Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

[Thomas Shey]

If you are mitigating the effect of "realism" by a meta currency, then it is no longer realistic, is it?

Its as realistic as is possible for many settings. Its not like realism can't be selective. You don't see the kind of questions about what's actually going on when you have a basically realistic combat system that selectively puts its thumb on the scale, because you see what the result would be without that authorial intrusion. You can see the times when the character would have just got by via skill and armor and what all, and the times "they got lucky". That has pretty big look-and-feel effects, and can matter enormously with how things play out with NPCs or what happens when the player runs out of metacurrency.

(It also eliminates a lot of subsystem weirdness. You don't have to wonder what's going on with healing magic and high tech equivalents because they're only engaging with actual injury, not the conflated luck/defense/injury mix that a lot of traditional hit point models that have them going up with level do.)

(And there are ways to admix them in various ways--but most only address some of the issues. The question is if someone cares about those issues and to what degree).

I am not convinced that Savage World is that realistic, it is or can be more gritty.

I did say "in broad strokes".

 

[mmadsen]

I do not believe that it can be reduced to a simple single probability like this but if we run with your 10% number, in an average 4 round combat the fighter that gets hit around 4 times as a 34% chance of dying.
That is not a fun game at this point.

I don’t understand your complaint. Should four stab wounds have no chance of killing the fighter? A slightly lower chance?

Also, what should his chance of surviving eight stab wounds be? Zero? 100 percent?

 

[mmadsen]

If you are mitigating the effect of "realism" by a meta currency, then it is no longer realistic, is it?

If you’re mitigating the effect of realism with a meta-currency, then you’re explicitly skewing results when and where you want to in order to get the desired effect, so almost everything is realistic and makes sense, but the game isn’t broken when your PCs, fated for greatness, die ignominiously.

D&D doesn’t have a good way to represent competent characters without plot protection or incompetent characters with plenty of plot protection.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you’re mitigating the effect of realism with a meta-currency, then you’re explicitly skewing results when and where you want to in order to get the desired effect, so almost everything is realistic and makes sense, but the game isn’t broken when your PCs, fated for greatness, die ignominiously.

D&D doesn’t have a good way to represent competent characters without plot protection or incompetent characters with plenty of plot protection.

Yup. It explicitly draws a line between PCs and most NPCs, but in a way its like Bill Zebub said upthread: you can have realistic, no real line between NPCs and PC, and high heroic fantasy: pick two. If the setting is overall realistic but still high heroic fantasy, then the PCs have to be outside the norm in pretty pronounced ways. You can have realistic with less high-heroic fantasy (I ran RuneQuest for years after all), or no real line between NPCs and PCs and high heroic fantasy, but then the overall result isn't going to be particularly realistic in combat.

Its just that latter option is fine for a lot of people.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don’t understand your complaint. Should four stab wounds have no chance of killing the fighter? A slightly lower chance?

Also, what should his chance of surviving eight stab wounds be? Zero? 100 percent?

I dispute that they are realistic, that they represent the underlying physics, but they do satisfy the need for a sense of realism. If you like it have at it.

 

[mmadsen]

I think that a realistic combat system would make a much, much bigger deal out of morale and fear in combat. Even mundane foes should scare most people, leaving them shaken indefinitely, potentially frightened, and even panicked. In a modern fire-fight, I would expect most soldiers to be frightened and taking cover. The braver ones might be shaken and firing wildly. The bravest, or craziest, few might keep their cool and deliver pinpoint accuracy. (Those are the PCs, of course.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that a realistic combat system would make a much, much bigger deal out of morale and fear in combat. Even mundane foes should scare most people, leaving them shaken indefinitely, potentially frightened, and even panicked. In a modern fire-fight, I would expect most soldiers to be frightened and taking cover. The braver ones might be shaken and firing wildly. The bravest, or craziest, few might keep their cool and deliver pinpoint accuracy. (Those are the PCs, of course.)

This is part of why I've limited my discussion to damage mechanics. Morale is, shall we say, a fraught discussion, and there's a reason almost no RPG bakes it in (even the very limited way it was in Cyberpunk 2013 was controversial, and I doubt has survived to RED.)

 

[Bri]

I remember a time back when I was 10 in 70's and everything was so much simpler. Lol

AC just an old system and really easy if you don't have tables.

Attack bonus= level+ Dex+ weapon magic bonus if any.

Defense bonus=level+Dex+AC

Each character or monster calculate these two stats. Both roll d20. Both add either defense or attack bonus. If attacker has higher total, it's a hit.

D&D simplified so only need to roll once, but need tables to convert that Dex bonus, like a 15 Dex becomes a +1 to hit as an adjustment to the natural 50:50 chance. So basically attacker must roll a 10 to hit, but this is adjusted by tables

...

So it's kinda a choice. You can have extremely simple rules, but both attacker and defender must roll, or much more complex rules on how to calculate bonuses, but only attacker needs to roll.

 

[mmadsen]

This is part of why I've limited my discussion to damage mechanics. Morale is, shall we say, a fraught discussion, and there's a reason almost no RPG bakes it in (even the very limited way it was in Cyberpunk 2013 was controversial, and I doubt has survived to RED.)

In what limited way did Cyberpunk 2013 address morale?

Back in the day, Champions gave “shock and awe” a mechanic based on its charisma-like stat, Presence, with bonuses to this Presence Attack for bursting through a wall while yelling “It’s clobbering time!” (or whatever).

 

[Thomas Shey]

In what limited way did Cyberpunk 2013 address morale?

As I recall--and its been many a year since I used it so I may be misremembering--that the Cool stat plus the special Solo (combatant specialist background) skill was used to resist freezing in combat if you were wounded or certain other results happened. It wasn't sophisticated, but given how rare representing it at all is in games it stood out.

Back in the day, Champions gave “shock and awe” a mechanic based on its charisma-like stat, Presence, with bonuses to this Presence Attack for bursting through a wall while yelling “It’s clobbering time!” (or whatever).

Yeah, but that required active choice to do it (not that with proper setup it couldn't be useful to do), and it was difficult to get a sufficient multiple/bonus value high enough to produce a noticeable effect unless you started with a high Presence.