Petition to keep the old combat tables

[Halfbat]

Under your system I take it that a partial success dodge vs critical attack would cause double minimum weapon damage plus normal damage modifier. That would work really nicely in that critical still gets something but the partial success might keep you alive.

Or, alternatively the partial dodge success reduces _one_ of the weapon damage (e.g. weapon damage+min+DM). Otherwise you really start to penalise characters with _no_ damage modifier and doubly penalise those with a negative modifier.

I'm assuming you are also defense-biased, Rurik, or are the rolls opposed and maxed out like Deleriad (I'm thinking the the Critical vs Critical results which aren't explicitly specified in both cases)?

 

[gamesmeister]

So I use:

Attack:
Critical: Double rolled damage + normal rolled damage modifier
Success: Normal Damage
Fumble: Roll on Fumble Table

Parry:
Critical: 2xAP Blocked and May Riposte
Success: 2xAP Blocked
Partial Success: AP Blocked
Fumble: Roll on Fumble Table

Dodge:
Critical: No Damage - attacker overextends unless attack was also a critical.
Partial Success: Minimum Damage
Success: No Damage
Fumble: Roll on Fumble Table.

Though I use 2xRolled Damage on a critical you could just as easily use the official Max Damage. I like the ability to do massive damage, and that a dagger to the head can serously ruin your day (up to 10 damage w/out a damage modifier).

I think those results are easy enough for a player to digest without a matrix.

I agree, and really like this.

The only problem as I see it (and this may have been mentioned elsewhere) is that a critical hit vs a successful dodge results in no damage, whereas if the attack had been a normal hit but won the opposed roll, it would have done minimum damage.

I suggest that a critical attack vs a normal success in defense also counts as winning an opposed roll, and therefore automatically downgrades the defensive success to a partial success. So a successful parry vs a critical hit will only protect using AP (never AP x 2), and a successful dodge vs a critical hit will still take minimum damage. This also means a critical hit has a chance of getting past a successful parry with a shield, which at the moment doesn't happen.

 

[Deleriad]

I suggest that a critical attack vs a normal success in defense also counts as winning an opposed roll, and therefore automatically downgrades the defensive success to a partial success. So a successful parry vs a critical hit will only protect using AP (never AP x 2), and a successful dodge vs a critical hit will still take minimum damage. This also means a critical hit has a chance of getting past a successful parry with a shield, which at the moment doesn't happen.

This is, basically, what I do for precisely the reasons that you give. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating but it's not vastly different to what I've done previously and even makes good use of MRQ's parry AP reductions.

Imagine two masters (both 100%) facing each other. Previously the parrier made all its parries so all attacks were reduced by Parry AP. In old RQ this meant that fights could last for ever as Parry AP + armour often blocked all damage.
Under the opposed system, the parrier gets a partial success for 1/2 the parries and a normal success for the rest. Given that parry AP+armour now is not usually enough to block all damage then 1/2 the attacks probably do no damage and 1/2 the attacks do minor injuries. 1/10 attacks risk causing a major injury. So far it looks reasonable.

 

[Halfbat]

Imagine two masters (both 100%) facing each other. Previously the parrier made all its parries so all attacks were reduced by Parry AP. In old [...]

Just a warning on this sort of example - with opposed rolls it's not the 100% or the equal %ge that is the factor, but how things breakdown when two fighters with different skill percentages face off against each other. The changes mean the lesser becomes brittle really fast...

 

[Deleriad]

Imagine two masters (both 100%) facing each other. Previously the parrier made all its parries so all attacks were reduced by Parry AP. In old [...]

Just a warning on this sort of example - with opposed rolls it's not the 100% or the equal %ge that is the factor, but how things breakdown when two fighters with different skill percentages face off against each other. The changes mean the lesser becomes brittle really fast...

Agreed but I don't really see that as a problem. EG at 100% vs 50% the 50% er is failing to parry 50% of the time, getting a partial success about 25% of the time and a normal success about 20% of the time.
However, this change is completely submerged by the change in having to pre-declare defences because that massively increases the importance of the number of Combat Actions. In the "old days", if your opponent had more CAs than you, you could hope that it missed one of its attacks or save your reactions for criticals. Now you're playing lottery. 50% with 2 CAs vs 100% with 3CAs will be minced within 1 to 2 combat rounds now because you have to simply parry the first two attacks each round and then watch your opponent get a free, unopposed hit.

As a question:
How much do you have to declare when attacking. Obviously you have to declare target but do you need to declare weapon and how you're going to attack?
E.g.
"Cormac attacks Ugbag" or
"Cormac attacks Ugbag with the spear using a precise attack to bypass armour"
As you may be able to tell, this has something of an effect on whether the target chooses to parry, dodge or not oppose (if short on reactions).

 

[gamesmeister]

Agreed but I don't really see that as a problem. EG at 100% vs 50% the 50% er is failing to parry 50% of the time, getting a partial success about 25% of the time and a normal success about 20% of the time.
However, this change is completely submerged by the change in having to pre-declare defences because that massively increases the importance of the number of Combat Actions. In the "old days", if your opponent had more CAs than you, you could hope that it missed one of its attacks or save your reactions for criticals. Now you're playing lottery. 50% with 2 CAs vs 100% with 3CAs will be minced within 1 to 2 combat rounds now because you have to simply parry the first two attacks each round and then watch your opponent get a free, unopposed hit.

To be fair, this is representing an extremely one sided fight anyway, and you'd expect it to end pretty quickly. The 100% represents combat mastery, and the 3 CAs represents high speed and excellent reactions.

50% is a relative novice (you can easily achieve this level as a starting character), and 2 CAs represents poorer reactions. In reality a fight like this would also be over very quickly.

Also in your example, the chances are the attacker would hit with both of his first attacks anyway, so regardless of whether you need to declare parries up front, you would expect to have used them both within the first two actions leaving the third as a free hit. This changes matters more when the attacker is not so skilled, and you may end up wasting a reaction, but in that case the third attack is not guaranteed to hit so the impact of the change is less.

As a question:
How much do you have to declare when attacking. Obviously you have to declare target but do you need to declare weapon and how you're going to attack?
E.g.
"Cormac attacks Ugbag" or
"Cormac attacks Ugbag with the spear using a precise attack to bypass armour"
As you may be able to tell, this has something of an effect on whether the target chooses to parry, dodge or not oppose (if short on reactions).

I think the attacker has to declare everything, and then the defender decides whether to use a react. It's not necessarily the most realistic approach, but from a mechanics point of view it's much better.

 

[Halfbat]

I think the attacker has to declare everything, and then the defender decides whether to use a react. It's not necessarily the most realistic approach, but from a mechanics point of view it's much better.

Agree - and I also think it's pretty realistic given the short timescale. In MRQ the Defender is reacting to a specific attack he sees coming - it's a commitment from both sides. An attacker can't suddenly pull back, change weapon, approach and stance and reattack just because the defender is doing something - that's a complete CA of change.

50% vs 100%

I think that's exactly the statistical trap I was concerned about, in addition to gamemeister's useful comments. In an opposed system the stat's just don't work out so cleanly as might be thought - the chance of the 50% getting that good success is MUCH lower than would be thought - mainly because the 100% automatically wins so many when the defender parries (when he rolls 51+) and actually only "partials" in a narrow band (10-50). And the 100%-er has already won most of the rest when the defender fails his block completely! :-(

I still think the Rurik/Deleriad no-table system would work - but like the tables, they would be better without opposed rolls (and the defensive focus is fine with the new declarations).

 

[Rurik]

Wow. Lots to catch up on and lots to say. Unfortunately I have no time and will be gone for a week and a half (week vacation followed almost ommediately by a business trip ).

Halfbat is right about the odd 'squishing' with opposed rolls. The following math does not take criticals or automatic failures into account, but honestly those will affect the odds minimally (less than 1%). These numbers went around in one of the mathy threads a while ago.

A 50% skill has a 12.5% chance of winning an opposed roll against a 100% skill in straight opposed roll. In a combat opposed roll the 50% skill therefore gets a 12.5% winning the roll, a 37.5% making his roll but losing the opposed roll, and a 50% chance of missing his roll outright. That is pretty slim odds for the 50% skill.

The effect of using opposed resolution in combat amplifies the relative difference between skills. A 50% stands a much better chance against a 100% skill in a non-opposed system than an opposed system. (The same holds true for spellcasting, a 50% resist vs. a 100% caster has only a 12.5% chance of resisting, rather than 50% in the old unopposed system).

That being said though all of this adapting opposed rolls to RQ is really just mirroring how Pendragon handles opposed rolls more or less only using a d100 instead of d20, and that system has certainly stood the test of time. You get pretty much the same odds with a Pendragon Skill of 10 vs. 20. It really comes down to how much you feel the difference in skill is supposed to mean.

I like the result set using an opposed roll as it allows for more possible results than simple unopposed rolls. This works especially nicely with dodge, where a simple success resulting in avoiding all damage is too good, but taking minimum damage on all simple successes is pretty poor.

On the other hand the actual odds can look a bit grim in certain cases. All of this requires some heavy pondering.

 

[Deleriad]

...A 50% skill has a 12.5% chance of winning an opposed roll against a 100% skill in straight opposed roll. In a combat opposed roll the 50% skill therefore gets a 12.5% winning the roll, a 37.5% making his roll but losing the opposed roll, and a 50% chance of missing his roll outright. That is pretty slim odds for the 50% skill.

The effect of using opposed resolution in combat amplifies the relative difference between skills. A 50% stands a much better chance against a 100% skill in a non-opposed system than an opposed system. (The same holds true for spellcasting, a 50% resist vs. a 100% caster has only a 12.5% chance of resisting, rather than 50% in the old unopposed system).

That being said though all of this adapting opposed rolls to RQ is really just mirroring how Pendragon handles opposed rolls more or less only using a d100 instead of d20, and that system has certainly stood the test of time. You get pretty much the same odds with a Pendragon Skill of 10 vs. 20. It really comes down to how much you feel the difference in skill is supposed to mean.

I like the result set using an opposed roll as it allows for more possible results than simple unopposed rolls. This works especially nicely with dodge, where a simple success resulting in avoiding all damage is too good, but taking minimum damage on all simple successes is pretty poor.

Fairly major quoting to say I agree. I actually think the odds are rather intuitive in that 100% should deal with 50% very quickly. I also think that the extra granularity that "partial success" (make your skill but lose the contest) is really handy for RQ. As you say, it's a system that has stood the test of time in Pendragon and I've been using opposed skills for a long time using an almost identical system to MRQ in BRP systems (notably CoC and RQ3 where I threw out the resistance table and used opposed skills for sorcery) with no major hang-ups.
I also don't think it adds in too much complexity. E.g.
OldRQ had: critical, special, success, fail, fumble
MRQ would have: critical, success, partial success, fail, fumble

All seems good to me.

 

[Rurik]

...babble babble babble...

Fairly major quoting to say I agree. I actually think the odds are rather intuitive in that 100% should deal with 50% very quickly. I also think that the extra granularity that "partial success" (make your skill but lose the contest) is really handy for RQ. As you say, it's a system that has stood the test of time in Pendragon and I've been using opposed skills for a long time using an almost identical system to MRQ in BRP systems (notably CoC and RQ3 where I threw out the resistance table and used opposed skills for sorcery) with no major hang-ups.
I also don't think it adds in too much complexity. E.g.
OldRQ had: critical, special, success, fail, fumble
MRQ would have: critical, success, partial success, fail, fumble

All seems good to me.

I was actually kind of conflicted in the above quote and trying to present both sides. I'll try to post some real numbers, but the odds using opposed rolls can seem a bit scary when looking at actual numbers. But as I've said, they are really no different than Pendragon (except that has 5% chance of a tie in most all cases).

I have however figured a clearer way of presenting results of the defense. Assuming an attack does either normal or critical damage, we don't really need to list it, just the defenses, as such:

Parry (Criticals against any result may riposte)
Parry vs. Success: 2xAP Blocked.
Partial Parry vs. Success: AP Blocked.
Critical Parry vs. Success: No Damage.
Critical Parry vs. Critical: 2xAP Blocked.

Dodge (criticals result in Attacker Overextends unless otherwise noted)
Dodge vs. Success: No Damage.
Partial Dodge. vs. Success: Minimum Damage.
Critical Parry vs. Success: No Damage.
Critical Parry vs. Critical: No Damage, attacker Not overextended.

I think that is the clearest presentation of results without a matrix.

It also raises the option (assuming you require declaring defense before attack is rolled) of the following results:

Parry vs. Failure: May Riposte
Dodge vs. Failure: May Move Away (or riposte or something good).

If you have to use a reaction against a failed attack you should get some bonus for succeeding your roll. A riposte is an interesting choice as you already used one reaction, but would need another for the riposte - which could leave you open to an unopposed attack later.

I honestly have been thinking of replacing the overextended results in dodging with ripostes anyway (yeah, yeah, I know it is a parrying term, but basically allowing the dodger to opt for an attack using a reaction by creating an opening with his fancy footwork). It seems a bit 'off' to me that the defenders roll causes the attacker to stumble or whatnot - it seems a bit more natural that if I roll bad I do something bad, if I roll good I do something good. You rolling good causing me to do something bad (as opposed to you do something good - like maneuver for a free swing) seems a bit odd.

 

[gamesmeister]

Although I agree with what you say, this is still a matrix by any other name, only in text rather than tabular form. This will become even more obvious once you factor in a couple of missing results i.e. critical hit vs successful dodge/parry.

If you really want a non-matrix, you need to have results that are not directly related to each other, such as the following.

Attack:
Success: Calculate normal damage.
Critical: Calculate normal damage and then double the result. Ignore overextended or riposte results.

Parry
Critical: Block all damage. Defender may riposte.
Success: Block AP x 2
Partial Success: Block AP

Dodge
Critical: All damage is reduced to zero. Attacker overextended.
Success: Reduce weapon damage to minimum. Ignore damage from Damage Bonus. Defender must Give Ground.
Partial Success: Reduce weapon damage to minimum. Apply damage from Damage Bonus normally. Defender must Give Ground.

There is now virtually no interdependency between the results, which means no need for combat tables. As an attacker, I only need to know that if I hit, I do normal damage, and if I crit I double it. If I parry, I need to know the three parry results only - not the five or six that are necessary if the results of a parry are related to the level of success of the attack.

Example: I roll my attack and get a critical. I don't need to see what result you got - I roll my damage (including damage bonus), double it, and tell you the result. You then take that and apply your result to it. If you got a Critical Dodge, you reduce what I gave you to zero (although I'm not overextended because I ignore those results). If you got a successful Parry, you block AP x 2 - again, this is not dependent on my level of success in any way.

As before, this uses the opposed roll to good effect through the use of partial successes, and gives a more granular set of results.

 

[Rurik]

The effect you describe was exactly what I was trying for - all results are not dependant on the other. The problem I ran into was dodge.

Critical Parry vs. Critical Attack I found it just fine to stack individual results: 2xDamage (or max. damage) vs 2xAP plus riposte seems fair enough to me.

But dodge is another story. Critical Dodge vs. Critical Attack it just doesn't seem right to have the dodge avoid all damage AND get the attacker overextended even if the attacker criticaled. For that result some kind of matrix effect is needed. Ditto with Success vs Critical Attack (I suppose double minmum damage is the logical result, but not exactly the clearly obvious result - and I like clearly obvious results, as in makes perfect sense to drunk/stoned/hungover/harrased gamers who have been playing straight for 38 hours without sleep - not that I condone such behavior - but I like rules that make sense to gamers in such a state).

 

[Rasta]

and I like clearly obvious results, as in makes perfect sense to drunk/stoned/hungover/harrased gamers who have been playing straight for 38 hours without sleep

Me too! 8)

 

[gamesmeister]

The effect you describe was exactly what I was trying for - all results are not dependant on the other. The problem I ran into was dodge.

Critical Parry vs. Critical Attack I found it just fine to stack individual results: 2xDamage (or max. damage) vs 2xAP plus riposte seems fair enough to me.

But dodge is another story. Critical Dodge vs. Critical Attack it just doesn't seem right to have the dodge avoid all damage AND get the attacker overextended even if the attacker criticaled. For that result some kind of matrix effect is needed.

Hence why I added the line to Critical Attack: Ignore Riposte and Overextended results. Again, no matrix is required, you just need to remember this simple rule on a critical attack.

Ditto with Success vs Critical Attack (I suppose double minmum damage is the logical result, but not exactly the clearly obvious result - and I like clearly obvious results, as in makes perfect sense to drunk/stoned/hungover/harrased gamers who have been playing straight for 38 hours without sleep - not that I condone such behavior - but I like rules that make sense to gamers in such a state).

Isn't it as obvious as any other result? "Criticals always do double damage" is a common enough game mechanic, and not difficult to remember. So if I dodge successfully, I tell you to use minimum damage. If you achieved a critical hit, we double it because using this ruleset, that's what criticals do. There's no matrix to look up, which let's face it is only going to confuse drunk/stoned/hungover/harrased gamers anyway.

 

[Rasta]

There's no matrix to look up, which let's face it is only going to confuse drunk/stoned/hungover/harrased gamers anyway.

Amen brother. Amen.

 

[Rurik]

Gamesmeister: I see the wisdom of your ways. I don't like ignoring the riposte on a critical parry because I don't plan on having it block all damage. So I would go with something like:

Attack:
Success: Rolled Damage
Critical: Weapon Damage is doubled. Ignore Overextended results.

Parry:
Success: Block 2xAP
Partial Success: Block AP
Critical Success: Block 2xAP and may Riposte

Dodge:
Success: Take No Damage
Partial Success: Take minumum damage.
Critical: Take no damage. Attacker Overextended.

Any simple success is considered a partial success against a critical success.

How is that? Simple and straightforward. Perhaps Rasta can let us know if it passes 'the test'.

The only thing I don't like is that a simple dodge will reduce critical damage from most weapons to 2.

Perhaps a critical should do Max+Rolled damage as in the old impale? that is a brutal damage curve but then a simple dodge vs. a critical will take max+min damage. (9 for a warsword).

Or just say all parries and dodges fail against criticals period. Takes a Crit to defend a crit.

 

[Rasta]

How is that? Simple and straightforward. Perhaps Rasta can let us know if it passes 'the test'.

Indeed. It does.

The only thing I don't like is that a simple dodge will reduce critical damage from most weapons to 2.

Perhaps a critical should do Max+Rolled damage as in the old impale? that is a brutal damage curve but then a simple dodge vs. a critical will take max+min damage. (9 for a warsword).

Uh oh you're losin me. :?

Or just say all parries and dodges fail against criticals period. Takes a Crit to defend a crit.

There we go that's the stuff. Oh yeah. 8)

 

[gamesmeister]

Sounds good!

A critical attack vs a successful dodge always seem to be the fly in the ointment. However, I assume on the Partial Success you still intend to apply damage bonus in some form? Even if you only hit with minimum damage bonus on top of minimum weapon damage, most warriors have at least a D2 damage bonus, which means a critical hit will typically do at least 4 points of damage against a successful dodge.

Use a Great Axe and you'll do at least 10 points :twisted:

 

[Rurik]

Yeah, I was keeping minimum damage to mean plus rolled damage bonus (as in the rules. So:

Attack:
Success: Rolled Damage
Critical: Weapon Damage is doubled. Ignore Overextended results.

Parry:
Success: Block 2xAP
Partial Success: Block AP
Critical Success: Block 2xAP and may Riposte

Dodge:
Success: Take No Damage
Partial Success: Take minumum damage.
Critical: Take no damage. Attacker Overextended.

Any simple success is considered a partial success against a critical success.

Minumum Damage equals weapons minumum damage + rolled Damage Modifier. Minumum critical damage is twice weapons minimum damage + rolled Damage Modifier.

End of Story. Hows that? I like it and am goin to run with it for a while.

 

[gamesmeister]

Cool.

I'm going to run with it for a while too, although I may play about with the Critical Parry result just to see how the two compare.

All in all, sounds great!