Basicier Combat

[TGLS]

This is only a sketch of an system

The Lightning Round
Each character involved in the combat decides what level of commitment for the combat round. This effects how many attacks they will attempt in the round and how likely they might be attacked. Count up each successful hit and its damage. After each attempt is resolved, randomly determine who is hit by each attack and apply damage if they fail to dodge.

[Balor Patch]

Originally Posted by mr beer

Isn't there a points system for monster threat ratings somewhere? Could you use those values as modifiers for a 3d6 Contest? If it's reduced to a single roll in that manner, you could use degrees of pass or fails to refer to results on a table.

So total your PCs Threat, total your monsters Threat, roll one Contest, refer to results.

You are probably thinking of It’s a Threat! by Christopher Rice in Pyramid 3/77.

[kirbwarrior]

A simple system I was working on with someone sometime back was just converting combat as a whole into a Regular Contest, where one person must lose and another win. In ties, each side lost some amount of resources based on the numbers of the opposition. Tactics, positioning, etc all were taken out and put into the hands of roleplaying. If a side wanted to escape (and had the possibility to), then the contest is dropped and the escaping side loses resources as if the fight was a tie. Turn length was ignored; In a frantic situation, the combat would be over in seconds, but in an arena, each roll could represent a minute's worth of fighting.

I never did figure out any hard numbers, though. I think the working function we had was to take (average damage - DR) and halve it. For group combat, it was a matter of highest damage and highest DR without halving, spread among the group as the defenders wanted. I think the contest itself was you choose your combat skill to roll against (Tactics gets a +2) and you get +1 for each ally. It definitely needed more playtesting.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Anders

IIRC, that led to high-skill fighters being unbeatable murder machines. Maybe apply the rule of 16 to that?

Maybe. Honestly, it almost seems like a given as the Rule of 16 - while still new - was found in Compendium I by this point.

Another option is to just roll with it. If combat needs to be fast, maybe murder machines are intentional, if not acceptable.

I also recommend, when dealing with two fighters of very low skill or two fighters of very high skill, scaling the scores to more manageable numbers. If the goal is speed it makes sense to avoid constant double failures/double close successes. Basically, use something like the rules found in "Contests of ST for Very Weak or Very Strong Characters" (p.CI13). Sorry, I'm sure this is in 4e someplace (probably even in Basic), but I couldn't find it and just remembered where the 3e version of the rules were.