Free Defense Candy For Everyone

[Clovenhoof]

As I have already hinted in other threads, I am not altogether happy with the Defense progressions as written. Of course the idea as such is great, I just think the progressions are too stingy.

Analysis for similar Level and Abi scores:

Hit Chance for different Offense/Defense pairings
Off.\Def. | Good | Average
-------------------------------
Good . . .| 75%  | 95%
-------------------------------
Average . | 50%  | 75%
-------------------------------

And you well know it gets even more extreme for disparate levels and/or Abi bonuses. If the average mobs/mooks are like 4 levels lower, even a second-line attacker can hardly miss a front-line defender mook. And so forth.

This isn't such a big deal all by itself, but it does get ugly in conjunction with the _other_ thing typical for the Conan system, Massive Damage. A warrior-type can load up on PA to guarantee MD without even increasing his Miss chance! And _that's_ when things break, imho.

So in short, once you strike, you will hit, and once you hit, you will kill, so everything is just all about striking first. Botch your Ini roll just once and you can kiss your sweet ass goodbye (if it weren't for fate points at least).

While I basically _like_ fast and deadly combat, I don't like it being such a one-way road. It's okay that one hit has a good chance to kill, but then the defender should at least have some chance not to get hit, respectively it should be a challenge to hit your mark. At the VERY least, Power Attack should incur an actual risk of missing your target.

Suggestion:
Upgrade all Defense progressions by one step.
+15 becomes +20; +10 becomes +15 and +7 becomes +10.

This would shift the Hit chance chart as follows:

Hit Chance for different Offense/Defense pairings
Off.\Def. | Good | Average
-------------------------------
Good . . .| 50%  | 75%
-------------------------------
Average . | 25%  | 50%
-------------------------------

Which isn't too bad considering that one hit still most probably kills.
What do you think?

 

[Ichabod]

I don't know how I feel about the fact that hitting is so easy. I can imagine being more frustrated with combat than I currently am if it became harder for PCs to hit stuff, but I'm not sure about the other way around. Of course, one can just rebalance opposition.

I do find it interesting how absurdly high monster attack bonuses tend to be. Any annoying special tacked on to an attack is pretty much going to engage (usually, it's grapple, followed by grapple, followed by grapple, in a neverending grapplefest of grapplemania which one might think would encourage ranged weapons except it's so easy to close on archers since it's so hard to kill anything before it closes, assuming it wasn't right next to you to begin with).

Might be interesting if the feats which bumped DV scaled or were otherwise better as they are pretty awful when not acting as prerequisites for something else.

Or, could eliminate (probably simplifying the game) Strength as a to hit and defense bonus since it's the fact that STR is the only necessary attribute in combat which makes it so easy to PA/Cleave everything to death.

 

[Hervé]

That's why I prefer the RQ/BRP system. You hit less often because of the Attack/Parry matrix, but blows are more deadly. Sounds more realistic to me.

 

[Clovenhoof]

@Ichabod:
most of the Opposition tend to be humans, and follow the same rules as the PCs (except for FP). So you can fool around mainly with level and also with Abilities. A level 2 with Str 18 has the same Attack/Parry as a Level 5 with Str 13.

I tend to throw like-levelled enemies at my group, but with worse stats. It helps to keep them alive, but I'm not altogether happy with the setup. If I had any NPC group fight with everything they have, I'm sure the players would need new characters every session. Not good.

As for monsters, yes, they love Grappling a lot. However, I hate Grappling because of the convoluted rules, so my players are relatively safe. But recently I found the new simplified Grapple rules from the Pathfinder RPG and I'm going to give these a shot.
For the matter at hand, yes, I also find it annoying that all those monster abilities are so surefire because of the notoriously weak defense. Higher progressions for character classes would probably help.

Just as an aside, when I looked at this one Demon in Ruins of Hyboria (Quf-Something), I was wondering how to best kill it. Insane Fortitude (+27 or so) so you can forget MDKing it. Insane Attack bonuses including Improved Grab and Swallow Whole, and all that at 15' Reach. Took a while until it dawned on me that the thing is pretty much helpless against Ranged attacks, due to its 10' Movement. It can teleport in a Full-Round action, so you can always get out of reach again (provided you are immune to AoOs) and slowly wear it down.

Or, could eliminate (probably simplifying the game) Strength as a to hit and defense bonus since it's the fact that STR is the only necessary attribute in combat which makes it so easy to PA/Cleave everything to death.

I was pretty surprised when I first realized that Parry goes on Strength. I actually thought it had to be a typo in the book, for the exact same reason you mention.
I also toyed with the idea of tying Attack to Dex for all attacks, so a fighter has to split his points between Dex for To Hit and Str for Damage. Alternatively, tie both Parry and Dodge to Dex.

The current setup works in favour of Parry classes and against Dodge classes, especially the Barbarian, but it doesn't really show because even a fully-optimized defensive char is still going to get hit 50% of the time by a vanilla fighter.

 

[Krushnak]

On defense, maybe something simple like +1 to a dv(parry or dodge) for every 5 levels. only applies to PC's and important named npc's. would net a +4 at lvl 20.

Or, could eliminate (probably simplifying the game) Strength as a to hit and defense bonus since it's the fact that STR is the only necessary attribute in combat which makes it so easy to PA/Cleave everything to death.

I've toyed with the idea of including a new stat. Weapon skill to reflect your natural talent with weapons instead of strength. Could use it for parry aswell.

 

[Ichabod]

Actually, little of what we fight is human, seems to be a key difference in our campaign. Our party of Conan and his spearchuckers isn't good at much, but it has consistently diplomacized its way past humans and nearhumans (occasionally sacrificing the odd party member more out of ambivalence than any particular need for barter). I think the lowest Charisma among the spearchuckers is 17.

When we do fight humans, it tends to be hordes of low level or even true mook characters since armies don't tend to be as much into our babble.

Would the PCs care about increased defenses for themselves? I don't know if it matters. Does it rebalance the classes? Probably not. Does it make the PCs more awesome in the world? Sure, as monsters/animals (out of the book stats that one is less likely to adjust as opposed to NPCs with levels that have numbers by GM choice in the first place) have a harder time with them. Is that good?

I see throwing similar level NPCs at PCs as being incredibly dangerous unless you allow days between each battle. Healing time is a major impediment to survivability and our party's problems come when it thinks in full strength mode when it isn't.

Also, PCs are normally generalists - they fight in the most generally effective way, they take a balance of skills, they try to achieve minimum competency at certain things like Heal. It's incredibly easy to specialize a NPC. Specializing a NPC for something irrelevant as an obstacle "I'm the greatest fisherman in all the world!" is not very likely, so what GMs tend to do is specialize in some way that is effective against the party ... which means the NPC is way more effective than a similarly levelled PC.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Well, if you want to give those buggers a similar boost, simply give them a Defense bonus of +1 for every full 4 HD.

As for Specializing an NPC, yes it is very easy. Thus I think it's the GMs responsibility to consider if such a character _really_ could exist in the position the GM intends to assign to him. For example, the boss of a Thieves Guild should have feats that reflect his cunning, streetwise and keen senses, not an extraordinary ability to destroy his opponents' weapons just because Greater Sunder screws the PCs so good.