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DE5PA1R
2018-07-24, 07:34 AM
Hello! Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game? Something where a very skilled low-level non-min-maxed party could go toe-to-toe with an adult dragon or equally impressive creature and win, say, 80% of the time.

Put another way, I'm looking for a tabletop game where all else being equal (level, equipment, etc) the power level of knowledgeable and skilled players drastically dwarfs the power level of unskilled players.

I'd assume random elements - especially how defense works - would be minimal to make the game more predictable for the players.

Please note:


I am specifically talking about how much the players affect the characters' prowess.
I'm not talking about specific or narrow choices made during character creation; when I say combat system, I mean the turn-by-turn decisions players are making after some in-game prep work.
I don't assume a level 3 party fighting a dragon would be easy, just that it would be possible - but only by a set of extremely skilled players all working together. This hypothetical fight could last several in-game days and if one PC makes a mistake (at that low of a level) I'd assume a TPK.


Thanks!

DeTess
2018-07-24, 07:41 AM
Hello! Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game? Something where a very skilled low-level non-min-maxed party could go toe-to-toe with an adult dragon or equally impressive creature and win, say, 80% of the time.

Put another way, I'm looking for a tabletop game where all else being equal (level, equipment, etc) the power level of knowledgeable and skilled players drastically dwarfs the power level of unskilled players.

I'd assume random elements - especially how defense works - would be minimal to make the game more predictable for the players.

Please note:


I am specifically talking about how much the players affect the characters' prowess.
I'm not talking about specific or narrow choices made during character creation; when I say combat system, I mean the turn-by-turn decisions players are making after some in-game prep work.
I don't assume a level 3 party fighting a dragon would be easy, just that it would be possible - but only by a set of extremely skilled players all working together. This hypothetical fight could last several in-game days and if one PC makes a mistake (at that low of a level) I'd assume a TPK.


Thanks!

So, essentially you want something with a combat system that's more like chess or something? Where being really tactically knowledgeable trumps having OP 'pieces'? I'm not certain something like this exists for ttrpg (most of the player skill comes into play building a character and knowing what they can do, but you specifically called out a scenario in which character optimization is not a thing), but I'll be interested in seeing what others come up with.

Edit: Maybe an RPG based on war-game engine? Something like Battletech, where (I assume, I've never played it) most combat happens using the war-game rules?

CharonsHelper
2018-07-24, 07:45 AM
You might be better off with a skirmish style wargame where you roleplay what happens leading up to combat - maybe using a different system entirely.

Knaight
2018-07-24, 08:11 AM
Burning Wheel. The character side still matters, but the core combat system involves double blind selection of one of eleven default actions, plus whatever is open situationally. These then feed in to a massive matrix that describes how they interact.

If you're good at predicting your opponent and consistently have the advantage in selected move you can overcome a much stronger opponent. Aiming feints at defends, counters at attacks, attacks at feints, locks at shoves, etc. can add up quickly, despite character skill or equipment gradients - and that's without getting into shenanigans I've seen (most notably a question that came up on the forums about using the draw action to draw an opponent's weapon after grabbing them, which was part of a scarily effective opening ambush from an initially unarmed character).

Then there's Mythender and Anima Prime, where instead of the Fight! matrix the combat system is based in powers and the management of several fluctuating resources that all interact with the system of powers. Beyond that basically any system that heavily uses a grid has at least some of this if the environments are designed well.

DeTess
2018-07-24, 08:22 AM
Burning Wheel. The character side still matters, but the core combat system involves double blind selection of one of eleven default actions, plus whatever is open situationally. These then feed in to a massive matrix that describes how they interact.

If you're good at predicting your opponent and consistently have the advantage in selected move you can overcome a much stronger opponent. Aiming feints at defends, counters at attacks, attacks at feints, locks at shoves, etc. can add up quickly, despite character skill or equipment gradients - and that's without getting into shenanigans I've seen (most notably a question that came up on the forums about using the draw action to draw an opponent's weapon after grabbing them, which was part of a scarily effective opening ambush from an initially unarmed character).


How exactly does the predicting work? What you've described in the first paragraph sounds like every round is a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock, etc. but apparently there's more to it?

Quertus
2018-07-24, 08:36 AM
Burning Wheel. The character side still matters, but the core combat system involves double blind selection of one of eleven default actions, plus whatever is open situationally. These then feed in to a massive matrix that describes how they interact.

If you're good at predicting your opponent and consistently have the advantage in selected move you can overcome a much stronger opponent. Aiming feints at defends, counters at attacks, attacks at feints, locks at shoves, etc. can add up quickly, despite character skill or equipment gradients - and that's without getting into shenanigans I've seen (most notably a question that came up on the forums about using the draw action to draw an opponent's weapon after grabbing them, which was part of a scarily effective opening ambush from an initially unarmed character).

Then there's Mythender and Anima Prime, where instead of the Fight! matrix the combat system is based in powers and the management of several fluctuating resources that all interact with the system of powers. Beyond that basically any system that heavily uses a grid has at least some of this if the environments are designed well.

Something like this, but where you can know that Black Knights only have "thrust" and "parry", but not "dodge", and can plan your strategy accordingly? Hmmm... May I suggest Exalted?

In Exalted, player skill, knowing exactly what powers and weaknesses every style has would probably be huge.

MrStabby
2018-07-24, 08:39 AM
Played/built a homebrew MtG RPG... about 10 years ago now? Wow. Didn't seem that long.

Skills, spells etc. were represented by cards and there was a huge element of skill in what to keep in hand, what to play and how to bluff the DM. Some "low power" cards are so situationally powerful that it was possible to defeat really tough encounters through skill (including deck construction). Other aspects of the game were a mess and there were some deepish balance issues so we never really fixed it - would be keen to go back to it at some point.

Knaight
2018-07-24, 08:42 AM
How exactly does the predicting work? What you've described in the first paragraph sounds like every round is a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock, etc. but apparently there's more to it?

It's similar to that, except you're scripting multiple rounds in advance (though you can break out of a script and switch actions if you're willing to forfeit other actions entirely to do that), the different actions aren't equally valuable, and the symmetry is broken. Take rock paper scissors as the simplest example here, played over multiple rounds. There there's a point for winning, no point for tying, and no point loss for losing.

Even boiled down to just attack defend feint counter the system is more complex. Two defends bounce right off, but two attacks translate to both being fairly likely to hit, but not necessarily at the same time. If you're significantly better than your opponent and they don't have much armor that double attack might be good for you. You'll probably hit first and hard, and wound them enough to either completely nullify their attack or at least make it minor. If you've also got good armor that just gets better. On the other hand, they likely know this, which makes them likely to counter, which means you might want to feint.

Then there's variation in speed, where some actions go up against straight up blanks. If you know exactly how fast your opponent is and you know the system well enough you know exactly which actions you get that they don't in every set of nine (three rounds of three, scripted simultaneously). So maybe you want to play defensively on the overlap, then throw your nastiest maneuvers at crappy passive defenses. On the other hand if you can predict this strategy from an opponent and suss out which defenses are likely to show up when you can hopefully position yourself so they can't do that come that round, either because they're down or because you've got a solid advantage somehow (the lock action here is generally your friend).

There's also a positioning system with reach tied in to it and some moves about altering that, which is another angle to play with. Those exchanged attacks I mentioned earlier? An even better situation than better skill and better armor is being faster moving with longer reach, deliberately provoking a movement competition one action before exchange of attacks, then getting in a clean shot while completely out of reach. On the other hand that too is somewhat predictable (of course the guy with the spear wants to stay out), and better movement isn't enough to counter a well timed dedicated charge - itself predictable enough to make charge countering worth it.

It's less rock paper scissors and more the mindgames associated with high level fighting game tournaments, or high level competitive Pokemon, or even Poker. Exchanges of second and third best moves because of counters to counters, so on and so forth. There's a whole forum PvP duel area on the official forums just because of it, and they're interesting reading from a system design perspective.

Moving back to this thread though, the GM isn't likely trying to win in quite the same way as those PvP duels. Instead they're playing specific characters with specific personalities, and particular styles of fighting that come out of it. It might be better for that orc to use a feint and counter heavy strategy, but come on, it's an orc. So the orc does orc behavior, which means that players that understand orc behavior can take it even with a character significantly worse at fighting than said orc.

DeTess
2018-07-24, 09:44 AM
*snip*

Thanks for the explanation!

That sounds really interesting, really complicated, and a lot like what the OP asked for. I'll keep this system in mind for when I've got a bit of time to learn another TTRPG.

Segev
2018-07-24, 10:23 AM
You might also take a look at various cooperative board and card games, where the players are working together against an "AI" that is built into the rules of the game that dictates how the world, enemies, whatever create opposition.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is particularly close in execution to the concept of fighting an enemy. Each player has a "hero deck" that represents the powers and abilities of one particular superhero they're controlling, and there's a "villain deck" that has specific rules on how you flip the cards in the deck to determine what the villain's up to each round. This creates things to which the players must respond with their available powers and actions, all while trying to get enough breathing room to actually deal directly with the villain.

You'd probably want to have your NPC enemies set up on a similar "AI," where you've designed them in advance to be difficult to a particular level. otherwise, you're winding up with the DM vs. the players as the DM has to essentially demonstrate his own prowess at using the system for the enemies to stand up to the players, and the players have to be better than the DM at the combat game to win the fight.

Most ttRPGs use statistics-based difficulty curves and the RNG of the dice to make it so that it's just a tactical level where things get "player skill"-related, and the DM is more interested in modeling tactics and goals of the monster than in demonstrating his skill at the competitive puzzle-game that is the combat engine.

Note: this problem isn't solved by a "good DM" who "isn't competitive about it." If the DM has to play the skill-basis for the combat engine for NPC enemies, not being competitive translates to "going easy." It's like playing chess with your friends, and deciding that this chess game should go to them, so you deliberately make bad moves. Not satisfying for anybody. (Worse, it also means the DM can't adequately model highly-skilled enemies if the DM is not already better than the players at this game.)

Using a pre-established AI set up as a puzzle means the DM can take all the time he needs to make it precisely as tough as he wants it to be, but then doesn't have to "go easy" or be "better" than the players in the turn-to-turn moments. He can back off to the same tactical level he is at in other ttRPGs, choosing what enemies, if any, to introduce and how to use them.

DE5PA1R
2018-07-24, 01:31 PM
It's similar to that, except you're scripting multiple rounds in advance (though you can break out of a script and switch actions if you're willing to forfeit other actions entirely to do that), the different actions aren't equally valuable, and the symmetry is broken. Take rock paper scissors as the simplest example here, played over multiple rounds. There there's a point for winning, no point for tying, and no point loss for losing.

Even boiled down to just attack defend feint counter the system is more complex. Two defends bounce right off, but two attacks translate to both being fairly likely to hit, but not necessarily at the same time. If you're significantly better than your opponent and they don't have much armor that double attack might be good for you. You'll probably hit first and hard, and wound them enough to either completely nullify their attack or at least make it minor. If you've also got good armor that just gets better. On the other hand, they likely know this, which makes them likely to counter, which means you might want to feint.

Then there's variation in speed, where some actions go up against straight up blanks. If you know exactly how fast your opponent is and you know the system well enough you know exactly which actions you get that they don't in every set of nine (three rounds of three, scripted simultaneously). So maybe you want to play defensively on the overlap, then throw your nastiest maneuvers at crappy passive defenses. On the other hand if you can predict this strategy from an opponent and suss out which defenses are likely to show up when you can hopefully position yourself so they can't do that come that round, either because they're down or because you've got a solid advantage somehow (the lock action here is generally your friend).

There's also a positioning system with reach tied in to it and some moves about altering that, which is another angle to play with. Those exchanged attacks I mentioned earlier? An even better situation than better skill and better armor is being faster moving with longer reach, deliberately provoking a movement competition one action before exchange of attacks, then getting in a clean shot while completely out of reach. On the other hand that too is somewhat predictable (of course the guy with the spear wants to stay out), and better movement isn't enough to counter a well timed dedicated charge - itself predictable enough to make charge countering worth it.

It's less rock paper scissors and more the mindgames associated with high level fighting game tournaments, or high level competitive Pokemon, or even Poker. Exchanges of second and third best moves because of counters to counters, so on and so forth. There's a whole forum PvP duel area on the official forums just because of it, and they're interesting reading from a system design perspective.

Moving back to this thread though, the GM isn't likely trying to win in quite the same way as those PvP duels. Instead they're playing specific characters with specific personalities, and particular styles of fighting that come out of it. It might be better for that orc to use a feint and counter heavy strategy, but come on, it's an orc. So the orc does orc behavior, which means that players that understand orc behavior can take it even with a character significantly worse at fighting than said orc.

This is very intriguing and I'll definitely take a look. Couldn't help but think of this scene:

https://youtu.be/3EkBuKQEkio

Koo Rehtorb
2018-07-24, 01:49 PM
This is very intriguing and I'll definitely take a look. Couldn't help but think of this scene:

https://youtu.be/3EkBuKQEkio

There's also a social argument system in the game that works along roughly similar means (though less complicated) called Duel of Wits, which is probably a better fit.

NichG
2018-07-24, 03:42 PM
Maybe something based on the Persona/SMT systems would work, where there are lots of hard counters and pulling off a hard counter feeds back into extra actions? So each creature would be 'statted' more as a script of actions than a set of numerical stats, and the player advantage is entirely that they don't have to use a fixed script.

So for example, even a starting party would have access to things like 'make the party immune to a single fire attack', 'revive one character on KO', etc - basically preparatory abilities that get used up when proc'd. Very powerful enemies would have attacks in their script that would be an automatic TPK if they proc against a weaker party, but if the players know the script well they can use forcing moves to avoid those branches entirely. E.g. maybe a dragon that is allowed two consecutive turns without taking damage can setup and use a Flyby Attack that does a simultaneous Physical attack against all enemies, but otherwise uses AoE elemental attacks that can be Nulled or single target physicals that drop only one character at a time.

Reversefigure4
2018-07-25, 03:55 PM
Mmm... hard concept. Because any TTRPG that relies on player skill probably also relies on DM skill.

Either the DM has to use an 'enemy script', and is essentially an AI in combat, which loses a lot of the flexibility that makes TTRPGs greats, or the DM has to pit their skill level against the players (4 people are generally smarter than 1, it adds a lot of stress to the DM role, and you don't necessarily want to win fights for the continuity of the game).

Florian
2018-07-25, 04:04 PM
What a weird question. Player skill = meta gaming and any gaming system with pronounced mechanical drawbacks and benefits can be "gamed" in that way.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-25, 04:06 PM
In Exalted, player skill, knowing exactly what powers and weaknesses every style has would probably be huge.

The winning strategy in Exalted is to combine perfect attacks and perfect defenses until you are literally invincible and unblockable except by other invincible unblockable people, at which point all that matters is who runs out of blue juice first.

Quertus
2018-07-25, 04:39 PM
The winning strategy in Exalted is to combine perfect attacks and perfect defenses until you are literally invincible and unblockable except by other invincible unblockable people, at which point all that matters is who runs out of blue juice first.

Yes and no. Isn't that kinda the "low skill" version of Exalted? Whereas the "high skill" version would be more like, "I see you are using Dark Sun style. You cannot block unless you are touching the ground, cannot dodge in sunlight... I see that you have combo'd your attack with a dodge... But, if I use an attack that cannot be dodged, can you still attack and block? If so, I need to remove you from the ground, then launch my unlockable attack".

Metagaming at its finest.

Segev
2018-07-25, 04:48 PM
Yes and no. Isn't that kinda the "low skill" version of Exalted? Whereas the "high skill" version would be more like, "I see you are using Dark Sun style. You cannot block unless you are touching the ground, cannot dodge in sunlight... I see that you have combo'd your attack with a dodge... But, if I use an attack that cannot be dodged, can you still attack and block? If so, I need to remove you from the ground, then launch my unlockable attack".

Metagaming at its finest.

Sort-of, except that most PC perfect defenses can be used even against undodgeable and unblockable effects. And the flaws of invulnerability were poorly-enough designed that arranging to hit somebody when he can't use his defenses is nigh impossible.

Quertus
2018-07-25, 05:30 PM
Sort-of, except that most PC perfect defenses can be used even against undodgeable and unblockable effects. And the flaws of invulnerability were poorly-enough designed that arranging to hit somebody when he can't use his defenses is nigh impossible.

... Aren't perfect defenses dodges, blocks, soaks, and, um, whatever else? Parrys, maybe? If they only have one prefect defense, and it's a dodge, cannot one use an undodgeable attack, or negate the conditions of their dodge, in order to hit them? Is that not the way that at least one edition of Exalted works?

Mechalich
2018-07-25, 09:15 PM
... Aren't perfect defenses dodges, blocks, soaks, and, um, whatever else? Parrys, maybe? If they only have one prefect defense, and it's a dodge, cannot one use an undodgeable attack, or negate the conditions of their dodge, in order to hit them? Is that not the way that at least one edition of Exalted works?

Except there's nothing to stop a character from having all of the perfect defenses, and indeed that was the go to strategy in all variations of 2e Exalted: the Turtle-Combo that could be used to perfect any and all attacks. 1e worked differently - the goal was to maximize persistent active defenses in order to make your character functionally unhittable in any way (the D&D equivalent is never leaving home without being buffed to the gills) and I believe 3e functions somewhat similarly (insofar as 3e is actually a game, which is not very).

The real problem Exalted 2e had was that all attacks either did 0 damage (negated via perfect, outright miss), 1 damage (fail to penetrate soak), or immediate death. Since the game was designed so that characters only had ~10 health levels total (and losing even half of them inflicted crippling wound penalties), taking any damage from an attack resulted in death very rapidly. This meant perfect defenses were far superior to any other defensive option. This was, ultimately, a problem created by how the Storyteller system's core mechanics interacted with high dice pool numbers, which is to say, they did not function (basic mechanical problems crippled Aberrant, Exalted, and Scion).

RazorChain
2018-07-25, 09:58 PM
Hello! Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game? Something where a very skilled low-level non-min-maxed party could go toe-to-toe with an adult dragon or equally impressive creature and win, say, 80% of the time.

Put another way, I'm looking for a tabletop game where all else being equal (level, equipment, etc) the power level of knowledgeable and skilled players drastically dwarfs the power level of unskilled players.

I'd assume random elements - especially how defense works - would be minimal to make the game more predictable for the players.

Please note:


I am specifically talking about how much the players affect the characters' prowess.
I'm not talking about specific or narrow choices made during character creation; when I say combat system, I mean the turn-by-turn decisions players are making after some in-game prep work.
I don't assume a level 3 party fighting a dragon would be easy, just that it would be possible - but only by a set of extremely skilled players all working together. This hypothetical fight could last several in-game days and if one PC makes a mistake (at that low of a level) I'd assume a TPK.


Thanks!

Gurps using a lot of optional rules and the full advanced tactical combat rules comes to mind. Give a noob player and an experienced player the same character to fight against each other and the experienced player will probably win just because he knows all the options and the modifiers. He's going to ask if that is a sturdy table and then jump on top of it to gain the higher ground, he's going to use a beat instead of a feint when his character is strong and he fights an opponent with high parry, he's going to play the map against the inexpirenced player by retreating and forcing the other player to make bad decisions that penalize his defenses, he's going to stack his defenses just to be able to make a good riposte and follow up with a rapid strike to make use of the opening or even go all out just if he's sure he can finish the fight.

It still relies on chance but a good player is the one who manages his chances, knows when to take a risk and when the payoff is great. The options are so many and the combination of options makes for that an experienced, tactical minded players can defeat stronger opponents. If you just declare that you are going to hit your opponent then you've probably lost already.

Xuc Xac
2018-07-26, 01:42 AM
Hello! Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game?

Free Kriegsspiel could do it. If you want to use it for a fantasy game, the GM will have to do a lot of prep work to clarify (to himself) exactly how the fantastic elements like magic and dragon fire work and then be consistent with it.

Kriegsspiel was a wargame used to train German officers but the rules were too complex and combats took forever to resolve. So they came up with Free Kriegsspiel that gave more power to the referee to just decide results based on his own personal battlefield experience instead of consulting charts and calculating chances.

The good thing is that players don't need to learn a bunch of dice modifiers and stuff. They can just make decisions like "I'm going to order this unit to charge while this one tries to flank around this side. How thick is that stand of trees?"

The bad thing is the GM needs to be an expert with a lot of real world experience. That way, he can tell less experienced players (junior officers learning tactics and strategy) things like "That's actually a really good idea" or "Oh, sorry. I know that seems like it should work, but in actual practice what happens is..." or "Wow! That is... that is a terrible idea. I haven't seen anything that foolish since Kapitän Dumbkopf tried the same thing. It was so stupid, I can't even remember his real name. Everyone just calls him Dumbkopf.... All they found of him was one boot."

For a fantasy game, the GM need to be a very clear and consistent idea of how the fantasy world works. You can't just fall back on wishy washy cop-outs like "It's magic!" or "a wizard did it!" unless a wizard really did it and you know how do you can fairly adjudicate the PCs' responses to it.

Tyrrell
2018-07-26, 07:14 AM
Something like this, but where you can know that Black Knights only have "thrust" and "parry", but not "dodge", and can plan your strategy accordingly? Hmmm... May I suggest Exalted?

In Exalted, player skill, knowing exactly what powers and weaknesses every style has would probably be huge.

In exalted, character power is still more important than player skill. A character with 150 xp spent to win fights run by an average player will beat a character who has only invested in a few violence applicable charms no matter how skilled the player running it is.

At least that's my experience.

Edit: experience with 3e. I never played 2e much.

Quertus
2018-07-26, 08:23 AM
Except there's nothing to stop a character from having all of the perfect defenses, and indeed that was the go to strategy in all variations of 2e Exalted: the Turtle-Combo that could be used to perfect any and all attacks. 1e worked differently - the goal was to maximize persistent active defenses in order to make your character functionally unhittable in any way (the D&D equivalent is never leaving home without being buffed to the gills) and I believe 3e functions somewhat similarly (insofar as 3e is actually a game, which is not very).

The real problem Exalted 2e had was that all attacks either did 0 damage (negated via perfect, outright miss), 1 damage (fail to penetrate soak), or immediate death. Since the game was designed so that characters only had ~10 health levels total (and losing even half of them inflicted crippling wound penalties), taking any damage from an attack resulted in death very rapidly. This meant perfect defenses were far superior to any other defensive option. This was, ultimately, a problem created by how the Storyteller system's core mechanics interacted with high dice pool numbers, which is to say, they did not function (basic mechanical problems crippled Aberrant, Exalted, and Scion).

Scion, at least, had the ability to gain more than 10 health levels.

And is it really "wrong" to have a system where an attack that can significantly damage a huge Dragon can one-shot little human-sized things?

I haven't played Exalted much, but I think I can safely say that I've never played or seen a (PC) character with all 4 prefect defenses.

Even so, IIRC, there was no such thing as always applicable defenses. Every defense had a weakness - if you learned what those were, you could have a virgin use a hand-made weapon to hit the scion while riding at twilight or something, and none of their defenses would apply.


In exalted, character power is still more important than player skill. A character with 150 xp spent to win fights run by an average player will beat a character who has only invested in a few violence applicable charms no matter how skilled the player running it is.

At least that's my experience.

Edit: experience with 3e. I never played 2e much.

Hmmm... So, what you're saying is, players can lose the game, not exactly "at character creation", but at spending their XP stupidly? Well, ok, but the OP didn't specify that, they were asking about systems where metagaming vastly improves character performance. And Exalted seems to fit that bill.

Not that Exalted doesn't have its share of problems, mind, but, if the OP agrees that that's the kind of gameplay that they're looking for, maybe someone can recommend a better system that shares these traits.

Segev
2018-07-26, 09:59 AM
... Aren't perfect defenses dodges, blocks, soaks, and, um, whatever else? Parrys, maybe? If they only have one prefect defense, and it's a dodge, cannot one use an undodgeable attack, or negate the conditions of their dodge, in order to hit them? Is that not the way that at least one edition of Exalted works?

Seven Shadow Evasion, which is the Solar perfect Dodge and rather easy to get, has text which says, essentially, "You perfectly dodge the attack you use this on, even if the attack is undodgeable."

That last clause is important, because the rules of Exalted (2E, I'm not discussing 3E because while I have the book, I'm not as intimately familiar with its rules) state as a hard and fast rule that, if you have an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, whichever one counts as "a defense" wins. This is to avoid the "infinity +1! infinity +2! infinity +infinitity x(infinity)^2!" waste of space that would arise from "tiers" of unblockable/block-even-unblockable. It settles it as "defense wins."

While this doesn't resolve every argument (and some designers tried to game this by pretending an attack was a defense so it could 'beat' a defense's applicability-clause), it resolves a LOT of them. Your undodgeable attack can still be dodged by Seven Shadow Evasion, no matter how powerful your undodgeable attack's undodgeability is.

Morty
2018-07-26, 10:32 AM
In exalted, character power is still more important than player skill. A character with 150 xp spent to win fights run by an average player will beat a character who has only invested in a few violence applicable charms no matter how skilled the player running it is.

At least that's my experience.

Edit: experience with 3e. I never played 2e much.

I feel like we'd be hard-pressed to find a game where it is possible for player skill to make up for such a significant discrepancy in character skill. We'd be more likely to find a game where such discrepancy isn't possible. Speaking as someone who has likewise played 3e, as far as player skill vs. character skill goes, Exalted is honestly pretty typical. So probably not what the OP wants.

I also feel like pointing out that 3e combat is very different than the old editions. For one thing, there's no such thing as "perfect defence", at least not as a rules concept, and the initiative model was designed with the express purpose of avoiding the "whiff whiff splat" tendency.

Lord Raziere
2018-07-26, 11:51 AM
The winning strategy in Exalted is to combine perfect attacks and perfect defenses until you are literally invincible and unblockable except by other invincible unblockable people, at which point all that matters is who runs out of blue juice first.


Yes and no. Isn't that kinda the "low skill" version of Exalted? Whereas the "high skill" version would be more like, "I see you are using Dark Sun style. You cannot block unless you are touching the ground, cannot dodge in sunlight... I see that you have combo'd your attack with a dodge... But, if I use an attack that cannot be dodged, can you still attack and block? If so, I need to remove you from the ground, then launch my unlockable attack".

Metagaming at its finest.


Sort-of, except that most PC perfect defenses can be used even against undodgeable and unblockable effects. And the flaws of invulnerability were poorly-enough designed that arranging to hit somebody when he can't use his defenses is nigh impossible.

Can the people who haven't read Exalted 3rd edition and still think 2e is here, the objectively worst edition by admittance of the entire fandom, please stop as if they know what they're talking about? really please stop, don't, just don't, we're not doing 2e anymore. no one wants 2e anymore. its just not a good edition.

Exalted 3e doesn't have perfect anything anymore and instead has a combat system where your fight by attacking each others Initiative to gain advantage, to get it low enough to make an actual decisive attack on someone with initiative basically representing how much advantage you have in battle.

but yeah, its the same as far as player skill goes.

Segev
2018-07-26, 12:37 PM
Can the people who haven't read Exalted 3rd edition and still think 2e is here, the objectively worst edition by admittance of the entire fandom, please stop as if they know what they're talking about? really please stop, don't, just don't, we're not doing 2e anymore. no one wants 2e anymore. its just not a good edition.

Exalted 3e doesn't have perfect anything anymore and instead has a combat system where your fight by attacking each others Initiative to gain advantage, to get it low enough to make an actual decisive attack on someone with initiative basically representing how much advantage you have in battle.

but yeah, its the same as far as player skill goes.

This is an awfully unhelpful and arrogant post, Mr. Raziere. Exalted 2E does still exist, just as PF and D&D 3.5 still exist, and get discussed.

There's a reason I specified 2E: to be clear on what I was discussing. I am not calling anybody out for assuming 3e, nor for assuming 2E, but I think it not unreasonable to discuss both. A more useful response from you on this topic would have been something along the lines of, "Oh, well, in 3e, this is how it works..." rather than trying to insist that people are "wrong" for discussing a different edition than you were.

I doubt you're trying to pick a fight, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a better way to inject your core point (that you were talking about 3e, and didn't realize anybody else might still be discussing 2E) if you DID want to pick a fight, rather than have a civil discussion.

Quertus
2018-07-26, 12:38 PM
Seven Shadow Evasion, which is the Solar perfect Dodge and rather easy to get, has text which says, essentially, "You perfectly dodge the attack you use this on, even if the attack is undodgeable."

Having never built and played a Solar Exalted, I was unaware of this. :smallredface:


Can the people who haven't read Exalted 3rd edition and still think 2e is here, the objectively worst edition by admittance of the entire fandom, please stop as if they know what they're talking about? really please stop, don't, just don't, we're not doing 2e anymore. no one wants 2e anymore. its just not a good edition.

Um, this is kinda.. well, I can't come up with a non-insulting adjective to describe this stance.

The OP wanted games that emphasized player skill - particular player skills, that I've dubbed metagaming.

2e Exalted meets this criterion. Therefore it is worth discussing - regardless of its merits as a game.

If 3e Exalted also meets these criteria, then, by all means, tell us about 3e. Uh, and the OP. Yes, tell the OP about 3e. That's what I meant.

Segev
2018-07-26, 01:10 PM
On the subject of Exalted 2E and player/GM tactical skill, one lesson that the flaws in 2E taught me was how to run a fight that is interesting when the stakes don't generally include threat to the PCs' personal and physical well-being. Because it is so easy to make the usual "I roll, hit, and do X damage" exchange into, "I attack"/"I perfect defend," Exalted 2E combat is often dismissed as boring and unsatisfying.

The trick is the same here as it is in games where you don't want to have to threaten lethality all the time to make a fight feel exciting: have mutually exclusive goals between sides of combat that don't necessarily require the enemies' deaths to achieve. The most obvious, to me, being a fight over a macguffin. The One Ring can be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, or used to restore the Dark Lord to full power by being brought to him and placed upon his finger. The heroes want to get away from the fight with the Ring so they can continue their trek to the volcano. The villains want to get the Ring and run back to the Dark Lord so they can put it on his finger. In any given fight, the goal is seizing the Ring and running off with it. Whoever wins the fight, the other side is motivated to pursue and attempt to take the Ring.

Escort missions, guard missions, races against time or against the enemy, and a number of other things become more exciting when the prospects of loss don't mean the end of the game due to TPK. The GM now can make things hard for the players' characters, because they CAN lose, and have it mean real consequences, without meaning the game's over. Threat of the end of the game means no threat at all, generally, as few GMs are willing to pull that trigger. And, if they are, it loses impact after the first or second time as players lose investment. But a major setback? Oh, that's something a GM can relish, and players need fear.

Exalted 2E, because the players are almost certainly nearly-invulnerable, required that I learn this. So, the mortal bandits can't TOUCH the Solar Invincible Sword Princess. But she's still just one woman, and they're attacking the caravan she's helping to guard. If they kill some beasts of burden to slow it down while they steal stuff, that's a partial loss for her, even if the bandits ultimately lose. If they steal stuff successfully, she's also lost, because her whole job was to prevent that. If they kill her friends in the caravan, that hurts personally. She's safe, but the fight still has stakes because she has things other than her life and limbs to lose.

Lord Raziere
2018-07-26, 01:26 PM
This is an awfully unhelpful and arrogant post, Mr. Raziere. Exalted 2E does still exist, just as PF and D&D 3.5 still exist, and get discussed.

There's a reason I specified 2E: to be clear on what I was discussing. I am not calling anybody out for assuming 3e, nor for assuming 2E, but I think it not unreasonable to discuss both. A more useful response from you on this topic would have been something along the lines of, "Oh, well, in 3e, this is how it works..." rather than trying to insist that people are "wrong" for discussing a different edition than you were.

I doubt you're trying to pick a fight, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a better way to inject your core point (that you were talking about 3e, and didn't realize anybody else might still be discussing 2E) if you DID want to pick a fight, rather than have a civil discussion.

I'm sorry, let me rephrase that:

2e is not an edition of Exalted. because it shouldn't be.

No offense to you or anyone.

Just that 2e, is said by developers themselves to not be accurate to the setting at all. This isn't my opinion. Its just not good. Nothing about it reflects the setting, its like talking as if 4e is any way an accurate reflection of DnD: its just not. Or saying that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance accurately reflects any of the other Metal gear games: sure Revengeance is awesome in its own way, but if you played any of the other Metal gear games you'd know that its completely different and doesn't reflect the stealth gameplay of Snake or anything. Your looking at the dumb memetic theme park snap shot and not the real thing.

Morty
2018-07-26, 01:32 PM
We're getting kind of side-tracked here. Whatever the flaws or strengths of any given edition of Exalted, I really don't think they reward player skill particularly more than any other rules-heavy, combat-heavy system. Which is to say, 3e certainly does reward player skill a great deal, but not to the degree the OP seems to be asking for.

Florian
2018-07-26, 02:29 PM
"Rules lawyer skill" =/= "Player skill". So, yes, please drop the stupid talk about Exalted.

I´d rather propose systems like Dark Heresy. Pretty deadly, you know what kills and what will kill you, the actual player skill is about handling a situation that you know will kill you and come out on top of it.

Segev
2018-07-26, 02:39 PM
I´d rather propose systems like Dark Heresy. Pretty deadly, you know what kills and what will kill you, the actual player skill is about handling a situation that you know will kill you and come out on top of it.

How so? Please elaborate for those of us who've never played it.

Florian
2018-07-26, 03:00 PM
How so? Please elaborate for those of us who've never played it.

Dark Heresy does away with all that "heroic" or "Hollywood" stuff. You are a basic human and you can count yourself lucky when your bullet-proof vest stops that small arms fire, but you will lose your legs when stepping on that trip mine. No abstract "HP damage", just a concrete effect. As this is science-fantasy system and setting, we also talk about man-portable weapons that are intended to take out a tank with a single shot, but also no notable improvement in defenses beyond said flak vest or a rather unstable personal shield device. So, basically, there're no "standard encounters" like in D&D, even the usual "Beginner Gobbos" are pretty deadly in their own right, especially when one carries a flame-thrower.

Segev
2018-07-26, 03:37 PM
Dark Heresy does away with all that "heroic" or "Hollywood" stuff. You are a basic human and you can count yourself lucky when your bullet-proof vest stops that small arms fire, but you will lose your legs when stepping on that trip mine. No abstract "HP damage", just a concrete effect. As this is science-fantasy system and setting, we also talk about man-portable weapons that are intended to take out a tank with a single shot, but also no notable improvement in defenses beyond said flak vest or a rather unstable personal shield device. So, basically, there're no "standard encounters" like in D&D, even the usual "Beginner Gobbos" are pretty deadly in their own right, especially when one carries a flame-thrower.

I'm not sure how that entails "player skill" in the combat system, unless you just mean at choosing tactics. (Which I'd argue is a huge part of any combat system that doesn't just do the old Final Fantasy 'line up on one side, and the other, and swing at each other until dead' thing.)

Quertus
2018-07-26, 06:58 PM
We're getting kind of side-tracked here. Whatever the flaws or strengths of any given edition of Exalted, I really don't think they reward player skill particularly more than any other rules-heavy, combat-heavy system. Which is to say, 3e certainly does reward player skill a great deal, but not to the degree the OP seems to be asking for.

I'm not seeing it.

So, if I have (not actual, but I don't remember the actual flaws) a virgin use a hand-crafted weapon on a mounted Foo Exalted at twilight, I know that none of their prefect defenses will apply.

What is the parallel knowledge in 3e D&D that even comes close to that "you ignore my attack / you're dead" dichotomy?


"Rules lawyer skill" =/= "Player skill". So, yes, please drop the stupid talk about Exalted.


I´d rather propose systems like Dark Heresy. Pretty deadly, you know what kills and what will kill you, the actual player skill is about handling a situation that you know will kill you and come out on top of it.


Dark Heresy does away with all that "heroic" or "Hollywood" stuff. You are a basic human and you can count yourself lucky when your bullet-proof vest stops that small arms fire, but you will lose your legs when stepping on that trip mine. No abstract "HP damage", just a concrete effect. As this is science-fantasy system and setting, we also talk about man-portable weapons that are intended to take out a tank with a single shot, but also no notable improvement in defenses beyond said flak vest or a rather unstable personal shield device. So, basically, there're no "standard encounters" like in D&D, even the usual "Beginner Gobbos" are pretty deadly in their own right, especially when one carries a flame-thrower.

Um, I think at least one of us has misread the OP. What you just described doesn't sound like it rewards the metagaming player skills that I read the OP to be interested in.

Is "rewarding acting on knowledge of strengths and weaknesses" what you're calling "rules lawyer skill"? Because, if so, as a rules lawyer, I've gotta take issue with that mischaracterization of the noble profession of rules lawyer.

EDIT: here's the start of the OP, for reference:
Hello! Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game?

He then goes on to talk about 3rd level characters taking on dragons, which, well, your "basic human" system is more about dying to thugs than heroically slaying dragons through superior player skill, isn't it?

137beth
2018-07-26, 09:38 PM
I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. I can think of many CRPGs that work like this. For example, I made it through most of Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga at the minimum level possible (avoiding or running from all battles except those which are required to advance the story). It certainly wasn't easy, and boss battles took a lot longer than they normally would, but with enough practice dodging attacks it is possible. I ultimately gave up near the end of the game, at which point I fought some normal enemies to level up, and finished Joke's End and Bowser's Castle normally. I suspect that someone with more skill than me could get at least to the penultimate boss battle at minimum level by dodging all enemies' attacks. It might not be possible to beat Bowletta at minimum level, due to her regeneration, but I'm not actually sure.

Obviously, the reaction/timing focus of Mario & Luigi RPG battles wouldn't work for a TTRPG. I'd be interesting in trying a TTRPG that found another way to make combat about player skill.


This is an awfully unhelpful and arrogant post, Mr. Raziere.

Correction: Raziere is female.

tensai_oni
2018-07-26, 10:03 PM
No one mentioned Legends of the Wulin yet? For shame.

It's the most player skill-centric system I know. What your character can do is important, yes, and it's very unlikely that a young upstart will beat a real walking wulin legend. But, what the character can do is much less important than how the player governs it.

Encounters in Legends of the Wulin are all about managing pools. Mainly dice - you need to decide how to split actions from a basic roll you get every turn, whether to use a good dice pool now or save it for later (and when is that later too), which of multiple actions you take or defend against take priority. There's also chi pools, making sure you don't burn through your chi faster than the enemy, because a wulin without any chi is easy pickings in a fight. Then there's managing conditions - which provide bonus or penalty under specific circumstances, which means you sometimes need to get really creative to get the former while evading the latter.

A fair bit of luck is involved in any individual roll, but the game's turn granularity is just so that a single roll's results don't matter as much as what you do with it. I saw people online compare Legends of the Wulin to classic card games like poker, and I find that really appropriate. The system isn't without flaws - fights can take a very long time and while basic mechanics are not very complex, the need to track several things at once and do math (addition and substraction, but on larger numbers than D&D) at the same time can get overwhelming for new players. Also, it's meant to do one specific genre which is wuxia, and it does so extremely well but doesn't really fit with anything else. But for OP's question, this one's the best answer.

Reversefigure4
2018-07-26, 11:09 PM
I can also think of the Dueling system from Savage Worlds' Deadlands.

It involves an Intimidation check (character skill) and a Shooting check (character skill), along with assorted Toughness' (character skill).

However, the player interaction is with 2 poker cards dealt face down to each player, with 3 more open in the middle. Additional cards are dealt openly in the middle until one player shouts DRAW. Both characters making Shooting rolls, but the damage is determined by how good their poker hand is. There's a strong element of knowing the value of a poker hand, the odds of what your opponent could have, and actually having some steady nerves to carry it through.

---

The other one I can think of is Dread, the Jenga-tower based RPG. Designed for horror one-shots, players make pulls from the tower to accomplish what their characters are trying to do (the mechanic is entirely player-skill-based, with character skill not a factor). When the tower falls, your character dies. The GM never pulls, so the GM doesn't have to outcompete the players.

Ironically, high player skill is actually a handicap here - the purpose of the tower is to simulate the dread of a horror game, and having super-Jenga players can make the game less fun as a whole.

Tanarii
2018-07-27, 12:58 AM
Depends on if you think player skill is "convince the GM to fiat in your favor because you're clever" or "win by system mastery".

In the former case, you want a rules light game during play. Amber Diceless Roleplaying (or Lords of Gossamer for the more modern version) might be right up your alley. Technically the stronger in the ability score (out of four) being used always wins a contest in that ability score. But the trick is to convince the GM to let you switch the contest to another ability score in which you are stronger. Either by clever ploys, or by use of your powers. (ADRPG does have 'build' complexity during the bidding stage, so it's not exactly what you're looking for.)

In the latter case, you want as complex a rules system as possible that allows for clever strategic or tactical manuevers within the rules. If you're trying to avoid 'builds' it can't be too complex at that level, although that technically counts as strategic. Similarly you'd have to decide if you want complexity at the strategic decision making level to allow clever planning to win out (combat as war), or more level starting conditions and the complexity to mostly be at the tactical level to allow clever decision making there to win out (combat as sport).

Xuc Xac
2018-07-27, 05:11 AM
I can also think of the Dueling system from Savage Worlds' Deadlands.


That reminds me. The dueling system in the Baron Munchausen game is entirely dependent on player skill. You fight an actual duel with swords (unless you use the "Dueling for Cowards" rules that just flips some coins).

Quertus
2018-07-27, 06:26 AM
I'm sorry, let me rephrase that:

2e is not an edition of Exalted. because it shouldn't be.

No offense to you or anyone.

Just that 2e, is said by developers themselves to not be accurate to the setting at all. This isn't my opinion. Its just not good. Nothing about it reflects the setting, its like talking as if 4e is any way an accurate reflection of DnD: its just not. Or saying that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance accurately reflects any of the other Metal gear games: sure Revengeance is awesome in its own way, but if you played any of the other Metal gear games you'd know that its completely different and doesn't reflect the stealth gameplay of Snake or anything. Your looking at the dumb memetic theme park snap shot and not the real thing.

That's nice.

So, does the *combat system* of 2e fit the OP's criteria? I believe that it does. Does the *combat system* of other editions fit the OP's criteria? If so, how?

Because that's what the OP was asking about.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-27, 10:28 PM
So, does the *combat system* of 2e fit the OP's criteria? I believe that it does.

I'm not sure why, since it has already been explained to you that it does not and your only counterargument is that Exalted combat is interesting when played at lower skill levels. You, personally, have never seen a player play high skill Exalted and reduce the game to comparing mana bars, okay, great, but anyone who does do this is nearly guaranteed victory over anyone who does not, which means that is what high skill Exalted play actually looks like: Layering perfect defenses until you are invincible and hoping the other guy runs out of blue juice before you do (or was foolish enough not to layer their perfect defenses as thoroughly).

Segev
2018-07-28, 12:48 AM
I'm not sure why, since it has already been explained to you that it does not and your only counterargument is that Exalted combat is interesting when played at lower skill levels. You, personally, have never seen a player play high skill Exalted and reduce the game to comparing mana bars, okay, great, but anyone who does do this is nearly guaranteed victory over anyone who does not, which means that is what high skill Exalted play actually looks like: Layering perfect defenses until you are invincible and hoping the other guy runs out of blue juice before you do (or was foolish enough not to layer their perfect defenses as thoroughly).

Okay, again, the key to high op Exalted 2E is goals that are not dependent on the death of the enemy, and which can be failed without the PCs dying.

Rarely does anybody fight just to kill the other guy. There is usually something one wants that the other is willing to use violence to prevent. Don’t plan foes who are so shallow they wish only to kill or be killed. Make the PCs face choices and challenges that their perfect defenses don’t make them immune to.

This usually involves some resource, escortee, or mac guffin that the party wants to acquire or protect.

Quertus
2018-07-28, 05:17 AM
I'm not sure why, since it has already been explained to you that it does not and your only counterargument is that Exalted combat is interesting when played at lower skill levels. You, personally, have never seen a player play high skill Exalted and reduce the game to comparing mana bars, okay, great, but anyone who does do this is nearly guaranteed victory over anyone who does not, which means that is what high skill Exalted play actually looks like: Layering perfect defenses until you are invincible and hoping the other guy runs out of blue juice before you do (or was foolish enough not to layer their perfect defenses as thoroughly).


Okay, again, the key to high op Exalted 2E is goals that are not dependent on the death of the enemy, and which can be failed without the PCs dying.

Rarely does anybody fight just to kill the other guy. There is usually something one wants that the other is willing to use violence to prevent. Don’t plan foes who are so shallow they wish only to kill or be killed. Make the PCs face choices and challenges that their perfect defenses don’t make them immune to.

This usually involves some resource, escortee, or mac guffin that the party wants to acquire or protect.

... ?

Ok, a well-designed game of Exalted 2e may well involve making combat interesting and goal-oriented. But that's not what I'm talking about.

"Comparing mana bars" is what I'm calling the low-skill version of fighting in Exalted. Determining how to bypass the (im)perfect defenses while they still have a full mana bar is what I'm calling the high-skill version of Exalted. And, although I wasn't in the game, I'm told the group did that at least once. It seems by far the most effective way to win Exalted combat: round 1, just die, because you can't defend.

So, how does using player skill to know how to bypass an opponent's defenses not meet the OP's criteria?

Cluedrew
2018-07-28, 09:30 AM
You, personally, have never seen a player play high skill Exalted and reduce the game to comparing mana bars, okay, great, but anyone who does do this is nearly guaranteed victory over anyone who does not, which means that is what high skill Exalted play actually looks like: Layering perfect defenses until you are invincible and hoping the other guy runs out of blue juice before you do (or was foolish enough not to layer their perfect defenses as thoroughly).I've never seen it actually, but just a few days ago I got into a conversation about the "third level of Exalted play" which seems to be about forcing your opponent to resort to perfect defences without using perfect attacks. If you can do that and they are using perfect attacks (which you would be perfect defending) than you will be using a less blue juice than they are. So even if you have a smaller resource pool, you win by resource management.

Now I will confess that I have heard a lot about Exalted and this is the first heard of a level of play beyond the perfect stalemate. Around there most people seem to either stop playing or shift the focus away from direct consequences. Which may be why I have never heard of it before, people lost interest before breaking through past the stalemate. Or maybe there was some oddity in how this group played the game that made breaking the stalemate possible and more interesting.

Rhedyn
2018-07-28, 11:54 AM
I would argue that Savage Worlds is more about playing to your strengths then building an OP character.

NichG
2018-07-28, 12:26 PM
Maybe Nobilis? Everyone starts above greater godhood and is more or less immune to eachother's direct mechanical intervention, so everything becomes about politicking and social manipulation, which is entirely player skill. You defeat a rival by creating a great work of art that leads to a cultural shift marginalizing a thing they (illicitly) love, and thereby either force them to abandon a residual shred of their humanity or to be seen abusing their powers as an auditor of reality to forcibly preserve their anchor.

Telok
2018-07-28, 03:12 PM
That reminds me. The dueling system in the Baron Munchausen game is entirely dependent on player skill. You fight an actual duel with swords (unless you use the "Dueling for Cowards" rules that just flips some coins).

I'd be up for that. Fencing is fun.

More relevant to the OP; AD&D does this past about 3rd level as long as you actually use random treasure, random encounters, reaction rolls, and hirelings. It's the only version of D&D where a straight fighter with low teens physical stats and good (14 - 15) charisma can, played well, completely outclass even super-stat 'optimal' characters. Really. Buying barrels of lamp oil, hiring a few wagons and guards, and setting a mine fire is a perfectly good way to kill 20ish trolls at level 5.

Quertus
2018-07-28, 05:25 PM
I've never seen it actually, but just a few days ago I got into a conversation about the "third level of Exalted play" which seems to be about forcing your opponent to resort to perfect defences without using perfect attacks. If you can do that and they are using perfect attacks (which you would be perfect defending) than you will be using a less blue juice than they are. So even if you have a smaller resource pool, you win by resource management.

Now I will confess that I have heard a lot about Exalted and this is the first heard of a level of play beyond the perfect stalemate. Around there most people seem to either stop playing or shift the focus away from direct consequences. Which may be why I have never heard of it before, people lost interest before breaking through past the stalemate. Or maybe there was some oddity in how this group played the game that made breaking the stalemate possible and more interesting.

I built - but never played - an Exalted who could use a combo with both perfect attack and perfect defense, with cost reducers, and stunt to recover their "blue juice", just to win at such a war of shenanigans. :smallbiggrin:

That's about the only good thing I did with that system. :smallfrown:


I'd be up for that. Fencing is fun.

More relevant to the OP; AD&D does this past about 3rd level as long as you actually use random treasure, random encounters, reaction rolls, and hirelings. It's the only version of D&D where a straight fighter with low teens physical stats and good (14 - 15) charisma can, played well, completely outclass even super-stat 'optimal' characters. Really. Buying barrels of lamp oil, hiring a few wagons and guards, and setting a mine fire is a perfectly good way to kill 20ish trolls at level 5.

Huh. I completely forgot about OD&D. :smallredface:

RFLS
2018-07-28, 07:32 PM
I'm a little surprised that no one here has pointed at the design philosophy of OSR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_Revival) (literally, Old School Revival/Renaissance). One of the core tenets is that player skill should be rewarded. Shadow of the Demon Lord (http://schwalbentertainment.com/shadow-of-the-demon-lord/) and Lamentations of the Flame Princess (https://www.lotfp.com/RPG/about) are both prime examples. There tends to be a decent amount of discussion about OSR over in the rpg subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/rpg), where you can find ZakSabbath (the creator of Lamentations of the Flame Princess) posting pretty frequently.

Cluedrew
2018-07-28, 07:37 PM
I built - but never played - an Exalted who could use a combo with both perfect attack and perfect defense, with cost reducers, and stunt to recover their "blue juice", just to win at such a war of shenanigans. :smallbiggrin:Hmmm... if that works the way you suggest it sounds like it might get back to the stalemate issue.

In the end I think Segev's solution is probably the best and I can think of a couple of ways that might more naturally represent such high levels of skill then going "they have achieved perfection, nothing works". Sort of like the force cage if anyone remembers that conversation.

On Fencing: Yeah you can't build your way out of that.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-28, 09:58 PM
Okay, again, the key to high op Exalted 2E is goals that are not dependent on the death of the enemy, and which can be failed without the PCs dying.

Yeah, great, but that's not about high level play, that's adventure design. And it's a flawed system that requires contrivance to make conflict work because the standard kind is so boring. Quite contrary to your assertion, most conflicts are not fought over an item or escortee or whatever who is actually in the room at that second. Generally speaking, when two people fight, the immediate goal is in fact just to kill the other guy, because your ultimate goal is not within immediate grasp. Arranging it to be otherwise requires both sides not just to have a goal outside of killing each other, but for both to be able to accomplish that goal before the end of the combat. Otherwise, you're right back to mana bar comparisons, because if your ultimate goal isn't immediately available but someone is trying to kill you right now, then your immediate objective is gonna be to kill that guy.



"Comparing mana bars" is what I'm calling the low-skill version of fighting in Exalted. Determining how to bypass the (im)perfect defenses while they still have a full mana bar is what I'm calling the high-skill version of Exalted.

Yes, I know you are calling it that, but it does not, in fact, work that way. Determining how to bypass perfect defenses is not a thing that you can actually do reliably nor is there any mechanical support whatsoever for figuring this kind of thing out. That's not "high level play," that's the GM making stuff up to try and make a broken system function properly. Whether or not you get ambushed and insta-gibbed before you can ambush and insta-gib the other guy is entirely by GM fiat of how long it takes the other guy to discover and exploit your secret weakness. No player skill is involved at all, and changing that would require adding an entirely new subsytem to track opponents' progress in discovering your weaknesses.

Segev
2018-07-29, 01:02 AM
In general, two guys don’t fight to the death for nothing but a hope hat their goal will be in sight in the future.

Most game encounters are either surprisingly contrived, built without considering why the fight happens, or have the true goals built in, and just assume people will ignore non-death-based solutions.

Tanarii
2018-07-29, 02:37 AM
I'd be up for that. Fencing is fun.

More relevant to the OP; AD&D does this past about 3rd level as long as you actually use random treasure, random encounters, reaction rolls, and hirelings. It's the only version of D&D where a straight fighter with low teens physical stats and good (14 - 15) charisma can, played well, completely outclass even super-stat 'optimal' characters. Really. Buying barrels of lamp oil, hiring a few wagons and guards, and setting a mine fire is a perfectly good way to kill 20ish trolls at level 5.Yeah, B/X / BECMI and AD&D definitely had a lot of the "convince your DM of your plan is clever and win by DM fiat" kind of player skill.

I realize that probably reads like I'm bashing it, but I'm not. I like the player skill in old school D&D. But it's important to be honest about what kind of skill it was: convincing the "referee" to rule in your favor. It definitely was not clever application of the rules at hand.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-29, 05:50 AM
In general, two guys don’t fight to the death for nothing but a hope hat their goal will be in sight in the future.

This is exactly why most fights to the death happen. Most people who die violently as the intentional act of another human being are either being killed in some kind of war-ish situation in which the immediate goal is just to get enemies out of the way so you can go do something else, somewhere else, or else they are murdered by someone for whom killing them is an actual goal of theirs, either out of passion or a calculated decision that their ongoing survival is a threat to the killer's interests. When two people both want the last copy of Xanathar's Guide to Everything at the local Barnes and Noble, it generally doesn't result in murder, because these kinds of incidental conflicts where everyone shows up for something but it turns out there's not enough to go around are not generally resolved through immediate lethal violence. Someone you're willing to kill is not usually someone you've just met, unless you are in opposing armies, in which case your ultimate objectives are probably miles away and odds are the only reason your side wants the city you're fighting over is so that they can march through it to another one.

Cluedrew
2018-07-29, 08:38 AM
To Tanarii: I think it could be come more and more skill based as everyone gets a feel for what type of plans we can agree on. Either because they make sense or because of rule of cool.

To ChamHasNoRoom: But most fights aren't to the death. Even in war the goal is rarely to kill the enemy, but to get them to stop defending a location. Death of the enemy works, but so does forcing a retreat or seizing the location and capturing them. Often the result is a combination of all three, rarely has a battle ended with every single person on the loosing side dead.

Plus we can always de-escalate the situation. One of my proudest moments in role playing is the time assassins came after my PC. By the end of that scene Kelly had them help fix his jeep. On the other hand one of my worst play experiences resulted in a mass murder because someone just couldn't wrap their head around the idea that maybe lethal force wasn't always the answer. I might be a bit biased.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-29, 09:24 AM
To ChamHasNoRoom: But most fights aren't to the death. Even in war the goal is rarely to kill the enemy, but to get them to stop defending a location. Death of the enemy works, but so does forcing a retreat or seizing the location and capturing them. Often the result is a combination of all three, rarely has a battle ended with every single person on the loosing side dead.

Sure, but in that case the goal is still to physically defeat the enemy, not to steal something shiny or kill a non-super VIP or whatever. Regardless of whether you are specifically murdering an enemy, any attempt to remove them from the battlefield is generally going to happen one of three ways: They are going to be physically incapacitated, they are going to surrender, or they are going to run away. In context of high-end Exalted 2e combat, physical incapacitation is a result of dull mana bar comparisons, while surrendering and running way are the result of one side realizing they're going to lose a dull mana bar comparison and ceding the objective. Neither of these is the kind of "protect the VIP/steal the MacGuffin" objective that's being discussed, and they do not solve the problem that the victor is a foregone conclusion as soon as both sides have arrived, and therefore the actual combat involves no skill at all.


Plus we can always de-escalate the situation. One of my proudest moments in role playing is the time assassins came after my PC. By the end of that scene Kelly had them help fix his jeep. On the other hand one of my worst play experiences resulted in a mass murder because someone just couldn't wrap their head around the idea that maybe lethal force wasn't always the answer. I might be a bit biased.

The issue of how to get players to stop trying to murder everything they meet is an entirely separate one. I agree that it would be nice if players didn't use lethal force as a first resort so often, but the discussion is about making the outcome of combat more reliant on player skill once both sides have already decided they're going to fight over something.

Glimbur
2018-07-29, 09:53 AM
The Street Fighter rpg has a surprisingly deep combat system. You each pick a maneuver card at the start of each round and reveal based on how fast you are, slowest first. Faster actions can interrupt slower ones. It gets a little hairy in group on group combats but I enjoyed it. And knowing what to play when is important.

Segev
2018-07-29, 10:32 AM
This is exactly why most fights to the death happen. Most people who die violently as the intentional act of another human being are either being killed in some kind of war-ish situation in which the immediate goal is just to get enemies out of the way so you can go do something else, somewhere else, or else they are murdered by someone for whom killing them is an actual goal of theirs, either out of passion or a calculated decision that their ongoing survival is a threat to the killer's interests. When two people both want the last copy of Xanathar's Guide to Everything at the local Barnes and Noble, it generally doesn't result in murder, because these kinds of incidental conflicts where everyone shows up for something but it turns out there's not enough to go around are not generally resolved through immediate lethal violence. Someone you're willing to kill is not usually someone you've just met, unless you are in opposing armies, in which case your ultimate objectives are probably miles away and odds are the only reason your side wants the city you're fighting over is so that they can march through it to another one.

How common is it that game fights are war, with battle lines drawn to claim the battlefield location?

On the contrary, most are encounters that have specific reasons for the appearance. Robbery, kidnapping, hunting, and the like in the surface and especially with random encounters. Burglary, spying, hiding things, and he like in dungeons.

Sure, killing is one solution to many of these. But there are other solutions. Allowing the situations to resolve with addressing the underlying goals makes it possible to win or lose without killing or dying.

And, when there are unkillable characters involved, those alternate victory conditions become the focus. Stubbornly remaining focused on kill-or-be-killed makes for dull combat in such situations.

Tanarii
2018-07-29, 11:17 AM
To Tanarii: I think it could be come more and more skill based as everyone gets a feel for what type of plans we can agree on. Either because they make sense or because of rule of cool.As I said, the player skill in question is convincing your DM. Getting a feel for what kind of things "make sense" to the DM or the DM "finds cool" are a heavy basis for that player skill. If you go with what makes sense or sounds cool to you, and the DM thinks it is stupid or not fun, you're going to fail (or have an argument).

And I'm in no way suggesting it must be a conscious attempt at manipulation of the DM. It's just how more free form games in which the DM has lots of leeway in adjudication and resolution go down.

It's can be fairly bog standard even in a rules heavy game if the rules are heavy at the tactical level, but not the strategic, and you play the strategic game extensively to gain advantages at the tactical. Aka Combat-as-War.

Quertus
2018-07-29, 01:00 PM
Yes, I know you are calling it that, but it does not, in fact, work that way. Determining how to bypass perfect defenses is not a thing that you can actually do reliably nor is there any mechanical support whatsoever for figuring this kind of thing out.

Thank you for pointing out exactly why it qualifies. There is no system. Thus, player knowledge and player skill (aka "metagaming") is rewarded.

Telok
2018-07-29, 04:04 PM
Yeah, B/X / BECMI and AD&D definitely had a lot of the "convince your DM of your plan is clever and win by DM fiat" kind of player skill.

I realize that probably reads like I'm bashing it, but I'm not. I like the player skill in old school D&D. But it's important to be honest about what kind of skill it was: convincing the "referee" to rule in your favor. It definitely was not clever application of the rules at hand.

Honest question here: Are there any games that have rules to cover mine fires, causing volcanic eruptions, smooshing monsters with steamboats or starships, buying all the MacGuffunite, and finding loopholes in marriage contracts? Not games where these things can happen, but games that have actual rules to work through these things? All that I'm aware of is some of the more rule-light ones that use narrative rules for everything.

The reason that I ask is because it means that, from you point of view as I understand it, the vast majority of games become "convincing the ref" games as soon as you encounter anything not covered by an on-sheet character ability. And like you said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that functionally all games are "convince the ref" games outside of basic combat (don't try to be inventive, it's probably not covered in the rules) and a few pre-defined skills/skill uses.

Tanarii
2018-07-29, 05:18 PM
Honest question here: Are there any games that have rules to cover mine fires, causing volcanic eruptions, smooshing monsters with steamboats or starships, buying all the MacGuffunite, and finding loopholes in marriage contracts? Not games where these things can happen, but games that have actual rules to work through these things? All that I'm aware of is some of the more rule-light ones that use narrative rules for everything.http://www.scratchfactory.com/Resources/LavaBanners/LavaRules.pdf
:smallbiggrin: :smallamused:


The reason that I ask is because it means that, from you point of view as I understand it, the vast majority of games become "convincing the ref" games as soon as you encounter anything not covered by an on-sheet character ability.Not covered by the rules in the book. That's usually significantly more than an one-sheet character ability. But yes, you've got the gist of what I'm saying, I think.


And like you said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that functionally all games are "convince the ref" games outside of basic combat (don't try to be inventive, it's probably not covered in the rules) and a few pre-defined skills/skill uses.Yeah, functionally there is a point in every game where "convince the ref" is necessary, since the ref must make a ruling outside the rules.

But various games have different levels or rules and built in mechanics for resolving such things. Some have universal resolution mechanics that can be applied to most things. Others, like Classic D&D and AD&D had no such thing. If there wasn't a subsystem for it, the ref had to make it up. And the point where the ref has to make it up is in clear "convince the ref" territory. The point where there's a clear and unabiguous rule that requires no arbitration at all is on the "system mastery" side. And some mechanics (typically universal resolution ones) are somewhere in between.

My main point was some people think a lack of rules makes for player skill. To others, it's knowing how to use the rules.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-29, 08:47 PM
How common is it that game fights are war, with battle lines drawn to claim the battlefield location?

Let's take a look at every combat in Star Wars: A New Hope.

-Imperial stormtroopers blow down the door of the Tantive IV. Imperial objective is to capture the hallway to pass through. Rebel objective is to prevent Imperials from passing through.
-Imperial stormtroopers corner Leia and stun her. Imperial objective is to incapacitate opposing force without killing them (note: this is not an escort - Leia is not being escorted by the opposing force, she is the opposing force). Rebel objective is to avoid incapacitation and escape.
-Imperial stormtroopers open fire on Han as he escapes. Imperial objective is to capture the Millennium Falcon before it can take off. Rebel objective is to leave.
-Firefight in the control room overlooking the hangar. Imperial objective is to hold the room. Rebel objective is to capture the room.
-Firefight in the prison block entrance. Imperial objective is to hold the room. Rebel objective is to capture the room.
-Firefight against reinforcements after freeing Leia. Imperial objective is to kill the enemy force. Rebel objective is to hold the room. (Outcome is a stalemate: Rebels find another way to flee, but doing so is a setback, and they would have preferred to kill all the stormtroopers and leave the way they came).
-Fight with the dianoga. Dianoga's objective is to kill the Rebels so it can feed on them in peace. Rebel objective is to incapacitate the dianoga to make the trash compactor safe while they find a way out.
-Ben Kenobi's fight with Darth Vader. Imperial objective is to kill the opposing force. Rebel objective is unclear, but probably either to stall for time or to defeat the opposing force and make it back to the Falcon.
-Tie fighter attack on the Millennium Falcon. Imperial objective is to destroy the opposing force. Rebel objective is to destroy the opposing force.
-Battle of Yavin IV. Imperial objective is to destroy all attacking fighters and the Rebel base. Rebel objective is to destroy the Death Star before they can do that.

Note that, with the exception of the very last one, in every single one of these fights the Rebel objective is ultimately to find Princess Leia and get her to safety (well, keep her in safety for the first two). The Rebel side is constantly fighting to spring someone from prison and get them away safely, and yet several fights are simply to capture a room that is on the way to doing that. Leia herself is rescued between encounters and is immediately a fully functioning party member who makes plans and guns down stormtroopers afterwards, not a hapless escort who could be immediately recaptured if a single stormtrooper got past the front line. Most of the time, the Imperial objective is to capture a location or incapacitate the opposing force, and when the Rebels don't have the same objective, it's usually because they just want to run away.


Thank you for pointing out exactly why it qualifies. There is no system.

No, that is exactly not what the OP asked for:


Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game?

Emphasis isn't even mine. OP put the asterisks on "combat system" all by himself. Also, do you not know what metagaming is? Because it's clear at this stage that you are not referring to using out-of-character knowledge to inform in-character decisions, and while the first time you used it, it kind of made sense as a reference to the concept of the metagame in competitive games (not that this concept applies to D&D, since it's not competitive and there is no metagame), but at this point you're referring to a lack of rules as encouraging the metagame, which doesn't make sense for that context either, because a competitive meta only ever emerges because of rules.

The only skill that matters in a game with no rules is the ability to persuade other people that your plan should work. Actual understanding of the game, its setting, or any kind of planning ability is completely optional. The ability to engage in long term planning that actually means something is one of the principle reasons to use rules in the first place instead of just doing the easy thing and playing free form. And if you want to take the free form route, why the Hell would you burden yourself with several hundred pages of rules text?

comk59
2018-07-29, 10:54 PM
The Street Fighter rpg has a surprisingly deep combat system. You each pick a maneuver card at the start of each round and reveal based on how fast you are, slowest first. Faster actions can interrupt slower ones. It gets a little hairy in group on group combats but I enjoyed it. And knowing what to play when is important.

So, what you're saying is spam tatsu into shoryuken?

Tanarii
2018-07-30, 12:16 AM
Also, do you not know what metagaming is? Because it's clear at this stage that you are not referring to using out-of-character knowledge to inform in-character decisions,That kind of metagaming is a red herring. It doesn't exist naturally. It has to be intentionally created by someone. If it does exist, it's because someone wants it to exist. Usually so they can then go on to have a nice case of screaming gamer herpes about the a 'problem' they created in the first place. Which always seems pretty counter productive to me.

Florian
2018-07-30, 06:07 AM
Emphasis isn't even mine. OP put the asterisks on "combat system" all by himself. Also, do you not know what metagaming is? Because it's clear at this stage that you are not referring to using out-of-character knowledge to inform in-character decisions

This is basically why I used the Dark Heresy family of systems as an example. While there is a certain amount of mechanical "growth" by gaining and spending XP and there basically is no random loot to equip your team, the only way to meaningfully advance is by learning to handle your character better, become better at teamwork and develop tactics to deal with the various typical enemy types.

For example, for the typical D&D-trained player, a lot of equipment looks like utter trash and you have to wonder why it clutters the book(s). The mechanics only give you very vague hints, if at all.

Then you learn that the flimsy LasRifle is an E-type weapon and can actually blow up those suicide vests at range, which is easier that trying to mow them down with B-type guns or go for head-shots.
Or you wonder what's up with those ChainSwords, compare them to regular firearms, shrugs and drop the topic. The you learn how suppressive fire works, first for your team, than against it, and try to figure out way to deal with it. Suddenly, those JetPacks and GravChutes begin to make sense....

That's not regular system mastery, because that only has limited use, it´s also not regular meta-gaming, it´s just a solid learning curve on tactical, strategical and logistical matters.

Segev
2018-07-30, 10:50 AM
Honest question here: Are there any games that have rules to cover mine fires, causing volcanic eruptions, smooshing monsters with steamboats or starships, buying all the MacGuffunite, and finding loopholes in marriage contracts? Not games where these things can happen, but games that have actual rules to work through these things? All that I'm aware of is some of the more rule-light ones that use narrative rules for everything.

The reason that I ask is because it means that, from you point of view as I understand it, the vast majority of games become "convincing the ref" games as soon as you encounter anything not covered by an on-sheet character ability. And like you said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that functionally all games are "convince the ref" games outside of basic combat (don't try to be inventive, it's probably not covered in the rules) and a few pre-defined skills/skill uses.A lot of crunchy games actually do. The bad ones actually have specific rules and tables for every little thing, so there really is a section on "finding loopholes in contracts" and "attacking monsters with steamboats."

The better ones have fairly comprehensive rules for basic activities and for dealing with environments.

Mine fires are an environmental hazard, and how they spread is governed by the materials in the area. A more in-depth economic system than most games have would, in fact, deal with changing market values, but no, most don't. Any system with a bureaucracy subsystem or a good handle on the general uses of skills will allow for rolling intelligence or something to find loopholes in contracts. Many games have rules in them that can be USED to cause volcanic eruptions if one applies them right, though this does more commonly approach "convince the GM that this would work" territory.


Let's take a look at every combat in Star Wars: A New Hope.Alright. Sorry for how long this post might get!

I'm going to actually do something fairly radical here, and pretend that literally every character in the following fights can spam Seven Shadow Evasion (and thus perfectly dodge any attack). This won't be true even in an Exalted 2E game, but I am doing it for illustrative purposes. This will actively make some things harder; I may digress to illustrate how a more "normal" distribution of such invulnerability would look.


-Imperial stormtroopers blow down the door of the Tantive IV. Imperial objective is to capture the hallway to pass through. Rebel objective is to prevent Imperials from passing through.While killing the enemies certainly makes passing through work, it isn't required. Heck, if all involved are unable to be hit, the stormtroopers just walk straight through without worrying about the suppressive fire. The rebels need to actively physically block the passage, somehow, and the storm troopers' goal becomes crossing before they can, or preventing them from doing so.


-Imperial stormtroopers corner Leia and stun her. Imperial objective is to incapacitate opposing force without killing them (note: this is not an escort - Leia is not being escorted by the opposing force, she is the opposing force). Rebel objective is to avoid incapacitation and escape.With everyone involved able to perfectly dodge any attack, the storm troopers can't even use force to stun and capture her. This would seem to make her job the easy one, and it does. But it means the game becomes one of again manipulating the environment, or of getting ahold of something she values that isn't invulnerable to harm to hold hostage. This scene didn't provide any such thing; in reality, Leia is already the victor in this scene even with her life on the line because her goal was achieved before she was cornered. R2D2 has taken the macguffin to Obi-Wan Kenobi.


-Imperial stormtroopers open fire on Han as he escapes. Imperial objective is to capture the Millennium Falcon before it can take off. Rebel objective is to leave.Because the goal in this one is escape, disabling the Falcon is all that's required of the storm troopers. Han has to fly it out. But, even if it's destroyed, Han's still not out of luck; there are other ships he could try to steal.

However, Han values the Falcon greatly, so disabling it and threatening its destruction might get him to surrender anyway.


-Firefight in the control room overlooking the hangar. Imperial objective is to hold the room. Rebel objective is to capture the room.Here is perhaps the most war-like of the scenarios. Though even here, it's a question of what their purposes for the room is. Both would obviously like the control it provides. Both would also like to deny that control to the other side. It's a minor or Pyrrhic victory to disable the controls in the room so the room is useless. Minor for the side that has the most to lose from the other side controlling it; Pyrrhic for the side that is at least denying a complete victory to the other.

Depending on what they need the controls in the room to do, it could even be a victory just to get somebody to the panels they need and enter the commands they want. Holding the right control for just a short period, even while a firefight is going on in the room itself, might be sufficient victory for the rebels, for example.


-Firefight in the prison block entrance. Imperial objective is to hold the room. Rebel objective is to capture the room.This one's the one where fighting to deplete hp or mote pool is probably all you've got. Of course, there's the question as to what one does with control of the room; holding the room itself isn't important without the ability to use it in some fashion.


-Firefight against reinforcements after freeing Leia. Imperial objective is to kill the enemy force. Rebel objective is to hold the room. (Outcome is a stalemate: Rebels find another way to flee, but doing so is a setback, and they would have preferred to kill all the stormtroopers and leave the way they came).Here, we actually have "kill the other side" as at least one group's objective. This is, so far, a rare exception.

Also, this is where most Exalted games' lack of SSE on everyone (i.e., only the PCs, most likely, have it) comes in. Presumably, the PCs are the rescue party. They need to get Leia out.

And, again, environmental manipulation becomes valuable in impeding escape. In this case, the stalemate scenario is a result of such.


-Fight with the dianoga. Dianoga's objective is to kill the Rebels so it can feed on them in peace. Rebel objective is to incapacitate the dianoga to make the trash compactor safe while they find a way out.Sometimes, enemy monsters are too stupid to have self-preservation instincts and just go for the kill.


-Ben Kenobi's fight with Darth Vader. Imperial objective is to kill the opposing force. Rebel objective is unclear, but probably either to stall for time or to defeat the opposing force and make it back to the Falcon.Vader's goal is to prevent escape. Obi-Wan's goal is to stall to allow for it. Obi-Wan actually wins, despite dying, because his goal is achieved and Vader's ultimately isn't.

This is actually a good example of the kind of stakes I'm talking about, since the death of one side is irrelevant to which side wins.


-Tie fighter attack on the Millennium Falcon. Imperial objective is to destroy the opposing force. Rebel objective is to destroy the opposing force.They'd settle for disable and capture, honestly, but killing just seems easier. If killing wasn't an option, they'd still be trying to stop the flight of the Falcon.


-Battle of Yavin IV. Imperial objective is to destroy all attacking fighters and the Rebel base. Rebel objective is to destroy the Death Star before they can do that.Note how we're not really dealing with individuals for most of this. We're dealing with units and unit movements. And yet, when the individuals enter the story, the battle stops being about "destroy the other side" and becomes "destroy the macguffin." (In this case, the Death Star, before it can be used to destroy the rebel base with its plot-cannon.)


Note that, with the exception of the very last one, in every single one of these fights the Rebel objective is ultimately to find Princess Leia and get her to safety (well, keep her in safety for the first two). The Rebel side is constantly fighting to spring someone from prison and get them away safely, and yet several fights are simply to capture a room that is on the way to doing that. Leia herself is rescued between encounters and is immediately a fully functioning party member who makes plans and guns down stormtroopers afterwards, not a hapless escort who could be immediately recaptured if a single stormtrooper got past the front line. Most of the time, the Imperial objective is to capture a location or incapacitate the opposing force, and when the Rebels don't have the same objective, it's usually because they just want to run away.

Indeed. And "escape" rarely requires that you kill the pursuers, and "prevent escape" rarely requires that you slaughter the escapees. Both will enable the goal, but it's not required in either case.

If we remove Leia as a PC, making her an NPC without perfect defenses, but leave everybody else with them, then the goal to protect her, keep her from being recaptured, rescue her, etc. makes the focus not on killing the PCs (or avoiding being killed, on their part), but on control of Leia's freedom. Leia is cooperative with one side and opposing the other, which complicates the dynamic in a good way (from an "interesting encounters" standpoint). But she is ultimately the "ball" in this game of sportsball. Sure, disabling the other team's players helps immensely, but if that's too hard or for some reason forbidden (as it is in most pro sports), that doesn't make the goal any different. Just changes options for how to achieve it.

Cluedrew
2018-07-30, 12:54 PM
Sometimes I wonder why I'm here, why do I keep checking. And then I remember, this is Giant in the Playground where "What if all the main characters in Star Wars were Solar Exalts?" is not the question, but a supporting argument.

I love it.

I also agree with... at least some of the examples. There are definitely some cases where killing people might seem like the objective, but really that is more a convenient means. People die with relative ease and can do a lot to get in your way, so killing them can be a clean path forward. However remove either one of these conditions, otherwise add a way to get around them that doesn't involve killing them or add the condition that keeping them alive is important (ex. capturing Leia for interrogation) than that can change. So I guess I share the rarely is it actually a goal, more often a means.

Quertus
2018-07-30, 05:48 PM
this is Giant in the Playground where "What if all the main characters in Star Wars were Solar Exalts?" is not the question, but a supporting argument.

I love it.

Lol, yup!


No, that is exactly not what the OP asked for:

Ok, clearly, I need to increase my pedantry, to explain my position. Let's start with the OP:



Hello! Can anyone recommend me a ttrpg with a *combat system* that gets easier and easier the more the *players* know about the enemy and experience playing the game? Something where a very skilled low-level non-min-maxed party could go toe-to-toe with an adult dragon or equally impressive creature and win, say, 80% of the time.

Put another way, I'm looking for a tabletop game where all else being equal (level, equipment, etc) the power level of knowledgeable and skilled players drastically dwarfs the power level of unskilled players.

Please note:
I'm not talking about specific or narrow choices made during character creation;

Now, let's look at your claim:



Emphasis isn't even mine. OP put the asterisks on "combat system" all by himself.

Yes, there has to be a combat system. We're on the same page thus far.

Yet,

Determining how to bypass perfect defenses is not a thing that you can actually do reliably nor is there any mechanical support whatsoever for figuring this kind of thing out.

Here is where we differ.

You see, the OP said, "the more the *players* know about the enemy". My point is, there has to *not* be a system for *knowing things* in order for "the more the *players* know about the enemy" to matter. Again, note that it was the OP, not either of us, who put in that emphasis.

So, in Exalted, where there is a built-in combat system, but no built-in system for knowing what capabilities or defenses someone has, or how to counter them, you have what the OP asked for: the more the players know, the easier the game gets.

Is it clear what I'm saying yet, or do I need to try again?

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-30, 07:57 PM
I'm going to actually do something fairly radical here, and pretend that literally every character in the following fights can spam Seven Shadow Evasion (and thus perfectly dodge any attack).

You say this, but you are lying. You actually assume this only when it would be beneficial to you, and then ignore it when it would not. This is pretty typical of how your arguments in this post go: You have to demote Princess Leia to an NPC to make several of the encounters work, you have to ignore Darth Vader's explicitly stated intention to go and find his old master and instead pretend that he's trying to thwart an escape attempt he is not even aware of until after Obi-Wan is dead, you have to pretend that PCs will ever run away from anything ever, you have to focus on the Rebel objective in the Death Star run so as to draw attention away from the fact that the Imperial objective is in fact "kill the dozen-ish individuals making the attack," you have to ignore the Rebels' obvious ability to just close doors behind them instead of in front of them to force a confrontation with stormtroopers on the Tantive IV, and so on.

All you're doing is confirming my original claim: That making Exalted 2e combat work requires rewriting the plot to contrive for a reason why simply killing enemies who stand between point A and point B is no longer a source of conflict. You have to make the side that benefits from forcing a confrontation behave stupidly so that they don't actually do so, have to demote someone who is clearly important and competent enough to qualify as an Exalt to being a puny NPC mortal, and most of all you must continuously pretend that killing the other side is impossible rather than boring, but it's not. Most of these conflicts are, in fact, easily accomplished by one side or another by simply killing all of the enemies because they will win a mana bar comparison fight, and thus they have no incentive to do anything else but that. Yeah, the Rebel side storming the prison block probably could win by just opening the cell and leaving, but why? Why take the convoluted approach when their interests are best served by just clearing the place out? Their objective in the original was to clear the room for a reason - holding the room is useful. It means that instead of burning motes constantly they're only burning them for the duration of the fight, and if they need a chance to regroup and reorient themselves, they don't need to expend resources on constantly dodging more attacks to do it. They can take the room without actually clearing it, but they have no reason to want to, and changing that requires rewrites of a story that already works. Which is exactly the problem. A good combat system is not one that is so dull that you have to rewrite every combat encounter you ever have around how boring a normal combat would be.



You see, the OP said, "the more the *players* know about the enemy". My point is, there has to *not* be a system for *knowing things* in order for "the more the *players* know about the enemy" to matter.

Yeah, no, I got that. But you're also claiming that this involves "metagaming" in a way that does not make any sense with either definition of the term, and your claim that there must be no system remains false. People have brought up Chess - Chess is a game of skill because both sides have perfect knowledge of each other's capabilities. The only hidden information is what the other side is planning, not what the other side knows, because both sides know that their opponent knows everything. The board's right there. People have also brought up double-blind maneuvers, basically a really complex game of Rock Paper Scissors. In a game of RPS, both sides have perfect knowledge of what moves are available and what the consequences of each one may be. The only missing knowledge is what the opponent might do.

This does not apply to the game you're proposing. GM knows exactly what the PCs are planning, because they make plans right in front of him. Even if they don't, the GM has copies of all the players' character sheets. He can decide the enemy is prepared for the PCs' plans, or not. He can decide they have discovered the PCs' weaknesses, or not. When there is neither a system nor any other common background knowledge to work off of, the GM simply decides which side is victorious. There's no skill at all, because "what the opponent will do" is not take specific moves whose consequences are understood in advance, but rather decide to be victorious or not in a way that the other side cannot thwart.

Psikerlord
2018-07-30, 09:43 PM
It seems to me, for (i) player knowledge about the enemy, and (ii) increasing experience from playing the game, to be the primary determinants of a combat, you would need a system which has (a) very flat or no real advancement of PCs with predictable probabilities (eg plate is always a 3+ save on d6, a sword always does 3 damage), and (b) every monster has an important inherent weakness and strength vs certain kinds of attacks that players could exploit once they learn about them. So the more time they play, the more a player comes to learn monster vulnerabilities and threats, but there is no signficant level up to unbalance a fight between a newbie PC and a veteran one.

I cant think of an RPG that fits, as almost every RPG has signficant level up/advancement rules of some kind. What the OP is after feels more like a (complex) miniatures skirmish/war game to me.

Quertus
2018-07-30, 10:09 PM
Yeah, no, I got that.

Ok, good. Let's stop right there.

See, I'm opposed to any of these "skill on skill" examples, as they seem opposed to what the OP is asking. They aren't asking, "show me a system where player and GM skill matter", they're asking for a system where player skill matters, and would let third level characters defeat dragons. It rather implies a play style where the GM isn't trying to "win", but simply present a static challenge, the difficulty of which is determined primarily by player skill.

If the challenge is, "defeat a red Dragon", "defeat an invisible troll", or "defeat this particular lunar Exalted", player skill factors heavily into resolving this challenge - depending on the system. In 3e D&D, build skill - which the OP called out as not what they wanted to emphasize - is often viewed as mattering more than player skill. In older editions of D&D, clever use of flour, torches, spikes, and poison could resolve many issues (although, admittedly, not always in ways explicitly covered in the rules). However, identifying a troll, and knowing to use fire against a troll, seems, to me, exactly the same player skill as identifying a foo Exalted, and knowing how to counter their prefect defenses.

Now, I care not what you call that skillset; call it "Frank" for all I care. I just gave a name to it to distinguish it from character building skills, or other skills that others were leaning on.

Honestly, other than the live dueling example, I'm not aware of any other skills that can make as much of a difference in any of the systems I've played that isn't involved in character creation, and that allows one to directly interface with the combat system, than knowing what's what, and how to leverage that information. Although skill at cheating at dice (or cards) comes in a close second, in some systems.

And, IME, I've not seen a system where this knowledge can matter as much as it can in Exalted 2e, where it could turn a slow, painful, 50-turns-from-now defeat into a one-shot victory.

Knaight
2018-07-30, 11:09 PM
I cant think of an RPG that fits, as almost every RPG has signficant level up/advancement rules of some kind. What the OP is after feels more like a (complex) miniatures skirmish/war game to me.

Having no advancement rules is relatively rare (outside of games explicitly intended for one shots anyways), but there's a lot that have very slow and/or very mild advancement. Fundamentally human scale characters that stay fundamentally human scale are pretty common, D&D style zero to god characters pretty rare.

Telok
2018-07-31, 12:08 AM
Wasn't there a game that used poker hands to run combat?

Knaight
2018-07-31, 12:44 AM
Wasn't there a game that used poker hands to run combat?

Deadlands used them for magic in combat. That's the only case I know about.

Telok
2018-07-31, 01:48 AM
Deadlands used them for magic in combat. That's the only case I know about.

Hm. Too bad.

It's an interesting thought though. One round of combat to one hand of poker. Bid hits/damage with your character's ability as your stake. Folding is an abort to saftey move. Maybe implement some sort of fractional scoring so it's not a single winner-takes-all deal but the top two are still serious winners and the losers split the pain based on how badly they did.

Interesting to think about.

ChamHasNoRoom
2018-07-31, 01:51 AM
However, identifying a troll, and knowing to use fire against a troll, seems, to me, exactly the same player skill as identifying a foo Exalted, and knowing how to counter their prefect defenses.

The troll and its weakness to fire exists independent of the GM's decisions and are codified into the game. They aren't there because of a lack of rules, but specifically because there are rules. Not only that, it's one-way: Trolls cannot defeat players by discovering their hidden weakness. If they could, if the main point of the game were for players to discover enemy weaknesses before enemies discovered theirs, then there would need to be some means of determining how quickly enemies discover player weaknesses. If there isn't, the GM is simply deciding whether or not the players win. At that point, better to get the combat system out of the way entirely.

On the other hand, if the players are the only ones bothering to try and find enemy weaknesses, then there is still no player skill involved. They simply go on a quest to find the enemy's secret weakness and then use it to instantly vaporize him. The weakness was concocted by the GM, the quest to find it was created by the GM, and the players' only involvement was to follow the plot until they succeeded. That's not a bad way to play a game, but it's not what the OP asked for. He asked about players being rewarded for skill in the combat system, not for their willingness to follow plot hooks before the fighting even gets started. There is no possible reading of the OP that suggests "go on side quest to find secret weakness in order to obliterate them so thoroughly that you pretty much don't even need to roll dice" is an actual solution for their problem, when they are clearly asking for a system in which decisions made during the combat make the difference between victory and defeat even for drastically lopsided match-ups (and no, decisions like "use our instant win button or don't" don't count because picking the optimal move is so obvious and straightforward that it doesn't even matter).

The best way to go for this kind of thing is almost certainly going to be the double-blind RPS approach. There's ways to improve on the basic RPS formula to give it more complex and interesting decisions (easy place to start: Give different payouts based on different matchups, so rock beating scissors has a different payout than scissors beating paper), but that's probably the place you want to go. Apparently Burning Wheel does this, according to Knaight earlier in the thread. I don't know the system, but what they describe does sound like the kind of thing where your choices made during the combat 1) make a significant difference to its outcome and 2) can be optimized such that a knowledgeable player would do better than someone rolling dice to select moves completely at random (or picking the same move over and over again because it's always superior).

A "system" whereby players must convince the GM to give them information that only the GM has and which players cannot reasonably acquire except as a story award which is then used to immediately trivialize a combat fulfills none of these goals.

Quertus
2018-07-31, 08:00 AM
The troll and its weakness to fire exists independent of the GM's decisions and are codified into the game. They aren't there because of a lack of rules, but specifically because there are rules.

Yes, we're on the same page so far.


Not only that, it's one-way: Trolls cannot defeat players by discovering their hidden weakness.

And here's where we diverge.

The Dragon absolutely could defeat third level characters if it leveraged its abilities wisely. The point is to treat it as a static threat, regardless of what it theoretically could do. The PCs weaknesses generally only come up if that's what the monster would do anyway (ie, a red dragon breathing for on what happens to be a troll PC), not if the GM was playing 5-dimensional chess against the players.

The point I keep trying to make is, there *is* a system for combat, and there *isn't* a system for 5d chess. The GM presents static challenges, and the players "read the monster manuel" to let them defeat dragons with third level characters.

None of the rest of what you posted, about convincing the GM to give them information, convincing the GM to let things work, double blind systems, etc, etc, have anything to do with what I'm talking about.

CharonsHelper
2018-07-31, 08:16 AM
The point is to treat it as a static threat, regardless of what it theoretically could do.

It's always static? Even when it makes sense that it shouldn't be? That's kind of lame.

If the dragon knows that the PCs (likely famous/infamous to some degree when they're a major threat to the dragon) are gunning for it and that they have a favourite tactic, of course it should come up with a counter. As long as it's not a baby, it's likely at freakin' genius level intelligence.

It shouldn't be 'cheating' if a red dragon has item/spell defences against cold damage, or if they are prepared to avoid the party's uber-charger (or whatever). That's playing a dragon as a dragon rather than as a "static threat".

Not that a troll should act the same way. Or someone who would have no reason to know anything about the PCs.

noob
2018-07-31, 09:18 AM
It's always static? Even when it makes sense that it shouldn't be? That's kind of lame.

If the dragon knows that the PCs (likely famous/infamous to some degree when they're a major threat to the dragon) are gunning for it and that they have a favourite tactic, of course it should come up with a counter. As long as it's not a baby, it's likely at freakin' genius level intelligence.

It shouldn't be 'cheating' if a red dragon has item/spell defences against cold damage, or if they are prepared to avoid the party's uber-charger (or whatever). That's playing a dragon as a dragon rather than as a "static threat".

Not that a troll should act the same way. Or someone who would have no reason to know anything about the PCs.
If dragons were not utterly infinitely inept in tactics then instead of having a hoard they would carry all their wealth under the form of magic items and/or pay huge teams of mercenaries for striking against adventurers(and they would follow the strike team to ensure success).
In their stat block they do not have "strike team" in their list of organisations nor do they have written "all their wealth in carried magical items" in their treasure line
Therefore dragons are tactically inept according to their stat block.
Saying that dragons would prepare oppose directly what their stat block says and oppose the written wizard of the coast scenarios with dragons.

if you say that monsters adapt then you would make a system where it would be more or less the following flowchart are you known -yes> you die
-no> you beat the opponent if you have the appropriate tactic.
Punishing people for being known is bad because it makes the game feel unepic when you are just a team of adventurers nobody ever heard about and doing the ritual for becoming vecna blooded every day.

CharonsHelper
2018-07-31, 09:25 AM
Dragons were not utterly infinitely inept in tactics then instead of having a hoard they would carry all their wealth under the form of magic items

They generally should have some of their wealth in magic gear. But - they also enjoy big piles of gold for dragon-y reasons, so they don't want to spend it all. In 3.5/PF I pretty much always kitted out older dragons with decent gear such as rings of prot. and an AoMF.


and/or pay huge teams of mercenaries for striking against adventurers(and they would follow the strike team to ensure success).
in their stat block they do not have "strike team" in their list of organisations nor do they have written "all their wealth in carried magical items" in their treasure line
Therefore dragons are tactically inept according to their stat block.

1. Why would they trust a strike team? And why wouldn't they do the job themselves - they're a dragon!

2. Sometimes dragons DO hire a strike team. Being hired by a silver/gold dragon is a pretty common story hook.



Saying that dragons would prepare oppose directly their stat block and the written wizard of the coast scenarios with dragons.

WoTC has a lot of foes set up really dumbly. I agree 100%.


except that then you would make a system where it would be more or less the following flowchart are you known -yes> you die
-no> you beat the opponent if you have the appropriate tactic.
Punishing people for being known is bad because it makes the game feel unepic when you are just a team of adventurers nobody ever heard about and doing the ritual for becoming vecna blooded every day.

Or you use different tactics than your standard ones? One trick pony = fail.

Or you cast dispel.

Or you do your own research on the target and figure out that they're smart.

Etc.

To me having 100% static challenges is lame because it ruins all verisimilitude.

noob
2018-07-31, 09:28 AM
Or you use different tactics than your standard ones? One trick pony = fail.

Or you cast dispel.

Or you do your own research on the target and figure out that they're smart.

Etc.

To me having 100% static challenges is lame because it ruins all verisimilitude.
Sorry but the dragons are tactically inept according to their stat block.
Being skilled at tactics is different from being smart.
Adapting is different from being smart.
Do you see a line with written "tactical knowledge" among the skills of a dragon?
No there is not.
Dragons are also super old creatures that had a lot of time to fall in routine and lose ability to adapt over the centuries I mean someone 80 years old is already a lot less good at adapting now imagine someone 800 years old that would be even worse.
Also read the stories there is often a hero who goes and sword the dragon to death or shoot an arrow straight at its heart.
That would not happen if dragons did learn and start fleeing heroes and recruiting an army to attack the hero with but it never happens because dragons are supposed to be unable to adapt.
If you want a opponent supposed to be able to adapt do not pick one which have not done that in literature until very recently and still does that rarely.
maybe pick "an army with a general" or another thing that is more able to adapt.

CharonsHelper
2018-07-31, 09:32 AM
Also read the stories there is often a hero who goes and sword the dragon to death or shoot an arrow straight at its heart.
That would not happen if dragons did learn and start fleeing heroes and recruiting an army to attack the hero with but it never happens because dragons are supposed to be unable to adapt.

1. You're assuming that dragons in all stories are as smart as D&D dragons. I know that Smaug always came off as a bit thick to me.

2. Right - those are the stories you read about. You don't read about the 80 guys who strode in with sword bared only to die horribly. If a dragon hired an army to deal with every one of those guys, he quickly wouldn't have a horde left.

noob
2018-07-31, 09:40 AM
1. You're assuming that dragons in all stories are as smart as D&D dragons. I know that Smaug always came off as a bit thick to me.

2. Right - those are the stories you read about. You don't read about the 80 guys who strode in with sword bared only to die horribly. If a dragon hired an army to deal with every one of those guys, he quickly wouldn't have a horde left.
I think that the fact dragons have high mental stats was because the creators of the dnd manuals were not aware of what people did think about mental stats.
But when wizard of the coast manages dragons they do nothing more smart than humans with straight tens(actually they are often like people who have a penalty to wisdom).
Also there is ways to know how strong someone is if you track people by popularity you can see that there is groups of 4 guys who have a reputation of killing 20 bandits by burning their camp + ambushes and also did beat 20 other situations like that and guess those people are the skilled ones and make a strike team against those people.
However when the guy you never heard about is going with a sword in your cavern you just flee with your wings and if that person fly to pursue you then use teleport and know that it is a dangerous person and then start planning a strike team against that person since that person must be strong to have access to flight.(if that person does not fly nor seems to have clearly visible super arrows then you just do more research about that person that now you have seen)
If dragons were good at tactics it would involve a lot of running(most scenarios with dragons would involve "the dragon flee as fast as possible each time he meets you until he have sufficient resources to beat you and if he find out you become too strong the dragon goes to another country or even to another plane of existence") but I think that dragons are bad at tactics and also have an actual wisdom of something like 1 but have a high written wisdom because the creators of the dragons did not want to give an arbitrary boost to will saves nor wanted dragons to be too easy to trivialize with a will based attack.
Also most of the stat drains are either to mental stats or to con or to str with some to dex and since they did not want dragons to be beaten by one spell(shivering touch appeared after the core manuals) they gave high stats all around(except dex but that is probably because they believed it would make too much dangerous creatures and in fact their dex progression is fast but compensated by increase in size categories).

After dragons there is a lot of other creatures that have super high mental stats while being described as bestial or similar oddities simply because wizard of the coast decided to give high stats to many high cr monsters for avoiding them to be annihilated by attacks to stats

Segev
2018-07-31, 10:09 AM
You say this, but you are lying. You actually assume this only when it would be beneficial to you, and then ignore it when it would not.I'm not sure if this is intentional, and thus a clever (but underhanded) rhetorical trick, or just a bit of anger and frustration creeping into your argumentative tone, but you do realize that accusing people of lying when they are debating with you is a very strong position to take, and generally not conducive to actual discussion, right?

Especially since I said, in the same paragraph you quoted, that I would back off of it at times. I get that you don't like my arguments, but you're not addressing them; you're too busy working yourself into righteous indignation to do so. (See, attacking somebody's good faith is a great way to make them want to agree with you! You want to rush to agree with me, now, right?)


This is pretty typical of how your arguments in this post go: You have to demote Princess Leia to an NPC to make several of the encounters work,No, I state that she's a macguffin. In most encounters, she would not be immune to capture. If you really want to make her so, then the capture-game becomes one of environmental manipulation and hostage-taking of things she cares about (e.g. Alderan).


you have to ignore Darth Vader's explicitly stated intention to go and find his old master and instead pretend that he's trying to thwart an escape attempt he is not even aware of until after Obi-Wan is dead,You're the one who brought up how Obi-Wan was stalling to allow the escape attempt. I haven't seen A New Hope in more than a decade, and don't like the movie enough to want to rectify this. I was going off of what you said happened and very fuzzy recollections, and was more than happy to accept your description of events over any memory I might have as I assumed you knew the material better than I did.

Don't blame me for not knowing the material better than you described it, please. Feel free to correct me, but assigning a disingenuous motive is needlessly hostile.


you have to pretend that PCs will ever run away from anything ever,"Pretend," yes. See, here is where you're leaping off the precipice you accused me of, and start changing the scenario to suit your needs. True, many players aren't even aware that fleeing is an option, because they're used to fights where the only way to end it is for one side or the other to die. It is a GM's responsibility, if he is designing encounters to be more interesting than that, to get that message across in his encounter design. Make the goals clear.

If your goal is to get the Orb of Destiny out of the Star of Doom's vault before it can be united with the Star of Doom's core in the ritual ceremony of devastation next Tuesday, then it doesn't matter if you kill all of the mooks guarding it or not; only that you get it out. The same is true if it's Princess Leia whom you're rescuing before she can be interrogated to a breaking point/executed/whatever.


you have to focus on the Rebel objective in the Death Star run so as to draw attention away from the fact that the Imperial objective is in fact "kill the dozen-ish individuals making the attack,"My purpose is to point out the win/loss conditions. The Imperial objective is to get rid of the attackers. This is most likely to be achieved by killing them. Driving them off would also work, though their escape would be a lesser victory (because, yes, killing rebel attackers is a goal for the Imperials).

The Imperial loss condition is not "through exchange of basic attacks, have all our soldiers and ships shot down." It is, "losing the Death Star." It honestly wouldn't matter if the rest of the Imperial fleet survived; losing the Death Star is losing that engagement.

Sure, killing everybody on either side is one way to win. Having all your guys killed is one way to lose. But even if literally everybody were unkillable, taking out the Death Star would be a win for the Rebels and a loss for the Empire. Destroying the Rebel planet would be a win for the Empire and a loss for the Rebels.

But yes, war is one of those rare times when it may well be that "kill the other side" is the primary goal in and of itself. I have maintained that that sometimes is the case. Just that it is rare in situations players find their characters in in RPGs.


you have to ignore the Rebels' obvious ability to just close doors behind them instead of in front of them to force a confrontation with stormtroopers on the Tantive IV, and so on.You've lost me, here. I don't know this scene off the top of my head, and have trouble matching it to your list from before. Why do the Rebels want to force this confrontation, and if they do, why don't they do so? I'm really not sure what your point here is, because I don't know enough about this scene (what its stakes are, the staging, the environment, or who's involved) to make a coherent comment, and your accusation of me "ignoring" things doesn't provide a clear enough picture.


All you're doing is confirming my original claim: That making Exalted 2e combat work requires rewriting the plot to contrive for a reason why simply killing enemies who stand between point A and point B is no longer a source of conflict.Nope. You're having to ignore what I said in favor of pretending I lied to you in order to make that argument, and even then, it doesn't hold water.

Killing people is a source of conflict. But it needn't be the only one. Nor even the primary one. Killing people is usually a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. That's my point. Identify the actual end goal, and you can find ways around killing people. Whether you wish to bother doing so is, of course, up to you, but as killing people gets harder (see: Exalted 2E perfect defenses), those alternate stakes become the focus.

If everybody were invincible in those scenes, then would there be conflict? Would the Empire and the Rebels have nothing to fight over? Are the Imperial forces and the Rebels only seeking each other out because they want to murder each other, like some sort of Red vs. Blue reenactment of Halo PvP? (Even that has some sort of capture-the-flag mechanic, now that I think about it.)

If Leia is impossible to capture, certain scenes are nonissues, yes. If Obi-Wan and Darth Vader both cannot be hit, then there's no motive for Darth Vader to go face his old master; both know that's futile. If anything, Vader would be suspicious that Kenobi was coming after him, when Kenobi wouldn't waste time like that. But I digress.

Why do the Imperials want Leia taken alive? You say that repeatedly, but never specify why that is. We still haven't gotten to the real goal. IIRC - and I might not - it was to find out where she'd sent the Death Star plans. Keeping her on the ship long enough to inform her that they're holding Alderan hostage would likely be enough to get her to, if not surrender, at least join Vader on the bridge for a...conversation. (After all, she cannot be grabbed or held, so they can't actually capture her beyond tricking her into a lockable room.)


You have to make the side that benefits from forcing a confrontation behave stupidly so that they don't actually do so, have to demote someone who is clearly important and competent enough to qualify as an Exalt to being a puny NPC mortal, and most of all you must continuously pretend that killing the other side is impossible rather than boring, but it's not. Most of these conflicts are, in fact, easily accomplished by one side or another by simply killing all of the enemies because they will win a mana bar comparison fight, and thus they have no incentive to do anything else but that.I never denied that, in the story as presented, it was viable to kill the other side to win.

I can point to the fact that, in most situations, the heroes didn't kill every opposing storm trooper (and certainly didn't kill Darth Vader), and yet they still accomplished their goals...and that proves my point that running fights as if the only way to win is to wipe out the other side to a man is not necessary for tension.

In fact, the more there's something at stake other than character deaths, the more tense the viewers will find it. Nobody is going to believe that you're going to kill off Leia, Han, or Luke as they fight those storm troopers. We all knew they'd find a way to beat the monster in the trash compactor, or at least escape from it. The tension was there, but it was excitement of "how will they get out of this?" rather than "will they survive?"

Every time there's something other than character death at stake, the tension ratchets up higher: we don't know, through meta-narrative understanding, whether the heroes will succeed or fail, will win or be defeated. Because losing the encounter isn't going to end the use of the characters in the story.


Yeah, the Rebel side storming the prison block probably could win by just opening the cell and leaving, but why? Why take the convoluted approach when their interests are best served by just clearing the place out?That depends on the situation. Obviously, in this movie, they judged as you did: killing everything that moved between them and Leia was the optimal way to go.

But being outmatched, out gunned, or simply being much better at stealth and sabotage might be good reasons not to bother killing things and risking their own lives that way.

The guards being literally unkillable (just like the heroes) might be another.

You're accusing me of lying about changing the scenario, then complaining that I treated the scenarios as changed.

You're also insisting that the "kill everything" approach used in the movie is optimal in the movie's scenarios as if that somehow proves that it's always optimal and that thus anything which makes it non-optimal is...somehow bad writing? Design? Mechanics?

In all, you're not really making a point I can follow, here; it reads more like you're ranting to justify dismissing my points without actually examining them.

"Not all blackbirds are crows," I say.

"Well, let's look at this movie about birds," you rejoin, "and I can show you that each of those black birds are crows."

"Sure," I agree. "In that movie, as shot, that's true. But what if some of them were ravens? THen not all of them would be crows."

"Hah! You prove my point!" you gloat, "because you're having to change the movie to make there be non-blackbird crows! It would make no sense for there to be ravens in this movie; it's about crows fighting pidgeons!"

This is the tenor of your argument as far as I can follow it; do you see how this is impossible to debate not because it's a good point, but because it's swerving off into things unrelated to my argument?


Their objective in the original was to clear the room for a reason - holding the room is useful. It means that instead of burning motes constantly they're only burning them for the duration of the fight, and if they need a chance to regroup and reorient themselves, they don't need to expend resources on constantly dodging more attacks to do it. They can take the room without actually clearing it, but they have no reason to want to, and changing that requires rewrites of a story that already works. Which is exactly the problem. A good combat system is not one that is so dull that you have to rewrite every combat encounter you ever have around how boring a normal combat would be.O...kay?

Look, you can't both accuse me of lying about making everybody have SSE and then pretend that, if I do so, the scene can't possibly change.

I never said the fight for this room - whatever it is (because, remember, I am running only off what minimal description you've given, because I don't remember this particular scene at all from the last time I endured the movie) - didn't make sense. You postulated that the tension arises from the need to kill or be killed. That without the ability to kill or be killed, there'd be no tension. I responded by pointing out that there was a goal other than killing everybody on the other side: controlling the room. So of course I accept that holding the room is useful.

Killing everybody is a good way to do it in the movie. If it wasn't a good way to do it, there still could be tension over the control of the room without death being on the line. You're not really arguing against my point if you're getting so stuck on the scene being somehow perfect as-is, and thus any change to it being unacceptably editing the movie.

I'm not denying that. I'm also not agreeing with it. I don't care, because the purpose of discussing the scene is to use it to analyze my thesis that one can have tension in combat over things other than the deaths of the characters you care about. Yes, I'll discuss changes to the scene to help illustrate that point. I'm not trying to change Star Wars; I'm trying to discuss how that scene could have tension if killing the PCs were off the table for some reason. Getting hung up on the notion that the scene is great as it is and using that to object to any discussion of alternative sources of tension is missing the point, and probably a sign that A New Hope is too much a favorite of yours to use in this analysis.

Now, if you want to have an honest discussion, I'm happy to. But you're spitballing all over the place and not addressing what I'm saying, preferring to attack my integrity and get defensive over the quality of A New Hope and its individual scenes.

While I am not a fan of the movie, I am in no way criticizing it here. That's not my goal. I'm not accusing the heroes of doing anything stupidly, nor the writers of having poorly depicted the motivations nor goals in the conflict scenes.

I'm discussing how those scenes could have had tension in them even without the imminent threat of the main characters' demise. How there are victory and loss conditions other than "kill or be killed."

The fact that using killing to achieve those ends is perfectly rational and optimal in any given encounter is beside the point.

DE5PA1R
2018-07-31, 10:10 AM
Wow. This blew up.

Thanks for all the input thus far. And also that sidebar about Exalted 2E and 3E.

I'll be looking into several systems mentioned in the thread like Legends of the Wulin, the Street Fighter RPG and Exalted.


What a weird question. Player skill = meta gaming and any gaming system with pronounced mechanical drawbacks and benefits can be "gamed" in that way.

Ok smartass, thought experiment time: You're playing DnD 5e as a 3rd-level adventurer. Any and all character options found in the PHB, along with equipment and treasure appropriate for your level, are available to you. You, the player, as well as the character you're playing, know everything you could possibly know about a dragon. You are in its lair, it is awake and aware of you, and all exits are blocked off (ie, there is a *combat happening* between *your character and the dragon*).

Now win.


Player skill = meta gaming

I know I'm using the same quote twice but I wanted to address this specifically because I saw it echoed by several others in the discussion.

Is player skill metagaming? Probably not, because all the knowledge in the world doesn't mean you always make correct decisions. But it's hardly important and also irrelevant to the original question.

I'm looking for a combat system (that's the turn-by-turn fighting bits, y'all) where players can leverage their in- or out-of-character knowledge to make a night and day impact on in-game outcomes. You might call it agency if you were a game design snob. That's why I proposed the thought experiment above; if you know 100% there is to know about a powerful creature and can't toe-to-toe (that's a combat where everyone's awake and aware of each other, y'all) beat it 80% of the time, the combat system has not given you the agency I am looking for.


I'm a little surprised that no one here has pointed at the design philosophy of OSR (literally, Old School Revival/Renaissance). One of the core tenets is that player skill should be rewarded. Shadow of the Demon Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are both prime examples. There tends to be a decent amount of discussion about OSR over in the rpg subreddit, where you can find ZakSabbath (the creator of Lamentations of the Flame Princess) posting pretty frequently.

I think this has been alluded to already, but I'm looking for a codified rule system - one where the players know how the rules work and can predict (to a reasonable extent) what will happen if they try X, Y or Z. Obviously the rules couldn't predict every possible PC action so the GM/DM would adjudicate where appropriate. But, I'm looking for a system where most player options are codified and aren't generally resolved by GM fiat - if only because more predictability allows for greater player agency.

Tanarii
2018-07-31, 10:22 AM
You've got some basic misunderstandings regarding Player Agency, DM Fiat, and Metagaming. Or at least some strong prejudices wrapped around the trigger word / internet meme versions of them.

But at least you answered the question of what you think player skill is: knowledge of how to use the rules effectively.

DE5PA1R
2018-07-31, 10:51 AM
You've got some basic misunderstandings regarding Player Agency, DM Fiat, and Metagaming. Or at least some strong prejudices wrapped around the trigger word / internet meme versions of them.

False.


But at least you answered the question of what you think player skill is: knowledge of how to use the rules effectively.

Also false. If you're actually interested in what I think I suggest you re-read what I wrote.

DeTess
2018-07-31, 11:04 AM
Also false. If you're actually interested in what I think I suggest you re-read what I wrote.

I'd actually come to the same conclusion based on what you'd written (with the added note that it has to apply to application of the combat rules, not the character-building rules). I think you're going to have to explain what you want in more detail, as we can't read your mind.

Tanarii
2018-07-31, 02:12 PM
First of all, sorry. My comments on your views on things were out of line.



Also false. If you're actually interested in what I think I suggest you re-read what I wrote.Okay. I'll really try that, and give you my perception.

Let see here ...


I think this has been alluded to already, but I'm looking for a codified rule system - one where the players know how the rules work and can predict (to a reasonable extent) what will happen if they try X, Y or Z. Obviously the rules couldn't predict every possible PC action so the GM/DM would adjudicate where appropriate. But, I'm looking for a system where most player options are codified and aren't generally resolved by GM fiat - if only because more predictability allows for greater player agency.This really reads to me it's like I said: You want a heavy rules system that mostly removes the DM, and is dependent on the players skill in knowing and using the rules.

If that's not what this is supposed to mean, you didn't communicate it very well. (Edit: or I'm just dense. :smallwink: :smallbiggrin: )

There's nothing wrong with wanting less DM adjudication or even just no outright DM fiat involved. But some people think those things mean more player skill, and other think they mean less player skill. Which kinda tells us that player skill is a bit of an empty phrase without context.

Also, you weren't clear on what level, other than "combat", which technically can include strategic level rules or tactical. Are you primarily talking about tactical level rules?

Agency is a different matter. That's commonly defined as the ability to make meaningful decisions. That can happen with or without clearly defined rules.