Simple Realism System

[Conners]

I'm trying to construct the SRS (Simple Realism System) for my own and general use. This'd be it's own RPG from the ground up, made for two purposes: Realism in a fantasy DnD-like setting, and simplicity that won't burden play.

Any help I could get would be very welcome. Someone on another forum has been kind enough to help me get started (he has some IRL combat experience).
The things I'll need help with largely are balancing (well, as balanced as real life gets, anyway), content (I don't know all the ways you can get cut up or their detailed effects, as an example), and getting statistics close to the real-thing.

Here's what I have so far:

Character Creation:

Attributes/Stats:

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For each attribute, I'd say 10 would be the average for a human. The stats are as follows:

Strength: Damage, to-hit, carrying things, climbing rock-sides, swimming, etc..
With strength, it'd add to the damage modifier of the varying levels of success. 10 would add nothing, 12 would add 0.2, 8 would subtract 0.2, etc..
Also, each point over 10 would reduce the Cut-off Point[CP] (making success easier). Below 10 increases the cut-off point making it harder).

Agility: To-hit, dodging, dancing, archery.
Like STR, AGI reduces the Cut-off Point[CP], making it easier to hit. Each point over 10 reduces your CP by 0.5 (so you'll need 12 AGI to get any effect).
Each point of AGI over 10 increases your Defence.

Constitution: Health, healing, resistance to disease and toxins, more stamina.
You start with 20(?) Max HP and gain 1 point of Max HP for every point of CON over 10. If it's under 10, you lose at the same rate.

Intelligence: Knowing lots of skills, academic-minded matters, more hints for players with high INT.
Perhaps this could lower the cost for learning skills? Such as, it costs 5 points to learn Stiltering normally, but with 20 INT it only costs 2 points. Just an idea at this point.
It'd also be the skill for knowledge checks, like in 4E, which are pretty useful.

Perception: Spotting/hearing enemies, telling lies from truths, ability to notice subtle details and skills like tracking, archery.

Charisma: Relations with the people around you, lying ability, convincing, getting cheaper prices, charming people.

Skill: Rather like your "Level". This is how skilled you are as a warrior, the raw experience and know-how you've picked up over many fights you survived. This'd add to just about everything combat-related.

Combat

The Basic Roll:

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We have two men fight, with no bonuses or penalties to anything. For the attack, roll 1d100. Since they're equal and non-exceptional, the "Cut-off Point"[CP] is 50. Rolling less than 50 is good for the defender, rolling more is good for the attacker. 51 is a scratch, 49 is a near-miss, and 90 is a massive critical.

Now, what if guy A was 10 points better (at dodging and attacking) than guy B. The cut-off point for A is 40, and for B it is 60. "B" needs to roll 60 or more to hit, "A" needs 40 or more.

Note that you don't need 1d100. Use a d20, simply by dividing all the stuff here by five (cut-off point becomes 10, 18 for massive critical, etc.). Or you can use a d10 by dividing by 10 (cut-off of 5, 9 for massive critical). Will take some extra simplification, though.

Levels of Success:

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There are various levels of success based on how much you roll over the cut-off point. I'm not certain of how much force can be modified, realistically, by a success of the hit. So, I'll probably limit it to something like three times the force, for the highest critical, as a place-holder.

[Success Level]  [Roll] [Damage modifier]

Perfect Hit: 	  100	3x damage
Massive Critical: 98+	2.75x
Critical: 	  95+	2.5x
Minor Critical:   91+	2.25x
Great: 	 	  86+	2.0x
Good:		  81+	1.75
Square: 	  76+	1.5x
Decent Hit:	  71+	1.25x
Hit:		  60+	1.0x
Half-Hit:	  56+	0.5x
Scathe:		  51+	0.25x
Scratch: 	  50	0.1x damage
Near-miss:	  49	0 damage
Miss:		  48-	0 damage
Fumble:		   1	Unbalanced till end of next turn.

Strength would also add to the multiplier.
That's what I have currently. Might need to be changed around, in damage amounts, with more levels of success, have more stuff for rolling under, or perhaps something else.

Weapons and Damage:

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Weapons can have up to four properties:

Damage (dmg): This is the damage rating, which is modified by the success of the hit roll.
Armour Penetration (AP): This is the weapon's ability to ignore and penetrate armour.
Accuracy (ACR): If it effects the to-hit roll. Bigger, slower weapons have less chance of hitting--light, long weapons like rapiers have more chance.
Blocking (BLK): If it effects the enemy's to-hit roll. A butcher's cleaver wasn't designed to parry with--a sword with a large, steel hand-guard is good to parry with.
There'd also be Weapon Mastery, where if you aren't versed in the weapon you take penalties, and if you're skilled with the weapon you get bonuses.

As for damage, I'll try to keep the hit point numbers and damage ratings low, for simplicity.

Armour and Penetration:

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Weapons have a damage value, and a armour penetration value. Here's how it works against armour:

Narg the orc has a pick-hammer, and is fighting Dansen the elf, who is wearing full-plate.

Narg gets a total of 10 Damage, on his first attack. The Hammer's penetration value is 2x. 10 damage x 2 AP (armour penetration) vs. Dansen's armour of 30. 20 - 30 = less than 0, no damage is done.

Narg swings around, out of reach of Dansen. He steps forward with a second attack, getting a total of 20 damage this time. 20 damage x 2 AP = 40, vs. 30 armour.
Dansen winces with pain, 10 points of damage being a nasty wound.

The fight ends there. Narg is surprised to see the elf lie dead, so quickly. His pick, very luckily for him, pierced the elf's heart, though the damage was little. All should beware of combat, for a small wound can be your undoing.

A second elf steps through the ranks, wearing hardened-leather with 5 armour. Narg parries the elf's swing, countering with his own upward blow of 10 damage. 10 x 2 = 20 vs. 5 armour = 10 damage. Armour Penetration can't raise the actual damage of the attack, so it hurts this poor elf no more than if he was stark naked.

Backing away, barely dodging another strike as he tried to regain his composure. The elf, Gahdrim, didn't come here to die fighting orcs. Readying his longsword, AP 0.8x, one thunderous leap brought him at the Narg with a vengeance!

Thrusting hard, Gahdrim's strike is worth 15 damage, but it's against the orc's formidable splint mail, 10 armour. 15 x 0.8 = 12 vs. 10 = 2 damage.
The thrust is ineffective, most of the impact sliding off the splints of metal.

As for what happened in that battle, we'll leave that for another time. Gahrim would live to see great things, you shall see.

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Optional Rule

Tin-Hammering:
If an attack does no damage due to armour, but is adds up to half or more of the armour value, do 1 point of non-lethal damage.

You can have this for a quarter or more of the armour value, instead. Or you could have 1 damage for any successful hit.

This rule is handy if you find your players, or NPCs, having a grisly amount of trouble with fully armoured characters. It's still realistic, in that if people keep bashing you around, even if it doesn't get through your armour, it'll sure as heck disorientate you.

Movement:

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The movement is rather interesting. Take a grid, or a hex, doesn't matter. At the start of each round, everyone who can move picks a place they want to move to, as well as the action they want to perform ("I move south-west and slash at the orc!"). Then, you move everyone at the same time. If someone moves out of range of their target, they can't attack them that turn.

If multiple people try to move into the same spot, there'd be something like an Agility roll to see who gets there first. A tie could result in them both moving there, and colliding. Might need consideration.

Stances

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There's be a few Stances you could take up.

Offensive: Raises your Offensive skills by 20%(?).
Defensive: Raises your Defensive skills by 20%(?).
Mobile: Lets you move one extra square before the attack phase, decreases Offensive and Defensive skills by 10%(?).
Power Striker: Adds 0.25x(?) to the Success/STR damage modifier. Decreases Offensive skills by 5%(?) and Defensive skills by 10%(?).

You can only have from 0 to 2 stances active at the same time. They are chosen at the beginning of each round, before anything is done.

After stances are declared, they are no hidden from the NPCs or the players. You could, through this, take a Defensive Stance to make it look like you're going to retreat and be defensive, when actually you plan to step forward and slice them with a Counter.

We might also have it that you are required to take a certain stance to do certain things. Such as, you need to be in the Mobile stance to gain a dodge bonus against missiles. Just an idea.

Double Strike Engagement:

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In fights, it often happens where not one, but BOTH opponents strike a hit. Some duels ended with both participants on the end of a sword.

Initiative would be a Derived Stat from maybe Agility and Perception. When several characters land hits on each other, roll initiative to see who struck first. A blow of 5(?) or more points of damage, regardless of armour (even if it'd reduce the damage to 0), will stop the other character's attack.

If you roll a draw on initiative, you both strike each other at the same time.

Jobs/Skills:

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Skills will be kept as simplistic as manageable. There's a similar cut-off point mechanic. However, rather than 50 as the cut-off point, it tends to be 60 or 70, based on how difficult the skill is.

Weaving artistic quilts for someone who hasn't trained in weaving, would be very hard to succeed. So we'd have something like 70.
Climbing difficult rock faces is something more straight forward, at least, so it might get 60.
Brain Surgery can't be done by someone who isn't versed in it. If for some reason you want to let a character attempt such a skill, it'd be 100 CP--though I don't recommend even bothering to roll such a thing.

You could also improvise with skills. Try to do surgery with your large knowledge of First aid, receiving 1/4 of your usual bonus, kind of thing.

Mostly that sort of thing could be on-the-spot common sense, with a chart given for examples sake.

Special Moves:

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Where the real strategy would come in, is the special moves. Rather like 4e DnD, except completely different.

Specials would be things like "Shield bash", to try and unbalance your opponent, "Flurry", to attack with several weaker hits, "Multi-Attack" for attacking multiple opponents in one turn, etc..

These would be largely based off the weapon you're using, and your mastery with that weapon. Rather than feats purchased at level ups.
Print-out cards would be handy for these, keeping the effects unique but simple.

This is what I'm thinking for how to do them:

[Name:] [Proficiency level needed of X weapon] [Skill level needed]
Cut-off Point(CP) change, what subtracts/adds to CP.

Requirements to use this technique, like a shield for shield-bash.
Extra details on the Technique, such as losing your shield bonus for the round when using shield bash.

Effects of the Technique
Write your bonus/penalty down here, to make it easy to look up and use.

Shield Bash None. [0]
60CP - (STR Bonus x2) - (Skill) + Target's Defence

Requires: Shield.
No Shield-Bonus the round you use this.

Opponent is Unbalanced on success. Minor Critical to Perfect Success knocks enemy down.

-Blank Space for Writing-

[Flurry [3] [2]
70CP - (AGI Bonus x2) - Skill - WPN Mast + Target's Defence

Requires Weapon(s).
Lose WPN Mast bonus to Defence, for the round this is used.

You make three attacks, each at half the Damage Modifier (so a Perfect Hit would do 150% damage).]

[Draw-Strike [4] [2]
65CP - (AGI Bonus x2) - Skill - WPN Mast + Target's Defence

Requires Sheathed Weapon on hip opposite to main hand. Must be one-handed or smaller.

Make an attack as you draw your weapon.]

[Swift-Blow [0] [1]
60CP - (AGI Bonus x1.5) - (STR Bonus x0.25) - Skill - (WPN Mast x0.5) + Target's Defence.

Nothing.

+5 Bonus on any Initiative rolls against that target for that round.]

[Seize [3] [3]
80CP - (AGI Bonus x2) - (STR Bonus x 1.5) - Skill - (WPN Mast Unarmed) + Target's Defence

Requires an empty hand.
-10 to Defence.

Grappling with opponent upon success. Can automatically stick behind them, avoiding their attack for that round if you won initiative. Proceed to Grappling rules as the Advantaged combatant.]

[Weapon Knock-away [3] [2]
65CP - (STR Bonus x1.5) - (AGI x0.5) - Skill - (WPN Mast) + 1/2 Target's Defence + (Target's WPN Mast)

None.

Opponent can't attack with the targeted weapon next round, or this round if you won iniative. They lose thier WPN Mast and WPN BLK bonuses/penalties to Defence.

Levelling Up
Firstly, rather than levels, you have Attributes, and your Skill (Experience). Skill (experience) adds to most everything fighting related, so it's pretty much your Level.

Haven't decided on how to do handing out yet. For now it'd probably be something the GM gives out when appropriate, to an extent that makes sense.
Doing it at the end of each session is sensible for an in-person game, so that you only need to re-write the bonuses/penalties once at the start/end of each session.


Bleeding:
I'm thinking this won't be much of a problem to do. Unless someone's artery gets chopped, people can generally manage quite a while before fluid-loss kills/knocks them down. It is more awkward to fight, though, since you need to hold your blood and/or organs in. Could inflict penalties to fighting ability when badly wounded, easily enough.

Wounds:
There'd be a neat variety of wounds you can take. These could occur randomly, or occur always upon a critical or massive critical. Or both.



Well, that's most of the stuff I have so far. I'm trying to work out the rest of the details. Again, I appreciate any help you can give to improve upon this system. I'm very interested in views or advice you can give me on this, as well as facts as to realistic combat which I could consider.

I hope for this to be a dangerous but highly fun adventuring system, much like Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode, nethack, and 1st addition dnd, but with simplicity that makes it easy to approach.

Thanks very much.

[Spiryt]

"Simple" and "realistic" don't go together too well. Reality is very complicated thing.

That said, my pet peeve

Bigger, slower weapons have less chance of hitting--light, long weapons like rapiers have more chance.

This isn't really realistic idea - chance of "hitting" that said inflicting some serious threat with weapon isn't as simple, as "light, I swing I hit".

Accuracy would generally depends on too many things - so generally you can go with many things, but bigger shouldn't automatically mean less accurate.

[Zeta Kai]

Under your movement rules, whoever goes last in describing their actions has the advantage. After everyone else has declared where they want to go, the later movers are far more likely to avoid attacks & perform successful attacks on their own. Let's say that you're playing a warrior in combat with orcs. On a particular round, the orcs "win" the right to declare their actions first. One of them chooses to attack you. During your time to declare actions, you can simply choose to not be near your current position, thereby denying your attacker a chance to hit you.

This is an unavoidable consequence of your system, as people are going to have to describe their actions one at a time at the table, even though they will be moving simultaneously within the game world. Unless there are mechanics in place that either:

1. limit movement, preventing defenders from always evading attackers, or
2. allow attackers to follow their prey to their declared destination under some circumstances,

then those who come later in the talking circle will have a strong (IE unfair) advantage.

[Conners]

@Spiryt: Yes, this is often the problem... However, I'm thinking that it might be something where all the difficulty is at the start. Then, you just need to check the "attack axe" number on your character sheet, when playing, all easy. That's the hope, anyway, we can try our best.
Avoiding unnecessary details isn't too bad either.

Well that's why I said a big and slow weapon. There are some twenty-foot halberds they used to use, I'd say it'd be difficult to hit someone with that. The main idea with that weapon wasn't to be good for a one-on-one duel or small skirmish, so much as attacking armoured knights from a distance when you have multiple soldiers helping you. Was thinking of things like that.

Problem comes with great axes and the like, where their range isn't really significant enough for an extra square of range (maybe), and it's questionable whether the weight would slow it enough to make it less likely to hit.
Calculating things, like stun from parrying a big axe, is also pretty hard to emulate without clutter.

Generally though, big weapons can surprise you with their movement. It can be like slow motion. Unless you don't mind throwing your footing off or throwing your weapon, maybe. Though, I do agree, bigger doesn't always mean less likely to hit... just depends on the weapon.

Good thing about a 1d100 system is that you can fine-tune the results (no one will notice too much if the great axe lacks 2 points).



@Zeta Kai: I'd intend it as something you all declare at once. That is a bit hard, of course, in an in-person game. For that, be handy if each player had a few cards they'd put face-down on the table. North, North-east, stay-put, etc.. Generally though, if playing with honest players, they should stick to their decision.
Assuming the orcs are NPCs, the GM would decide in his head what each orc was going to do. A shady GM might change his decision, is a problem, but you could also allow this for more dramatic, exciting turns of events--the PC not dying in the first encounter, due to an orc slipping up, for example.

I'd suppose this mainly as a problem for player-vs.-player, and require the players to discreetly pass on their plans through some system.
--
As for them describing their actions one at a time in a player vs. game, this could allow meta-gaming for the later players who are quick on their feet, since they can work out a strategy based on what they shouldn't know the other players are going to do, as you point out.
What we could do is a sort of initiative system, where the players who are the most alert-seeming that round get to go last. It makes their attacks more coordinated, of course, but generally you don't allow tactical planning, in such a system (players on their first game(s) should get to discuss tactics, to learn the system, of course). So, this'd be their RP knowledge of each other, and teamwork.

Since the attackers and the defenders get to move at the same time, the attacker could move to a square they know/think the defender can't get out of range from. Example:

A = Attacker
D = Defender
x = blank

xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxADxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx

A moves east, D moves north-east. A can hit D.

xxxxxxxx
xxxxxDxx
xxxxAxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx

This'd have the risk of tumbling into the defender, of course. But if they want to run rather than fight, you can usually expect staying still is the last place they're going to be. Of course, it depends on the intelligence of the NPCs.

You are very right that there could be problems. Hopefully a better fix can be come up with later.


Thanks to both of you for pointing out errors :). That is really important step for making a system work, discovering problems with the base idea.
Thanks again.

[DaTedinator]

I remember reading about some system that had those who win initiative get to declare their actions last, and take them first. That could help with your initiative situation.

[erikun]

@ DaTedinator: AD&D 2nd edition did that, as did old World of Darkness and several older systems, I believe. Most gave the option to a later combatant to change their action, generally to a lesser action or by forcing a concentration check (or equilivant).


Ah, interesting. I think that you might run into a problem where the numbers are simple, but the math ends up complicated. Something like "DMG = (ACC x AP) + 0.3 * degree of success / weapon DMG value" might produce a realistic result from the strike, but it would be a nightmare to determine in an actual game. Note that the above is only a random selection of values, and doesn't actually mean anything...

As for the main points:

The Basic Roll
Most systems are either a roll-under system or a roll-over system. In a roll-under system, a 50% chance would need to roll 50 or less on a d100; adding +10% would need to roll 60 or less. In a roll-over system, a 50% chance would need to roll 50 or more; +10% would add to the roll itself, leaving the target value at 50 but moving the range of numbers from 1-100 to 11-110.

Your system is some bizarre mix of the two, mostly using the worst features. Yes, THAC0 was also confusing but there was a logic to it. (A -2 penality could apply to either the d20 roll or the AC, and had the same effect.) Unless your "bonus adds penality to target roll" system has a reason I'm missing, I think you would get along just as well with one of the more common systems.

Weapons and Damage
Sounds good enough, although ACR varies greatly with the training involved. A sniper rifle is far more accurate in trained hands than a pistol, and a two-handed sword can be quite fast in the hands of someone who knows how to swing it.

You're also forgetting weapon speed, although it seems you are trying to include it in the ACR value. Daggers are dangerous because they can slip under a guard so quickly; axes are slow because of the momentium making it hard to regain control as quickly.

I question the use of HP in any system referred to as "realistic".

Movement
Seems decent enough, although you'll want to answer questions like "what if I want to move to X while staying under cover" or movement that would obviously take multiple 'rounds'.

Double Strike Engagement
Nothing wrong with two opponents hitting each other. It would be quite common, in fact, if they dropped their guards to both go on the offensive.

Jobs/Skills
This seems to be nothing more than a bonus/penality of up to +/-50% to the difficulty roll. I would also note that some procedures would need specific knowledge to pull off. Realistically, rebuilding a car engine or performing brain surgery would be an automatic failure unless you knew what you were doing. Getting lucky and MacGuyvering a car together with chewing gum and bottle caps would be more appropriate using a Stunt/Luck/Action Points that assuming it automatically happens once every hundred tries.

Special Moves
These sound like combat techniques, something you would pick up while studying the weapons. Something like disarming parry (rapier), shield bash, or a grappling pin (judo) would make more sense as learned skills with the weapon rather than, to use D&D's termonology, "feats" to take upon leveling up.

Levelling Up
Sounds like you're heading in the direction of World of Darkness, Shadowrun, or Burning Wheel, where the character's strength is what skills they have. Perhaps more in like of Burning Wheel, where you don't have "experience" but rather directly increase skills through use.

I would recommend AGAINST seperating combat and non-combat skills. First, it's difficult to tell what exactly is a non-combat skill; why is meditation not related to combat concentration? or why is body dexterity not related to avoidance in melee? Secondly, it seperates the game into combat-mode and non-combat-mode, which in every system I've seen just pushes the game towards hack-and-slash mentality.

Bleeding/Wounds
You're probably best off adopting an injury system, where the penalities affect your ability to make checks. It doesn't really matter much if the -10 is from a twisted ankle, a broken arm, or a gash in your side, after all. Perhaps a seperate section for when a character undergoes serious bodily harm, such as your disembowelment example, but I would hope that characters are not disemboweled in combat very often. (especially ranged combat)

[Conners]

@DaTedinator: Thank you for pointing out that. Usually I'd go and look at the system. However, since I want to cut down on rolls and so-forth, I'd leave it as an intuitive on-the-spot thing, which the players and the GM decide as to who seems the most alert. Generally, level-headed and tactical characters and the leader would go last.

Ah, interesting. I think that you might run into a problem where the numbers are simple, but the math ends up complicated. Something like "DMG = (ACC x AP) + 0.3 * degree of success / weapon DMG value" might produce a realistic result from the strike, but it would be a nightmare to determine in an actual game. Note that the above is only a random selection of values, and doesn't actually mean anything...

As for the main points:

I am concerned about difficulty which may arise due to number calculation. One possibility, for if it gets complicated, is to have your character sheet list the damage for different levels of success. Not a great fix, but it should work. I'll do my best to keep the numbers simple but working, either way.

For example, armour-penetration will be ignored if your enemy isn't wearing armour, or if your weapon has no armour-penetration modifier.

The Basic Roll
Most systems are either a roll-under system or a roll-over system. In a roll-under system, a 50% chance would need to roll 50 or less on a d100; adding +10% would need to roll 60 or less. In a roll-over system, a 50% chance would need to roll 50 or more; +10% would add to the roll itself, leaving the target value at 50 but moving the range of numbers from 1-100 to 11-110.

Your system is some bizarre mix of the two, mostly using the worst features. Yes, THAC0 was also confusing but there was a logic to it. (A -2 penality could apply to either the d20 roll or the AC, and had the same effect.) Unless your "bonus adds penality to target roll" system has a reason I'm missing, I think you would get along just as well with one of the more common systems.

I don't see the system as a bad one. You compare the totalled skill levels between you and the other character, then lower or raise the difficulty to get a hit based on that. Thought you're right in that it would take some getting used to.

Variable target numbers tend to be harder to manage, I find, then this cut-off point system. This may very well be exclusive to me, and I wouldn't mind people using this system differently if it suited them that way.

Weapons and Damage
Sounds good enough, although ACR varies greatly with the training involved. A sniper rifle is far more accurate in trained hands than a pistol, and a two-handed sword can be quite fast in the hands of someone who knows how to swing it.

You're also forgetting weapon speed, although it seems you are trying to include it in the ACR value. Daggers are dangerous because they can slip under a guard so quickly; axes are slow because of the momentium making it hard to regain control as quickly.

I question the use of HP in any system referred to as "realistic".

I'd do that with Weapon Mastery Modifiers, I'd suppose. Someone can use a pistol without experience more easily than the sniper rifle, the pistol having -5, the rifle having -20, to give examples.

I figure you can generally get about the same number of attacks off each round, considering attack and defence can be interchangeable. It's easier, of course, with light, quick weapons, as you figured.

HP isn't really the most realistic system, it's true. However, it'd be generally difficult to track all the wounds involved, I'd figure, unless it became a matter of adding values together, much like reverse hit points (even then, random charts for every attack and calculating damage ratings is a hassle).
Hit points are mostly a pain-threshold, not how many times you can be stabbed in the head. One bad Wound could send you into unconsciousness or shock--or outright kill you.

Movement
Seems decent enough, although you'll want to answer questions like "what if I want to move to X while staying under cover" or movement that would obviously take multiple 'rounds'.

That's a bit tricky, since the combat is very intensely fast. I was considering a system for moving multiple squares, of course--perhaps a maximum of three unless you can run really fast for whatever reasons.

You'd have to forgo your attack for that turn. It goes as normal, everyone moving one square, until the attack part. Then, you don't get an attack, but anyone who was aiming for you and is in range gets to attack you. After that, assuming you're in a state to continue, with all your limbs, you get to move the other two squares.

That's my immediate idea for movement, anyway. I don't know how fast a person can run within 1 or 2 seconds.

Double Strike Engagement
Nothing wrong with two opponents hitting each other. It would be quite common, in fact, if they dropped their guards to both go on the offensive.

Just a question of how to make it uncommon enough that it doesn't become tedious.

Jobs/Skills
This seems to be nothing more than a bonus/penality of up to +/-50% to the difficulty roll.

I would also note that some procedures would need specific knowledge to pull off. Realistically, rebuilding a car engine or performing brain surgery would be an automatic failure unless you knew what you were doing. Getting lucky and MacGuyvering a car together with chewing gum and bottle caps would be more appropriate using a Stunt/Luck/Action Points that assuming it automatically happens once every hundred tries.

That's the idea, yes. The (attribute + skill level) - Difficulty.

Indeed. The brain surgery example was a bit of an inside joke. You could if you wanted allow someone the 1 in a 100 roll, but it is quicker and more realistic to simply say it's impossible.
Making a car with gum and bottle caps would be very impressive, certainly.

Special Moves
These sound like combat techniques, something you would pick up while studying the weapons. Something like disarming parry (rapier), shield bash, or a grappling pin (judo) would make more sense as learned skills with the weapon rather than, to use D&D's termonology, "feats" to take upon leveling up.

Yep, that's the idea.

Levelling Up
Sounds like you're heading in the direction of World of Darkness, Shadowrun, or Burning Wheel, where the character's strength is what skills they have. Perhaps more in like of Burning Wheel, where you don't have "experience" but rather directly increase skills through use.

I would recommend AGAINST seperating combat and non-combat skills. First, it's difficult to tell what exactly is a non-combat skill; why is meditation not related to combat concentration? or why is body dexterity not related to avoidance in melee? Secondly, it seperates the game into combat-mode and non-combat-mode, which in every system I've seen just pushes the game towards hack-and-slash mentality.

There isn't too much in the lines of skills, mostly. You have Weapon Mastery, your stats/attributes, and your experience/skill as a fighter over your years of fighting. Might be something I consider adding, like, "Dodging" and "Hitting" skills... perhaps? Seems fine as is to me, for now.
Not sure how much I want it like shadowrun and so forth with heavy skill focus. It isn't exactly unrealistic, so much as extending upon it becomes time consuming and difficult.

Bleeding/Wounds
You're probably best off adopting an injury system, where the penalities affect your ability to make checks. It doesn't really matter much if the -10 is from a twisted ankle, a broken arm, or a gash in your side, after all.
Perhaps a seperate section for when a character undergoes serious bodily harm, such as your disembowelment example, but I would hope that characters are not disemboweled in combat very often. (especially ranged combat)

That is a good idea. Hit point loss itself could lead to injuries, or it could be the attack success levels? A mixture could also be good.
I would want serious wounds to be separate from general injuries. Most serious injuries will put you out of combat due to shock, of course. I get confused as to the exact meaning of disembowelment, though I suppose you mean being opened up, so you try to make the in-things stay as in-things. I'll make serious wounds s realistically infrequent as possible. While an appropriately-headed arrow can almost take off an armour, I can't imagine it being too common to slice someone open so well as with a sword. If you have no armour and are hailed with arrows, perhaps.

Having a list of serious and light wounds you roll for at the appropriate time could lead to tensions and interestingness. could mean death or relief.


Thanks very much for bringing up that list of points erikun !

[elpollo]

Have you looked at Mongoose Runequest 2? It's quite gritty, it's percentile, it's got combat maneuvers which you can do if you beat your opponent's roll (if you beat it by certain levels you can use more than one), it saves you having to write a system, and it's pretty awesome. I'd say definately look at it (there are some previews at the bottom of the page).

You can try and make a system realistic, but that means different things to different people. I really thing that MRQ2 would satisfy your needs.

[Conners]

It does seem a well-made, well-thought system that takes a grittier, more realistic approach. However, it is a bit more complex than I was planning. Might work on this a while more for now.
Generally fun to try new takes on various aspects, also.

[elpollo]

In which case:

Just to clarify, you have to roll under or equal to [ 50 + Character Skill - Difficulty ], where the Character Skill is the active character's relevant skill and the Difficulty is either some arbitrary difficulty or a passive character's skill? If so I can add a few things since I briefly proposed this in a thread on rpg.net.

I would reaaaally change how your movement works to stop the faster people being untouchable (I'm afraid I've not got a better suggestion at the moment). Do you need squares/a grid at all?

For wounds and such, I'm gonna suggest having a look at Inquisitor if you haven't done so yet, specifically page 38-42. It implements a sort of hit points/wound levels combo. I mean, it's not a great system (many lasgun shots are better at killing a space marine than a multi-melta, if I recall correctly), but it's something to build from.

Right, I'll leave it there for now. What attributes are you planning to use?

[erikun]

Re: Basic Roll
The main reason I point out the different systems is that they are all virutally identical. You gain an increased chance of success from higher bonuses, and a decreases chance of success from higher difficulty. The main difference is how it's presented, and how well the players can understand it. If your system works and makes sense, there's no reason to chance. (although you could still look at others for ideas)

Re: Weapon Damage
Well, perhaps I was getting ahead of myself. After all, throwing in weapon stats like speed, momentium, and range will just complicate things if existing modifiers, such as accuracy or damage, handle the variables just as well.

Then again, I suppose weapon range/weapon speed could apply during initiative. After all, longer weapons tend to hit first, as do faster weapons. In a halberd vs. sword fight, the halberder hits first unless the sword fighter can slip under his guard. Similarly, in a knife vs. baseball fight, the knife fighter will strike first unless the guy with the baseball bat keeps his defenses up.

Re: Wounds and HP
The main reason I prefer a stacking wounds system over HP is that it is far to easy to still be up and running, despite massive penalities, just because you still have HP. You could also be knocked out of the fight, yet still "unwounded", due to HP. Adding wounds at various HP levels just makes the HP feel redundant, though. After all, if you are rendered unable to fight, then it doesn't much matter if it is because you are too weakened, paralyzed, or unconcious. Perhaps it's just a personal preference.

As for "critical wounds," most of these are ultimately fatal, although not within the time span of combat that we are talking about. Even something as grievous as losing an arm will kill you from blood loss within minutes, not within seconds like combat takes. Most deaths from fatal gunshot wounds happen within hours or days. (Ignoring damage to the brain, heart, or spine, which IS pretty much instantly fatal.) So yes, critical wounds should be seperate from wounds, and outside of surviving the shock of the attack, probably shouldn't affect combat much - beyond the obvious loss of ability, of course.

Re: Weapon Mastery
My main concern with this idea is that being good with a sword doesn't mean you are good with EVERYTHING with a sword. I'm just imagining the party fighter trying to pry open a secret door with his longsword, because "I get a +50% bonus when weilding my weapon!"

A general "Weapon Mastery" might work at determining an overall "level" for a character, but probably isn't something you'd want to apply to every roll. Hitting someone is different from defending yourself, hitting accurately is different from hitting powerfully, and learning various techniques are different than being generally good with the weapon.

Simplification is good, but if you're going to simplify that much, I wonder why you don't just use FUDGE or something similar.

[Conners]

@elpollo: The reverse of that, actually. Equal to or over the given number, which is reduced by your bonuses, and increased by your penalties.

All characters can only move one square, before attacks are handed out. After that, if you had decided to forgo your attack to move farther, you get to move a few more squares (two more, typically).
Squares aren't really that necessary, just easier to talk in terms of grids.

Looks quite interesting. I'll probably use a similar, heavily revised version of that. Need to consider how I'm going to do location damage, too. Things should stay simple, but it is a point with armour, where you want to attack an exposed place. Might be able to side-line it, if it doesn't add enough to the gameplay, so the mechanic is only called in when it's important to hit or not hit specific areas.

As for Attributes, I'm rather certain of the following:
Strength: Damage, to-hit, carrying things, climbing rock-sides, swimming, etc..
Agility: To-hit, dodging, dancing, archery.
Constitution: Health, healing, resistence to disease and toxins, more stanima.

Intelligence: Knowing lots of skills, academic-minded matters, more hints for players with high INT.
Perception: Spotting/hearing enemies, telling lies from truths, ability to notice subtle details and skills like tracking, archery.
Charisma: Relations with the poeple around you, lying ability, convincing, getting cheaper prices, charming people.

Skill: Rather like your "Level". This is how skilled you are as a warrior, the raw experience and know-how you've picked up over many fights you survived. This'd add to just about everything combat-related.


@erikun: "Re: Basic Roll"
I've played quite a few systems, with different ways of presenting the numbers. Haven't seen too many with this way of doing it. It seems simple enough to learn, and not too hard to understand.

"Re: Weapon Damage"
Hopefully Accuracy, Damage and Armour Penetration are enough to manage it, with some Weapon Mastery. Probably can't get precise realism, but I'd only want that for a computer-generated game.

Yes, longer weapons have a greater reach, so you don't need to get as close to strike at your opponent, making them very useful tools. Might want to consider accuracy penalties for attacking people inside your reach, though. A halberd is pretty useless when the other guy is breathing down your neck.
Something like -5 for every step past your maximum range, maybe (this'd be -10 when someone is right up to you, with the 20-foot halberd)?

"Re: Wounds and HP"
Well, that's why I suggested a mixture of the two. You could get one incapacitating wound at the start of the fight, or you could get gradually beaten down. If you were in plate armour being beaten with swords, for example, you're more likely to get knocked down from bruising, fatigue, and soreness rather than some terrible wound. With HP, can have it that you can't take a million hits.
Combine this with Wound possibilities, where any hit over 7/whatever HP is a light wound, etc., and it should work out pretty good.

Indeed. Magic can help you here, of course, so that a wound you normally can't survive is patched up so that you live to recover. I don't want there to be heaps of magic, but I think a cleric being able to sear your stump of an arm to stop the bleeding sounds OK (healing magic can't typically be performed in combat, though--takes too long).
--
Gangrene would also be a fatal, constant killer, to anyone in this profession who takes hits. Luckily, advanced alchemy and some specific herbs led to a cure to this... and BOY does it sell like hot-cakes among among those in the fighting profession. Adventurers would be taking these after every terrible beating, mostly, to be careful.
--
Was also thinking of an interesting item. A pain-killer you can take for a HP bonus--some kind of drug. Morphine, maybe. Could lead to interesting role-play with realistic morphine addictions, from over-use.
--
Of course, I wouldn't make things like morphine too common, though the gangrene-cure potions are pretty wide spread among civilized regions with an interest in warfare.

"Re: Weapon Mastery"
...XD I'd laugh if someone said that in my player group. I could put a foot-note, that holding a sword doesn't aid to your doing-the-dishes check--just didn't think it'd be necessary. Though considering some players...

Well, being a master of a particular weapon means you are good at those things. If someone could only perform one aspect of that very well, they'd hardly even be a fighter, since a fight demands flexibility if you want to get anywhere--alive. Of course, people are often better or worse at those various aspects, though I'd start to wonder if we are getting too deep into skill management.
--I do think Stances are in order. Defensive, Offensive, Power-Striker, maybe another couple I've forgotten. Just that I'm unsure about levelling up those aspects as you go, rather than them being plain modifiers.

Roleplaying through the entirety of a game is something to consider, but it does have problems and complications of its own. How to make action scenes exciting, why the GM shouldn't just let you in every time as part of the fun of the game. Adding a skill element that allows characters to have different attributes, without roleplaying exaggeration.
That's the idea at least.



Thanks again to both of you for the good help. Trying to work out ranged combat currently, plus the other stuff.

[erikun]

...XD I'd laugh if someone said that in my player group. I could put a foot-note, that holding a sword doesn't aid to your doing-the-dishes check--just didn't think it'd be necessary. Though considering some players...

Well, it's obvious when using the silly examples, but there will be times when weapon training would apply to skills not affected by combat. Do you allow Martial Arts Mastery to apply for moving silently or maintaining your balance? It would certainly make sense to, as balance and foot placement are very important in many martial arts. However, doing that might encourage players to try to use their Pistol Mastery skills for moving silently by walking on the barrels of their guns. (Yes, I've seen it attempted.)

As for stances, perhaps Offensive, Defensive, and Mobility? Offensive means actively trying to attack, Defensive means actively trying to block/parry, and Mobility means actively trying to dodge/move around. Or perhaps it would be better to combine two stances. Offensive/Mobility would involve charging and hacking, giving little disregard to your defense. Offensive/Defensive would be acting like an armored knight or spartian, holding a position and not moving much. Defensive/Mobility would be going "total defense", giving up attacks to move around and protect yourself.

All characters can only move one square, before attacks are handed out. After that, if you had decided to forgo your attack to move farther, you get to move a few more squares (two more, typically).
Squares aren't really that necessary, just easier to talk in terms of grids.

I would recommend moving away from the grid, or at least away from relying on the grid.

The way I saw it at first, you had a character who started at point A. They say they want to get to point B. They get a swing at one target along the way, and the only things that should matter are terrian, distance, and any characters that might try to stop them.

To use the stances above, anyone in Offensive stance would have the option to take a swing at anyone passing by. Anyone in Defensive stance would have the option to try to block movement (assuming they don't move away, of course). Hence why someone guarding or holding an area would take Offensive/Defensive, able to attack anyone moving towards them and prevent people from getting past. Defensive/Mobility could just block a door but not fight back, while Offensive/Mobility would be dangerous to walk past but doesn't have a way to stop people.

Thanks again to both of you for the good help. Trying to work out ranged combat currently, plus the other stuff.

Hmm. Doesn't sound too difficult, although I'd think most people would start with melee combat. From what I can see, the major factors in hitting someone would be armor (damage reduction), shields (avoiding, damage reduction), dodging (avoiding), and cover. Stuff like parrying wouldn't apply unless you decided to play "super anime style", so to speak.

[Conners]

Martial arts doesn't usually contain sneaking in its training.--in fact, an amount of them encourage you to yell to focus your "energy". If a player can justify the use, however, like keeping your balance after a friend accidentally nudges you towards the cliff, then I'd let them use half of their martial arts skill in place of the Balance skill which they have no points in, just as an example. Sneak could be done at something like 25% of the Martial Arts skill, maybe.

Combining stances is an interesting idea. Put in Power-Strike and combine it with Offence for berserkers, to off-set the to-hit penalties... and to increase the defence penalties.
Problem with the mobility stance, is that I'd want to combine Blocking and Dodging as one Defence modifier (which raises the opponent attacking you's cut-off point). Also don't want to calculate things like moving around due to dodges, and just have moving as a conscious thing before each attack stage.
Blocking your opponent's path would be a thing of the player's/NPC's own intuitiveness. Generally, tapping them on the back with an axe as they pass is enough to stop them dead, perhaps literally dead.


Grids would make it easier to calculate. Generally, I'd keep it in grid fashion, since you can't really move that far in a 1-second round.

Distance is the main thing here. It'd get confusing as to who is what and what is who distance. Could be done without a grid, just easier with a grid.

Hmm.... actually, the Mobility stance does sound interesting. I'd say decreased Defence/To-hit, in exchange for the ability to move an extra square during the attack phase. So if someone you wanted to attack steps out of reach, you get to move again, putting yourself within reach. Good for dodging away, too. A bit risky to use too often, however, since it decreases attack and defence.


Just trying to figure how it'll fit in. From what I gather: You pick your target at the start with everyone else. Everyone but you takes their move (I'll consider Feats, that allow you to do things like take a move action while firing by ranged), and it's the attack stage. If an ally has gotten in the way of your target, you miss your attack for that round.

With a clear shot, you get to fire at them. Roll archery similar to melee, with a cut-off-point. Increase the difficulty by +20 if they're moving strangely (aka: IN A MELEE FIGHT),
+10 if they're running in a direction away from you (it's easy to hit a target running at you),
+5 if they're walking a direction away from you,
add their Dodge skill to the difficulty if they're actively trying to avoid your fire while in a Mobile stance,
add their shield blocking if they're actively trying to block your fire while in a Defensive stance.

Calculate damage upon a hit with levels of success.

The stances you came up with really are an interesting idea. Thank you very much for it. A lot of it would just be common sense, of course. You want to avoid the arrows? Go to mobile stance. You want to block the arrows? Defensive.

Defensive would not only be parries, but dodges too--ones that involve not too much movement (like ducking under a high swing). Thanks again, I'll look forward to thinking up more uses for this.

[Conners]

Added some stuff to the original post. Armour workings and penetration, a bit on attributes, stances, levels of success.

We're at a stage now where testing could begin, for melee combat. Just need to work out how stats effect the success rolls, and some minor details with them. Then we get on to adjusting numbers, and trial and error, following by other things like Shields, Techniques, and anything else.

[Conners]

Combat bonuses:

Offence.

Strength: Adds +1 for every point over 10 to Offence rolls.

Agility: Adds +0.5 for every point over 10, or +1 for every 2 points over 10.

Skill: Adds +1 for every point of skill.

Weapon Agility: Add this value to the Offence.

Weapon Mastery: Add your weapon mastery for the weapon you are using to the Offence, whether negative or positive.

Racial/Special Value: Add this.

Circumstantial: Add these when appropriate. Examples:

Spoiler

Show

Fighting from elevation (up stairs, from horse, etc.): +2 to Offence.
Flank: +5 Offence
Back-Attack: +8 Offence
Slippery/Bad Ground for Footing: -2 to Offence
Prone: -5 Offence

Defence.

Agility: +1 for every point over 10.

Shield: Add the defence value of any shield you are using.

Weapon Blocking: Add this to your Defence.

Skill: Add this to your Defence.

Weapon Mastery: Add your weapon mastery for the weapon you are using to the Defence, whether negative or positive.

Racial/Special Value: Add this.

Circumstantial: Add these when appropriate. Examples:

Spoiler

Show

Prone: -3 Defence
No Dodging Space: -8 Defence
Allies or Terrain Guarding you: +4 Defence

That should be enough to put together something interesting. After testing, onto Techniques.


EDIT: Did some testing, and it seems the numbers work. Sadly, it has the complication where -2 is a good thing for your attack ,and +2 is a good thing for your defence. Confusing, sadly, but one can get used to it.

[Conners]

*Bump*

Worked out how Techniques should go. Check the first post to see for yourself.

[Conners]

Added more techniques. The system I have for them is pretty good, I just worry about the realism and balance of it, as well as for the modifiers for each particular technique.

[erikun]

Alright then, back to this! Let's see how and where things have changed. I'll skip over the stuff that's the same.

Attributes/Stats:
They seem to work well enough, I guess. Pretty much any attributes are going to be abstracted anyways, so I guess the D&D six aren't a bad place to work with. Any reason for choosing those, rather than Mind/Body/Soul, or Head/Arms/Legs/etc, or Physical/Mental/Social?

Levels of Success:
The biggest thing I see here is that half of the rolls are a flat 0, which the other half are an ascending scale from 0.25 to 3. There is also a 10-degree critical success range, yet only a 1-degree critical failure range.

First problem is that it requires looking up a table, which won't be very simple to most people. Second, it requires multiplication for every role, further complicating things.

Armour and Penetration:
The first problem is that the "Optional Rule" should be in a spoiler tag, rather than a code tag. Right now, each paragraph is on a single line, leaving a lot of scrolling to read it all.

Weapons with less than 1.0 AP will always deal less damage than what you've rolled.

In fact, AP doesn't really seem to have much meaning at this point. In nearly every situation, AP is just a damage multiplier. The only time I see it being anything different is if you have a large AP or are hitting very weak armor.

Stances
Well, I like to see the stances there. After all, how you are swinging a weapon affects its performance as much as what weapon you are swinging.

However... more math. Also, penalities seem unnecessary when you want to be in a stance anyways. "Defaulting" to no stances is the equilivant to being unprepared for battle.

My suggestion on stances was to give you more options - Offensive/Aggressive giving more attacks, for example, or Defense to defend an area. Making the stances nothing more than bonuses seems to encourage decisions based on numbers and math, which feels less realistic to me at least.

Double Strike Engagement:
This looks like three completely unrelated subjects under the same heading. Other than that, it looks like any meaningful amount of damage stops your opponent from attacking. This looks completely contrary to your example under "Armour and Penetration" and isn't realistic, to boot.

Special Moves:
So special moves are just anything beyond swinging a sword? It looks like they are picked up while training in a weapon skill, as opposed to feats limited to one every several "levels", correct?

Also, I would call them "Weapon Skills" or something similar. I can't think of anyone who would call unbalancing or stunning an opponent delivering a "special move".

[Corporate M]

Reality is very complicated thing.

No, it isn't. People just want it to be so that complicated=beurocracy="figure out this maze while I kindly go over here".

I like the system well enough. It's just I don't see it being used in anything sept a game specificaly designed for realism. You and I seem to have a very simaler idea of how combat should look, but your's actually complicates it further by suggesting there be d100s and large tables of modifiers... Bleh!

I'd say your's is kind of like what mine would look like if I gave enough of a crap to go that deep into it. Mine would basically look like

Armor=This
Attack=That
Damage=The other

Lets say for example a Largespear.

Attack: 1d10 Damage: 1

Lets say the person he's up against armor, after everything's figured out is, 3.

Well, under my system, that would mean the more he rolls on attack, the more he rolls on damage. Lets say he rolls a 9. That's 3 damage. I'm not the first person to come up with this. Zelda basically does this. With each heart representing 2HP. This largespear would be like when those moblins attack you with a spear. Notice when you're wearing the good tunics, they don't do any damage. Your armor is just too much to overcome. When you're not wearing a tunic, the damage is "random", but always on the low side.

Transitioning that to D&D wouldn't be that hard. Maybe just reverse the stats and have the largespear come at +1 bonus to attack rolls vs damage being d10. And everytime you meet the AC requirements, you get an extra d10. (Sortof like rewarding high attacks instead of random criticals)

This would require alot of tweeking either way. As under my system, suddenly warmages turn into tier-4 or tier-5 classes cause even a simple lesser orb of lightning becomes a "oh, your armor class was 12 and I met that requirement twice... so 10d8 damage for you!) So really it depends less on the mechanics and moreso what kind of game you're playing.


I basically talked alot more then I needed too. But I think you're on the right track dude. I understand you want the math to make sense, but you have to ask yourself, if you were playing these rules in mid-game, are they adaptable? Could you compromise them for someone who's just rolling dice without forethought? Is it capable of being bent to make circumstances higher or lower as a DM who wants something to be seen as different levels of competence? Under my system, if I wanted to see my attack as unsurvivable, I'd just increase the attack bonus as damage bonus would just mean it hurts more once but attack means it hurts more then once. Your's might require adding a 0.5 somewhere...

[Conners]

Alright then, back to this! Let's see how and where things have changed. I'll skip over the stuff that's the same.

Attributes/Stats:
They seem to work well enough, I guess. Pretty much any attributes are going to be abstracted anyways, so I guess the D&D six aren't a bad place to work with.
Any reason for choosing those, rather than Mind/Body/Soul, or Head/Arms/Legs/etc, or Physical/Mental/Social?

Levels of Success:
The biggest thing I see here is that half of the rolls are a flat 0, which the other half are an ascending scale from 0.25 to 3. There is also a 10-degree critical success range, yet only a 1-degree critical failure range.

First problem is that it requires looking up a table, which won't be very simple to most people.
Second, it requires multiplication for every role, further complicating things.

Armour and Penetration:
The first problem is that the "Optional Rule" should be in a spoiler tag, rather than a code tag. Right now, each paragraph is on a single line, leaving a lot of scrolling to read it all.

Weapons with less than 1.0 AP will always deal less damage than what you've rolled.

In fact, AP doesn't really seem to have much meaning at this point. In nearly every situation, AP is just a damage multiplier. The only time I see it being anything different is if you have a large AP or are hitting very weak armor.

Stances
Well, I like to see the stances there. After all, how you are swinging a weapon affects its performance as much as what weapon you are swinging.

However... more math.
Also, penalities seem unnecessary when you want to be in a stance anyways.
"Defaulting" to no stances is the equilivant to being unprepared for battle.

My suggestion on stances was to give you more options - Offensive/Aggressive giving more attacks, for example, or Defense to defend an area. Making the stances nothing more than bonuses seems to encourage decisions based on numbers and math, which feels less realistic to me at least.

Double Strike Engagement:
This looks like three completely unrelated subjects under the same heading. Other than that, it looks like any meaningful amount of damage stops your opponent from attacking. This looks completely contrary to your example under "Armour and Penetration" and isn't realistic, to boot.

Special Moves:
So special moves are just anything beyond swinging a sword?
It looks like they are picked up while training in a weapon skill, as opposed to feats limited to one every several "levels", correct?

Also, I would call them "Weapon Skills" or something similar.
I can't think of anyone who would call unbalancing or stunning an opponent delivering a "special move".

@erikun: OK.

Attributes/Stats
I'm thinking of adding in Willpower, for the (optional) fear system, and resisting pain (CON would also help here).
As for why I didn't pick something more unusual, I didn't see it as being advantageous. Since it follows well-known formula, it also makes it easy to understand.

Levels of Success:
Well, since I have a 0.1x mod for barely rolling success, there isn't much for failure. Failure in this case is the opponent parrying, or stepping out of reach, or even you deciding not to swing because of a bad angle, etc..
You have a good point about there being not enough levels of failure, though... This list can probably be improved upon either way. Maybe rolling a 1 would be... falling prone, dropping your weapon? Or more likely, I just have it easier to become unbalanced.

According to another fellow, tables make games go by fast, fast. However, it won't require a table forever. Eventually, people will remember that Great hits are 1.72+ times the CP, etc., and it's just running a couple of numbers through a calculator.
Multiplication is easy on a calculator. Take the number, and divide it by your CP. It'll come out as something like 1.72, also known as 172%. Compare to the table, until you get the idea for it (I'll add percentages of what the number is to the CP, later on. Be good to make the finished version of the table first). Just need some quick rounding, for when you get pointsomethingsomething digits.

Armour and Penetration:
Well, at least it isn't a problem with the system. I'll do that now.

If your target is wearing armour, and you hit, yes--that's what AP implies.

Umm... Not really sure how to reply to this. AP is, almost fully, a damage modifier as you observe, for purposes of armour penetration calculation. It can take into account level of success, damage/power/size of the weapon, your STR bonus, and the penetration level of the weapon used. I also have a rule in that stops you from doing more damage than your original roll.
With the numbers done right, this is close to perfect.

Stances:
The weapon, your skill with it, and what you're trying to do are all important.

Sadly, there's little way to avoid bonuses/penalties from various circumstances, so one may as well put Stances in with the circum. The current numbers are just place-holders till I work out a better set of numbers or function. I'd want it to be easy numbers which make sense, like +/-50%, 25%, etc..
As for why Mobile stance is penalized, that's for the simple fact that if you're putting extra concentration and efforts into moving around, your ability to hit the other guy is hindered, and it's generally easier to hit someone who doesn't have perfect balance, as you don't when you're moving particularly fast. Power-Striking more because you're focusing on hitting hard, instead of accurately, or defending with your weapon as much.
Defaulting to no stance means your enemy doesn't know what you plan to do that turn, of course ("Is he going to run as I charge him, or does he plan to stab me when I get close...?").

Giving more attacks is an interesting idea, and I would like to follow that line in some ways, but giving extra attacks sounds like a good way to unbalance combat--which is meant to be made up of 1-second rounds. Techniques already give the option for Flurry, several attacks, and etc..
Strategy comes from use of techniques, positioning, and realization of your own skills (ie: stats) vs. the enemy's, equipping yourself for the task at hand, picking your fights, and measuring your chances accurately. Deciding whether to fight from a defensive, reluctant stance, or from an aggressive, risky stance are part of this.

Double Strike Engagement:
Not sure what you mean by this, all three paragraphs would be considered related by the rules of the English language.
As to how it's contrary to what I wrote in Armour Penetration, that is also a questionable statement. They're different subjects, certainly--in fact, they don't appear to make reference to one and other. .-...-....-...-. Well, thinking on it, you might be referring to the bit on the pierced heart, where he didn't attack because his heart was pierced. Might've forgotten about my plans for this and done that, but a point is that he wouldn't be able to attack next round.
--
For the realism part, this is understandable--I wouldn't have believed this either, and still have trouble. To describe it one way... if you touch a hot stove, you'll instantly recoil with your hand, and possibly with the rest of your body. The expert I've had the pleasure of questioning had almost any hit cause you to flinch and ruin your attack, but I thought 5 points might be an accurate transfer of force and pain. However, might as well ask him a bit more, in case there are other details and reasons that should be better translated.

Special Moves:
Pretty much.
Basically, you can use any technique you can meet the requirements for: Skill, Weapon Mastery, and the weapon (you can't use shield bash without a shield). A few of the techniques won't be available till once every few "levels", still.

Doesn't really matter what they're called.
Not sure how many people you know, in that case.

No, it isn't. People just want it to be so that complicated=beurocracy="figure out this maze while I kindly go over here".

I like the system well enough. It's just I don't see it being used in anything sept a game specificaly designed for realism.
You and I seem to have a very simaler idea of how combat should look,
but your's actually complicates it further by suggesting there be d100s and large tables of modifiers... Bleh!

I'd say your's is kind of like what mine would look like if I gave enough of a crap to go that deep into it. Mine would basically look like

Armor=This
Attack=That
Damage=The other

Lets say for example a Largespear.

Attack: 1d10 Damage: 1

Lets say the person he's up against armor, after everything's figured out is, 3.

Well, under my system, that would mean the more he rolls on attack, the more he rolls on damage. Lets say he rolls a 9. That's 3 damage. I'm not the first person to come up with this. Zelda basically does this. With each heart representing 2HP. This largespear would be like when those moblins attack you with a spear. Notice when you're wearing the good tunics, they don't do any damage. Your armor is just too much to overcome. When you're not wearing a tunic, the damage is "random", but always on the low side.

Transitioning that to D&D wouldn't be that hard. Maybe just reverse the stats and have the largespear come at +1 bonus to attack rolls vs damage being d10. And everytime you meet the AC requirements, you get an extra d10. (Sortof like rewarding high attacks instead of random criticals)

This would require alot of tweeking either way. As under my system, suddenly warmages turn into tier-4 or tier-5 classes cause even a simple lesser orb of lightning becomes a "oh, your armor class was 12 and I met that requirement twice... so 10d8 damage for you!) So really it depends less on the mechanics and moreso what kind of game you're playing.


I basically talked alot more then I needed too. But I think you're on the right track dude.

I understand you want the math to make sense, but you have to ask yourself, if you were playing these rules in mid-game, are they adaptable? Could you compromise them for someone who's just rolling dice without forethought?
Is it capable of being bent to make circumstances higher or lower as a DM who wants something to be seen as different levels of competence?
Under my system, if I wanted to see my attack as unsurvivable, I'd just increase the attack bonus as damage bonus would just mean it hurts more once but attack means it hurts more then once. Your's might require adding a 0.5 somewhere...

@Corporate M: Reality is complicated, just that emulating it into a system doesn't need to be. Sometimes the minor details are nice to have, but for a system that isn't computer-worked... better to compress them and take a direct route to the same result.

Not really intending it for unrealistic games--though optional rules could make it a bit more movie-like (not that I recommend using them).
I guess we just look at it how it is .
The 1d100s and chart aren't so bad, the amount of extra work needed being shockingly little. Would take half a session to get used to, of course.

I'd like it to be as realistic a system manageable, within the constraints of simplicity.

So, Roll - Armour / 2 = Damage? That is an interesting system, certainly, and it's pretty simple. Which way are numbers rounded?

Having it that each time you meet the AC you roll more damage is a good idea, also. I can imagine using those rules for a DnD game.

Though generally one would assume magic as powerful, realistically (being hit with a lightning bolt isn't something to sneeze at).
I need to work on the magic system, as well. Probably a combination of "it takes time" ("I can kill everyone one of you in five seconds of spell-casting!... OW! Stop killing me and let me finish my spell!"), and "it takes energy"--working in the TRoS idea that if you over-do it you'll lose from weeks to years of your lifespan. That's going to be interesting, working out... balancing will be less fun.


Good to talk lots, and think lots, when developing a system. Thanks Corporate M, your system sounds pretty good also.

Well, as far as I can see, any adaptation could be done pretty well, without complication. As for making it for people who just roll dice without thinking... that sounds a bit like designing an AI. The system won't be hard to learn, with a bit of trying it and looking at it, but if people go into a fight without considering what they're doing, they will die, sooner or later. As for considering numbers, you need to play it a bit, until you remember it to a scary extent like with DnD.

Well, depends on what you mean, but I'd say so--the Skill stat is what shows different levels of fighting competence.
You could do that simply by increasing the weapon damage or armour penetration. Or you could decrease the CP, which increases your chances of critical success. Depends on the circumstance and how you want to do it, not so hard either way.



Nice talking to both of you. The system is making its way to completion steadily. Thanks for the help in getting it this far!


EDIT: Talked to the expert on the Initiative thing. It's more complex than one can imagine. Some people don't realize their arm was blown off till a moment later, some get grazed by a bullet and faint. This is going to be Willpower and Constitution intensive, I'd say.

[erikun]

I'm thinking of adding in Willpower, for the (optional) fear system, and resisting pain (CON would also help here).

I don't see much of an initial problem with it, especially when it adds to the game. The biggest thing to watch out for is attribute bloat (or be aware of needing to cut it down later).

Remember that D&D is not necessarily simple, intuitive, or realistic. You may want to focus on what stats your system will use rather than what stats match up with a given popular system. I should note that two of my examples were taken directly from TriStat and World of Darkness, two rather noteworthy systems.

To describe [realism] one way... if you touch a hot stove, you'll instantly recoil with your hand, and possibly with the rest of your body. The expert I've had the pleasure of questioning had almost any hit cause you to flinch and ruin your attack, but I thought 5 points might be an accurate transfer of force and pain.

EDIT: Talked to the expert on the Initiative thing. It's more complex than one can imagine. Some people don't realize their arm was blown off till a moment later, some get grazed by a bullet and faint.

This is kind of what I'm talking about. Accidentally setting your hand against a hot stove when you're not expecting it, and you will jump back in pain. Intentionally doing so which adrenaline pumping through your veins, and you may not even notice. It is surprisingly easy to not notice an injury, especially if there isn't anything to bring your attention to it. I've been working outdoors only to notice much later some pretty bad bumps and scratches.

Something like Willpower/Constitution for a "pain threshold" as to how much damage you can take without flinching? I don't think you will even find a realistic report on the factors which prevent someone from flinching at an injury while under adrenaline, so we want to devise a game construct which produces something believable.

Though generally one would assume magic as powerful, realistically (being hit with a lightning bolt isn't something to sneeze at).

Magic will be tricky no matter how it is done, as there isn't a realistic way to model magic (obviously). Nobody is going to survive an actual lightning strike or diving through magma, but nobody said that every wizard throws out a full power lightning strike every time.

[Conners]

Mostly, I can do just as well with these stats with vaguer uses. It also has a good division between toughness and strength, intelligence and perception, etc..

I'm thinking more of TRoS, actually. No problem is using DnD naming.


You have your Pain Threshold from CON and WP (Willpower), then it'd be randomized in some way so you can never be sure (except that the tougher guy with more resolve can take more).


Indeed, magic is tricky. Still, I have a good outline that should make it surprisingly easy to use, but still powerful, yet balanced... but the outline will need details. Details are important.

You learn spells, much like Techniques. Things like levitate, zappy missile, light spell, etc..

There could be a CP just like with melee, and something where you can put extra power into the spell to decrease the CP to reachable-levels.

Failure could have harsh repercussions, like in TRoS, where you lose days to years of your lifespan from a spell gone wrong. The spell could also backfire and knock you out. Would want this to only happen when you roll really badly, or if you fail a second roll against the spell's backfiring (since armour-penetration and so forth don't need rolling, this isn't too bad).
Oh, you could put points into your defence against a spell backfiring, and you get half your points back if it doesn't backfire.

Magic Proficiencies, like "Movement", "Range", "Targeting", "Power", "Micro-Management," "Sight,". Something like that, maybe more could be added.
Movement is moving things, whether yourself in levitation, or a rock at anything from snails pace to many miles per hour.
Range is how far from you the spell works, as well as how far the target you cast it on can be.
Targeting would be your accuracy, and perhaps your ability to target what things (allows you to target objects with spells that only target living creatures, etc.).
Power is the power of the spell, controlling how much weight you can levitate, how big an explosion your fireball causes, how detailed your micro-scope spell is.
Micro-Management was the best name I could come up with for minor details of spells. Getting the magnetic-plates armour to work just right. Fiddling with the biology and DNA of a creature to make it into something else. Subtle things.
Sight for things like using your crystal ball to see distant places, reading minds, and seeing at microscopic level, as well as seeing through walls and such.

It seems like a good array, for now. As well as being required to cast spells, like with Weapon Masteries and Skill levels for Techniques, you could use these to justify the use of spells you've made up yourself.
Want to make someone's heart explode? High Targeting, Range depending on the distance of the target, moderate Sight to see your target, finishing with low Power to make the explosion. This, of course, would have a very high CP, and take a lot of power to make it doable.

Also need to factor in time... Three seconds isn't a long time normally, but you might get killed three times in that period. Spending magic to quicken spells would also be a possibility, making spellcasting a costly occupation to your mana, within the constraints of battle. Still, you could cast powerful spells when given the chance.

I'd also like to implement my Wizard idea, that wizards aren't so good at casting spells, and need time preparing ingredients, incantations, etc., as well as needing a staff or wand to transfer the energies. They are HIGHLY envious, jealous, and violent towards sorcerers, who can sling spells around naturally.
So, dependence on a magic implement, limited magic points for all but the best wizards, and necessity to prepare components.

Wizards are cheaper to make via point-buy, of course, so sorcerers aren't the definite-best-option. After all, if you're a beggar with not-so-great combat stats, even though you can cast mighty spells, you aren't doing so well in other ways.



Optional Rule:

Spoiler

Show

DEADLY COMBAT

When you roll a failure in melee fighting. See how much under the CP you rolled (if it's a CP of 50, and you roll 40, that's 10 points under). Divide that number in half, and add it to the roll of your opponent's attack, if he attacks next (attacking at the same time doesn't count). If you attack again before your opponent gets to attack you, he doesn't get the bonus for your earlier failure.

So, Goblin has CP of 55, Goblin wins initiative, Goblin rolls 30 (55 - 30 = 25 points under) and misses. Ted the Barbarian has CP of 40, he rolls 30, the Goblin's failure adds 12 points to that, making it 42, and a Scathe.

[Conners]

Here's a test fight I did. Seems to be going quite well. I'll post the systems I used to design this, later on:

Spoiler

Show

Knight vs. Viking
38 CP 38
=
48 41

This is working out the cut-off point for each combatant. Your own Offence bonus lowers your CP(Cut-off Point), and your opponent's Defence raises your CP.


-------------------------
Round 1
Initiative: Viking

At the start of each round, a character rolls for initiative. This means they strike first, and might have other significances later. I haven't decided the exact specifics, but if you both roll within 10(?) points of each other, you strike simultaneously, which can end in double-deaths.

Viking(CP 41) = 25 Miss
Knight(CP 48) = 36 Miss

Neither of them hit. This could be seen as the two of them standing their ground, hesitating to move in and fight. Or it could be seen differently.


Round 2
Initiative: Knight
Knight(CP 48) = 76 Square Hit to Right Hand, for 16 x1.9 damage, 30. Hand severed, Bleeding value of 30 (Major Bleeding). Pain of 1d100 + 40 - CON and WIL values = 77, he's in Extreme Pain. His attack is interupted, and he's Unbalanced for 1 minute.

The Knight got a good success. What's more, he rolled very luckily on the Hit-Location table, scoring the unarmoured hand.


Viking collapses, having run out of HP, he can't stand all the pain and blood.


Another Viking teleports in, to continue the fight.

Round 1
Initiative: Viking
Viking uses Shieldbash(CP 50): 94, Minor Critical, Knight is knocked down.
Knight loses attack and is toppled prone.

I tested Technique use here. Shieldbash usually just Unbalances the opponent, but it knocks them prone on a Minor Critical or better. The viking has a shield, but the Knight doesn't.


Round 2
Initiative automatically goes to Viking
Viking(CP 41) = 84, 11 x 1.78(1.75 + 0.3 STR) = 20 damage to Face. Axe splits the head horizontally, killing Knight.

Lots of lucky hits going on here...


A Knight spawns.


Round 1
Initative: Viking
Viking uses Flurry(CP 60): 40 Miss, 47 Miss, 14 Miss. Viking loses his WPN Mast bonus to Defence, till end of next round (-5 to Knight's CP = 43).

Things are starting to get more complicated, since I started splashing various self-notes all over the place. Skip the the conclusion if this gets to be confusing.


Knight tries to smash Viking's Buckler. Power Striking Stance (STR Bonus to damage x 2, Full OFF Bonus x 0.75, Full DEF Bonus x 0.75) + 3 CP = 46~~[Viking CP - 1 = 40] (CP 46): 68 Decent Hit, 16 Damage x 2.05 (1 + STR Bonus of 0.4 x 2) = 33 Damage x AP of 0.6 = 20 vs. DP of 20. Buckler smashes just barely, Viking discarding it. Shield Bonus lost. Knight exits Power Striking, CP - 3 = 40 (45 at end of next round)

Here, the Knight switched Stances, adjusting his Offence, Defence, and Damage capabilities. He managed to destroy the Viking's shield, barely. Shields have a DP(Destruction Point), where if they take their that much damage or more, they're rendered useless.


Round 2
Initiative: Viking
Viking takes Defensive Stance (Full DEF x 1.5 [without WPN Mast bonus till end of this round], Full OFF x 0.5) CP is now 47~~(Knight's CP +1 = 41). Viking attacks(CP 47)! 38 Miss.
Knight attacks(CP 41)! 86 Perfect Hit to Left Shoulder. 16 Damage x 3.4(STR 0.4) = 54 x AP 0.6 = 32 vs 10 = 22 Damage to Left Shoulder, half-way severed. Roll for Artery Sever: 10, no artery severed. Bleeding Value 40, Major Bleeding. Pain of 1d100 + 56 - CON 12 - WIL 10 = +34. Roll 115, Viking is put into a Coma.

[Conners]

Someone was kind enough to give me a book with 100 realistically statted medieval weapons. I'm working on a method of conversion from the system it was made for to my system now. I'll post a few when I'm comfortable with them.

[Corporate M]

This system is actually simaler to my own, only I lean more toward simple then realistic.

The system isn't complete, it compliments your own but just dumbs it down. Attack/Damage are much more frontloaded. Attack vs Defense is X vs d100.

Say you have a handgun. A handgun has it's own attack, and you add your stat to it. A handgun's attack will say is 4d8. And your dexterity bonus increases that by 15. So maxed out, 48. That means your opponent has to roll a 48 or better to "dodge".

But then there's actual damage. I would keep the abstract HP, but unlike normal HP, it doesn't recover, you simply gain more along your adventures. Lets say you were a fighter, hit die d10 and roll good. 10+constitution score of 18=28HP. Damage of handgun is 2d8. So someone won't die from the first, or maybe even the second shot. But they won't recover from it either. Atleast not for awhile. It's going to be quite sometime before they find HP like that again. It's the concept of avoid combat rather then worry about if you can survive or beat the other guy. It isn't extremely realistic, it doesn't take into consideration permanent injuries or anything, but is a more arbitary injury system and you could roleplay that out.

[Conners]

That does sounds like a pretty good system. While I plan to have Wounds, I hope to keep them pretty abstract, still.

Your system could be quite realistic, merely by having combat similarly deadly to reality. So, just by having high damage weapons, which can wipe out HP quickly if you're not cautious.
The wounds can be RPed deadly enough, too.

My system could be played similarly, but for now I'm going for a sort of intermediate level.

[Eloi]

Hm, it seems more 'flexible and realistic' than 'simple and realistic' but that isn't a bad thing. I mean its not all that easy-to-learn but its a solid system, nonetheless.

[Conners]

It's mostly as complicated as people like it to be--flexible as you rightly put it. HP can substitute for Wounds completely, if you lower the fresh-holds a bit.

Still, I don't believe it a complicated system in comparison. When it's finished, I'll write out the best possible tutorial. Planning to code some character sheets which do a lot of the work for you (put in your attributes and it'll work out most of the other stuff, is what I plan).


To make it simpler still, I'll need to make the CP table correspond to a linear formula (each five points raises the mod by 0.1, or something). There's other tricks I can use once I work out the system.

[Samurai Jill]

I'm trying to construct the SRS (Simple Realism System) for my own and general use. This'd be it's own RPG from the ground up, made for two purposes: Realism in a fantasy DnD-like setting, and simplicity that won't burden play...

It would be possible to create a drastically cut-down version of the Burning Wheel combat system that would maintain most of the flavour. Which I did here, actually, though on reflection I'd probably tweak that system a bit.

But then there's actual damage. I would keep the abstract HP, but unlike normal HP, it doesn't recover, you simply gain more along your adventures. Lets say you were a fighter, hit die d10 and roll good. 10+constitution score of 18=28HP. Damage of handgun is 2d8. So someone won't die from the first, or maybe even the second shot. But they won't recover from it either. Atleast not for awhile. It's going to be quite sometime before they find HP like that again. It's the concept of avoid combat rather then worry about if you can survive or beat the other guy. It isn't extremely realistic, it doesn't take into consideration permanent injuries or anything, but is a more arbitary injury system and you could roleplay that out.

Hit points have nothing to do with realism. Indefinite accumulation of HP has even less to do with realism.
Classes have nothing to do with realism.
Rolling for HP per level was always a dumb idea.
Levels have nothing to do with realism.
Not being able to recover from damage is a killjoy and also has nothing to do with realism.

You can also toss out most aspects of initiative rolls, and even a combat grid isn't particularly useful.