Changing the function of skill categories?

[MatteoN]

Uh, sorry, I misunderstood your previous post, for some reason I thought you weren't ok with that aspect of the system. I wasn't criticizing it it - in fact, it seems very interesting! I'd like to know more about it.

[Atgxtg]

Uh which aspect. Now I'm confused. 

 

As far as my variant went, the basic idea was that I used the 10s digit ion the die roll, and added modifiers to generate an EFFECT score which was then used to buy whatever results the character wanted (and could afford). 

 

I was trying to decide between 3 combat systems. Alternating attacks (such as most RPGs use), a winner is the attacker method (like in Pendragon), or an advantage system (one of the combatants has the advantage, and is on the offensive, which the other character is forced to defend until he can find some way to gain the upper hand, such as from a good parry or sidestep). 

[MatteoN]

Interesting. Option 2 and 3 were mutually exclusive? In the past I've wondered if it would be possible to expand on Pendragon's system (which sadly I never played, but know a few things about it), so that who has the upper hand can choose between a series of options, for example a successful reckless attack that lets them deal much damage but but also lets the defender deal them a few damage, a successful defensive maneuver that prevent them from receiving any damage, but leaves also the opponent unscathed, etc.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah 2 & 3 were mutually exclusive. The reason being the way Pendragon works. Each round the winner of an opposed weapon skill roll gets to inflict damage on the loser.  Since the winner could change on any given round, no one was ever really on the defensive in Pendragon. 

 

There were a few special maneuvers such as the Berserk Attack, and Fighting Defensively, which did pretty much what you suggested, but no one had the upper hand per say. Generally the sp[special options were chosen in play based on the circumstances. Berserk was good in you thought you could soak the other guys attack, or if you were greatly over-matched, since the attack was unopposed. Fighting Defensively was usually a good stopgap measure to use when you could double or triple team a foe. The guy being attacked could fight defensively while his allies could do the damage.

 

What I was trying for was to actually force someone to be on the defensive for a few rounds or so, until he worked his way on to the attack. For example, someone with a weapon that had a significant reach advantage would generally start off of the offensive, since the opponent couldn't hit them. Said opponent would have to try to knock the longer weapon out of line and step in close, but do if before the attacker recovered. 

That's where effect came in. A defender would need to use a difference in effect to knock the weapon aside, and to step a pace (=yard/meter) or two (1 EFFECT for 1 pace). It actually worked out pretty simply in play. I could make the character move dynamically in the fight instead of just standing still and trading blows. 

 

 

One of the other things I was toying with was uisng the hit location for parry rolls. The hit location table looked something like this:

 

1-2 Right Leg

3-4 Left Leg

5    Abdomen

6-7    Chest

8  Right Arm

9 Left Arm

10 Head

For example, if the attacker rolled a 56, he would hit location 6 (chest). To parry or block  the defender needed to get his weapon to location 6. If the defender rolled a 83, he would "burn" 3 points of EFFECT to move his parry from location 3 (Left Leg) to location 6 (Chest). Now, if/when the defender had any EFFECT left over he could spend that to do stuff like  a sidestep, beat the attacking weapon aside, and so on. .

Shields had a spread or radius of locations they covered, such as +1, meaning that they could parry attack is within 1 of the location they rolled. So someone using a shield who rolled an 83 parry could block any attack from locations 2-4 automatically, and only needed to burn 1 EFFECT to shift to locations 1 or 5. It made shield feel like shields.

[MatteoN]

So increasing the difficulty reduced your chance of success but boosted your potential EFFECT. But at the same time, the EFFECT value wasn't used to buy just additional effects, right? I mean, if I roll under my parry skill, but then my EFFECT doesn't let me cover the area that's targeted by the attack, my parry fails nonetheless? In that case, if say my opponent's attack succeeds and their EFFECT value of 10 lets the attack target my head (or possibly another location if they decide to spend some EFFECT on other... effects?), I better try some hard acrobatic defensive maneuver to try to defend instead of a standard parry/dodge. It seems quite cost effective as a choice: if I attempted a standard defensive maneuver my defensive skill would be reduced to 1/10 of its value (because only an EFFECT of 10 lets me cover the area that's targeted by the attack), but if I attempted a hard defensive maneuver (difficulty 2) I would need an effect of 5+ to be able to protect my head, so my defensive skill would be reduced to 3/10 of its value. It seems your system would potentially have allowed for a more cinematic play style compared to standard BRP.

 

Were you trying to design a universal (non-logarithmic?) scale for EFFECT along the lines of the AP scale in DC Heroes? That's one of the games I regret the most never having played, 

[Atgxtg]

You haven't quite got it. 

 

The EFFECT die is the 10s digit.

The LOCATION die is the one's digit.

 

So there is only a 1/10th chance of the defender rolling the same location as the attack, but a reasonably good chance of bumping a parry over to the right location.

 

Going with your example, let's say the attacker rolled a 50. That would mean a 5 EFFECT hit to location 10 (the head). Now if the defender rolled a 68 parry (6 EFFECT, location 8) he could burn two points of effect to shift the parry to location 10. Since he would only have 4 effect left to block with, the defender would end up taking  1 point hit, or a partial parry. 

[MatteoN]

You haven't quite got it. 

 

The EFFECT die is the 10s digit.

The LOCATION die is the one's digit.

 

So there is only a 1/10th chance of the defender rolling the same location as the attack, but a reasonably good chance of bumping a parry over to the right location.

 

Going with your example, let's say the attacker rolled a 50. That would mean a 5 EFFECT hit to location 10 (the head). Now if the defender rolled a 68 parry (6 EFFECT, location 8) he could burn two points of effect to shift the parry to location 10. Since he would only have 4 effect left to block with, the defender would end up taking  1 point hit, or a partial parry. 

I  hadn't reread the previous posts and misremembered what you wrote in them. Thanks.

[Atgxtg]

Were you trying to design a universal (non-logarithmic?) scale for EFFECT along the lines of the AP scale in DC Heroes? That's one of the games I regret the most never having played, 

 

Yes and no. I had a scale but it was logarithmic. Matter of fact that was one of the things that was killing the effect system mechanic. It just didn't stat out well.

 

I had a nice logarithmic scale game system I was working on that seemed to hold up better, but was d20 based, not percentile based. They that worked was the game stat was equal to the base10 log of the value. The whole number was how many d20s you rolled, while the decimal value was the add. 

 

For example, a 50kg barbell would have a stat of 1.7. That would mean rolling 1d20+7. A 65 ton M1 tank would have a stat score of 4.8, translating to a 4d20+8.

 

That system had a few advantages.   . For one thing anything that could be measured in SI (metric) system could be easily stated up.  Opposed tests were easy. Also, the stat score was also very close tot he average score (17 is about the average roll for 1d20+7, and 48 is almost the average roll for 2d10+8). It was also easy to shift scale. You could shift the scale up or down a factor of 10 just by subtracting or adding another d20. 

I also liked it because I could do a lot of math tricks with it. For instance, I could design vehicles using the actual real world data, and work out like top speed using the real world drag formula, which was a lot simpler in logarithmic form. 

[MatteoN]

Very cool!

[Atgxtg]

What? the LOG system?

 

I was really fond of it for design purposes as well as for ease of generating game stats. It was very easy to write up vehicles using real world data and working up top speed using (POW-DRAG)/3 or (STR-DRAG)/2. 

 

What was also nice was that for task against a fixed force, such as lifting a weight, the difficulty could be fixed instead of rolled. So a 50kg rock would be difficulty 17 to lift. 

 

And I always though it could be fun for handling a microverse type of game where the character shank down to insect size. -3d20 of mass brings a 80kg man down to 80g, and should drop STR down by 2d20. So humans would probably be beating up most insects, thanks to the square-cube law. . 

 

 

One of the bad bits was that on a logarithmic scale human attribute range is a pretty small spread. Each point of attribute is worth about 3 points in BRP or most 3d6 systems. 

 

It was probably a little bit too generous to the underdog. An average human  (rolling 1d20+7) probably has a better chance of winning a tug or war against a horse (rolling 2d10+7) that he probably would in real life. 

[MatteoN]

Yes, the LOG system is cool. I think the compressed scale and the "generosity to the underdog" flaws actually aren't flaws if you use such a system for what it is expected to excel at: superheroes, kitchen sink settings etc. Probably it's not the right tool to build a gritty, realistic RPG... unless one had a scale that is linear at one end (or in the middle), and becomes increasingly logarithmic at the other end (or at the extremities). Is such a variable scale actually a (possible) thing? Am I wrong, or some versions of the Size scale for BRP function like that?

[Atgxtg]

It's not so much a flaw, as a limitation. The coarser the scale, the coarser the "steps" in ability. For instance, with the LOG system a +1 is about a 26% improvement. If someone is only 5 or 10% better than someone else, it is too small a difference to merit a +1. Going to a D100 log system would let me track 2% steps, but would be more cumbersome.  

 

The LOG system could work just fine for  arealistic, gritty setting, It's just that the stat range would be compressed. That means that there would probably only be a 3-4 point spread in most stats between the PC heroes and the average Joes. That would probably have the effect of making the system more...gritty and realistic!

 

Is a variable scale possible, uh, yeah. All you'd have to do would be to use an increasing exponent. The SIZ scale for BRP doesn't actually do that. It mimics that,l but it doesn't follow an actual formula past SIZ 88 or so. An increase scale would also make the values much harder to work with to do math shortcuts (that's one thing I hate about RQ/BRP- wish they stuck with the Superworld SIZ formula!)

 

Hmm, you got me thinking. Looking at it the way you suggested, I think you don't really need to adjust the scale at all - you could just increase the amount needed to adjust the dice rolled.  What I mean by that is that it is the difference between the opposing scores that is important, not the actual scores. .So I could give a default roll, say 2d20, and then increase the size of the increments needed to get an additional +1 (or an additional die). 

 

But is is also possible to just use smaller increments. For instance, instead of using a base 10 LOG, we could use  10&base2 LOG. That would actually give us a slightly  finer granularity that we get with BRP. Or we could use 8*base2 LOG and get the same granularity as (and and easier correlation with) BRP.   

 

There is actually quite a bit that can be done with the mechanics for the LOG system, since most of the system is based on real formulas and data. So as long as the method is applied consistently, the ratios will be correct and the system will still work. For instance, We could use multiple d6s or d10s instead of d20s. We could even do something like use a log based formula to get a % score that we could use as a success chance. 40%*LOG gives a scale pretty close to the SIZ and resistance tables.  

 

Hmm, let's see, at 40*LOG an 4g ant would get a SIZ/MAss roll of (-)96%. We could use some sort of bump method to handle an opposed roll here. For instance we could add 100% to the ant (giving him a 4% success chance) but bump down it results 1 success level. 

[Atgxtg]

Oh, and just to threadjack this a bit further, my latest game design attempt has ditched attribute scores. Instead I made the attributes advantages (if high)  and disadvantages.(if low).The goal was to eliminate a lot of the  bookkeeping (like tracking 10s and 11s). 

[MatteoN]

Feel free to threadjack, I find your ideas - especially regarding the LOG-based system - very interesting, but without some concrete examples I think soon I won't be able to continue following your thoughts - my maths is only at a subsistence level. 

[Atgxtg]

Do't feel bad. It's hard to follow a lot of this without some sort of context. I had a partne who was pretty good at math, that I used to bounce this stuff off of and he would often (usually) fail to follow it until we put it into some sort of context. So on that note let me put this into some sort of example.

 

Just to show the way the LOG system works as is, lets set up some sort of tug of war between some characters.

 

Let't start with the Hulk. According to Marvel he can lift about 100 tons, more when he get's angry. In the LOG system that would be about  STR 5.0 (5d20+0).Iron Man,used to be  listed as being able to lift about 80 tons (it tends to increase when the armor gets upgraded)  so around STR 4.9 (4d20+9). That illustrates what I mean about the limitations. of the scaling system. There is only a 1 point difference between them. And no way to differentiate someone like Capitan Britain at 90 tons. 

 

 

Now if we assume an average human can lift 65 kg (STR 11 in BRP) that would give him STR 1.8  (1d20+8) in the LOG system. Now it's pretty apparent that an average man has little chance of holding his own against the Hulk. But there is a slight chance that the Hulk could roll very poorly and end up with a total low enough that an average man could beat.  

[MatteoN]

Sorry, Atgxtg, you had already explained the basic workings of the system clearly, and it's very cool. The part where I don't follow you are the actual differences between the alternative logarithmic scales.

 

I've been for a long time firmly against the traditional difference between stats/attributes and skills, because it's a clear-cut difference that is meant to represent in-game what in reality is a very elusive difference between inborn and acquired capacities; and because I don't see the point in differentiating mechanically in an RPG between someone's genes' and personal history's contributions to their ability to use a computer or run a marathon or forge a document; of course there is a difference and it may be relevant to the description and background of the character, but not necessarily to a game's resolution system. So, in principle I agree with you that doing without stats/attributes and having just advantages and disadvantages solves a problem (reducing bookkeeping) without any shortcomings. However, lately I've become quite fond of games with random character creation, so I've also become tolerant of randomly created stats (and I've had some ideas for random methods to roll up balanced characters  ).

[Atgxtg]

Ah, okay. My bad. I tend to miss things when I post while sleep deprived. 

 

The basic differences between scales mostly translate into trade offs between granularity, usability, and preference in the rating values.  If you make a change to improve one factor, it will probably impact on the other factors. All games have a "sweet spot" where they are designed to work in, and tend to break down when pushed too far out of the sweet spot. It helps to know just where the sweet spot is going to be when you design the game. It all breaks down to what you want to do with the game. That sets the parameters and helps to point out what features to emphasize.

 

My desire to get rid of attributes is mostly due tot he fact that in most RPGs a single attribute point doesn't mean much, and most characters tend to have a bunch of average attributes that have to be tracked but which do really mean much. For instance, there is very little difference between a 10 STR and an 11 STR in BRP, or in most other 3D6 systems. It usually takes a change of several points to make a significant difference. The same with damage bonus. So getting rid of stats and just assuming an average value unless otherwise noted saves a ton os stat tracking and helps with playability. 

 

Random character creation isn't necessarily incompatible with this approach either. Instead of rolling random attribute scores you could use table to assign traits and skills. 

[MatteoN]

Shields had a spread or radius of locations they covered, such as +1, meaning that they could parry attack is within 1 of the location they rolled. So someone using a shield who rolled an 83 parry could block any attack from locations 2-4 automatically, and only needed to burn 1 EFFECT to shift to locations 1 or 5. It made shield feel like shields.

 Hey, I've tried to implement your idea in this draft of a melee system: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=31122

[Atgxtg]

Card based? Interesting.

 

Are you familar with TSR's old SAGA system? 

[MatteoN]

Card based? Interesting.

 

Are you familar with TSR's old SAGA system? 

 

No. 

[Atgxtg]

Okay here's the basics:

 

Instead of dice the game uses cards. The Marvel version of the RPG(the simplest) uses a deck comprised of four suits: Strength, Agility, Intellect, Willpower, and Doom. The first four suits are the attributes, and the Doom suit is bad news (more on that later).

 

Players draw a hand size based on their character's experience, and then play cards against the difficulty. For example, if wielding a sword the character would play a card and add it to his Strength score (as Swords is a STR skill). If the player plays a card that matches suit with the attribute being used, it is considered to be trump, and the player can draw a card off the deck and add it to his total.The total in compared to the difficulty. If the total beats the diffuclty the difference is taken as damage. When a player takes damage, he must reduce his maximum card size by a total number of points equal to or greater than the damage taken. When a player runs out of cards he is beaten.

 

Where the Doom suit comes in is that when a player plays a doom card, he hands it to the GM, who can play it latter on to increase the difficulty of some task. 

 

 

After looking at your card based system, I was thinking that you could port over some ideas from SAGA. For instance you could use suits to determine the location attacked, and suits to determine the defense attempted. 

[MatteoN]

By the way, I think in that system I'd give all characters a fixed amount of non-localized hit points. Armor protection plus protection bonus would be subtracted from weapon damage plus damage bonus, and the amount of damage that bypassed armor (if any) incremented by a fixed amount based of the body part hit by the attack.

[MatteoN]

After looking at your card based system, I was thinking that you could port over some ideas from SAGA. For instance you could use suits to determine the location attacked, and suits to determine the defense attempted. 

 

I was thinking of using pip cards only to determine initiative score (which I think would be of paramount importance in that system) and the number of dodges a character can make, and suits only in case characters have the same initiative score (see the section on sustaining attacks).

[Atgxtg]

JUst tossing in some more info. Castle Falkenstien also has a card based dueling system. Each character gets two  black court cards (attacks) two red court(defenses) and two low numbered cards (rests)> The outcome of the duel is based on what choices the characters make (in serect) each excahnge, and relative skill.

 

For instance id someone plays two attacks, the defender must play two red cards to block it completely. Only one red card means they get a light hit, and no red cards means they get a "double" hit.

 

 

Oh, btw, one thing that might be interesting is that in fencing, the moves are laid out along lines of attack and defense, that are numbered. For instance a defender would parry in six (or sixte) to stop a head cut. I was thinking that this could be used with a deck of cards as the basis for a combat system. 

[MatteoN]

Oh, btw, one thing that might be interesting is that in fencing, the moves are laid out along lines of attack and defense, that are numbered. For instance a defender would parry in six (or sixte) to stop a head cut. I was thinking that this could be used with a deck of cards as the basis for a combat system. 

 

Interesting!

 

I'd like the system to remain as simple as possible without being devoid of any tactical depth (which as it is now is mostly related to choosing where to hit your opponent - based on whether they're wearing armor, what type of armor they have on different body parts, whether they're wearing a shield, and what type of shield they're wearing). Also, the system uses 3d6 because that was a mechanics that the OP of the thread at rpg.net wanted to mantain, but I'm quite fond of it. So, since the system uses both cards and dice, I think I want the cards playing element to remain quite simple. As it is now,

- the number of pip cards you draw determines the number of dodges you can make in the round, and of other movements you can make in your turn (when you make a dodge or a movement, you have to discard your highest pip card);

- the number on the highest pip card you have in your hand determines when you can attack (if you dodge before being entitled to attack, your attack will probably be delayed) and if you have the upper hand on the defender (if you have to move towards the defender to be able to attack them, you have a smaller chance of then having the upper hand on them);

- the suit of your highest pip card determines if you're more brash or more cautious than your opponent, when you two have the same initiative score (the brasher fighter attacks first, but the more cautious fighter can choose between sustaining the opponent's attack without defending and then counterattacking, and forfeiting their attack in order to block or dodge the opponent's attack).