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Minor nitpicking with combat skill beyond 100%


Lloyd Dupont

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An angel has 200% with his sword. That will let it do 4 attack at 50%. (or 3 attack at 67%)

Let say he is fight an opponent with 200% in defence (say another angel parrying with his sword), that will let the opponent defend at 200%, 170%, 140% 110%...

this is unsatisfactory... but so is inflicting -50% per cumulative defence in the general case....

what alternative rule would you suggest?

mm... or maybe 1v1 is always a stalemate at those level of skills...

Edited by Lloyd Dupont
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I would not use the split attacks rule, but something more akin to the multiple parry rules.

You can declare more than one attack at the start of a round, but each one after the first will give a cumulative -30% to all your rolls in the round, including parries.

Defences and other reactive actions do not need to be declared, and follow the normal multiple defence rules. First reaction is "free", but the other ones will put a cumulative -30%.

So, if you declare 4 attacks, all will be at -90%, and so will be your first parry. After your first parry, that malus will be -120%, then -150%, and so on...

I would also let the attacker deal damage if he rolled the same success level but with a higher roll than his opponent, reduced by an amount depending on the parrying weapon.

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I do like your idea for calculating attack skill %! :)  and I think I might adopt it in general! :) 

mmm.. I am unsure about your parry rule...  I am confused with various possibility and combination here... mmm...

however, I just got hit by an epiphany, if I combine / mix and match with the other high percentage rule (where higher skill inflict malus to everyone until they drop to 100%) and apply it first...
Both angel are 100% vs 100% = 1 low chance of success attack per round...

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1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

An angel has 200% with his sword. That will let it do 4 attack at 50%. (or 3 attack at 67%)

Let say he is fight an opponent with 200% in defence (say another angel parrying with his sword), that will let the opponent defend at 200%, 170%, 140% 110%...

this is unsatisfactory... but so is inflicting -50% per cumulative defence in the general case....

what alternative rule would you suggest?

mm... or maybe 1v1 is always a stalemate at those level of skills...

With RQ3, you would also have to split your parry skill if you want to do several parries. I would stay with a ruleset put attacker and defender with the same rule: Either several attacks and parries with a cumulative modifier, split, or simply only 1 attack and 1 parry.

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1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

An angel has 200% with his sword. That will let it do 4 attack at 50%. (or 3 attack at 67%)

Let say he is fight an opponent with 200% in defence (say another angel parrying with his sword), that will let the opponent defend at 200%, 170%, 140% 110%...

this is unsatisfactory... but so is inflicting -50% per cumulative defence in the general case....

what alternative rule would you suggest?

mm... or maybe 1v1 is always a stalemate at those level of skills...

Um, why when faced with an opponent of equal skill would it ever be sensible to impede ones own ability so badly? Surely the rule that makes that a sub-optimal choice is correct?

The point of the splitting skill option is to allow the high skilled individual to deal with multiple less skilled opponents; and likewise the cumulative parry penalty enables a highly skilled combatant to defend multiple times.

Precisely the way BRP combats have always worked is that evenly matched combat skills are finely balanced affairs that can turn on the luck of whom first gets an uncountered special or critical result.  One tilts the contest in ones favour by other means  - see the Spot Rules.

Edited by NickMiddleton
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19 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I do like your idea for calculating attack skill %! :)  and I think I might adopt it in general! :) 

mmm.. I am unsure about your parry rule...  I am confused with various possibility and combination here... mmm...

Well, the attack rule is "mine" (in fact, it's taken from a rule supplement for original Star Wars d6 but with 30% steps instead of D6s - and it's been used in other games, such a Yggdrasil), but the parry rule is exactly the same as Elric! and BRP. :)

I just have one single cumulative malus for attack and parry instead of two unrelated rules for multiple attacks and parries.

The idea was to have a system where the norm was to make 1 attack and 1 defence, and that you had to "pay" to get more. I also didn't want to ask for the defender to declare his reactions beforehand, because it simply doesn't work well from my experience.

The whole system works better if you use it with an action/reactions track on your character sheet. You set it at the start of a turn according to the number of actions you want to make, then push it one step further for each parry after the first.

Edited by Mugen
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I mean.. the guy with 200% does 4 attack at 110%, fine, but his defences against a similar opponent are at 80%, 50%, 20%, fail.
That doesn't feel right...

Although, as other have pointed out... the multi attack is only to be used when you have the obvious advantage... otherwise use the other rule, where the guy with 200% simply does one action at 100% and inflict 100% malus to the opposition's kill....

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1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I mean.. the guy with 200% does 4 attack at 110%, fine, but his defences against a similar opponent are at 80%, 50%, 20%, fail.
That doesn't feel right...

Again, the idea is to have a standard situation where a character only attacks and parries once, no matter what his skill is.

In my idea, a character doing multiple attacks is sacrificing his own safety in order to attack brutally.

Also, his first parry does not reduce the malus, so he starts at 110%.

 

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On 4/28/2020 at 10:48 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

An angel has 200% with his sword. That will let it do 4 attack at 50%. (or 3 attack at 67%)

Let say he is fight an opponent with 200% in defence (say another angel parrying with his sword), that will let the opponent defend at 200%, 170%, 140% 110%...

this is unsatisfactory... but so is inflicting -50% per cumulative defence in the general case....

what alternative rule would you suggest?

mm... or maybe 1v1 is always a stalemate at those level of skills...

200% vs 200% means that they both subtract 100, so are effectively at 100% vs 100%.

So, the attacker can split at 50%/50% and the defender can parry at 100%/70%.

That's how I read it, anyway.

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

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11 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Do you think 200% is a good maximum skill value?

It is good for angels and some people in Dorastor. For others, it's a bit weak.

Our long-running RQ2 campaign had skills in the 150-200 mark, by and large, but some were higher. Derak the Dark Troll had 250-300 and Raven had 300% Elf Bow, but she had INT 25, so made experience rolls over 100% about a quarter of the time.

For RQG, 200% is fine for a top-end skill.

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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On 4/30/2020 at 4:06 PM, Don Kennetho said:

Thats interesting. How do you do it when the character first parries for example two times in a round and then attacks? -30% on the attack or unmodified? Or what if he wants to attack twice? 

I'm assuming it's a question for me.

Yes, if a character parries twice before he attacks, he gets a -30% to his attack.

To attack more than once, you need to declare it in the declaration phase. The penalty is 30% per attack after the first and applies on all actions and reactions in the turn.

So, if you have a character with 200% skill which decides to attack twice and parries once before and after his turn, his malus will be:

First Parry : -30% (due to the two attacks)

Both attacks : -30% (first parry doesn't change the modifier)

Second parry : -60% (it's the second parry, so he gets another -30%)

Again, it may be difficult to track without some kind of actions track.

I could use the same rule for attacks and parries, and apply a cumulative malus for each attack after the first, and it's how I designed it in the first place. But I once had a bad experience in a RPG which made me change my mind. In this game, the GM played a monster with multiple attacks, each with a cumulative malus. While the first 2 attacks had a decent chance of hitting, the 4th and 3rd were just pointless, with less than 1% chance to hit. But the GM kept rolling those attacks, because it cost him nothing, and we lost time looking at him rolling his dice for nothing. Of course, in BRP it's easy to fix such an issue, as you can decide that a character with less than 0% simply can't attack.

Of course, there's also the need for having a dedicated step for action declaration. A quick fix would be to require that the player says how many attacks he plans to do either at the start of his turn, or when he's first targeted by another character's action.

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