Looking for House Rules on Attack and Defense rolls { was: Combat House rules }

[Kromm]

While I'm proud of my work on GURPS Martial Arts, I'll admit that its goal is to layer more depth onto combat, increase player choice, and generally move toward "combat is a chess game where you must think hard about which of a huge number of moves will be your next move." It isn't the right book for a group that has trouble with the far more modest combat detail in the Basic Set; it adds about as much to combat as GURPS Magic adds to Chapter 5 of the Basic Set, or as GURPS Low-Tech, GURPS High-Tech, and GURPS Ultra-Tech add to Chapters 8 and 17. Basically, it blows the few chapters on combat out into a full-length book, with all that implies for decision-making in combat.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

It's more rewarding than learning dedicated Techniques which penalise enemy defences (a Technique that gives -1 to enemy defences has -4 to its base value, MA91).

In general, if you go to a quick contest model, you want to double any effects that reduce enemy defenses (you also want to use full skill instead of half skill for calculating defense levels, and twice speed for calculating dodge).

Going with Only the Best Shall Win is basically equivalent to a flat reduction in target defense of around 2 points.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In general, if you go to a quick contest model, you want to double any effects that reduce enemy defenses (you also want to use full skill instead of half skill for calculating defense levels, and twice speed for calculating dodge).

That's good to know.

[Gef]

Two observations:

I'm now running a gladiator game. We started with one-on-one practice fights between PCs, then moved up to fighting against a weaker rival team, finally a fight against an equal team to first blood. The purpose was to teach the combat system. After a month of this, all the players undertand their options and the GM understands it all pretty well, so I can start introducing the intrigue, and when a fight occurs, we can take it in stride. Fortunately, my players have been patient with the process.

Having done this exercise, I've seen how well the ruleset hangs together, all the things it models well. The contest mechanic is a fundamental change, and while I've no doubt that it's an equally good mechanic that could be extended to model all the same things, this hasn't been done.How do you model two-against-one? Penalties for the one, I expect, but how large should they be? That takes some playtest to discover, and that's just one common situation. What about reach? Can a dude with a shortsword properly engage ina contest against a dude with a long spear? From the time when I tried it, many fights would screech to a halt while the GM decided how he'd try to handle some new wrinkle. If fighting isn't a big part of a campaign, if all hand weapons are treated equal as if they only differed cosmetically, then that's no problem. If any player designs a strong fighter and expects to make his contribution to the party's successes by holding off the bad guys, then I expect that he'll be disappointed.

GEF

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Gef

Two observations:

I'm now running a gladiator game. We started with one-on-one practice fights between PCs, then moved up to fighting against a weaker rival team, finally a fight against an equal team to first blood. The purpose was to teach the combat system. After a month of this, all the players understand their options and the GM understands it all pretty well, so I can start introducing the intrigue, and when a fight occurs, we can take it in stride. Fortunately, my players have been patient with the process.

A month of nothing but fights just to learn the combat rules (and rules that they don't totally care for) wouldn't go over well with this group. Frankly I don't want to digest all that either.

Having done this exercise, I've seen how well the ruleset hangs together, all the things it models well. The contest mechanic is a fundamental change, and while I've no doubt that it's an equally good mechanic that could be extended to model all the same things, this hasn't been done.How do you model two-against-one? Penalties for the one, I expect, but how large should they be? That takes some playtest to discover, and that's just one common situation. What about reach? Can a dude with a shortsword properly engage ina contest against a dude with a long spear? From the time when I tried it, many fights would screech to a halt while the GM decided how he'd try to handle some new wrinkle. If fighting isn't a big part of a campaign, if all hand weapons are treated equal as if they only differed cosmetically, then that's no problem. If any player designs a strong fighter and expects to make his contribution to the party's successes by holding off the bad guys, then I expect that he'll be disappointed.

GEF

I appreciate the comments but I don't think it will be a problem. Either we'll come up with something that works, the tips given in this thread seem like they'll help or just handwave it. Making the rolls contested doesn't mean dropping all modifiers and I don't see it would weaken a good fighter. You'll still need skilled combatants when fighting comes up. We just prefer combat as a contest if at all possible and don't really care to sift through allot of complicated modifiers and options to run fights.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Keiko

Probably more streamlined fights and contested attack and defenses gives a feel to combat that most of us prefer, some pretty strongly.

I'm hoping that you're talking only about your group.

Almost everybody else in this thread seems to support standard GURPS combat. As does almost everybody I've ever played GURPS with.

And yes, some of us have experimented with combat as a simple contest (even me) and yet we're back to using the more complex rules again.

If your system works for your group, then by all means use it.

However, there are ways to make the traditional combat system run easier for a group.

The first is to make sure as a GM to know the combat system inside and out. I've been studying basic combat and the martial arts extensions to it. Shortly I'll be running some mock combats with her character both to teach her and to help me relearn it (this is the first face to face I've run in over ten years). I'm already doing mock combats with myself, but Lee is shy and needs to learn the combat system also.

For my group I'm making a set of combat cards that will help to make their choices easier. They will have cards for just the skills and techniques they have available to them. I will try to arrange to have the cards be able to be distributed.

I also have a more detailed cheat sheet that I'll let my players use, though since that uses copied words from the GURPS books I can't distribute it.

These are just designed to allow the players to learn or relearn GURPS combat again; I have two new players and two older ones who have played GURPS 3e quite a while ago.

The first session will be spent going over the rules, including combat. I won't be going very deep, but they need to learn how to use skills, roll QCs, roll damage, use influence skills, and a bit of everything else I can think of. The players will need to learn about how dangerous the combat system is and what they can expect to happen if they shoot the average mook and visa versa.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I'm hoping that you're talking only about your group.

Yes, I am. Our opinion doesn't define the hobby.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

But how do you handle the case where one fighter has more attacks than the other?

They roll their attacks, defender rolls whatever defenses they have available.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Almost everybody else in this thread seems to support standard GURPS combat. As does almost everybody I've ever played GURPS with.

And yes, some of us have experimented with combat as a simple contest (even me) and yet we're back to using the more complex rules again.

GURPS seems to be engineered for people that enjoy really complex rules. There is some appeal to that. The noncombat skills and action resolution mechanics (particular the social) are pretty good and a real draw that everyone has liked. The combat not so much. All we really want/need is to know who gets hit and how much it hurts in a way that's easy and quick to handle, especially if you're just doing it in your head. The contested rolls add all the flavor we need/want to come from the mechanics.

I know its a preference. We get the same reactions from D and D players when it comes up we don't use battlemaps and minis in our games. Overall, we like combat to be breezy and fast but fun without a stack of rules to keep in mind. Hopefully the contested rules will work where the regular rules didn't. I can't really see going back to the standard rules if they don't.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Keiko

GURPS seems to be engineered for people that enjoy really complex rules. There is some appeal to that. The noncombat skills and action resolution mechanics (particular the social) are pretty good and a real draw that everyone has liked. The combat not so much. All we really want/need is to know who gets hit and how much it hurts in a way that's easy and quick to handle, especially if you're just doing it in your head. The contested rolls add all the flavor we need/want to come from the mechanics.

Well, most of the complex stuff is very optional. E.g. removing hit locations isn't going to break the game unless people actually want to use called shots to specific locations.

I suspect the thing with the Active Defence mechanism isn't so much that it is overly complex (at least before including Feints and Deceptive Attacks), but that it's totally alien to every other system I encountered. I mean, the idea of success by 0 being good enough to parry an attack success by 10 is extremely counterintuitive if taken without deeper analysis of the hows and whys of the system. I know it puzzled me when I first saw it.

Originally Posted by Keiko

I know its a preference. We get the same reactions from D and D players when it comes up we don't use battlemaps and minis in our games. Overall, we like combat to be breezy and fast but fun without a stack of rules to keep in mind. Hopefully the contested rules will work where the regular rules didn't. I can't really see going back to the standard rules if they don't.

Not using maps seems not all that rare. IME.