Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

[mmadsen]

In my own LARP and fencing experience, I do remember it being much more a mix of different paces- slower paced tentative feints and feeling each other out and pot-shotting punctuated by furious bursts of action where combatants are striking as fast as possible, trying to finish off an opponent, or overwhelm/push past them as part of a tactical maneuver*. And the latter are quickly tiring which enforces breaks/lulls again. Which is a significant contrast to a standard RPG combat round where each combatant tends to do the same amount of things each time they get to act.

Systems like Champions and Car Wars and Shadowrun having the faster combatants acting on more distributed segments each round is definitely a thing, but that's still a steady pace for them, as long as they maintain speed. As opposed to lulls and bursts for each combatant.

*(I often see this in realistic portrayals of modern combat too, for example WW2 stuff like Band of Brothers or SPR).

RPGs don’t generally model waiting for an opening, and if they do have a feint maneuver, it’s generally either worth doing or not worth doing, not something that comes up from time to time.

I’ve thought about modeling openings by having characters roll one of their attack dice (in, say, a 3d6 system), and then having a choice to attack using that die, or to defend (presumably with some bonus).

Interestingly Champions doesn’t just use a speed mechanic, but it also has endurance and recovery stats, so characters can’t generally attack non-stop without an occasional lull.

Modern firefights do generally involve frantic non-stop shooting when guys are caught out in the open, but pot shots against guys popping out of cover have unpredictable lulls, because the fighters are trying specifically to be unpredictable. Anyone who pops out like clockwork gets shot.

 

[Argyle King]

If you consider a fair fight to be 50-50, then winning 10 fair fights (and losing none) is virtually impossible, 0.1% chance of success. I don’t think many people have thought that through.

Of course, in real life, one-in-a-thousand people do pull off the near-impossible. We can either play “old school” and wait for it to happen organically, or we can introduce Fate Points to nudge things in the right direction.

In real life, part of winning a battle is engaging in strategy and tactics that skew things to be unfair in your favor.

Sometimes that's stealth & ambush
Sometimes that's attacking the enemy's logistics so that they're cold, hungry, or otherwise impaired

It may be that a "fair" game system establishes 50/50, but a system designed to emulate some version of "reality" would not artificially force the fights to be 50/50 once the physical act of the engagement commences.

Due to genre conventions, it may be that some systems allow PCs to have some metacurrency which nudges things in their favor or enables overcoming hardship. I don't believe that has to be necessarily at odds with "real." For me, it's acceptable to have some limited resource that players might use. "Real" in terms of an action movie or fantasy novel might mean "mostly plausible but with some of the corners filed off to look cooler."

But how that is expressed via the system matters...

Buckets of HP and/or the main villain making a save just because the DM says they do through a special action = kinda lame

A bloodied PC pushing through their normal limits by spending a fatigue point to cast a spell and turn the tide of battle before collapsing = heroic and cool

 

[mmadsen]

Defense: Base Number (10? 5?) + Dex Mod + some combination of Proficiency Bonus + Weapon Bonus (magic and/or parry bonus for specific weapons) + Class Features + Possible Feats. Sort of like AC, but replacing armor with bonuses. I started with 10 for the base, but on further thought considered that it maybe should be 5, with more bonuses than AC making up the difference (e.g. Prof), so more "swingy" than AC.

Damage Reduction: A number from (probably) 0-10 for conventional armor that reduces damage from melee weapons, or the "naked to full plate" spectrum, with 1 being clothing, maybe 3 being leather, 5 being chain, 7-8 partial plate, 10 full plate; over 10 for some monsters (e.g. dragons, tarrasque, etc). Presumably crits would bypass DR, or reduce it.

If we go back to the original proposal, it makes the most sense for combatants who are armored homogeneously, with a full suit of armor or a thick hide covering their whole body. In that situation, a hit is a hit, and any weapon has to overcome that armor. (This makes smaller weapons useless against any armor.)

If we look at D&D’s basic system, it makes the most sense for combatants who are armored unevenly, with some amount of coverage, but with armor that is proof against most weapons. It takes luck or skill to hit an unarmored spot, but then — well, you do one die of damage against someone who might have multiple hit dice. (This leaves smaller weapons somewhat effective.)

Rolling to-hit versus Armor Class makes less sense when the weapons and armor are mismatched. If you have a magic sword that cuts through stone or a mundane firearm that punches through steel, then normal armor shouldn’t help, but being able to dive out of the way should. This might be a strange corner case in a medieval wargame, but a common occurrence in a fantasy RPG.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Interestingly Champions doesn’t just use a speed mechanic, but it also has endurance and recovery stats, so characters can’t generally attack non-stop without an occasional lull.

Though, it should be noted that in Heroic scale Hero System games the consumption of Endurance is low enough that a combat will usually be over before Endurance depletion is a major issue (though Long Term Endurance can bias this depending); this is even more true when dealing with modern games where firearms are likely the weapon of choice.

Modern firefights do generally involve frantic non-stop shooting when guys are caught out in the open, but pot shots against guys popping out of cover have unpredictable lulls, because the fighters are trying specifically to be unpredictable. Anyone who pops out like clockwork gets shot.

Not to mention people just having to pause to get themselves together if they can do so without being a sitting duck.

 

[Retros_x]

If you play the game with new players, they immediately think in these “realistic” terms. If there’s a goblin throwing javelins from the end of the corridor, the guy with a large shield should obviously lead the way.

I agree, but than we need a completely different system. Like "being hard to hit" should not be able to translate into a swashbucker being in a tank role. But than it again becomes much more complex and I wonder if that is worth it. But I am open to get positively surprised by game designers.

 

[mmadsen]

In real life, part of winning a battle is engaging in strategy and tactics that skew things to be unfair in your favor.

Exactly. In fact, to have even odds of winning 10 fights in a row, you need a 93% chance of winning each fight.

But I get the impression that most people expect an adventure to string a dozen close fights together.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree, but than we need a completely different system. Like "being hard to hit" should not be able to translate into a swashbucker being in a tank role. But than it again becomes much more complex and I wonder if that is worth it. But I am open to get positively surprised by game designers.

There are some things about the avoidance-based defense that can sometimes not work well for tanking, but they usually require certain assumptions about setting usually, and as you say, usually will at least complexity to some degree.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Exactly. In fact, to have even odds of winning 10 fights in a row, you need a 93% chance of winning each fight.

But I get the impression that most people expect an adventure to string a dozen close fights together.

That's only really an assumption in parts of the D&D sphere, largely because they're so focused on resource management to one degree or another. I didn't see a lot of that in my Fantasy Hero or RuneQuest days.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you consider a fair fight to be 50-50, then winning 10 fair fights (and losing none) is virtually impossible, 0.1% chance of success. I don’t think many people have thought that through.

Of course, in real life, one-in-a-thousand people do pull off the near-impossible. We can either play “old school” and wait for it to happen organically, or we can introduce Fate Points to nudge things in the right direction.

Or we can do our best to avoid fair fights.

 

[mmadsen]

Though, it should be noted that in Heroic scale Hero System games the consumption of Endurance is low enough that a combat will usually be over before Endurance depletion is a major issue (though Long Term Endurance can bias this depending); this is even more true when dealing with modern games where firearms are likely the weapon of choice.

Champions suffers from a number of problems when its wide scale gets narrowed down to “heroic” humans, whose stats really only have a few possible values: half-normal, normal, 1.5x-normal, or 2x-normal.

Simply dodging attacks should be exhausting for normal people.

If you’ve ever worn heavy gear, you can see that it doesn’t require some special skill proficiency, but it is exhausting and painful if you’re not used to it.

I have no trouble imagining that a wizard could wear heavy armor, but there’s no way he’d hike cross-country and climb down holes in it.