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Mr. Mask
2016-05-22, 12:28 PM
Most hit and miss effects, or more specifically critical ones, are too extreme or random and so aren't engaging. I was thinking of a few that would be good. Wanted input on these ideas, and discussion about your experience with it in other RPGs.


Knockback: Like Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis, a hit could sometimes knock your opponent back.

Retreating Dodge: Similar to knockback, your opponent has the option to dodge (or possibly reduce) your attack, if they back away one square.

Partial Damage: You nick the opponent, hitting them for less damage than normal.

Critical: You hit them for more damage than normal.

Impairment: Your strike impairs the opponent somehow. Now, an actual stun where they can't do anything for a turn or so should be rare as I dislike stuns and the like which take characters out of play. Most stuns should just impair their next turn or two, somewhat. This can also be fluffed as putting them off balance, putting them on the defensive, etc.. This could happen even if you miss.

Self-Impairment: Due to your attack or your opponent's defence, you suffer impairment.

Counter?: This would give your opponent a bonus on their counterattack against you. But, this might already be covered by impairment, above.

Morale Effect: Your attack, whether it hit or miss, may effect the opponent's morale. Having someone hit them, or almost hit and kill them, can shake their confidence. Still, it is very unlikely you'll actually make someone flee with this, but just make them hesitant to continue the attack.



Aesthetics

It would be good if there were details as to how you defend yourself, or as to how you hit the opponent. Say, whether you dodged their blow by ducking, or blocked it with your shield, or parried it, or whichever. Problem being, this would likely be complicated and not worth the effort in pen and paper.

The closest you could get is a table you can roll on, that is something like this:

1 *Parry with Shield, You get a +1 on your next attack.

2 Parry with Weapon, You get a +1 on your next attack.

3 *Block with Shield, --

4 Block with Weapon, --

5 *Beat with Shield, Opponent gets -1 to Hit, but you cannot use your shield next turn.

6 Beat with Weapon, This weapon receives a -1 penalty on the next turn. Your opponent also suffers a -1 penalty on the next turn.
7 Leaning Dodge, --

8 Duck, You suffer -1 defence in the next turn.

9 Moving toward the opponent, If the opponent tries to disengage, you get a +3 bonus on your attack.

10 Opponent missed, You get +1 on your next attack.

*: If you don't have a shield, use the entry directly below this one.


That is a rough presentation Of how it might look, but having any kind of mechanical option to it as you can see, is pretty dubious. Nickel and diming the player with bonuses and penalties gets tedious and confusing without being especially engaging. Having more dramatic bonuses and penalties that effect their next move could be good. Would have to be done carefully.

The inspiration for this was the original (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/09/25) White Knight Story trailer. If a computer can handle it for you, this sort of system is a lot more viable.


What sort of effects do you/have you used, would you like to see, do you hate using/seeing, and what have you seen used in other games?

Knaight
2016-05-25, 10:23 AM
Impairment is an incredibly broad category, and most of what I've seen can be slotted into it somehow. With that said, there is one big category that you didn't hit, which is effects that bring in an ally somehow.

As for different ways of dodging being too complicated, not necessarily. Take a look at Burning Wheel's Fight! subsystem. It's pretty much at the maximum complication range, but the core way it works is that everyone scripts small bursts of activity, and then you see how they interact with each other on the table. Most of them are pretty straightforward - if both people strike at the same time they trade blows, if both people defend at the same time neither strikes (which defense is pretty immaterial here). There are some particularly fun interactions though, particularly with the more indirect effects. Deliberately locking weapons can be a really nasty trick, particularly from stronger opponents - on the other hand, if you see this coming* and meet it with a full on charge, that lock action counts for nothing.

*The decisions are double blind, so it's about predicting the opponent.

Slipperychicken
2016-05-25, 12:24 PM
For hit effects, I like injuries, blinding, knockdown, stun, bleed, and confuse. They're simple, intuitive, and they tell you what's happening in the game-world. Stagger might not prevent someone from doing something, but it could penalize the next thing he tries to do. Stun should not be a common effect.

I think that throwing a +1/-1 for precisely how you avoided an attack is overdoing it. I just describe that stuff in a fight, it sounds cool, and we all move on.

I play dnd 5e, so I don't like the whole "+1, -1, +2, -2, etc" thing. I greatly prefer advantage/disadvantage. Maybe you could have it so that a confusing hit gives someone disadvantage on his next attack roll or something.

Mr. Mask
2016-05-26, 10:27 AM
Impairment is an incredibly broad category, and most of what I've seen can be slotted into it somehow. With that said, there is one big category that you didn't hit, which is effects that bring in an ally somehow.

As for different ways of dodging being too complicated, not necessarily. Take a look at Burning Wheel's Fight! subsystem. It's pretty much at the maximum complication range, but the core way it works is that everyone scripts small bursts of activity, and then you see how they interact with each other on the table. Most of them are pretty straightforward - if both people strike at the same time they trade blows, if both people defend at the same time neither strikes (which defense is pretty immaterial here). There are some particularly fun interactions though, particularly with the more indirect effects. Deliberately locking weapons can be a really nasty trick, particularly from stronger opponents - on the other hand, if you see this coming* and meet it with a full on charge, that lock action counts for nothing.

*The decisions are double blind, so it's about predicting the opponent. Yeah, impairment really would go under all effects that are not advantageous. It just meant general penalizing effects that were not already listed.

I can see the point of an ally. Your hit could cause them to leave themselves open to a second opponent, or such. Certain attacks may even give them a bonus to defence against a second opponent.

I'll have to look through Burning Wheel's system again.


Slip Chicken: Blind is an interesting one, difficult to explain with most attacks. You can cut someone above the eye-line so that blood gets in their eyes, but that won't fully blind them. Throwing sand into their face would work. You could get them to flinch and blink, but that would be so short that it wouldn't normally have an effect. There are certain moved that raise the line of sight so they can't see what's going on, but those are rather specific.

Not quite sure how to make use of confusion. In the extreme cases, it means you might attack allies, which seems too much normally. In lesser cases, it might just mean you can't cast spells. The player needs to somehow choose something fairly random, maybe roll to see whether they attack, defend, retreat, or even do little of anything.

Knockdown is good. Like Stun, it has to be used carefully.

These are good examples. Thanks.

Mutazoia
2016-05-26, 10:34 AM
Yeah, impairment really would go under all effects that are not advantageous. It just meant general penalizing effects that were not already listed.

I can see the point of an ally. Your hit could cause them to leave themselves open to a second opponent, or such. Certain attacks may even give them a bonus to defence against a second opponent.

I'll have to look through Burning Wheel's system again.


Slip Chicken: Blind is an interesting one, difficult to explain with most attacks. You can cut someone above the eye-line so that blood gets in their eyes, but that won't fully blind them. Throwing sand into their face would work. You could get them to flinch and blink, but that would be so short that it wouldn't normally have an effect. There are certain moved that raise the line of sight so they can't see what's going on, but those are rather specific.

Not quite sure how to make use of confusion. In the extreme cases, it means you might attack allies, which seems too much normally. In lesser cases, it might just mean you can't cast spells. The player needs to somehow choose something fairly random, maybe roll to see whether they attack, defend, retreat, or even do little of anything.

Knockdown is good. Like Stun, it has to be used carefully.

These are good examples. Thanks.

Start reading on page 36.... (http://annarchive.com/files/Drmg039.pdf)

Slipperychicken
2016-05-26, 10:50 AM
Slip Chicken: Blind is an interesting one, difficult to explain with most attacks. You can cut someone above the eye-line so that blood gets in their eyes, but that won't fully blind them. Throwing sand into their face would work. You could get them to flinch and blink, but that would be so short that it wouldn't normally have an effect. There are certain moved that raise the line of sight so they can't see what's going on, but those are rather specific.

Not quite sure how to make use of confusion. In the extreme cases, it means you might attack allies, which seems too much normally. In lesser cases, it might just mean you can't cast spells. The player needs to somehow choose something fairly random, maybe roll to see whether they attack, defend, retreat, or even do little of anything.

Knockdown is good. Like Stun, it has to be used carefully.

These are good examples. Thanks.

"Blinding" could be more along the lines of briefly impairing vision to make an enemies moves less likely to work, and there are a lot of ways to do that. Confuse would probably be a similar effect that could be achieved by smacking the enemy's noggin really hard, or it could mean that an enemy has to pick a random target (maybe he gets to pick 4 targets, and determines which one he attacks randomly).

I actually took those examples from turn-based video games. They tend to avoid the problem of melee being boring by giving combatants a variety of status effects and different kinds of attacks. I'm not sure why, but tabletop RPGs seem to have a lot of trouble with the idea of attacks inflicting status effects and good damage at the same time.

Mr. Mask
2016-05-26, 11:08 AM
Mutazoia: That's a pretty good wounding table. It is a little concerning. Some of those effects are pretty devastating for fumbles or hits, and they're going to occur rather frequently and randomly the way criticals and fumbles work.


Chicken: Well, if you have a cape or something, you can obscure their vision, or throw sand in their eyes. If you're working unarmed, you can push their chin up. You can smack them in the side of the head or chin with a weapon to make them look away, but unless they're wearing serious armour that's more likely to kill or maim them than temporarily blind them. Can't see much other way of achieving this.

Unless the character is surrounded by enemies, having to pick a target won't be highly problematic for them.

Generally, if you want to have a competitive standard attack that just deals damage, all status effect abilities have to have drawbacks. I do see a general lack of standard attacks being capable of rendering interesting status effects, in tabletop. In games like Darklands, Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle, your hits sometimes knock the enemy away, and can cause them to fall off cliffs. A couple of games allow knockdown of occasion.