hit rate) fails to account for attacks that don't do damage (such as knockdowns, disarms, etc., which armor shouldn't protect you from) or damage from attacks that don't involve "to hit" rolls (such as explosions, which armor should protect you from).

I'm aware of the source material, I just don't think that AC is a good way to represent what it's intended to do and there are mechanical gaps in "Armor as Defense" that "Armor as Mitigation/DR" doesn't have.

Quote from: estar;1118793As for what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do, they both felt that as you leveled and gained experience you ought to be able to do damage easier and more often. That the better armor you wear the less often you will take damage. The system they developed does this.

Or rather, it did (past tense). When damage was constrained to the d4, d6, d8 and d10 +/-1 from a high ability score the mechanic is sensible because the damage range is small enough (ave. of 2.5 to 5.5) that armor as percentage of hits completely stopped seems logical.

But by as early as 1e AD&D an 18/00 (from gauntlets of ogre power) dealt more static damage than the average roll of a d10 and static damage has only scaled up from there to the point that the idea was strained to say the least.

When the the difference between a near miss and a minimum damage hit is 1 point of damage, AC being partly DR makes sense. When the difference between a near miss and minimum damage hit is 7+ points it stops feeling like it's partly DR and feels more like the armor is all or nothing.

It's compounded by the hit points = meat mentality because the hits are invariably described as actual injuries (ones that would often be fight ending because they're scaled to what they'd be on a zero-level soldier; an axe sticking in your gut as one memorable example).

It's less bad where hit points are mostly or entirely non-physical (ex. Stamina) and it's loss represents the effort needed to make a hit non-injuring (in which case AC from armor represents the times you can use the armor to deflect an attack with no appreciable effort), but still notable.

I get that it was the original intent. I think people are just expressing that there's been over four decades of development into something else entirely and that is what the vast majority are familiar with.

ETA: if I weren’t four years deep into design and playtesting and the whole system nearly written save for some fluff text and random encounter-ish tables, I’d probably do a Armor + Attribute + Skill = Defense target number with damage based on margin of success; but that’s for someone else to explore I guess.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800I'm aware of the source material, I just don't think that AC is a good way to represent what it's intended to do and there are mechanical gaps in "Armor as Defense" that "Armor as Mitigation/DR" doesn't have.

FWIW, the book "From Sumer to Rome" convinced me that armor wasn't primarily about "damage mitigation", it was about limiting the areas where you could be hurt ("armor as defense"). The authors show with very careful calculation and empirical testing that contemporary weapons during the period simply couldn't harm a person if they hit the armor. Hitting your breastplate with my sword doesn't damage you, it damages my sword and hurts my arm. As a result, combat was about hitting the target where he wasn't armored, which could be quite challenging.

Their results help explain why:
1) Heavy infantry beat archers in the ancient world. They find that 99% of all arrows would be deflected by shields and armor, meaning heavy infantry could close long before they were attritted. Waves of arrows wiping out heavy infantry is Hollywood nonsense.
2) Casualties are so lop-sided in battles, with the winning side having so few. The vast majority of attacks by heavy infantry on heavy infantry are deflected by armor and shield and only when one side turns its (less armored unshielded) back does the slaughter occur.
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.

I agree with you 100% that there are mechanical gaps in D&D but they can all be addressed within an "armor as defense" framework should one want to achieve that outcome. But they can't be achieved if you don't understand what's being simulated, which is why I think estar's essay is valuable. It's not the answer, but it's the beginning of the answer.

Quote from: estar;1118716Harnmaster by far. Brutal, fast, and realistic. Basically opposed rolls followed by damage saves. Accumulated injury result in lower skill and harder damage saves.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4068[/ATTACH]

Needing to reference a chart during gameplay is a deal-breaker for me.

Quote from: estar;1118721I think people would had less trouble if it was properly explained in the first place.

Even without an explanation the design method and philosophy was obvious to anyone who could manage the simple contingent probabilities.

But understanding the design philosophy didn't make me like it. AC works well intuitively and systemically for determining if a 75mm HEAT round penetrates the armor on a Panzer V. But that is because Panzer V's don't try to parry opposing artillery shells. Knights do try to parry the attacks of their opponents which is why, for many people, opposing parry rules is both more intuitive and less dissociative . Parrying feels more like what your character is actually doing in combat.

Quote from: estar;1118793Do you find a flaw in the math I presenting showing how a AC system can reflect the same odds of suffering damage and the same amount of damage suffered as a armor reduces damage system?

The odds are the same only if DEX does not add to AC and if the weapon damage does not vary by weapon type. But weapon damage does vary. And in nearly all versions of D&D DEX does add to AC. To deal with variable weapon damage, one could add in a table to vary the armor class by weapon type. This would be similar to the armor vs weapon type table that early D&D created. It didn't get used a lot back in the day, in part because adding in a table lookup step complicates combat.

QuoteDefense rolls are intuitive but there are several equally good way to represent the odds of not being hit

Since we are talking about a method players use, enjoyment or the lack thereof is also a factor, so mathematical equivalence isn't sufficient for a method to be "equally good."

The advantage of opposed rolls is player involvement. The disadvantage is it slows down play relative to a static number.

As long as combat involves more than a single check (i.e. multiple rounds of combat) the opposed roll mechanic doesn't even affect the bell curve distribution of outcomes for an entire battle all that much (the multiple rolls to hit vs. a static defense will already create a bell curve in terms of damage dealt per combat).

Unless there's enough interesting ways for active defenses to affect the outcome I'd say one check per attack is sufficient, particularly if it means other player's turns come around faster.

On the other hand, no one says it has to always be the attacker who rolls. A system where all NPCs use static values while players roll both attacks against them and defenses against their opponent’s attacks would still just have one check per action (I'd also say margin of success for damage would be beneficial as then there's no need for the player to also roll damage against themselves... instead they take damage based on how bad their failure to effectively defend was.

Quote from: amacris;1118803FWIW, the book "From Sumer to Rome" convinced me that armor wasn't primarily about "damage mitigation", it was about limiting the areas where you could be hurt ("armor as defense"). The authors show with very careful calculation and empirical testing that contemporary weapons during the period simply couldn't harm a person if they hit the armor. Hitting your breastplate with my sword doesn't damage you, it damages my sword and hurts my arm. As a result, combat was about hitting the target where he wasn't armored, which could be quite challenging.

Their results help explain why:
1) Heavy infantry beat archers in the ancient world. They find that 99% of all arrows would be deflected by shields and armor, meaning heavy infantry could close long before they were attritted. Waves of arrows wiping out heavy infantry is Hollywood nonsense.
2) Casualties are so lop-sided in battles, with the winning side having so few. The vast majority of attacks by heavy infantry on heavy infantry are deflected by armor and shield and only when one side turns its (less armored unshielded) back does the slaughter occur.
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.

I agree with you 100% that there are mechanical gaps in D&D but they can all be addressed within an "armor as defense" framework should one want to achieve that outcome. But they can't be achieved if you don't understand what's being simulated, which is why I think estar's essay is valuable. It's not the answer, but it's the beginning of the answer.

I'm going to look that book up. Can never have too much reference material.

I think this is a wonderful post full of mental-grist for my mill. Because it clearly demarcates two entirely relevant and extant schools of thought in game design: Armor as Damage Mitigation and Armor as "contact denial". This speaks directly to the perception of the player to the abstraction of combat in RPGs and raises the Chicken/Egg scenario as it pertains to "Health".

Now while we're talking in parallel to AC and what that actually means, it's true you can't have the discussion at a deep level without talking about HP as an abstraction too. My issue is it takes the abstractions of what they're supposed to represent a bit too far. I'm not *necessarily* looking for ultra-realism in regards to mechanical fidelity at the table - but you're giving me a lot to consider by presenting the MacGuffin pretty clearly here.

Then the perennial question - "Is it fun? Does it rub you the right way in play?" That too has to be answered. I can think of some downstream effects using your idea here that would make Gritty Realistic games REALLY scary, because in history having plate-armor was rare for a reason. Whereas in D&D - every fighter that wants plate armor has plate armor... which further erodes the whole context the system because then it becomes a standard assumption by which all other systems become "balanced" around.

It's good food for thought in either case...

It proably needs to be reminded that 1e D&D factored in damage avoidance into their AC system with the elaborate Hit vs Armor type tables. I used to use them.

But I'm not sure if this was an outgrowth of the rational you provided ester? Because it would seem between those and the addition of the damage mitigation offered in the optional Unearthed Arcana muddies the waters of that rationalization further. The total conglomerate of this is why AC probably leaves people (such as me) a little unsatisfied.

Quote from: amacris;1118803FWIW, the book "From Sumer to Rome" convinced me that armor wasn't primarily about "damage mitigation", it was about limiting the areas where you could be hurt ("armor as defense"). The authors show with very careful calculation and empirical testing that contemporary weapons during the period simply couldn't harm a person if they hit the armor. Hitting your breastplate with my sword doesn't damage you, it damages my sword and hurts my arm. As a result, combat was about hitting the target where he wasn't armored, which could be quite challenging.

Their results help explain why:
1) Heavy infantry beat archers in the ancient world. They find that 99% of all arrows would be deflected by shields and armor, meaning heavy infantry could close long before they were attritted. Waves of arrows wiping out heavy infantry is Hollywood nonsense.
2) Casualties are so lop-sided in battles, with the winning side having so few. The vast majority of attacks by heavy infantry on heavy infantry are deflected by armor and shield and only when one side turns its (less armored unshielded) back does the slaughter occur.
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.

I agree with you 100% that there are mechanical gaps in D&D but they can all be addressed within an "armor as defense" framework should one want to achieve that outcome. But they can't be achieved if you don't understand what's being simulated, which is why I think estar's essay is valuable. It's not the answer, but it's the beginning of the answer.

That's actually a good point, and it is true that plate armor in particular was design not just to mitigate damage, but deflect blades. However, armor can still be breached and a variety of weapons--like military picks, maces and war hammers--were design for that purpose, and armor is not effective at deflecting concussion damage (which can still pass through armor) only edged attacks, particularly slashing attacks (piercing attacks may sometimes breach armor). Even long swords were designed with an extra strong tip to pierce through armor, though, it wasn't optimal for that task (hence, why knights also used maces). And in those instances, "Armor as Mitigation" still works because it reduces the damage from attacks that breach armor, which it would IRL, even if an attack managed to pass through.

But that veers into the discussion of weapon type vs armor, as well as armor durability, which is a whole other can of worms. And while I like some degree of realism or verisimilitude/simulation, keeping track of armor and specific weapon types use and how effective they are at bypassing armor can slow play down too much (more than Armor as Mitigation already does; though, I think DR's drag on game play is minimal). So it's something I struggle with, since I'd like things making "sense" in my game, but also prefer combat to keep moving.

Quote from: tenbones;1118826It proably needs to be reminded that 1e D&D factored in damage avoidance into their AC system with the elaborate Hit vs Armor type tables. I used to use them.

I mentioned the weapon vs armor type table earlier. Armor protection is not a simple linear increase in uniform protection that affects all weapons equally. Those tables were intended adjust for how different armor types and weapons interacted, e.g. a halberd or warhammer/military pick were better than a sword at penetrating plate armor whereas a sword was good against light armor or no armor and the table reflected that.

Quote from: Bren;1118830I mentioned the weapon vs armor type table earlier. Armor protection is not a simple linear increase in uniform protection that affects all weapons equally. Those tables were intended adjust for how different armor types and weapons interacted, e.g. a halberd or warhammer/military pick were better than a sword at penetrating plate armor whereas a sword was good against light armor or no armor and the table reflected that.

I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800I'm aware of the source material, I just don't think that AC is a good way to represent what it's intended to do and there are mechanical gaps in "Armor as Defense" that "Armor as Mitigation/DR" doesn't have.

There are consquence to both approaches including AC, but I disagree that there are mechanical gaps.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800Part of it is a matter of stylistic preference,

This is the part where I stress again none of my point are to be construed as you should like AC because... If one likes a system one likes a system.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800but there are also mechanical issues as well.

Lets break it down.

Armor as "Defense" (i.e. evasion or reduced hit rate) fails to account for attacks that don't do damage
knockdowns,
So AC does have one case where an actual hit is determined and that when an unarmored target suffer damage. In most editions it is modified by a dex bonus. So to make contact with a target is to roll higher than the number for AC 10 (or 9) adding the dex bonus to the target number.

So now we determined that we made contact. Now we can proceed to resolving the knockdown itself. Different RPGs have different ways of handling this. Some match strength vs strength. Some get more sophisticated and include velocity and mass like GURPS. Some add skill in and so on. But the difficulty for D&D here was determining whether contact was made. Now that out of the way you can proceed to whatever mechanics you feel accurately represent the odds of getting knocked down after contact is made.

disarms,
In GURPS disarms are a function of weapon skill. In other system they are often a critical result. As for D&D, it has weapon skill in the form of your to-hit bonus so you can adapt that if need be. Or incorporate a critical result system. Both would be consistent with the larger system even though various editions have remained silent on it.

The method I prefer, is to have character make a normal to hit roll and the target make a save. If the save fails then the target is disarmed. I don't have an issue with including armor as part of the target number. I don't view armor as protection in this instance but rather it represents the attacker in that exchange of blow landing a hit on the armor instead of forcing a disarm.

The reason for the save is that in GURPS and other system I played with detailed combat mechanics including disarm, is that disarm is nearly always more difficult then try trying to do damage. That it less likely the more skilled the target is. Saves get better as the character levels, saves are traditionally used to mitigate something bad, that something bad is encompass a variety of situation not just damaging ones, disarms are something bad. Allowing the target a save makes a disarm attempt clearly inferior to an attempt to deal damage.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800or damage from attacks that don't involve "to hit" rolls (such as explosions, which armor should protect you from).

In GURPS, DR (Damage Resistance) does protect against a wide variety of damage including damage. Although the GURPS hobby has debated the accuracy of this. The thing with explosion is that their force is applied all at once. I am not going to debate the particulars only to point out that the question whether armor should protect against whole body effects is not settled among various systems that use Damage Reduction.

Specific to D&D is the saving throw mechanic. Saving Throws are used to avoid or mitigate something "bad" happening to you particularly things like explosion, fire, and other effects effect the whole character at once. So if one feels that armor should mitigate some of these like an explosion, then for later editions I would apply either all of or half of the AC bonus as a positive modifier to the saving throw.  It reduces damage by helping the save.  

It may not be the way some people would do it if they were designing a system but it does accomplish mechanically the same thing and does it in a way that consistent with how D&D works.

Again none of this means you should like AC or how D&D handle things, but it should demonstrate that through an understanding the system one can handle the situation you outline in a way that doesn't feel foreign.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802Or rather, it did (past tense). When damage was constrained to the d4, d6, d8 and d10 +/-1 from a high ability score the mechanic is sensible because the damage range is small enough (ave. of 2.5 to 5.5) that armor as percentage of hits completely stopped seems logical.

But by as early as 1e AD&D an 18/00 (from gauntlets of ogre power) dealt more static damage than the average roll of a d10 and static damage has only scaled up from there to the point that the idea was strained to say the least.

The problem with your thesis that you don't go back far enough. AD&D was a consolidation and edit of the 3 LBB plus supplements. Even the Greyhawk supplement was a tweak by subsistuting different dice for damage and hit points. You need to consider your thesis in light of just the 3 LBB by themselves along with the accounts of how Gygax used the rules..

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802When the the difference between a near miss and a minimum damage hit is 1 point of damage, AC being partly DR makes sense. When the difference between a near miss and minimum damage hit is 7+ points it stops feeling like it's partly DR and feels more like the armor is all or nothing.

In the 3 LBB you only ever did 1d6 damage and could get a +1 strength bonus. What happened is that in the Greyhawk supplement the Strength bonuses were increased and expanded, damage dice was varied with many weapons using 1d8 or 1d10. Finally hit dice now varied in dice.

It had a substantial change in the system. OD&D 3 LBB plays differently than Greyhawk onwards. I think it also illustrate the problem that afflicts later editions in that Gygax and the author lost sight of why they did what they did in the first place.

Now I don't think the Greyhawk supplement is all bad, but I found through my own playtesting that the changes are better done if you tone down the dice used and the bonuses.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802It's compounded by the hit points = meat mentality because the hits are invariably described as actual injuries (ones that would often be fight ending because they're scaled to what they'd be on a zero-level soldier; an axe sticking in your gut as one memorable example).

It's less bad where hit points are mostly or entirely non-physical (ex. Stamina) and it's loss represents the effort needed to make a hit non-injuring (in which case AC from armor represents the times you can use the armor to deflect an attack with no appreciable effort), but still notable.

Look people bent themselves for decades to describe hit points. But in reality all they represent is how long you endure in combat until you are killed. Of all the abstraction in D&D hit points have seen little change or innovation. It still remains an extrapolation of hits to kill being replaced by 1d6 hit points. Unlike GURPS where hit points are function of a character's health. There is little you can do to equate hits to kill to actual injury like you can in GURPS. All you can reliably say that if a character has 24 hit points is that on average they will last for twice as long as a character with 12 hit points. Beyond that the referee has to salt to taste so to speak.

What I do is look at the damage being dealt in proportion to the target's max hit points. Three hit points of damage is a major injury to a target with 6 hit points, while 3 hit point to a target with 24 hit point is a bleeding scratch.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802get that it was the original intent. I think people are just expressing that there's been over four decades of development into something else entirely and that is what the vast majority are familiar with.

ETA: if I weren't four years deep into design and playtesting and the whole system nearly written save for some fluff text and random encounter-ish tables, I'd probably do a Armor + Attribute + Skill = Defense target number with damage based on margin of success; but that's for someone else to explore I guess.

Yes but so what? It great that we have a wider variety of system to choose from with more being released every year. But D&D or Pathfinder has been the choice of the majority of the hobby for decades now. So when I read about the history of its development and dug into it, I think it not as complicated or arbitrary as people make it out to be. I don't expect anybody to like it better. But I hope it helps people understand some of the underlying rationale to D&D.

Quote from: tenbones;1118794Actually I think it does make sense in how you present it. I, personally, don't like how it "feels" as a mechanic designed to to express what is being abstracted. Rather - I don't hate it or anything, I just think my sensibilities about the degrees of abstraction-to-narrative assumptions have shifted.

Much like the ballyhooed negativity about FFG's "Narrative" die mechanics - which are only as narrative as you want them to be, since they have tables that give you static values for just about any/every roll you can make - as a parallel example.

I think there is a very good reason why people don't look at AC in the manner you're explaining - though after consideration I kinda get it. I just think it's an odd view of how to express it in Task resolution. But in fairness, i've always thought that about AC - especially, ironically, once I started playing Stormbringer and Palladium Fantasy and Talislanta back in the day. AC felt weird to me for decades as a concept. EVEN though I was perfectly fine with the math behind it.

All sounds good to me. I am not looking to convince you to like it. Only to explain that there is a rationale even if the original authors didn't follow up on it themselves. Thanks the OSR we can write our own followups branching off at whatever point one things best. For me it is the 3 LBB plus some of Greyhawk, for other it different.

Quote from: tenbones;1118826It proably needs to be reminded that 1e D&D factored in damage avoidance into their AC system with the elaborate Hit vs Armor type tables. I used to use them.

Actually it originated in OD&D Greyhawk and that table was a straight extrapolation of Chainmail's Man to Man combat table (weapon versus armor type). The problem with AD&D was they added different armors so AD&D version was somewhat nonsensical compared to Greyhawk's.

My own opinion is that Gygax should have not included it either Greyhawk or AD&D for the same reason he probably didn't include in the 3 LBB, it another damn chart and it is a pain to expand it.

What I personally came up is noting in each weapon description whether they get a bonus against a particular type of armor.

Mace, small   9d/ea.    3.0/lbs.
Damage: 1d4+1
Used since the beginning of recorded history, maces became a popular battlefield weapon when chainmail became common a millennia ago. It is still a popular choice despite the spread of plate armor and war hammers. This weapon is between 18 to 24 inches long and has a ball of metal affixed to the end. It gets +1 to hit versus opponents wearing chainmail or gelatinous creatures like ochre jellies or black puddings. It is usable in the off-hand when dual wielding.

or

Hammer, war   8d/ea.   3.5/lbs.
Damage: 1d4+1
The spread of plate armor in the last few centuries has seen the adoption of the war hammer as a weapon. This version is designed to be used by one hand. It is 18 to 24 inches long, with a hammer shaped lump of metal affixed to one end. It gets +1 to hit when used against plate armor and creatures with natural plate like armor. It is usable in the off-hand when dual wielding.

Quote from: tenbones;1118823Then the perennial question - "Is it fun? Does it rub you the right way in play?" That too has to be answered. I can think of some downstream effects using your idea here that would make Gritty Realistic games REALLY scary, because in history having plate-armor was rare for a reason. Whereas in D&D - every fighter that wants plate armor has plate armor... which further erodes the whole context the system because then it becomes a standard assumption by which all other systems become "balanced" around.

It's good food for thought in either case...

With regard to "is it fun", let me offer up some math. Let's consider two cases:
Case 1) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 99% chance to hit. If he hits he will do 6-15 (avg 10) points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.
Case 2) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 10% chance to hit. if he hits he will do 100 points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.

Mathematically these seem similar, but in actual play, they are very different. The first is attritional - Aragorn knows he'll hit and it's a matter of how long it takes him to whittle Conan down vs. Aragorn whiffs 9 times out of 10. Put another way, the variance of Case 2 is much greater than Case 1; Case 2 could end in one round or it could never end. Case 1 will end somewhere between 17 and 7 rounds.

In my experience I've found most players have more fun with a game like Case 1 than  Case 2. Why? I think it's because...
a) RPGs are played in a group. If damage is primarily attrititional, then each turn you have a good chance of contributing to the battle by hitting and doing some damage. On the other hand, if damage is primarily hit-kill vs. miss, then each turn you likely will achieve nothing at all. Your miss is totally unhelpful, but your hit, however small, helps a bit.

b) Players enjoy a sense of progress. Slowly whittling away at an enemy's hit points feels like progress. Whiff, whiff, whiff, KILL just feels like gambling.

c) Players want to keep their characters alive. Having the enemy whittle away your hp gives you a chance to flee. If you know you have 7 to 17 rounds to live, there's a chance. OTOH, whiff, whiff, whiff DIE is like gambling and the House just won.

With the above in mind, I think the ideal Attack System is one where:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - Conan gets to feel awesome against thugs
Elite fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other elite fighters; - Aragorn vs Conan is an extended duel where both sides see progress and rising stakes
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes attrit elite fighters; - Conan can be worn down by weak fighters but can be heroic without fear of insta-death
           and there seem to be two possible preferences for low level:
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - Low-level fighting is scary and deadly, and thus fun to go through as you level up (OE-3E)
Weak fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other weak fighters - Low-level fighting feels just like high level fighter (4E)

How does that compare to existing games? Through chance, insight, or genius, D&D's attack roll & hit point system is much closer to this ideal than most other games, which I think is a large part of its enduring popularity. Few other games accomplish this.

Modern games tend to fail in two categories. Consider Cyberpunk/Traveller/RECON/Delta Green:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - FUN
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill elite fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes quickly kill fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - FUN or NOT AS FUN IF YOU PREFER 4E LOW LEVEL STYLE PLAY

Quote from: estar;1118748...
So say I have a 50% chance of hitting the target with my sword.
Let say I roll 1d10 damage
Let say the target is wearing armor that absorb 5 points of damage.

So if I hit there is a 50-50 chance of me doing any damage. If I roll a 1 to 5, the target will take nothing because the armor absorb 5 points. If it roll 6 to 10 then the target will suffer damage in the range of 1 to 5 points. (1d10-5).

So we take the 50% chance of hitting, the 50% chance of actually doing damage and multiply them. So we have a 25% chance of dealing 1d5 damage.  So I can have the player roll a d20 and if they roll a 16 to a 20 they hit for 1d5 damage.

Two different procedures both a reflection of the same reality.
...

In theory perhaps. And, I do do this kind of "folding" (and even more extreme folding, where I get it down to one die roll determining the result of back-and-forth combat)... but I want it to come out to the right overall odds.

And the D&D formula does NOT do that. To take your example, a hit on an unarmored person should range from 1-10, while the hit on the armored person should range from 1-5.

Not to mention the business where D&D at higher levels gets figures' HP up rather larger than a weapon attack can inflict, or the matter of whether damage represents injury or not, and so what are healing potions doing? Etc.

Quote from: amacris;1118803...
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.
...

This is also what I tend to see in GURPS ancient/medieval combat, where there are both active defenses and armor that mitigates damage (but it can often mitigate it enough to stop it completely).

It's ALSO what I've seen in TFT (no active defenses except using tactics to take out your opponents before they hurt you, armor mitigates damage but also messes up your DX)  when one side has some sort of superiority and uses tactics.

What both games add though are good mapped tactical combat games, which means if you move well enough and your figures are good enough, you tend to be able to avoid being hit by virtue of maneuver and handling the foes you are facing to keep them from hitting you very often (or even at all if you do it well).

Quote from: tenbones;1118823...
Then the perennial question - "Is it fun? Does it rub you the right way in play?" That too has to be answered. I can think of some downstream effects using your idea here that would make Gritty Realistic games REALLY scary, because in history having plate-armor was rare for a reason. Whereas in D&D - every fighter that wants plate armor has plate armor... which further erodes the whole context the system because then it becomes a standard assumption by which all other systems become "balanced" around.
...

There's a reason I have played TFT & GURPS 99% of the times I've played RPGs. I find the tactics and satisfying detail, grit, and making sense to me to be very fun, and the absence of the things I like in other games to become intolerable to me.

As for plate armor, it's pretty rare in most of the situations I've gamed, because in addition to the cost, or even in TFT where you have to be good enough to handle the DX reduction, it reduces your running speed, which means you may not be able to get away from threats you don't want to fight, and if your friends run away in lighter armor, you won't be able to keep up with them, and if you're racing your friends to get to the enemy, you'll get there after they do, and your ability to quickly maneuver on the field is reduced, etc. With some exceptions, most players in my games don't want to be slowed that much.

But yes, if you played with really historical values for armor (which you can do in TFT & GURPS if you simply adjust the numbers), then in the periods where good full-coverage armor was available, you'll get an experience where the people in full armor are really hard to seriously injure unless/until you can wrestle them to the ground or something.

Quote from: estar;1118833The problem with your thesis that you don't go back far enough. AD&D was a consolidation and edit of the 3 LBB plus supplements. Even the Greyhawk supplement was a tweak by subsistuting different dice for damage and hit points. You need to consider your thesis in light of just the 3 LBB by themselves along with the accounts of how Gygax used the rules.

My thesis is that the version of D&D Armor Class you're arguing for was already dead by the time AD&D 1e was published. I know what it was before then, but "before" hasn't been the experience for 45 years.

QuoteYes but so what? It great that we have a wider variety of system to choose from with more being released every year. But D&D or Pathfinder has been the choice of the majority of the hobby for decades now. So when I read about the history of its development and dug into it, I think it not as complicated or arbitrary as people make it out to be. I don't expect anybody to like it better. But I hope it helps people understand some of the underlying rationale to D&D.

I'd reverse the "so what?" You're the gaming equivalent of the guy reminding everyone that the word gay didn't use to mean homosexual.

So what if it meant that nearly half-a-century ago. Those meanings for AC and hp haven't been accurate to the popular understanding for about as long as gay has been popularly understood to mean homosexual.

Point of reference; I had to replace the term "hit points" in my system and describe the replacement as a character resource you SPEND to avoid otherwise serious or mortal injury. I had to do this because 45 years of people playing "hit points = meat points" has even D&D developers who worked on 4E deriding the Warlord class for "shouting people's hands back on" (never mind that the system itself had zero rules for dismemberment or even lasting injuries of any kind associated with hit point loss and was one of the most overt in terms of reminders that hit points are not meat points).

Regardless of how I explained it, playtest players and GMs regularly tried to associate my hit points with meat and argued, for example, that my falling rules were stupid because they shouldn't lose hit points for avoiding a fall (the mechanic was that you lost hit points equal to the margin of failure when trying to catch yourself and end up clinging to the edge... basically hit points as you understand them... you're that much closer to death, but not there yet... which you would be if you Disney-deathed yourself off a thousand foot cliff).

Hit Points just equals meat now and the more you try to make it not mean that, the more players will fight you. Saying they're abstract units of how close you are to dying and not injuries isn't any more useful to the discussion than demanding that you use the term gay to mean happy and frivolous in modern America. You can insist that calling something the Gay Festival is intended to be family fun for all ages, but that's not the meaning anyone in America would take from it.

Likewise, AC and DR have been separate things in D&D for 40 years now since a variation on DR was included for field and full plate and in popular consciousness for 20 years when 3e included DR as an explictly separate thing from AC.

Yes, AC meant something different nearly half-a-century ago. So what? Vanishingly few think of it that way now and trying to redefine it back will just confuse matters. You'd be better served inventing a new term for the old thing than trying to fight fifty years of cumulative inertia.

Quote from: amacris;1118846In my experience I've found most players have more fun with a game like Case 1 [lots of attritional hits] than Case 2 (rare, but typically lethal, hits].

Just chiming in here to say that your experience matches my playtesting. Hit rates of about two-in-three seem to be the threshold where it goes from acceptable number of misses to frustration.

Likewise, there really does seem to be something to the "three hits" rule; after three hits something should happen to change the situation. Typically this can just be "the monster dies," but could also be some condition changes... many of the tougher monsters in 4E gained some special action they could use when bloodied which reflects a similar concept.

It's kinda counter to reality (where one good hit usually just ends things), but it appeals to human psychology.

Quote from: tenbones;1118831I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

We use the following, no table needed.
Impact weapons (clubs, weapon hilts and shafts, that little guy standing there just when you need him) on a hit, roll damage, subtract armor value, apply damage.
Blunt weapons (maces, warhammers, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract .5 armor value, apply damage.
Chopping weapons (axes, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract armor value, double the result, apply damage
Cutting weapons (sword and knife edges, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract 1.5 armor, triple the result, apply damage.
Armor-Piercing Point weapons(some spearheads, some sword points, all picks, some arrows and bolts) check for hitting a gap, otherwise treat like a blunt weapon, except on an exceptional hit.
Stabbing points: (other spears, some sword points, some arrows and bolts) Treat as cutting damage except on an exceptional hit.

Quote from: amacris;1118846With regard to "is it fun", let me offer up some math. Let's consider two cases:
Case 1) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 99% chance to hit. If he hits he will do 6-15 (avg 10) points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.
Case 2) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 10% chance to hit. if he hits he will do 100 points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.

Mathematically these seem similar, but in actual play, they are very different. The first is attritional - Aragorn knows he'll hit and it's a matter of how long it takes him to whittle Conan down vs. Aragorn whiffs 9 times out of 10. Put another way, the variance of Case 2 is much greater than Case 1; Case 2 could end in one round or it could never end. Case 1 will end somewhere between 17 and 7 rounds.

In my experience I've found most players have more fun with a game like Case 1 than  Case 2. Why? I think it's because...
a) RPGs are played in a group. If damage is primarily attrititional, then each turn you have a good chance of contributing to the battle by hitting and doing some damage. On the other hand, if damage is primarily hit-kill vs. miss, then each turn you likely will achieve nothing at all. Your miss is totally unhelpful, but your hit, however small, helps a bit.

b) Players enjoy a sense of progress. Slowly whittling away at an enemy's hit points feels like progress. Whiff, whiff, whiff, KILL just feels like gambling.

c) Players want to keep their characters alive. Having the enemy whittle away your hp gives you a chance to flee. If you know you have 7 to 17 rounds to live, there's a chance. OTOH, whiff, whiff, whiff DIE is like gambling and the House just won.

With the above in mind, I think the ideal Attack System is one where:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - Conan gets to feel awesome against thugs
Elite fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other elite fighters; - Aragorn vs Conan is an extended duel where both sides see progress and rising stakes
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes attrit elite fighters; - Conan can be worn down by weak fighters but can be heroic without fear of insta-death
           and there seem to be two possible preferences for low level:
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - Low-level fighting is scary and deadly, and thus fun to go through as you level up (OE-3E)
Weak fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other weak fighters - Low-level fighting feels just like high level fighter (4E)

How does that compare to existing games? Through chance, insight, or genius, D&D's attack roll & hit point system is much closer to this ideal than most other games, which I think is a large part of its enduring popularity. Few other games accomplish this.

Modern games tend to fail in two categories. Consider Cyberpunk/Traveller/RECON/Delta Green:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - FUN
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill elite fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes quickly kill fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - FUN or NOT AS FUN IF YOU PREFER 4E LOW LEVEL STYLE PLAY

I was writing a very thoughtful reply to this, but then I pressed Go Advanced, and somehow my browser decided I was no longer logged in, and logging in led me to a blank page, and my words were lost is browser cache hell, one of my least favorite levels of hell.


So I'll just summarize.

* There is a Case 3, which is like Case 2 except there is a good interesting tactical game where there is a whole mapped combat situation to engage, that gives players ways to mitigate their risks of dying or other outcomes, and even in simple head-on combat, many other things can happen besides "whiff" or "you kill Conan".

* There are also conceptual and psychological issues which only some players suffer from, which result in some players suffering under Case 2 or even Case 3, but not all players have those issues.

* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

* I also can't stand attrition games where fighting means you're almost certainly going to be worn down, but worn down slowly, and once worn down enough, you're very likely to fall. Not unless it actually represents a situation where that makes sense. In a fist fight, ok. In an unarmored sword fight, no.

* I also really like effects of injury. One of the best ways to stay alive it to hit your opponent first, in a way that means they're going to have a hard time hitting you back immediately. 1/7 hit points gone, but no other effect, is to me, uninteresting and not fun. I much prefer a high "whiff" rate to no way to deny a foe a high chance of hurting me.

I can see how in a D&D-style combat system, having more hit points than weapons could ever do damage, sort of fills in for the lack of ways to avoid getting hurt that exist in the combat systems I like. To me it feels like a poor substitute, though. If I had to play a game with no mapped tactical aspect to it, I personally would much prefer to have a high chance to avoid being hurt, than a pile of hit points that will almost surely erode in each fight.

Quote from: tenbones;1118831I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

I've used weapon and armor types since I started playing GURPS in 1986. It's built in to GURPS, though different from the D&D and Palladium models. I'm mostly happy with it, and it quickly became second-nature.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901* There are also conceptual and psychological issues which only some players suffer from, which result in some players suffering under Case 2 or even Case 3, but not all players have those issues.

The majority of humans are irrationally risk averse. Given that, it makes sense that many people prefer a system where their favorite character can't be killed in a single round.

Quote* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

While I don't feel quite as strongly, I don't like attrition only games either.

Quote from: estar;1118832There are consquence to both approaches including AC, but I disagree that there are mechanical gaps.

The gaps are there though, you just mention ways to address them later in your post. But if there weren't there there wouldn't be anything to address.

Quote from: estar;1118832Lets break it down.

Armor as "Defense" (i.e. evasion or reduced hit rate) fails to account for attacks that don't do damage
knockdowns,
So AC does have one case where an actual hit is determined and that when an unarmored target suffer damage. In most editions it is modified by a dex bonus. So to make contact with a target is to roll higher than the number for AC 10 (or 9) adding the dex bonus to the target number.

So now we determined that we made contact. Now we can proceed to resolving the knockdown itself. Different RPGs have different ways of handling this. Some match strength vs strength. Some get more sophisticated and include velocity and mass like GURPS. Some add skill in and so on. But the difficulty for D&D here was determining whether contact was made. Now that out of the way you can proceed to whatever mechanics you feel accurately represent the odds of getting knocked down after contact is made.

disarms,
In GURPS disarms are a function of weapon skill. In other system they are often a critical result. As for D&D, it has weapon skill in the form of your to-hit bonus so you can adapt that if need be. Or incorporate a critical result system. Both would be consistent with the larger system even though various editions have remained silent on it.

The method I prefer, is to have character make a normal to hit roll and the target make a save. If the save fails then the target is disarmed. I don't have an issue with including armor as part of the target number. I don't view armor as protection in this instance but rather it represents the attacker in that exchange of blow landing a hit on the armor instead of forcing a disarm.

The reason for the save is that in GURPS and other system I played with detailed combat mechanics including disarm, is that disarm is nearly always more difficult then try trying to do damage. That it less likely the more skilled the target is. Saves get better as the character levels, saves are traditionally used to mitigate something bad, that something bad is encompass a variety of situation not just damaging ones, disarms are something bad. Allowing the target a save makes a disarm attempt clearly inferior to an attempt to deal damage.

Yes, I forgot about Touch AC. But Touch AC is a concept that was added later as an Ad Hoc solution to one of the "gaps" I mentioned. But just because you find ways to cover them that doesn't mean the gap isn't there. You're ultimately dealing with an exception to the rule where Armor AC is still used as a default, but ignored in certain situations because it doesn't quite work in those cases.

Quote from: estar;1118832In GURPS, DR (Damage Resistance) does protect against a wide variety of damage including damage. Although the GURPS hobby has debated the accuracy of this. The thing with explosion is that their force is applied all at once. I am not going to debate the particulars only to point out that the question whether armor should protect against whole body effects is not settled among various systems that use Damage Reduction.

I can see how armor with gaps might not be fully effective against explosions, but I can't imagine it not offering any protection compared to being naked or unarmored. The fact that there are pieces of tough material between at least parts of your body and a blast should be preferable to not having any protection.

Quote from: estar;1118832Specific to D&D is the saving throw mechanic. Saving Throws are used to avoid or mitigate something "bad" happening to you particularly things like explosion, fire, and other effects effect the whole character at once. So if one feels that armor should mitigate some of these like an explosion, then for later editions I would apply either all of or half of the AC bonus as a positive modifier to the saving throw.  It reduces damage by helping the save.  

It may not be the way some people would do it if they were designing a system but it does accomplish mechanically the same thing and does it in a way that consistent with how D&D works.

Again none of this means you should like AC or how D&D handle things, but it should demonstrate that through an understanding the system one can handle the situation you outline in a way that doesn't feel foreign.

This is certainly a way to handle armor protection against blasts or explosions in a game like D&D, and I might consider it when using that type of system, but D&D doesn't use this rule and similar to Touch AC it's an Ad Hoc mechanic that deals with exceptions, while DR may handle this directly without additional rules.

Quote from: Bren;1118903The majority of humans are irrationally risk averse. Given that, it makes sense that many people prefer a system where their favorite character can't be killed in a single round.

While I don't feel quite as strongly, I don't like attrition only games either.

I am risk-averse too. Part of why I dislike attrition games is because I want it to be possible to play in such a way I might often not get hurt at all. But an attrition game tends to mean it's often almost impossible to fight without losing any hit points.

I often want to play a cautious fighter type who greatly reduces risks in ways that are logical parts of the game, but there's still a chance I'll get killed or maimed. I often manage to avoid getting injured at all, which I quite enjoy. But it would be an empty experience for me if there were a predictable way to avoid all risk, and it wouldn't feel like an actual deadly combat situation.

My perspective is that I really want a game that represents the situation to some degree. If I know I can survive 7 rounds versus Conan before I run away and take a "short rest" or have "the Cleric lay hands" and be unhurt, that is NOT the experience of facing someone who could kill me if they hit me with their weapon.

But if the game also doesn't allow me to really do anything to mitigate the risk, because if I fight, it's always the same situation, that's not good either. Even so, I'd rather the abstraction be that I can say I'm trying my best not to get hit, and get a decent chance to not get chopped, but if I get chopped by Conan with a weapon that can hurt me through whatever I'm wearing, I should have a very good chance of being seriously hurt or killed, and even if I survive, there should not be zero effect on my ability to hit him back.

Because that would be utterly unlike what I understand the situation of fighting a deadly armed opponent to be like.

Not to mention how predictable it is.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1118900We use the following, no table needed.
Impact weapons (clubs, weapon hilts and shafts, that little guy standing there just when you need him) on a hit, roll damage, subtract armor value, apply damage.
Blunt weapons (maces, warhammers, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract .5 armor value, apply damage.
Chopping weapons (axes, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract armor value, double the result, apply damage
Cutting weapons (sword and knife edges, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract 1.5 armor, triple the result, apply damage.
Armor-Piercing Point weapons(some spearheads, some sword points, all picks, some arrows and bolts) check for hitting a gap, otherwise treat like a blunt weapon, except on an exceptional hit.
Stabbing points: (other spears, some sword points, some arrows and bolts) Treat as cutting damage except on an exceptional hit.

Does this mean that slashing weapons do triple damage by default? Wouldn't that outstrip any advantage of armor being 50% higher vs cutting weapons?

I was thinking of making weapon vs armor even more simple. DR affects all weapons the same by default, but DR from armor gets +50% bonus vs Slashing attacks (other than axes), but is halved against armor piercing attacks. Slashing weapons might also get a slight damage bonus compared to other weapons.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901I was writing a very thoughtful reply to this, but then I pressed Go Advanced, and somehow my browser decided I was no longer logged in, and logging in led me to a blank page, and my words were lost is browser cache hell, one of my least favorite levels of hell.

Yeah, I don't even bother with regular mode. I either Go Advanced from the get go or write it out in a notepad then copy/paste. Too much risk typing the whole thing out in-site, where any mistake or error means you lose the whole thing you wrote and will never remember ever again.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901So I'll just summarize.

* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

* I also can't stand attrition games where fighting means you're almost certainly going to be worn down, but worn down slowly, and once worn down enough, you're very likely to fall. Not unless it actually represents a situation where that makes sense. In a fist fight, ok. In an unarmored sword fight, no.

Yeah, attrition is one of the most boring and tedious ways to handle a fight. This is one of the things I hate about D&D at high levels. It eventually gets to a point where everyone is a bag of HPs and the entire point of combat is to hack away indefinitely at bags of HP.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901I was writing a very thoughtful reply to this, but then I pressed Go Advanced, and somehow my browser decided I was no longer logged in, and logging in led me to a blank page, and my words were lost is browser cache hell, one of my least favorite levels of hell.

Been there. If it's any consolation, your response still seemed thoughtful!

Quote*There is a Case 3, which is like Case 2 except there is a good interesting tactical game where there is a whole mapped combat situation to engage, that gives players ways to mitigate their risks of dying or other outcomes, and even in simple head-on combat, many other things can happen besides "whiff" or "you kill Conan".

I agree that this case exists, and is good. But I'd argue there also exists a Case 4 which is like Case 1 except there is a good interesting tactical game, too. The method of attack resolution and damage is orthogonal to whether there are other factors of interest.

There is also a Case 5, which blends Case 1 and Case 2. For instance, MERP is somewhat attritional (you have hit points) but it also permits critical hits that can maim or kill you even if you're at maximum hit points. That system would be represented [in my parlance] as:
Elite fighters frequently hit each other and slowly attrit each other, but infrequently crit and kill each other
Elite fighters frequently crit and kill weak fighters
Weak fighters sometimes hit and slow attrit strong fighters, and very rarely crit and kill strong fighters
Weak fighters frequently hit each other and slow attrit each other, and infrequently crit and kill each other.

I think my own game, ACKS, is Case 4. (With the new rules in Heroic Fantasy Handbook, it's Case 5.)

Quote* There are also conceptual and psychological issues which only some players suffer from, which result in some players suffering under Case 2 or even Case 3, but not all players have those issues.

I won't delve into "conceptual or psychological issues" or "suffering". I'm merely saying that, in 20+ years of running games ranging from the most attritional to the most whiffy, most players most of the time tend to favor the attritional. I believe it's for the reasons I stated - they prefer the sense of progress, they prefer to contribute a bit rather than randomly contribute nothing each round, and they prefer to have manageable risk.

Quote* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

OK. I respect your preference. As it happens, I personally think something like Case 5 is my own sweet spot for enjoyment; but my preference does not seem to be what most other people think is most fun, as they complain that games like MERP are "way too deadly" and "Aragorn shouldn't be able to get one-shotted by any orc" and so on. In my recent playtesting for ACKS Heroic Fantasy, I had to tune-down critical hits substantially because players hated the risk of their high level PCs getting slain by a nasty MERP-style crit.

Quote* I also can't stand attrition games where fighting means you're almost certainly going to be worn down, but worn down slowly, and once worn down enough, you're very likely to fall. Not unless it actually represents a situation where that makes sense. In a fist fight, ok. In an unarmored sword fight, no.

Based on my own studies of real world combat and occasional participation in fighting sports, I think that most forms of fighting between relative equals involve, in part, getting worn down slowly until you fail. One clear exception is a Wild West gunslinger's duel. Even in an unarmored sword fight where one hit can kill, both sides tend to be very cautious and deliberate - meaning fatigue and exhaustion become huge factors. In any extend gunfight, fatigue, exhaustion, fear, suppression, etc. are huge factors. Modern military doctrine is very much "use firepower to wear down the enemy until he's shellshocked and shaken, then assault him". Etc. And from time in the boxing ring and shooting range, as soon as the adrenalin wears off, you're exhausted as heck.

Quote* I also really like effects of injury. One of the best ways to stay alive it to hit your opponent first, in a way that means they're going to have a hard time hitting you back immediately. 1/7 hit points gone, but no other effect, is to me, uninteresting and not fun. I much prefer a high "whiff" rate to no way to deny a foe a high chance of hurting me.

OK, sure. I certainly don't dispute that in real life, the first side to get injured is often hugely disadvantaged. However, I think your preference here is a rare preference. Most gamers I have played with do NOT like to have penalties from injuries, most GMs don't want to have to keep track of injury penalties for mobs of NPCs, and most design theorists worry that penalties from injuries create a failure cascade where a slight advantage becomes compounded into a bigger and bigger advantage. Anecdotally, when I ran Cyberpunk 2020 (my go-to system for years), every player who could would get a Pain Editor and Adrenalin Shock/Surge Chip so that they didn't have to worry about pain penalties from wounds.

My bottomline isn't to tell anyone that they game they love sucks or whatever. Simply that if you're designing a game for wide appeal, attritional combat seems to be preferred by players over non-attritional combat because they don't find whiffing fun and they don't find randomly getting whacked fun. Heck, this preference shows up not just in tabletop RPGs. It's everywhere.
- Virtually every MMO uses attritional combat - and the most popular games are hugely attritional with carefully calculated "damage over time" and so on
- Virtually every CRPG uses attritional combat - again, the most popular games are hugely attritional with carefully calculated "damage over time" and so on
- Virtually every fighting game uses attritional combat - compare the popularity of Mortal Kombat to Bushido Blade
- Even the majority of mass market FPS use attritional combat where you lose Health and get Health Packs to heal - the one exception I can think of is Counterstrike, which I personally love but which continues to stand out as the exception to the rule

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118910Yeah, attrition is one of the most boring and tedious ways to handle a fight. This is one of the things I hate about D&D at high levels. It eventually gets to a point where everyone is a bag of HPs and the entire point of combat is to hack away indefinitely at bags of HP.

That's not an issue with attrition, that's an issue with bad design. You can just as easily have a non-attritional game that is equally tedious: "At high levels, everyone is so hard to hit that the entire point of combat is to whiff away indefinitely until you score a lucky kill". It's mathematically quite possible to have an attritional battle where the combat will tend to last any X number of rounds, and a non-attritional battle where combat will last any X number of rounds. And it's possible to have an attritional game with lots of tactical options, battlefield maneuvers, and so on, and a non-attritional game with lots of tactical options, etc.

From what I have seen, most players prefer fights that last about 3 to 6 combat rounds, regardless of game system. Less than that, and it feels like a waste of time to have shifted into combat mode/taken out the minis/rolled initiative. More than that, and there's a sense that the fight is dragging on. How you get that 3-to-6 sweet spot is just math.

For instance:
Game 1. Conan has 100hp, Thulsa-Doom has 100hp. Conan hits 100% of the time for 1d6 Damage. This will be tedious with 33 combat rounds required for the battle to end on average.
Game 2. Conan has 100hp. Thulsa-Doom has 100hp. Conan hits 100% of the time for 5d10 Damage. This will be a fast-paced fight with 4 combat rounds required for the battle to end on average.
Game 3. Conan has 10hp. Thusla Doom has 10hp. Conan hits 10%* of the time for 1d6 Damage. This will be a tedius combat with 28 combat rounds required for the battle to end on average.
Game 4. Conan has 10hp. Thusla Doom has 10hp. Conan hits 66% of the time for 1d6 Damage. This will be an average 2.31hp/round so 4 combat rounds are required for the battle to end on average.

*An example of how this can happen is in some versions of Runequest/Elric/etc where the 1d100 game system allows an attack (% chance) to be blocked by a parry (% chance). Two combatants at 89%. First combatant hits 89% of time, but his attack is parried 89% of the time, yielding 10% total hit rate. One of the ways that such systems get around this is that the parry still results in a damaging hit, but the damage of the hit is greatly reduced...which results in de-facto attritional combat.

Quote from: amacris;1118917...Lots of good points...

Rather than re-quote practically your entire post with "I agree"s sprinkled everywhere I figured I should point out a couple of areas.

Your observation on real-world attrition in personal combat (i.e. essentially whoever gets too tired or so off balance that they can no longer defend against a finishing attack) matches my research and is the reason I focused on entirely non-meat "hit points" for my system (i.e. stamina and ability to recover when an opponent tries to force you into an error) and the idea that once those points are depleted, you're basically wide open for whatever strike your opponent makes (be it a lethal strike or a knockout blow.

Related to though is that I found from my research that reaching a basic level of competence was "relatively" easy, but where the experts and masters excelled was in superior efficiency of effort and in more quickly wearing their opponents down, but could still be overwhelmed by multiple less skilled foes at once.

A related aspect is that there are some spans in a fight where no matter how good you are you're not in a position to force your opponent to wear himself down (i.e. sometimes even the best warrior "misses" against a mediocre opponent) and conversely, even the least skilled foe can sometimes surprise you and force you to spend more stamina and focus than you'd like on them (i.e. sometimes even the mook "hits").

In game terms these two combined into mechanics of relatively static attack and defense bonuses (the baseline competence), but scaling of "hit points" (how efficient they are in managing their own endurance) and damage dealt (how effectively they exploit the openings they do get in wearing down their opponent) and through relatively quick recovery of "hit points" (while more severe injuries require a night's rest at best and can only be healed by magic at worst). A master warrior can easily dispatch an unskilled foe in a single hit (their damage exceeds the target's hp), but enough of them will wear even the master out to the point he could fall.

A related element in reference to the person pointing out that AC doesn't model certain attacks well is that, when your system is based on comparing a roll to a target number there's no reason you have to be limited to just one target number. My system uses four defenses; Armor (for attacks armor helps with), Dodge (for attacks only evasion can help you with), Fortitude (for things armor doesn't help with and you can't really dodge either; you just have to soak it) and Willpower (attacks on your mind and morale). Some weapon maneuvers actually target Dodge, Fortitude or even Willpower (advanced feinting maneuvers for example).

Quote from: amacris;1118918That's not an issue with attrition, that's an issue with bad design. You can just as easily have a non-attritional game that is equally tedious: "At high levels, everyone is so hard to hit that the entire point of combat is to whiff away indefinitely until you score a lucky kill".

That would also be an example of bad design, but on the skill/ability level end of things. Though, generally speaking if we're talking about something like an opposed skill system, for example, if both characters have comparably high skills both skills would cancel each other out making things roughly 50/50 hit or miss. Only way to constantly miss in such a system would be if one of the combatants has a much lower ability level, which means that the other would probably hit consistently.

Not entirely sure in what type of system exactly everyone would have a consistently low chance to hit.

Quote from: amacris;1118918From what I have seen, most players prefer fights that last about 3 to 6 combat rounds, regardless of game system. Less than that, and it feels like a waste of time to have shifted into combat mode/taken out the minis/rolled initiative. More than that, and there's a sense that the fight is dragging on. How you get that 3-to-6 sweet spot is just math.

That's why I don't like high level D&D, which is the most common example I can think of a system emphasizing attrition as a combat/damage mechanic. Eventually combat begins to drag too much and the whole battle becomes an exercise in hacking away at hit points.

Quote from: amacris;1118918*An example of how this can happen is in some versions of Runequest/Elric/etc where the 1d100 game system allows an attack (% chance) to be blocked by a parry (% chance). Two combatants at 89%. First combatant hits 89% of time, but his attack is parried 89% of the time, yielding 10% total hit rate. One of the ways that such systems get around this is that the parry still results in a damaging hit, but the damage of the hit is greatly reduced...which results in de-facto attritional combat.

Oh, those are the systems where everyone has a consistently low chance to hit at high levels? That mechanic sounds atrocious, almost wrong. Sounds like it's missing some type of opposed component. Like maybe "highest successful roll wins", if it's a Roll-Under d100 mechanic, or maybe "highest success margin wins (subtract rolls from respective Skill Values and compare)".

I voted #5 as I don't think HERO really fits any of the others as described (maybe #4).

HERO (1-5th ed)* has offensive and defensive combat values (OCV/DCV). The base numbers are modified by skill levels (can add to OCV, DCV or damage) and maneuvers (ex Dodge gives +3 to DCV, some other actions can also increase / reduce DCV).

Adjusted OCV / DCV are compared and the net gives the bonus / penalty to the to hit roll.


My description sounds more complex than it actually is.


*OCV/DCV was one of the major changes in 6th ed.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118940Not entirely sure in what type of system exactly everyone would have a consistently low chance to hit.

GURPS which has an defense roll independent of the attack roll. Often rolled with odds similar to the attack roll resulting in a lot of I hit, no I defend outcomes.

For example you can attack at a 14 or less and the target can defend at a 13 or less. Both rolled using 3d6.

To hit therefore is 90.74% and to defend is 83.80% resulting in only a 14.69% chance of the attack doing damage. Even then it can be reduced by Damage Resistance.

This is mitigated by GURPS supporting the use of various maneuvers and tactics that people use in life to overcome defenses in melee combat like feints, and positioning.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118910Does this mean that slashing weapons do triple damage by default? Wouldn't that outstrip any advantage of armor being 50% higher vs cutting weapons?

Not at all. If none of your damage gets through, the fact that it would triple if it did isn't of much use. Sword edges and even glaive edges are almost useless against plate (and some monsters) and not great against mail but you can cut up unarmored peasants and hobgoblins in no time.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118940Oh, those are the systems where everyone has a consistently low chance to hit at high levels? That mechanic sounds atrocious, almost wrong.

Or it how reality works if all one does is whack away at an opponent. Fortunately in reality people don't just stand around and whack away at each other. Positioning and maneuvers need to be incorporated to give players the same option to overcome a target defense as people do in life.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118940Sounds like it's missing some type of opposed component. Like maybe "highest successful roll wins", if it's a Roll-Under d100 mechanic, or maybe "highest success margin wins (subtract rolls from respective Skill Values and compare)".

That route is good for a quick resolution. But it is an abstraction that omits various details. Which some hobbyist may feel those are important to consider. In which case the designer is on the same path as the authors of GURPS, Runequest, Riddle of Steel as to what to incorporate.

For example one common tactic melee fighter use are various forms of wrestling moves for example a body slam to knock the opponent down, or to trip your opponent. There are moves to pin your opponent's weapon so you can use a second weapon to attack. Things that are not countered just by a shield block, parry, or dodge.

For example in GURPS one has the option to feint with your dex and weapon skill, or do a beat with your strength and weapon skill, or to perform a ruse with your IQ and weapon skill. The end result is the same, the opponent is now out of position causing their defense to be reduced.

Or you could try for a a body slam which can be defended against but counts as a heavy weapon which makes blocks and parries less effective.

Like in life, the combat mechanics of GURPS allow you tailor your tactics to the situation and specific abilities of the character. GURPS expects players to treat combat more than just opponents whacking away at each other on a static battlefield.

Quote from: amacris;1118917Been there. If it's any consolation, your response still seemed thoughtful!

Thanks, it helps! :-)

I had to save this one before saving because it tried to do it to me again for this post.

Quote from: amacris;1118917I agree that this case exists, and is good. But I'd argue there also exists a Case 4 which is like Case 1 except there is a good interesting tactical game, too. The method of attack resolution and damage is orthogonal to whether there are other factors of interest.

It's orthogonal in one sense, but I think that in abstract combat systems, the hitpoint "buffer" ends up being the way players can manage to keep their characters alive through managing that, and so both in terms of that tactic, and in terms of how many players think of hitpoint representing characters' ability to dodge, parry, and do smart things to avoid being hurt, it ends up in a sense filling the need for those tactical and logical elements, whereas in a game with a detailed literal mapped tactical combat game, instead of filling those needs with hitpoints, those needs are filled partly by the tactical elements and other literally(rather than abstractly)-represented ways to avoid injury. That is, a game without other ways to avoid getting hurt needs hitpoint buffers but a game that offers other ways to avoid high chances of dying, doesn't have the same need.

Quote from: amacris;1118917There is also a Case 5, which blends Case 1 and Case 2. For instance, MERP is somewhat attritional (you have hit points) but it also permits critical hits that can maim or kill you even if you're at maximum hit points. That system would be represented [in my parlance] as:
Elite fighters frequently hit each other and slowly attrit each other, but infrequently crit and kill each other
Elite fighters frequently crit and kill weak fighters
Weak fighters sometimes hit and slow attrit strong fighters, and very rarely crit and kill strong fighters
Weak fighters frequently hit each other and slow attrit each other, and infrequently crit and kill each other.

This case 5 is essentially my preference too, and (depending on the details) what GURPS is (or can be) like.

Quote from: amacris;1118917OK. I respect your preference. As it happens, I personally think something like Case 5 is my own sweet spot for enjoyment; but my preference does not seem to be what most other people think is most fun, as they complain that games like MERP are "way too deadly" and "Aragorn shouldn't be able to get one-shotted by any orc" and so on. In my recent playtesting for ACKS Heroic Fantasy, I had to tune-down critical hits substantially because players hated the risk of their high level PCs getting slain by a nasty MERP-style crit.

Your goals for your publications and/or the people you play with would be different from my goals as a player, GM, or any game I'd want to publish.

I dislike typical attritional abstract combat systems enough that I find their popularity annoying and not a reason to want to play or publish anything like them.

I also feel that many players think they like what's familiar, and many have not experienced the types of gameplay I like, because there are so many games with styles I don't like. But I have rarely had new players actually complain about games I've run.

I also have seen many complaints by people who think TFT or GURPS is too deadly, but it seems to me just haven't experienced (play with a good GM and/or) that if you learn good tactics, use caution, bring enough people to combat, and have strong enough characters, that PC death can/does tend to be extremely rare.

And I think the Aragorn notion you mentioned is even shown to be untrue - he gets knocked off a cliff and should have died but not for a miracle, the Fellowship runs from goblins, Boromir gets taken out by a few Uruk-Hai - when Boromir gets hit by the first arrow, he's in a cinematic version of what they'd complain was a "death spiral". So if what they think they want is LOTR, I think they don't know what they're talking about.

I think such players also basically don't realize/admit it but essentially think they want plot armor or GM protection from serious permanent loss, while pretending to be playing a game and overcoming danger. I see it even with some TFT and GURPS players - many players think they want danger and to play an adventure situation, but their expectation (which they probably wouldn't admit to or express as I would) is that they get to show up and have their characters get to have cool adventures that seem dangerous but really don't require them to do anything but sit there and say they go along with the railroad plot and say they attack and don't do anything too stupid and they're guaranteed they won't die, won't lost a leg, won't have their magic items break or be stolen, will get steadily rewarded with new loot, magic and abilities, etc etc. And I very much am not interested in playing that or providing that. That is available in tens or hundreds of thousands of derivative games that seem like a terrible waste of effort and talent to me.

Ok, that was a rant. My point being that I see attritional combat as part of a pattern of typical play styles that I find very uninteresting. And that I suspect is popular largely because it's common and conventional, more than that people wouldn't enjoy other styles if they were exposed to good versions of them.

Quote from: amacris;1118917Based on my own studies of real world combat and occasional participation in fighting sports, I think that most forms of fighting between relative equals involve, in part, getting worn down slowly until you fail. One clear exception is a Wild West gunslinger's duel. Even in an unarmored sword fight where one hit can kill, both sides tend to be very cautious and deliberate - meaning fatigue and exhaustion become huge factors. In any extend gunfight, fatigue, exhaustion, fear, suppression, etc. are huge factors. Modern military doctrine is very much "use firepower to wear down the enemy until he's shellshocked and shaken, then assault him". Etc. And from time in the boxing ring and shooting range, as soon as the adrenalin wears off, you're exhausted as heck.

Yes. I just want to represent such things distinct from the representation of physical wounds.

Quote from: amacris;1118917OK, sure. I certainly don't dispute that in real life, the first side to get injured is often hugely disadvantaged. However, I think your preference here is a rare preference. Most gamers I have played with do NOT like to have penalties from injuries, most GMs don't want to have to keep track of injury penalties for mobs of NPCs, and most design theorists worry that penalties from injuries create a failure cascade where a slight advantage becomes compounded into a bigger and bigger advantage. Anecdotally, when I ran Cyberpunk 2020 (my go-to system for years), every player who could would get a Pain Editor and Adrenalin Shock/Surge Chip so that they didn't have to worry about pain penalties from wounds.

Again, what popular conventional thinking is, at most makes me sigh and not be interested in the games that follow it.

And again, there seem to be common ideas that aren't really about my experience. Countless times I've seen people comment "I don't like death spirals", but they're generally not talking about (and have never seen) the game experiences I enjoy. I also would much rather master and use a slightly more complex rule, than endure a game that's just a slow race to 0 HP. Effects of injury mean I can likely avoid being injured by injuring a foe first, and that if I get injured, I need to focus on not getting injured again until I'm not reeling and can regain an advantageous situation, and hopefully my comrades will come try to help me out. I want those to be things that happen in combat. I do not want to hack up an assailant only to have them keep attacking me with no penalty.

I remember playing Fallout 3 and being very immersed in it, carefully sneaking about and a bandit appeared right around the corner from me who I managed to shoot first, twice in their shaved unarmored head! . . . and they then proceeded to shoot me with no penalty to their action at all. And I lost interest after more demonstrations of how it was a hitpoint whittle-fest (but with realistic graphics showing ridiculous visual interpretations of hitpoint attrition combat).

Quote from: amacris;1118917My bottomline isn't to tell anyone that they game they love sucks or whatever. Simply that if you're designing a game for wide appeal, attritional combat seems to be preferred by players over non-attritional combat because they don't find whiffing fun and they don't find randomly getting whacked fun. Heck, this preference shows up not just in tabletop RPGs. It's everywhere.
- Virtually every MMO uses attritional combat - and the most popular games are hugely attritional with carefully calculated "damage over time" and so on
- Virtually every CRPG uses attritional combat - again, the most popular games are hugely attritional with carefully calculated "damage over time" and so on
- Virtually every fighting game uses attritional combat - compare the popularity of Mortal Kombat to Bushido Blade
- Even the majority of mass market FPS use attritional combat where you lose Health and get Health Packs to heal - the one exception I can think of is Counterstrike, which I personally love but which continues to stand out as the exception to the rule

Yeah, and again, I am not designing a game for that demographic of "wide appeal", and I don't equate commonness of a convention, or popularity of the games, to be a reason to do so too, nor even a real vote of preference. Most people who like games are used to these conventions and have little/no experience with other types. And even if most people really did have an essential preference for it, I don't, the people I like playing with don't, I don't see any reason to play, run or make a game I don't like, etc.

I could rant about FPS games too but I'll (mostly) spare everyone.

I will mention other examples of FPS games that aren't hitpoint whittle-fests where a submachinegun bullet does 5% damage because of how "not fun" and "unpopular" it would be if a gun combat game made it "too" possible to get shot and killed:
The Arma series
The Ghost Recon / Rainbow 6 / Rogue Spear series
The Hidden and Dangerous series
The Operation Flashpoint series
The Delta Force series
The Red Orchestra series
The SWAT series
Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix
Raven Shield
various deadliness mods and/or settings for Team Fortress 2, Unreal, Battlefront, etc.
various settings and mods that make deadly games more deadly (Red Orchestra, Arma)

Quote from: Skarg;1118982[lots of good thoughts]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Since we've both been clear in distinguishing our personal vs perceived market-wide preferences, I fear I don't have any particular bombastic rhetoric to offer back...  

My one comment is with regards to attrition vs. non-attrition systems and tactics. I think you're right that Hit Points can be used as a buffer against the need for tactical planning. Conversely, however, I have seen many non-attritional RPGs end up having to rely on Luke Points/Fate Points/Hero Points/Bennies to get around the deadliness and basically offer a meta-attrition instead. Warhammer has its Fate Points, Cyberpunk has Luck Points, Mekton has both Luck Points and (in Zeta) Maneuver Points, Savage Worlds has Bennies, etc. The number of truly non-attritional RPGs with detailed tactical combat doesn't seem very big -- what's your go-to list? GURPS?

In any case it sounds like you enjoy realistic combat systems and have found a gaming group that does too and that's honestly about the best one can hope for in gaming, I think -- a group that enjoys what you enjoy. We're all in our own tiny niche of preference, so it's nice to find others in the same niche.

Quote from: estar;1118965Or it how reality works if all one does is whack away at an opponent. Fortunately in reality people don't just stand around and whack away at each other. Positioning and maneuvers need to be incorporated to give players the same option to overcome a target defense as people do in life.


That route is good for a quick resolution. But it is an abstraction that omits various details. Which some hobbyist may feel those are important to consider. In which case the designer is on the same path as the authors of GURPS, Runequest, Riddle of Steel as to what to incorporate.

For example one common tactic melee fighter use are various forms of wrestling moves for example a body slam to knock the opponent down, or to trip your opponent. There are moves to pin your opponent's weapon so you can use a second weapon to attack. Things that are not countered just by a shield block, parry, or dodge.

For example in GURPS one has the option to feint with your dex and weapon skill, or do a beat with your strength and weapon skill, or to perform a ruse with your IQ and weapon skill. The end result is the same, the opponent is now out of position causing their defense to be reduced.

Or you could try for a a body slam which can be defended against but counts as a heavy weapon which makes blocks and parries less effective.

Like in life, the combat mechanics of GURPS allow you tailor your tactics to the situation and specific abilities of the character. GURPS expects players to treat combat more than just opponents whacking away at each other on a static battlefield.

I'm not sure this mechanic accurately illustrates the way things actually work in real life. From what you tell me these parry attempts don't even seem to take opponent skill or the quality of the blow into account, so that a character would have the same chances to parry a poorly skilled fighter's attack as they would a highly skilled fighter or a well-placed blow. But in my experience from sparring matches and training martial arts, opponent skill and attack placement does matter. Granted, a lot of sparring matches are a bunch of blocks compared to how things handle in RPGs that use AC or simple opposed rolls, but those people aren't trying to kill each other. If you see a UFC match, however, where fights are all out like they're trying to kill each other, and a LOT more attacks connect--there's way less blocking and much more "OMG! Did you see that guy's teeth fly across the fighting mat? Jesus Christ!"

There is also a lot of movement and positioning in a real life fight going on that are highly situational and impossible to illustrate in terms of the game rules beyond just fighting skill--the more skilled you are the better you are at positioning yourself in a way that could maximize the effectiveness of your blow. But all of that is thrown away if you can just parry an attack with zero regards for opponent skill. And you don't need block-heavy combat mechanics to include special maneuvers, like trips and feints, in the game. Almost all games include that regardless of how combat mechanics work.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1118963Not at all. If none of your damage gets through, the fact that it would triple if it did isn't of much use. Sword edges and even glaive edges are almost useless against plate (and some monsters) and not great against mail but you can cut up unarmored peasants and hobgoblins in no time.

IDK, I guess it depends on how much damage attacks do or armor mitigates. It just seems to me that if an attack does triple damage it would be able to overcome armor even if that armor is 50% higher against that type of attack, since the extra damage would be higher than the extra armor. But again, that would depend on how much damage we' talking about beyond just percentages.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119048IDK, I guess it depends on how much damage attacks do or armor mitigates. It just seems to me that if an attack does triple damage it would be able to overcome armor even if that armor is 50% higher against that type of attack, since the extra damage would be higher than the extra armor. But again, that would depend on how much damage we' talking about beyond just percentages.

I get what WillInNewHaven is getting at. It's basically because humans in armor are not homogeneously dense/hard and different materials respond to different forces differently.

Traditionally slicing attacks are excellent against flesh, lousy against metal. Piercing attacks are better at punching through armor, but don't cut flesh open nearly so much (incidentally one reason for wearing certain fabrics under armor was because arrows didn't pierce it after penetrating the armor, they pushed a generally sanitary piece of cloth into the wound; reducing blood loss and risk of infection).

There are two ways to model this.

One way to model this is to use the same damage for everything (say 2d6+5), but assign different DRs to different attacks (say DR 5 vs. piercing, DR 15 vs. slashing). The issue with this though is that it fails to account for the fact that, even when it does penetrate the piercing attack creates less wound trauma than the slash would... it's just universally the better weapon to use against that target.

The more accurate way to model it is with a single DR (say 10) and the multiplying the damage by its type AFTER seeing how much the armor stopped (say 1x for piercing, 3x for slashing). Let's say you have a piercing attack that does 15 damage and a slashing one that does 12. The piercing attack does 5 damage (15-10=5), but the slashing one does 6 (12-10=2x3=6).

But against DR 11, the piercing attack does 4, and the slashing attack does just 3 and against DR 12, the piercing attack is still doing 3, but the slashing attack is blocked entirely. And the poor unarmored sod takes 15 from the piercing attack and a whopping 36 from the slashing attack.

Basically it's an attempt to more precisely model the difference between weapon types and how armor interacts with them.

One could go even more precise, assign the weapon three different damage values based on how they deliver damage (a swung sword is primarily cutting, but there's some bashing and even a little piercing at part of connecting with the target) and give the armor different DRs against each damage type and then multiply the results of what makes it through by the damage type. Then you could throw in hit locations to further differentiate the damage dealt AND track the cost in fatigue to both the attacker and defender from the action.

But something that complex is really only useful when you've got a computer to do the calculations for you. Since we're in the realm of table-tops and dice, a level of abstraction well below such detail is required to keep the game from getting bogged down to the point of being unplayable.

Just wanted to say - I'm loving this discussion. I'm really chewing on all these posts in consideration. I've already changed my thinking on several things I hadn't even considered. But keep it rolling. There is a lot of good stuff here even beyond my current design needs. I think it's good simply for the sausage-making  for anyone else out there GMing or building their own mousetrap.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119047I'm not sure this mechanic accurately illustrates the way things actually work in real life. From what you tell me these parry attempts don't even seem to take opponent skill or the quality of the blow into account, so that a character would have the same chances to parry a poorly skilled fighter's attack as they would a highly skilled fighter or a well-placed blow. But in my experience from sparring matches and training martial arts, opponent skill and attack placement does matter. Granted, a lot of sparring matches are a bunch of blocks compared to how things handle in RPGs that use AC or simple opposed rolls, but those people aren't trying to kill each other. If you see a UFC match, however, where fights are all out like they're trying to kill each other, and a LOT more attacks connect--there's way less blocking and much more "OMG! Did you see that guy's teeth fly across the fighting mat? Jesus Christ!"

There is also a lot of movement and positioning in a real life fight going on that are highly situational and impossible to illustrate in terms of the game rules beyond just fighting skill--the more skilled you are the better you are at positioning yourself in a way that could maximize the effectiveness of your blow. But all of that is thrown away if you can just parry an attack with zero regards for opponent skill. And you don't need block-heavy combat mechanics to include special maneuvers, like trips and feints, in the game. Almost all games include that regardless of how combat mechanics work.

In GURPS, a generic attack with no preparation can be defended with the usual active defense skill level, unless the attacker manages a critical hit, the odds of which go up with high skill (i.e. either a very low 3d6 roll, or make your skill roll by 10, up to a point).

However, there are several ways to make a more skillful attack that can reduce enemy defenses. One is to do a Deceptive attack, where you use some of your skill to reduce your opponent's defense all in one attack move. Another is to spend one or more turns Evaluating, waiting for a good opening, which increases your effective skill for your next attack the more you do it, up to a point. Another is to Feint, which is a contest of skills which if you win, reduces your foe's defense by the amount you made it. Rapid Attack, if you can pull it off (or allies helping you out by attacking the same foe) can also reduce/consume the foe's defenses. There are various other techniques as well in GURPS Martial Arts, for people who want more detail.

But players who are new to the game or who don't think about it much may end up just doing simple Step and Attack repeatedly, which against a skilled foe can tend to mean they're likely to have their attacks avoided a lot, and some players may decide GURPS is just like that before they learn otherwise.

Quote from: amacris;1119019Thanks for the thoughtful response. Since we've both been clear in distinguishing our personal vs perceived market-wide preferences, I fear I don't have any particular bombastic rhetoric to offer back...  

My one comment is with regards to attrition vs. non-attrition systems and tactics. I think you're right that Hit Points can be used as a buffer against the need for tactical planning. Conversely, however, I have seen many non-attritional RPGs end up having to rely on Luke Points/Fate Points/Hero Points/Bennies to get around the deadliness and basically offer a meta-attrition instead. Warhammer has its Fate Points, Cyberpunk has Luck Points, Mekton has both Luck Points and (in Zeta) Maneuver Points, Savage Worlds has Bennies, etc. The number of truly non-attritional RPGs with detailed tactical combat doesn't seem very big -- what's your go-to list? GURPS?

In any case it sounds like you enjoy realistic combat systems and have found a gaming group that does too and that's honestly about the best one can hope for in gaming, I think -- a group that enjoys what you enjoy. We're all in our own tiny niche of preference, so it's nice to find others in the same niche.

Yes, I've had very compatible people to play/with, and pretty good radar for avoiding players and games I'm not going to enjoy playing with. I also tend to GM a lot, and seem to be able to translate for new players well enough that they don't tend to have issues with the style.

I agree that there are few non-attritional RPGs with detailed tactical combat. My "go-to" games are GURPS and The Fantasy Trip. There are (or in most cases I know of, were) some others I don't like as much in the details, though, such as the Dark City Games (http://www.darkcitygames.com) TFT spin-offs for fantasy, wild west, and sci fi games, the non-superhero HERO games (e.g. Danger International), Avalon Hill's James Bond RPG, Task Force Games' Delta Force, the infamously overly-complex Phoenix Command.

Quote from: estar;1118716Harnmaster ...

What version is this? (just curious)

Quote from: Toadmaster;1118943I voted #5 as I don't think HERO really fits ...

I personally consider it #3 (basically a roll vs. an opponents TN) but it could be #1 because DCV/DMCV are essentially AC with different names...

To contribute...

I find opposed rolls to be tedious. It just makes combat take too long. I really like the AC/TN approach to streamline things. Also, in practice I find my players are not super tactical, nor do they maneuver around much. Games like Mythras or AGE my players often don't choose stunts, etc. I personally love these kinds of options, but I think most players don't invest the time to learn a system at that depth. So generally speed/ease-of-play tends to win out in the majority of the people I play with.

Quote from: trechriron;1119068To contribute...

I find opposed rolls to be tedious. It just makes combat take too long. I really like the AC/TN approach to streamline things. Also, in practice I find my players are not super tactical, nor do they maneuver around much. Games like Mythras or AGE my players often don't choose stunts, etc. I personally love these kinds of options, but I think most players don't invest the time to learn a system at that depth. So generally speed/ease-of-play tends to win out in the majority of the people I play with.

That is my experience too. I suspect that it comes from the mentality of "If I have to be creative and it's not giving me an express bonus to do I'm not going to do it".

This is true of the stunt-system in Talislanta where it says essentially "Tell the GM the stunt you wanna do - he'll tell you the penalty and effect if you succeed." They don't even bother. In my current game I'm outlining specific things they can DO with mechanical benefits to skills and combat, and it's definitely helped.

TFT (and original GURPS) started with games that were ONLY the ancient/medieval combat system, and creating characters for it with only combat-relevant stats and equipment.

The next products for TFT and GURPS were Death Test and Orcslayer, both solo-able adventures that are mainly a context for a series of tactical battles which will be challenging or difficult for new players who have not learned tactics yet, but will be much easier for characters who have. Players in them will tend to learn by dying in some or even many cases. If the GM doesn't at least make it clear that using bad tactics can and will lead to death and dismemberment or weeks resting up wounds, the players may not get how there's a game of survival that they can/should do something with. Of course one should tell the players the expectation is they may likely die, and that that's expected and fine and part of the fun of these games.

These are fun games by themselves, great for teaching the game, and for teaching/learning the value of tactics, what works and what does not, in what situations.

Similar can be done in an RPG campaign either by running arena or practice/training combats or by having situations in an RPG campaign where there are distinct situations where it's fairly clear that the outcome is being driven by the situation and what people do about it.

Another technique is to have a PC or NPC character who knows tactics giving them tips and/or orders, and/or teaching by example.

When I GM, there are two conflicting things (relevant to this discussion) that I want the system to do:

A. Handle large numbers of players, allies, and foes with as little handling time as possible (considering mechanics but also the communication flow, initiative, etc.).
B. Provide many different options for player choices that map to something they can visualize their characters doing in the game world and that provide the players chances to make real choices with a lot of back and forth between players and GM.

You could say I don't really care for "Armor Class" and "Hit Points", but I very much do like how well they work.

For the longest time, I tried to split the difference (by house ruling Hero System or GURPS, for example). This tactic works for some time, but ultimately wears me out trying to juggle it.  Plus the necessary compromises gradually become less than satisfactory.  The longer I go with the compromises, the more difficult it is to ignore them.  Learning a more complex system really well (even when the players do too), doesn't solve Issue A sufficiently to satisfy me.  For example, you can get to where 5 or 6 players can rip a Hero battle along pretty darn quick, but it inherently doesn't scale well in numbers of characters involved once you go much over that (especially not away from Champions, where the foes could easily outnumber the characters 2 or 3 to 1).  

This is also why D&D 3.*/PF are easily the version of D&D I dislike the most (with 4E sort of irrelevant to the point).  Piling a bunch of options on D&D to provide more customization is another big chunk of compromises, and makes the underlying system more difficult to tweak in ways that I want.

I finally realized that our groups were better off addressing those needs in different systems.  A good version of D&D (or something that works more or less like it), runs well in satisfying Issue A.  Then when I'm doing my own design or house rules, that lets me pursue something like opposed rolls and other complications separately, not worrying about scaling.  Or rather, I do worry about scaling, because I'm just built that way.  But at least when I'm explicitly designing to satisfy Issue B, the compromises can make the scaling secondary to the primary aims.  

Thus all my design is very much not like D&D, not because I dislike D&D but because I'm fine with D&D the way it is, and want other things that aren't so available for a change of pace.

Quote from: Chris24601;1119054I get what WillInNewHaven is getting at. It's basically because humans in armor are not homogeneously dense/hard and different materials respond to different forces differently.

Traditionally slicing attacks are excellent against flesh, lousy against metal. Piercing attacks are better at punching through armor, but don't cut flesh open nearly so much (incidentally one reason for wearing certain fabrics under armor was because arrows didn't pierce it after penetrating the armor, they pushed a generally sanitary piece of cloth into the wound; reducing blood loss and risk of infection).

I know this part, I just have my doubts that multiplying slashing damage x3 wouldn't undermine the mechanic by making the damage so high it would ignore armor being "better" against slashing attacks and still inflict more damage, unless the damage is completely random and rolls really low.

Quote from: Chris24601;1119054There are two ways to model this.

One way to model this is to use the same damage for everything (say 2d6+5), but assign different DRs to different attacks (say DR 5 vs. piercing, DR 15 vs. slashing). The issue with this though is that it fails to account for the fact that, even when it does penetrate the piercing attack creates less wound trauma than the slash would... it's just universally the better weapon to use against that target.

That's not necessarily the case. Piercing attacks only need to pierce through over an inch of flesh to potentially kill a someone. You don't need to hack someone apart to kill them, you just need to cut deep enough. And piercing weapons are way better at doing that than slashing weapons, especially against an armored opponent. A slashing weapon would rarely cut through a plate armor more than a piercing weapon would be able to pierce deep through it. The plate would get in the way of the blade continuing to slice through, even if the blade manages to punch through a portion, but it won't be able to stop a piercing attack once it already broke through cuz the piercing attack doesn't need extra room to cut--it just needs a hole to dig through.

Quote from: Chris24601;1119054The more accurate way to model it is with a single DR (say 10) and the multiplying the damage by its type AFTER seeing how much the armor stopped (say 1x for piercing, 3x for slashing). Let's say you have a piercing attack that does 15 damage and a slashing one that does 12. The piercing attack does 5 damage (15-10=5), but the slashing one does 6 (12-10=2x3=6).

But against DR 11, the piercing attack does 4, and the slashing attack does just 3 and against DR 12, the piercing attack is still doing 3, but the slashing attack is blocked entirely. And the poor unarmored sod takes 15 from the piercing attack and a whopping 36 from the slashing attack.

A lot of this assumes that slashing weapons are better at cutting through armor than they really are, as I explained above. And piercing damage would be minimal even on the rare instances it manages to make somewhat more damage than slashing attacks. When in reality piercing weapons are some of the most effective weapons against armor, especially if they're strong enough to punch through.

Quote from: Chris24601;1119054Basically it's an attempt to more precisely model the difference between weapon types and how armor interacts with them.

One could go even more precise, assign the weapon three different damage values based on how they deliver damage (a swung sword is primarily cutting, but there's some bashing and even a little piercing at part of connecting with the target) and give the armor different DRs against each damage type and then multiply the results of what makes it through by the damage type. Then you could throw in hit locations to further differentiate the damage dealt AND track the cost in fatigue to both the attacker and defender from the action.

But something that complex is really only useful when you've got a computer to do the calculations for you. Since we're in the realm of table-tops and dice, a level of abstraction well below such detail is required to keep the game from getting bogged down to the point of being unplayable.

Yeah, I have my doubts about overly complex systems. I like to have some degree of simulation, but tend to rather compromise with an abstract rule that's "close enough" than drag play too much with complicated mechanics. If I add Weapon vs Armor rules to my game I'm probably making them optional rules that can be modularly added or ignored based on group preference, and I'm probably simplifying them as well, as I mentioned in the post WillInNewHaven was replying to.

• Slashing: +50% to DR.
• Armor Piercing: -50% to DR.
• Everything Else: Unmodified DR.

I'll just note in passing in regards to piercing versus slashing that "kill the enemy" is not the goal.  Get the enemy to quit or be unable to fight any longer is the goal.  Certainly, killing them is one way to do that.  But piercing having a higher kill rate (or quicker kill rate or however you want to work it, assuming even that is true), isn't desirable in and off itself if the slashing has a distinct advantage on removing enemies from the fight.  

Of course, that says nothing one way or the other about the proper way to model it.  Though I do think once you get into that level of detail about the modeling, such concerns are perhaps appropriate to what the model is attempting overall.

Quote from: Skarg;1119062In GURPS, a generic attack with no preparation can be defended with the usual active defense skill level, unless the attacker manages a critical hit, the odds of which go up with high skill (i.e. either a very low 3d6 roll, or make your skill roll by 10, up to a point).

However, there are several ways to make a more skillful attack that can reduce enemy defenses. One is to do a Deceptive attack, where you use some of your skill to reduce your opponent's defense all in one attack move. Another is to spend one or more turns Evaluating, waiting for a good opening, which increases your effective skill for your next attack the more you do it, up to a point. Another is to Feint, which is a contest of skills which if you win, reduces your foe's defense by the amount you made it. Rapid Attack, if you can pull it off (or allies helping you out by attacking the same foe) can also reduce/consume the foe's defenses. There are various other techniques as well in GURPS Martial Arts, for people who want more detail.

But players who are new to the game or who don't think about it much may end up just doing simple Step and Attack repeatedly, which against a skilled foe can tend to mean they're likely to have their attacks avoided a lot, and some players may decide GURPS is just like that before they learn otherwise.

I think that estar already covered a lot of this in the replies to my post, and as I mentioned, almost every other game also has most of those options. But none of these really addresses my points about statistic defense based on your own skill not addressing opponent skill, and how well that truly simulates real life.

Quote from: trechriron;1119068Also, in practice I find my players are not super tactical, nor do they maneuver around much. Games like Mythras or AGE my players often don't choose stunts, etc. I personally love these kinds of options, but I think most players don't invest the time to learn a system at that depth. So generally speed/ease-of-play tends to win out in the majority of the people I play with.

Part of the problem, in my experience, is that even when players are familiar with the rules such options tend to be punishing in most systems (imposing significant penalties to attack and/or requiring you to spend/waste an entire action round to maybe gain some minor bonus the next round) and provide only minor benefits that don't always outweigh the risks even when successful. Feint in D&D 3e, for example, requires you to spend one standard action (which takes up your action that round) and succeed on a Bluff check only to deny your opponent their DEX bonus to AC (assuming they even have one) to your next attack against them, which would take place the following round. So you basically have to sacrifice one ENTIRE action to MAYBE impose a minor penalty on your opponent, assuming you don't get killed the round you spent doing nothing but "bluffing" and not even actively defending yourself.

Meanwhile, in real life a feint is just this minor action that must be followed immediately by an attack--not one full round later, but mere fractions of a second after your feint or your opponent will recover and you'll lose any advantage. And, if successful, your opponent would be penalized (or alternatively you would get a bonus) regardless of how agile (high DEX) they are. I would probably handle Feints as a standard action at allows you to immediately attack as a free action at a +4 bonus if successful, but looses you an action if the feint attempt fails.

In GURPS a round is a second and to take advantage of a feint one has to make an attack the next second.

As for not taking into account relative skills, general principle of GURPS that each manuevuer represents a single thing with very little in the way of abstraction.

The standard attack in GURP is similar to what fencing calls a simple attack, with a corresponding straight forward defense. It winds up being a basic test of skill on both sides.

Similar to the tactical wheel for fencing, GURPS combat is comprised a variety of manueveurs that have different uses at different time. All corresponding on a one for one basis with their real life counterparts.

Thus on second one, the higher skiller combatant executes a feint, wins the contest of skills which results in a negative defense modifier because the defender is now out of position. Then followed up with an attack on second two.

But if you are concerned with subsecond timing GURPS does take that into account with specific tactics like riposte from Martials Arts page 125

QuoteTo set up a Riposte, declare that you wish to do so before you parry. Choose a penalty to your Parry score – the larger the penalty, the greater your focus on the counterattack. This cannot reduce your Parry, before all other modifiers except Enhanced Parry, below 8.

Then add the remaining modifiers and try to parry the attack. You can retreat – but if your foe steps back after attacking, you might end up too far away for a Riposte. Success means you parry and set up a Riposte. If your first attack next turn uses your parrying weapon against the foe you parried, one of his active defenses against it suffers the penalty you accepted on your parry. If you parried his hand or weapon, reduce his Parry with that hand (with either hand, if his attack used two hands). If you parried his shield, lower his Block. If you parried an unarmed attack other than a hand strike (bite, kick, slam, etc.), reduce his Dodge. Apply half this penalty (drop fractions) to any other defense he attempts against your attack – including rolls to resist grappling moves that use Quick Contests instead of active defenses (e.g., takedowns).

Failure means you're hit, as for any failed parry. Your attempt gives you no special benefits – although you can still attack your foe on your next turn, if his attack leaves you in any shape to do so.

Quote from: tenbones;1118831I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

Back in the day, I liked a fair degree of complexity and granularity and back then I used the D&D weapons table a bit. Now that would be more complexity than I want to manage as the GM and at least one order of magnitude more complexity than my regular players ever want to see.

Quote from: Skarg;1118907My perspective is that I really want a game that represents the situation to some degree. If I know I can survive 7 rounds versus Conan before I run away and take a "short rest" or have "the Cleric lay hands" and be unhurt, that is NOT the experience of facing someone who could kill me if they hit me with their weapon.

I kept looking for something that you said with which I could strongly disagree. Still looking. :D

I think the only real point of difference is that you seem to have a greater tolerance for system complexity. I say seems, because I get the sense that you have spent more time with GURPS (and GURPS-like systems, e.g. Melee-Wizard and TFT) than I have spent with any one system (or family of systems) and you therefore have internalized so much of the system complexity that it is effectively less complex for you to play or run GURPS than it would be for me to run any system that even approaches that degree of granularity and complexity.

Quote from: trechriron;1119068To contribute...

I find opposed rolls to be tedious. It just makes combat take too long. I really like the AC/TN approach to streamline things. Also, in practice I find my players are not super tactical, nor do they maneuver around much. Games like Mythras or AGE my players often don't choose stunts, etc. I personally love these kinds of options, but I think most players don't invest the time to learn a system at that depth. So generally speed/ease-of-play tends to win out in the majority of the people I play with.

Ever played Exalted? There you get opposed rolls, rerolls, dice adders, (rarely) target number modifiers, not to mention rolling soak and a variety of other shit all jammed into one attack. 2e even had a multistep process expanded out for resolving each attack indicating which step any particular fiddly bit of skill, magic, or gear applied. Fun died every time the dice were picked up.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119087I think that estar already covered a lot of this in the replies to my post, and as I mentioned, almost every other game also has most of those options. But none of these really addresses my points about statistic defense based on your own skill not addressing opponent skill, and how well that truly simulates real life.

I'm confused why you'd say those things don't address opponent skill, since they're all examples of ways the attacker uses their own skill to reduce the defender's defense ability.

So I'm guessing you saying "almost every other game has most of those options" is that I didn't communicate fully what I was trying to say about them.

(There's also a simpler optional rule where you can just do what is essentially a contest as a standard attack.)

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119048IDK, I guess it depends on how much damage attacks do or armor mitigates. It just seems to me that if an attack does triple damage it would be able to overcome armor even if that armor is 50% higher against that type of attack, since the extra damage would be higher than the extra armor. But again, that would depend on how much damage we' talking about beyond just percentages.

You roll damage and then subtract 1.5 the armor. Then, and only then, do you triple the damage.

So, a sword edge that does 4D8 attacking mail and gambeson (19 DA against most weapons but 10 DA against AP weapons and 28 DA against cutting) would have to do nearly maximum to do any damage at all. Against high-quality plate, you can't do squat.
Meanwhile, a mace against mail and gambeson is attacking ten points of armor.

Quote from: Bren;1119106I think the only real point of difference is that you seem to have a greater tolerance for system complexity. I say seems, because I get the sense that you have spent more time with GURPS (and GURPS-like systems, e.g. Melee-Wizard and TFT) than I have spent with any one system (or family of systems) and you therefore have internalized so much of the system complexity that it is effectively less complex for you to play or run GURPS than it would be for me to run any system that even approaches that degree of granularity and complexity.

Yeah, I have lots of tolerance for system complexity (especially if I see value in it). And yes I have played TFT and GURPS so much that it's second nature and fast.

I also have a much easier time learning and applying complex rules when they make sense to me. The reasons for the rules are my mnemonic device for remembering them and knowing I'm right about what they are. (And if they don't seem right, I tend to house rule them.)

Quote from: Skarg;1119157I also have a much easier time learning and applying complex rules when they make sense to me.

I hear you. I'm finding D&D 5E unexpectedly challenging since many of the rules as written work contrary to my expectations.

Quote from: Bren;1119173I hear you. I'm finding D&D 5E unexpectedly challenging since many of the rules as written work contrary to my expectations.

What are you having trouble with?

Quote from: trechriron;1119066What version is this? (just curious)



I personally consider it #3 (basically a roll vs. an opponents TN) but it could be #1 because DCV/DMCV are essentially AC with different names...

1 and 3 suggest largely static values to me. OCV and DCV are dynamic values changing based on the use of skill levels or maneuvers used. I can see how an opinion could differ though, just the way I was looking at the options.

Quote from: estar;1119236What are you having trouble with?

Oh where to start? One problem is it feels much more gamey than any other RPG I've read or played. I feel more like I'm playing a card game like Illuminati than I am playing a character in an imaginary world. The rules and rule effects seem far more front and center than they do in other games I've played e.g. OD&D, AD&D, and related class & level based games, Boothill, Traveller, The Fantasy Trip, Runequest, Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu and multiple versions of BRP-based games, FASA Star Trek, WEG Star Wars D6, James Bond 007, Honor + Intrigue, and Barbarians of Lemuria.

The action economy is a bit weird. The spell descriptions seem rather finicky. People using spell cards in play exacerbates the playing a card game feel. And it seems to require at least a moderate system understanding to avoid running afoul of some rule or other. Of course some of this will be based on group and DM style so it's likely that a different DM might smooth over some of the rough spots and its fair to say that class and level based games where hit points are a single, amorphous bucket is fairly low on my list of preferred system designs. But I have to say that DM aside, even just reading the rules makes me tired and a bit cranky in a way that no other rules have done.

And it doesn't help that so far everything I've played is set in the Forgotten Realms which I am finding is not a setting I find appealing.

Quote from: estar;1119090In GURPS a round is a second and to take advantage of a feint one has to make an attack the next second.

As for not taking into account relative skills, general principle of GURPS that each manuevuer represents a single thing with very little in the way of abstraction.

The standard attack in GURP is similar to what fencing calls a simple attack, with a corresponding straight forward defense. It winds up being a basic test of skill on both sides.

Similar to the tactical wheel for fencing, GURPS combat is comprised a variety of manueveurs that have different uses at different time. All corresponding on a one for one basis with their real life counterparts.

Thus on second one, the higher skiller combatant executes a feint, wins the contest of skills which results in a negative defense modifier because the defender is now out of position. Then followed up with an attack on second two.

But if you are concerned with subsecond timing GURPS does take that into account with specific tactics like riposte from Martials Arts page 125

IDK, this still sounds like kind of a roundabout way of making attacker skill affect defender skill, which is already effectively covered by a simple opposed roll or an Attack Skill vs Passive Defense Skill roll. This seems like adding extra steps to get to that point and I'm still not convinced that you can just make an attack or block up in the air that's completely unaffected by opponent skill. At least it doesn't seem to me like that's what's actually going on in a real fight or that this is the most effective way to emulate that.

I'd rather just abstract things to a simple "Attack Skill vs Defense Skill" roll (preferably using passive defense to minimize rolls) in a 6 second round and use stuff like feints as extra tricks that you can do, but don't have to rely upon and consistently take extra actions to use, extending the process of resolving combat.

At least GURP's feint doesn't suck as much as D&D, cuz it takes attacker's skill into account when determining the penalty imposed, which would probably make it more effective.

Quote from: Skarg;1119154I'm confused why you'd say those things don't address opponent skill, since they're all examples of ways the attacker uses their own skill to reduce the defender's defense ability.

So I'm guessing you saying "almost every other game has most of those options" is that I didn't communicate fully what I was trying to say about them.

(There's also a simpler optional rule where you can just do what is essentially a contest as a standard attack.)

I think my reply to estar also applies to this. It seems like an indirect way of affecting opponent skill that requires extra steps.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1119155You roll damage and then subtract 1.5 the armor. Then, and only then, do you triple the damage.

So, a sword edge that does 4D8 attacking mail and gambeson (19 DA against most weapons but 10 DA against AP weapons and 28 DA against cutting) would have to do nearly maximum to do any damage at all. Against high-quality plate, you can't do squat.
Meanwhile, a mace against mail and gambeson is attacking ten points of armor.

That's probably the part I was missing. If DR is subtracted first armor would be much more effective.

It's a bit meta - but how *many* calculations are you wanting to have in a combat exchange to determine the act of simply hitting a target?

Cooking in the abstractions into the task resolution is what we're really discussing here. And I'm interested in finding the sweet spot(s).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119243... I'd rather just abstract things to a simple "Attack Skill vs Defense Skill" roll (preferably using passive defense to minimize rolls) in a 6 second round and use stuff like feints as extra tricks that you can do, but don't have to rely upon and consistently take extra actions to use, extending the process of resolving combat.

I have been working on developing a version of this that I like for a TFT house rule. TFT RAW is 3d6 roll-under DX to hit, usually with no effect of defender's skill. The base new house rule is to adjust both figure's DX so their average is about 10 (50% chance to hit). Then add an option to fight offensively or defensively to nudge both figure's skills up or down.

This way, if both figures have the same DX, they both have a 10 (50%) to hit each other, whether the DX level is 8 or 18.

And if for example the DX levels were 16 and 12, one attack would be at 12 (74%) and the other would be at 8 (26%). Which feels really good to me.

And it's just one roll.

The "hard" part is adjusting the skill, but I find it's pretty simple and I'm memorizing it the more I use it.

The tricky development part though is getting the details right about figuring out how much adjustment should be allowed for fighting offensively or defensively, and what should happen in more complex fights where there are multiple people fighting multiple people in the same spot, when people have to declare their fighting style setting, etc. Of course most of that can be ignored if you choose not to use or allow the "fighting offensive/defensively" option at all.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119243At least GURP's feint doesn't suck as much as D&D, cuz it takes attacker's skill into account when determining the penalty imposed, which would probably make it more effective.

Yes, feint in GURPS can be quite effective, especially if you're patient enough to wait for it to work well. Since it is two opposed 3d6 rolls, there can sometimes be a pretty wide random swing on top of the difference in skills, which means even people of the same skill, or even someone of a somewhat lower skill, can get a good effect out of a feint... but you can't count on it. It ends up mainly being used for situations like "ok what I'm doing isn't working, so I'm going to go for a good feint to be able to get him" or "I'm a lot better than this guy but he has a strong defence. I'll feint so I can probably really nail him next turn." And it can also get people to flee or surrender because you just totally out-did them in a feint. (Or get them to try a desperate all-out-attack.)

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119243I think my reply to estar also applies to this. It seems like an indirect way of affecting opponent skill that requires extra steps.

Well, the difference is I was mentioning an alternate method that's been offered as an option since earlier editions of GURPS, where the standard attack becomes a contest of skill. A GM who knows both the attacker and defender's values can roll that all at once (3 dice of one color and 3 dice of another), which can get almost as easy as a single roll, and doesn't involve choices on either side.

It's only slightly more complex than the house rule method I mentioned after the first quote above. (Also less complex than using the "fighting offensively or defensively" part of that house rule.)

Quote from: tenbones;1119282It's a bit meta - but how *many* calculations are you wanting to have in a combat exchange to determine the act of simply hitting a target?

Cooking in the abstractions into the task resolution is what we're really discussing here. And I'm interested in finding the sweet spot(s).

For me the ideal abstraction level is about two rolls; whether by one combatant (ex. rolling to hit and then damage) or both (ex. attack vs. defense roll with damage determined by the margin of success).

I also like having maneuvers/tactical options if they play within those bounds.

For example, adding to or replacing the hit effect; adding knockdown to the attack or disarming the target instead of damaging them. Another would be an offensive stance that boosts your attack roll for a turn, but penalized your defenses or defensive stance that boosts your defense but penalizes your attack.

Both of those keep to the "two rolls to resolve" limit that keeps it from being too complex.

Another point on my preferred complexity is what I call nested choices. I actually enjoyed the tactical combat in 4E a lot, but one of its downsides was that it was pretty easy to end up in "option paralysis" territory with 2-3 at-will, 4-5 encounter, 4 daily and possibly some item powers that all need the same standard action and have to be selected before the roll is made.

What a nested choice means is that, at any given point in the resolution process, you only have to choose between 2-3 (maybe four on the outside) options at any one time; keeping the each choice point below the level where option paralysis becomes a noticeable thing.

As an example, say you have a choice of three maneuvers. Each of those maneuvers then has three options IF you hit. One-of-three choices and a second one-of-three choices you only worry about if you hit is a lot easier for many people to manage than having to make a one-of-nine options choice.

It can be further eased if those decisions are for different things... for example, before the roll pick aggressive (+to hit/-defense), normal (no modifiers) or defensive (-to hit/+defense) option. If you chose agressive and hit you can choose extra damage, knockdown or forcing the target back. If you chose defensive and hit you can choose a free withdrawal action, a bonus to your next attack or a pull your target out of position as you shift back. Etc.

That's much easier to work with for a lot of players I've found.

Quote from: Skarg;1119287I have been working on developing a version of this that I like for a TFT house rule. TFT RAW is 3d6 roll-under DX to hit, usually with no effect of defender's skill. The base new house rule is to adjust both figure's DX so their average is about 10 (50% chance to hit). Then add an option to fight offensively or defensively to nudge both figure's skills up or down.

This way, if both figures have the same DX, they both have a 10 (50%) to hit each other, whether the DX level is 8 or 18.

And if for example the DX levels were 16 and 12, one attack would be at 12 (74%) and the other would be at 8 (26%). Which feels really good to me.

And it's just one roll.

You have just reinvented the Runequest Resistance table. ;)
(For the example you gave the Resistance Table gives a result of 70-30.)

Quote from: Chris24601;1119288As an example, say you have a choice of three maneuvers. Each of those maneuvers then has three options IF you hit. One-of-three choices and a second one-of-three choices you only worry about if you hit is a lot easier for many people to manage than having to make a one-of-nine options choice.

It can be further eased if those decisions are for different things... for example, before the roll pick aggressive (+to hit/-defense), normal (no modifiers) or defensive (-to hit/+defense) option. If you chose agressive and hit you can choose extra damage, knockdown or forcing the target back. If you chose defensive and hit you can choose a free withdrawal action, a bonus to your next attack or a pull your target out of position as you shift back. Etc.

That's much easier to work with for a lot of players I've found.

Hey that's a nice idea Chris. And if the players had a flow chart or multi-column table they could fairly easily figure out their choices. In Honor + Intrigue the options aren't nested and I did see some option paralysis for certain players.

Quote from: Bren;1119289Hey that's a nice idea Chris. And if the players had a flow chart or multi-column table they could fairly easily figure out their choices. In Honor + Intrigue the options aren't nested and I did see some option paralysis for certain players.

As I've mentioned before... I've both done research (ex. the ideal number of choices for most people is three at a time) and run A LOT of play tests on my system with varying groups of people to find a good balance between ease of play and complexity.

The main place to have lots of options is in the character building stage (initial or when leveling up) because there's no super-tight time constraint associated with those choices. Once you get down to the in-play experience though keeping the default options to 2-4 is best for getting players to make quick choices with their turn.

Another thing that helps a LOT (and its one of the areas that 4E and 5e fell down on with their minor/bonus actions) is to make sure you at least have a default action available for each action type a character is able to freely take in their turn. A LOT of turn delay in those games was from players not wanting to waste their minor/bonus action by not using something, and so they'd go searching through their available options for something to throw out.

Ex. my system uses a main and minor action during your turn*. Early on in my design process I made sure that every class had something it could do every round for its minor action (main actions usually being for attacks). While there were often bigger and better situational things they could do with that action, what it did was give them a default to use. As soon as there was SOMETHING they could spend the action on they largely stopped going through what they could do "one more time" because they no longer felt the action was being wasted if it wasn't being used.

* Why do I even have minor actions? In a word... multi-classing. By tying key class-related benefits (ex. an interdictor's ability to use area attack spells or a maledictor's ability to do extra damage with their spells) to the minor action you limit the ability of a multi-class character to stack the benefits of multiple classes at the same time (ex. an enlarged and empowered spell attack). By making it a main and a minor action (instead of just two actions) you prevent the ability to use two attacks (which use a main action) in turn (unless your class' minor action benefit is making a second attack).

Quote from: Chris24601;1119288What a nested choice means is that, at any given point in the resolution process, you only have to choose between 2-3 (maybe four on the outside) options at any one time; keeping the each choice point below the level where option paralysis becomes a noticeable thing.

Yes.  The upper limit is 7 for most things (i.e. not just combat/fast decisions).  A normal person in an average situation under average pressure can keep no more than about 7 thoughts\items running at once.  Above that, they need references, a moment to focus on different parts of a longer list, or any number of other techniques that people use to classify and remember things.  Thing is, though, under any increased pressure or more complex situation or even just having a bad day, that limit degrades pretty darn quick.  (It's been a long time since I seriously read the research on this, but as far as I know the limit of 7 has held up well even though I think more nuance has been applied since I first read about it.  As I understand it, it's very rare for anyone to handle more than 7 things at once.  People that seem to do so are in fact using their own classification system--nested or otherwise--to manage items.  They just do it so well it looks as if they handle more than 7.  In any case, as a practical matter, we aren't interested in what the exceptional can do.)

In fact, even outside of play, you are running a big risk exceeding that limit, though you'll be a lot more comfortable flirting with 7 outside of play than during it, and outside of combat or other fast-paced activity than during them.  

It's notable in D&D play in the difference between looking up ability scores versus looking up skills.  I've rarely seen even the rawest newcomer have much trouble handling a simple ability check, and if they do, the problem doesn't last long.  On the other hand, even people that know the game but are having a bad day can temporarily freeze on finding a skill--even knowing all they need to do is scan the character sheet alphabetically.  Not saying it would be better all around (because there are other considerations), but from a "human player rapidly processing" perspective, the D&D skill list would be far better if there were 2-4 under each ability, and they were listed that way on the character sheet.

Another way to think about it, as with any complexity, is that breaking those limits has a cost.  So you want to limit how many times you do it, and the payoff needs to be worth it--given whatever the game is trying to achieve.  Obviously, if the thing is something that doesn't get used much or isn't particularly time sensitive, you can relax more.

I've partially broken it during a play test of a game I'm doing.  I knew it was a bad idea for the long term, but the connections between the 25 things in the list aren't always obvious.  Even though I expect the final game to be better organized, I'm deliberately not forcing it yet in order to see how the players will organize.  Already, I've had some good feedback about how the players think about it which has led me to tweak my design a little.  The cost during a play test to get information is worth it (even if it was painful at first).  No way that would survive intact later into the game development.

Quote from: Skarg;1119287I have been working on developing a version of this that I like for a TFT house rule. TFT RAW is 3d6 roll-under DX to hit, usually with no effect of defender's skill. The base new house rule is to adjust both figure's DX so their average is about 10 (50% chance to hit). Then add an option to fight offensively or defensively to nudge both figure's skills up or down.

This way, if both figures have the same DX, they both have a 10 (50%) to hit each other, whether the DX level is 8 or 18.

And if for example the DX levels were 16 and 12, one attack would be at 12 (74%) and the other would be at 8 (26%). Which feels really good to me.

And it's just one roll.

The "hard" part is adjusting the skill, but I find it's pretty simple and I'm memorizing it the more I use it.

The tricky development part though is getting the details right about figuring out how much adjustment should be allowed for fighting offensively or defensively, and what should happen in more complex fights where there are multiple people fighting multiple people in the same spot, when people have to declare their fighting style setting, etc. Of course most of that can be ignored if you choose not to use or allow the "fighting offensive/defensively" option at all.

On a d20+Mod mechanic (which I'm more familiar with) I would probably handle defensive fighting as a general +4 bonus to defend against all attacks at the expense of a -4 penalty to attack. On a 3d6 Roll-Under mechanic I think this could be reduced to a +2/-2 (maybe +3/-3) to skill level and still work. It's simple modifier that's significant but not too high and should be easy to remember during play.

I would use the same modifiers even when fighting multiple opponents, however, flanking and similar situational modifiers may apply depending on opponent placement.

Quote from: Skarg;1119287Well, the difference is I was mentioning an alternate method that's been offered as an option since earlier editions of GURPS, where the standard attack becomes a contest of skill. A GM who knows both the attacker and defender's values can roll that all at once (3 dice of one color and 3 dice of another), which can get almost as easy as a single roll, and doesn't involve choices on either side.

It's only slightly more complex than the house rule method I mentioned after the first quote above. (Also less complex than using the "fighting offensively or defensively" part of that house rule.)

Yeah, I would probably use that option if I tried GURPS.

Quote from: tenbones;1119282It's a bit meta - but how *many* calculations are you wanting to have in a combat exchange to determine the act of simply hitting a target?

Cooking in the abstractions into the task resolution is what we're really discussing here. And I'm interested in finding the sweet spot(s).

I've already mentioned it a couple of times, but think that the sweetest spot is Attack Roll vs Passive Defense. It's fast, simple, intuitive, easy to learn and use, reduces rolls and complications, and keeps the game moving. Opposed rolls are good as well, but I find that both sides making a roll is unnecessary when a passive defense based on an average roll already produces results that are almost identical mathematically, except for lacking the slight bell curve of making multiple rolls. But those multiple rolls draw combat out with additional player actions and things to check. And using passive skills also allows diceless GMing, where the GM can simply have players make all attacks AND defense rolls against a passive skill value--speeding up play even more while allowing players to feel more engaged in their own defense when avoiding attacks.

I also tend to prefer Armor as DR over Armor as Defense, but if I was gonna use Armor as Defense for my own systems I would still use the Attack vs Passive Defense scheme I mentioned above as a base and have armor provide a small bonus to the character's defense skill against weapon attacks or blasts. I would keep the armor bonus low, but I would forgo using "max DEX" like in D&D, or similar mechanics. That way I could keep things balanced and reduce the number of things to track.

Quote from: Chris24601;1119288For me the ideal abstraction level is about two rolls; whether by one combatant (ex. rolling to hit and then damage) or both (ex. attack vs. defense roll with damage determined by the margin of success).

Yeah, generally prefer to limit the number of rolls as well. I even tend to prefer single die action resolution mechanics over multiple dice resolutions because it keeps the action moving faster. Though, I have a soft spot for dice pool mechanics (preferably d6 pools,  each 4+ = 1 Success, difficulty = number of success required) and Open d6, and have also considered 3d6+Mod as well. But 1d20+Mod moves the game faster and has a nice range of variables to allow some room for character growth.

One area I think multiple dice can do well (though, it is a tradeoff) is damage. I find that rolling multiple dice for damage can increase the excitement and contribute to the sense that you're pilling on a lot of damage and really devastating your opponent, which reduces the stress of counting so many dice. While multiple dice in action resolution might increase the stress of counting dice, since you're devoting additional effort into something when success is uncertain and your action might still fail. But with damage, success has already been  determined, so every extra die you count is that much more damage that you certainly did make. And since you don't always hit you don't always have to roll extra dice.

I also like the elegance of damage based on margin of success, and have considered using it as well, but ultimately went with damage rolls because I'm creating an effect-based system that emphasizes effect levels. So damage will be based on effect level, but it's affected by degrees of success: Partial (Half), Complete (Full) or Critical (+50%).

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119298It's notable in D&D play in the difference between looking up ability scores versus looking up skills. I've rarely seen even the rawest newcomer have much trouble handling a simple ability check, and if they do, the problem doesn't last long. On the other hand, even people that know the game but are having a bad day can temporarily freeze on finding a skill--even knowing all they need to do is scan the character sheet alphabetically. Not saying it would be better all around (because there are other considerations), but from a "human player rapidly processing" perspective, the D&D skill list would be far better if there were 2-4 under each ability, and they were listed that way on the character sheet.

I prefer skill-based systems over class-based systems and consider them to be generally superior, but skill system efficiency diminishes with number of skills. One issue common with skill-based systems is skill specificity. A lot of skill-based systems tend to have lots of skills that are essentially variations of the same types of activity, such as melee attacks, knowledge or piloting.

The problem that crops up in that type of situation is that players have to split up whatever points they have among a bunch of skills that are basically variations of the same skill yet don't contribute to each other's levels (or however they're measured), which is not realistic and complicates the character creation and progression process. Players may even develop decision paralysis when deciding which skills to pick and how many levels for each. The more skills there are, the more this problem is compounded, and the more situational skills that aren't even likely to come up during play there will be.

One thing I'm doing in my system to address that is to use a combination of consolidated and specific skills. The class of abilities called "Skills" are general and focused on broad areas of activity and common game functions, such as Fighting (melee combat), Athletics (all mobility rolls, including dodges), Lore (all academic knowledge) or Piloting (any type of vehicle or moving machinery). There's 16 skills total spread across 4 attributes (all listed together in the character sheet).

• Might: Health, Toughness and Strength.
• Reflexes: Athletics, Fighting, Marksman, Piloting and Stealth.
• Bearing: Interaction, Perform and Willpower.
• Awareness: Crafting, Lore, Medicine, Perception and Technical.

Additionally, each skill is supplemented by a secondary class of abilities called Techniques, which expands on what a skill can do and cover specific training and specializations. Techniques are low cost and one-time-select, so players don't have to fret about how many points to spend on each. Skills handle the "level" component (how good the character is), while Techniques handle additional capabilities or bonuses.

That way players can focus on a handful of skills that cover broad areas of activity that are actually likely to come up during play, but specialized training (such as languages or specific knowledge) is still covered when necessary. And if players want their characters to be particularly good at a specific type of task or function (such as specific weapons or vehicles) those things are covered as well. But skills themselves are just 3-5 skills per attribute, so there's not that many skills to keep track of.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119320And using passive skills also allows diceless GMing, where the GM can simply have players make all attacks AND defense rolls against a passive skill value--speeding up play even more while allowing players to feel more engaged in their own defense when avoiding attacks.

I have never found that the players roll faster than me. I can roll the attacks (and damage and parry if needed) for 5 opponents much faster than I can get 5 players to make those rolls.

QuoteOne area I think multiple dice can do well (though, it is a tradeoff) is damage. I find that rolling multiple dice for damage can increase the excitement and contribute to the sense that you're pilling on a lot of damage and really devastating your opponent, which reduces the stress of counting so many dice. While multiple dice in action resolution might increase the stress of counting dice, since you're devoting additional effort into something when success is uncertain and your action might still fail. But with damage, success has already been  determined, so every extra die you count is that much more damage that you certainly did make. And since you don't always hit you don't always have to roll extra dice.

That's an interesting point.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119320One thing I'm doing in my system to address that is to use a combination of consolidated and specific skills. The class of abilities called "Skills" are general and focused on broad areas of activity and common game functions, such as Fighting (melee combat), Athletics (all mobility rolls, including dodges), Lore (all academic knowledge) or Piloting (any type of vehicle or moving machinery). There's 16 skills total spread across 4 attributes (all listed together in the character sheet).

• Might: Health, Toughness and Strength.
• Reflexes: Athletics, Fighting, Marksman, Piloting and Stealth.
• Bearing: Interaction, Perform and Willpower.
• Awareness: Crafting, Lore, Medicine, Perception and Technical.

Additionally, each skill is supplemented by a secondary class of abilities called Techniques, which expands on what a skill can do and cover specific training and specializations. Techniques are low cost and one-time-select, so players don't have to fret about how many points to spend on each. Skills handle the "level" component (how good the character is), while Techniques handle additional capabilities or bonuses.

That way players can focus on a handful of skills that cover broad areas of activity that are actually likely to come up during play, but specialized training (such as languages or specific knowledge) is still covered when necessary. And if players want their characters to be particularly good at a specific type of task or function (such as specific weapons or vehicles) those things are covered as well. But skills themselves are just 3-5 skills per attribute, so there's not that many skills to keep track of.

I tried several variations of that, what I would call hard nesting.  I think for a lot of games it will work fine.  However, it contributes even more to "fault lines" in the skill design, which is one of the things that often annoy me about skill-based systems.  Any game with skills has them, such as the "Perception/Investigation" confusion in D&D 5E.  In a game like D&D, primarily driven by classes, it doesn't matter as much.

That is, in humans, skills are an incredibly complex, overlapping set of different abilities that are combined in multiple ways to do things.  You can't model all of that in a game.  So a game quite rightly focuses on modeling the things the game is mainly about.  When you do that in a skills-based game, though, especially with hard nesting of skills, you are cutting off a big part of what makes a skills-based game attractive--that at least some of the overlapping is still easily represented in the model.  

As an example of a game that does a fair job of managing the problem, consider Rune Quest.  I think the Mythras derivative does an even better job.  It's still got fault lines, but at least the fault lines are chosen to not be that important in the scope of what those games are about.

Balancing that kind of issue against ease of handling by nesting is one of those considerations I mentioned earlier.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119320I also like the elegance of damage based on margin of success, and have considered using it as well, but ultimately went with damage rolls because I'm creating an effect-based system that emphasizes effect levels.

I ultimately had to abandon margin of success-based damage for my system because it requires escalating attack and defense scores (rolled or passive) to increase/ablate damage and that can pretty easily result in characters who simply can't miss or be hit by weaker opponents regardless of those opponents' numbers.

So in my case I opted for relatively flat attack/defense numbers to reflect that there are some spans of six seconds where even the most skilled swordsman can't find an opening in an amateur's flailing defenses and then scaling damage and "hit points" so that skilled warriors can more effectively cut down foes when there IS an opening to be exploited and their pool of "hit points" mean their less vulnerable to a single opening they leave for their foes to be fight ending (but enough weak foes can overcome that).

It's by no means a perfect model, but it works well enough for a tactical heroic fantasy game.

Quote from: Bren;1119339I have never found that the players roll faster than me. I can roll the attacks (and damage and parry if needed) for 5 opponents much faster than I can get 5 players to make those rolls.

Yeah, I meant "speed up play" more in the sense that it frees up the GM from having to do enemy rolls so they can focus on other stuff. So maybe that wasn't the correct way to frame it, but rather that it reduces the GM's workload. Though, in my experience part of the reason why players might stall the rolling process in such circumstances is because players have to wait for the GM to deal with them to know what to do, so their attention may waiver elsewhere till that time, making them as difficult to herd as cats. So I suppose the effectiveness or usefulness of this mechanic from a GM's POV depends on how you handle combat in your game.

But in my experience, part of the reason players like opposed rolls is that they like to feel in control of their character's fate, and giving them the chance to roll to defend themselves rather the GM rolling against their passive defense might still satisfy that need. Which would be a benefit (at least from the POV of player experience) of this type of rolling method when using passive skills or defenses rather than opposed rolls.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119341I tried several variations of that, what I would call hard nesting.  I think for a lot of games it will work fine.

I'm going for a universal game engine with my system's design, adaptable to a wide range of action-adventure genres, so "works fine for a lot of games" is kinda what I'm aiming for.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119341However, it contributes even more to "fault lines" in the skill design, which is one of the things that often annoy me about skill-based systems.  Any game with skills has them, such as the "Perception/Investigation" confusion in D&D 5E.  In a game like D&D, primarily driven by classes, it doesn't matter as much.

That's actually one of the reasons I have a single "Perception" skill in my system to handle everything having to do with detecting things (or even mental speed/agility in general)--Insight, Investigation, Observation, Listen, etc. IMO all of those things are basically the same function, and in my experience people who are good at noticing things (and I would include myself in this category) tend to be good at nothing any type of thing that's "off" or out of the ordinary, not just uber specific things that apply only in very specific situations. So there's little justification for treating each of those functions as completely separate things that require completely separate training and "level" development. If you want to have some distinction between these things stuff like specializations, proficiencies or other types of "techniques" should be enough.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119341That is, in humans, skills are an incredibly complex, overlapping set of different abilities that are combined in multiple ways to do things.  You can't model all of that in a game.  So a game quite rightly focuses on modeling the things the game is mainly about.  When you do that in a skills-based game, though, especially with hard nesting of skills, you are cutting off a big part of what makes a skills-based game attractive--that at least some of the overlapping is still easily represented in the model.

This is something that I had to learn the hard way in my development process trying out different aptitude (attribute-skill) layout schemes in a futile attempt to cover the whole range of overlap in human aptitude as best I could. But ultimately they all come up short and I came to realize that there's always a give and take in game design--when you add to one area or emphasize one thing you always have to take from somewhere else or downplay another aspect of the system. And when it comes to aptitude overlap there are too many variables between different skill sets that may potentially contribute to each other in real life (art training IRL also improves perception, for example, and perception could affect attack accuracy, etc.) that are impossible to accurately account for in terms of game mechanics.

So it always comes down to what you're looking for in your game and what types of compromises you're willing to make. What I found worked best for my purposes was to focus on tasks or game functions that are as general as possible, and applicable to a wide range of settings, without being so general they lack proper definition. So each skill is different and covers a different common type of activity without being overly specific, but the specificity still exists in the form of techniques as a functional compromise.

There is some degree of abstraction that cuts off the broad range of skills typically offered in a skill-based system, but I'm willing to work with that because from the POV of simulation skills that deal with similar things (such as different melee weapons) but whose training does not contribute to each other (as in most skill-based systems) makes ZERO sense. And those specifics are still covered by techniques anyways. And additionally a lot of those specifics tend to be highly situational, particularly in the case of academic knowledge, and hardly ever come up during play. So handling specialized skills as separate abilities with separate levels becomes a fool's errant and unnecessary complication that isn't even realistic if you care about simulation.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119365Yeah, I meant "speed up play" more in the sense that it frees up the GM from having to do enemy rolls so they can focus on other stuff. So maybe that wasn't the correct way to frame it, but rather that it reduces the GM's workload. Though, in my experience part of the reason why players might stall the rolling process in such circumstances is because players have to wait for the GM to deal with them to know what to do, so their attention may waiver elsewhere till that time, making them as difficult to herd as cats. So I suppose the effectiveness or usefulness of this mechanic from a GM's POV depends on how you handle combat in your game.

I find that even when players don't "have to wait for the GM" many still will wait. And those players will also wait to decide what they are going to that turn until the GM points to them for their turn.

QuoteBut in my experience, part of the reason players like opposed rolls is that they like to feel in control of their character's fate, and giving them the chance to roll to defend themselves rather the GM rolling against their passive defense might still satisfy that need. Which would be a benefit (at least from the POV of player experience) of this type of rolling method when using passive skills or defenses rather than opposed rolls.

I agree. As a player I like that. But beyond that, opposed rolls make hitting an opponent (and getting hit) dependent on the actions (and die rolls) of both the attacker and the defender. In this way the system process for resolving combat matches what occurs in the game world. Opposed rolls make my action and the character's action feel more connected. Single rolls do the opposite.

Quote from: Bren;1119500I agree. As a player I like that. But beyond that, opposed rolls make hitting an opponent (and getting hit) dependent on the actions (and die rolls) of both the attacker and the defender. In this way the system process for resolving combat matches what occurs in the game world. Opposed rolls make my action and the character's action feel more connected. Single rolls do the opposite.

And when there are significant choices to make about what you do to defend, then you actually are more connected (not just the illusion given by rolling dice yourself).

e.g. In GURPS you can retreat, or dive for cover, but you have to choose when/if you want to do that, and where you want to retreat or dive to. Or which weapon or skill to use to defend. And various possible options (like you could try to not just parry but attack the incoming weapon, which is harder to do but may have a great result if you can pull it off). Or in my house rules, you can switch to a defensive stance which gives you a bonus against the current attack, but makes it hard or impossible to attack back the next turn. Etc etc.

Quote from: Skarg;1119502And when there are significant choices to make about what you do to defend, then you actually are more connected (not just the illusion given by rolling dice yourself).

On one level all RPG engagement is a cognitive illusion. On another, I'd say that it depends on player skill (and interest). Honor & Intrigue allows for a number of choices: parry (which may allow a riposte), bare-handed parry, stop-thrust, and dodge. I like the choices, but I find they appeal to some players, but they provide too much detail for others.

Quote from: Bren;1119339I have never found that the players roll faster than me. I can roll the attacks (and damage and parry if needed) for 5 opponents much faster than I can get 5 players to make those rolls.

I wonder if the increased speed is because DMs do not inherently care as much about their NPCs then the Players do about their PCs combined with NPCs that have less options then a PC does.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119320One area I think multiple dice can do well (though, it is a tradeoff) is damage. I find that rolling multiple dice for damage can increase the excitement and contribute to the sense that you're pilling on a lot of damage and really devastating your opponent, which reduces the stress of counting so many dice. While multiple dice in action resolution might increase the stress of counting dice, since you're devoting additional effort into something when success is uncertain and your action might still fail. But with damage, success has already been  determined, so every extra die you count is that much more damage that you certainly did make. And since you don't always hit you don't always have to roll extra dice.

This is a great observation. t's making me re-think some game design stuff at the moment.

Yeah, there is something about hearing more rumble on the table the more dice are being rolled for damage.

That was always part of the appeal of not just multiplying damage results on a double or triple damage result, but multiplying the dice rolled! Oh my god! He rolled double damage on a halberd charge! 8d6 damage - (rumble rumble!)

He falls off the cliff ... it's a 20 meter drop! Roll 20d - 40! (RUMBLE!)

You can hear the characters die! ;-D

Which brings me to another question...

Random or Static Damage? Should that be another thread?

Quote from: tenbones;1119804Which brings me to another question...

Random or Static Damage? Should that be another thread?

I'd say it's interdependent enough with attack rolls to stay here.

For example, a margin of success based damage system is greatly dependent on the attack mechanics (and is neither static nor random in the sense that D&Ds damage is random). Also relevant is whether you want linear (just to-hit or damage) or quadratic (to-hit and damage) scaling and how much you want (ex. It's trivially easy to cap attack/defense on a starting character in the classic World of Darkness rules vs. the abilities of a level 1 vs. level 20 D&D fighter).

Quote from: Chris24601;1119821I'd say it's interdependent enough with attack rolls to stay here.

For example, a margin of success based damage system is greatly dependent on the attack mechanics (and is neither static nor random in the sense that D&Ds damage is random). Also relevant is whether you want linear (just to-hit or damage) or quadratic (to-hit and damage) scaling and how much you want (ex. It's trivially easy to cap attack/defense on a starting character in the classic World of Darkness rules vs. the abilities of a level 1 vs. level 20 D&D fighter).

Yes, it very much depends on how the attack roll works.  Though I doubt I will ever consider static damage.  I enjoy rolling for damage so much, that it skews my appreciation of the associated attack roll system as well.  It's why I don't much care for "damage as margin of success" attack systems--nothing against the math or elegance of the system, just such a huge preference to roll the damage.  Exception would be some dice pool games where the scale is coarser than attack/damage, though even then I have a love/hate feeling for the system.

Quote from: tenbones;1119804Which brings me to another question...

Random or Static Damage? Should that be another thread?

For the type of game I usually want, it should model the situation well. So if it's about someone being, say, hit with a melee weapon, that can happen in a variety of ways that are more or less injurious such that it almost always makes sense for the amount of injury from each hit to be random over an appropriate range.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119838Yes, it very much depends on how the attack roll works.  Though I doubt I will ever consider static damage.  I enjoy rolling for damage so much, that it skews my appreciation of the associated attack roll system as well.  It's why I don't much care for "damage as margin of success" attack systems--nothing against the math or elegance of the system, just such a huge preference to roll the damage.  Exception would be some dice pool games where the scale is coarser than attack/damage, though even then I have a love/hate feeling for the system.

Yeah, dice pool games were the first games where I encountered the idea of damage based on margin of success, and it works well for them cuz it's tied to the number of dice rolled (that succeeded), so it becomes like a substitute for rolling damage. Plus I really like the idea that the quality of the attack affects its effectiveness.

You could still have damage by margin of success and also roll damage, though. One example would be to make damage a roll based on the weapon or attack type, but modified based on the margin of success. Another would be to base damage rolls on damage levels (like maybe 1d6/level or 1d6/2 Levels, +2 at odd levels), with each weapon or attack type having a base damage level. Then modify the attack's damage level based on the margin of success.

Another possibility is to roll damage based strictly on the attack, but add some additional effect based on degree of success. Marvel Super Heroes RPG (FASERIP), for example, used static damage based on the attack's rank number (this could be changed to a random roll, though), but the attack's degree of success would trigger an extra effect on a yellow (complete) or red (critical success) result, based on the attack's damage type. Edged or Energy attacks could potentially stun or kill an enemy, Blunt/Force attacks could knock or slam them, etc.

Granted, this goes beyond Static vs Random damage, but still ties to attack roll methods and attack effects based on degrees or margins of success.

The best attack is undoubtedly D20+stat+base attack+misc vs armor class.

Quote from: Shasarak;1119535I wonder if the increased speed is because DMs do not inherently care as much about their NPCs then the Players do about their PCs combined with NPCs that have less options then a PC does.

NPCs having fewer options is system dependent. Usually I run systems where there is no mechanical difference between PCs and NPCs. And I almost always have an advantage when I GM since I know the system better than most (and often all) of the players.

But I think you are right that caring effects the speed of decision making. I'm pretty sure that I make faster decisions when I GM than when I play. But it's not just the caring/risk. Decisions are more fraught for players in another way. As the GM I know how tough the NPCs are, where they are, how many of them there are, etc. and I also know the same information about the PCs. But the players have far less information. The fog of war is much thicker for the player than it is for the GM.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1120455The best attack is undoubtedly D20+stat+base attack+misc vs armor class.

Let us not mistake "best" with "most common"... :p

Quote from: RPGPundit;1120455The best attack is undoubtedly D20+stat+base attack+misc vs armor class.

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While that is most accurately the 3e method (5e method also applies advantage/disadvantage), it's still very traditional. Growth sometimes trying something different. It may not work, but growth cannot happen without taking such chances.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120560[ATTACH=CONFIG]4108[/ATTACH]
While that is most accurately the 3e method (5e method also applies advantage/disadvantage), it's still very traditional. Growth sometimes trying something different. It may not work, but growth cannot happen without taking such chances.

Of course people are welcome to experiment and try new things, but there's also a lot of "reinventing the wheel" going on, and in many cases what you get is something that doesn't work as well as if you based your work on what was already proven and viable.

There's an elegance to the standard attack roll that has been hard to beat.

That's the real gist of what I'm polling for.

The abstraction arguments are important, obviously, but so is the gameplay. There is an undoubted elegance to the AC mechanic... in that it abstracts so much into the procedure alongside HP that it's pretty clean in play.

But I'm gauging what people here are willing to put up with in terms of the procedure vs. abstraction based on what's been established all these years in gaming. The results have been pretty interesting (as has this discussion).

Quote from: tenbones;1119282It's a bit meta - but how *many* calculations are you wanting to have in a combat exchange to determine the act of simply hitting a target?

Cooking in the abstractions into the task resolution is what we're really discussing here. And I'm interested in finding the sweet spot(s).

I had been mulling how to answer this, and forgot about it.  Time has let me focus on what was causing my initial hesitation:  For me, the bottleneck is not the number of calculations but rather the number of GM/player interactions--as well as where those interactions occur and the player uncertainty about success.  (The difficulty of the calculations is still a concern, of course.)

In general, I want to minimize the number of player interactions while having a rapid, almost ad hoc back and forth between GM and players, and having players uncertain about when they will next get to do something effective.  If that adds one or two simple calculations to what I'd otherwise need, then I'm more than happy to make that trade.

How I run D&D 5E combat gives a partial example of what I mean.  Instead of the usual--roll initiative up front, everyone goes in order in the cycle, do character at a time, effects last until "end of your next round", attacks, then damage, I've got something more akin to controlled chaos:  

- Players roll initiative every round to go before or after the monsters.  Roughly half the characters will thus go early, in a round, of Players A, Monsters, Players B.
- Players in A all go at once, and cannot wait to see the results of what others are doing (though they may hear what they intend, of course).  You want to see what happens, you can go with Players in B.
- After a couple of rounds, if the target ACs aren't already known, they'll be announced.  
- Back and forth is thus more about intent and targets.  Then I'm rapidly moving onto the next person in that group of players.  As players determine hits and damage, they start letting me know.
- When the monsters go, I frequently announce targets and then have the players roll most of the smaller attacks against their own characters.  So they know the attack bonus and damage of the foes fairly quick.
- "End of round" is the end of the round for Players A effects, but end of the next round for Players B effects.  However, death saves are all done at the end of the round.
- I narrate in chunks, not individual player actions.

The overall effect is that I can run a chaotic but fast combat with 10-12 players and easily 2 or 3 times that many creatures in about 20 minutes, unless a majority of the creatures are complex ones to run (or I've just got a good reason to keep their abilities hidden or those handful of cases where the fight is so tight that it drags from the sheer death struggle).  You'll note that I've got an extra roll in the sequence (initiative every round) but have farmed some of my rolls to the players.  I reserve the option to roll as the GM or not on a round by round basis depending on the situation, which changes the flow as well.  Not knowing when you'll go next round is definitely a thing that keeps the players worried and interested.  (Also funny at times.  "Oh boy, good thing the cleric lost initiative, because we needed that healing at the end!"  We've even had a player deliberately lose initiative a few times because they suspected they'd need to pick up the pieces after the monsters went.)  The stop and go pacing from the multiple characters at once and the end of round is also different.

The whole thing is set up to magnify the D&D trait that the first few rounds are a little slower, but it gradually picks up speed on each round as effects and damage take creatures out, the players know what they need to hit, and the players take over more of the rolls.  This frees me up to inject more uncertainty via the actions of the monsters.  That is, I can still run a very fast combat by spending my attention on having the monsters do interesting things that will make the players sweat instead of making a bunch of rolls that have lost their punch.

Overall, I don't mind attack calculations (D&D style, GURPS or Hero style, Rune Quest style, etc.) nearly as much as I mind having everything go into slow motion while they GM/player get into this sequence of:  Ask something, get answer, do calculation, roll, report results, etc."  We've got 10+ brains in the room.  I want the calculations to use the inherent parallel processing available.  Obviously, past a certain point of complexity, the calculations break the parallel processing, because the players don't get them well enough, and go back into a wait state while they clarify with the GM.  Though of course that is true of any system.

Aside #1:  A lot of my own system design/development work is in finding better way to make the mechanics support the flow I want.  There is something very tricky about bridging the gaps between initiative/attack/effects/conditions in mechanics.  I think a lot of the fault lines are precisely in the communication/sequence process more so than the attacks.

Aside #2:  I'm very interested in seeing what Skarg has to say about the above, since I suspect that some of this will be very off from what he prefers and some of it very on.  Though maybe I'm projecting since one of the reasons for the focus is to put more player decisions, such as meaningful maneuver choices, into that framework.

It appears we are both in the same boat! I'm working on a project and mulling over creating my own house-system, and I'm not interested really in novelty as much as I'm interested in field-testing whether or not a "better mousetrap" is worth my time. There are certainly systems I can use an simply tweak - some like Savage Worlds are made for that. Others not so much, but they have elements that I find really solid for a certain kind of gameplay.

The key is finding the mechanics that "rub" the assumptions of the setting the right way.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1121005

I find myself largely in agreement. One reason I found Runequest combat didn't take that long despite the need to roll both attack and parry is that the players knew what they needed to roll and they rolled it, tracked their result, and then told me when it was their turn during the round. Initiative was Strike Rank based so they also knew when they needed to give me the results of their rolls.

Quote from: tenbones;1120993That's the real gist of what I'm polling for.

The abstraction arguments are important, obviously, but so is the gameplay. There is an undoubted elegance to the AC mechanic... in that it abstracts so much into the procedure alongside HP that it's pretty clean in play.

But I'm gauging what people here are willing to put up with in terms of the procedure vs. abstraction based on what's been established all these years in gaming. The results have been pretty interesting (as has this discussion).

Indeed it has been.

I've always felt Palladium had the best rule.  It's not just the opposed roll, but the controlled range of modifiers through skills and the armor as conditional hitpoints verses roll.  There are better and worse implementations and really high attributes can break it but that's my vote.

Quote from: David Johansen;1121595I've always felt Palladium had the best rule.  It's not just the opposed roll, but the controlled range of modifiers through skills and the armor as conditional hitpoints verses roll.  There are better and worse implementations and really high attributes can break it but that's my vote.

I'll definitely agree on the more limited modifiers; it's one of the reasons I opted to heavily restrain my system's attack and defense numbers (to about +3 over 15 levels) while scaling damage and "hit points" pretty linearly with level.

The biggest advantage of that is that it allows weaker things in larger numbers to remain a threat at higher levels and for powerful things to at least potentially be survivable long enough for a party to flee (or overcome using strategy and tactics if they're of that bent).

A group of orc warriors in Palladium was always something you at least had to be on your guard about (even if the odds of them actually beating you are near zero, quirks of probability happen and they'll at least attrit some resources you'd rather have for elsewhere).

The opposed rolls I'm more indifferent to in a mechanical sense. Any combat is already going to involve multiple rolls so the overall outcome will be a bell curve distribution regardless so static numbers will be faster compared to opposed rolls.

But psychologically, what opposed rolls do is give the illusion of control to the player. The monster didn't hit them with nothing they could do about it, they failed on their parry roll.

My general preference in this regard if players really want that feeling is to adapt the rules so the players roll everything while opponents use static values.

The monster has a 16 attack (11 damage) and 16 defense. The player has +5 to hit, +5 to defense and their armor soaks 1d10 damage. Mathematically that's the same as the monster having +5 to hit for 1d10 damage and the player having defense 16, but the player rolling the dice feels like they have more control because the dice are in their hands.

Where both sides rolling for both makes the most sense to me would be a system where a fair amount of PVP was expected (say RPing a martial arts competition where players will sometimes have to face each other in the ring ) and you wanted to maintain that illusion of more control.

I feel you could resolve things with a single opposed roll, and that would include parry, AC, etc.

Which means, ALL possibilities at once...

For example, if you roll higher you win and your AC/parry is ignored, but your foe's AC and parry might diminish the damage, etc.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1121752I feel you could resolve things with a single opposed roll, and that would include parry, AC, etc.

Which means, ALL possibilities at once...

For example, if you roll higher you win and your AC/parry is ignored, but your foe's AC and parry might diminish the damage, etc.

You could, but then the trick would be whether you can satisfyingly take into account enough of the situation, that everything in the situation has appropriate effects on the chances of various outcomes.

I have even done this to convert some GURPS matchups to single die rolls. ... But in order to satisfy my own tastes for detail, I did it by playing out (and/or applying analysis to) a variety of fights between specific figures with specific stats doing specific things, using the full GURPS rules. And then that only would give me an estimate of the odds of various outcomes if two figures with those stats fought each other the way I had them fight in the tests, and weren't interfered with. But it was close enough for me for use with NPC fighters fighting each other some distance away from the PCs. This let me simulate pretty well the outcomes of a bunch of NPCs fighting each other, extremely quickly.

But I'd not choose to do that for PCs, since it's fun and interesting and immersive to play out the PCs' combat in detail and let them choose exactly what they do and determine exactly what happens etc. Simplifying that would be throwing out one of the main reasons I play.


On the other hand... I have been testing out a system for doing single contested rolls for combat in TFT. Which is actually a step UP in complexity for TFT, since usually there an attack is just a roll against the attacker's adjusted Dexterity, sometimes with modifiers for the target's fighting skill or attempt to defend themselves, but more often not.