[GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

For a while now I followed with interest Nymdoks attempts to create a way to balance melee enounters:

[GM] Individual Melee Combat Balance

[GM] At last! A combat Matrix is Born(sort of)

[Balance - Worked Example] Your basic Orc encounter



Finally I dicided to incorporate his works explained on his web page into an easy to use spreadsheet.

Goal is it to supply GM (especially ones with little experience in balancing melee encounters) with a tool that makes it quick and easy to check how dangerous planned encounters will probably be for the PC.


I used Nymdoks basic approach but added two little things that should generate more accurate resuts.

1. Included a factor that reduces the defense probability if you outnumber / or are beeing outnumberd by your foes. This ought to simulate that it is of advantge to outnumber an enemy with a limited number of defenses.

2. Accounted for HT-values. If someone has a high HT value it is more likely that he will successfully pass his HT checks when his HP reach a HP barrier (e.g. 0 HP, -1xHP, -2xHP etc.). Thus he will longer stay in combat which means that you have to inflict more damage to get him to the next HP barrier or until he finally reaches the ultimate -5xHP barrier.



Naturally this can not simulate the complexity of GURPS melee combat nor can it take into account the fast number of possible maneuvers and situations during a melee encounter. It is after all a strong abstraction. But it is still a tool that will help GM to get a feeling for the numbers involved in melee combat and possibly helps to balance future encounters in order to keep the PC alive. (Note: In order to keep PC alive the tool tends to err in favour of the PC.)



Please feel free to use the "GURPS - Combat Balancer v.1.0" and report any bugs as well as comment on this project and give suggestions for improvement.



Format: MS-Excel, GURPS - Combat Balancer v.1.1.xlsx, 54KB
Temporarily you can download the sheet from here. But since I can't constantly use this web space I would ask anyone who is inclined to help this project and has some web-space available to host it - thanks!

Re: [GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

I like it! Thanks a lot!

Re: [GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

Wow! Nice Work! Look forward to trying it out!

Nymdok

Re: [GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

I updated the Combat Balancer:


v1.1

The Combat Balancer works with average numbers for damage and DR. This lead to the problem that when the average DR was as high or higher than the average damage dealt, there was no possibility to inflict damage, even when the maximal possible damage could penetrate DR.

This has been fixed in the current version.

Re: [GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

You could easily host that excel file on a variety of free hosting services (or in Google Docs), but if you prefer, I can host it on my website (just as I do for the "Collection of GURPS Spells" you see on my signature).
Just send me a PM.

Re: [GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

Does anyone have this hosted anywhere?

Re: [GM] Melee Combat Balancer
 

Is this file still alive somewhere?