Looking for a new (combat) success rate....

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In the White Wolf system (which I mostly dislike), combat allows margins of success with attack & defense (someone swings sword, you defend, only a little damage is dealt instead of opening your stomach), in Gurps, you either 100% hit, or 100% miss. Is there any way to implement anything like this?


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Fangface wrote:
> In the White Wolf system (which I mostly dislike), combat allows margins of success
>with attack & defense (someone swings sword, you defend, only a little
damage is dealt
>instead of opening your stomach), in Gurps, you either 100% hit, or 100% miss. Is
>there any way to implement anything like this?
>
>
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> ------= Binary Usenet downloading made easy =---------
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What margins of success in GURPS? Sure you can modify the rules to do
so. Every 3 or 5 points difference between the skill roll and the actual
roll increases the margin of success by one level. What this level would
do would depend on the skill in question. It might increase damage, it
might reduce armour effectiveness, it might allow faster use of the
skill (8 minutes to fix something instead of 10).
Ken

 

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Fangface wrote:
> In the White Wolf system (which I mostly dislike), combat allows margins
> of success with attack & defense (someone swings sword, you defend, only
> a little damage is dealt instead of opening your stomach), in Gurps, you
> either 100% hit, or 100% miss. Is there any way to implement anything
> like this?

There's an energetic discussion going on over on the SJG forums - you may
want to check that out: forums.sjgames.com

It sounds like you feel like the greater the MoS, the more likely you should
be to do better damage. How 'bout this:

MoS: 0,1,2 No change
MoS: 3,4 All 1's on damage are 2's
MoS: 5,6 All 1's and 2's on damage are 3's
MoS: 7,8 All 1-3's on damage are 4's
MoS: 9,10 All 1-4's on damage are 5's
MoS: >10 Max Damage

Example: Thud the Bavarian, Axe skill-15, rolls to hit Fangface. He hits.
Damage is 2d+1.

If his to-hit roll was a 12 (MoS 3), and his damage roll was 1,5, he'd do 8 (2+5+1)
If his to-hit roll was a 6 (MoS 9)(not quite a crit, but damned decent!) and his
damage roll was still a 1,5, he'd do (5!+5+1) = 11.

This'd keep the random nature of damage to an extent, but increase the chance
that a good hit (large MoS) would do more damage (and, perhaps more importantly,
_decrease_ the chance that you'd do really pitiful damage). And it'd be fairly
easy to remember, I think...

Thoughts?

Arne

 

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Fangface wrote:
> In the White Wolf system (which I mostly dislike), combat allows margins of success with attack & defense (someone swings sword, you defend, only a little damage is dealt instead of opening your stomach), in Gurps, you either 100% hit, or 100% miss. Is there any way to implement anything like this?
>
>
sounds odd - either you parry or you don't. Being half out of the way
counts as hit - with low damage rolled. Low damage means small wound -
that's the way it works in GURPS.

 

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Something like this _could_ be done (though I don't know when it completely
breaks down):

In any attack all rolls are made to see how much damage connects to the
target - a succesful skill roll is needed to do damage at all. Succesful
Defence rolls subtract from damage at 2 points pr. level of succes. ST and
weapon modifies damage (ST: +/- 1 to swings pr. point off 10, +/- ½ if
thrusting, weapon use mentioned modifiers, eg. Broadsword is +1 to swing
damage and give a cutting aspect)

Ex:

Bradlark of Broadsword skill 13 and ST 13, using a large club, beat upon
Darrag, of Dodge 10. Skill roll is 9 a succes, and 4 better than skill - a
base of 4 damage. ST gives +3, the weapon +1 for a total of 8. Darrag
chooses to retreat on his dodge for a 13 chance, rolling a 10 for a margin
of 3 and a damage reduction of 6, leaving an impact of 2, cutting to
penetrate any armour

 

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Arne Jamtgaard wrote:
> It sounds like you feel like the greater the MoS, the more likely you
> should
> be to do better damage. How 'bout this:
>
> MoS: 0,1,2 No change
> MoS: 3,4 All 1's on damage are 2's
> MoS: 5,6 All 1's and 2's on damage are 3's
> MoS: 7,8 All 1-3's on damage are 4's
> MoS: 9,10 All 1-4's on damage are 5's
> MoS: >10 Max Damage

Good idea. However, the notion of changing numbers on dice seems a
little clunky and quite unGURPSlike. All the other modifiers for this
sort of thing (Boxing, Karate, etc.) are either a flat bonus or a bonus
"per die". Also, you should have the chance to do less damage: a
"glancing blow", if you will.

I would be a lot more comfortable with an implementation something
like this:

MoS: 0 -2 per die
MoS: 1 -1 per die
MoS: 2-3 No change
MoS: 4-6 +1 per die
MoS: 7+ +2 per die

 

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On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:01:08 GMT, "Fangface" <Fangface74@Gmail.com>
carved upon a tablet of ether:

> In the White Wolf system (which I mostly dislike), combat allows
> margins of success with attack & defense (someone swings sword,
> you defend, only a little damage is dealt instead of opening your
> stomach), in Gurps, you either 100% hit, or 100% miss. Is there
> any way to implement anything like this?

Not without house rules. However, GURPS already has two levels of
success - normal hits and critical hits. Also, it has a seperate
damage roll. A low damage roll tells you that the hit, however
technically good (high margin of success) wasn't perfectly on target.
Likewise a high roll says it was a good square hit, despite your
relatively poor execution.


--
Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn@paradise.net.nz>
"Just because the truth will set you free doesn't mean the truth itself
should be free."

 

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>>>>> "RB" == Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn@paradise.net.nz> writes:

RB> On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:01:08 GMT, "Fangface"
RB> <Fangface74@Gmail.com> carved upon a tablet of ether:

>> In the White Wolf system (which I mostly dislike), combat
>> allows margins of success with attack & defense (someone swings
>> sword, you defend, only a little damage is dealt instead of
>> opening your stomach), in Gurps, you either 100% hit, or 100%
>> miss. Is there any way to implement anything like this?

RB> Not without house rules. However, GURPS already has two levels
RB> of success - normal hits and critical hits. Also, it has a
RB> seperate damage roll. A low damage roll tells you that the
RB> hit, however technically good (high margin of success) wasn't
RB> perfectly on target. Likewise a high roll says it was a good
RB> square hit, despite your relatively poor execution.

There's also an optional rule, which I'm not sure is in 4e, that you
can use the attack and defense rolls in a Quick Contest instead of
rolling to see if the attack would hit and then rolling to see if the
defense would stop it. That would make the margin of success
relevant, but would change a lot of the dynamics in combat: in
particular, it would slant things a lot more in favor of the the
higher skill.

Another thing to note is that margin of success *is* relevant with
several combat maneuvers, just not the simple Attack maneuver. That
seems reasonable to me; if all you're trying to do is land a blow,
what matters is whether you hit or not, while if you're trying to
confuse or distract your enemy, how well you do it matters more.

(This is not to say that I don't like the White Wolf unified mechanic;
I just think that the WW designers had a different goal in mind than
SJ did.)

Charlton


--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com

 

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On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:40:56 -0700, Arne Jamtgaard
<ajamtgaa@cisco.com> carved upon a tablet of ether:

> It sounds like you feel like the greater the MoS, the more likely you should
> be to do better damage. How 'bout this:
>
> MoS: 0,1,2 No change
> MoS: 3,4 All 1's on damage are 2's
> MoS: 5,6 All 1's and 2's on damage are 3's
> MoS: 7,8 All 1-3's on damage are 4's
> MoS: 9,10 All 1-4's on damage are 5's
> MoS: >10 Max Damage

For high skill characters this means all critical hits will be for
maximum damage. As you can't defend against criticals, this makes them
exceedingly deadly, rather than just scary. Also, combat with ranged
weapons doesn't work much like that - if your opponent is 'combat
aware' and dodging, behind cover, etc., the quality of any hits you
get on them is pretty random. If they aren't aware they're about to be
shot it's usually pretty academic - they'll have a hole through
something vital.


--
Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn@paradise.net.nz>
"Just because the truth will set you free doesn't mean the truth itself
should be free."

 

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Arthur Samuels wrote:
> Arne Jamtgaard wrote:
>
>> It sounds like you feel like the greater the MoS, the more likely you
>> should
>> be to do better damage. How 'bout this:
>>
>> MoS: 0,1,2 No change
>> MoS: 3,4 All 1's on damage are 2's
>> MoS: 5,6 All 1's and 2's on damage are 3's
>> MoS: 7,8 All 1-3's on damage are 4's
>> MoS: 9,10 All 1-4's on damage are 5's
>> MoS: >10 Max Damage
>
>
> Good idea. However, the notion of changing numbers on dice seems a
> little clunky and quite unGURPSlike. All the other modifiers for this
> sort of thing (Boxing, Karate, etc.) are either a flat bonus or a bonus
> "per die". Also, you should have the chance to do less damage: a
> "glancing blow", if you will.
>
> I would be a lot more comfortable with an implementation something
> like this:
>
> MoS: 0 -2 per die
> MoS: 1 -1 per die
> MoS: 2-3 No change
> MoS: 4-6 +1 per die
> MoS: 7+ +2 per die

Even better is if Damage wasn't rolled at all - You do a set amount of
damage based on Str and you get bonuses/take penalties based on the MoS.
The randomization of damage is accounted for by the randomization of
attack/defense rolls. This works better as a Quick Contest actually, so
a good defense could say turn an otherwise really good attack into
only a glancing blow. So you might very well use the same table as
above, except instead of, say, 2d-1 damage, a character would do a set 6
damage and have it modified as per the table above. The (-1 per die)
can be emulated by, say, -1 per 3 points, -2 per 3 points, +1 per 3
points ect., or the "die" number stored as a separate number in damage
but not actually used except for determining damage based on MoS.