PDA

View Full Version : Let's make a better Combat System



Thinker
2019-07-22, 01:40 PM
The recent discussions about whether or not HP is meat have been enlightening. We've had all manner of debate about whether or not it is luck, stamina, armor, endurance, evasion, or combat proficiency. At first, I wanted to make a post about coming up with a better HP system, but I quickly realized that wouldn't work without an underlying Combat System supporting it. I think that the bright minds here at Giant in the Playground can come up with a combat system that is fair, supports multiple types of game play, and above all is fun. Let's try to make this a standalone system that we could drop into almost any other game system.

First question: At a high level, which of the following elements do you feel are important to a fun Combat System?


Physical consequences, in accordance with what is possible in the game's fiction
Narrative consequences, in accordance with the situation presented in the game's fiction
Includes a few impactful player decisions each turn
Includes many possible player decisions each turn
Tactical gameplay
Descriptive gameplay


If this gets a good response, I will tally the results in a couple of days to see what the community finds important and then I'll present the next question. If you feel that I overlooked an important high-level consideration, please write it in and I'll add it to the list above along with what I feel to be an opposite.

Jakinbandw
2019-07-22, 02:24 PM
The recent discussions about whether or not HP is meat have been enlightening. We've had all manner of debate about whether or not it is luck, stamina, armor, endurance, evasion, or combat proficiency. At first, I wanted to make a post about coming up with a better HP system, but I quickly realized that wouldn't work without an underlying Combat System supporting it. I think that the bright minds here at Giant in the Playground can come up with a combat system that is fair, supports multiple types of game play, and above all is fun. Let's try to make this a standalone system that we could drop into almost any other game system.

First question: At a high level, which of the following elements do you feel are important to a fun Combat System?


Physical consequences, in accordance with what is possible in the game's fiction
Narrative consequences, in accordance with the situation presented in the game's fiction
Includes a few impactful player decisions each turn
Includes many possible player decisions each turn
Tactical gameplay
Descriptive gameplay


If this gets a good response, I will tally the results in a couple of days to see what the community finds important and then I'll present the next question. If you feel that I overlooked an important high-level consideration, please write it in and I'll add it to the list above along with what I feel to be an opposite.

A few things. Where do you draw the line between physical consequences and narrative consequences. Like If someone attacks my character, and he gets thrown back ten feet and lands off balance, is that a physical consequence, or a narrative consequence?

I think it's important to have at least a few player decisions to make, but I would argue that more than a couple can really cause combat to drag as players need at least a little while to decide on what option to use. See wizards trying to decide between fireball burning hands when they don't know the hp totals of the foes they are fighting in 5e.

Finally, I'm not sure of what you consider the difference between tactical gameplay and descriptive gameplay. Could you give examples?

Thinker
2019-07-22, 03:29 PM
A few things. Where do you draw the line between physical consequences and narrative consequences. Like If someone attacks my character, and he gets thrown back ten feet and lands off balance, is that a physical consequence, or a narrative consequence?

I think it's important to have at least a few player decisions to make, but I would argue that more than a couple can really cause combat to drag as players need at least a little while to decide on what option to use. See wizards trying to decide between fireball burning hands when they don't know the hp totals of the foes they are fighting in 5e.

Finally, I'm not sure of what you consider the difference between tactical gameplay and descriptive gameplay. Could you give examples?

Firstly, the options are intentionally somewhat vague. The idea is to start with very broad goals and then narrow down on what they mean through discussion. As for your specific questions:

What I meant by Physical Consequences versus Narrative Consequences was that Physical Consequences are a result of the physical action that took place - being knocked into a wall because of a failed defense roll, for example. A narrative consequence might be a failed combat roll that results in hearing enemy reinforcements arriving on the scene or the villain activating the Orb of Doom.
Your comment about Few Player Decisions versus Many Player Decisions is exactly what I was getting at with the survey - do people prefer having lots of options for players or only a few? One obviously makes combat longer, but also can make for a more in-depth experience while the other would allow people to get through combat quickly, but perhaps with less style. This does not preclude different character types from having different character options. A warrior might have four combat options while a wizard might have three completely different combat options and one shared option.
Tactical Gameplay in Combat is where there are tactical decisions that the players make, typically involves turn-based combat, and where terrain, cover, action types, and movement speed might matter. For example, it's Reginald's turn and after he goes, the two goblins will get a turn, followed by his ally Geoffrey. Right now, Reginald is out of range for the Goblins to reach this turn, but he could reach them on a charge himself. So, Reginald decides to delay his turn until after the Goblins so that he can charge and attack followed by Geoffrey. Meanwhile, Descriptive Gameplay in combat is more about the players describing what they want to do with far less focus on things like turn order, max speed, and the like. Reginald might consider the battlefield as the GM describes and say, "I want to charge the goblins with Geoffrey and hack them in half with my claymore!" Then, he will roll to see if he was successful. His position is now more exposed, but the player didn't have to consider his speed, the goblins' attack range, when his turn order was, or the like.


Obviously, these are a scale. You might like the idea of some Tactical Gameplay, but perhaps not with the depth of something like GURPS or even DnD, but maybe not with so little depth as Apocalypse World.

Ken Murikumo
2019-07-26, 11:39 AM
This is my own opinion based on personal preference & experience with light and heavy systems:

Combat should have physical consequences. Narrative consequences are a GM tool that generally should not be part of a mechanical combat system. Exceptions do exist and these two are not mutually exclusive; but personally as a GM and player, i prefer physical consequence as a system and narrative consequence as an intrinsic part of table top gaming and good Gm storytelling.


More choices in combat is better. This does not mean that everyone should have every option available at all times with no exception though. Having a base set of options available to everyone (like a set of actions each round, options like "all out attack" or being defensive, etc...) can establish a foundation for the combat system. It doesn't have to be super complicated like 3.5; M&M 3e does a great job of being relatively straight forward but still offering plenty options without heavy investment. Include options to improve base abilities or even gain access to new and exclusive abilities. Also, construct it in a way that allows the individual player to choose how complicated the character can be. A good example of this would be (again) M&M. One of my GMs is running a M&M game where we have a newish player. His character is pretty simple. His options include a healing beam, damage beam, healing nova, and damage nova. And hes a doctor so he has doctor skills and stats. Thats it. Me, on the other hand, my character is mash up of different sci-fi soldiers (halo Spartans, mass effect spectres, Iron Man, etc...) with stats in and out of the armor; light, medium, and heavy armor modes with shifting armor values, speed, and flight depending on the mode; melee combat mode; ranged combat mode; armor-lock; suit AI; Drone minions that create shields and barriers for cover; and a roster of 18 mechanically different weapons, of which i pick 3 during "suit up" (primary, side-arm, and "power weapon"). Making a system that can accommodate simple, easy to manage characters & also mechanically robust characters at the same time is something i gravitate towards.


And as the above would indicate, i prefer tactical combat over "roleplay combat" as we've called it in the past. Personally i feel that descriptive gameplay for combat is a lazy cop-out, and leaves way too much up to GM discretion. Worst case scenario: it turns into 2 six year olds yelling at eachother, "You can't hit me, i have a shield!", "My gun can shoot through shields!", "Well my shield is gun proof!", ad infinitum. Best case scenario it becomes a task of asking the GM over and over and over again, "can i...?"

Morty
2019-07-26, 11:48 AM
Better than what and better for what? If you mean "a combat system better than D&D's", well, it's not a high bar to clear and many systems have accomplished it. But they all have different purposes behind theirs.

Lacco
2019-07-27, 02:48 AM
First question: At a high level, which of the following elements do you feel are important to a fun Combat System?


Physical consequences, in accordance with what is possible in the game's fiction
Narrative consequences, in accordance with the situation presented in the game's fiction
Includes a few impactful player decisions each turn
Includes many possible player decisions each turn
Tactical gameplay
Descriptive gameplay



For me:
Physical consequences over narrative consequences.
Few decisions each turn, but many options.
Tactical gameplay over descriptive gameplay.

That said:
- no initiative order for carrying out actions (e.g. "after the goblin moved here, I will move there"); instead initiative order states who states their intent first (the slowest ones) so the faster ones may react on actions of the slower ones)
- short combats; no HP (or low HP)
- 3v1 equivalent foes should be extremely hard to win (almost impossible), winning against 3 foes should be thing that's quite masterful feat
- few decisions (e.g. do I attack or defend? whom do I attack? how do I attack?) but many options (do I cut? thrust? go for a feint?)
- tactical gameplay without 5 foot grid (no mapping/tape measuring; relative positioning should suffice)

I don't mind narrative consequences - but they have to be connected to the situation and player choice (e.g. if you take a break from fighting the BBEG, he may push the panic button bringing reinforcements), it shouldn't be "your defense roll failed, get damaged for 7 HP or put another enemy on board".


Better than what and better for what? If you man "a combat system better than D&D's", well, it's not a high bar to clear and many systems have accomplished it. But they all have different purposes behind theirs.

Good comment. For me, clear baseline for this forum would be D&D combat, but me? I'm GMing Riddle of Steel most of the time, so I have already found the best system ===for me===.

To OP: just a question: which systems do you have experience with?

Knaight
2019-07-27, 04:22 AM
This is not something where there's any one standard. I wouldn't want to use the same combat system for a wuxia game and a post apocalyptic one, to pick just one example - and that's before getting into potentially far more drastic changes. Before I could even begin to provide a possible viable framework I'd like there are some necessary questions. Most notably:

Who's doing the fighting? Why is fighting happening?

The first is mostly a matter of scope. Rules that make sense to support a game specifically about duelists are going to get really cumbersome fast when applied to a mass combat system. A system built to the scope of humans with personal weapons is going to be built differently than if you're assuming monsters or vehicles - and even then there's the question of how general that is, where "there are vehicles involved" leads to a very different design than "you play fighter pilots specifically".

Given the D&D focus on these forums I'm going to assume small scale fights involving individual characters, where the characters range from ordinary human(oid)s to fantasy superheroes to monsters of wildly varying size, with magic being thrown around. That's not to say that that's the only thing that I'd expect to see supported, but that's at least the main thrust with things like naval engagements deemphasized as compared to, say, Seven Seas.

Zakhara
2019-07-27, 04:57 AM
First off, you may wish to examine "The Fantasy Trip." It has an easy to learn, but strategically-rich combat system.

Second, part of what could make combat more fun (and "narrative") would be giving Inspiration more purchase. Just spitballing, but perhaps you can hold as much as Proficiency Bonus, gain it from Ability Check 20s, and can declare an attack to Inspire. Perhaps a "critical" just allows you to combine two options in combination (damage die, effect, point of Inspiration). 5e, for all its misgivings, does have some toys to play with here.

But for my money, the best combat systems are ones which are fast. Game combat struggles to be as diverse and electric as film, and I believe it best not to play to its flaws. In my future games, I'll be using Dave Arneson's "Chop 'Til You Drop" as a staple.

Pleh
2019-07-27, 09:10 AM
I should preface my statements with the disclaimer that I have not played a large number of RPGs (mostly 3.5, SWSE, and a little 5e and L5R).

I agree with the general statements so far that combat should be physical, not descriptive. I'm reminded of arguments elsewhere on the forum that no one needs a rulebook to tell them to make something up or improvise. If we are making a better combat system, let's do everything we can to avoid the need for descriptive consequences because players using these rules can modify on the fly regardless of what we end up creating.

That said, I think we must avoid system bloat. A good rule system ought to be largely intuitive, even if the strategy is more complex. I like the way the game of Chess illustrates this. At any given point, there are a very small number of legal moves that a player can make, but almost limitless permutations of moves that could lead to the end goal. The question becomes how success in combat is measured.

Back to HP problems. I'm sure the origins of HP trace back to, "I hit him with my sword and cut his head off" and the ensuing debates. Now you roll dice to see if you hit, but how do you measure how many hits it takes? We're still fighting about how much damage is taken, so we represent with damage dice, but how many points are needed for the kill? HP as meat seems designed to answer the lower level combat mechanics, which is fine, but it leads to problems like the barbarian surviving a fall off a cliff later.

Setting that aside for a moment, a mechanic I always felt to be superior to HP damage was Status Effects. Roll the dice, if successful, the enemy is *prone*. End of line. No Stance Point to whittle away until the enemy can't stand anymore. Another attack might leave the enemy disarmed or staggered. These attacks have tactical benefit with definitive physical consequences that are not so arbitrary as HP drain.

That leads me to my conclusion that spellcaster and Tomb of Battle characters are better designed combat systems. There are ways for a fighter in 3.5 to make an enemy prone, but they have to build their whole character around it to use it reliably and spellcasters have a host of status effects to choose from at the start of every day.

I know I said we want to avoid system bloat and sorting through 3.5 spell books isn't the best for that, but what if we had a combat system that replicated the optimal spell selections (in an active combat, not scry and die, which isn't really combat and isn't meant to be) and reconfigured them to be standard combat maneuvers (not necessarily related to the Tomb of Battle term)?

Suppose Color Spray were reconfigured to be an attack against the enemy's eyes (maybe with a handful of dust).

The immediate problem is the 4e complaint. We don't really want the wizard's burning hands spell to feel identical to the knight's spinning sword attack. It makes more sense if the knight is using magic to make a *fiery* spin attack, but at that point, isn't he just a wizard casting the same spell through his sword? And I think this may be the key to my thought process. If you want to remove HP Is Meat from your game, you kind of need to remove classes that play to that mechanic. Swordsmen need to have a different goal than dealing HP damage. But what effect should cutting someone with a sword have other than HP damage or simply death?

I'm reminded of the SWSE Condition Track. 5 steps drops the enemy and beating their damage threshold drops them 1 step (and you can improve this to drop them faster). They also start taking penalties to just about everything and the penalties rapidly increase for each step. While it's not a lot less arbitrary than HP, it serves to represent how combatants are gradually worn down by combat, growing increasingly feeble as they take damage.

That's about as far as my thoughts have gotten. It's not a finished conclusion. Just a general direction of thought.

erikun
2019-07-27, 10:01 AM
If you feel that I overlooked an important high-level consideration, please write it in and I'll add it to the list above along with what I feel to be an opposite.
What are the priorities of the system? This seems like a fairly important consideration, and something that will direct the conversation of how the combat system should be designed. It is also the reason that you won't find any good "universal combat system" because different aspects of different games will be taking different priorities.

For example, some games might be about gathering a squad of characters at higher levels and taking them through battles. The combat for this would obviously be tactical-focused, since you would require the ability to see where all characters are and what might affect any one with any particular roll. A game system that is focused on narrative is probably going to focus on the narrative consequences of actions regardless of the game level, and the major difference between low level play and high level play are going to be the scope of those outcomes. A game system designed around rolling on a chart to determine the consequences of being hit or failing a roll should probably keep those systems at higher level play, as opposed to swapping them out for something different.

In general, though, I would recommend:

Give few major player choices available each round. This doesn't mean that players shouldn't have many options, just that there are a limited number that would have a major impact on the conflict. Sure, players should still be able to heal or pick stuff up or pull stuff out of bags, but the major things like dealing damage, restraining enemies, or changing the battlefield should be limited to a handful of possibilities. Players might have many different ways of changing the battlefield, but you'd want to avoid giving them battlefield changing along with, say, teleporting everybody to a different location, and polymorphing into different things, and summoning new characters to engage in the fight, and calling on allies to join in. (At least, not all at the same time.)
Player choices should have a large impact. Arguably, the biggest difference between "low level" play and "high level" play should be how much of an influence the players have on the world. Low level characters influence the world in minor ways, from killing one goblin of many to trying to convince a major. High level characters influence the world in major ways, from uniting kingdoms to slaying dragons. While the impact of a character in low-level combat might be throwing around 2d4+2 damage projectiles, the impact of a character in high-level combat should similarly be something major. The orc might be able to ignore the 1st level fighter swinging around a sword, but the demon should not be able to just casually ignore the 20th level fighting swinging around their magic scimitar of demonsbane. I say "low level" and "high level" even though impact on the world is unrelated to character level, although they typically do correlate.
Physical/Social/Narrative/etc. consequences should related to the task and roll being made at hand. It seems very odd to swing a sword and have a horde of enemies appear as a result. It seems odd to convince a NPC of something and have an enemy take a large portion of damage as a result. Sure, these things can happen (perhaps the PC got the command through for a team of archers to launch a volley of arrows for HP damage) but these would be specific rolls made in specific circumstances to result in that consequence. The consequence should follow the trial being attempted, and usually, the result should follow the roll being made. There are physical consequences to physical actions. There are narrative consequences to changing things with narrative control points, whatever they are called.


You could probably argue that high level play should be "bigger", in that higher level actions should be more complex and have more variables to consider. But I think that's probably related to the system and depends on the priorities of the game system. Some game systems are going to be intentionally simple throughout, wanting to focus more on the player actions in the game and the tension in the plot. Some game systems want to bake the increasing complexity and scope into the system itself, expecting some sort of player mastery after so many levels and forcing high level play into a specific mold. Neither are necessarily better or worse, just different priorities, and the combat system to use would depend on which game system priorities are in play.

Anonymouswizard
2019-07-27, 03:41 PM
Better than what and better for what? If you mean "a combat system better than D&D's", well, it's not a high bar to clear and many systems have accomplished it. But they all have different purposes behind theirs.

Yep. I mean Unknown Armies combat is relatively terrible as far as RPG combat goes, it's pretty much sub-D&D, but that's fine because it's also so lethal you want to avoid it. Meanwhile Savage Worlds combat gets better as you scale it up to the 'skirmish level wargame' scale, with the PCs, their mooks, the bad guys, and their minions.


First off, you may wish to examine "The Fantasy Trip." It has an easy to learn, but strategically-rich combat system.

To be fair, The Fantasy Trip began as a melee combat board game (called 'Melee'), had a variation that dealt with magical combat ('Wizard'), and then got the book that compiled everything into an RPG. It's got really good tactical combat for an RPG because it just goes back to Melee and Wizard, but it means that it's out of combat gameplay is a little bit lacking (although considering Into the Labyrinth was released in 1980 that's not shocking).

Which I think we have to realise, any attempt to make combat more engaging will probably turn it more into a skirmish-level wargame. Which is not bad, I like skirmish level wargames, but it's somewhat inevitable.

The other real option for 'improving' combat is to demphasise it. Spend less time and less focus on it, and less detailed combat doesn't matter.

Either way works, and I enjoy both in the right group. But after having played a combat-heavy Unisystem game, I have to say that if I'm playing a high combat game I want it to feel more like 'wargaming with roleplay elements' than 'roleplay with bad wargaming attached' (D&D 4e would fall into the former category, 5e the latter).