What does it mean when you miss?

[AikiGhost]

YouTube - Longsword techniques/Hosszúkard technikák

Funny actually theres quite a bit of aikido in there

[rust]

Not really Aikido, because it is based on old European martial arts, but

it is indeed surprisingly similar.

Edit.: Some informations, in case you are interested in it ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfringen

Edited November 15, 2008 by rust

[Guest Vile Traveller]

For me a more realistic way to handle it would be to have a static defense skill of say between 0 and 50% which is taken from an attackers skill before he rolls. No need for a parry roll at all.

RuneQuest II had a defence rating, which was subtracted from opponents' attacks. That was in place of the later RQIII dodge, though, because in both RQII and RQIII you could also parry (maybe not at the same time - I need to open the book again).

Funny actually theres quite a bit of aikido in there

Probably a case of 'parallel evolution' producing some similarities between two separate ways of using long, sharp bits of metal to kill each other. I think most people's idea of western sword fighting is skewed by a century of inaccurate hollywood swashbuckling, probably brought on by considerations like using lightweight, undersized aluminium swords and fencing rather than longsword techniques. The old longsword manuals look very similar in many ways to medieval Japanese manuscripts. Edited November 16, 2008 by Vile

[sladethesniper]

Probably a case of 'parallel evolution' producing some similarities between two separate ways of using long, sharp bits of metal to kill each other. I think most people's idea of western sword fighting is skewed by a century of inaccurate hollywood swashbuckling, probably brought on by considerations like using lightweight, undersized aluminium swords and fencing rather than longsword techniques. The old longsword manuals look very similar in many ways to medieval Japanese manuscripts.

Parallel evolution in combat is actually quite common. The same problems, similar problems breed similar solutions.

There was a book by Steve Perry called "The Musashi Flex" wherein the main character has this great mental conversation with himself about the development of martial arts...basically the end result of it is IIRC "There are only so many different ways for a human being to move, thus there are only so many attacks and defenses that can be done". From that, he goes on to make the 97 Steps, a very stripped down/lethal martial art in the Matador Universe that has effects throughout the series.

And I apologize for hijacking the thread. ;-(

-STS

[AikiGhost]

"There are only so many different ways for a human being to move, thus there are only so many attacks and defenses that can be done".

Absolutely this is why freestyle wrestling matches look so much like combat judo (as opposed to Olympic judo) matches. Once you minimize the rule set all the grappling arts also start to look very similar.

[AikiGhost]

RuneQuest II had a defence rating, which was subtracted from opponents' attacks. That was in place of the later RQIII dodge, though, because in both RQII and RQIII you could also parry (maybe not at the same time - I need to open the book again).

I wonder why they abandoned the defense rating? It would seem to make more sense to me. Giving you a default defense rating and the allowing a full parry or dodge as an action.

What was the RQ2 defense rating based off?

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Defence was calculated like a skill bonus - minuses for high SIZ, pluses for high INT, POW and DEX. Anytime your defence saved you from an attack, you could roll INT or lower on D100 to gain the usual RQII 5% increase. If you didn't have a positive defence, you could never increase it - you'd have to build up your stats to get a defence bonus first. You could split your defence among multiple attackers in lots of at least 5%.

I don't think a negative defence counted (i.e. it wouldn't make you easier to hit), but looking back at the rules I see it doesn't explicitly say so. In that case, it could become very easy to hit giants and such. Which would actually make sense, except then splitting your defence wouldn't work - with a negative defence, you would actually be harder to hit if you went up against multiple attackers. So, on balance, I still think the intention was that your defence wouldn't ever go negative.

Edited November 16, 2008 by Vile

[deleriad]

In RQ2 you still had to apply defence against an attack; it didn't affect all incoming attacks. E.g. if you were surrounded by three trollkin and you have 20% defence then you might parry the first, apply defence against the second and do nothing against the third.

[RMS]

Been out of town over the weekend, so there may be a flurry of posts as I catch up here:

But surely a bad attack requires next to no effort to avoid (IE: no defence roll needed), whereas a decent attack requires a strong effort to avoid (IE: YOu must make a defense roll). Certainly I've never made people roll defenses against failed attacks, it seems unnecessary and also to slow things down for no good reason.

That's certainly the way to rationalize not having defense rolls and I don't have any argument against it, but it does assume that you know ahead of time when a blow is a good one or not. That's not the case in a real fight. Unless the opponent is completely incompetent every incoming blow has a chance to be fatal.

I would describe the differences between each success level of an attack going towards the head (easily changed to different location) as follows:

• Critical: hits the face or neck solidily, thus avoiding the armor protection and doing maximum damage.
  
• Special: a solid blow directly on the helm.
  
• Success: a blow that hits somewhere on the helm. The solidity of the blow depends on the damage roll.
  
• Failure: a near miss or glancing blow. There's no damage, but the difference in this and a success is only a fraction of an inch difference.
  
• Fumble: a blow that either misses or is a glancing blow. It doesn't miss by any more than a normal failure (or many successes for that matter). It just results in some sort of combat disadvantage for the attacker: unbalancing, broken strap, etc.
  

Btw, rolling shouldn't slow anything down. I've always rolled attack and defense rolls simultaneously. It adds to the tension of combat, in addition to speeding it up. In fact, I'd suspect it's marginally faster than rolling attack, deciding if it hits and then rolling defense. Plus, all the forms of BRP that I've played that use the second method have random armor which adds yet another roll to combat.

Btw, I actually like both systems. However, feel is the deciding factor, not speed of play IMO. RQ3 combat with hit locations, strike ranks, declarations, etc. is just as fast at the table (if you ignore fatigue) as Elric! in my experience. (Any difference is negligible in my experience of running a lot of both.)

Well if fencing is anything like boxing you dont actually make any decisions at all. You basically do what you do in training, not time for actual thinking of any kind. This becomes more and more the case the better you get.

I'll just note that your comment above is an even better argument for always rolling a defense. It's instinctive from training to always stop everything incoming. The part that comes out in RQ with this are the tactics involved. You always parry (or dodge potentially in RQ3) in one-vs-one fights because it's the most logical thing to do. However, how do you handle those two trollkin. You have to make a choice between them as to which one you'll concentrate your active defense against. You shield is only going to help against one of them, while you depend on getting the first shot in against the other or hoping your armor holds out.

I wonder why they abandoned the defense rating? It would seem to make more sense to me. Giving you a default defense rating and the allowing a full parry or dodge as an action.

Defense had a few issues. One, it works completely different than any other skill in the game that seemed wonky even in the days before unified mechanic became all the rage. Two, as implemented "the rich get richer" as the skill shoots up for those who have it, while everyone else is basically a sitting duck. Three, the subtraction of the Defense rating every single round was a major PIA. (What's really wonky is that they ditched this for Defense for RQ3, but added the fatigue system into RQ3 that required the exact same thing for every character and the number changed every single round.) It'd be easy enough to add back in. I'd give everyone basic Defense then and hard cap it at Dex x3 or x5 to keep it in check. Finally, it did tend to make combats drag out even more than they did between high skilled characters in other versions of BRP since Defense dropped attacks, while parries where at full value.

Edited November 17, 2008 by RMS
Condensed everything into one long post for your enjoyment.

[RosenMcStern]

Jason has stated on these forums that he liked the concept of Defense that was in RQ2, but did not insert it because it would become a super-skill more valuable than any other skill. In any case, it is still there as a super-power so you can easily add it. But I would not recommend doing so: Dodge represents this better.

[AikiGhost]

Jason has stated on these forums that he liked the concept of Defense that was in RQ2, but did not insert it because it would become a super-skill more valuable than any other skill. In any case, it is still there as a super-power so you can easily add it. But I would not recommend doing so: Dodge represents this better.

perhaps the thing to do would make it = to 1/2 of a PC best defensive combat skill?

EG: If you best combat skill (this could include the dodge skill I guess) = 80% your Defense would be 40% which you could split as you wanted?

[frogspawner]

perhaps the thing to do would make it [Defence] = to 1/2 of a PC best defensive combat skill?

It'd still be a pain to recalculate attack-chances (and hence special/critical/fumble chances too) all the time, especially if it's being split in possibly different ways each round.

I prefer to use a version of Defence that is rolled as a normal skill, rather like Dodge, but in addition to parrying.

[RosenMcStern]

I do not see any reason why. If you have Dodge 80%, then you simply dodge 4 blows out of 5, or less if you are facing multiple opponents and incur in the -30% penalty. This mix of active and passive defense adds very little to realism, and decreases playability by splitting the defense mechanics between active and passive.

[RMS]

I do not see any reason why. If you have Dodge 80%, then you simply dodge 4 blows out of 5, or less if you are facing multiple opponents and incur in the -30% penalty. This mix of active and passive defense adds very little to realism, and decreases playability by splitting the defense mechanics between active and passive.

I agree. For my tastes, I'd rather just move everything over to a passive defense mechanically than have to deal with both. Just add up all the defenses, subtract from attack and roll. Otherwise, the current system suits my tastes just fine, though I do miss the RQ3 method of only getting one active defense and one attack per round. I'm not sure that it made anything more realistic, but it did lead to a different style of combat and made the system a bit more gameable (in a good way IMO). The newer method tends to lead more to just basic "roll attack", "roll defense", etc. without the tactical considerations, in my experience. (Not that you couldn't do that with the new system. It just doesn't force it as much so players don't tend to do it as much.)

[Atgxtg]

Defense....

Sounded good in theory, but didn't play out to well.

Early on, it didn't affect combat much (a 5 or 10% defense has a minor effect on the chance to hit), but did complicate the game more, requiring recaculating attack crticial and special chances.

As denfese improved, it started to dominate. A character with a 60% defense was usually better ff that someone with a 120% parry.

With RQ3, the "dodge" skill was develoved, and it took the place of defense, and was probably the main reason why defense went the way of the Dodo.

Personally, I prefer active defenses, since they give the player more of a hand in hi character7s destiny. I hate it in other RPGs when someone looses a characrter to a lucky die roll, and can do nothing about it.

One idea that I like, but that doesn't translate well into BRP, is to only have the PCs roll for tasks, against a set difficulty, both for attack and defense.

[Al.]

I agree. For my tastes, I'd rather just move everything over to a passive defense mechanically than have to deal with both.

The classic British 80s rpg Dragon Warriors* was written by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson who wrote a lot of RQII stuff in White Dwarf back in the day.

The mechanism used there was derived from a quicker way of playing RQII combat

Attack% minus (half Parry%) is statistically similat to Attack% vs. Parry%

So this has certainly been done before

Al

*which has just been re-released but I'm not getting any money to push it and it is published by Mongoose so do not necessarily take this as an encouragement to buy it

[Lord Thousand]

The mixing of sword and wrestling in western martial culture developped to counter the increased efficiency of plate armour, to face a fully armored warrior the best technique was to wrestle him to the ground and then hit him trough the joints of the armour

in not heavy armored combat those wrestling techniques are too risky to be practical and are not used in other less selfdefence oriented martail arts like kenjutsu or modern kendo

[islan]

New idea: if an attack is a failure and a defense roll is a fail, then the attack still succeeds (normal success).

I haven't had a chance to really think about this yet, but do you think this would be bad for the game?

[Harshax]

New idea: if an attack is a failure and a defense roll is a fail, then the attack still succeeds (normal success).

I haven't had a chance to really think about this yet, but do you think this would be bad for the game?

Nope. That's the way HarnMaster does it. (I love saying that)

More specifically, a Defender's level of success is subtracted from the Attacker's level of success. So a Critical Attack vs. a Standard Defense yields a Standard Success. But a Critical vs. a Fumble introduces heaps of nastiness. Use that, along with SPQ's ala-carte combat result table, and combat is slightly more interesting then: Miss, Parry, Parry, Explode at higher skill ranks.

[Questbird]

The classic British 80s rpg Dragon Warriors* was written by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson who wrote a lot of RQII stuff in White Dwarf back in the day.

Speaking of Dave Morris, his free Tekumel game Tirikelu (also vaguely RQ inspired) had a very interesting mechanic for ripostes which is relevant to this discussion.

A successful parry vs. a failed attack would give the defender the chance for a riposte. The defender needed to make another roll less than his successful parry roll to make a free attack which (by definition) could not be parried if successful. In other words, the attacker had left an opening which the defender might exploit.

I like this idea because it makes ripostes more common than in BRP, where depending on your rules (I use Elric!/SB5) you need to make a critical parry with a second weapon or shield to make one. In the Tirikelu system ripostes are less effective than normal attacks, but I like the way the line may be blurred between attacker and defender.

Of course, this does rely on rolling attack and defense rolls at the same time, which was the contention of the original post. It does give one possible reason for doing so though.

[canology]

I like that idea of a riposte. The only problem I would have with it is that the better the parry the harder the riposte. So if you rolled a special parry, you would have less of a chance for a riposte than if you had rolled your parry on the nose. I'm sure there is a mathematical work-around to that, but I'm too sleepy to think of it...

[Mugen]

New idea: if an attack is a failure and a defense roll is a fail, then the attack still succeeds (normal success).

I haven't had a chance to really think about this yet, but do you think this would be bad for the game?

I had a similar idea, except that in my houserule a failed attack only did minimum weapon damage +character's damage bonus (mirroring the max weapon damage + damage bonus of a critical strike).

That means the attack % is not a chance to hit, but rather a chance to do an effective attack.

I also introduced the Pendragon/MRQ rule for skill oppositions: when both combattants have the same success level, the highest roll wins.

Edited March 4, 2011 by Mugen

[Chaot]

I was actually thinking about adding a Feint maneuver to BRP that would allow an attacker to make a defender waste one of their defensive rolls (thus giving them a -30) on their next one. The defender would probably have to make a Sense roll in order to see if something is in fact a feint and thus not fall for it.

Hey! I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but this has got me thinking...

[Questbird]

I like that idea of a riposte. The only problem I would have with it is that the better the parry the harder the riposte. So if you rolled a special parry, you would have less of a chance for a riposte than if you had rolled your parry on the nose. I'm sure there is a mathematical work-around to that, but I'm too sleepy to think of it...

Maybe you could keep the rule about making a full-strength riposte on a special success. So for example someone with Trident 50% parrying vs. a failed attack roll

score 50 --> riposte at 50%

score 11-49 --> riposte at that score

score 01-10 --> riposte at 50%

net result is to increase by 1% the chance of getting the equivalent of a special success. Not too bad.

[Chaot]

I like this idea because it makes ripostes more common than in BRP, where depending on your rules (I use Elric!/SB5) you need to make a critical parry with a second weapon or shield to make one. In the Tirikelu system ripostes are less effective than normal attacks, but I like the way the line may be blurred between attacker and defender.

Just a point of clarification and this may be exactly what you meant. I think it's that you need to make a critical parry and have a second weapon or shield available for riposte. The second weapon or shield would then make the free attack. The critical parry can be made with the primary weapon.

That Tekumel stuff is very interesting.