Official Thread for "Non-Flashy Fighter Discussion"

[Psychic Robot]

So the last thread got locked. Let's try to keep that from happening here.

Basic Goals
The goal of the system is to create a system similar to Conan--where martial characters are competent, but they don't do Wuxia-esque things (no running up the walls or shooting lasers). Similarly, casters are useful, but they get with the nerfbat in comparison to 3e--they don't overshadow the fighter.

Thoughts
Work on what fighters should do first and then figure out what casters do. We also need to define what is or is not too "flashy" for the game.

Elennsar, go.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I guess I need to understand how nerfed Wizards are getting. Are we talking 4e nerfed? or something between 4e and 3.5 in terms of power?

[angelfromanotherpin]

First, I think it's important to mention that in the Conan setting, there isn't really a division between 'fighters' and 'casters.' Conan uses magic on occasion, and Thoth-Amon is a giant murderer.

That said, the characters that most people would recognize as caster-types tend to use some combination of:
• Weird martial arts
• Hypnotism
• Chemistry

The part where there's actually magic involves relationships with powerful magical nonhuman entities. Thoth-Amon uses his ring to call up and command various killer beasts, Yara of the Three Hundred Years has his space-elephant-man who does things for him, and Tsotha-lanti has the enormous snake and hell-flower in his dungeon.

[Username17]

I guess I need to understand how nerfed Wizards are getting. Are we talking 4e nerfed? or something between 4e and 3.5 in terms of power?

Neither one. The point is that people in such a setting are supposed to care about torches and physical strength and such. So obviously no one is going to have a 3e power of calling up powerful fire demons nor is anyone going to have the 4e power of being able to shoot freeze rays at will.

In such a setting the wizards are going to be like the wizards in Conan, which means that in combat they will spend most of their time hitting people with actual weapons. The removal of big flashy fighters means among other things that the big flashy wizards are gone too. A powerful magician will at most look like Darth Vader - where they augment their sword play with an occasional telekinetic thrust. Or like the Mummy in the original black and white epic of the same name - where they are protected by an aura of majesty but behind that they are just a dude.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

Fighters (using that to mean "martial characters" - rogues to the extent that's a distinct skill set are seperate) should be the best in combat. That ought to be an undeniable given.

That doesn't mean no one else can help out, but no spell a wizard can cast should render a sword or arrow unnecessary.

As for flashiness...well, as a honest suggestion (though I do not propose we adopt her setting), Katherine Kurtz's Deryni are probably not a bad idea. (I have a book somewhere describing what kinds of powers Deryni have, but unfortunately I don't know where it is at the moment or I'd grab it to sum up what I mean...will look for it and try and fill in)

Until then, I would say that a dedicated "Mage" is a scholar/loremaster type - emphasing how the word "wizard" is related to "wisdom" in the English language. Sure, they have magic powers, but its something that takes time and care - not something you fling around in battle, or at least not usually.

I believe one thing that would help this is something mentioned in the other thread (by me).

Magic cast that "directly influences other beings" (requires a saving throw) is difficult.

Its not particularly hard (relatively speaking) to look into the future and get a general sense of what's going on, or to levitate an object. Or start a fire.

On the other hand, bending a strong willed man to your will should be something that takes lots of time and/or incredible power.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I guess I need to understand how nerfed Wizards are getting. Are we talking 4e nerfed? or something between 4e and 3.5 in terms of power?

Neither one. The point is that people in such a setting are supposed to care about torches and physical strength and such. So obviously no one is going to have a 3e power of calling up powerful fire demons nor is anyone going to have the 4e power of being able to shoot freeze rays at will.

In such a setting the wizards are going to be like the wizards in Conan, which means that in combat they will spend most of their time hitting people with actual weapons. The removal of big flashy fighters means among other things that the big flashy wizards are gone too. A powerful magician will at most look like Darth Vader - where they augment their sword play with an occasional telekinetic thrust. Or like the Mummy in the original black and white epic of the same name - where they are protected by an aura of majesty but behind that they are just a dude.

-Username17

Alright, so say we removed At Will Powers, and just had encounter and daily powers. How close are we to Conan now? Still too flashy?

If so: What about changing the flavor of some of the attacks to just enhanced arrow attacks or something?

[Elennsar]

From what I know of 4e, yes.

Also, are we trying to model Conan specifically (not my vote), which means some particular set of things regarding wizards, or are we just modeling that level of Sword and Sorcery and/or heroic fantasy?

One thing that keeps lower powered wizards in check is the fact that while a mighty wizard is not someone to be taken lightly, you can whip up a mob with torches and pitchforks, storm his tower, and he might actually have cause for concern.

So we need to know whether wizards regularly fear those things or not - if using magic creates suspicion amongst most people, or at least concern (whether or not that is justified), wizards are going to be very reluctant to make a big point of being wizards.

[violence in the media]

I think we should incorporate something like Combat Schools with their own specialized moves and styles and weapons. That way, fighters are encouraged to broaden their knowledge base to make them more effective.

On the other hand, should we let people go all Superfoot Wallace and just train 3 techniques so intensely that they don't need any others?

Also, should all combat schools (if we go this route) ultimately be equal? Should there be some interaction between common/obscure schools and simple/difficult styles and techniques?

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Well and here's another question that's especially relevant to answering your questions Elennsar.

Are we trying to build a balanced combat system? Is it a design goal for a Fighter and a Wizard character of the same level to have a roughly 50/50 chance of winning a fight against one another?

Or is the goal to let the Fighter be outright better in combat, but the Wizard can do some fun things that the Fighter can't?

[Elennsar]

I think we should incorporate something like Combat Schools with their own specialized moves and styles and weapons. That way, fighters are encouraged to broaden their knowledge base to make them more effective.

On the other hand, should we let people go all Superfoot Wallace and just train 3 techniques so intensely that they don't need any others?

Also, should all combat schools (if we go this route) ultimately be equal? Should there be some interaction between common/obscure schools and simple/difficult styles and techniques?

Combat schools - whether "don't need any others" or "learn all you can", definately sound like a good idea.

As for all being equal...

All of a given difficulty/obscurity, yes. All as in all schools, no.

Or is the goal to let the Fighter be outright better in combat, but the Wizard can do some fun things that the Fighter can't?

I am in favor of the latter.

[violence in the media]

Combat schools - whether "don't need any others" or "learn all you can", definately sound like a good idea.

As for all being equal...

All of a given difficulty/obscurity, yes. All as in all schools, no.

OK. What should we do to encourage people to learn the common/easy schools over the obscure/difficult?

[Elennsar]

"They're easier."

No, seriously - if it costs say 30 points and five years to learn the secrets of The Ultimate Strike, but five points to learn Swordplay 101, its going to be quite an investment, so you need to learn the easy ones.

That of course means that the cost of the "advanced schools" has to be steep enough to mean only the truly commited (and those with points/feats/whatever to burn) will master them - and it wouldn't hurt to make having the basic skills firmly mastered to even -attempt- the advanced ones.

[baduin]

The first thing to do is to establish power level. Let's say you have 10 levels (that number is reasonable because of lower number of special abilities, and also because of lower power level the overall numbers will be lower).

There are two basic question:
1) How many basic warriors can 10 level Fighter defeat at the same time: 3 or 30?
2) What monster/animal can he defeat in hand-to-hand armed combat: wolf, lion, elephant, tyrannosaurus?

There are also two supplementary questions:

1) How consistent combat should be - that is, what is the chance of losing against a slightly weaker (one level weaker) enemy?
2) What should your endurance be? How much your strength drops after a combat, and how quickly you recover from wounds.

[Elennsar]

1) Good question. More than 3, probably less than 30 - though if he keeps them from being able to effectively gang up on him, 30 may well be possible.

2) Probably closer to lion than elephant.

1b) Good question.

2) Also a good question.

I would like to make healing from serious wounds take a reasonably long time, but the light stuff (Even stuff that would be incapaciating to a less tough individual) not so much.

But Robin Hood spending weeks keeping his arm in a sling after it was sorely broken would be appropriate.

[TavishArtair]

Alright, so say we removed At Will Powers, and just had encounter and daily powers. How close are we to Conan now? Still too flashy?

If so: What about changing the flavor of some of the attacks to just enhanced arrow attacks or something?

Mmm, no. It's a paradigm shift. It's not about at will, encounter, or daily, although I will tell you those can affect the tone of the game. No, what happens is we basically remove everything that cannot be explained as either physical or mental trickery. Essentially, in 4e terms, what happens is the arcane, divine, and indeed every power source that is not martial disappears, and that further we go over the martial effects to make sure they are truly "martial" in nature, and an acceptable range of effects. A limited amount of impressive jumping and such is fine, but it should be quite restrained. So I'm going to go ahead and say that maybe as much as 50% of the powers listed for martial characters in the game would go out, though some of them only by degree, i.e. some of them are fine but would need to be toned down so they weren't bullshit.

Now, we keep the Ritual Caster feat in, but we might modify it. In fact we modify it extensively. It becomes its own subsystem, really. And that's magic. And the fact of the matter is performing a ritual has an activation time of minutes and hitting you in the face has an activation time of seconds, so you never ever ever see it in combat, and further the effects are prone to failure.

Also, I'd change feats around and remove anything about 10th level or so, making it "E10". However, this is all keeping in mind that I'm just expressing this in terms of how I would mod 4e to do it even passably well. Honestly, I'd find it faster and more to the point to just write a whole new system, or take something like BRP which has always had writeups for settings like Elric and Conan and mod it.

[Elennsar]

How good is BRP as a system, then?

[TavishArtair]

1) How many basic warriors can 10 level Fighter defeat at the same time: 3 or 30?

Terrain based. If he can choke them into coming at him one at a time, he should be able to slay essentially ridiculous numbers of opponents. 20 at the minimum. We do want the Battle of Thermopylae going on. If he faces even two at a time, the number drops dramatically. I would go so far as to say that unless totally outmaneuvered (flanked on all sides), however, a level 10 fighter should be able to kill at least 10 men. That was the original design intention of level and I see no reason to not use it here. If essentially totally outflanked, he should still bring a few guys with him but he will die shortly.

2) What monster/animal can he defeat in hand-to-hand armed combat: wolf, lion, elephant, tyrannosaurus?

Level 10? He can beat the crap out of the wolf and the lion in a straight fight, wrestling or even boxing them down if need be, although he doesn't relish either, and if he is allowed to pull a Legolas, possibly even the elephant. The tyrannosaurus eats him, however, in anything approaching a straight fight, although his odds of survival if he tries only to save himself and not kill it per se are probably good.

1) How consistent combat should be - that is, what is the chance of losing against a slightly weaker (one level weaker) enemy?

It should probably be somewhat inconsistent. You can definitely kill them and the odds are in your favor, but it's no Sure Thing.

As to the last question, no opinion. Vitality/Wounds type systems are usually good for this sort of thing (easy to heal back most "HP", but a small amount that actually matters at the end), but the specific implementation of that is obviously abominable for certain reasons.

[CatharzGodfoot]

For this sort of a system you might want to use tiers rather than levels. Most character advancement would be horizontal, by gaining new abilities. Your power level would stay roughly the same within a tier. I don't think that there's really an advantage in this type of RPG to regularly increasing the attack numbers of both the PCs and their opposition.

The little advancement you do have is story based, and would pretty much be 'swineherd' -> 'hero' without passing through 'mercenary'. Then there can be a 'demigod' level at the top, which is where Heracles and Zena hang out. Heroes would of course be strictly superior to most of their human opposition (which would fall into categories like 'bandit' or 'mercenary', more on par with 'swineherd' than 'hero').

[Username17]

For this sort of a system you might want to use tiers rather than levels. Most character advancement would be horizontal, by gaining new abilities. Your power level would stay roughly the same within a tier. I don't think that there's really an advantage in this type of RPG to regularly increasing the attack numbers of both the PCs and their opposition.

Hell, I think you should cut the bonus crap entirely and go dicepool skill-based. It's a good base system for when people are all roughly human sized.

The big question to my mind is your tactical minigame "hook." That is, you need some sort of decision tree so that the player can affect the outcome of the game while at the same time being simple enough to get your girlfriend to sit in on a game. You need to make it so that choices matter and you don't just use your biggest available move each turn until the guy with the bigger set of numbers wins.

You could go card based like on that other thread, to pick a recently discussed alternative. If you had a limited and semi randomly replenishing resource for your defenses, you might want to throw down a block that was fairly effective against an incoming attack, or you might want to save it for a later attack that it was super effective against.

Or you could go area based, where a character's moves required and covered certain geometric areas and you tried to use them to hedge in an opponent without interfering with your allies. If your move's self area intersects with an enemy's threat area, you get cock punched, and the self and threat areas are changing size and shape every turn in reverse order to initiative results.

Or something.

Point is that you need a gimmick that makes people feel like their choice matters. And while RPS mechanics are good for that (see: MET and Lost Worlds), they are distinctly unsatisfying in cooperative storytelling games, because there's no adversary and therefore no one to outwit.

-Username17

[Crissa]

My suggestions were all based upon Parn; High will, ability to cut or bash their way through magical effects. And some sort of ability to redirect or intercept effects so that they can protect their friends.

RPGs don't suffer from the MMO trouble of 'everyone has be be able to complete the same challenges in the same amount of time' but they do suffer from the lack of pre-programmed reactions like aggro tables, hence needing intercept abilities on a resistant character, else they're going to be ignored by critters that can't hurt them.

-Crissa

[virgil]

We could go for cinematic, sort of like Feng Shui. As an aside, my first impression of its initiative system is great.

How wargamey (or minis based) do we want it to be?

[Elennsar]

Isn't Feng Shui leaning in the "jumping up walls" direction?

[violence in the media]

I was sort of thinking of cards with my combat schools suggestion. It was also kind of inspired by the old Streetfighter RPG (lulz). That had different combat cards for maneuvers like roundhouse kick, uppercut, and low block. Beyond that, I don't recall much of how it worked save that it was based on the old WW system.

I like the idea of making this dicepool skill-based, as Frank suggested. I was thinking that you could have several combat skills, like one handed melee, two handed melee, thrown, one handed ranged, two handed ranged, etc. You put your points into these areas and each school gives you a variety of techniques that you can learn, up to your total skill level.

You'd be able to make generic "I hit him with my sword" attacks, where you just roll your one-handed melee skill. But you could also use a special maneuver if you had one. If you had 4 points in one-handed melee, you could know 4 level 1 maneuvers, or 2 level 2s, or whatever combo you wanted.

The maneuvers themselves would have an interplay like people have been talking about with the card idea. I don't think that animals, monsters, and common folk wouldn't have special combat school training, however.

[Username17]

I was thinking that you could have several combat skills, like one handed melee, two handed melee, thrown, one handed ranged, two handed ranged, etc. You put your points into these areas and each school gives you a variety of techniques that you can learn, up to your total skill level.

I'd rather do things the opposite way. In many games you have to choose to put points into punching fools or hitting them with swords. The end result is always that smart shoppers just put all their dice into a single pool and spam a single weapon style come hell or high water.

How about instead your close combat dicepool is just the number of combat styles you know? So as you get proficient with more combat options your general badassery goes up. That way people would be incentivized to switch from swinging a sword one handed like a fencer and two handed like a woodcutter - because they'd have to learn how to fight in both ways anyway if they wanted to be the very best.

-Username17

[Anguirus]

I was thinking that you could have several combat skills, like one handed melee, two handed melee, thrown, one handed ranged, two handed ranged, etc. You put your points into these areas and each school gives you a variety of techniques that you can learn, up to your total skill level.

I'd rather do things the opposite way. In many games you have to choose to put points into punching fools or hitting them with swords. The end result is always that smart shoppers just put all their dice into a single pool and spam a single weapon style come hell or high water.

How about instead your close combat dicepool is just the number of combat styles you know? So as you get proficient with more combat options your general badassery goes up. That way people would be incentivized to switch from swinging a sword one handed like a fencer and two handed like a woodcutter - because they'd have to learn how to fight in both ways anyway if they wanted to be the very best.

-Username17

Or you could disincentive specialization by having huge situational modifiers for not using the appropriate style against the right enemy. The maneuvers that you learn from each style could be designed to specifically deal with another weapon style. In effect having 2 ranks (or what have you) in two-sword style (or what have you) would be better than having 5 ranks in one sword style when facing sword and shield style. So, in effect, generalizing is incentiveised (because you are able to effectively deal with more styles) and specializing is disincentiveised (because you will always loose to a generalist that knows your kryptonite)