TNE: Combat Advantage Number

[TheWorid]

You're really reaching there. Aside from the fact that I think your explanation is still stupid and contrived -- the typical badass warrior or stone golem certainly will not be feeling pain and dizziness from blood loss -- even if I accept your weakass explanation it still fails..

If what you say is true, then all it means is that stone golems are immune to pain and blood loss. While I can think of examples of characters continuing combat after losing limbs, the "typical badass warrior" (whatever that means) is not.

If I was going to have an 'On Fire' status effect, it wouldn't be on the PCAN or MCAN status tracts; it'd be on the universal tract. And it'd still be slightly dissociative because I have said and continued to state that Possession and Despair are examples of effects that should add a universal CAN penalty.

Universal track? Is that something you referred to elsewhere? How does it interact with the other two tracks, and what qualifies something to be on it and not one of the others?

Also, please stop altering my name when you quote my posts.

[CatharzGodfoot]

While I can think of examples of characters continuing combat after losing limbs, the "typical badass warrior" (whatever that means) is not.

Obligatory:

[Lago PARANOIA]

Sorry. I don't use the Quote function; I use the quick-reply window most of the time, meaning I have to type in The Worid manually. And at the font TGD uses Worid looks like World.

Anyway, I know I said earlier that wasn't going to nitpick your examples for the whole 'making sense' part, you still seem to be under the impression that the nonsensical results created by one track have an easy explanation. I totally, totally disagree with that. So here we go.

When stuck waist deep in mud and facing a group of armed opponents, giving up tends to become a relatively good option as opposed to death. Being half-defeated saps the will, so I could easily see domination becoming easier.

That's. Just. Stupid. Not just because 'immobilized for one round' is not by any stretch of the imagination half-defeated (oh god, this six-second waist-deep excursion in mud has left me vulnerable to having my mind crushed!), not because it's not genre appropriate in action-adventure fiction for people to be generically more susceptible to willpower loss for physical setbacks, not just because your system is is agnostic to relative advantage (I'm waist-deep in mud but the enchanter is about to succumb to a heart attack from overcasting, time to give up), but because you keep having to come up with piddling contrived shit to justify everything.

You can come up with piddling contrived shit to justify anything if you think hard enough about it. Even Bloody Path. But you should keep that to a minimum if possible. And if you're having to come up with a (completely unconvincing) reason stabled with a bunch of assumptions to say why domination should be easier with being stuck in mud...

And being blinded while charmed? If you are already charmed, then you are putting your trust in the one who charmed you, and presumably their friends, which makes you vulnerable to just about anything they might want to do to you. Not to mention that being charmed could also imply that you could just order them to look straight into the dust you are about to throw into their eyes.

This is why your examples are retarded. You can only think about the narrow confines of your unspoken and presumptious scenarios rather than general-case situations. This is why you have to contrive your examples so hard. If I charm the captain of the guard and tell him to guard the my summoning chamber to the best of his abilities while I call upon Iblis, what when some other assholes come to attack the guard to get through? Why would any of that shit you said apply to this common scenario?

Are you going to keep contriving more explanations? How about instead of that, you realize that you're going to have to keep doing this for many other scenarios; meaning that there just may be an association problem with your system! As you astutely noted, there's an association problem with my system, too, hence why Frank wanted to use a condition flowchart. Do you think that my system is already at the breaking point for WSoD -- a criticism I think is valid? If so, how does a single condition track make that any better?

If what you say is true, then all it means is that stone golems are immune to pain and blood loss. While I can think of examples of characters continuing combat after losing limbs, the "typical badass warrior" (whatever that means) is not.

Are you kidding me? People, even so-called ordinary people, lose body parts (either to having them lopped off, crushed, or disabled) and keep going all of the time in action-adventure fiction that lets violence get that far. Characters like Luke Skywalker wimping out and trying to run away after getting delimbed or disemboweled are the exception.

Universal track? Is that something you referred to elsewhere? How does it interact with the other two tracks, and what qualifies something to be on it and not one of the others?

Yes, in a couple of posts before that. I didn't have it in the original proposal but when I reiterated it for Mask De H I did.

The universal track isn't a track per se. It refers to CAN modifiers that would apply to both the Mental and Physical tracks, like having a level advantage or a bless spell or whatever. Because you're already tracking this number for both the PCAN and MCAN there's no point in giving it its own counter. Well, I guess that people still tracked touch AC even though everything in it applied to regular AC, so nevermind.

[PhoneLobster]

So you declared that stacking charm and concussions is so bad that you needed separate damage tracks.

You massively increased game complexity with an additional damage track. This in turn causes all sorts of major mechanical put falls, apparently you think it's worth it.

You then however add in an additional complex mechanic allowing things to stack across damage types. And your actual specific example results in setting people on fire and then charming them.

It's almost as if you have gotten utterly nowhere after massively increasing complexity for NO REASON.

Perhaps your problem lies here...

CAN is going to have some dissociation problems unless you push it to the point of overcomplexity and/or nonoverlappingness. There is no getting around that. Having a single condition track would make this problem worse.

Because maybe having a single condition track doesn't make things worse. Maybe it makes things the same or possibly even better (one abstraction to not even bother arguing about instead of three).

And maybe most notably of all, while not making largely non-existent abstraction arguments any worse... it just so happens also not to be massively more complex while achieving nothing... like your "two tracks plus universal" system and it's massive multiplication of fundamental mechanical complexity goes and does.

[TheWorid]

This is why your examples are retarded. You can only think about the narrow confines of your unspoken and presumptious scenarios rather than general-case situations. This is why you have to contrive your examples so hard.

You keep saying that, but saying something repeatedly does not make it any more true. You throw out lots of belittlement, but very little argument.

Are you going to keep contriving more explanations? How about instead of that, you realize that you're going to have to keep doing this for many other scenarios; meaning that there just may be an association problem with your system!

My system? I never had a system, I never stated support for any of the systems presented. And I am the presumptuous one?

Are you kidding me? People, even so-called ordinary people, lose body parts (either to having them lopped off, crushed, or disabled) and keep going all of the time in action-adventure fiction that lets violence get that far. Characters like Luke Skywalker wimping out and trying to run away after getting delimbed or disemboweled are the exception.

Once again, you make bold claims, with literally no support. The only example you give is a major character who disregards what you claimed, which is just laughable.

Yes, in a couple of posts before that. I didn't have it in the original proposal but when I reiterated it for Mask De H I did.

I read that before; you never talked about a universal track, in fact you specifically said that treating it as one was counterproductive. But what is most important here is that is shows you slapping on more and more workarounds to make your proposed system work.

[ckafrica]

There is precedence in source material regarding violent confrontation leading to diplomatization, whether is be political or romantic. Warriors falling in love due to their respect for each others martial skills is a fairly common meme in fantasy. A show of arms to convince a king to side with you is also relatively common.

Now the next question is whether you truly want it to be modeled as part of the core combat rules or do you create specific sub-rules to specifically model when this is the primary intent of the combat.

While I can understand that people would want to avoid promoting FATAL style play, people who actually want to play like that using your system will find a way to do so regardless of your distain. I'm sure there are plenty of gaming groups where the primary use of charm and dominate person it to collect a harem for a sorceror instead of an army.

I'm not arguing it is a necessary component of a system but there is a real argument to be made to allow martial ability into the social mini-game. We are talking about worlds where might does equate to respect and the ability to command people. You win the duel and become the new war chief or convince the king to side with your goal or convince the love interest that you are worthy of their attention. Part of what could make it palatable would be making sure that the nature of martial combat is to the defeat rather than the death or at least making non-lethal combat a commonly used style rather than the abnormal, such as it is in 3.X

[Username17]

There is precedence in source material regarding violent confrontation leading to diplomatization, whether is be political or romantic. Warriors falling in love due to their respect for each others martial skills is a fairly common meme in fantasy.

I can't name a single encounter in a single piece of fantasy fiction in which anyone stabbed someone past "grudging respect" into love. I can think of many instances in which characters fought hard and declared a truce and after talking decided that they should get together as friends/lovers/teammates. But I seriously can't recall a single event in any story, show, or video game in which beating the shit out of someone was by itself a thing that made them switch sides.

Even the jRPGs where you defeat people and they join you have long-ass cutscenes after you win the fight in which there is a lot of talking and the protagonist convinces them to join the team.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

Keep in mind that social-fu is only something you need if you're trying to make someone do something they weren't already inclined to do. If someone is wandering the earth Kung Fu style in search of a worthy opponent and teacher (and/or suitor) then the righteous ass kicking that you bestow upon them is just fulfilling their conditions, not changing their minds.

[ckafrica]

Ok yes, the time frame is important. The book I'm reading now has a couple that meet at blade point and immediately draw a connection due to respect for each other's skill but they don't rut on the battlefield once its over; in fact not until much later. I can recall yet not cite (which obviously is not a particularly weighty source) instances where combats have lead directly to reciprecated kissing in battle but again not to my recollection as part of a first encounter. And others where a kiss in a combat led to the kissed changing sides later. But many of these instances don't include much in the way of talking, the romantic allure between combatants seems to be more primal (Madmardigan and Sorsha in Willow is somewhat of an example; she is not effected by the dust of broken hearts but falls for him anyways, in mid battle).

The problem that most rpgs face in emulating any sort of diplomatic combat is that combats that lead to romances are usually not deadly combat (as in the combat's primary intent is not to kill the opponent, simply defeat them. Obviously killing an opponent and then having a romance brings an entirely different category of yuck). And as I mentioned in my previous post, I don't think you could create any satisfying martial/diplomacy mechanic where the assume result of a successful strike is "I've punctured your kidney".

I'm actually pretty tired of that being the default combat assumption for all sorts of reasons but probably the biggest reason being that combats whose standard result is the opponent dead rather than defeated prevents fights from leading to diplomatic situations or having diplomatic effects on opponents. I want opponents to agree to side with my team because we beat them squarely in a battle. I want to be able to swoon the sexy swashbuckler because of my awesome. I'd like the slave soldiers to consider switching sides because they see I'm kicking their overseers' asses. Some are after battle, some are battle finishers and some are mid battle effects.

[OgreBattle]

I can't name a single encounter in a single piece of fantasy fiction in which anyone stabbed someone past "grudging respect" into love.

[ModelCitizen]

I'm actually pretty tired of that being the default combat assumption for all sorts of reasons but probably the biggest reason being that combats whose standard result is the opponent dead rather than defeated prevents fights from leading to diplomatic situations or having diplomatic effects on opponents. I want opponents to agree to side with my team because we beat them squarely in a battle. I want to be able to swoon the sexy swashbuckler because of my awesome. I'd like the slave soldiers to consider switching sides because they see I'm kicking their overseers' asses. Some are after battle, some are battle finishers and some are mid battle effects.

Your examples aren't really handled by CAN or bloodied or anything similar. If you're beating up the overseers then you presumably haven't damaged or debuffed the slaves at all.

That's actually a great example. If diplomacy is keyed to the target being wounded, then the rules for what you want to do reward ignoring the overseers and attacking the slaves. There's a story there if your character happens to be that kind of heartless psychopath, but most of the time it's just dumb and terrible.

[Mask_De_H]

I think we'd all like to forget MGS4 happened, Ogre.

EDIT: The fantasy fiction idea of defeat equaling friendship comes after and along with fighting; you don't stab someone until they like you, you earn their respect/sway them with words while fighting. You're running social-fu at the same time. When you get a character who blurs the line (Nanoha or Reimu, for example), people joke about them being fucking monsters because they beat people into being friends with them.

[Whipstitch]

I like to forget that Hideo Kojima happened.

[Leress]

Ogre, that's not an example. Raiden didn't make a friendship with Vamp after that. If you are saying it was Vamp then that isn't true either, at best Vamp wanted to get into Raiden's pants.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I think we'd all like to forget MGS4 happened, Ogre.

EDIT: The fantasy fiction idea of defeat equaling friendship comes after and along with fighting; you don't stab someone until they like you, you earn their respect/sway them with words while fighting. You're running social-fu at the same time. When you get a character who blurs the line (Nanoha or Reimu, for example), people joke about them being fucking monsters because they beat people into being friends with them.

Having thought hard(-ish) about it, I don't see how Nanoha even blurs the line --

• Season 1: The TSAB side with Nanoha and Yuuno after sitting down for tea; Fate is only befriended after the fight, and after her mother has basically declared her undying hatred for her.
• Season 2: Hayate and Nanoha were never foes, and the Wolkenritter only team up after it turns out what they were doing is about to cause the end of the world.
• Season 3: Vivio was friendly to Nanoha before the big fight, after Nanoha adopted her after rescuing her; defeating her was just to destroy the mind control device.

tl;dr: the jokes about Nanoha 'befriending' people with laser beams have no real grounding in the show; all of those people were befriended in separate encounters, none of which involved laser beams at all.

I'm not familiar with the details of Reimu's exploits, so I'll leave that to other people.

[Mask_De_H]

No Radiant, people like Nanoha because she beats their asses past Fate in the first series. Every combat ready friend/admirer she has, she's kicked her ass at least once (except for Chrono and Yuuno, but men under 30 don't count in Nanoha).

She saves Vivio by blasting the shit out of her and knocks Teana clean out for daring to pull out a potential killshot combination. When she's totally restrained. And Subaru watches.

This makes them both respect Nanoha greatly. And the training from hell.

And A's has the classic line "I may be a demon, then I'll use my hellish words to get you to listen". She then proceeds to continue opening up a can of whoop-ass on the Wolkenritter, who respect and fear her. This is also not including Fate and Signum bonding over wanting to stab each other, and them rebooting Reinforce with extreme prejudice to allow Hayate to keep her powers.

And Reimu's whole thing is she kicks your ass, then has tea with you at the Hakurei Shrine. It's how every damn Touhou game ends, pretty much.

[RadiantPhoenix]

No Radiant, people like Nanoha because she beats their asses past Fate in the first series. Every combat ready friend/admirer she has, she's kicked her ass at least once (except for Chrono and Yuuno, but men under 30 don't count in Nanoha).

She saves Vivio by blasting the shit out of her and knocks Teana clean out for daring to pull out a potential killshot combination. When she's totally restrained. And Subaru watches.

This makes them both respect Nanoha greatly. And the training from hell.

And A's has the classic line "I may be a demon, then I'll use my hellish words to get you to listen". She then proceeds to continue opening up a can of whoop-ass on the Wolkenritter, who respect and fear her. This is also not including Fate and Signum bonding over wanting to stab each other, and them rebooting Reinforce with extreme prejudice to allow Hayate to keep her powers.

• StrikerS
• Nanoha saves Vivio by shooting her with lasers, but THAT'S NOT WHEN THEY START GETTING ALONG; their relationship starts about ten episodes before that, with Nanoha finding Vivio in a box and then adopting her
• Subaru started respecting Nanoha before she even joined the TSAB because Nanoha came in and rescued her from a burning building
• Even Teana had at least gone on one on-screen mission with Nanoha before the training incident
  A's
• 'Respect and Fear' is not the same as friendship; they only begin to actually get along after and because it is unambiguously revealed to the Wolkenritter that the book is going to eat the world and kill Hayate if they don't stop it.
• Signum and Fate still don't actually get along until they're already on the same side for other reasons
• What actually happens is that Nanoha and Fate hold off Reinforce until Hayate can talk her down (from inside). Then, Reinforce ejects the 'Defense Program', and everyone fights that. At the end, Nanoha and Fate seal Reinforce at Reinforce's request -- after the fight is already over. Reinforce Zwei is essentially a different person.

I haven't actually played any Touhou games beyond the first level, so I will reiterate that I don't actually know what Reimu's befriending process looks like.

Also, I don't think most people object to wounds making people more vulnerable to fear effects.

[virgil]

Since CAN's not a dicepool based system, and there is no point where AC falls off the RNG, how necessary is the d20 attack roll? I'm asking with the idea of simplifying the process.

[Blicero]

With the damage already scaling with successive attacks, and accuracy never falls off the RNG, how necessary are having the attack rolls as opposed to just rolling the damage effect straight?

Mathematically, I don't think that attack rolls are by any means necessary. But,

1) It's nice, in any given attack, to let the attacker roll once and the defender roll once. Players feel more connected to actions in the gameworld when they are physically rolling some of the dice involved.

2) I suspect that people want the defenses of a fast but fragile character to feel different from the defenses of a slow but tough character. You can, to some extent, address these issues with Reflex and Fortitude, but I don't know if that will give a great enough sense of differentiation.

[codeGlaze]

I find it amazing that no one argues from the point of DM fiat.

A lot of the 'problems' associated with one tracking system assume the DM is a sponge, or soap dish, as opposed to an actual human.

Tell me how your charm spell making an NPC friendly to YOU and ,maybe your friends implies that NPC now views the whole world as their friend?

I can understand, the interpretation of CAN being higher for YOU because it lowers that NPCs defenses toward YOU ... ( at least until you begin attacking it).

So really we're talking about situational CAN modifiers which seems pretty logical. Most people should be able to determine that a person is not going to be easier to mind control when you have a dagger in their gut. How can you seriously argue for pages about this shit?

[codeGlaze]

I find it amazing that no one argues from the point of DM fiat.

A lot of the 'problems' associated with one tracking system assume the DM is a sponge, or soap dish, as opposed to an actual human.

Tell me how your charm spell making an NPC friendly to YOU and ,maybe your friends implies that NPC now views the whole world as their friend?

I can understand, the interpretation of CAN being higher for YOU because it lowers that NPCs defenses toward YOU ... ( at least until you begin attacking it).

So really we're talking about situational CAN modifiers which seems pretty logical. Most people should be able to determine that a person is not going to be easier to mind control when you have a dagger in their gut. How can you seriously argue for pages about this shit?

[sabs]

This is the Den, we can argue for pages, about arguing for pages.

[Username17]

Most people should be able to determine that a person is not going to be easier to mind control when you have a dagger in their gut. How can you seriously argue for pages about this shit?

What? Mind control magic does not actually exist. It "works" however the fuck the rules say it works, and not other ways. If mind controlling is based on the target's current hit points (like say, the Charm Person in the D&DNext Playtest), then you're damn fucking right it becomes easier to mind control people by sticking daggers in them. The task, then, is to use your "common sense" to explain how the fuck that works.

As soon as "magic" enters the equation, narrative common sense is out the fucking window. All you can do is create a continuous narrative to describe how it works in the world given how the rules say it works. The issue is not whether DM fiat can or should override how the rules say magic works, because the answer to those questions are blatantly obvious: the DM can and should not. The issue is 100% whether the narrative explanations for how magic says it works in the game make a story that is "stupid" or not.

Vancian spell charges are not to be overrided by DM fiat, but they are nonetheless a fairly bad thing to include in your game design. Improved charming magic from gut stabbing is much the same.

-Username17

[Ice9]

There's a bit of a distinction there. "Soft" mind control like Charm Person, UMI-level Diplomacy, and so forth shouldn't (IMO) be assisted by stabbing them. "Hard" mind control like Dominate Person, or especially fear effects, I could see benefiting from that quite easily.

[codeGlaze]

Vancian spell charges are not to be overrided by DM fiat, but they are nonetheless a fairly bad thing to include in your game design. Improved charming magic from gut stabbing is much the same.

This is true, and this is also (mostly) the point I was trying to make.

Every person in my sphere of interaction would immediately call shenanigans on a rule allowing charming through stabbing. (At least directly)
Primarily because the trope behind things like 'charm' and 'suggestion' are relatively non-combative and, in many cases, combat tends to BREAK such effects.

There's a bit of a distinction there. "Soft" mind control like Charm Person, UMI-level Diplomacy, and so forth shouldn't (IMO) be assisted by stabbing them. "Hard" mind control like Dominate Person, or especially fear effects, I could see benefiting from that quite easily.

I could see will being broken down in certain situations from combat; like confusion and weariness. But those are quantifiable and ARE already status effects.
Morale is quantifiable, too. (Which could play into the quick-sand/mud scenario)
Those are all very easily added/subtracted/tracked.

It just seems to me that the conversation started going into 'toothbrush argument' territory, for paragraphs, and was no longer constructive.