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Combat Question and ideas-- Relatively new to COC/BRP


Zombieboy

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I revisited CoC this past week and I hadn’t played it in ages. I had picked up the supplement CoC Dark Ages (awesome setting) and was GM’ing. The game was going incredible, and even skill fails had become a great source of drama. As many of the previous people commented, it’s how the GM describes a fail. My issue, however, was with combat. One of the investigators had a blunt weapon skill of 55%, which isn’t terrible, but the fight just descended into a slapstick comedy of errors with the investigator AND the creature rolling “fails/misses” for about 12 combat rounds. Finally, my creature (a resurrected girl from the village) hit a critical fail and I simply had her fall onto her knife! I really enjoy BRP’s simple system and that it doesn’t concern itself with intricacies, but I’d like some suggestions on how to handle fighting a little better because it seems we hit a wall. And yes, I know that CoC isn’t about fighting , but since there is so little combat, I want to ensure the fights that are present are dramatic and memorable. Thanks! :)

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Yes, BRP and CoC combat can be drawn out, especially if the dice roll badly.

Ways of making it more interesting:

Move about in combat - get bonuses for being behind someone, beside them or above them and the bonuses can mount up.

Try and make the opponent fall over - shoulder barge them or trip them.

In BRP, use magic to boost your skill. CoC doesn't normally have that.

You could try and be imaginative in combat - Legend has Combat Manoeuvres that allow you to do things on a critical hit and you could use something similar.

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IOne of the investigators had a blunt weapon skill of 55%, which isn’t terrible, but the fight just descended into a slapstick comedy of errors with the investigator AND the creature rolling “fails/misses” for about 12 combat rounds.

This is just an example of an extremely rare sequence of high rolls. It would have worked the same in D&D, GURPS, etc. Even in Legend, as you need to make your roll in order to generate a Combat Manoeuvre.

What happened to you has a 1 in 4096 chance to occur. For your next 4095 combats, it should not happen again.

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This is just an example of an extremely rare sequence of high rolls. It would have worked the same in D&D, GURPS, etc. Even in Legend, as you need to make your roll in order to generate a Combat Manoeuvre.

What happened to you has a 1 in 4096 chance to occur. For your next 4095 combats, it should not happen again.

Such a thing doesn’t happen in GURPS, because GURPS uses 3d6 rather than a flat D100. Thus, the least bonus improves a lot odds of success, especially when the skill is around average… If the player has 10 (50% chance of success) or 11 (62% chance of success), for instance, he just has to choose the all-out attack maneuver (+4) to raise his skill to 15 (95% chance of success) or 16 (98% chance of success)…

Now, I’m not here to tell that GURPS is better than BRP. It is not. It is just different and I love BRP too.

When you’ve got a system with a flat dice roll, the only way to avoid that unluckiness make things go wrong for a character several times in a raw is to play with bonuses an penalties. And BRP allows that!

As said above, think to attack from behind… If a character does so, his attack becomes easy, which means double chance of succeeding: 55% becomes 110%!

Also think to point blank range. If the player shoot his foe with a range less than 1/3 of his DEX, his attack is easy too.

The character can also aim at his foe. For 5 DEX ranks (which means that he does his action as if his DEX was DEX-5), he adds 10% of his skill to his skill: 55% becomes 55 + 6 = 61%. For 10 DEX ranks (which requires that his DEX is above 10), he adds 20% of his skill to his skill. 55% becomes 55 + 11 = 66%. And if he is very dextrous (DEX above 15), he can even take his action as if his DEX was DEX-15 and get +30% of his skill: 55% would become 72%.

A character in a superior position (higher than his foe, that is on a table or above on stairs) has a bonus of +10%.

And be imaginative… There are a lot of circumstances that can give other bonuses, from +10% to +30%, or even make the attack easy. A cornered foe, sand in the eyes just before the attack, etc. If you give your players bonuses when they have a clever idea (that is, whenever they do something that is supposed to make the attack easier), they will begin to think rather than contenting themselves with: “I attack… I parry… I attack… I dodge…” Descriptions of their actions will become more and more interesting and combats will be more memorable.

Finally, I use a house rule during my games. BRP allows what GURPS name “all-out defense”: the character can abandon all his attacks to have a better defense. Fighting defensively (the term used in BRP) allows the character to have one more dodge.

So, I allow my player to fight “offensively” or “aggressively”, that is to abandon all their defenses to have one more attack (what GURPS names “all-out attack”).

And since subsequent dodges are at -30%, the fighting defensively option corresponds to a bonus of +30%. So, in my games, fighting defensively allows two defenses or just one with a +30% bonus, and fighting offensively allows either two attacks, or just one with a +30% bonus. But the players have to be careful with that! Once they made their choice, they can’t change it. So, if their aggressive attack is not a good one, they don’t have any defense left!

Edited by Gollum
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So, I allow my player to fight “offensively” or “aggressively”, that is to abandon all their defenses to have one more attack (what GURPS names “all-out attack”).

And since subsequent dodges are at -30%, the fighting defensively option corresponds to a bonus of +30%. So, in my games, fighting defensively allows two defenses or just one with a +30% bonus, and fighting offensively allows either two attacks, or just one with a +30% bonus. But the players have to be careful with that! Once they made their choice, they can’t change it. So, if their aggressive attack is not a good one, they don’t have any defense left!

I like that rule. A while ago I used "Combat Cards" to give the players more options during play. They are self created and give a bonus to attack or defense or skills, etc and some of these cards do actually include your house rules. Never thought about making it a general rule, though. ;)

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I like that rule.

Thank you.

A while ago I used "Combat Cards" to give the players more options during play. They are self created and give a bonus to attack or defense or skills, etc and some of these cards do actually include your house rules. Never thought about making it a general rule, though. ;)

The most important, in role playing games with a flat die system, is to make the chance of success vary a lot according to what the player characters exactly do... Like this, they don't have the nagging feeling that the results of their actions is purely random. Instead, they begin to think to find clever ideas, in order to make things easier… Exactly as if they really were in the situation.

Likewise, another way to make things more living is to describe the dice results in terms of event rather than in terms of luckiness or unluckiness (as it has been said above). A failed sword attack? The foe avoided it. A failed shoot? The target moved just when the character was pulling the trigger. A failed library research? The book that the character was looking for was in that shelf, just in front of him… But someone borrowed it.

Bonuses, penalties and good descriptions are the tools which make everyone forgot dice and think at the story and the characters.

Edited by Gollum
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Don't forget, if the players come up with something clever like throwing sand or kicking the target while attacking, it might give them a bonus. In my group some people would bash in the door, yell and insult a target and make a very forceful impression in the first combat round. This could grand a bonus to their first attack, as it distracts the target.

Throwing dust or sand while attacking also gives a bonus - without rolling for a thrown attack or such. The intention is to distract the target a bit, not to harm it. Think of actions movies and what protagonists do in there while doing hand to hand combat. All these dirty tricks I judge in my group help to enhance the combat - without need for additional skill rolls. They are "effects", or "modifiers", no attacks or well aimed actions.

Allow the players a bit more freedom and you will see how motivated they will be to enhance the "boring" attack-defend rolls with lots of flavour. And do not look for hard rules! Story first, rules last. :) The beauty of the BRP system is the lack of all these "Features" players have in other RPG systems. In BRP there is no straight jacket for them, but they have to be inventive and use their imagination.

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I revisited CoC this past week and I hadn’t played it in ages. I had picked up the supplement CoC Dark Ages (awesome setting) and was GM’ing. The game was going incredible, and even skill fails had become a great source of drama. As many of the previous people commented, it’s how the GM describes a fail. My issue, however, was with combat. One of the investigators had a blunt weapon skill of 55%, which isn’t terrible, but the fight just descended into a slapstick comedy of errors with the investigator AND the creature rolling “fails/misses” for about 12 combat rounds. Finally, my creature (a resurrected girl from the village) hit a critical fail and I simply had her fall onto her knife! I really enjoy BRP’s simple system and that it doesn’t concern itself with intricacies, but I’d like some suggestions on how to handle fighting a little better because it seems we hit a wall. And yes, I know that CoC isn’t about fighting , but since there is so little combat, I want to ensure the fights that are present are dramatic and memorable. Thanks! :)

I recommend that you buy a copy of Classic Fantasy. It contains some great rules for miniature combats including facing rules, zone of control, effects of terrain on movement and line of sight, better tactical movement rules and initiative rules.

These rules alone are worth the price of the book and they can be used in any BRP game, but they work especially well in fantasy games.

Classic Fantasy is only $16.47 at DriveThruRPG:

Classic Fantasy - Chaosium | Basic Roleplaying | DriveThruRPG.com

Edited by silent_bob
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The beauty of the BRP system is the lack of all these "Features" players have in other RPG systems. In BRP there is no straight jacket for them, but they have to be inventive and use their imagination.

Yes. This is precisely one of the major difference between GURPS and BRP. GURPS gives as many option as you want for combats, with very precise modifers to apply in each case. BRP lets it up to the game master.

Both are nice. With GURPS, you precisely know what to do, but you have a lot of rules to remember. In BRP, rules are much more light, but you have to be imaginative and to follow your intuition.

It's just a matter of preference.

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I recommend that you buy a copy of Classic Fantasy [...] Classic Fantasy is only $16.47 at DriveThruRPG:

Classic Fantasy - Chaosium | Basic Roleplaying | DriveThruRPG.com

There also is the Runequest Deluxe SRD, which is free on this BRP Central (in the Download section). Runequest brings some options, bonuses and penalties, to make combats vary.

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Thanks for the great ideas everyone! I'm going to be tackling another Call of Cthulhu:Dark Ages scenario and I'm going to do some "home tooling" with some of the combat tools. We've also bought the monogram "Classic Fantasy" which looks to have some interesting combat rules (looks to take liberally from Runequest which looks promising).

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