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View Full Version : WoW - A Fair Non-Level-Based RP Combat System!



Dread Angel
2012-11-22, 08:24 PM
Hello folks.

I know WoW is not actually a roleplaying game, but it does have the elements there.

My little guild has the setting that it is a college, of sorts. Therefore there are instructors.

Before I joined, they used a system with the /roll command to simulate fair duels between characters, regardless of their in-game level.

Worked simply enough. Player 1 describes an attack with the /emote command, rolls an attack, defender rolls, comes out looking like this in the chatbox, from Araris' perspective:

Araris draws his blade and slashes at Nathaira's eyes.
You roll a 64
Nathaira rolls a 79
Nathaira jerks backwards out of the path of the blade, and sends a bolt of hellfire at the swordsman's face.
Nathaira rolls a 2
You roll a 53

.....and so on and so forth until someone scores 3 hits, winning the duel.

This is literally perfectly fair, as any character can duel any other character and the odds of winning are 50/50 regardless of gear, level etc.

I've taken over an officer's role in the guild, and have proposed this more in-depth system.

As it is a college, we have instructors. Araris, my character, is the school's blademaster (as well as being a highly respected duelist and weapon master in his own right), etc. And we have students.

Becoming an instructor is a matter of consulting the guild leaders and organizing it first, showing you can roleplay teaching properly, etc. But being a student is where most of our members find themselves.

Now, what is the point of attending in character classes if you don't see a benefit from it? Further, what's stopping any old student from challenging an instructor and having the 50/50 chance of beating the absolute crap out of them?

At the moment, nothing.

I came up with a simple system that is more in depth and lends more realism to the whole "collegiate" setting.

Each character, be they student or instructor, gets a skill level at whatever form of attack they use. This reflects as their minimum roll limit, and instructors have a very, very high one, reflecting that they are essentially Boss types. Let's use Araris as an example.

Araris is highly trained in most every type of weapon, and is the blademaster of the College. His entry would look like this:

Main Weapon (in this case, his twin katanas) 75-100
Other Melee (any melee weapon besides his swords) 60-100
Ranged 35-100

This is his stats as a boss encounter. These are both for attack and defense, i.e. if he is wielding his swords he rolls between 75 and 100 for his attacks and for his defense, etc.

He engages in a practice bout with Issirin, a student who prefers ranged weapons. Issirin is an expert hunter and stealth attacker, but is not versed in open combat. Her stats are:

Ranged 10-100
Other 1-100

This means that essentially she has a better chance to hit with her crossbow than her daggers, because she is more practiced with her ranged weapons, but not so practiced that she has the discipline and skill to hold her ground in the face of a charging plate-armored warrior and place a kill shot perfectly.

So she still has the chance of rolling upwards of 75, meaning that anzthing below 75 can't hit Araris by virtue of the fact that he never rolls below 75. They clash, he closes with her and disarms her, she draws her daggers as a desperate measure and has a full 1-100, i.e. only the 25% chance that she will even have a chance to hit him. If you follow.

So, that balances the student-instructor relationship.

As students attend class, practice, become more versed in their weapons, they increase their skill with it, raising their minimum roll value, until they gradually approach the skill level of their instructor and become thus more likely to hit and defend successfully.

This rather neatly simulates learning and ties it in to the roleplaying.

If two people of equal and high skill level such as two instructors duel, they use 1-100.

In this way, any character can improve any of their weaponplay by actually practicing in character.

Each instructor will be required to keep track of each student's current stats on the website, and anyone can look into it.

This simulates actually watching your classmates practice and knowing how good they are with what....which would realistically happen.

No skill level ever goes about 75-100.

It rather neatly solves our problems, I think.

Nath pointed out that people can simply create characters and claim to be a world expert in the field or whatever, which is true in itself.

This is where roleplaying comes in. If you're a world expert in swordsmanship, you aren't going to end up in Araris' classroom because you don't need improvement. By choosing a student role, you de facto assume that you are there to learn and improve your skills.

I think this makes sense, the people I have spoken to so far agreed. I wanted a more broad opinion though, does this make sense or am I just being super-biased because I'm one of the instructors, at least with that character?

Acanous
2012-11-22, 08:52 PM
We had a similar system in City of Heroes, but it was done with the D6 roller. We'd take turns attacking and blocking, but you could also "Heal" or "Charge up".

A Heal was a once-per-battle-per-player thing that removed one hit. A Charge up aded +1 to your next attack (Max of +3) at the expense of your turn. Defenses could not injure other players.

This was later truncated, though, because fights would take too long, into a best of 5 roll-off, with the victor of the roll describing his action, and the loser describing how they took it. (So instead of Attacker and Defender roll, if attacker wins, describe hit, it was Both players roll, high roll hits)

Any time someone scored a "Flawless" victory, they recieved a +1 bonus against the same opponent in the first roll of the next battle.

Dread Angel
2012-11-23, 06:13 PM
That is a cool way to do it, aye, I like the Charge Up idea but the trick with that one would be figuring out how much of a boost is appropriate in 1-100 based rolls.

The flawless victory thing is cool too - but I think it would only really be able to apply to students in our case, as the instructors are already nigh-untouchable until late in a student's study.

Raum
2012-11-23, 10:00 PM
I wanted a more broad opinion though, does this make sense or am I just being super-biased because I'm one of the instructors, at least with that character?So you're starting from an egalitarian system that plays no favorites and you want to move it to a system favoring those who put time in to some training system? The irony is that your thread title seemed proud of the "fair" system.

Kind of amusing.

As for the system itself, decide what you want to reward and weight it appropriately. If you want to reward "attending class" and shift results accordingly it sounds like a reasonable system.

Dread Angel
2012-11-26, 05:50 AM
So you're starting from an egalitarian system that plays no favorites and you want to move it to a system favoring those who put time in to some training system? The irony is that your thread title seemed proud of the "fair" system.

Kind of amusing.

As for the system itself, decide what you want to reward and weight it appropriately. If you want to reward "attending class" and shift results accordingly it sounds like a reasonable system.

Let me clarify - by "fair" I don't mean that everyone has an equal chance to win.

I mean that it is a fair representation of the distinction between master and student - that the master is a master for a reason, and the student doubly so.

It's the same thing in a real life college - if you put the time into it, you become better at it. If you don't, then you don't. The idea is realism, not communism.

A beginner swordsman with barely any more knowledge than "stick them with the pointy bit" does not have much of a chance at all of defeating an expert swordsman in real life.