CoC7e combat is perfect (for me)

[Sam E.]

Just a shout out.  🙂

I dig BRP / d100 stuff in general, but I often find the combat parts too fiddly for my tastes.  On the other hand, CoC7e nails it for me.  It's elegantly simple.  Or is it simply elegant?!  Either way, I find it fast, intuitive, and just plain fun.  In particular, the "fighting back" option for melee combat is freakin' brilliant, and really mitigates the issue I have with some other BRP / d100 games' way of resolving attack vs. defense.

Well done, Chaosium!

[Grimmshade]

Agreed! Another thing I like about it is Maneuvers. It makes it so easy to let the players try options instead of just straight attacking. 

[Closterphobia]

I love the combat system, with the exclusion of dealing with automatic weapon fire which I find a bit too finicky. I’m sure though if it were used more in the games I ran I’d probably change my mind over time.  

[Sam E.]

@GrimmshadeYes, the maneuvers are excellent!

@ClosterphobiaI haven't had the occasion to use the automatic fire rules yet, but I have heard similar concerns.  I should probably do a mock combat with them sometime and see how they play out.

[Closterphobia]

1 minute ago, TheophilusCarter said:

@GrimmshadeYes, the maneuvers are excellent!

@ClosterphobiaI haven't had the occasion to use the automatic fire rules yet, but I have heard similar concerns.  I should probably do a mock combat with them sometime and see how they play out.

That’s what I did, sat here with my son for an hour and “tested” out the various methods of semi / automatic fire. Buuuuut, having said that, it hasn’t even come up in the past couple years of play so it’s pretty much out of my head. I found a cheat sheet online (from somewhere I can’t recall) and keep it nearby just in case. 

[Grimmshade]

I had it come up in my first session of Two-Headed Serpent last week. It's actually pretty fast and easy at the table. Didn't take much longer than anyone else's turn and the PC wasted two mooks right away. 

[Closterphobia]

1 hour ago, Grimmshade said:

I had it come up in my first session of Two-Headed Serpent last week. It's actually pretty fast and easy at the table. Didn't take much longer than anyone else's turn and the PC wasted two mooks right away. 

I love the “Mook” concept in Pulp Cthulhu.

[Sam E.]

I need to buy Pulp Cthulhu!  😄

[Grimmshade]

30 minutes ago, TheophilusCarter said:

I need to buy Pulp Cthulhu!  😄

Pulp Cthulhu is a great toolset. It could have used a bit more in some areas, but what it does have and the way it easily changes the style of the game is totally worth the money. You can also add or remove rules to hit the level you want. 

Also, The Two-Headed Serpent is a great campaign. 

[mvincent]

21 hours ago, Closterphobia said:

That’s what I did, sat here with my son for an hour and “tested” out the various methods of semi / automatic fire. Buuuuut, having said that, it hasn’t even come up in the past couple years of play so it’s pretty much out of my head. I found a cheat sheet online (from somewhere I can’t recall) and keep it nearby just in case. 

The complicated 7e rules basically boil down to:

• -If you have skill 60%+: roll to hit twice (the second time with a penalty die). Each success = three bullets hitting
• -For skill 40% to 59%: roll to hit thrice (2nd roll w/penalty die, 3rd with two penalty dice). Each success =  two hits
• -For skill below 40%: you probably shouldn't bother with auto-fire

 

In practice though, PC's typically aren't very skilled in automatic weapons, and attacks with penalty dice are unlikely to hit, so I just have PC's:

• make one roll (but use 10 rounds) and treat a success as two hits

[Closterphobia]

19 hours ago, mvincent said:

The complicated 7e rules basically boil down to:

• -If you have skill 60%+: roll to hit twice (the second time with a penalty die). Each success = three bullets hitting
• -For skill 40% to 59%: roll to hit thrice (2nd roll w/penalty die, 3rd with two penalty dice). Each success =  two hits
• -For skill below 40%: you probably shouldn't bother with auto-fire

 

In practice though, PC's typically aren't very skilled in automatic weapons, and attacks with penalty dice are unlikely to hit, so I just have PC's:

• make one roll (but use 10 rounds) and treat a success as two hits

That’s a succinct, easy to follow guideline. 🙂

[TheEnclave]

I love it too. It's quick, fast, fun, and deadly for both the players and enemies.

[DreadDomain]

On 4/25/2022 at 6:07 AM, TheophilusCarter said:

Just a shout out.  🙂

I dig BRP / d100 stuff in general, but I often find the combat parts too fiddly for my tastes.  On the other hand, CoC7e nails it for me.  It's elegantly simple.  Or is it simply elegant?!  Either way, I find it fast, intuitive, and just plain fun.  In particular, the "fighting back" option for melee combat is freakin' brilliant, and really mitigates the issue I have with some other BRP / d100 games' way of resolving attack vs. defense.

Well done, Chaosium!

 

On 4/26/2022 at 2:32 AM, Grimmshade said:

Pulp Cthulhu is a great toolset. It could have used a bit more in some areas, but what it does have and the way it easily changes the style of the game is totally worth the money. You can also add or remove rules to hit the level you want. 

Also, The Two-Headed Serpent is a great campaign. 

I personally find CoC 7e to be an excellent ruleset for a lot more than just CoC and I can totally see it verge into full pulp and adventure, sword and sorcery or even superhero territory. It feels like it managed to balance well designed simplicity with depth of rules. For combat, it has interesting tactical choices and damage rules that are both deadly but with a level of forgiveness (as long as you don't get a major wound, you'll be fine).

Now, me perfect generic CoC 7e ruleset would include all the options from Pulp Cthulhu (specifically talents), would organise skills into skill categories and would repurpose Luck and Sanity into more adaptable, generic Drive and Adversity.

Drive and Adversity

Each characters have two pools of points that define their nature, their drive, and what they need to overcome, the adversity they face. The names of these pools are generally personalised for each character. What drives a character, and the type of adversity they must overcome, is a decision that must be made carefully by the player. It should flavour how the character responds to challenges and what can become their undoing.  Drive and Adversity can be physical, mental or personality traits (determination, ruggedness, selfimportance, callousness, stress), values (truth, justice, duty, power), passions (love, hatred, fear, loyalty) or even intangible or esoteric concepts (luck, fate, destiny, doom). In some campaigns, players might want to change their Drive and Adversity as their character evolve or even from one scenario to another.  In other campaigns, Drive and Adversity might be the same for everyone. In Call of Cthulhu, the drive pool is Luck, only luck can truly make a difference against cosmic horror, and the adversity pool is Sanity, which represents their ability to cling to their comprehension of reality. 

As an Example of Drive and Adversity, Batman could have Saving Gotham and Childhood Trauma and Superman could have Truth and Justice and Blue Boy Scout. Note how BBS sounds like a positive thing but it often disadvantages him because he gets blindsided by the pettiness of people and so on.

Drive would work exactly like Luck but Adversity would need a bit of work to make it more generic than Sanity. 

Edited May 14, 2022 by DreadDomain

[Grimmshade]

@DreadDomain

I also think Call of Cthulhu 7e is a fantastic generic toolkit. I probably wouldn't run any sort of high power superhero game with it. It's certainly not the everything system (I don't think any system is), but there are a ton of genres I use it for. It's my go-to Horror, Pulp, Wild West, Historical fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Sherlock Holmes, Modern Spy, Weird Tales, and even Star Trek system. It could also do space horror, but I use the Alien RPG for that, as well as post apocalyptic (but I use Twilight 2000.)

Sanity is fairly easily mod-able by changing the Bout of Insanity tables to better fit the genre you are going for (as Pulp Cthulhu does.) I like your Drive and Adversity breakdown.