"Better" Combat Systems in RPGs - Feedback Welcome!

[JohnSnow]

More likely, people are thinking of a dodge being something like this:

 

[JohnSnow]

As far as mobility in full armor...

 

[Bilharzia]

More likely, people are thinking of a dodge being something like this:

View attachment 125449

That's an attack Vs a failed parry.
(B has a higher initiative, rolls first with a successful attack, A fails their parry)

 

[JohnSnow]

That's an attack Vs a failed parry.
(B has a higher initiative, rolls first with a successful attack, A fails their parry)

No, it's not.

If you read the text that accompanies the image, it's an evasion combined with a counter-thrust. Both cuts and thrusts can be evaded, and doing so is a fundamental part of medieval and renaissance swordplay. You have to time it right, but you can do it. General evasions are something you tend to do as part of fighting, but you can also choose to sacrifice your attacks and jump back out of range (Volta or Evade).

For the record, I'm not just speaking theoretically, as I have been actively studying this stuff for almost 20 years.

 

[JohnSnow]

Someone posted the tail end of a fight I did with my buddy 10 years ago on YouTube. That's me in the burgundy jerkin. Please note that this is not choreographed, we're just sparring, ergo not going "flat out." We've had better bouts, but nobody uploaded them to YouTube.

 

[Bilharzia]

No, it's not.

If you read the text that accompanies the image, it's an evasion combined with a counter-thrust. Both cuts and thrusts can be evaded, and doing so is a fundamental part of medieval and renaissance swordplay. You have to time it right, but you can do it. General evasions are something you tend to do as part of fighting, but you can also choose to sacrifice your attacks and jump back out of range (Volta or Evade).

For the record, I'm not just speaking theoretically, as I have been actively studying this stuff for almost 20 years.

In which case it's a parry(B), attack(B), failed parry(A).
I know what you're saying but the maneuver is impossible without the weapon, so it's subsumed within the parry action.

Martial experience is not that unusual in Mythras land tbh. Pete Nash, one of the system authors has been a practitioner for getting on 30 years now, and there are a fair few others. Dan True, who has written a couple of the combat modules, is a teacher and demonstrator. Come...to the dark and crunchier side...

 

[JohnSnow]

In which case it's a parry(B), attack(B), failed parry(A).
I know what you're saying but the maneuver is impossible without the weapon, so it's subsumed within the parry action.

If I correctly read what you're saying, you're counting "evasion" as part of parrying. Which I grant it often (typically?) is, but the official definition of "Parry" is "deflecting an incoming attack." And avoiding isn't deflecting. You can certainly evade a cut or thrust without having a weapon in hand. We do this at my school as a drill, just to teach people the importance of not just standing still. We take their weapons away and make them concentrate 100% on evasions.

I grant that once you have a weapon in hand, it's very hard to separate the two, and thus they should probably be subsumed in a single "defend" action, but parrying and evading are technically different things.

Moreover, we need to discuss the difference between "single time" actions and "double time" actions. In single time, you parry and counter attack in the same tempo, to whit...

SINGLE TIME:
First tempo: A closes and Attacks. B then simultaneously Evades and Counterattacks.

(Or alternatively, if B has two weapons (or a single one capable of doing both simultaneously), Parries and Counterattacks. Since A is already using his tempo to attack, he's screwed on a defense.)

Alternatively:
First Tempo: A Attacks. B Parries (or Evades, or Parries and Evades).
Second Tempo: B counterattacks. A Parries or Evades (or doesn't).
Repeat.

Many combat systems advocate for learning how to parry/evade and strike in single time, but it's something of an advanced move - probably best modeled as the ability to "counter-attack" on a failed attack (bringing this back to RPGs, Savage Worlds actually has an Edge called "Counterattack" that allows a character to do this).

 

[Li Shenron]

6) Damage matters, as weapons are DANGEROUS. In the real world, a single blow from a dagger can kill you. Attrition based health mechanics (cough*Hit Points*cough) are useful from a gaming sense, but they're problematic for believability. And they can tend to lead to sloggy combats.

I agree on mostly every other point but not on this one.

It's true that with not enough realism, there is no believability. But with too much realism, there is no game. Because someone who fights more that a few battles with swords and axes dies, or ends up maimed for life.

The required level of believability is already reached in many ways in a typical RPG game, thanks to many rules, for example ability scores (whatever the set) to represent different attitudes/abilities at the base of solving tasks. Something as apparently innocuous or subtle as a martial maneuver being usable exactly per-encounter instead of being tied to resting between encounters has a much stronger effect in destroying believability than HP.

People do not play RPG games because they want to replicate the experience of a RL character in a real-world war, they play to replicate the story of characters from movies, comics, books or computer games, characters who potentially and very unrealistically face hundreds of battles before dying, and sometimes also after.

Attrition based combat gives the players more time.

• time to change your tactic if it doesn't work
• time to try more weapons/tricks/abilities, just for fun
• time to make a mistake (a fundamental right when playing a non-competitive game!)
• time to run out of your best weapons and having to resort to secondary means
• time to realise you shouldn't have started this battle in the first place, and you can still run for your life

With a "realistic" weapon hit system, one hit means you're very likely out (unless it's boxing with gloves). How are you even going to figure out you are winning or losing?

If anything, 5e might have even a bit too fast attrition for having really enough time for all those things, but 4e has proven that if attrition is made too slow AND the battle is actually going well then players tend to just drag on until winning on points.

 

[LightStriker]

Combat can be thematic and exaggerated as well.
In my games, from homebrew to my own custom system, it captures the style and feel of the world, the characters, and the story.

In my current game, "Light Strikers" combat is tactical, but is based around super powers. So it feels like a turn based JRPG, as well as a MOBA, and provides plenty of room for "narrative" combat as well as creative actions on the fly.

 

[Bilharzia]

If I correctly read what you're saying, you're counting "evasion" as part of parrying. Which I grant it often (typically?) is, but the official definition of "Parry" is "deflecting an incoming attack." And avoiding isn't deflecting. You can certainly evade a cut or thrust without having a weapon in hand. We do this at my school as a drill, just to teach people the importance of not just standing still. We take their weapons away and make them concentrate 100% on evasions.

I grant that once you have a weapon in hand, it's very hard to separate the two, and thus they should probably be subsumed in a single "defend" action, but parrying and evading are technically different things.

I'm very doubtful of unarmed people's ability to "dodge" sword blows in close combat since the armed fighter does not have to defend themselves against the unarmed opponent at that reach ... ok if you say they are doing it ...

I'm not talking about a tempo-level of emulation, I'm pretty sure there are RPG systems that do that, but from what I've seen they are pure combat engines and not much else. There's a fairly large amount of abstraction in RQ6/Mythras (for example it doesn't model armour properties like GURPS does).

My basic point is there's a certain amount of movement, leaning and footwork subsumed in a Parry action, and this is the RQ6/Mythras definition. Of course all sorts of martial arts are going to use different terms, "Attacks" and "Parries" are made with all kinds of weapons, from a range of time periods across about 10,00 years of history, so talking about particular traditions periods is too finely grained when it comes to the principles. These attack and parry notions also include natural weapons of creatures without weapons as such.

Making an "Evade" during a combat is a more radical manoeuvre which can be used to defend as a parry does, but it will leave you prone (unless you have a special ability or an additional skill), and it's harder to use since it's an opposed roll Vs the attack, whereas a parry action just needs to succeed, it doesn't need to beat the attack roll, but an Evade does also need to beat the attack as well as succeed. This makes Evading an inferior defence most of the time.