A short while ago I posted an ISRP called Lesser Heir, a medieval fantasy ISRP in which you take the role of a guy who was cheated out of his inheritance, and that got me thinking along a train of thought that eventually became about combat systems. I have three ideas for combat systems that I'll use for it and various other RPs as time goes on, but I'm also inclined to see how you do combat in RPs.
First is what I'll call the diceless system. This is what I've been doing in most of my RPs for years; essentially, I determine hits and misses and everything else based solely on what I think would benefit the plot. It's rather self-explanatory, and I think that it's what most of you use, so if you use it just say that you ordinarily use the diceless system for simplicity. The advantages of this are that it prevents someone from just getting really lucky and killing everyone instantly, but the disadvantages are that I, or whoever the host of the RP is, can be extraordinarily biased in this.
Before I go into my second and third methods, I'd like to quickly point out that about a year ago I purchased a novelty dice set. It doesn't include d20s or other D&D dice, I mean that it's really a novelty set that no major system uses and that includes some deformed versions of common dice, a d24 and a d60. I got it from the Museum of Mathematics in New York, although you can also get the dice online from thedicelab.com or something like that.
Now, my second system is what I'll call the d24 system. Essentially it's a modified form of the system that Pirate's using for me on the Underworld custom ISRP thread and as such all credit for the inspiration goes to him. What it is is I group the possible outcomes of the diceroll in a way such that 1-6 is a miss with a counterattack, 7-12 is just a normal miss but defensible, 13-18 is a hit but not a kill (say, a third of the way to a kill) and 19-24 is an instakill. That's what I'll call the base values. Then, from there, I'll adjust those numbers for various opponents - for instance, a more skilled fighter may have a larger counterattack margin and a lower instakill margin, or a dragon might have no instakill at all. This system is good because it's versatile enough that I can alter things for the sake of the storyline and it removes some of the bias that comes with the diceless system, but it's possible to still produce biased results by adjusting the statistics and it makes combat more mathematics focussed. It also makes it some combination of turn-based and not turn-based, but I'm not sure how you like your combat so I'm not classifying that as an advantage or a disadvantage yet.
Third and finally is what I'm calling the d60 system, and it's what I think I'll do for Lesser Heir and many of my RPs and ISRPs to come after it, depending on how well it works. What happens is that, before the fight, I assign everyone involved in the fight a health value. Most disposable footsoldiers that the protagonist is slaying left and right will have a value of 30 to 40, the PC will have a different value depending on various factors, and more well-trained enemies will have higher health values, possibly up to 100 or 120 or something. After that, for every singly slash of a sword, stab of a spear or shoot of an arrow I roll a d60, remove that much health from the total and make up the story part accordingly. For instance, a master swordfghter with a base health of 120 might sidestep 10 points of damage and just get slightly tired (making him easier to kill) whereas a common footsoldier with just 30 health taking 10 damage might lose a hand or take a nasty gash to the side or something along those lines.
So, what do you guys think of the various combat systems that I've come up with? What interesting combat systems have you devised for your RPs over the years? Please, discuss the one OOC on all of RP that's relevant in great detail down below! |