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Shinizak
2018-08-07, 02:02 AM
So I've been watching a lot of Castlevania and Avatar the Last Airbender recently, And one thing I can't get over is the AMAZING choreography that the fight scenes portray, And I began to wonder why the fights in D&D didn't feel quite as amazing. I realized that each fight scene had a certain "back and forth" that D&D and World of darkness never replicated. The dice mechanic just didn't seem suited to that whole "I throw a punch, my opponent blocks it, I counter strike, etc."

Is there a system that can replicate the all important "back and forth," "strike and dodge," "tit for tat" quality that makes each fight feel amazing?

If not, I was wondering what kind of system I could design to replicate it. I was thinking of a deck of card based system. Something like the card game "war" fast paced with cards and values being traded back and forth.

Here's an okay example of what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCzyt-55PiQ

https://78.media.tumblr.com/17efb8f3e005c3337eb20c1ad4e0707f/tumblr_inline_osqp5m4B3T1rutr7h_500.gif

Koo Rehtorb
2018-08-07, 02:07 AM
Initiative is a system that immediately makes any fight in it feel like JRPG style games where you stand in a line and take turns running out, taking a swing at each other, then running back into place again.

DeTess
2018-08-07, 02:10 AM
There was a thread a week or so back in which someöne described the combat system of a TTRPG called Burning wheel. It sounds like what you want, though I've never played it myself.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23245091&postcount=8

Mordaedil
2018-08-07, 02:18 AM
The onus of boring combat kinda falls on the players or DMs themselves, at least in D&D.

From experience and having listened to different podcasts of players playing D&D, I've noticed a lot of people go "okay, I attack the ogre. I rolled 15 and hit. I land 12 damage. Okay, I'm done." for their turns. Meanwhile, watching something like Critical Role they spice things up quite a bit by having the player state their intent of attack first, Matt the DM then follows up with a complex description of the result of your roll and damage landed, making for a more visceral experience in observing the table.

Working this kind of combat into a system itself is kinda cumbersome and slows combat to a halt as it becomes a matter of consulting tables and matrixes.

JoeJ
2018-08-07, 02:47 AM
GURPS has parrying and dodging to counter hits. Fate gives mechanical effect to narration through the creation and invocation of aspects.

BWR
2018-08-07, 03:29 AM
You're just looking at the finished product. I can guarantee you that the fights in the shows you mentioned didn't feel cinematic or awesome when in planning stages, choreography, animation and sound editing, etc. etc. etc.
RPGs basically have to do most of that on the fly rather than plan and execute it in advance and then allow people to look at the result and not have to bother with what into it. Now there are systems that expect players to add descriptions of what and how they do something to make it more cinematic, and there's nothing stopping you from doing this in D&D or WoD. The problem is trying to make something which is primarily verbal give the same impression as something primarily visual: once you start adding too much mechanics to a/encourage/allow/force you to get more cinematic and detailed, combat soon slows to a crawl which is the last thing you want in an exciting fight.

DCraw
2018-08-07, 03:34 AM
Exalted 3e has an interesting system where most attacks only damage the opponent's initiative, not their health, and build advantage that can be traded for the ability to land the big hits. Add to this the stunt system, and you are actively encouraged to fluff these as eg a series elaborate of cuts at your opponent's feet that knock them off balance, only for them to stumble into a superhero landing and charge back swinging wildly. It's only when you have your opponent well and truly on the ropes that you can risk a directly damaging attack.

That said, I haven't had the chance to play Ex 3e, only to read it.

It's also Exalted, so YMMV.

Mordaedil
2018-08-07, 03:58 AM
If you want to add your own flair of choreagraphy to the fights in D&D, I did think up a system a while back, which is going to slow things down, but it might give you some inspiration.

Roll 2d8. The result of the first die determines what part of the body you are aiming for. An 8 is the head, 7 is the left shoulder, 6 is left arm, 5 is left leg, 4 is torso (or crotch), 3 is right leg, 2 is right arm, 1 is right shoulder. The result of the second die is what angle you swipe your sword to strike at said body part, where 8 is a straight slash at the angle to hit it and 4 is a straight stab and the others depend on what location you are striking, but opens a lot of avenues for thinking out how you are hitting and swinging.

It's basically the rules for splash weapons done twice and it's about the simplest way to get something slightly satisfying. You could also do called shots with this method and even have things like shield AC apply to rolls of 7-4 and to certain strikes from 3-1. It's also a system where using wounds and vitality systems becomes a little more fitting to how combat plays out.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-08-07, 06:23 AM
If you're going to add complexity of choice to a battle system, then to my mind, the average fight should be decided very quickly - all those choices, misses, parries and ripostes should end in a climactic telling blow that does in your opponent.

Part of the "problem" with the relative simplicity of D&D and derived games' combat is that those fights can go on too long without penalty: you chip away at a huge pile of HP, never feeling that you're progressing until finally the big monster falls. Each individual attack is quick to resolve, but the combat drags on, round after round.

So if instead you have a system that has complex actions, then I feel you need to make sure that there are only a few such actions to each combat. My ideal is that a fight should usually last no more than three actions per player, and that everyone should get to take an action.
(Big boss fights may go on longer - but these should be exceptional.)

Cespenar
2018-08-07, 07:30 AM
I also think that the quantity of battles directly affect the quality of the battles.

Case in point, my most recent RL group had consisted of very enthusiastic roleplayers. We started many fights with describing all of our moves in detail and what-have-you, and then even the bland turn system of D&D was feeling kinda enjoyable. But we were playing a published module, so the fight frequency began to take its toll, and after a point, we were simply naming our actions and rolling, hoping to make the whole thing just... resolve.

I'm firmly of the belief that "mook battle" should stop being a thing in D&D, and perhaps other roleplaying games.

Knaight
2018-08-07, 07:44 AM
Weapons of the Gods, and the later Legends of the Wulin (which effectively is a 2nd, better edition of the former, system-wise) fit your requirement just fine, with a natural back and forth essentially built in to the system.

JeenLeen
2018-08-07, 08:07 AM
Riddle of Steel has a neat combat system you might like the *idea* of, but mechanically it's so complicated that I think it would bog down play too much to feel fast pace. For most dice systems, simplicity of mechanics is a boon to fast-paced combat but at the cost of simulating real combat.

A card-based system does sound interesting.

Maybe something like take a standard deck for each player. (For one, it's cheap.)
Divide it into the 4 Suits, but shuffle them. Make each Suit aligned to a certain thing. What the things are depend on your setting, but I could see Offense, Defense, Magic, Tricks or something like that. Based on your character build, you draw so many cards from each Suit at the start of a scene/combat.

When you use an ability, you play one of the cards from your hand. Thus, you can choose whether to use higher-power or lower-power cards.
To add in a level of face-paced, maybe there's a benefit to being the first to throw down a card. Trade off a small mechanical boon for seeing the opponent's card. But if both stall too long, the round passes as they measure each other up. And if just one stalls too long, they just get their passive defense/dodge.

At the start of each round (or set of rounds -- maybe a stat is Refresh), you can draw X number of cards from your Suit decks.
Anyway, no real mechanics figured out in the above, but it's a basis for a system.

---

I haven't played or read much about Thornwatch, the card-based RPG-like (if not actual RPG) made by Penny Arcade's Gabe. But the bit I've gleamed from reading the comic and commentaries, it sounds like it has real character growth over time but combat is done via cards to represent abilities. No idea about pacing or feel, though.

Segev
2018-08-07, 08:20 AM
Ill second the Exalted 3e recommendation. It’s combat system is explicitly designed to feel like a anime style fight scene.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-08-07, 09:20 AM
Exalted 3e has an interesting system where most attacks only damage the opponent's initiative, not their health, and build advantage that can be traded for the ability to land the big hits. Add to this the stunt system, and you are actively encouraged to fluff these as eg a series elaborate of cuts at your opponent's feet that knock them off balance, only for them to stumble into a superhero landing and charge back swinging wildly. It's only when you have your opponent well and truly on the ropes that you can risk a directly damaging attack.

That said, I haven't had the chance to play Ex 3e, only to read it.

It's also Exalted, so YMMV.


Ill second the Exalted 3e recommendation. It’s combat system is explicitly designed to feel like a anime style fight scene.

I have played Exalted 3e, and with a combat-focused character at that, and I'll third this recommendation-- it had some of the most (mechanically) fun RPG combat's I've encountered. The attacks-damage-initiative thing lead to a less static flow of battle, and you can learn tons of special abilities that can be used in reaction to things that are happening in the battle-- counterattacks, special augmentations, that sort of thing.

kyoryu
2018-08-07, 10:15 AM
Invoke "battles" in Fate come the closest to replicating that of any system I've seen. Of course, they put a good amount of the descriptive burden on the players, but still, they do promote it.

LibraryOgre
2018-08-07, 05:08 PM
Hackmaster.

No rounds, just seconds.

Active defenses based on how you're using your weapons.

Armor as damage reduction. Big hits knock you or your opponent back.

Free basic rules. (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104757/HackMaster-Basic-free?affiliate_id=315505)

Beneath
2018-08-07, 05:25 PM
Not so much a system that produces this as a system that gets out of the way when you try it, Dungeon World. It might take a bit of an adjustment in GMing it to get to a situation where you aren't just letting players roll Hack&Slash all the time and applying damage rolls (which is all that the rules demand you do), and instead basically rearranging the battlefield every time the narration comes back to you.

Kaptin Keen
2018-08-08, 12:59 AM
The trouble is .. if you have a parry roll, you automatically diminish player agency and the feeling of succes. No matter how good your roll, the enemy can turn your succes into a failure.

It also makes combat longer. It also means more dice rolls. Honestly, it really isn't optimal. Abstraction and storytelling is far better - and by storytelling, I mean fluffing out your attack. Not 'I shoot the guy for 12 points of damage' but 'as Vanquish leaps for cover, his pistols seem to leap into his hands - gouts of flame erupting from each as he pumps round after round into his enemy.'

Knaight
2018-08-08, 01:04 AM
The trouble is .. if you have a parry roll, you automatically diminish player agency and the feeling of succes. No matter how good your roll, the enemy can turn your succes into a failure.

The difficulty of the parry roll is often determined by the quality of the attack roll. On top of that the parry roll is just a mechanism by which an attack roll isn't guaranteed to hit. It no more hurts player agency than the existence of AC.

That said, I do tend to favor opposed roll systems, where somebody is reliably getting hit.

BWR
2018-08-08, 01:40 AM
The trouble is .. if you have a parry roll, you automatically diminish player agency'

Failure is not removal of agency. A GM saying "You cannot do this thing which by rights you should be able to do" or "you must do this even if there are no good reasons to other than my say so" are issues of agency. Success and failure of attempted actions are not.

NichG
2018-08-08, 03:27 AM
stem in which there are a number of different resources which can be expended, and rather than defenses negating an action their primary purpose is to redistribute the cost of that action in different ways. So the aggressor has agency in terms of what they want to try to inflict, and the defender has agency in terms of how they want to deal with that circumstance.

Ultimately, a duel or battle is an attempt to deny one side the ability to have agency over a situation. So for the resources to each be meaningful, they all have to be something that the participants rely on in order to take effective action (both in battle, and beyond it). Battles to the death are a simple version - you need to be alive to act, so forcing an opponent to become unable to be alive ends the fight. Similarly, if you have an initiative system in which actions can be sustainably denied beyond a certain point of disadvantage (e.g. stun-locking), that can also map to a victory condition. If some sort of resource like stamina/mana/etc is needed to take effective or meaningful actions, forcing an opponent to spend all of their stamina could also be a victory condition. So we can accumulate all of those 'necessary conditions for effective action' and make them each subject to assault.

Lets take for example the following.


- Momentum: This resource determines the character ability to act at the frequency of the scene. A character who takes actions incurs some degree of 'Delay', which reduces by a quantity equal to their Momentum each round. A character whose Delay is non-zero over the course of a round may only take Movement actions and Defense actions that round. In a round in which a character's Delay is zero, they may take a Proactive action. Regardless of Momentum, a character cannot take more than one Proactive action in a round. Momentum can be gained, lost, stolen, attacked, etc, with upper and lower bounds on its value. Some styles of defense generate momentum in response to being attacked. A character who hits zero Momentum is forced into retreat.

- Advantage: This resource determines the effectiveness of a character's actions - essentially acting as a multiplier on injuries inflicted, resources denied, etc. Advantage is transient - any round in which it does not increase further, positive Advantage resets to the default value (whereas negative Advantage sticks unless recovered or released). However, since Advantage is multiplicative, a character who manages to produce it multiple rounds in a row will be significantly more effective on average than if they just took normal actions. Advantage cannot be harvested from the same type of thing more than once in a given run (e.g. a character who moves to obtain Height advantage cannot subsequently obtain Height advantage again until their Advantage is reset). A character at zero Advantage is Weakened - while they can in principle take actions, their actions are unable to have numerical mechanical impact.

- Opportunity: Opportunity is a resource which represents the right to choose particular targets. Flying targets, distant targets, targets who are under protection from guards, etc all have a cost in Opportunity which must be expended before proactive abilities may be directed at them. Characters generate Opportunity via movement, with bonuses for having high mobility or movement modalities; similarly, ranged attack abilities can discount the opportunity costs of choosing particular targets. It is also possible to generate Opportunity via abilities which act as traps or feints - essentially saying 'you can target me this round, but in exchange I will gain some Opportunity' or 'you can disengage from me this round, but in exchange I will get some Opportunity'. A character at zero Opportunity is effectively captured, entangled, or isolated - they may only take actions have themselves as the target.

- Energy: Abilities beyond the most basic can only be used if the character maintains a sufficient level of Energy. Most abilities have a prerequisite level of Energy, but do not actually cost Energy to use. Therefore, allowing an enemy to build up Energy means they will have more options, and attacking their Energy reduces their options. A character at zero Energy is Paralyzed - they do not meet the criteria for taking any actions.

- Stamina: Various abilities involve some kind of sustained effect or consequence - perhaps a character is holding someone in a grapple, or levitating the keystones of a bridge with their mind. A character's current Stamina rating determines the duration such effects can persist without being renewed through another action. A character at zero Stamina is Unconscious - they cannot maintain any course of action for any length of time. Some abilities have a stamina cost to use.

- Health: Although losing all of the above resources can each make a character unable to participate in a fight, killing a character quite effectively makes them unable to do anything. Most NPCs have a single level of Health, with PCs and significant antagonists having two levels (on average). Most attacks with weapons which are taken full-on with no form of mitigation do one level of damage to Health. A character at zero Health is in Critical Condition - they can only take Movement actions, and those at 1/2 effectiveness; any subsequent attacks will finish them off; and if they are not aided (or manage to aid themselves) within 10-20 minutes, they will die. At the same time, all characters can be expected to have a number of basic mitigation abilities both from their character and from their gear that can be used at any time, at the cost of trading Health damage for damage to one of their other resources.


For example, the main function of armor is to let you turn an attack into Stamina damage. A character built on high mobility/dodging can sacrifice Opportunity or Advantage to avoid or mitigate an attack. Something like a Dwarven Defender might have an ability that lets them almost indefinitely turn threats against their Health into Delay - as long as they don't need to do anything, they're nearly impossible to budge. Where things start to get more interesting is that you could have abilities which don't threaten Health, and thereby bypass those main schticks. So rather than attacking the Defender and building up their Delay, you target their Energy directly and try to make it so that they can't afford the ability that is keeping them up.

Firest Kathon
2018-08-08, 05:59 AM
The combat system of The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge) may be for you.

In its basic form, it is attack roll + parry roll. But then you can add maneuvers, from simple feints (make the opponent's parry roll harder) to special attacks (trip, disarm) to complex parries (redirect the opponent's damage back to them). In addition, you can add in an optional stamina system (0 stamina = you cannot really attack or defend yourself any more).

Armor is damage reduction, you can also play with a zone armor system where you can determine the target zone either randomly or (at a small penalty) announce where you want to hit. In addition to damage you can cause wounds which inflict penalties, possibly additional damage, and can disable an opponent's body part (e.g. leg, sword arm) or knock them out completely (e.g. head wounds).

I agree with Kaptin Keen though that it does extend battles, especially if you do not use the stamina system (even a completely blocked attack will reduce your stamina). I attack successfully ... your opponent parries ... the opponent attacks successfully ... I parry ... etc. It's only when players and GMs start to risk things by doing offensive or defensive maneuvers (which reduce the probability of success), so it's a bit of "push your luck".

Grod_The_Giant
2018-08-08, 07:25 AM
At one point a few years ago I was tinkering with a system for Errol Flynn style duels...as I recall, the idea was that normal attacks wouldn't do damage, but would let you move the fight around the battlefield. The only way to actually hurt your enemy was to push them into some sort of special terrain feature, where you could make a check to do something dramatic like kick a chair into their legs, swing on a chandelier, topple a suit of armor on them, etc. I don't remember ever being entirely satisfied with it, but I can see if I can dig it up and polish it off for you?

Cluedrew
2018-08-08, 07:37 AM
The trouble is .. [some stuff I don't agree with] It also makes combat longer. It also means more dice rolls. Honestly, it really isn't optimal.Yeah, the best handling of parry I have seen have taken the idea to opposed roles, both sides attack and attempt to defend at the same time. That way the number of roles (2) is the same. It does not handle team battles very well though. But I think a lot of systems do go into too much detail, folding it into your defence is fine unless it makes some meaningful decision points. Without that, well introducing decision points is kind of a waste of time is everyone makes the same decision at it.

I suppose I should explain why I disagree with the agency thing. Because it is (hopefully) a clear part of the rules of the game and hence something you can use to inform your decisions. I know when faced with an opponent with a good parry ability I am either going to want to get a really strong hit that they can't parry or maybe a flurry of blows if they have limited numbers of parries. Of course if you can't decide to make those trade offs than, while it may not take away agency, it is a lot of work to add none.



- Momentum: This resource determines the character ability to act at the frequency of the scene. A character who takes actions incurs some degree of 'Delay', which reduces by a quantity equal to their Momentum each round. A character whose Delay is non-zero over the course of a round may only take Movement actions and Defense actions that round. In a round in which a character's Delay is zero, they may take a Proactive action. Regardless of Momentum, a character cannot take more than one Proactive action in a round. Momentum can be gained, lost, stolen, attacked, etc, with upper and lower bounds on its value. Some styles of defense generate momentum in response to being attacked. A character who hits zero Momentum is forced into retreat.

- Advantage: This resource determines the effectiveness of a character's actions - essentially acting as a multiplier on injuries inflicted, resources denied, etc. Advantage is transient - any round in which it does not increase further, positive Advantage resets to the default value (whereas negative Advantage sticks unless recovered or released). However, since Advantage is multiplicative, a character who manages to produce it multiple rounds in a row will be significantly more effective on average than if they just took normal actions. Advantage cannot be harvested from the same type of thing more than once in a given run (e.g. a character who moves to obtain Height advantage cannot subsequently obtain Height advantage again until their Advantage is reset). A character at zero Advantage is Weakened - while they can in principle take actions, their actions are unable to have numerical mechanical impact.

- Opportunity: Opportunity is a resource which represents the right to choose particular targets. Flying targets, distant targets, targets who are under protection from guards, etc all have a cost in Opportunity which must be expended before proactive abilities may be directed at them. Characters generate Opportunity via movement, with bonuses for having high mobility or movement modalities; similarly, ranged attack abilities can discount the opportunity costs of choosing particular targets. It is also possible to generate Opportunity via abilities which act as traps or feints - essentially saying 'you can target me this round, but in exchange I will gain some Opportunity' or 'you can disengage from me this round, but in exchange I will get some Opportunity'. A character at zero Opportunity is effectively captured, entangled, or isolated - they may only take actions have themselves as the target.

- Energy: Abilities beyond the most basic can only be used if the character maintains a sufficient level of Energy. Most abilities have a prerequisite level of Energy, but do not actually cost Energy to use. Therefore, allowing an enemy to build up Energy means they will have more options, and attacking their Energy reduces their options. A character at zero Energy is Paralyzed - they do not meet the criteria for taking any actions.

- Stamina: Various abilities involve some kind of sustained effect or consequence - perhaps a character is holding someone in a grapple, or levitating the keystones of a bridge with their mind. A character's current Stamina rating determines the duration such effects can persist without being renewed through another action. A character at zero Stamina is Unconscious - they cannot maintain any course of action for any length of time. Some abilities have a stamina cost to use.

- Health: Although losing all of the above resources can each make a character unable to participate in a fight, killing a character quite effectively makes them unable to do anything. Most NPCs have a single level of Health, with PCs and significant antagonists having two levels (on average). Most attacks with weapons which are taken full-on with no form of mitigation do one level of damage to Health. A character at zero Health is in Critical Condition - they can only take Movement actions, and those at 1/2 effectiveness; any subsequent attacks will finish them off; and if they are not aided (or manage to aid themselves) within 10-20 minutes, they will die. At the same time, all characters can be expected to have a number of basic mitigation abilities both from their character and from their gear that can be used at any time, at the cost of trading Health damage for damage to one of their other resources.
I am so sad now that so many systems only use health. I mean so does the system I am working on, but combat is not supposed to be a center point in it.

CharonsHelper
2018-08-08, 07:45 AM
Yeah, the best handling of parry I have seen have taken the idea to opposed roles, both sides attack and attempt to defend at the same time. That way the number of roles (2) is the same. It does not handle team battles very well though.

Actually, I believe that I came up with a solution to that in my own system.

Instead of it technically being opposed attack rolls, your attack roll simply becomes your defense score for the rest of the melee phase. Which - in a 1v1 situation is the same thing mathematically, but avoids the issues about larger melees and a lot of other weird edge cases.

Rhedyn
2018-08-08, 07:54 AM
Idk Savage Worlds has parry and toughness values in addition to edges like counter attack that proc off a miss.

The edge first strike also let's you attack people when they get in melee range. It's a tad more dynamic.

LibraryOgre
2018-08-08, 09:46 AM
The trouble is .. if you have a parry roll, you automatically diminish player agency and the feeling of succes. No matter how good your roll, the enemy can turn your succes into a failure.


I disagree. The player does not lose agency because other people can respond to their actions... they can still TRY things, but the things they try will not necessarily be successful. A parry roll is a randomization of target numbers, and can work both ways... "Wow, the bad guy would've killed you, but you rolled a Perfect Defense, allowing you a counter-strike."

It does take longer; can't argue with that.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-08-08, 10:12 AM
Instead of it technically being opposed attack rolls, your attack roll simply becomes your defense score for the rest of the melee phase. Which - in a 1v1 situation is the same thing mathematically, but avoids the issues about larger melees and a lot of other weird edge cases.
That's kinda neat.

CharonsHelper
2018-08-08, 11:56 AM
That's kinda neat.

Thanks.

It's not a one-size-fits-all fix, as its tied into my (somewhat unusual) initiative system. But in playtests I've found that it works well.

Slipperychicken
2018-08-08, 12:46 PM
"back and forth" that D&D and World of darkness never replicated. The dice mechanic just didn't seem suited to that whole "I throw a punch, my opponent blocks it, I counter strike, etc."

Is there a system that can replicate the all important "back and forth," "strike and dodge," "tit for tat" quality that makes each fight feel amazing?


I haven't played it yet, but Runequest 6e has things for this, with its system of reactions (parry, evade, etc) and effects that can be applied on good hits.

LibraryOgre
2018-08-08, 01:04 PM
So, Hackmaster, which I mentioned earlier.

Assuming no one is surprised, two people close. Whoever has the longest weapon gets to go first, and the other person the next second. From there, it's down to weapon speed... faster weapons attack more, though slower weapons tend to do more damage per hit.

When you roll to hit, it is compared to your enemy's defense roll (the die they roll is determined by their fighting style). If you beat their total, you hit. If you rolled a natural 20 and beat their defense roll, you critically hit. If they beat your total, they defended... but that might not mean no damage. If they beat your defense and rolled a 19, they made a Near-Perfect defense, entitling them to an off-hand or unarmed attack against you. If they beat your defense and rolled a 20, they get a Perfect defense, and can make an immediate counterstrike, regardless of where they are in their count.

If they successfully defended with a shield, but they did not beat your attack by 10 points, then you've done a shield hit. Shield hits do less damage, and allow the shield's damage reduction to reduce the damage... but your shield might break. This may seem like shield users get screwed, but that 10 points is about the advantage they gain from the shield, AND shields have a chance to catch any missile launched at you, which will probably then do effectively no damage (most do 1 point on a shield hit... that will only leak through if they're STUPID strong, or using something like a throwing axe, which does better damage).

If you hit, there's a few possible results. If you take enough damage before damage reduction from armor, you might get a knock-back... 10 points for small creatures, 15 points for medium, IIRC. If you take enough damage AFTER damage reduction, you might fall down in pain for several seconds, or possibly minutes. Threshhold of Pain and the Trauma Save can REALLY affect combat, especially if you've got thieves or assassins in one group, whose faster Coup de Grace can end crippled opponents quickly.

After your first attack, you have a few seconds until your next attack, during which others might attack you, you might move a bit, or your opponent might attack you.

There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you have it down, it's fast and easy, and you REALLY miss having seconds when you go back to games that measure in rounds.

Knaight
2018-08-08, 02:13 PM
Thanks.

It's not a one-size-fits-all fix, as its tied into my (somewhat unusual) initiative system. But in playtests I've found that it works well.

It seems pretty similar to opposed rolls in systems that have simultaneous action, where there's no turn-round distinction and everyone is rolling. That said I'd imagine this either requires a separate declare and act phase or making acting later an outright benefit. Using d20 as an example if one foe rolls a 19 and another rolls a 2 on their attack rolls, well, I know which of the two I want to hit.

CharonsHelper
2018-08-08, 02:19 PM
It seems pretty similar to opposed rolls in systems that have simultaneous action

Indeed. That's basically the intent - only it avoids having to make weird rules for things like 3v1 or 4v8 melees. Plus it's easier to add abilities such as defensive ones or including shields (which add +1 to your defense score without adding to attack).

Chauncymancer
2018-08-10, 08:19 PM
One thing: in games with more narrative combats, you're dependent on the GM and all of the players knowinf something about either real martial arts or movie choreography.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-10, 08:58 PM
I also think that the quantity of battles directly affect the quality of the battles.

Case in point, my most recent RL group had consisted of very enthusiastic roleplayers. We started many fights with describing all of our moves in detail and what-have-you, and then even the bland turn system of D&D was feeling kinda enjoyable. But we were playing a published module, so the fight frequency began to take its toll, and after a point, we were simply naming our actions and rolling, hoping to make the whole thing just... resolve.

I'm firmly of the belief that "mook battle" should stop being a thing in D&D, and perhaps other roleplaying games.

Exactly. I don't care what game you're playing, enough "Oh hey, here's another group of random goblins who solely exist to be a resource tax," encounters will quickly take the fun out of it, no matter how you're mechanically determining the fight.

Chad Hooper
2018-08-11, 09:33 PM
My opinion:

This is best handled by DM/Player descriptions of attacks, parries, dodges, and damage, not by additional game mechanics.

Example Statement of Intent: I'm going to try to staple the bad guy's cloak to the banister with my throwing knife, to slow him down, then try to run him through.

When player's turn comes (DM) Your dagger successfully pins his cloak to the stair rail. Roll now for sword attack.

Player: I thrust with my sword, aiming about his solar plexus on an upward angle. (rolls)15?

DM: Pinned cloak slows him down, but he still manages to move aside from your attempt to skewer him. He's far from untouched, though, as your blade's edge has opened a deep cut across his ribs to his back. He's bleeding quite a lot and obviously in pain now.

Now imagine it this way:

DM: Called shot with throwing knife hits, roll for your sword.

Player: 15?

DM: 6 HP, you've hurt him but he's still in the fight.

Again, just my opinion.:smallsmile:

Mechalich
2018-08-11, 10:10 PM
One thing about fight choreography in the TTRPG context that is important to remember is that TTRPG combats are generally mixed melees with multiple perspectives, which is a mode almost never used in choreographed fights in narrative media.

The overwhelming majority of narrative media fights are 1 v 1 duels or 1 v many brawls. Even in situations where you have multiple heroes fighting a huge horde they are usually divided into a series of 1 v Many brawls with rapid cutting between them. Somewhat less often you'll get a coordinated 2 v 1 melee or a 2 v 2 melee or a 2 v many brawl, but that's around the upper limit. Narrative media just doesn't do choreographed 4 v 4 fights or anything like that, they inevitably break them apart into sub-battles - usually 1 v 1 or 1 v 2 duels. Attempting to do anything else is extremely rare and when it is done tends to look cheesy and bad. For example, the big Avengers v Ultron fight at the end of Age of Ultron is a really weak looking fight scene. Another good example is FFXV - that game has a combat system that is intended to allow for fights that look glorious with all the characters and enemies moving about in real time and teleporting and maneuvering and a whole bunch of stuff. In practice, any fight with obstacles or more than two enemies degenerates into miserable chaos instantly.

Ultimately the very kind of combat you're trying to produce in a TTRPG context is simply a terrible fit for having combats that appear awesome. There are systems that make table-top combat more granular, and you can always use narrative to make combat more descriptive, but the metagame barriers are always going to be there. You could absolutely produce a brilliantly crafted highly mobile duel in D&D, but running it would mean asking everyone else to stand around and watch for far too long.