Is my combat system clunky? If so, could you help streamline it?

[valadil]

I've been trying to come up with a combat system that's a bit more interesting out of the box than what you get with D&D. I'd like there to be choices every round, for characters of all skills, not just those who bought all the maneuvers.

I think what I've come up with might be too clunky though. I've been stuck on this point because I can't decide if I have to rewrite the combat system or if it's a good idea and I should keep it.

That I'm posting this at all indicates that, yeah, it's probably slow. I'm interested in any ideas that will speed it up. I'm open to dropping some of the overhead if that's the only way to speed things up, but I'm hesitant to do that without a playtest.

Anyway, here's what I've got.

First off, there's no basic damage attack. You're either going to attack a limb or do a maneuver like a trip or disarm. Since you don't have a default swing for damage attack, this imposes an extra decision on the player.

Next, there's a pseudo status effect for whether two combatants are engaged. This means they've got their swords raised and they're facing each other. It's easier to defend yourself against someone you've engaged. But your attention is limited, so if three people jump you you won't be able to engage them all at once.

There's also advantage, which is going to tie into reach in a moment. Consider sword vs spear. At first, the spear guy has an advantage since he has a chance to hit the sword guy right away. But once the sword guy moves past the tip of the spear, into spear guy's guard, he has an advantage.

Finally reach. Each weapon has a reach stat. The difference between your reach and your opponent's reach will be the numerical bonus provided by advantage. My goal is to make this stat something the player's can vary. Brawling and grappling will provided long weapon wielders with some close quarters attacks. Some weapons will have different stances for manipulating their reach as well.

After that, it's an opposed skill check and degree of success determines damage.

So compared to D&D that adds a decision, two status effects, a little arithmetic, and the possibility of more decisions to manipulate that arithmetic. Each of those changes seems reasonable on their own, but together they seem like too much.

[Glimbur]

I read all your words, and all I can think of is Riddle of Steel. It's a game which is supposed to have all of these things you want. Check it out.

[valadil]

I read all your words, and all I can think of is Riddle of Steel. It's a game which is supposed to have all of these things you want. Check it out.

That's been in my reading list forever. I'll load it up on my Nook as soon as I'm done with my current novel.

(Incidentally I hear RoS works well for duels, but fails at mass combat. I was worried about that in my system too and that's what engagement is supposed to address.)

[Yakk]

Unless you want to have an attack per second (that almost always fails), people do not decide to attack a given limb for each attack.

They look for openings, threaten or attack where they think their opponent is weak, abort and recover if the enemy looks like they are going to defend.

You don't "choose" to attack the enemies foot, you attack the foot because the enemy left it exposed. The enemy did not choose to leave the foot exposed -- either the enemy screwed up and didn't know they where exposing their foot, or the enemy was "forced" to expose something by an earlier attack.

Against someone lacking gear/skill/etc compared to you, you might simple power through their defences -- or, given your relative skill levels, there might be only 1 or 2 spots where they are effectively defending themselves, and you can choose between the other ones.

In short, "I attack your left arm" is both far too detailed, and not detailed enough.

[Vadskye]

I strongly agree with Yakk. The only way limb-based attacks would make sense is if you introduce a mechanic to have separate defense values for each limb that fluctuate semirandomly throughout the combat. However, that's crazy, so don't do that.

[Jormengand]

I strongly agree with Yakk. The only way limb-based attacks would make sense is if you introduce a mechanic to have separate defense values for each limb that fluctuate semirandomly throughout the combat. However, that's crazy, so don't do that.

Limb-based attacks kind of worked with D&D 3.X's Called Shot mechanic - a basic attack is "I just want to hit them, so I'll hit them in the area they left exposed," while a called shot is "I want to make sure they can't walk, so I'll hit their leg." If you want to have a way of attacking a specific body part, you need to make it optional and uncommon, because that's how real fighting actually happens.

[Vadskye]

Limb-based attacks kind of worked with D&D 3.X's Called Shot mechanic - a basic attack is "I just want to hit them, so I'll hit them in the area they left exposed," while a called shot is "I want to make sure they can't walk, so I'll hit their leg." If you want to have a way of attacking a specific body part, you need to make it optional and uncommon, because that's how real fighting actually happens.

To my knowledge, 3.X never had Called Shots in any official source.

[valadil]

Unless you want to have an attack per second (that almost always fails), people do not decide to attack a given limb for each attack.

They look for openings, threaten or attack where they think their opponent is weak, abort and recover if the enemy looks like they are going to defend.

Interesting. I don't think that occurred to me before but it makes a ton of sense. I've played a bunch of games with called shots, but I guess those were always focused on ranged weapons, where it does make more sense.

Two follow up questions.

1. How would you do hit locations? Just make them random? What if I'm not using dice?

2. For the sake of discussion let's say I cut that part out entirely. It wasn't really coupled to the rest of the system and I can ignore it without changing much else. How does the rest of the combat sound?

[Vadskye]

Next, there's a pseudo status effect for whether two combatants are engaged. This means they've got their swords raised and they're facing each other. It's easier to defend yourself against someone you've engaged. But your attention is limited, so if three people jump you you won't be able to engage them all at once.

One simple way to implement this would be the "overwhelm penalties" which I use in Rise. The system replaces flanking:

When a creature is being attacked by multiple foes at once, it is less able to defend itself. A creature is considered overwhelmed if it is being threatened by more than one creature. Multiple creatures occupying the same square count as a single creature when determining overwhelm penalties. If a creature is overwhelmed, it takes a penalty to armor class equal to the number of creatures threatening it.

You should be able to change "penalty to armor class" to suit whatever defense system you use.

There's also advantage, which is going to tie into reach in a moment. Consider sword vs spear. At first, the spear guy has an advantage since he has a chance to hit the sword guy right away. But once the sword guy moves past the tip of the spear, into spear guy's guard, he has an advantage.

You'll need weapon groups to implement this idea effectively. If you're similar to D&D, I recommend Rise's weapon groups (see my sig); they are more consistently defined than the UA weapon groups.

Finally reach. Each weapon has a reach stat. The difference between your reach and your opponent's reach will be the numerical bonus provided by advantage. My goal is to make this stat something the player's can vary. Brawling and grappling will provided long weapon wielders with some close quarters attacks. Some weapons will have different stances for manipulating their reach as well.

Meh. Here's the thing: longer weapons are also typically slower. So you could go through a bunch of hoops to represent "longer" and "faster", defining a complex interplay between the two. Or you could just say that they roughly cancel out, which is what D&D does. You end up in the same place 95% of the time, but it's way more complicated. What's the point?

[Knaight]

This reminds me a bit of both GURPS and Burning Wheel. You might want to look into how they handled things.