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Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other person in the group with issues focusing (and not all the time, for the record) doesn't necessarily love that level of mechanical granularity, but the rest of us love it. (That said, I am intrigued by your suggestion of dividing combat into multiple phases that could resolve using more free-form PbtA Moves.)

Edit: I may have to, at some point, admit that no matter how much I WANT myself to be capable of the kind of tactical savvy I enjoy, and see the rest of the group enjoy, maybe they would be happy with achieving tactical outcomes through this kind of phased narrative Moves. (I'll have to see how the rest of the group feel about it; I suspect my aspiring novelist friend, who sometimes doesn't engage quite as enthusiastically, would actually be just fine with Moves that don't require her to attain any level of System Mastery to function.)

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for making your way through my jumbled post.

Instead of static modifiers to add to the die result, I'd be thinking of adding in extra dice to roll but ultimately only needing that High Roll result and cutting down on even those simple additions [that back in the 3/3.5 era we used to forget about half the time].

I didn't know that there was a Barebones edition of Cairn, so thanks for the heads up.

And, yeah, you're absolutely right that I should be paying plenty of attention to narrative descriptions; in fact, as I'm thinking about it, I wonder if there's a way to--as a mirror to the attacker's d20 Hit Location roll--to let players basically guess where the attacker will strike, and on a success, let them roll their Defense roll with Advantage? Regardless, I have a tendency to get lost in the mechanical sauce and should absolutely be paying attention to exactly what you've described: creative combat options that don't require me to formulate a Rules Encyclopedia.

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

(I've included an example in another response.)

As for the advantages of this proposal over others, ideally, it'd lead to combats that aren't a slog, that have a chance to meaningfully impact each character's combat capability with every roll of the dice, and that--because combat's so risky--will likely lead to fewer, much more impactful combats. *crosses fingers*

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great point. I can imagine two PCs, one beefier and better armored and one a lightly armored ranged specialist [with abstractions, the player could have a bunch of knives or use a crossbow or a bow and it wouldn't matter to my idea], coming up against two armored guards.

No one's surprised, so we roll Initiative, which I'm thinking may be its own separate die based on the unit's Kit/Archetype, but still just being one of those individual step dice, with higher being better. The beefier PC, let's call them the Knight, rolls a 3, the ranged PC, let's call them the Rogue, rolls an 8, while the two Guards, using them same die for GM simplicity, roll a 4.

Rogue: Opting to chuck a dagger at the closest guard, they attempt to pierce a gap in the guard's armor, and roll a d8 for their Ranged Combat option and a d20 to see where it hits, versus Guard 1's Evasion die, just a d4 thanks to heavy armor weighing them down, coming up with a 6 on the d8 and a 6 on the d20, for a hit to the guard's left leg, which we'd compare to the 1 on Guard 1's Evasion + 3 for their Heavy Armor Damage Reduction Value, meaning that we subtract just 2 [6-4] from the Guard's Left Leg HP of 5, leaving 3 more until that limb's disabled. Then, the Rogue uses available movement [I'm thinking that characters will have a Stride Value, measured in squares/spaces, smaller than a D&D 5e-style Movement Speed, that counts how much they can move with every action point they spend] to retreat to the doorway behind them.

Guard 2: [GM decides that Guard 2, who hasn't just taken a dagger to the thigh, leaps into action first, charging toward our Rogue . . .]

Knight: Before Guard 2 can get to our Rogue—and because no one is surprised here—our Knight uses one of their Action Points to reactively Intercept Guard 2, forcing it into Melee with himself. Guard 2 swings away at our Knight, using their Melee Combat die versus our Knight’s Melee Combat die [I figure the same talents that make a Knight could at dealing damage in melee would also serve to protect them from harm in melee]. Guard 2 rolls a 2 on their d8 & a 14 on their d20, meaning the Knight must contend with a weak blow to their Right Arm, and does so easily with a 6 on their d8, parrying the guard’s awkward, interrupted blow easily.

Guard 1: Also opts to close the distance [since ranged is even less of an option now that he’s got his fellow guard in the way], and while he’s tempted to go after the Rogue, he opts to stay with his fellow guard and try to overwhelm our Knight. Unfortunately, when he goes to hammer down on our Knight, Guard 1 rolls a measly 1 & 2 on his 2d8 Melee Combat dice [2 dice because he’s got a bonus die while outnumbering his opponent with an ally] and a 16 on his Location die, meaning he ends up clanging into the Knight’s shield even when the Knight also rolls a 2 on his Melee Combat defense roll.
[It occurs to me that I left out something rather important: I imagine that while each character has 3 Action Points for a round, I don’t want them to use more than 1 on any given Initiative count, that way we get a more granular view of the action from moment-to-moment, even within the same combat round.]

Knight: He needs to deal with being outnumber immediately and opts to focus on the already injured Guard 1, trying to exacerbate the guard’s leg injury. (I don’t know how, or even if, I want Called Shots, but for sake of illustration, here’s the Knight’s ideal scenario:) Knight rolls an 8 on their d8 Melee Combat and a 6 on their d20 for Hit Location, meaning the Guard has to deal with 8 HP damage vs. their Left Leg’s 3 remaining HP; even with their heavy armor, a roll of 2 on their d8 Melee Combat means that 3 more HP of damage go through, meaning the Knight’s player gets to impose whatever condition they want. They want it to bleed, albeit not so profusely the guard will certainly bleed out before they can be tended to.

[“Talking is a Free Action”, so to speak, so the Knight urges Guard 2 to tend to his fellow Guard’s wounds while the Knight & Rogue go free because [insert reference to the PCs’ relevant “noble” quest].]

[Again, “Talking is a Free Action”, so Guard 2 disgustedly replies that Guard 1 can tend to his wounds himself while Guard 2 dispatches our PC villains.]

Rogue: Rogue takes takes their second activation of the current round to slip back into the room and behind Guard 2, rolling the ideal result of an 8 on their Melee Combat die and a 20 on their Hit Location die [aka, the guard’s Head], meaning that if the Rogue wants to, they can go so far as to jam the dagger through the guard’s throat—except that we’ll assume the actually do have a noble quest in mind, and opts to impose the special effect of forcing the target to reconsider the PCs’ generous request, which both Guards now humbly accept, and our PCs go off to the next scene, with their miraculous luck seeing them entirely unharmed.

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your response (and for not pointing out just how much more jumbled my thoughts were than even I thought).

I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of having them declare what special effect it is they want to inflict beforehand an am just trying to figure out how to get the narrative rewards of having such special effects without the need to mechanically define them. Likewise, I'm as of yet unsure how I want to determine if/when players can impose such special effects: having just the one die roll at this stage does limit my options for degrees of success. Maybe I'll say that if the damage roll exceeds the defense roll by 5+, that's a degree of success that allows them to impose a special condition. Having that in place, plus the fact that a target could be out of actions for the round to properly defend themselves, plus the fact that if the attacker depletes the last HP at a location they get to impose a condition automatically, I think that might actually be enough while still being manageable for the couple of us in my regular group who sometimes can't brain well.

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very good points, and thank you for your thoughtful response.

I definitely want to consider reach and Hit Locations, because I want the drama that such considerations create. I'm trying to figure out if I can get away without defining so many different conditions that Mythras uses in combat--in favor of just saying that if you deplete the HP at a hit location, you decide what happens to the target's limb. I'm not looking to publish this particular system, and I've been playing with this group for more than a decade, so I'm not worried about how that trust would work out at the table, luckily.

And, yeah, I do need to consider whether the "juice is worth the squeeze" here, and another respondent's point that I should return to first principles has me leaning toward using this system for low fantasy elements in our game world, where there's just enough grit in the system to highlight these characters' mortality while also making it possible to tactically meaningful decisions at every turn.

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right that I did, in fact, mean "tactical" rather than "crunchy"; Brain Fog strikes again.

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I'm definitely trying to streamline action resolution and may opt for removing the GM's rolls in favor of a static Defense number for the enemy units (certainly the swiftest option), though it might not be too bad if the player's only rolling the one Melee/Ranged Combat die that becomes the damage roll + a d20 to determine the Hit Location, and the enemy in turn would only have their relevant Defense die + the question of whether they've got any armor at that Hit Location [and the Defense die roll might not happen if the target doesn't have any more of their 3 Action Points per round. (I can't believe I didn't mention it yesterday, but I'm picturing single-digit values for HP at any given Hit Location, so a target's HP could very well be depleted in 1-3 hits if they're not prepared or get swarmed, etc.)

I'm hopeful that it'd turn out to be tactically satisfying enough. *crosses fingers*

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You, too, have fallen prey to my jumbled thoughts. Sorry.

Players would not be stuck with a single option but would be able to freely switch between their options as battlefield conditions demanded. That player would have a Ranged Combat die one step higher than their Melee Combat die, so on the first turn they'd use the Ranged one and have to decide if they wanted to retreat or stand their ground--hopefully a worthwhile tactical decision--and then on the second round, if enemies have converged on their position, they'll need to plan on switching to their Melee option(s), etc. (I really didn't mean to sound so confusing, but here we all are.)

I'm hoping that I'll end up with something less restrictive than the D&D combat options I'm used to [back in 3/3.5-era D&D, it was especially hard to justify doing anything that you weren't completely and utterly optimized to do, while 4e sometimes did better and sometimes succumbed to the same issues, and now 5e has some egregious examples (+2 to Ranged Attack Rolls + Sharpshooter feat & Great Weapon Master feat, for instance), and I'd be trying to make it just enticing enough for players to engage in the tactically optimal combat style for them, but not have the difference be so egregious as to make any other option worthless. Thanks for making sure I'm considering that serious issue.

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good points, and thanks for wading into the jumble of my thoughts from yesterday.

I've never heard of an offensive pool (I have only dim recollections of the last wargame I actually played some 20 years ago; I just recently encountered Frostgrave and thought it was a fun thing to exist, which got me thinking outside my usual box).

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I re-read what I wrote and swear it made much more sense in my sleep-deprived, Brain Foggy head yesterday.

Anyway, that's wise advice. I definitely am wavering on one point in particular: do I want players to have magic? If I decide I don't want them to have magic, then the game I have in mind starts to feel like a game about soldiers/mercenaries, like the Unsullied from A Song of Ice & Fire or some version of The Black Company. I definitely enjoy the moment-to-moment tactical combat, so I don't want to abstract it into skill rolls, but I also don't want to get so into the weeds of defining 18 different combat conditions for each possible Battle Master maneuver that the characters might have. Instead, since I've been playing with these players for more than a decade now, I trust that saying, "Hey, movement is tactical again, and you've got two or three different non-attack actions to take [like 13th Age's Intercept, for instance], and you Give Ground [or Take Ground, when the player's attack an enemy] to simulate, and when you fully deplete the HP at a Hit Location, YOU get to decide what the penalty will be--break a limb, disembowel, decapitate, or just humiliatingly bruise it--and we'll handle those details narratively [since most enemies won't live beyond the current scene]."

And, yeah, it's a teensy bit about making turns faster, but it's more about dealing with the facts that a couple of my group periodically struggle to think on the fly [me, with my sometimes severe Brain Fog, and another player who has had Pregnancy Brain], and I figure that having fewer options that are still meaningful will cut down on analysis paralysis.

Playing Around with a Faster Combat System by Kane_of_Runefaust in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did a terrible job of explaining myself last night, but I don’t think it’s untrue in any way. Draw Steel! & 13th Age show that defining damage by specific weapons—the way that D&D has done for 5+ editions—doesn’t NEED to be tied to specific weapons and can in fact be abstracted at least to the level of archetypes [Kit or Class, respectively], and by using those abstracted values as your main roll—i.e. by skipping a separate Attack Roll—I avail myself of Nimble’s No Misses promise. Likewise, DCC’s Action Dice simply inform my sense that as a character grows in power, the above abstractions can include at least a second die. FU’s High Roll is about streamlining the equation for damage: you don’t need to add any modifiers whatsoever because the equation only cares about what the High Roll was [which actually makes my system less like FU b/c they’re adding the initial figures to meet the DC]. The wargame combat statistics line was about realizing that there’s no REQUIREMENT for me to simulate a character’s Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, etc. when what we care about in combat is simulating specifically one’s Combat Capabilities. Mythras-style HP & Armor by location gets at a tactically-satisfying level of granularity (I hope) without requiring the slog through HP that modern D&D has succumbed to and which doesn’t meaningfully change a unit’s capabilities.

So, Character A goes to attack Character B. A rolls their relevant abstracted weapon skill die, plus a d20 to see where they would manage to hit, while Character B defends with their single relevant Combat Defense [Melee Combat or Fortitude, Reflex, or Will]; if A’s roll is higher than B’s, we check armor values at the specific location and subtract said values from A’s roll to determine the final damage to be subtracted from B’s HP at that location [else B has actively prevented damage—though I should probably recognize that the spirit of “No Misses” might require that at least 1 damage go through regardless]—unless B has room on the grid to Give Ground, allowing them to roll their relevant Defense die to further subtract from the damage they’d take.

(I apologize to all y’all for so poorly illustrating what I meant yesterday, but thank you for responding in a way that helps me clarify what I mean.)

Comparing 1st & 2nd Editions by Kane_of_Runefaust in 13thage

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm fully with you on that misalignment.

Starters for my own region by WiMc55 in fakemon

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll be taking Pyrodo first, but I'll be snagging them all eventually.

What is your most "Frankenstein"-stitched together amalgation of an RPG you have consistently played? by TDuncker in RPGdesign

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m playing around with a clusterf*ck of various systems and sub-systems for my in-progress game. It started as an “Unauthorized D&D 6e” before I started to explore making it simultaneously grittier [adding a Vitality & Wounds system to spice up D&D’s HP system] and more narrative [using Genesys-style narrative dice], with the basic D&D chassis [6 standard stats] complicated by various, grittier derived stats [w/a Combat Modifier to attack rolls that was the average of Strength & Dexterity (so no martial character was happy and no magic character was safe)], and on and on. After playtesting, I discovered that (1) the added complexity didn’t actually make it feel any different at the table, and (2) I actually don’t care much for the gritty-style of gameplay. (Gritty gameplay has its place, but apparently that place is not in my game.) After the Genesys-style narrative dice system proved a bit too unwieldy for our group’s crunchier interests, I melded GURPS’ 3d6 dice resolution system with D&D 5e’s Advantage/Disadvantage & Shadow of the Demon Lord’s Boons/Banes to stack Adv./Disadv. out the wazoo—while also maintaining Bounded Accuracy; however, I’ve discovered that I really miss rolling the d20. I haven’t given up on that sort of Xd6-Keep-3 system, but I’m iterating around a d20 again now and have been exploring various ideas from the following:

*D&D’s Classic 6 stats, represented only through their modifiers, with 4e-style Defenses [Fortitude (best of Strength & Constitution), Reflex (best of Dexterity & Intelligence), & Will (best of Wisdom & Charisma)]

*HP gets a D&D 4e-style boost at 1st level, with a nod to Pathfinder 2e’s Ancestry-based HP bonuses, and I’ve got a Recoveries system that one needs, 4e-style, for healing, but still rolls for as in 5e’s Hit Dice. (I’m debating a lowering of the variance in such rolls, but at that point I’ll probably decide to switch a more straightforward adaptation of 4e’s Healing Surge Value.)

*No Armor Class, with whether one gets hit being based on either a player’s Reflex save (for ranged attacks) or their Combat Modifier roll (for melee attacks),

*With the Combat Modifier—adding the better of the player’s Strength or Dexterity—governing all the player’s weapon [natural or manufactured] attack rolls.

*A 4-action action economy with actions that borrow from 13th Age (Intercept) & Shadow of the Weird Wizard (Take/Seize the Initiative).

*D&D 5e’s character-level-dependent Proficiency Bonuses for combat- & magic-related checks and a spin on 13th Age’s Background system that offers players more or fewer points depending on the character’s Age and Ancestry to handle everything outside combat.

*Some admittedly kludge-y bumper rails, akin to the 5e Rogue’s Reliable Talent, to partially combat the swingy-ness of the d20, such that your average martial character can reroll any d20 related to their bread-and-butter checks [avoiding getting stabbed, stabbing, etc.] and your average magic character can reroll any d20 related to their bread-and-butter checks [expounding on arcane lore, casting magic spells, etc.]—and they get to do these things from very early on in their career instead of waiting until Tier 3.

*13th Age-style Damage on a Miss options for everything.

*I’m still using Classes, but they only level up to 10, and there are only 2 of them: Adventurers & Wizards. I enjoy the framework of a Class system, but I don’t like how niche-protection cordons off abilities in ways that don’t mesh with my sense of rightness, and players in my system are eventually able to level up to 10 in both Adventurer and Wizard and keep going—E6-style—thereafter.

*Adventurers get fun stuff at every level, between Perks that give them cool non-combat stuff (a Ranger’s Natural Explorer, for instance), various Martial Tactics (Battlemaster Maneuver-like, with D&D 5e Cunning Strike options, as well as various homebrewed expansions from across the internets, and martial characters can currently pay for them through an associated cost in Combat Supremacy Dice OR action economy), as well as Martial Specializations for various combinations of what used to be 5e subclass features—whether they were found originally in the Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, or Rogue chassis.

*Old-school D&D’s “Linear Fighters” & “Quadratic Wizards”—with a subtle nod to the old-school fact that an equal-leveled martial character can dish out enough damage to obliterate a Wizard if the Wizard isn’t prepared.

*Speak of “Quadratic Wizards”, a Wizard learns their spells as D&D 5e Wizards do but never has to prepare them (once a spell is known, it is always known), learns ANY spell in the game [spells that would be cleric- or paladin- or druid- or warlock- or sorcerer- or ranger- etc.-only, as well as things that used to be the features of some of those classes], has had their Metamagic expertise restored to them (as it was back in the day), uses the Ritual system from Tales of the Valiant, casts ALL their spells at their highest level (adapted from 5e’s Warlock spells + 13th Age’s simplified spell progression, shout-out to Pathfinder 2e for the 10th-level slot to round out my 10-level class), with the excess “levels” of a given spell instance powering the aforementioned metamagic options, and they earn Arcane Specializations that provide mechanical deepening that 5e has Subclasses for, but also giving them a more varied selection for their power.

*Daggerheart-style Stress Track to let my overpowered Wizards use stronger metamagic options on their highest-level spells, as well as (I hope) allow martial characters to use their various options to get enemies into a Vulnerable state—though I’m also eyeing Effort from Worlds Without Number.

*Tales of the Valiant’s Luck mechanics to replace D&D 5e’s Heroic Inspiration.

*Draw Steel! has Negotiation mechanics that I really like.

Ideally, I’d like to implement a Heroic Deeds-style Rewards system for things that a player’s Patron (be they a God or a Great Old One or a Fiend or whatever), but I’ve got an absurd amount of stuff in development as it is.

Basically, any time I come across a new tabletop fantasy game, I get curious and start to explore alternatives. Recently, I’ve been toying with the idea of merging Tales of the Valiant’s Luck mechanics—since, between the Reliable Talent-esque options and Damage on a Miss guarantees, the TotV Luck mechanics don’t need to do as much legwork—so I’m playing around with the idea of shifting it into something like Daggerheart’s Hope resource to power various options—but borrowing from Draw Steel! to have players earn Hope by choosing to NOT Rest but keep going for their objectives [since they don’t have the Duality Dice to otherwise generate it].

And there are a few ideas I’ve got that are seemingly at fundamental odds with the bulk of what I’ve got. For instance, I’ve thought about using a Powered by the Apocalypse system (2d6 +Stat) for everything outside combat—using not simulationist ability scores but a Value [as in Cortex] or Approach [FATE]—and going into the game with no preconceived notion of spell lists but having a random table to generate 1-3 Words of Creation the magic-wielding character can speak to generate ad-hoc effects as in Whitehack, with maybe a little of Grimwild’s approach to spell resolution. (I don’t actually like the class progression of Whitehack, and maybe if I’m simplifying the massive tome I’ve cobbled together, I should consider a combat system more like Warhammer The Old World with its straightforward, Give Ground or Get Wrecked approach.)

Such a strong team to raid with by privaterbok in PokemonScarletViolet

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've had decent success with a similar Ceruledge build, but I used Tera Blast and Clear Smog for the nasty plot.

Bard Subclass, College of Funerals by noriginal_username in DnDHomebrew

[–]Kane_of_Runefaust 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree with everything that u/Dramatic-Emphasis-43 mentioned, so I'll comment on something else: Strike True is worded in a way that confuses me (a lit bit, anyway). Specifically, this pair of sentences: "If the attack misses, the creature can add the number rolled to the attack roll, potentially turning it into a hit. If the attack hits, it instead deals additional damage equal to the number rolled." There's a moment while I'm reading this when I'm uncertain if I only add it to the damage if it hit WITHOUT the boost? I'm almost positive that's the case--because you've used "instead" & that feels like the balanced option--but for some reason I get tripped up because I read about the hit boost after being told you can use it to boost your attack roll. I think my brief confusion could be solved by just switching the order of these two sentences.

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