Quote from: tenbones;1118831I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

We use the following, no table needed.
Impact weapons (clubs, weapon hilts and shafts, that little guy standing there just when you need him) on a hit, roll damage, subtract armor value, apply damage.
Blunt weapons (maces, warhammers, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract .5 armor value, apply damage.
Chopping weapons (axes, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract armor value, double the result, apply damage
Cutting weapons (sword and knife edges, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract 1.5 armor, triple the result, apply damage.
Armor-Piercing Point weapons(some spearheads, some sword points, all picks, some arrows and bolts) check for hitting a gap, otherwise treat like a blunt weapon, except on an exceptional hit.
Stabbing points: (other spears, some sword points, some arrows and bolts) Treat as cutting damage except on an exceptional hit.

Quote from: amacris;1118846With regard to "is it fun", let me offer up some math. Let's consider two cases:
Case 1) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 99% chance to hit. If he hits he will do 6-15 (avg 10) points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.
Case 2) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 10% chance to hit. if he hits he will do 100 points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.

Mathematically these seem similar, but in actual play, they are very different. The first is attritional - Aragorn knows he'll hit and it's a matter of how long it takes him to whittle Conan down vs. Aragorn whiffs 9 times out of 10. Put another way, the variance of Case 2 is much greater than Case 1; Case 2 could end in one round or it could never end. Case 1 will end somewhere between 17 and 7 rounds.

In my experience I've found most players have more fun with a game like Case 1 than  Case 2. Why? I think it's because...
a) RPGs are played in a group. If damage is primarily attrititional, then each turn you have a good chance of contributing to the battle by hitting and doing some damage. On the other hand, if damage is primarily hit-kill vs. miss, then each turn you likely will achieve nothing at all. Your miss is totally unhelpful, but your hit, however small, helps a bit.

b) Players enjoy a sense of progress. Slowly whittling away at an enemy's hit points feels like progress. Whiff, whiff, whiff, KILL just feels like gambling.

c) Players want to keep their characters alive. Having the enemy whittle away your hp gives you a chance to flee. If you know you have 7 to 17 rounds to live, there's a chance. OTOH, whiff, whiff, whiff DIE is like gambling and the House just won.

With the above in mind, I think the ideal Attack System is one where:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - Conan gets to feel awesome against thugs
Elite fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other elite fighters; - Aragorn vs Conan is an extended duel where both sides see progress and rising stakes
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes attrit elite fighters; - Conan can be worn down by weak fighters but can be heroic without fear of insta-death
           and there seem to be two possible preferences for low level:
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - Low-level fighting is scary and deadly, and thus fun to go through as you level up (OE-3E)
Weak fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other weak fighters - Low-level fighting feels just like high level fighter (4E)

How does that compare to existing games? Through chance, insight, or genius, D&D's attack roll & hit point system is much closer to this ideal than most other games, which I think is a large part of its enduring popularity. Few other games accomplish this.

Modern games tend to fail in two categories. Consider Cyberpunk/Traveller/RECON/Delta Green:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - FUN
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill elite fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes quickly kill fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - FUN or NOT AS FUN IF YOU PREFER 4E LOW LEVEL STYLE PLAY

I was writing a very thoughtful reply to this, but then I pressed Go Advanced, and somehow my browser decided I was no longer logged in, and logging in led me to a blank page, and my words were lost is browser cache hell, one of my least favorite levels of hell.


So I'll just summarize.

* There is a Case 3, which is like Case 2 except there is a good interesting tactical game where there is a whole mapped combat situation to engage, that gives players ways to mitigate their risks of dying or other outcomes, and even in simple head-on combat, many other things can happen besides "whiff" or "you kill Conan".

* There are also conceptual and psychological issues which only some players suffer from, which result in some players suffering under Case 2 or even Case 3, but not all players have those issues.

* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

* I also can't stand attrition games where fighting means you're almost certainly going to be worn down, but worn down slowly, and once worn down enough, you're very likely to fall. Not unless it actually represents a situation where that makes sense. In a fist fight, ok. In an unarmored sword fight, no.

* I also really like effects of injury. One of the best ways to stay alive it to hit your opponent first, in a way that means they're going to have a hard time hitting you back immediately. 1/7 hit points gone, but no other effect, is to me, uninteresting and not fun. I much prefer a high "whiff" rate to no way to deny a foe a high chance of hurting me.

I can see how in a D&D-style combat system, having more hit points than weapons could ever do damage, sort of fills in for the lack of ways to avoid getting hurt that exist in the combat systems I like. To me it feels like a poor substitute, though. If I had to play a game with no mapped tactical aspect to it, I personally would much prefer to have a high chance to avoid being hurt, than a pile of hit points that will almost surely erode in each fight.

Quote from: tenbones;1118831I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

I've used weapon and armor types since I started playing GURPS in 1986. It's built in to GURPS, though different from the D&D and Palladium models. I'm mostly happy with it, and it quickly became second-nature.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901* There are also conceptual and psychological issues which only some players suffer from, which result in some players suffering under Case 2 or even Case 3, but not all players have those issues.

The majority of humans are irrationally risk averse. Given that, it makes sense that many people prefer a system where their favorite character can't be killed in a single round.

Quote* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

While I don't feel quite as strongly, I don't like attrition only games either.

Quote from: estar;1118832There are consquence to both approaches including AC, but I disagree that there are mechanical gaps.

The gaps are there though, you just mention ways to address them later in your post. But if there weren't there there wouldn't be anything to address.

Quote from: estar;1118832Lets break it down.

Armor as "Defense" (i.e. evasion or reduced hit rate) fails to account for attacks that don't do damage
knockdowns,
So AC does have one case where an actual hit is determined and that when an unarmored target suffer damage. In most editions it is modified by a dex bonus. So to make contact with a target is to roll higher than the number for AC 10 (or 9) adding the dex bonus to the target number.

So now we determined that we made contact. Now we can proceed to resolving the knockdown itself. Different RPGs have different ways of handling this. Some match strength vs strength. Some get more sophisticated and include velocity and mass like GURPS. Some add skill in and so on. But the difficulty for D&D here was determining whether contact was made. Now that out of the way you can proceed to whatever mechanics you feel accurately represent the odds of getting knocked down after contact is made.

disarms,
In GURPS disarms are a function of weapon skill. In other system they are often a critical result. As for D&D, it has weapon skill in the form of your to-hit bonus so you can adapt that if need be. Or incorporate a critical result system. Both would be consistent with the larger system even though various editions have remained silent on it.

The method I prefer, is to have character make a normal to hit roll and the target make a save. If the save fails then the target is disarmed. I don't have an issue with including armor as part of the target number. I don't view armor as protection in this instance but rather it represents the attacker in that exchange of blow landing a hit on the armor instead of forcing a disarm.

The reason for the save is that in GURPS and other system I played with detailed combat mechanics including disarm, is that disarm is nearly always more difficult then try trying to do damage. That it less likely the more skilled the target is. Saves get better as the character levels, saves are traditionally used to mitigate something bad, that something bad is encompass a variety of situation not just damaging ones, disarms are something bad. Allowing the target a save makes a disarm attempt clearly inferior to an attempt to deal damage.

Yes, I forgot about Touch AC. But Touch AC is a concept that was added later as an Ad Hoc solution to one of the "gaps" I mentioned. But just because you find ways to cover them that doesn't mean the gap isn't there. You're ultimately dealing with an exception to the rule where Armor AC is still used as a default, but ignored in certain situations because it doesn't quite work in those cases.

Quote from: estar;1118832In GURPS, DR (Damage Resistance) does protect against a wide variety of damage including damage. Although the GURPS hobby has debated the accuracy of this. The thing with explosion is that their force is applied all at once. I am not going to debate the particulars only to point out that the question whether armor should protect against whole body effects is not settled among various systems that use Damage Reduction.

I can see how armor with gaps might not be fully effective against explosions, but I can't imagine it not offering any protection compared to being naked or unarmored. The fact that there are pieces of tough material between at least parts of your body and a blast should be preferable to not having any protection.

Quote from: estar;1118832Specific to D&D is the saving throw mechanic. Saving Throws are used to avoid or mitigate something "bad" happening to you particularly things like explosion, fire, and other effects effect the whole character at once. So if one feels that armor should mitigate some of these like an explosion, then for later editions I would apply either all of or half of the AC bonus as a positive modifier to the saving throw.  It reduces damage by helping the save.  

It may not be the way some people would do it if they were designing a system but it does accomplish mechanically the same thing and does it in a way that consistent with how D&D works.

Again none of this means you should like AC or how D&D handle things, but it should demonstrate that through an understanding the system one can handle the situation you outline in a way that doesn't feel foreign.

This is certainly a way to handle armor protection against blasts or explosions in a game like D&D, and I might consider it when using that type of system, but D&D doesn't use this rule and similar to Touch AC it's an Ad Hoc mechanic that deals with exceptions, while DR may handle this directly without additional rules.

Quote from: Bren;1118903The majority of humans are irrationally risk averse. Given that, it makes sense that many people prefer a system where their favorite character can't be killed in a single round.

While I don't feel quite as strongly, I don't like attrition only games either.

I am risk-averse too. Part of why I dislike attrition games is because I want it to be possible to play in such a way I might often not get hurt at all. But an attrition game tends to mean it's often almost impossible to fight without losing any hit points.

I often want to play a cautious fighter type who greatly reduces risks in ways that are logical parts of the game, but there's still a chance I'll get killed or maimed. I often manage to avoid getting injured at all, which I quite enjoy. But it would be an empty experience for me if there were a predictable way to avoid all risk, and it wouldn't feel like an actual deadly combat situation.

My perspective is that I really want a game that represents the situation to some degree. If I know I can survive 7 rounds versus Conan before I run away and take a "short rest" or have "the Cleric lay hands" and be unhurt, that is NOT the experience of facing someone who could kill me if they hit me with their weapon.

But if the game also doesn't allow me to really do anything to mitigate the risk, because if I fight, it's always the same situation, that's not good either. Even so, I'd rather the abstraction be that I can say I'm trying my best not to get hit, and get a decent chance to not get chopped, but if I get chopped by Conan with a weapon that can hurt me through whatever I'm wearing, I should have a very good chance of being seriously hurt or killed, and even if I survive, there should not be zero effect on my ability to hit him back.

Because that would be utterly unlike what I understand the situation of fighting a deadly armed opponent to be like.

Not to mention how predictable it is.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1118900We use the following, no table needed.
Impact weapons (clubs, weapon hilts and shafts, that little guy standing there just when you need him) on a hit, roll damage, subtract armor value, apply damage.
Blunt weapons (maces, warhammers, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract .5 armor value, apply damage.
Chopping weapons (axes, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract armor value, double the result, apply damage
Cutting weapons (sword and knife edges, some polearm warheads) roll damage, subtract 1.5 armor, triple the result, apply damage.
Armor-Piercing Point weapons(some spearheads, some sword points, all picks, some arrows and bolts) check for hitting a gap, otherwise treat like a blunt weapon, except on an exceptional hit.
Stabbing points: (other spears, some sword points, some arrows and bolts) Treat as cutting damage except on an exceptional hit.

Does this mean that slashing weapons do triple damage by default? Wouldn't that outstrip any advantage of armor being 50% higher vs cutting weapons?

I was thinking of making weapon vs armor even more simple. DR affects all weapons the same by default, but DR from armor gets +50% bonus vs Slashing attacks (other than axes), but is halved against armor piercing attacks. Slashing weapons might also get a slight damage bonus compared to other weapons.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901I was writing a very thoughtful reply to this, but then I pressed Go Advanced, and somehow my browser decided I was no longer logged in, and logging in led me to a blank page, and my words were lost is browser cache hell, one of my least favorite levels of hell.

Yeah, I don't even bother with regular mode. I either Go Advanced from the get go or write it out in a notepad then copy/paste. Too much risk typing the whole thing out in-site, where any mistake or error means you lose the whole thing you wrote and will never remember ever again.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901So I'll just summarize.

* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

* I also can't stand attrition games where fighting means you're almost certainly going to be worn down, but worn down slowly, and once worn down enough, you're very likely to fall. Not unless it actually represents a situation where that makes sense. In a fist fight, ok. In an unarmored sword fight, no.

Yeah, attrition is one of the most boring and tedious ways to handle a fight. This is one of the things I hate about D&D at high levels. It eventually gets to a point where everyone is a bag of HPs and the entire point of combat is to hack away indefinitely at bags of HP.

Quote from: Skarg;1118901I was writing a very thoughtful reply to this, but then I pressed Go Advanced, and somehow my browser decided I was no longer logged in, and logging in led me to a blank page, and my words were lost is browser cache hell, one of my least favorite levels of hell.

Been there. If it's any consolation, your response still seemed thoughtful!

Quote*There is a Case 3, which is like Case 2 except there is a good interesting tactical game where there is a whole mapped combat situation to engage, that gives players ways to mitigate their risks of dying or other outcomes, and even in simple head-on combat, many other things can happen besides "whiff" or "you kill Conan".

I agree that this case exists, and is good. But I'd argue there also exists a Case 4 which is like Case 1 except there is a good interesting tactical game, too. The method of attack resolution and damage is orthogonal to whether there are other factors of interest.

There is also a Case 5, which blends Case 1 and Case 2. For instance, MERP is somewhat attritional (you have hit points) but it also permits critical hits that can maim or kill you even if you're at maximum hit points. That system would be represented [in my parlance] as:
Elite fighters frequently hit each other and slowly attrit each other, but infrequently crit and kill each other
Elite fighters frequently crit and kill weak fighters
Weak fighters sometimes hit and slow attrit strong fighters, and very rarely crit and kill strong fighters
Weak fighters frequently hit each other and slow attrit each other, and infrequently crit and kill each other.

I think my own game, ACKS, is Case 4. (With the new rules in Heroic Fantasy Handbook, it's Case 5.)

Quote* There are also conceptual and psychological issues which only some players suffer from, which result in some players suffering under Case 2 or even Case 3, but not all players have those issues.

I won't delve into "conceptual or psychological issues" or "suffering". I'm merely saying that, in 20+ years of running games ranging from the most attritional to the most whiffy, most players most of the time tend to favor the attritional. I believe it's for the reasons I stated - they prefer the sense of progress, they prefer to contribute a bit rather than randomly contribute nothing each round, and they prefer to have manageable risk.

Quote* I can't stand attrition-only games in situations where I think there should be some actual non-zero risk of serious consequences (including death) even at the start of a fight.

OK. I respect your preference. As it happens, I personally think something like Case 5 is my own sweet spot for enjoyment; but my preference does not seem to be what most other people think is most fun, as they complain that games like MERP are "way too deadly" and "Aragorn shouldn't be able to get one-shotted by any orc" and so on. In my recent playtesting for ACKS Heroic Fantasy, I had to tune-down critical hits substantially because players hated the risk of their high level PCs getting slain by a nasty MERP-style crit.

Quote* I also can't stand attrition games where fighting means you're almost certainly going to be worn down, but worn down slowly, and once worn down enough, you're very likely to fall. Not unless it actually represents a situation where that makes sense. In a fist fight, ok. In an unarmored sword fight, no.

Based on my own studies of real world combat and occasional participation in fighting sports, I think that most forms of fighting between relative equals involve, in part, getting worn down slowly until you fail. One clear exception is a Wild West gunslinger's duel. Even in an unarmored sword fight where one hit can kill, both sides tend to be very cautious and deliberate - meaning fatigue and exhaustion become huge factors. In any extend gunfight, fatigue, exhaustion, fear, suppression, etc. are huge factors. Modern military doctrine is very much "use firepower to wear down the enemy until he's shellshocked and shaken, then assault him". Etc. And from time in the boxing ring and shooting range, as soon as the adrenalin wears off, you're exhausted as heck.

Quote* I also really like effects of injury. One of the best ways to stay alive it to hit your opponent first, in a way that means they're going to have a hard time hitting you back immediately. 1/7 hit points gone, but no other effect, is to me, uninteresting and not fun. I much prefer a high "whiff" rate to no way to deny a foe a high chance of hurting me.

OK, sure. I certainly don't dispute that in real life, the first side to get injured is often hugely disadvantaged. However, I think your preference here is a rare preference. Most gamers I have played with do NOT like to have penalties from injuries, most GMs don't want to have to keep track of injury penalties for mobs of NPCs, and most design theorists worry that penalties from injuries create a failure cascade where a slight advantage becomes compounded into a bigger and bigger advantage. Anecdotally, when I ran Cyberpunk 2020 (my go-to system for years), every player who could would get a Pain Editor and Adrenalin Shock/Surge Chip so that they didn't have to worry about pain penalties from wounds.

My bottomline isn't to tell anyone that they game they love sucks or whatever. Simply that if you're designing a game for wide appeal, attritional combat seems to be preferred by players over non-attritional combat because they don't find whiffing fun and they don't find randomly getting whacked fun. Heck, this preference shows up not just in tabletop RPGs. It's everywhere.
- Virtually every MMO uses attritional combat - and the most popular games are hugely attritional with carefully calculated "damage over time" and so on
- Virtually every CRPG uses attritional combat - again, the most popular games are hugely attritional with carefully calculated "damage over time" and so on
- Virtually every fighting game uses attritional combat - compare the popularity of Mortal Kombat to Bushido Blade
- Even the majority of mass market FPS use attritional combat where you lose Health and get Health Packs to heal - the one exception I can think of is Counterstrike, which I personally love but which continues to stand out as the exception to the rule

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118910Yeah, attrition is one of the most boring and tedious ways to handle a fight. This is one of the things I hate about D&D at high levels. It eventually gets to a point where everyone is a bag of HPs and the entire point of combat is to hack away indefinitely at bags of HP.

That's not an issue with attrition, that's an issue with bad design. You can just as easily have a non-attritional game that is equally tedious: "At high levels, everyone is so hard to hit that the entire point of combat is to whiff away indefinitely until you score a lucky kill". It's mathematically quite possible to have an attritional battle where the combat will tend to last any X number of rounds, and a non-attritional battle where combat will last any X number of rounds. And it's possible to have an attritional game with lots of tactical options, battlefield maneuvers, and so on, and a non-attritional game with lots of tactical options, etc.

From what I have seen, most players prefer fights that last about 3 to 6 combat rounds, regardless of game system. Less than that, and it feels like a waste of time to have shifted into combat mode/taken out the minis/rolled initiative. More than that, and there's a sense that the fight is dragging on. How you get that 3-to-6 sweet spot is just math.

For instance:
Game 1. Conan has 100hp, Thulsa-Doom has 100hp. Conan hits 100% of the time for 1d6 Damage. This will be tedious with 33 combat rounds required for the battle to end on average.
Game 2. Conan has 100hp. Thulsa-Doom has 100hp. Conan hits 100% of the time for 5d10 Damage. This will be a fast-paced fight with 4 combat rounds required for the battle to end on average.
Game 3. Conan has 10hp. Thusla Doom has 10hp. Conan hits 10%* of the time for 1d6 Damage. This will be a tedius combat with 28 combat rounds required for the battle to end on average.
Game 4. Conan has 10hp. Thusla Doom has 10hp. Conan hits 66% of the time for 1d6 Damage. This will be an average 2.31hp/round so 4 combat rounds are required for the battle to end on average.

*An example of how this can happen is in some versions of Runequest/Elric/etc where the 1d100 game system allows an attack (% chance) to be blocked by a parry (% chance). Two combatants at 89%. First combatant hits 89% of time, but his attack is parried 89% of the time, yielding 10% total hit rate. One of the ways that such systems get around this is that the parry still results in a damaging hit, but the damage of the hit is greatly reduced...which results in de-facto attritional combat.

Quote from: amacris;1118917...Lots of good points...

Rather than re-quote practically your entire post with "I agree"s sprinkled everywhere I figured I should point out a couple of areas.

Your observation on real-world attrition in personal combat (i.e. essentially whoever gets too tired or so off balance that they can no longer defend against a finishing attack) matches my research and is the reason I focused on entirely non-meat "hit points" for my system (i.e. stamina and ability to recover when an opponent tries to force you into an error) and the idea that once those points are depleted, you're basically wide open for whatever strike your opponent makes (be it a lethal strike or a knockout blow.

Related to though is that I found from my research that reaching a basic level of competence was "relatively" easy, but where the experts and masters excelled was in superior efficiency of effort and in more quickly wearing their opponents down, but could still be overwhelmed by multiple less skilled foes at once.

A related aspect is that there are some spans in a fight where no matter how good you are you're not in a position to force your opponent to wear himself down (i.e. sometimes even the best warrior "misses" against a mediocre opponent) and conversely, even the least skilled foe can sometimes surprise you and force you to spend more stamina and focus than you'd like on them (i.e. sometimes even the mook "hits").

In game terms these two combined into mechanics of relatively static attack and defense bonuses (the baseline competence), but scaling of "hit points" (how efficient they are in managing their own endurance) and damage dealt (how effectively they exploit the openings they do get in wearing down their opponent) and through relatively quick recovery of "hit points" (while more severe injuries require a night's rest at best and can only be healed by magic at worst). A master warrior can easily dispatch an unskilled foe in a single hit (their damage exceeds the target's hp), but enough of them will wear even the master out to the point he could fall.

A related element in reference to the person pointing out that AC doesn't model certain attacks well is that, when your system is based on comparing a roll to a target number there's no reason you have to be limited to just one target number. My system uses four defenses; Armor (for attacks armor helps with), Dodge (for attacks only evasion can help you with), Fortitude (for things armor doesn't help with and you can't really dodge either; you just have to soak it) and Willpower (attacks on your mind and morale). Some weapon maneuvers actually target Dodge, Fortitude or even Willpower (advanced feinting maneuvers for example).

Quote from: amacris;1118918That's not an issue with attrition, that's an issue with bad design. You can just as easily have a non-attritional game that is equally tedious: "At high levels, everyone is so hard to hit that the entire point of combat is to whiff away indefinitely until you score a lucky kill".

That would also be an example of bad design, but on the skill/ability level end of things. Though, generally speaking if we're talking about something like an opposed skill system, for example, if both characters have comparably high skills both skills would cancel each other out making things roughly 50/50 hit or miss. Only way to constantly miss in such a system would be if one of the combatants has a much lower ability level, which means that the other would probably hit consistently.

Not entirely sure in what type of system exactly everyone would have a consistently low chance to hit.

Quote from: amacris;1118918From what I have seen, most players prefer fights that last about 3 to 6 combat rounds, regardless of game system. Less than that, and it feels like a waste of time to have shifted into combat mode/taken out the minis/rolled initiative. More than that, and there's a sense that the fight is dragging on. How you get that 3-to-6 sweet spot is just math.

That's why I don't like high level D&D, which is the most common example I can think of a system emphasizing attrition as a combat/damage mechanic. Eventually combat begins to drag too much and the whole battle becomes an exercise in hacking away at hit points.

Quote from: amacris;1118918*An example of how this can happen is in some versions of Runequest/Elric/etc where the 1d100 game system allows an attack (% chance) to be blocked by a parry (% chance). Two combatants at 89%. First combatant hits 89% of time, but his attack is parried 89% of the time, yielding 10% total hit rate. One of the ways that such systems get around this is that the parry still results in a damaging hit, but the damage of the hit is greatly reduced...which results in de-facto attritional combat.

Oh, those are the systems where everyone has a consistently low chance to hit at high levels? That mechanic sounds atrocious, almost wrong. Sounds like it's missing some type of opposed component. Like maybe "highest successful roll wins", if it's a Roll-Under d100 mechanic, or maybe "highest success margin wins (subtract rolls from respective Skill Values and compare)".

I voted #5 as I don't think HERO really fits any of the others as described (maybe #4).

HERO (1-5th ed)* has offensive and defensive combat values (OCV/DCV). The base numbers are modified by skill levels (can add to OCV, DCV or damage) and maneuvers (ex Dodge gives +3 to DCV, some other actions can also increase / reduce DCV).

Adjusted OCV / DCV are compared and the net gives the bonus / penalty to the to hit roll.


My description sounds more complex than it actually is.


*OCV/DCV was one of the major changes in 6th ed.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118940Not entirely sure in what type of system exactly everyone would have a consistently low chance to hit.

GURPS which has an defense roll independent of the attack roll. Often rolled with odds similar to the attack roll resulting in a lot of I hit, no I defend outcomes.

For example you can attack at a 14 or less and the target can defend at a 13 or less. Both rolled using 3d6.

To hit therefore is 90.74% and to defend is 83.80% resulting in only a 14.69% chance of the attack doing damage. Even then it can be reduced by Damage Resistance.

This is mitigated by GURPS supporting the use of various maneuvers and tactics that people use in life to overcome defenses in melee combat like feints, and positioning.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118910Does this mean that slashing weapons do triple damage by default? Wouldn't that outstrip any advantage of armor being 50% higher vs cutting weapons?

Not at all. If none of your damage gets through, the fact that it would triple if it did isn't of much use. Sword edges and even glaive edges are almost useless against plate (and some monsters) and not great against mail but you can cut up unarmored peasants and hobgoblins in no time.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118940Oh, those are the systems where everyone has a consistently low chance to hit at high levels? That mechanic sounds atrocious, almost wrong.

Or it how reality works if all one does is whack away at an opponent. Fortunately in reality people don't just stand around and whack away at each other. Positioning and maneuvers need to be incorporated to give players the same option to overcome a target defense as people do in life.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118940Sounds like it's missing some type of opposed component. Like maybe "highest successful roll wins", if it's a Roll-Under d100 mechanic, or maybe "highest success margin wins (subtract rolls from respective Skill Values and compare)".

That route is good for a quick resolution. But it is an abstraction that omits various details. Which some hobbyist may feel those are important to consider. In which case the designer is on the same path as the authors of GURPS, Runequest, Riddle of Steel as to what to incorporate.

For example one common tactic melee fighter use are various forms of wrestling moves for example a body slam to knock the opponent down, or to trip your opponent. There are moves to pin your opponent's weapon so you can use a second weapon to attack. Things that are not countered just by a shield block, parry, or dodge.

For example in GURPS one has the option to feint with your dex and weapon skill, or do a beat with your strength and weapon skill, or to perform a ruse with your IQ and weapon skill. The end result is the same, the opponent is now out of position causing their defense to be reduced.

Or you could try for a a body slam which can be defended against but counts as a heavy weapon which makes blocks and parries less effective.

Like in life, the combat mechanics of GURPS allow you tailor your tactics to the situation and specific abilities of the character. GURPS expects players to treat combat more than just opponents whacking away at each other on a static battlefield.