Combat Proposal

[David Johansen]

The more I play with it the more I think the place where combat starts to feel too messy and dicey is distributing hits to characteristics. Having to roll for hit locations and a die for each die to determine which stat it impairs is just too much. Sure I'd like to see the modifiers moved to difficulty steps but without half dice it's too grainy and I think the biggest issue is the damage.

So looking back to Megatraveller here's my thought.

Why not make the lowest of C1, C2, C3 into the incapacitated value and the total into the kill value. Take Max 57967F The good duke is knocked out by 5 points of damage and killed by 21. Stat damage can be distributed after combat if desired. Roll 1d3 for each point of damage to determine which stat is reduced.

Alternately we could use the average of C1, C2, C3, giving max an incapacitated value of 7.

Another thing we could do is have npcs incapacitated by the lowest stat and pcs incapacitated by the highest. Not that I'm approving of different mechanics for npcs and pcs.

We can leave in damage die distribution as an option too of course.

 

[mike wightman]

Different damage types should apply to different stats - here is how I have done it in CT in one of my many (abandoned) house rules.

Weapons are rated for puncture damage, blunt impact damage and slashing damage.
P damage is applied to endurance
S damage is applied to strength
B damage is applied to dexterity

 

[ovka]

Why not make the lowest of C1, C2, C3 into the incapacitated value and the total into the kill value. Take Max 57967F The good duke is knocked out by 5 points of damage and killed by 21. Stat damage can be distributed after combat if desired. Roll 1d3 for each point of damage to determine which stat is reduced.

Alternately we could use the average of C1, C2, C3, giving max an incapacitated value of 7.

This is similar to what I was thinking. Only, using the highest of the three stats for incapacitated, and allowing the player to assign the damage as desired after the combat.

Another thing we could do is have npcs incapacitated by the lowest stat and pcs incapacitated by the highest. Not that I'm approving of different mechanics for npcs and pcs.

I've never been a fan of treating NPCs and PCs differently.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Wowsers!

Different damage types should apply to different stats - here is how I have done it in CT in one of my many (abandoned) house rules.

Weapons are rated for puncture damage, blunt impact damage and slashing damage.
P damage is applied to endurance
S damage is applied to strength
B damage is applied to dexterity

Very much liking this. It makes a certain sense to which is cool.

 

[kilemall]

I rather like the concept I've read in some postings of the characteristics being linked to specific underlying systems.

Strength= muscles, cardiovascular system
Dexterity= nervous system
Endurance= immune, respiratory and digestive systems

So specific damage from system specific 'attacks' would go straight to the appropriate characteristic.

A neural stunner or paralysis poison would take down Dex, a gas would hit endurance, etc.

Non-weapon attacks could use the same principle- an alien parasite that attacks the heart would hit strength, high altitude/low oxygen would register hits against endurance, a neural degenerative disease would hit Dex, etc.

A disease that hits endurance would be a particularly dangerous one, as End would be the primary stat for immunity checks.

As for weapon damage/hit location, just make each hit location specific to a characteristic.

Taking a cue from building Robots in the older systems, qualify the extremities as Str and Dex, split damage between them evenly.

So example-

2 Left Hand DEX
3 Right Hand DEX
4 Left Arm STR/DEX
5 Right Arm STR/DEX
6 Head DEX
7 Chest STR
8 Chest END
9 Thigh STR/DEX
10 Gut END
11 Left Leg STR/DEX
12 Right Leg STR/DEX

In order of exposure to looking/firing. Just as valid to do seriousness of hit order.



This chart would tend to have some interesting effects on combat results.

Dex would tend to go faster, affecting the ability to shoot or do other related tasks.

The extremity hits would have a degrading effect on combat ability but not disable, simulating to an extent the light wound result from Striker. The combatants would be a little less likely to disable initially, but a heavy hit to any of the critical areas will still knock people down on one shot.

From a proportionate hit standpoint hands are not equal in area to the other hits, but are so important to functionality I felt they require their own result.

I also was thinking about what is most exposed so an easy cover rule could be in place for the quick snapshot or look around cover.

It means though that a hand hit could knock out a character when an arm or leg won't necessarily, a STR/DEX result would be just as valid to avoid that oddity.

The results skew a bit towards hitting dexterity harder, strength middling and endurance a little less. So an accumulation of hits to a critical result would tend to leave physical stats something like 002, which 'feels' right to me.

While we are on the topic of combat results, might consider an aging check recovering from a two stat zero wound state, and brain damage rules when the character is at 000 and not stabilized or emergency low berthed, with aging checks against Int and Edu if death is arrested and reversed.

 

[mike wightman]

I rather like the concept I've read in some postings of the characteristics being linked to specific underlying systems.

Strength= muscles, cardiovascular system
Dexterity= nervous system
Endurance= immune, respiratory and digestive systems

I think I may have posted that once or twice

I stole it from Trveller's Digest magazine

So specific damage from system specific 'attacks' would go straight to the appropriate characteristic.

A neural stunner or paralysis poison would take down Dex, a gas would hit endurance, etc.

Yup, which is why I went through the CT weapons list and allocated each weapon as being so many Dp, Ds, Db - T5 has a few more damage types that could easily fed into such a system.

Non-weapon attacks could use the same principle- an alien parasite that attacks the heart would hit strength, high altitude/low oxygen would register hits against endurance, a neural degenerative disease would hit Dex, etc.

That is an excellent suggestion, consider it stolen to be incorporated in my next version of CT combat

A disease that hits endurance would be a particularly dangerous one, as End would be the primary stat for immunity checks.

Various plagues which cause extensive internal bleeding - nasty.
Then there are wasting diseases affecting STR... I really like this idea.

As for weapon damage/hit location, just make each hit location specific to a characteristic.

Taking a cue from building Robots in the older systems, qualify the extremities as Str and Dex, split damage between them evenly.

So example-

2 Left Hand DEX
3 Right Hand DEX
4 Left Arm STR/DEX
5 Right Arm STR/DEX
6 Head DEX
7 Chest STR
8 Chest END
9 Thigh STR/DEX
10 Gut END
11 Left Leg STR/DEX
12 Right Leg STR/DEX

In order of exposure to looking/firing. Just as valid to do seriousness of hit order.

I don't like too many rolls during combat, slows things down too much, so I use the severity of the hit and the characteristic affected to describe the wound.

This chart would tend to have some interesting effects on combat results.

Dex would tend to go faster, affecting the ability to shoot or do other related tasks.

The extremity hits would have a degrading effect on combat ability but not disable, simulating to an extent the light wound result from Striker. The combatants would be a little less likely to disable initially, but a heavy hit to any of the critical areas will still knock people down on one shot.

From a proportionate hit standpoint hands are not equal in area to the other hits, but are so important to functionality I felt they require their own result.

I also was thinking about what is most exposed so an easy cover rule could be in place for the quick snapshot or look around cover.

It means though that a hand hit could knock out a character when an arm or leg won't necessarily, a STR/DEX result would be just as valid to avoid that oddity.

The results skew a bit towards hitting dexterity harder, strength middling and endurance a little less. So an accumulation of hits to a critical result would tend to leave physical stats something like 002, which 'feels' right to me.

This is all good stuff.

While we are on the topic of combat results, might consider an aging check recovering from a two stat zero wound state, and brain damage rules when the character is at 000 and not stabilized or emergency low berthed, with aging checks against Int and Edu if death is arrested and reversed.

I have a bleeding rule for when someone takes a critical End hit (which is either a roll of 12 or End reduced to 0 through cumulative wounds) - the character loses a virtual End point each turn, when End reaches -End then brain damage sets in. Each turn a character loses a random point of Int or Edu, if Int reaches 0 the character is brain dead (time to fit a robot brain, synth brain or cloned brain), if Edu reaches 0 the character is reduced to a vegetative state but may recover with extensive therapy and retraining - or I suppose a wafer backup could be used...

 

[David Johansen]

I think you could just specify incapacitation stat by damage type in a couple different ways.

For hit locations you could use high, median, and low stat. So it could be easier to knock someone out by hitting them in the head.

For damage type you could specify the incapacitation stat.

Now, personally I'd run it hit location first with type as the tie breaker, that way you could skip the hit location it you wanted to.

 

[kilemall]

I think you could just specify incapacitation stat by damage type in a couple different ways.

For hit locations you could use high, median, and low stat. So it could be easier to knock someone out by hitting them in the head.

For damage type you could specify the incapacitation stat.

Now, personally I'd run it hit location first with type as the tie breaker, that way you could skip the hit location it you wanted to.

Example please.

 

[David Johansen]

Well for a simplified data set

Head - Low Stat
Torso - Median Stat
Arm - High Stat
Leg- High Stat

Bullet - Strength
Blow - Dex
Shock - Endurance

Say Bob 889ABC gets shot with an Advanced Combat Rifle for 5d damage, he's got 12 points of armor on his head and torso and the die roll is a precise 17.5 points of damage to his torso. Since his Strength and Dex are tied, the bullet damage applies to his strength. So he takes the 5.5 damage to his Strength. But if you're running the incapacitated / dead method and skipping hit locations his strength would indicate that he is not incapacitated by 5.5 points of damage.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

I really like the idea of lowest / average = incapacitate, and remainder = death. That was a great innovation from MegaTraveller, although I didn't like the more abstracted 'hit points' in that system; dice damage to characteristics is more straightforward and involves one less step.

That also resolves the "10 points to eliminate an NPC" problem with sophonts who don't have 2D for all three characteristics. That is, it's a scalable solution.

And just my 20c on damage types applying to particular characteristics: I can seen some case for this on the surface, but I think injury tends to affect your performance in complex ways. For example, nerve damage can effectively make you less strong as well as less dextrous. Recovering from any penetration of the muscle effectively reduces dexterity through favouring the wound due to pain; endurance because of the limit of pain; and strength because you can't lift or use the muscles with as much effort (hey, did anyone else laugh in Prometheus at the surgery where she was left with a major abdominal wound by could still get up and walk? My wife certainly didn't do it that easily after both her caesarians). I'm happy to keep statistic application random; we can make sense of how the wound is affecting the character based on combining damage type and characteristics impacted. Of course, for the vast majority of NPCs, we're not that interested - only whether they are still in the fight. The very specialist weapon types (e.g. bang/flash grenades) have specific effects such as stunning for a certain number of rounds.

 

[kilemall]

Points to Ojno's reply, I'm not suggesting that my proposed system is completely physiologically accurate, best I figure you can get in any one-roll system is it 'feels' right.

Guess I just don't like the 'animal' knockout/kill system, strikes me as too much D&D hit point and not the crunchy implicit in the original characteristics damage model. My idea of crunchy may be beyond most people's taste, but there is such a thing IMO as going too far the other way.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

Points to Ojno's reply, I'm not suggesting that my proposed system is completely physiologically accurate, best I figure you can get in any one-roll system is it 'feels' right.

Guess I just don't like the 'animal' knockout/kill system, strikes me as too much D&D hit point and not the crunchy implicit in the original characteristics damage model. My idea of crunchy may be beyond most people's taste, but there is such a thing IMO as going too far the other way.

Sorry on re-reading your post I can more clearly see your objective was to eliminate a step or roll of the dice.

That's a good point about knockout/kill - you don't get the feel of someone actually losing strength or dexterity on during the battle because of a wound. I think the idea of damage directly to characteristics is a reasonable game reflection of the way the real world works with injury and recovery. On the other hand, in the heat of combat especially where we now write down 'shoot' and 'melee' numbers, are we going to revise those numbers if a relevant characteristic is hit mid-combat? Or wait until after combat and the character gets the effect of the reduced statistics afterwards?

 

[Epee]

If you want the "feel" of pain and the degradation of ability that wounding produces then you mod "to hit" and damage numbers as the skirmish unfolds. If this involves a large of NPCs direct tracking of combat numbers becomes cumbersome. Likewise NPCs should be governed by morale and, depending on motivation, seek escape quickly if injured.

 

[robject]

I think the idea of damage directly to characteristics is a reasonable game reflection of the way the real world works with injury and recovery. On the other hand, in the heat of combat especially where we now write down 'shoot' and 'melee' numbers, are we going to revise those numbers if a relevant characteristic is hit mid-combat?

Traveller5's core rules lean towards more detail on purpose, and that includes characteristic degradation, calculations for pen and damage, and so on.

When I or Greg Lee referee a game, we tend to play more loosely, but we won't find SWAG rules in the T5 Core.

 

[robject]

I'd suggest either using a variation on the MegaTraveller combat rules, or something based on Joe Fugate's vague recollection of fast combat in development (but unfinished) by DGP back when.

A SWAG which might (?) avoid calculating penetration and distributing damage in a detailed way would be, almost by definition, a "Beer And Pretzels" style of combat. Blow things up. I think Joe Fugate and DGP was on that trail, but never got there.

...conveying effect and keeping things moving by minimizing the computational workload were the keys that made it work.

[...]

...task based combat had too many rules, and needed to be streamlined, but we had to deliver to our promised deadline, so time didn't allow fully playtesting it like I wanted.

I also wanted to put a highly streamlined version of task-based combat in the rules, and I had playtested those somewhat, but they also had big gaps. The "fast combat" rules, as I called them, were a blast, because combat went so quickly it added a lot to the excitement level. But they needed a lot more work to make them publishable.

In vague: Joe's scheme required some up-front calculations which would then streamline combat. In a T5 mode, I assume that those calculations would codify pen-and-damage against hit points. Hit points are, presumably, a function related to Str, Dex, and End. Weapon categories might sit in a matrix against armor categories, like CT. Thus your task might be Range Dice < Matrix Result. Maybe it's an opposed roll if the target is doing something usefully defensive.

An Experiment: use the (CT weapon effectiveness table vs Armor) + some constant (such as 10) as the target number, and see what that gets you.

If the result is close, then the target is wounded but up. If the result is better than expected, then he's down. A rule of thumb would help, such as "three strikes and you're out": three wounds equals one serious, out of action wound. Three serious wounds equals death. But after combat you can figure out how badly off each guy really is.

As Jayne said, "I smell a lot of IF coming off of this plan." But them's my two cents.

 

[kilemall]

Sorry on re-reading your post I can more clearly see your objective was to eliminate a step or roll of the dice.

That's a good point about knockout/kill - you don't get the feel of someone actually losing strength or dexterity on during the battle because of a wound. I think the idea of damage directly to characteristics is a reasonable game reflection of the way the real world works with injury and recovery. On the other hand, in the heat of combat especially where we now write down 'shoot' and 'melee' numbers, are we going to revise those numbers if a relevant characteristic is hit mid-combat? Or wait until after combat and the character gets the effect of the reduced statistics afterwards?

Given the way I do it in my CT/Striker hybrid, my preference is drop 'em immediately. Taking hits has consequences.