Evaluating and Modifying Combat: Some feedback from the Hydra Playtesting

So we had a game session last week, and there will be a write-up post for that shortly, but in the course of it – more feedback and constructive criticism from the playtesters. Which was welcome, and triggered some on the spot debate which I’m attempting to summarise from my selfish perspective here. I’ve also opted to create some writing accounts on this blog for the hydra playtesters so they can publish their own entries on the blog directly. I’ll simply maintain some editorial control, not over the content, but just to keep an eye on formatting and spelling etc. In this way we can have some other views on things rather than just my distorted burblings. Anyway onto the playtesting feedback.

The combat engine: Thoughts and directions.

Vincent raised some good constructive criticisms of the combat engine particularly in respect of counterstrike and number of hits per round and we looked at alternatives. Here are my collected ruminations. There is a counterstrike option in the game which as it is at the moment is not a skill but a tactical choice of defence – an alternative to a parry/block/dodge action option. It enables you to strike back and ignore the incoming strike as a defence option if a person attacks. This of course means that you get effectively two attacks in a round if you decide to counterstrike as a defence. The downside of counterstrike is that inevitably at some point you miss and take a crunching hit. Even if you hit – you are taking a blow from the opponent if they are successful so it’s not a very protective defence.  A hit with a counterstrike is therefore not the same as a hit from your own attack. This has been proven risky with the mystic-monk’s Antiva’s repeated use of counterstrike and how close he has been to being very dead on a number of occasions. NPC’s have also come a cropper using the counterstrike defence option.

There is a rule that could be invoked to limit things which is – one main action per round, which could therefore exclude having an attack if counterstrike is chosen, and is parallel to the rule about not being able to attack if dodge has been selected as an action option. There is also a rule I have waived which is you can only defend against one attacker you specify you are guarding against – again because I haven’t wanted things too restricted – this has opened up the number of actions people have been undertaking per round as a result. I’ve mostly waived these two rules  in play-testing because it would knacker up the ‘fiorintine style’ of fighting and it doesn’t do the flow of combat much good. I don’t like these kinds of restrictions much and am not so bothered about a perceived ‘imbalance’ in the action if ultimately the risk of the action options chosen leads to characters  (PC’s and NPC’s) getting heavily bashed/paying the consequences. That is –  it evens out over time, and also, NPC’s can chose the same action option and take ‘advantage’ of this imbalance as much as PC’s. The advantage of the one major action option per round rule is that it means that everyone labours under the same limitations.  The disvantage of this is that it is an artificial restriction on activity and inhibits activity flow. It’s a core rule of the game engine that I’ve mashed that I’ve ignored to allow more freedom of activity so far in the combat mode of the game.

We have a ‘fiorintine’ fighting style in the gameworld that enables, for example, the swordsman to have two attacks a round by virtue of having two weapons – e.g. Iswann’s sword/dagger combo. So theoretically he can have three attacks in a round if he counterstrikes as an action option during an NPC’s attack. I think it would not be unreasonable to make this fighting style a trained skill so that the initial attack has to be under the fiorintine martial style for the second attack to happen. This is one change I am considering – it would continue to make two-weapon fighting a real option, just a little more challenging. After all, my personal experience from using two-weapons in fighting is that it is more difficult than one-weapon fighting. (Just to explain I’m a martial artist and have been training mostly in unarmed combat as an ongoing interest but have trained in armed combat too – mostly nunchuk, knife and sword).

You do get some of this emulated in the engine by having a 1h and a 2h skill for the various weapons – you have to develop a left-hand dagger skill for example so that takes care of that aspect. But at present it doesn’t represent the extra difficulty of having to co-ordinate left-handed attacks when you are right-hand dominant in a two weapon fighting mode. It is also not a justifiable to prevent someone with only one-weapon from not counterstriking when you attack with the two-weapons each time if they are set up to do so just because that means they would get as many attacks as you. That to my mind does not create balance – it creates an advantage for being a two-weapon fighter. The practicality of one-weapon/two-weapon fighting is that two-weapon fighting is more difficult than one-weapon, but it does give you more options of weapons to attack with. It is just as easy to bash multiply and quickly with one weapon as it is with two – so the rate of attack explanation will never provide a justification here for restricting things.

What the hydra system is trying to do is not fully emulate combat – but get a decent enough approximation of it, have it lethal so that you fight appropriately and make sound choices – and make combat a relative activity experience rather than an absolute time-frame experience. Again, I wouldn’t tend to want to restrict the action option to counterstrike as a response to an attack as over time selecting this mode of defence will be costly to the aggressive defender. Vincent’s suggestion that could be implemented was that somekind of penalty to using the counterstrike option if it goes wrong – making you more vulnerable to the attack would be a way of ‘balancing’ it more as well as another suggestion to making it a particular skill.

Again given that it is a defence option (counterstrike) I’m not going to make it a skill but the possibility of DM imposed penalties (making the person easier to hit or more vulnerable as a result of the counterstrike option) sounds a more do-able tweak to me – but I’m not sure how necessary this is. The fact is – if you chose counterstrike then you accept getting hit as a consequence – that’s the negative of choosing it as an action option for defence – it has an inbuilt penalty. It therefore makes you more vulnerable as a form of defense. You are banking on the opponent missing their to-hit roll and hitting them better yourself. It seems to me it already carries its own penalties. If you are a better fighter taking on a weaker opponent then counterstriking is a fine option, if not then it is a dumb option. If they have a better weapon and armour than you then it is a dumb option, if not then it is a good option. If they are wounded or fighting with penalties then it is a good option, if not then it is a dumb option etc. If you are a lucky so and so with your rolls it is a fine option, if not it can be a dumb option – we all play with the risks.

Restrictions that could be applied are – if you counterstrike then your next attack is lessened (e.g. efffectively halved in chance). If you dodge as a defence then also your next attack should be halved in chance. (That’s a rule in the engine that I’ve mostly been ignoring in the rule-set so far but maybe should come into play if such a counterstrike penalty is going to be applied). I tend to think though that neither of these limitations/penalties is worth applying.

Everyone labours under the same potential advantage from choosing these options. If I can be bothered my NPC can be fiorintine trained and get those advantages that the PC can have. My NPC can chose to counterstrike every incoming attack if he wishes and labour under the same risk as the PC. Every PC can chose to do these things if they wish. It’s about choice with regard to risk of these manouvers. The only imbalance I’ve perceived is that those with a two-weapon fighting style get more attacks per round because they fight with more weapons. This is harder to do then having one weapon – and therefore there should be a skill restriction – as per martial artists and the damage advantage they get from having the martial arts skill. It can therefore be a DM option to penalise those who chose the counterstrike option in terms of making the attack have some advantage if the counterstriker muffs up – above and beyond what it already confers within the system. So with this adjustment you could also make it so that if the counterstriker fails his strike, then the attacker/opponent gets a bonus to his hit as the failing counterstriker ‘walks into’ a strike or opens himself up to being more vulnerable by trying to hit his opponent. This could be done by subtracting the failure margin from the opponent’s blow whether it is successful or not. It may turn a marginally unsuccessful attacking attempt into a success, or make a successful attack more successful in the process. Let me explain!

So – to illustrate:

Horace the Guard piles in swinging his shortsword (1d6+1) and Geoff the heroic bard counterstrikes with his d10 bastard sword. Horace rolls 54% under for his to-hit, which is a reasonable success. Geoff, however rolls 80% and fails. The DM knows that this is a 20% failure margin, as Geoff only has a 60% skill. The PC doesn’t know his exact percentage. He therefore gives Horace a post-roll modification of 20% to his roll, so it is as if Horace rolled 54%-20% i.e. 34% with his roll. This is a better level of success than he had initially because the counterstriker failed and walked into the attack. In Hydra the better the level of success the better the location of the attack which may mean hitting an area with relatively little armour – e.g. in the face or under the arm etc. In this case it makes relatively little difference as the success level of the attack is still not 1/5th of Horace’s to-hit chance. If it had been more marginal – e.g. Horace had rolled 34% – an even better to hit, and Geoff’s fail had been the same – a 20% miss, then we would end up with Horace getting a 14% attack.

Then we could also apply the impale rule for the weapon (if it’s an impaling one) and he’d get more damage. (Although shortswords don’t count as ‘impaling’ weapons – but if it was a spear he’d get a double damage roll which would make the counterstrike fail even more dangerous). We don’t count shortswordsto be impaling weapons not because you can’t successfully prong someone with such weapons – of course you can, but because compared to weapons like bows and crossbows or spears which are pure stabby-thrusty weapons there is a relative difference in type of effect. The only sword capable of generating an impale would be a rapier type sword.

With Horace’s 14% attack though the DM may rule that his blow cut across the opponent Geoff’s eyes where he has no armour and therefore gets no armour absorb protection. That would be a considerable advantage as all the 1d6+1 damage would come straight off his hit points regardless of his armour profile. This would also enable Horace to penetrate armour that would otherwise preclude him doing damage – so if Geoff has 8 points of chest armour, but walks into an attack by Horace with a counterstrike then the DM has the option to rule that Horace’s blow cuts into a spot where the armour is missing (e.g. weak under the arm points or similar) or where there is damage to the armour, or the armour  for some other reason is simply ineffective to the lethal blow (a flaw in the substance/metal for example).

So it also stands given this rule that if Horace was not as skilled and had rolled  a 60% which would have been a failure, (if his skill was 55% say) but the counterstriking Geoff failed by 20%, then Horace’s failed attack would suddenley become successful to the tune of 40%. So it’s possible by doing this to penalise the failing counterstriking effort to the attackers advantage – both in terms of potential damage, hit location, and chance of successfully hitting changing if the counterstriking fails.

My proposals for modifications are therefore – have a ‘fiorintine’ fighting style skill (or two-weapon skill for any combo). Your first attack must successfully come under this two-weapon skill otherwise you cannot use a second attack with the second weapon. This just makes two-weapon fighting a little harder to implement rather than readily run of the mill otherwise we will all be popping two weapons in our hands and doing it all willy-nilly. Counterstrike fails will be offset to the attacker as described above making it an even more dangerous action option for all characters to select.

Character Development

Vincent was complimentary about the character development – in that the system is extremely flexible in the design of characters. The downside being that rolling up is a long process. Being able to tailor each character with packages of skills is a major plus to the system. Each rolling up of a swordsman, or a thief for example will create a different variation of a swordsman or thief – they should not be the same. This is evidenced by the differences between Moolsh and Glendawynn. You can check out their differences by taking a look at these entries which has their rolled up character sheets. These are two characters with the same occupation – but they are very different types of thieves. The downside is that this requires quite a bit of work from DM and PC – so you have to roll with the problem of lengthy roll up times. You can’t have a quick and dirty character class system that generates nicely rounded out invidiually crafted variations of characters. You need to take time over that and this is why I’ve chosen to do so in the character generation system. Hydra is not a character class based system – it’s a skill-based occupational experience collaborative co-creative system which is a different kettle of fish.

As Vincent pointed out – this is not a first-timers system. It’s crafted out of a relatively sophisticated and advanced appreciation of the pro’s and con’s of different RPG engine types and system types. This is a kind of Cthulhu-type game engine for a fantasy world – it’s not taking any prisoners in the process!

Encounter Heavy!? and some Hosting Issues

There was also a general comment about the games being a bit ‘samey’. A fair point but mainly because this is still a playtest and I want to trial and push the combat engine as much as possible. Certainly there has been a lot of – getting badly injured, need to rest up a lot and then get injured again going on. That’s because I have been pushing the number of combats a lot in the sessions, but also because of how PCs are prepared/not prepared for fights. Also we have only about an hour and a half to two-hours to game in. This means the various plot arcs haven’t got much room to develop because of time limitations and because I’m throwing in quite a few random encounters to get the combat engine well tested. Naturally this is going to distort the game. I therefore deliberately didn’t push a random encounter into the game and tried to develop some of the plot-arcs this session. Don’t think I did so well at that as I can do, but it’s difficult sometimes in the setting of the  busy noisy role-playing club to do it. At times there are interruptions, thrown in comments (not always positive) about your game from people not playing, it can be noisy and all these things play on my DM nerves. I’m starting to think that hosting at home – where it will be quieter and uninterrupted will help in hosting the game. Either that or getting a game session in on a quieter night as Thursday is their busiest evening at the RPG club from what I can surmise.

We’ve therefore talked about an alternative game day – Sunday evening – so we can have more time, and we’ll see if this turns out to be feasible next time. Don’t think I was able to find out if this would be ok with George (aka Glenda), so will check this out during the next Thursday evening session. I also have a meet up with my other players – finishing off their characters and planning on how to get them into the developing campaign.