01-29-2018, 01:36 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
While I wholeheartedly support the "get comfortable with the standard system" approach, I will say that a couple of times when the combat was getting in the way of the story and all the players were not into gaming a fight. I used the mass combat rules (specifically 3rd edition) to run through things faster. This sped things up and by and large produced a middle of the road outcome.
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01-29-2018, 01:52 PM | #12 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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01-29-2018, 04:03 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dobbstown Sane Asylum
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills? (SOME STATISTICS...)
Agreed, which is why I split this into its own thread.
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01-30-2018, 12:40 AM | #14 | |||||
Join Date: Jan 2018
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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Sindri and D10 convinced me above that trying to use Quick Contests to determine combat would break the game and have unintended consequences. It would probably require re-engineering GURPS. However, I DO like the simplicity of the idea we are discussing. Maybe someday when I have the mechanics of the standard rules down I can revisit and try some re-engineering... On a separate note, did you check out my plots in my link above? I'll repost HERE . The PDF files shows the probability of successful attacks given different attacker/defender skill levels combinations when using either the current GURPS combat rules, or the alternative we are discussing. I think the plots show some interesting features of the game mechanics. For instance, look at the image in Combat_v_Dodge.pdf . (Sindri, if you are reading, I fixed the problem in this plot that you mentioned above.) Under the regular GURPS attack and defense by Dodge rules, ridiculously high attack skills are pointless when the defender has a 16 or higher in their Dodge skill. The probability of successful attack never rises above ~10%, no matter how skilled the attacker. On the other hand, I prefer the constant diagonal plots from the Quick Contest rolls (either with or without critical hits) as shown in the other PDF files. I'd love to hear your thoughts on them! Thanks for your post! |
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01-30-2018, 02:18 AM | #15 | ||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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That said, there is some room for automatic scaling of attack quality. Its not necessarily crazy to let people's margin of success convert to deceptive penalties after the fact but at a ratio of 4-1 or something instead of the 2-1 of normal Deceptive Attack. Or to say that targeting the torso vitals is actually just targeting the torso at a -1, but if you succeed by 2 or more you hit the vitals instead. Quote:
It wouldn't even break the game to have the entirety of a combat resolved as a quick contest if you could find an answer to questions like "what does my ST give me?". Naturally that's way too fast of a resolution mechanic for any game that cares about combat, but if the only combats liable to occur are lower lethality and the campaign being run doesn't really care about the details of combats it could work. Quote:
1. Get a really high attacking skill level. After all, they dropped some serious character points on their stupid dodge trick (the specifics will depend on how much DX and how much HT is contributing to their Basic Speed). If you're allowed to buy a high enough combat skill you'll be able to afford enough Deceptive Attack penalties to burn through their dodge. 2. Turn that retreat into the conditional bonus it nominally is. If two people attack them with swords their retreat only applies to one of them. If you can drive them into a literal corner they'll have difficulty retreating. That's 3 points right there. 3. Rapid strike. The more attacks you throw at them, the more chance they have to fail their dodge. 4. Rapid fire, ideally with low Recoil. You don't dodge each rapid fire shot individually, but instead need to get a margin equal to the number of shots you need to dodge. That means that someone with a laser rifle with its Recoil of 1 effectively is from some perspectives in a quick contest with you. 5. Feint. That's a quick contest that if won gives your foe penalties next attack. Can be combined with option 3 effectively. 6. Shock. If you can get some damage in that'll make their next defense worse. And that's not comprehensive by any means. Last edited by Sindri; 01-30-2018 at 02:35 AM. |
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01-30-2018, 05:02 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: May 2009
Location: In Rio de Janeiro, where it was cyberpunk before it was cool.
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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That radically alters the defense probability For instance, my character has a parry and a block of 24 and a dodge of 16, usually 19 with haste. But then I get attacked by an enemy with brawling at 44. 44-16 = 28 28/2 = 14 That means when I defend I have -14 on the roll. My parry and block go from 24 to 10. My dodge goes from 19 to 5. If I retreat (im a fencer), my parry will be 13 and my dodge might get to 10 with the addition of an acrobatics roll. In this scenario my defense is far from being a certainty, and I know that these are very high skill levels, but due to this, I never experienced that which you refer as "defense score of 16 means I get hit almost never" Usually we use all at our disposal to survive. You also have many other things you can use to affect probability of defense rolls. Climate, visibility, bad ground, stunning the enemy, using buffs and other defenses. Just something to consider Last edited by D10; 01-30-2018 at 05:09 AM. |
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01-30-2018, 05:04 AM | #17 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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However it functionally turns every attack into a deceptive attack* equal to the Margin of Success of the Attacker's success roll for free. Without requiring a conscious choice weighing the usual gamble of the trade off by the attacker. Similarly skilled attackers in the system tend to weigh the knowledge that they are likely to be doing a good attack (i.e one with lots of MoS) to load up on penalties to leverage that MoS for positive effects. But the point is they make that choice before rolling the dice to see how many MoS they get. The 3d6 bell curve makes this prediction easier than say a d20 though! I think the net effect will be to give more advantage to the more skilled against the less skilled especially when you take into account how the 3d6 bell curve will distribute MoS to each. Which is not a problem in abstract of course! Honestly the same advice I gave earlier applies here, run some combats with your system see if you like the result more than the RAW system. *deceptive attacks here would be a 1:1 trade off not the usual 2:1 trade off due to Defences being just skill not (Skill/2)+3 I assume? Quote:
Only If I have skill 26 I can do a -10 deceptive attack that will still give me 98.1% of being on target with my attack, but will drop that dodge skill from 16 to 11 for functionally no trade off for me (even my chances of a critical success and failure won't change) but a large benefit in terms of overall likelihood of a successful hit buy dropping the changes of dodging. Last edited by Tomsdad; 01-31-2018 at 03:46 AM. |
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01-30-2018, 05:48 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cambridge, MA
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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Otherwise good points all around. Given the existence of Deceptive Attacks and Feints, turning attacks/defenses into QCs offers no advantage that I can see and plenty of disadvantages against the existing system. Among other things, the proposed system takes away a sense of agency from players. One of the coolest things about GURPS is that as a player you have many choices about how to attack and how to defend. Do I make a Deceptive Attack and risk missing for a chance to punch through enemy defenses? Do I use my retreat or my extra effort options against this attacker or save them for a later one? Should I commit my paired weapons to a cross parry or have more parries to cover more attacks? Should I risk trying to use Acrobatics on this Dodge, knowing that failure will make my Dodge even worse? Should I Dodge and Drop, knowing I'll end up on the ground if I do? How can I maneuver around my opponent to get in for a side attack or circumvent his shield? Which All-Out Defense option should I choose? You could turn many of these into analogously meaningful choices in a QC system, but it would basically require a full system rewrite, and I really see no advantages to such a system. It's certainly not a simplification, as the number of rolls appears to be the same, and the amount of calculation required is similar. |
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01-30-2018, 12:30 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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02-01-2018, 02:42 AM | #20 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Combat- Why not contests of skills?
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(Actually, I am talking Contest too – a form of Regular Contest. But you're discussing Quick Contests.) Re play-test: Just in "arena battles" mode, not a campaign (i.e., the real test!). For typical PC ranges (skill 12-16 or so?), there's little change from GURPS' "skill/2+3", so not much to test. Things only change with very high weapon skills; what you're testing is essentially just "What happens when fighters have really high defense rolls?" The answers to that are pretty well-known: You get lots of successful defenses, unless attackers do something to thwart those (feints, swarming, grappling, etc.). Quote:
If "very good" means "aimed right at the center of the heart, not a couple inches to the side", then "very good" is certainly harder to perform, and a greater threat if performed successfully, but in this case it wouldn't make defense appreciably harder. (And as we know, that's how it plays in GURPS.) If "very good" means "performed with impressive speed (or other property) that challenges defense"... well, wait, where did that come from? That sort of thing is difficult to perform, just as the cardiac bullseye is difficult to perform. It should equally hold for both difficult tasks, IMO, that if I didn't say I was attempting to perform the difficult variant, and if I don't suffer any penalty for the attempt, then I didn't attempt it and I don't get to enjoy the benefit. That's my point (I hope it's clear). Quote:
In any case, I'm not saying that you can't rework combat to use these Quick Contests, only that you'd be creating system with more abstract combat resolution. Which is perfect if it's what you want; lots of games do something of the sort! My objection is just to a specific, uneven (IMO) mixture of more detailed + more abstract resolution, in which a heart-piercing accurate attack happens only if I intentionally attempt it and accept a penalty, but a defense-withering speedy attack happens automatically if the dice say so. Let's keep these on the same level, I say: either both difficult outcomes require success on a stated attempt with penalties (per GURPS), or both difficult outcomes can happen automatically on a good roll (per a Quick Contest... with the question of "so which one happened?" determined randomly, or selected by the attacker, or whatever). (Even that "objection" is a formality, not a recoil in horror. Some form of Quick Contest system like you describe could certainly do the job of getting on with the fights and reaching resolutions, and would probably do a fun job of it too, whatever quibbles the picky may have. : )
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