[GM] Individual Melee Combat Balance

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

I take as a given that all the attack manuvers are balanced already. I have NO statistical proof of this, but I assume that any glaring errors would have come up by now.

Well, they are "balanced" in a way that all maneuvers have serious drawbacks in a 1-on-1 ("skip" a turn, no defense). However, consider a brute with skill 10 and DR 20 vs a fencer with skill 20 but low DR and not enough strength to get through DR 20. Evaluate, feint, all-out-attack etc. suddenly make sense. Similarly, Aim seems like an essential maneuver for ranged combat.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

I specifically use deceptive attack (Even though it has its peculiarites) because its the only manuver that can reduce the Active defense of an opponent on the SAME turn its applied.

All-out-attack(Feint)? Or maybe a possible strategy is to Feint until you succeed and then follow up with a normal attack (deceptive, of course). Attacking every third turn (you win a quick contest about 50% of the time with equal skills, so after two expected rounds of feinting) is certainly bad, but the penalty to defense might make up for it (quite doubtful in most situations, but maybe I can figure it out precisely).

Originally Posted by Nymdok

NOTE: One fo the limitations of this model so far is that it assumes you dont Deceptive Attack your skill to below 16. I made this decision because below that, deceptive Attack can actually REDUCE your odds of landing a blow.

Umm, that would not be a limitation in your model if it was always like this. But: Skill 20 vs 20, thats attack 20 vs. defense 13 or defense 16 with a +2 shield and combat reflexes.
Assuming my math is correct, the chance to hit with 20 vs 13 reduced to 16 vs 11 is ... 42.6%, including automatical hits on a crit of <= 6.
If you further reduce to 14 vs 10 the chance to hit is 46.3%, but you have less good crits and risk more crit fails.
It's more pronounced with attack 20 vs. defense 16. Reduced to 16 vs 13 that's a 23.7% chance to hit, 14 vs. 12 is 24.9% and 12 vs 11 is 28.9%.

Anyway, I can see why 16 is a good point to land on, but it's not always the sweet spot for the chance to hit. I guess 75% less critical failures make up for 20% less hits, but I'm not entirely sure.

Regards, Ts