"Better" Combat Systems in RPGs - Feedback Welcome!

[dragoner]

Given our discussions over the years, you using BRP doesn't surprise me.

I will say that, in armor, I've taken hits that have damaged the armor, but not me inside it. ANd hits that did damage me but not as much as they should. Case in point (intentional pun), I did a hand parry that took a chop and converted it into a slash while fencing (rapier) - the nicks from the days fencing resulted in a serration, which opened a slice through the 8oz leather glove, but not into the webbing of the thumb, tho' it did leave a small surface scratch. Likewise, fighting SCA Heavy, I took a hit to the arm which bent the brass rings of the ring-on-leather¹ I was wearing, but didn't break my arm; instead, it left a 4" × 2" bruise in the pattern of the rings.

1: ring on leather is rings sewn to leather, not mail over leather.

Blunt force trauma is a thing. I mean there is some ablation going on, it is just if the armor subtracts 20 and my max damage is 24, say with a Gauss Rifle, the fact that it will only ever do a maximum of 4 points of damage is not very plausible. Maybe if damage reduction was modified to "if armor penetrated by x amount then full damage as rolled is done"; however, that way seems to be going to too much crunch or extra rules on top of rules. Armor itself in frame of reference should probably be considered individual from the wearer, simultaneously warding and taking damage itself, until degraded and useless; which would be realistic.

 

[GMMichael]

I believe that to model the tactical effect of combat well, you would need to track will, blood loss, and structural damage.

Many people simply quit when they get hurt; I've seen this both in the military and in law enforcement. In game terms, I would restrict this to NPCs, as reducing character motivation to a die roll for a PC would not be a good idea.

Adrenaline, raw emotion, and drugs can and has kept people fighting after a mortal wound is inflicted, but a broken bone or cut tendon cannot be completely overcome (in most cases). And when your blood pressure drops to a certain point, you're going down.

I've yet to find an effective way to model this, but the dream lives on.

In Numenera, you have three stages of health: Might, Speed, and Intellect. You can lose all of your Might pool, and continue fighting with Speed and Intellect. That's like fighting after getting hurt, right? If you burn through your Speed pool though, Intellect doesn't do much more than keep your heart beating.

In D&D, a couple of house rules would suffice. Your hit points would represent blood loss. Run out of those and your will won't matter much. Each time you take a hit, regardless of damage, you'd tick off a willpower point. Exceed your class-appropriate ability score for will, and you become Frightened. Finally, a hit-location chart would add a structural effect every time, say, a critical hit occurs.

In Modos RPG, you can take Mental damage which is separate from Physical damage. Deciding to quit could be related to that Mental damage. Like D&D (5th ed, anyway) your character has Flaws that could represent structural damage. A few house rules here could set up a sturdy framework for your dream system.

If you don't want to house-rule anything, there's always GURPS.

 

[Jd Smith1]

If you don't want to house-rule anything, there's always GURPS.

I've been gaming since 1979, and things have never gotten that desperate.

 

[aramis erak]

Maybe if damage reduction was modified to "if armor penetrated by x amount then full damage as rolled is done"; however, th

Welcome to MegaTraveller...
If Pen > 2×AV, damage = listed
If Pen > AV, damage = 1/2 × listed
If pen > ⅒ x AV, damage = ⅒ × listed
If To Hit made by 0: post-AV damage ×½
If To Hit made by 1: post-AV damage ×1
If To Hit made by 2-3: post-AV damage ×2
If To Hit made by 4-7: post-AV damage ×4
If To Hit made by ≥8: post-AV damage ×8
Now round to nearest whole. That's how many of your hits go away (joe average is 7, in the form "3/4", while the buffest K'kree can exceed 20...).
When the adrenaline wears off, or unconsciousness threatens, convert hits damage dice damage to atts. Note that fully enclosed rigid armor (Battle Dress (aka Battlesuits) and Vehicles) treat P/AV <1 as D×0

In play, it's not too bad. I'd rather it simply added the to-ht margin to the pen... and used P/V >⅒ = D×⅒, ≥½ = D×½, ≥ 1 = D×1, ≥2 D×2 ≥3 D×3... to a max of D×4

 

[dragoner]

Welcome to MegaTraveller...
If Pen > 2×AV, damage = listed
If Pen > AV, damage = 1/2 × listed
If pen > ⅒ x AV, damage = ⅒ × listed
If To Hit made by 0: post-AV damage ×½
If To Hit made by 1: post-AV damage ×1
If To Hit made by 2-3: post-AV damage ×2
If To Hit made by 4-7: post-AV damage ×4
If To Hit made by ≥8: post-AV damage ×8
Now round to nearest whole. That's how many of your hits go away (joe average is 7, in the form "3/4", while the buffest K'kree can exceed 20...).
When the adrenaline wears off, or unconsciousness threatens, convert hits damage dice damage to atts. Note that fully enclosed rigid armor (Battle Dress (aka Battlesuits) and Vehicles) treat P/AV <1 as D×0

In play, it's not too bad. I'd rather it simply added the to-ht margin to the pen... and used P/V >⅒ = D×⅒, ≥½ = D×½, ≥ 1 = D×1, ≥2 D×2 ≥3 D×3... to a max of D×4

There is also attenuation in there. I never thought the MT personal combat rules were bad in and of themselves, except that we were already playing 2300, and T2K. MT's Hard Times is a great supplement, one of the best for Traveller, which had a lot of good supplements. Don used to talk some of MT in pm and emails we had about T5, he was really an MT guy. I think he yelled at Dave Nielsen at GenCon that TNE was commiting genocide on the setting.

I think probably around 2009 I was more interested in a quicker system. Partially because as the older wargame crowd faded away, complex system often were loaded onto the GM to do the calcs, as the players wanted to just roll. I don't mind using tables, because I use them at work at a lot, they are easy to read for me.

My Father was a soldier, fought, and was wounded. Judging by his experience when he was bayoneted (he had scars like Frankenstein's Monster), that combat was like he saw three guys come out of the mist, he knew at that point he was probably finished, so Morale Check; he shot one with his SMG, clubbed down the second, then was bayoneted in the back by the third. So maybe just some DC's, he failed the wound check, but passed the second DC, a death save. One could apply +/- by armor, skill, experience, battlefield conditions, etc.; we talked about it, and he thought CT's sort of chaotic randomness was a more accurate representation than AD&D's more formal style.

 

[aramis erak]

There is also attenuation in there.

Yep, But, if one's Traveller games mirror reality, Attenuation's not going to matter for anything but the body pistol.

we talked about it, and he thought CT's sort of chaotic randomness was a more accurate representation than AD&D's more formal style.

My fencing and living in bad neighborhoods puts me close to agreement. I prefer the MT convert damage points to atts as a simplifiction, and it also matches the published data on one-shot stops and one-shot kills a bit better. It also lets me run mass combat without having to convert everything to similar sized units.

Then again, I tweak MT for swinging-from-the-chandeliers level swashbucklers-in-space feel... (the multiplier breakpoints change for Pen/Atten to ≥0.1 = × 0.1 vs soft armor and ×0 for hard, ≥ 0.5 = ×0.5, ≥1 = ×1, ≥2 = × 2; I use Att/3 instead of Att/5, and increase the TN by 1.

As for Mr. Nilson... he basically shat upon the setting. Marc approved the Virus, and it implies it wasn't Mr. Nilson's brainchild, but he did ride that puppy into ground, and then accuse fans of CT of being delusional in print. Many fans would rather see the Aliens of the Rim vol 1 decanonized, thanks to the sh**show that was the ithklur and the introduction. And Don wasn't wrong... the sales numbers for TNE were a small fraction of MT. And TNE was in print longer.

Thing is... Mr. Nilson and his (as my buddy Cryton calls it) "Dark Traveller" brought mostly new players, rather than selling to the fans of prior. Some of us tried it - I ran four campaigns of it... one converted to MT midway through at player request. The other three? A TPK, a TPK, and a successful return from a trip into the wilds... which ended with a near TPK as they blew up a power plant that was virused.

It was mishandled. It found an audience at the cost of alienating a large part of the existing one.