Post by malice on Jan 30, 2013 19:44:46 GMT -5
Since it appealed to people I thought of a possible way to separate damage and attack. I've done it before in some custom rules and it mostly involves giving people a version of Electrification that doesn't stun, and making their attack stones determine their success in penetrating defense and their damage modifier determine how bad it is to have them pierce your defenses.
If you actually wanted to implement something like that into the game without making a lot of other changes to compensate it you just make damage a modifier people will have as standard. It works something like this:
Close Combat Damage
Cost Level = MN + 1 - Close Combat attack potential (Can't exceed MN 10 and can't cost less than 1 red stone)
All characters do damage when they strike someone, this is determined by their expertise in combat as well as relevant ability scores. Characters who do not buy this modifier can only do stun damage (Damage against red stones of energy, or panels of stun against a target with no energy).
"Close Combat attack potential" is determined by averaging the character's close combat score and their relevant ability bonus. So the Hulk has a Strength of 10 and a Close Combat of 3, so his Damage Modifier costs MN -5 levels. He buys it at 5 and gets 2x damage so it costs him 2 red stones. His increased strength when enraged doesn't factor in because he is not always enraged but he must always have a damage modifier.
Thus Hulk begins combats with up to 13 stones he can put into a Close Combat attack, when he pierces defense he always does 10 red stones of damage. This knocks out any character with 4 or less durability, as a punch from the Hulk would. As he becomes enraged his attacks become harder to avoid.
Weapon Modifiers and modifiers like Claws, Bone Weapons, and Weapons Morphing still work like they do now, because weapons are designed to hurt people and thus make it easier to land an attack as well as making that attack more devastating. Guns for example are extremely easy to use and can kill if they hit anything vital, their modifiers therefore should continue to add to both attack and damage. Most melee weapons add reach and other properties that make them easier to use than fists, and they usually are designed to do more damage than a fist (By being harder, sharper, or some other characteristic).
Damage, unlike other modifiers, can benefit from Leadership.
"Close Combat Attack Potential" can be determined by using actions like Ninja, Mastery of Kung Fu, or Nerve Punch in place of Close Combat to determine its cost. The damage modifier's name changes to reflect the action which was used to determine its cost, and it only applies to attacks from that action.
What you have then is a system where people fighting against marksmen can keep up in attack and damage output, but where failing to dodge becomes much more deadly.
In such a system you may want to change Toughness and Armor to reduce Damage instead of increase Defense.
Why does massive strength continue to aid your accuracy? Because that's how it really works as I said in my earlier post. A powerful blow is harder to block or redirect. You can still dodge them, but they're often harder to dodge because good fighters frequently gain their power from both speed and strength, so their blows are coming harder but they're also coming faster. Also someone like Hulk can just punch through that concrete wall you're hiding behind have plenty of Oomph left over to knock you out.
Hulk is also a bad example because most characters can't spend 21 stones in Close Combat. They're usually limited by their ability bonus and Close Combat, which don't typically even add up to 20. Even with really nice claws I think Wolverine only turns in 17 stones or so. That's hard to dodge, but it should be when someone maxes out their output to hit you.
Damage as a modifier tends to be very cheap, but it DOES max at MN 10 which you could get up to 30 if you grabbed 3x damage, and that assumes you're armoring up as well. Defense is still very easy to increase in this system, since the idea of this is to change the game as little as possible, so people can still avoid attacks pretty well, but suffer more when they fail.
Sadly Attack and Damage being the exact same thing is how MURPG was built, so you start running into problems when you expand the amount of actions in the discussion. It's easy to update a single aspect of MURPG combat like Close Combat, but when you start having all the actions show up to the party more has to change, which tends to be normal for major changes to game mechanics.
In such a system Ranged Combat would be more muzzled than it is now, because you draw all of your damage from your weapon and all of your accuracy from your action + targeting.
Not sure what to do with Force Blast, the problem with that action is that it's just not very good, so everything sounds like an improvement and you can't pin down what would actually be best. Might be fair to give it a damage value equal to its action number, you still can't get the high attacks of Ranged Combat but suddenly a lot of advantages aren't available to Ranged Combat because it's no longer a damage-dealing action. So 2x and 3x damage and Armor Penetration can be put on Force Blasts but not on Ranged Combat. The result is Force Blast becoming a more customizable Ranged Combat, which is really how it should have been perhaps.
Fireworks would gain the same treatment as Force Blast, since it's already better and already costs more, that seems fair.
Charged Objects becomes a way to apply 2x damage to improvised weapons, which sounds about right. Might not be worth the price any more though.
Phase Attack still works, just applies powerful advantages to your Close Combat Damage. I think it ends up equivalent or weaker for damage.
Oddballs like Tendril Whip are harder to figure, maybe let it do as much damage as its durability, 1 stone. Don't really care for that action. If I were actually in charge of designing the game I'd make it work right, but since I'm just a hobbyist I spend my energy on things I like.
Unstoppable and Blasting probably work OK as they are now. Unstoppable can put out a lot of stones but since it's based on momentum the idea of you losing some damage when you get through defenses makes perfect sense. Blasting's attacks generally don't get that high since it's expensive and lacks the free ability bonus. You can buy that ability bonus but you're paying a lot for it so the benefit you gain seems fair (If you overlook the already-low price of Blasting).
Overall I think damage output ends up being pretty similar, but it becomes much less of an energy investment to destroy thugs, and you don't get nicked to death anymore because one or two shots through your defense will put you down, assuming the person spent the small amount of stones necessary to affect white stones.
It is in no way intended to be a perfect solution, but it's one for which the mechanics are already available, simple enough to understand, and relatively cheap (I love Electrification, I use it often). Originally when I was thinking of this I thought of just making people buy Damage at MN, but that might mean you change the amount of stones allotted at character creation. Although that might still work, just buying it like that, that means characters invest less in high attacks in order to afford their damage, the problem with it is the defenses are still very high.
I am actually pretty comfortable with the marriage of attack and damage in MURPG. It always made sense to me so I don't have a strong desire to separate them. However recent discussion made me want to put the ideas down.
I have separated attack and damage like this before, like in my Phantom Dust rules, but that was specifically designed to mimic the damage system from that video game where attack was largely autoaim at the correct range.
If I ever want to separate them I always look first to Electrification though, it's just a wonderfully unique and effective modifier. It has been a great source of inspiration for me and it one of the few good tricks close combat guys have in this game.
If you actually wanted to implement something like that into the game without making a lot of other changes to compensate it you just make damage a modifier people will have as standard. It works something like this:
Close Combat Damage
Cost Level = MN + 1 - Close Combat attack potential (Can't exceed MN 10 and can't cost less than 1 red stone)
All characters do damage when they strike someone, this is determined by their expertise in combat as well as relevant ability scores. Characters who do not buy this modifier can only do stun damage (Damage against red stones of energy, or panels of stun against a target with no energy).
"Close Combat attack potential" is determined by averaging the character's close combat score and their relevant ability bonus. So the Hulk has a Strength of 10 and a Close Combat of 3, so his Damage Modifier costs MN -5 levels. He buys it at 5 and gets 2x damage so it costs him 2 red stones. His increased strength when enraged doesn't factor in because he is not always enraged but he must always have a damage modifier.
Thus Hulk begins combats with up to 13 stones he can put into a Close Combat attack, when he pierces defense he always does 10 red stones of damage. This knocks out any character with 4 or less durability, as a punch from the Hulk would. As he becomes enraged his attacks become harder to avoid.
Weapon Modifiers and modifiers like Claws, Bone Weapons, and Weapons Morphing still work like they do now, because weapons are designed to hurt people and thus make it easier to land an attack as well as making that attack more devastating. Guns for example are extremely easy to use and can kill if they hit anything vital, their modifiers therefore should continue to add to both attack and damage. Most melee weapons add reach and other properties that make them easier to use than fists, and they usually are designed to do more damage than a fist (By being harder, sharper, or some other characteristic).
Damage, unlike other modifiers, can benefit from Leadership.
"Close Combat Attack Potential" can be determined by using actions like Ninja, Mastery of Kung Fu, or Nerve Punch in place of Close Combat to determine its cost. The damage modifier's name changes to reflect the action which was used to determine its cost, and it only applies to attacks from that action.
What you have then is a system where people fighting against marksmen can keep up in attack and damage output, but where failing to dodge becomes much more deadly.
In such a system you may want to change Toughness and Armor to reduce Damage instead of increase Defense.
Why does massive strength continue to aid your accuracy? Because that's how it really works as I said in my earlier post. A powerful blow is harder to block or redirect. You can still dodge them, but they're often harder to dodge because good fighters frequently gain their power from both speed and strength, so their blows are coming harder but they're also coming faster. Also someone like Hulk can just punch through that concrete wall you're hiding behind have plenty of Oomph left over to knock you out.
Hulk is also a bad example because most characters can't spend 21 stones in Close Combat. They're usually limited by their ability bonus and Close Combat, which don't typically even add up to 20. Even with really nice claws I think Wolverine only turns in 17 stones or so. That's hard to dodge, but it should be when someone maxes out their output to hit you.
Damage as a modifier tends to be very cheap, but it DOES max at MN 10 which you could get up to 30 if you grabbed 3x damage, and that assumes you're armoring up as well. Defense is still very easy to increase in this system, since the idea of this is to change the game as little as possible, so people can still avoid attacks pretty well, but suffer more when they fail.
Sadly Attack and Damage being the exact same thing is how MURPG was built, so you start running into problems when you expand the amount of actions in the discussion. It's easy to update a single aspect of MURPG combat like Close Combat, but when you start having all the actions show up to the party more has to change, which tends to be normal for major changes to game mechanics.
In such a system Ranged Combat would be more muzzled than it is now, because you draw all of your damage from your weapon and all of your accuracy from your action + targeting.
Not sure what to do with Force Blast, the problem with that action is that it's just not very good, so everything sounds like an improvement and you can't pin down what would actually be best. Might be fair to give it a damage value equal to its action number, you still can't get the high attacks of Ranged Combat but suddenly a lot of advantages aren't available to Ranged Combat because it's no longer a damage-dealing action. So 2x and 3x damage and Armor Penetration can be put on Force Blasts but not on Ranged Combat. The result is Force Blast becoming a more customizable Ranged Combat, which is really how it should have been perhaps.
Fireworks would gain the same treatment as Force Blast, since it's already better and already costs more, that seems fair.
Charged Objects becomes a way to apply 2x damage to improvised weapons, which sounds about right. Might not be worth the price any more though.
Phase Attack still works, just applies powerful advantages to your Close Combat Damage. I think it ends up equivalent or weaker for damage.
Oddballs like Tendril Whip are harder to figure, maybe let it do as much damage as its durability, 1 stone. Don't really care for that action. If I were actually in charge of designing the game I'd make it work right, but since I'm just a hobbyist I spend my energy on things I like.
Unstoppable and Blasting probably work OK as they are now. Unstoppable can put out a lot of stones but since it's based on momentum the idea of you losing some damage when you get through defenses makes perfect sense. Blasting's attacks generally don't get that high since it's expensive and lacks the free ability bonus. You can buy that ability bonus but you're paying a lot for it so the benefit you gain seems fair (If you overlook the already-low price of Blasting).
Overall I think damage output ends up being pretty similar, but it becomes much less of an energy investment to destroy thugs, and you don't get nicked to death anymore because one or two shots through your defense will put you down, assuming the person spent the small amount of stones necessary to affect white stones.
It is in no way intended to be a perfect solution, but it's one for which the mechanics are already available, simple enough to understand, and relatively cheap (I love Electrification, I use it often). Originally when I was thinking of this I thought of just making people buy Damage at MN, but that might mean you change the amount of stones allotted at character creation. Although that might still work, just buying it like that, that means characters invest less in high attacks in order to afford their damage, the problem with it is the defenses are still very high.
I am actually pretty comfortable with the marriage of attack and damage in MURPG. It always made sense to me so I don't have a strong desire to separate them. However recent discussion made me want to put the ideas down.
I have separated attack and damage like this before, like in my Phantom Dust rules, but that was specifically designed to mimic the damage system from that video game where attack was largely autoaim at the correct range.
If I ever want to separate them I always look first to Electrification though, it's just a wonderfully unique and effective modifier. It has been a great source of inspiration for me and it one of the few good tricks close combat guys have in this game.