Realistic Combat

[Celebrim]

Which doesn't change the fact that you were slamming someone for improper understanding of the rules.

I don't know why you are jumping into this. It doesn't really seem to be in any concern to you. First of all, I wasn't slamming him for a lack of understanding of the rules - he'd not made any rules errors and specifically asked that if he had they be graciously ignored. I was slamming him for making up an example which was designed to fail and then complaining when it produced the carefully crafted failure he desired. It implied to me either disengeniousness, or simply a lack of experience with how the game was played. In any event, whatever disagreement I had with Dremmen, it wasn't over which version of Power Attack is better for the game. The 3.0 power attack is what is used at my table, because its a better less silly rule than the 3.5 power attack in just about every way. The example I gave was perfectly valid under 3.0 rules, but if it makes you feel better, assume that he put down the knife and power attacked using his bare hand which is valid under 3.5. Happy now? Of course, if he'd worn a cestus, he'd not have been able to punch nearly as hard. Go figure.

Your rules you are insisting on are dumb, as is evidence by the scores of threads under 'Rules' and 'House Rules' and probably won't survive into 4th edition. And in any event, this doesn't change the fact that you are just trying to draw out flames for no damn good reason.

Personally, I agree with you: mechanically speaking PA is just a way to trade accuracy for damage.

Then why the hell the snark?

 

[Korgoth]

I agree that D&D is not realistic in that, no matter what level you are, a dagger thrust or crossbow bolt should have a chance of killing you. And in the heroic fiction I've read, that's also how things work (plenty of one-shot kills in the Iliad). And in S&S fiction it's even more common, and a knife is dangerous to the hero even in the hands of an unskilled man (although Conan is more dangerous... but that doesn't mean that the low-level assailant is not dangerous at all).

To model combat realistically in a game you'd probably have to do something like assign a "lethality percentage". For firearms, even a .22 pistol round has some chance of killing you, and anything smaller than a .50 HMG round has some chance of not killing you. Of the shots that kill you, a small number would put you right down, and a relatively larger proportion would represent mortal blows.

 

[Mallus]

...I never expected it to really replicate fantasy literature. One can expand that to movies as well.

It's hard for me not to conceive of D&D, or any RPG, as a book/film emulator, therefore, I assume everyone thinks that. In other news, the universe will end when I kick the bucket...

The one thing D&D combat (and, again, many other things in the game) is absolutely great at pulling off is the feel of mythology.

Could you elaborate? I find D&D's overall tone to be all over the map. No version struck me as particular mythic. Certainly not the most recent. There's too much shopping...

Combat the way it occurs in the Iliad, Mahabharata, Mabinogion, Eddas, etc. is the closest fictional analogue to D&D combat that I've ever read.

How do you think M&M's combat compares? I'm really digging the damage save as a solution to my biggest complaint with D&D combat system.

 

[Old Drew Id]

One important point to consider when looking for a game combat model is that a "realistic" model should probably not be your goal. Rather, if you want realism, then your goal should be a model that "seems realistic."

In other words, if I wrote a series of insanely complex rules that took every variable from wind speed to particle physics to the target's blood type into consideration and made it 100% realistic, you would still have situations where two apparently identical guys could get shot in apparently identical ways, and one would go down and the other would keep fighting and have to be shot 12 more times before he went down. At that point, you might think the system is not realistic. In fact the issue would not be that the system was unrealistic at the point, but rather that it did not "seem" realistic.

For most players, their conception of realistic combat is based on movies and books, not on actual experience. And even for the players with actual combat experience, they would recognize the existence of impercetible variables in combat that would mean the difference between life and death. Even if the system is realistic, both types of player would be bound to have issues with it if it did not match their perception of what "realism" should look like.

 

[iwatt]

I don't know why you are jumping into this.

Chill out man. Maybe if you hadn't posted in a condescending manner in the first place, this whole incident would have been avoided.

Then why the hell the snark?

What snark?

Your rules you are insisting on are dumb, as is evidence by the scores of threads under 'Rules' and 'House Rules' and probably won't survive into 4th edition.

Were exactly was I insisting on any rules?

In any case I'd hardly take the rules bickering of ENWorld as evidence of any forthcoming changes. I don't think we are as representative of the gaming community as we'd like to believe.

 

[mmadsen]

If you start insisting that knife thrusts can and should be able to kill or maim a warrior, common sense dictates something like fireball would be insta-kill or insta-maim, no saving throw.

People have survived seemingly lethal modern weapon attacks, like a grenade going off a few feet away. (I believe that happened in Black Hawk Down.) Drivers have walked away from crushed cars engulfed in flames. It may not be typical, but it happens.

For example, who could ever survive a blow from a 10' ogre's steel shod club?

I'm sure plenty of people could, as long as it wasn't a square hit. The typical result might be broken ribs, but people survive getting hit by cars; I'm sure a few lucky ones could survive an ogre club.

Of course, we can have a "realistic" yet heroic system where skilled fighters rarely get hit by an ogre with a club, rather than an "unrealistic" one where they soak up repeated hits from giants.

We can also separate plot-protection from fighting skill, so that skilled fighters might generally avoid the ogre's club, but occasionally take a lethal hit, while skilled heroes, like the PCs, occasionally take a near-lethal hit, that looks like it should have killed them, but after the fight they shake it off.

Also, if we look the history for guidance, there were Roman soldiers facing elephants, and the primary issue was probably simply getting men to stand their ground near angry elephants. It was an issue of morale and fighting the fear of a giant animal. If you kept your nerve, you could let it pass and aim a javelin at its vulnerable eye.

 

[Pbartender]

There the hit points only work because the fighters are wearing full suits of heavy armor and not using armor-piercing weapons. In that case, they really are fighting to exhaustion, and all the little bumps and bruises add to their fatigue.

Hit points would do a terrible job of modeling a fight from, say, The Three Musketeers, which is equally heroic, because there combatants rarely take more than a scratch before getting run through. Similarly, hit points wouldn't work well for a western or a samurai movie, where one shot or one slash is supposed to kill even a competent foe.

That depends on how you describe "hit points" and other related "damage" in the game.

I've grown fond of the Skull & Bones philosohy of hit points... Whereas an attack that misses, misses with little effort on the part of the defender, hit points are all of the dodges, parries, and other near misses that slowly fatigue you down toward exhaustion. Eventually, the fight wears you out enough that you can no longer effectively defend yourself, and an attack breaks through your defense to actually hit flesh and bone and cause a "real" wound -- that's when your hit points run out.

Alongside a negative hit point house rule that essentially turns negative hps into a damage save (Fort Save DC = negative hitpoint total, with effects based on degree of success or failure), and it does a fairly decent job of emulating action-adventure movie damage.

Once the "dude points" wear out and you start taking real wounds, there's a small, but increasing chance for you to get knocked out or die, and likewise there's a large, but decreasing chance of staying up and effective.

 

[shilsen]

It's hard for me not to conceive of D&D, or any RPG, as a book/film emulator, therefore, I assume everyone thinks that. In other news, the universe will end when I kick the bucket...

Ah, I see the error. You assume everybody thinks

Could you elaborate? I find D&D's overall tone to be all over the map. No version struck me as particular mythic. Certainly not the most recent. There's too much shopping...

I mean mythic in the sense of larger than life characters who consistently break the laws of reality as we know them, while existing in a world which pretends to care about those laws and surrounded by lots of people who are supposedly functioning on a real-world scale. And I think that's especially true when it comes to combat in D&D.

Put a 10th or so lvl D&D character up against 2nd-3rd lvls and what you get is the wrath of Achilles or Arjuna going up against a few hundred Kaurava soldiers alone and coming out on top. Put the same 10th lvl character up against another of equivalent level and you have Achilles vs. Hector (and all the other matchups in the Iliad) or Arjuna vs. Karna. The whole hit pt system just replicates mythic heroes much more than fantasy heroes. If Conan is sleeping and a guy with a sword gets to whack him, Conan's head falls off. If Cuchulainn is sleeping and a guy with a sword gets to whack him, Cuchulainn wakes up, makes his Fort save vs. the coup de grace, and kills the guy with his toenail. Mid to high level D&D does Cuchulainn much better than Conan.

How do you think M&M's combat compares? I'm really digging the damage save as a solution to my biggest complaint with D&D combat system.

I don't really think there's any kind of fair comparison. I think the M&M combat system reflects the modularity of the entire M&M system in being a lot more flexible than the D&D combat system is, but even that's somewhat unfair an assessment, since D&D combat is very varied. It's just that D&D makes the decisions for you about how combat in the game will change, since it varies from 1st to 5th lvl, 5th to 10th lvl, 10th lvl to 15th, etc, and the progression is pre-decided. M&M leaves the choice a little more open-ended, since you are more likely to start at a certain level and stay around it too.

That, I think, might be one of the biggest differences. Playing a D&D game where PCs cover a lot of levels during the campaign means significant changes in gameplay. Playing an M&M game for the same period of time is unlikely to mean a significant change in gameplay, since the power level won't shift that much (though it can, if the DM does a D&D-esque jump in PL every couple of months). So I think that the difference in the combat systems has more to do with things outside the combat system. D&D is designed for things outside the combat system (i.e. levels) to change drastically over time, and that changes combat equally drastically. M&M isn't and it doesn't. In both, however, you can do the other (not level up or not much, in D&D, and change PLs a lot in M&M).

Or maybe I'm just rambling. What do you think?

 

[Rothe]

That depends on how you describe "hit points" and other related "damage" in the game.

I've grown fond of the Skull & Bones philosohy of hit points... Whereas an attack that misses, misses with little effort on the part of the defender, hit points are all of the dodges, parries, and other near misses that slowly fatigue you down toward exhaustion. Eventually, the fight wears you out enough that you can no longer effectively defend yourself, and an attack breaks through your defense to actually hit flesh and bone and cause a "real" wound -- that's when your hit points run out.

Alongside a negative hit point house rule that essentially turns negative hps into a damage save (Fort Save DC = negative hitpoint total, with effects based on degree of success or failure), and it does a fairly decent job of emulating action-adventure movie damage.

Once the "dude points" wear out and you start taking real wounds, there's a small, but increasing chance for you to get knocked out or die, and likewise there's a large, but decreasing chance of staying up and effective.

I think that is a perfectly legitmate way of viewing hit points. Even if your not hit, muscles get pulled, bruises, scrapes, minor lacerations, etc. start adding up and slowing you down. This stuff represents "injury" maybe not deep wounds but "damage" that needs time to heal none the less. All very good.

The "realism" I like to add is a chance that a lucky blow, or more likely a blow from complete surprise, can bypass all this accumulated toughness and battle savy and still lay someone low. I'd also like the odds not to be too high unless the truly herioc (or foolhardy) task is undertaken by the player, charging 30 orcs with aimed crossbows without armor.

 

[Aaron L]

figure.

Your rules you are insisting on are dumb, as is evidence by the scores of threads under 'Rules' and 'House Rules' and probably won't survive into 4th edition. And in any event, this doesn't change the fact that you are just trying to draw out flames for no damn good reason.

So, it's perfectly fine to call someone an idiot for not understanding the rules while misquoting them yourself, as long as the rules you don't understand are "dumb", but when others call you out on your own lack of knowledge, they are "trying to draw out flames" and being snarky?

Some people don't like sitting aside and watching snotty belligerence, whether it's directed at themselves or not.