Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

[dragoner]

I saw an interview with a bunch of kids after a shooting in Chicago, and one thing that stuck with me was one of the kids saying "We want to be the shooter" and the other kids agreeing. There has to be that willingness to fight, and kill, to be effective. Training is another layer.

 

[Argyle King]

I saw an interview with a bunch of kids after a shooting in Chicago, and one thing that stuck with me was one of the kids saying "We want to be the shooter" and the other kids agreeing. There has to be that willingness to fight, and kill, to be effective. Training is another layer.

I would agree that the willingness needs to be there.

I would also say that what people verbally say they are willing to do often does not align with what they actually do when faced with the situation. Some of the most boisterous people I have met have also turned out to be the ones who froze when under fire.

I think there's also a world of difference between unarmed targets and experiencing what it is like when an enemy combatant can return fire. You can see pieces of that in martial arts training; I've seen people who spent their whole lives in a no-contact dojo get thrashed in a pub because they weren't mentally prepared for the reality of being hit.

 

[dragoner]

I would agree that the willingness needs to be there.

I would also say that what people verbally say they are willing to do often does not align with what they actually do when faced with the situation. Some of the most boisterous people I have met have also turned out to be the ones who froze when under fire.

I think there's also a world of difference between unarmed targets and experiencing what it is like when an enemy combatant can return fire. You can see pieces of that in martial arts training; I've seen people who spent their whole lives in a no-contact dojo get thrashed in a pub because they weren't mentally prepared for the reality of being hit.

I don't know anything about combat. I did use to be security at a huge dance club in NYC and it was a real drag because every night you knew you would get in a fight; I mean, that was the job. After a while it became like an instinct to know who to watch out for, so not get a bottle broken over your head, which happened frequently. I have seen people in expert martial arts stances get floored, like you said. Part of it isn't rational, you just do it, attack, fight or die.

 

[GMMichael]

If we say a magic sword can cut through stone, it should ignore mundane armor, but it shouldn’t hit a pixie any more often. If we say a magic arrow or mundane bullet can punch right through armor, flesh, and bone, it should drop a giant or a dragon with one well-placed shot, just as it would drop an elephant or a bison, but a typical shot should just enrage the target.

Agreed, and I'd much rather handle these details on the fiction side of things than the rules side.

Eliminating stop motion combat would be my focus for realism.

Is that just turn-based combat? Turn-based-plus-opportunity-attacks? Does Dungeon World scratch that itch?

 

[mmadsen]

Marshall's data has been called into question, and Grossman has some serious detractors. I don't think his assertions are very well supported.

Grossman himself admitted SLAM’s findings were controversial:

Marshall's findings have been somewhat controversial. Faced with scholarly concern about a researcher's methodology and conclusions, the scientific method involves replicating the research. In Marshall's case, every available, parallel, scholarly study validates his basic findings. Ardant du Picq's surveys of French officers in the 1860s and his observations on ancient battles, Keegan and Holmes' numerous accounts of ineffectual firing throughout history, Richard Holmes' assessment of Argentine firing rates in the Falklands War, Paddy Griffith's data on the extraordinarily low killing rate among Napoleonic and American Civil War regiments, the British Army's laser reenactments of historical battles, the FBI's studies of nonfiring rates among law enforcement officers in the 1950s and 1960s, and countless other individual and anecdotal observations all confirm Marshall's fundamental conclusion that man is not, by nature, a killer.​

I don’t fully accept his explanation, but it’s clear that men in combat do not behave like wargame units.

 

[mmadsen]

Agreed, and I'd much rather handle these details on the fiction side of things than the rules side.

If you have rules for combat, you don’t get to just decide to narrate what happens, unless you choose to ignore the rules. This is a recurring problem with D&D, where what makes sense in the game world doesn’t happen by the rules. As long as there are no rules, the DM can just give a sensible description of what happens, perhaps guided by a high or low die roll. Once you introduce an inflexible rule set though…

 

[Bill Zebub]

 

[Hand of Evil]

Way back when, played with a group that system was basicly

• Roll to hit
• IF Hit, how hard of a hit
• Result of Hit - 1) light damage & no impact to player, 2) Disablement/out of combat, 3) Death
• Next Round

The GM believed that ANY damage you took in combat would kill or disable you, so he had created chart/table based on the value of the hit vs the target number (combination of AC & CON). No damage rolls. Any skills to reduce damage were rolled up in the AC.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Years ago, I read a book that talked about how increased accuracy (post Vietnam) was due to psychological factors in training.

The hypothesis is that changing from the abstract square and circle targets to the head and shoulders silhouette of a person helped to make soldiers more comfortable with firing at other human beings.

Grossman never served in combat. DoD studies put the increase down to the end of the draft, and combat optics; even as far back as the Marshal study, a big issue for infantry was an inability to see what they were shooting at. One motivation for the adoption of the M-16 was that the Marshal study found that BAR gunners fired far more than riflemen, because even if the target was obscured, the act of full-auto fire gave them confidence. The selective-fire M-14 was not a great success.

With modern optics and better-motivated troops, the willingness to engage has risen. Being regulars intensively trained as a unit before deployment has raised the understanding of suppressive and covering fire as well.

But it still fails. I saw a Staff Sergeant crack up and have to be hospitalized after he killed a guy. He had been in the Infantry with its 'Kill, Kill' mantra for six years, extensive pre-deployment training, and he utterly flaked out. At the core of it, was somehow he never believed that he was going to kill anyone. They ended up having to boot him out.

Optics, IMO, depersonalize the target. While you can see what you are shooting at, the optics make it much more sterile.

Oddly, I saw guys struggling with the fact that killing someone didn't bother them. They had been hyped up by Hollywood that it was a big emotional event, only to discover that in a firefight, things happen so fast that often you don't realize what you had done until after its over and you have time to detox.

The other thing that bothered guys was that unlike Hollywood, people don't usually just drop and go limp; there's often a lot of screaming and thrashing involved, which can get on your nerves.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Grossman himself admitted SLAM’s findings were controversial:

Marshall's findings have been somewhat controversial. Faced with scholarly concern about a researcher's methodology and conclusions, the scientific method involves replicating the research. In Marshall's case, every available, parallel, scholarly study validates his basic findings. Ardant du Picq's surveys of French officers in the 1860s and his observations on ancient battles, Keegan and Holmes' numerous accounts of ineffectual firing throughout history, Richard Holmes' assessment of Argentine firing rates in the Falklands War, Paddy Griffith's data on the extraordinarily low killing rate among Napoleonic and American Civil War regiments, the British Army's laser reenactments of historical battles, the FBI's studies of nonfiring rates among law enforcement officers in the 1950s and 1960s, and countless other individual and anecdotal observations all confirm Marshall's fundamental conclusion that man is not, by nature, a killer.​

I don’t fully accept his explanation, but it’s clear that men in combat do not behave like wargame units.

Grossman never served in combat (Neither did Marshall, but Marshall did directly interview troops), so his findings are also challenged.

SLAM's core work is solid; looking at his baseline data is still relevant; his own interpretations are open to challenge.

However, studies done during & after Vietnam, where automatic weapons were standard issue, did bear out several of his theories.