Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: combat

Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: combat - Recent Topics http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/tags/combat Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: combat - Recent Topics en-US Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:11:27 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/search.php M. J. Young on "The Lauren Should Have Been Blind Fight" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/the-lauren-should-have-been-blind-fight#post-13420 Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:29:58 +0000 M. J. Young 13420@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ John "A1Nut" Cross is rather upset about the fact that when he sparred with Lauren Hastings in the dark so that he could practice his Blind Fighting skill, she used her psionic Intensify Senses skill, and so could see better than she could. The matter has appeared several times since he, as player, knew that it happened that way, but he only found a legitimate means of raising the issue in play when his character was being taught the Intensify Senses skill and so guessed that she had used it in the previous combat. I am copying posts here from two threads, <a href='http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/behind-the-screens-2009/page/14#post-13406'>Behind the Screens 2008</a> page 14, and <a href='http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/terrraterraterranova/page/13#post-13412'>John Cross in TerraTerraTerraNova</a> page 13. From the first, John, quoting me: <blockquote> <blockquote> How is what you do different from what Daredevil does, but that he is so much better at it? </blockquote> Because if you're quiet, Daredevil can't see you at all. MJ, I know you know what I'm talking about. There is no way on God's green earth that you can tell me that being able to see is not an advantage over being able to hear location. </blockquote> Answered by Harry: <blockquote>Actually, Daredevil can hear you even if you're perfectly quiet, by hearing sound bouncing off of you, unless you are sound-deadening yourself. You can tell that in the fact that he can see terrain features, things like subway pillars and such. /Perfect/ echolocation like that isn't much of a step down, except that you can't read in echolocation. </blockquote> To which John responded: <blockquote>Yeah, but the fact remains that my character went into it believing that Lauren was also blind like he was. She wasn't. She lied by omission. </blockquote> In response to some excellent observations that echolocation is superior to vision in some ways, he wrote: <blockquote>Yeah, but a sighted person can also hear every direction. </blockquote> Then, from the other thread, he produced an angry tirade, from which: <blockquote>How many times do I have to say the same thing before it sinks through that THICK skull of yours? My character went into it under the impression that Lauren was BLIND. BLIND, unable to see. Without vision. She could SEE. She was not BLIND. THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS!!!!!! Whatever other skills were used by anyone are BESIDE THE POINT!!!!!!!! LAUREN WAS NOT BLIND!!!!!!!!!! She could SEE!!!!!!! WHATEVER OTHER SKILLS USED ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT!!!!!!!! He had the impression that she was unable to see. She could see. Therefore, that's lying by omission. I CLEARLY STATED to her right up front that I was practicing a sightless skill. Point me to the part where she makes a similar declaration to him. Found it yet? No? Oh maybe that's because IT ISN'T THERE!!!!!!!!!!! She NEVER STATED that she could SEE!!!!!!!! She NEVER STATED what skill she was using in the dark PERIOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEREFORE SHE LIED BY OMISSION!!!!!!!!!! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THIS BEFORE IT SINKS IN????????????????????????????????????? I think he is justified in his anger over it, and your PATHETIC ATTEMPTS to justify her behavior only serve to show that you haven't paid a lick of attention to ANYTHING I'VE SAID!!!!!!!!!! </blockquote> The fight in question begins in his game thread on <a href='http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/terrraterraterranova/page/8#post-11703'>Sunday, June 28, page 8</a> and continues for some time interspersed with out-of-combat actions. The corresponding Behind-the-Screens post begin <a href='http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/behind-the-screens-2009/page/10#post-11704'>on page 10</a> of that thread. If we're discussing what she omitted mentioning, I think we can include several skills which she used but did not mention that she would be using, including: <ul> <li>Handspring, which she used to follow him when he attempted to surprise her by using the Great Jump he never mentioned, either.</li> <li>Force Shield, a psionic defense against his violent charge.</li> <li>Evasive Tumbling, to move away from his attack.</li> </ul> I have noticed several skills he used that he did not mention to her, as well, including the fact that he developed at least one (maybe two) during that combat. So I have no problem with the fact that she did not mention her ability to see in the dark. Then again, I find that she did mention it, because <a href='http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/terrraterraterranova/page/8#post-11856'>right at the beginning of the fight</a> he asked her: <blockquote>Lauren, how well can you see? I'm blind as a bat, so seriously, take it easy on me.</blockquote> ...and <a href='http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/terrraterraterranova/page/8#post-11913'>she answered him telepathically</a>: <blockquote>John, I've spent centuries fighting vampires. If I couldn't see in the dark, I would not have fared near so well as I have.</blockquote> Further, you indicated that you were dimming the lights, but complete darkness is not attainable in the rooms where you practice, so it comes to the level of night vision someone has. It is evident that we both forgot that she said that, because thereafter he was attempting to get her to say that she could see in the dark when she had already said it, and I was avoiding having her say it because it annoyed me that he was fishing for a way to bring out-of-character knowledge (something he got from behind the screens) into game play (as his character appeared to be unaware of it and trying to get her to tell him). Nowhere in the thread, however, does John state that the point of the fight is for Lauren to be unable to see him, or tell her that it would be unfair for her to be able to see better than he can. I would also note that if Lauren had the blind fighting skill he has, she would have gained it long enough ago (at least a couple centuries) and used it so extensively that it would have been among her 2@10 SAL skills; that means she still would have had the advantage of knowing exactly where he was better than he was able to tell where she was. At the root of the matter, it always seemed to me that John hoped that turning off the lights would give him a combat advantage, such that he would finally be able to beat Lauren in what he could call a "fair" fight because his blind fighting gave him an advantage. Whether that advantage is "fair" or "unfair" is debatable; but it becomes "unfair" if he refuses to allow that she would use whatever skill she would normally use to fight under the same circumstances. Lauren has never developed a Fighting Blind skill precisely because she has ways to overcome the blindness created by darkness, and has never had to deal with any other type of blindness. Besides, the real benefit of the fighting blind skill arises when you are blinded and your opponent is not--when someone throws dirt in your eyes, or uses a blinding attack that temporarily negates your vision, or, as in this case, is quite able to see under conditions under which you cannot. John, you got your new use for the skill, which was your player objective. What you did not get was the satisfaction of defeating a clearly superior unarmed combatant by using a trick she did not know, and that because she used a trick you did not know she knew. The thread is open for discussion, but I think I've made my position clear enough. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Realistic Game Mechanics" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/realistic-game-mechanics#post-8190 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:59:47 +0000 M. J. Young 8190@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <blockquote>And about asking for the roll on the Parkour school, I just keep forgetting that I don't know jack about how this game runs, but that's the whole point of the board, right? Something that I've never liked about this is the way you suddenly have a major skill increase. I mean if I was at 1@10+3 on my boxing, and then got my fourth new use in the middle of a fight, I would suddenly start hitting twice as hard and twice as fast? I know there's probably no better way to do it with game mechanics, but that's far from being realistic. It's not worth arguing over, but I just never liked that idea. Oh well. You designed a cool game, it's just not always that realistic. In a real fight, you might throw a kick that's from karate, throw a punch that's from boxing, then judo flip the guy. I bet there's no game mechanic for that, unless you're using special attacks.</blockquote> Let's take this in pieces. Yes, we're here to teach how to run the game. I think that my objection is not that you're trying to learn, but that you're acting like you think you already know. That is, "I'm going to look for something like Parkour, which is a sort of martial arts style that involves running, jumping, and escaping from things," is a much better approach than "I want you to roll such-and-such a mechanic to determine whether I can find this thing I'm hoping exists in this world." For one thing, it's not always "realistic" for me to make such rolls. You might ask me to roll whether there are fire breathing dragons in this world. I'm not saying that there are or that there aren't, but I would say that whether there are or aren't probably is not going to be determined so much by a General Effects Roll as by my assessment of the nature of the universe. But that's the small thing; I mention it because it was mentioned first. <blockquote>I mean if I was at 1@10+3 on my boxing, and then got my fourth new use in the middle of a fight, I would suddenly start hitting twice as hard and twice as fast? I know there's probably no better way to do it with game mechanics, but that's far from being realistic.</blockquote> As to whether there is a "better" way to do it with game mechanics, that is entirely subjective. For example, in Multiverser if you're doing ship-to-ship combat in outer space, you use skill checks based on weapon stats against protective defenses. In one classic space game the name of which slips my mind at the moment, you do trigonometric calculations for distances and directions in three-dimensional space to determine the probabily of hitting a target that size at that distance. The trig game is probably more accurate and more "realistic"; the Multiverser mechanic is a lot faster and accessible to a larger number of typical gamers, most of whom either can't or do not wish to do trig calculations for each shot in the game. I certainly could have designed a game in which each incremental increase in your skill increased everything incrementally. Let's say that your chance to hit is X, and cannot be greater than 99% or less than 1%. I could then create a damage scale by which your damage range is equal to X times the weapons maximum possible damage, and the roll determines what percent of that you actually do. Thus if the weapon has a maximum of 100, and you've got X=50 and roll 45, then you would do 45% of 50% of 100 points of damage. Since your range increases with each point of possible success the values of your rolls also increase. I could also say that you get a number of attacks equal to X times the maximum number of attacks the attack form can handle, rounded up. Then if the attack form has 10 attacks and your chance of success if 50, you've got five attacks. And if it were a computer game, maybe I would try something like that; but people have to do math at the table, and some already comment about the fact that I often bring a calculator with me (for those times when my mind is so boggled that adding a column of two-digit numbers is one too many tasks). But saying that it's "far from realistic" is misunderstanding a basic aspect of the concept of attack mechanics. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, an average guy weilding a sword against another average guy weilding a sword gets "one attack per round". A "round" is one minute. The game authors admit that it's silly to think that in one minute an ordinary guy is not going to be able to attempt to hit his opponent more than once. The way the mechanic works isn't by imagining two guys each of whom swings at the other once per minute, but imagining two guys swinging and parrying over the course of a minute, looking for openings and trying to land blows, and each of them having a percent chance that one of their attempting blows will hit the other guy per minute. The same reasoning applies with Multiverser: you're going to try to hit more often than you're going to roll for it; the odds are figured based on the assumption that sometimes you get the opening and sometimes you don't, but on average you'll hit this hard this often. Now, the problem with the suggested scenario above is that it is taking the dissected combat as the reality of the experience. That's tempting to do, and on one level it's necessary to do it--as referee I have to describe that you hit him, that you got hit, how badly he appears to be injured, how badly you think you're injured, and I have to do it on a move-by-move basis. In reality, though, these fights need to be seen as a whole, from the perspective of having finished them. So the kid gets in the ring, and he's pretty good, going for his shot at the big time. My paperwork says he's 1@10+3marks. He gets through the first minute and lands a blow. In the second minute he doesn't land a blow, but in the third minute he comes up with something he's never done before. He gets his new use mark, kicks into 2@1, and now he's rolling twice as often. What does it look like, really? The kid got off to a slow start, but then his training and practice seemed to come together. He pulled an unexpected stunt three minutes into the fight, putting his opponent off-balance, and from there he got his confidence, hit his stride, and pummelled the opponent for the rest of the fight, emerging as the winner. Remember, mathematically you are hitting twice as often and twice as hard, but in fact everything still rides on the dice. Those first two hits you landed--well, let's assume 1@10 BRA+1@10 SAL+2x7@ bias+1@10 MSV-1@6 TV=58%, damaging, then raise the SAL to 2@1 and we've got 59% dangerous. 58% damaging means once per round you've got a 58% chance of doing up to three intensities of damage on a hit. 59% dangerous means that twice per round you've got a 59% chance of doing up to 6 intensities of damage on either or both of two hits. Real quick extended math: <ul>damaging 20x1=20 20x2=40 18x3=58 sum=118 /100=1.18 intensities of damage per minute. dangerous 10x1=10 10x2=20 10x3=30 10x4=40 10x5=50 8x6=48 sum=198 /100=1.98 x2=3.96 intensities of damage in the average minute.</ul> What has really changed? <li>You might hit your opponent harder than you've ever hit him before; about half of your successful blows will do this, but the other half won't be any harder than anything you've done before.</li> <li>You will probably hit him twice as often--but remember, at 58% chance per minute you're really only landing a blow once every (1/(0.58x60))103 seconds, and at 59% per thirty seconds you're now landing one (1/(0.59x30)51 seconds.</li> If I gave you a list of the actual blows landed in a four-minute fight, could you actually tell without the mechanic breakdown at what point the fighter gained his level? You could probably tell that he was a better fighter at the end of the fight than he was going in, but the moment at which that happened would not be evident at all. As to this: <blockquote>In a real fight, you might throw a kick that's from karate, throw a punch that's from boxing, then judo flip the guy. I bet there's no game mechanic for that, unless you're using special attacks.</blockquote> There are several mechanics for that. <ul> <li>You have the ability to change which style you are using, shifting to the attacks and defenses of the new style, once per minute.</li> <li>You say "unless you're using special attacks", but then, that's really the whole point, isn't it? If you tell me you're using judo, then it's assumed that the "not special" attacks are all pushes, flips, throws, the sorts of things common in judo, and none of them are described, they're just rolled for success and damage. If you want a throw that is going to make more of a difference than just "you attacked him successfully and he is injured from it" then you have to use a special maneuver, a Leveraged Attack, Throw. But by the rules, special maneuvers are not locked into their styles--the only lock on them is whether you must have or not have something to do them (e.g., if you have a weapon-based disarm or parry, you must have the weapon). Thus if you tell me that you're doing Judo but you want to use the boxing punch and the karate kick, they're rolled as special maneuvers brought over from their styles and incorporated into yours.</li> <li>Anyone who has learned two or more styles knows enough to design his own style. How well he designs it--well, that's going to be dependent on how well he understands martial arts generally and how similar it is to what he's done before. But if you want to design a style that incorporates several techniques, as long as they are not inconsistent with each other you can do so.</li> </ul> So in fact you can do exactly what you've described, and people do it all the time. Modern game designers cringe at the word "realistic". It is a loaded word which means whatever the person using it wants it to mean at the time. These are simulations of imagined realities. They are always approximations, and there are always flaws in them. The trick is to get them to work as consistently as possible with the expectations of the player. I don't recall your character ever getting into a fight and you complaining that you couldn't mix bits from different fighting styles. You're complaining about things you think don't work because you've never actually seen how well they do work. I can be offended by that. You see, if Scott (who knows these rules as well as--well, within the top five people I've known) or Adam (who has expertise in several role playing game systems including nationally recognized championships) or Graeme (who was playing role playing games long before he ever became interested in Multiverser and is now the longest-running currently-active player on the forum) wants to say that there are flaws in the system that could have been handled better, I'm willing to bet that they speak from knowledge and experience. You speak (frankly) from ignorance and naivete. You tell me what's broken in parts of the game you've never seen actually in play. Have you ever seen someone improve his skill across a level barrier in the midst of combat? It happens so rarely I can't name the last time it did; that also reminds me that the game handles it so smoothly that it wasn't worth remembering. Please figure out how things really work, and test them, before you tell me why they don't. Thank you. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Bullets Piercing Armor" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/bullets-piercing-armor#post-5108 Tue, 13 May 2008 16:26:14 +0000 M. J. Young 5108@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ I know that John (II) said not to bring this to a new thread, but it probably does need to be discussed in a new thread, so I'm bringing it here. I'm starting with a recap of what is posted in <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/bb-admin/view-ip.php?ip=71.74.78.23">Behind the Screens 2008</a> (and gee, if that link actually works, I've learned something today about the forum coding). John (II) "A1nut" Cross started it: <blockquote>MJ, I don't see any kind of bonuses for shooting armor piercing bullets. A 7.62X39 (What I'm shooting) is designed to be a light armor piercing round.</blockquote> This led to a response from Eric "Tadeusz" Ashley: <blockquote>There is a list of bullets effects I created on this board. It probably covers AP. I think MJ has something against (although not extreme) different types of bullets. Jhiaxus had a discussion on this issue with him. I suspect it principally falls into the category of having to create details. Its one of the things that is very hard for a 'generic' game because there are literally a thousand and one different sets of details you need. Multiverser is not the only 'generic' game that has this problem, although many others more directly confront their problem (Mage and Champions forex). Indeed, I think this problem is inherent to the design. Besides no one particularly wants to write 300,000 words. However, it needs to be done. Also, certain residents of the People's Socialist Republics of the Northeast might have a tiny bit less experience with guns since they are not as free as Real Americans :). And just as I'm a bit reluctant to write on the law from my lack of experience (although I'll do it with some reluctance)so might someone be from what Tom Kratman called the People's Republic of Massachusetts, or its sisters.</blockquote> Not finished with the matter, John continued: <blockquote>And another thing. How does their armor affect my ability to hit them? I should have the same chance to hit that I had with anyone else. The damage value is what would be lowered. I mean I'm still shooting at a man sized target at the same distance. I have the same chance to hit said target. I could see the damage value being reduced an intensity, but the bullets wouldn't change direction because they were about to strike armor as opposed to flesh. EDIT: I mean if you have a 6 foot by 3 foot piece of paper, and a 6 foot by 3 foot piece of titanium alloy, and you're shooting from the same distance, you have an equal chance to hit both of them. Your chances of hitting the titanium alloy are not reduced, your chance of PENETRATING it is reduced. See what I mean?</blockquote> Scott "William T. Wodium" Horton, quoting part of that, gave a solid answer: <blockquote> <blockquote> And another thing. How does their armor affect my ability to hit them?</blockquote> That's a good question. My usual answer is that it doesn't. The penalty for cover value applies directly to your chance of skill success - that is, it reduces your chance of dealing damage with your firearm. Because of the relative success rules for calculating damage, this means that your maximum damage on a single blow drops along with your chances of dealing any damage at all. Don't think of the penalty as turning otherwise good hits into misses. Think of it as turning good hits into mediocre hits, turning mediocre hits into cruddy hits, and preventing the hits that would have been cruddy even without the armor from doing any significant damage at all. That's not what the math looks like when you see it first, but that's effectively what the sit-mod is doing.</blockquote> John posted again: <blockquote>Well, I would have made it so that you had the same chance to hit, but a shot that would have done dangerous damage would now only do annoying damage. Something like that. That way, it wouldn't confuse players.</blockquote> and then posted yet once more: <blockquote>If the truth be told, I think the sit mod in this case is completely bogus anyway. I'm shooting light armor piercing bullets at armor that is designed to stop blunt force trauma. Chain mail would stop a slash from a sword, but a stab would go right in between the links. I used to have a friend that made chain mail vests to sell at conventions. They were great for reducing blunt force trauma (club, mace, ax, sword slash) but a thin sword like a rapier would go between the links and they would have little to no effect at stopping or even slowing it down. Bullets are, for all practical intents and purposes, a stab. (Think of it like the tip of a sword moving at about Mach 2.5) I don't care what the rules say, chain mail would be quite ineffective at stopping bullets. Of course, if we took the time to include every single modification that could be made in Da Rulez!! it would go from being the size of a telephone book, to being a multi-volume of telephone books. Oh well, maybe when I'm in Heaven, I'll get to become a verser, and try this out for real. EDIT: MJ, I realize that probably sounds not too kind. There's no need to explain how the chain mail stops bullets, or start a new thread on the topic, or anything like that. Consider it pretty much dropped. The purpose of the forum is so that we can learn how to referee, and so that you, as the author, can get feedback from players about the game. Consider that feedback from a player about the game, and consider it dropped.</blockquote> That is the discussion to this point; I'm going to post this much to make sure I've got it formatted right, and then I'm going to respond. --M. J. Young