When you’re designing a game, you’re mostly dealing with rules. Combat is one of the most rules-heavy elements of any game system. I always like to say that this is because it’s one of the most highly contested aspects of the game. While some players might be okay with the GM making up some NPC reactions, or fudging a skill check; those same players will cry bloody murder if you try to arbitrarily have them killed off or defeated in combat with no rolls. When bodily harm is coming the way of the PCs, it’s best to let them roll to defend themselves.
Because combat always involves the threat of serious bodily injury, you will need very specific rules for it. Not only very specific rules, but enough rules to cover most eventualities. This also comes with the threat of overburdening the game with rules on combat. Because it’s so easy to get very specific with combat rules, it’s also very easy to put far too many rules in for combat. Usually, a well-meaning game designer will feel the compulsion to include rules to cover every eventuality in combat. There will be specific die rolls for rushes, disarms, retreats, charges, and mounted combat. This isn’t a bad thing if it isn’t taken too far. It’s nice to have some rules on naval combat and fighting underwater. If the rules start to get in the way of role-playing, you may have taken a good thing too far.
So, what rules should be covered? What’s the best way to cover them? What rules can you safely ignore? I like to start with some basic ideas. What does the combat system in this game need to achieve? Will there be massive battles with many miniatures or only man-to-man combat? How important will ranged combat and explosives be? How much of a focus does the game system have on combat itself? Do I want to gloss it over or glorify it? Secondly, I like to build a framework to achieve the goals I set out in the ideas stage. If I want a game which is light on combat, I have to build a framework which will take care of combat fast. I’ve always figured it’s best to be thorough where combat is concerned. Players like to know where they stand when it comes time to figure out how many bad guys they can crush. I like thorough rules, but I don’t like to get too fancy or complicated with them. My theory is that if you have a good combat framework, people can do whatever they want with it. I’d rather keep it simple and let people improvise. Using vague things such as damage and hit points, people can make up any fancy wounds and maneuvers they want.
Thirdly, I like to consider the main questions the GM and players will be asking about combat. How much of a beating can my character take? What happens when he’s dying or unconscious? How do I heal or get better? Can I attack the guy, and how? How far can my bow or laser gun shoot? If I’m hiding behind a concrete wall, does that help? I like to keep the answers to these questions brief and to the point. Some of them I might even ignore or cover with another rule. For example, you could cover a lot of fancy situations with a +2/-2 attack advantage or disadvantage rule. I also like to build a system with a heroic emphasis. Ideally, people should feel like they can attempt anything. This could be climbing the tallest mountain, crafting the greatest magic item, or attempting to ride a giant or set fire to a massive enemy. Paradoxically, if you cover too many tricks in combat it might actually discourage players from using those tricks. If your game has a very thorough approach to combat rules, it’s likely that certain maneuvers would only make sense if you stacked modifiers and scores to your advantage to use them. It’s likely you’ll end up with a system where only one kind of character build will use disarms and everyone else will ignore them because they don’t want to be statistically inferior. If you leave disarming more to the imagination, it could potentially open up the tactic to all players at all times. This strategy isn’t infallible. Often, players will ignore all tactics and opt for simple attack rolls. They know where they stand when playing within the rules, but using fancy tactics can be risky. To get them to take this risk you can give them experience point awards for thinking creatively, and make such fancy tactics effective.
When considering combat, it’s always good to keep an eye on your monster creation as well. The combat rules of your game will have a massive impact on the monsters you design for your system and how easy they will be for creative GMs to design for themselves. If you keep the combat rules fairly straightforward, it’ll be incredibly easy for most GMs to create new monsters and opponents for their PCs.
For health, I like to use the traditional hit points. They’re vague, they don’t make much sense, and they work. I know some people much prefer wounds, fast recovery hit points, and slow recovery hit points. Those systems would probably work great as well. As long as it’s straightforward, I like it. One thing I like to say about hit points is, the less the better. Essentially, it’s good to remove high numbers and replace them with low numbers. This is the same principal applied in good writing. Less words are better if they mean the same thing. If you have the option of giving all your creatures hundreds of hit points, tens of hit points, or single hit points; I’d almost always go with single hit points. The only reason I can think of to increase hit points is if it is demanded by another element of the game. For example, if the average weapon in your game does 1d8, monsters with 1-3 hit points aren’t likely to have much of a chance. Consequently, all monsters will need more hit points. 1-4 hit points becomes like 1 hit point and you can work your way up from there. That said, once you set your minimum hit points, I like to include some creatures with a surplus of hit points. This will make them difficult for the players to take down and allow the opportunity for role-playing, tactics, and using brains instead of simple sword blows. If you already exaggerated all creature hit points for no reason, and then you add in ‘more’ hit points to a creature you can end up with something incredibly tedious unless the players can deal equally outrageous damage. In that case, now you have way more numbers and dice rolls than you need for no reason other than the love of big numbers.
I like to keep the range of armor values fairly low. This is because I like to flatten out the curve of attack ranges over levels. It’s always fun to improve your character, but if the escalation of attack reaches too far you can end up with some really messed up numbers in your game. If you use armor as a reduction to damage, the same reasoning applies. Keeping the numbers low makes them reasonable. If armor can absorb too much damage you run the risk of some characters being completely immune to some attacks which can end up being totally ridiculous. It’s the same kind of thing which happens when you end up with a hundred swordsmen with +1 attack trying to hit a guy with armor 30 while rolling only a d10 for attack. Less isn’t always better. Reducing your attack bonus and armor ranges too much can result in nothing cool to achieve at high levels which will really annoy your players. Just don’t arbitrarily create armor and attack values which shoot to the sky for no reason without thinking about it.
When considering ranged or melee weapons, I like to figure out what advantages people will get for cover, ganging up, flanking, charging, and the like. I also like to give melee combat the advantage in most medieval systems I design. This isn’t based in any part on reality, it’s a game design consideration. In almost all circumstances, it’s more advantageous to be able to attack at range than in melee. Making melee weapons marginally stronger creates more of a balance between the two. I also really like swords.
One thing I’ve enjoyed doing is creating a simple combat framework and then filling it in with all kinds of crazy stuff from the character builds. This way, I don’t have much trouble worrying about basic monster and character attacks and battles, but I can still creatively design whatever cool powers I want to and add them into the framework without wrecking anything. The challenge here is balancing the characters. If each character in your game can seriously change the way combat is run, it’s very tricky to balance character power ratios. One trick I like to refer to is what I like to call the Monopoly/Risk TM strategy. Both these games—and many others—start all the players out on equal grounds. The games are inherently balanced because all the players have access to the same things. RPGs will never be quite like that, but if you allow all the players access to all the character builds, and try to balance all the character builds, you’re one step ahead of the game.
Because combat always involves the threat of serious bodily injury, you will need very specific rules for it. Not only very specific rules, but enough rules to cover most eventualities. This also comes with the threat of overburdening the game with rules on combat. Because it’s so easy to get very specific with combat rules, it’s also very easy to put far too many rules in for combat. Usually, a well-meaning game designer will feel the compulsion to include rules to cover every eventuality in combat. There will be specific die rolls for rushes, disarms, retreats, charges, and mounted combat. This isn’t a bad thing if it isn’t taken too far. It’s nice to have some rules on naval combat and fighting underwater. If the rules start to get in the way of role-playing, you may have taken a good thing too far.
So, what rules should be covered? What’s the best way to cover them? What rules can you safely ignore? I like to start with some basic ideas. What does the combat system in this game need to achieve? Will there be massive battles with many miniatures or only man-to-man combat? How important will ranged combat and explosives be? How much of a focus does the game system have on combat itself? Do I want to gloss it over or glorify it? Secondly, I like to build a framework to achieve the goals I set out in the ideas stage. If I want a game which is light on combat, I have to build a framework which will take care of combat fast. I’ve always figured it’s best to be thorough where combat is concerned. Players like to know where they stand when it comes time to figure out how many bad guys they can crush. I like thorough rules, but I don’t like to get too fancy or complicated with them. My theory is that if you have a good combat framework, people can do whatever they want with it. I’d rather keep it simple and let people improvise. Using vague things such as damage and hit points, people can make up any fancy wounds and maneuvers they want.
Thirdly, I like to consider the main questions the GM and players will be asking about combat. How much of a beating can my character take? What happens when he’s dying or unconscious? How do I heal or get better? Can I attack the guy, and how? How far can my bow or laser gun shoot? If I’m hiding behind a concrete wall, does that help? I like to keep the answers to these questions brief and to the point. Some of them I might even ignore or cover with another rule. For example, you could cover a lot of fancy situations with a +2/-2 attack advantage or disadvantage rule. I also like to build a system with a heroic emphasis. Ideally, people should feel like they can attempt anything. This could be climbing the tallest mountain, crafting the greatest magic item, or attempting to ride a giant or set fire to a massive enemy. Paradoxically, if you cover too many tricks in combat it might actually discourage players from using those tricks. If your game has a very thorough approach to combat rules, it’s likely that certain maneuvers would only make sense if you stacked modifiers and scores to your advantage to use them. It’s likely you’ll end up with a system where only one kind of character build will use disarms and everyone else will ignore them because they don’t want to be statistically inferior. If you leave disarming more to the imagination, it could potentially open up the tactic to all players at all times. This strategy isn’t infallible. Often, players will ignore all tactics and opt for simple attack rolls. They know where they stand when playing within the rules, but using fancy tactics can be risky. To get them to take this risk you can give them experience point awards for thinking creatively, and make such fancy tactics effective.
When considering combat, it’s always good to keep an eye on your monster creation as well. The combat rules of your game will have a massive impact on the monsters you design for your system and how easy they will be for creative GMs to design for themselves. If you keep the combat rules fairly straightforward, it’ll be incredibly easy for most GMs to create new monsters and opponents for their PCs.
For health, I like to use the traditional hit points. They’re vague, they don’t make much sense, and they work. I know some people much prefer wounds, fast recovery hit points, and slow recovery hit points. Those systems would probably work great as well. As long as it’s straightforward, I like it. One thing I like to say about hit points is, the less the better. Essentially, it’s good to remove high numbers and replace them with low numbers. This is the same principal applied in good writing. Less words are better if they mean the same thing. If you have the option of giving all your creatures hundreds of hit points, tens of hit points, or single hit points; I’d almost always go with single hit points. The only reason I can think of to increase hit points is if it is demanded by another element of the game. For example, if the average weapon in your game does 1d8, monsters with 1-3 hit points aren’t likely to have much of a chance. Consequently, all monsters will need more hit points. 1-4 hit points becomes like 1 hit point and you can work your way up from there. That said, once you set your minimum hit points, I like to include some creatures with a surplus of hit points. This will make them difficult for the players to take down and allow the opportunity for role-playing, tactics, and using brains instead of simple sword blows. If you already exaggerated all creature hit points for no reason, and then you add in ‘more’ hit points to a creature you can end up with something incredibly tedious unless the players can deal equally outrageous damage. In that case, now you have way more numbers and dice rolls than you need for no reason other than the love of big numbers.
I like to keep the range of armor values fairly low. This is because I like to flatten out the curve of attack ranges over levels. It’s always fun to improve your character, but if the escalation of attack reaches too far you can end up with some really messed up numbers in your game. If you use armor as a reduction to damage, the same reasoning applies. Keeping the numbers low makes them reasonable. If armor can absorb too much damage you run the risk of some characters being completely immune to some attacks which can end up being totally ridiculous. It’s the same kind of thing which happens when you end up with a hundred swordsmen with +1 attack trying to hit a guy with armor 30 while rolling only a d10 for attack. Less isn’t always better. Reducing your attack bonus and armor ranges too much can result in nothing cool to achieve at high levels which will really annoy your players. Just don’t arbitrarily create armor and attack values which shoot to the sky for no reason without thinking about it.
When considering ranged or melee weapons, I like to figure out what advantages people will get for cover, ganging up, flanking, charging, and the like. I also like to give melee combat the advantage in most medieval systems I design. This isn’t based in any part on reality, it’s a game design consideration. In almost all circumstances, it’s more advantageous to be able to attack at range than in melee. Making melee weapons marginally stronger creates more of a balance between the two. I also really like swords.
One thing I’ve enjoyed doing is creating a simple combat framework and then filling it in with all kinds of crazy stuff from the character builds. This way, I don’t have much trouble worrying about basic monster and character attacks and battles, but I can still creatively design whatever cool powers I want to and add them into the framework without wrecking anything. The challenge here is balancing the characters. If each character in your game can seriously change the way combat is run, it’s very tricky to balance character power ratios. One trick I like to refer to is what I like to call the Monopoly/Risk TM strategy. Both these games—and many others—start all the players out on equal grounds. The games are inherently balanced because all the players have access to the same things. RPGs will never be quite like that, but if you allow all the players access to all the character builds, and try to balance all the character builds, you’re one step ahead of the game.
