Is automatically hitting nonsensical?

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 9:57 pm

Well this has gotten fucking stupid pretty damn fast.

All actions are discrete. An attack is not movement; movement is not an attack. A dodge is not an attack; an attack is not a dodge. One action does not, inherently, contain the other. A lot of the simplification of our combat engine came from the notion of making every individual's turn consist of one action, and one action only.

When someone says "it totally makes sense that someone could both parry and attack at the same time," sure, yes, I am willing to grant that. An individual with more combat experience/training than zero could probably do that, and making that an option for a more advanced combatant is something we will probably be doing.

This whole notion that I am somehow saying that you cannot dodge and attack... this is coming from a misuse of the word "and." When I say that doing both at once is something a more experienced fighter can do, I am not saying that a lower-"level" character cannot take an attack action, then dodge an incoming attack; I am saying that a more experienced fighter would be able to dodge and attack in the same action, and that someone less experienced would not be able to react to an attack in that manner - dodge, yes, but not with an attack attached. Same goes for parrying.

So a normal, not-terribly-experienced person would do: attack - dodge - parry - attack.

A more experienced fighter would be able to do something like: attack - dodge/attack - parry/attack - attack.

Does this make my position more clear?

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 10:05 pm

Your position is clear, it is just wrong.
You need 0 combat experience to parry and make an attack in the same action.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 10:13 pm

I would draw you a picture, but my mouse is fucked, and it's too much of a hassle to do with my pad.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 2:10 am

Counterattacking is a thing. I've never fenced but I boxed for a while and Hitting someone while they are trying to hit you is a thing that you do. You step in when you box (move and attack). You dodge and punch at the same time. You can choose to just dodge or choose to just parry but doing both at the same time is totes a thing you can do.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:47 am

MGuy wrote:Counterattacking is a thing. I've never fenced but I boxed for a while and Hitting someone while they are trying to hit you is a thing that you do. You step in when you box (move and attack). You dodge and punch at the same time. You can choose to just dodge or choose to just parry but doing both at the same time is totes a thing you can do.

Genuinely curious, how does this work against multiple foes?

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 5:17 am

Against multiple foes do not stop moving ever or you will die. The worst thing you can be in a fight is surrounded so if you're up against multiple people your success basically comes down to your ability to maneuver so you're only ever fighting one or two guys and then you want them to be in front of you and in your sight, if at all possible it would be best to get to some kind of choke point that limits the enemy's ability to leverage their superior numbers.

Now, in fiction you can do it any way you want, and it's probably a good idea for Kenshin to be able to cut down entire units in the Boshin war (partly because that is specifically what his fighting style is designed for) because it demonstrates how awesome he is. So... basically- this, in fiction, do this.

By the way, the live action Ruroni Kenshin movie is fucking great, go buy it on amazon or something.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 6:05 am

TarkisFlux wrote:
MGuy wrote:Counterattacking is a thing. I've never fenced but I boxed for a while and Hitting someone while they are trying to hit you is a thing that you do. You step in when you box (move and attack). You dodge and punch at the same time. You can choose to just dodge or choose to just parry but doing both at the same time is totes a thing you can do.
Genuinely curious, how does this work against multiple foes?

Against multiple foes? Well I've fought in groups before but when it comes to that most of the boxing stuff goes out the window. The same tactics, feel for the ring, etc HAVE to change. I've been in a few brawls and there really isn't much advice I can give besides: Keep moving, if you can, keep one of your opponents between you and the group, keep your back to the wall to keep them from surrounding you. I can't remember any brawls I've ever been in that've gone smoothly but you can still do basic things like punching someone that's trying to punch you. Hell, usually in brawls you're fighting people who swing wide all the time so it's more of a cake walk if you know what you're doing.

DEBO · Post by **DEBO** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:11 pm

GnomeWorks wrote:
darkmaster wrote:Yeah, you are an idiot, because the mechanic GnomeWorks actually fucking described is that you have to give up your action for the turn...
Reactions do not take up your action on your next turn, they just delay it.

So the 'mechanic GnomeWorks actually fucking described' is what I thought, and you 'didn't notice dodging is a reaction, possibly because you can't pay attention to things'.

Nice to have that cleared up.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 1:34 pm

Shut up both of you. GnomeWorks is talking about delaying your next action as if it's a different thing than using up an action, but it definitely isn't. Those are the same fucking thing. GnomeWorks is just splitting hairs about tick costs.

-Username17

DEBO · Post by **DEBO** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 1:26 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Shut up both of you. GnomeWorks is talking about delaying your next action as if it's a different thing than using up an action, but it definitely isn't. Those are the same fucking thing. GnomeWorks is just splitting hairs about tick costs.
-Username17

Except that the delay is trivial, it takes 6 turns of one guy blocking and the other guy standing there being stabbed in the face to change the turn order. How is the reverse not true? If you're delaying your next action by a trivial ammount that doesn't affect turn order, isn't that the same as not using an action and just splitting hairs about tick costs?

I don't disagree on any other point made, but the criticism that defending uses up your action doesn't bear out.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 1:53 am

Unless you need to block multiple times.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 7:13 am

For given values of multiple, but yes, using up "3 ticks" is equivalent to using up one of your actions, it's a more granular and brain-hurty version of the same mechanic.

DEBO · Post by **DEBO** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 12:03 pm

So when you're outnumbered it does start taking up actions, which isn't unprecedented, other games have 'full defence' actions.

However one of the ways the convoluted nature comes to a head and becomes are real problem is that, with what's been presented thus far, combats turn into ridiculous stalemates. If you get mobbed you don't just effectively give up an action to defend, you start giving up multiple future actions (even if team mates come in and deal with the other combatants you sit there doing a dodge dance for several minutes), and there's no benefit to stop defending, which you can do forever and it doesn't appear to lose effectiveness. Now half a dozen guys are wailing on one, he can't counterattack and they can't actually hit him. It's not an edge case either, this seem the likely conclusion of the party taking on a solo monster. Nothing about that sounds appealing.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 12:25 pm

DEBO wrote:So when you're outnumbered it does start taking up actions,

No, you stupid fuck. It starts taking actions right away. Everything with a tick cost costs actions. That is how tick based combat fucking works. Some things have a low tick cost and thus cost less actions than things with a high tick cost. But they both cost actions. Because the budget you have to spend on actions is your ticks, and everything that uses ticks has its cost come out of the fucking action budget.

Tick based combat is extremely annoying and in practice almost always revolves around player characters taking actions with very low tick cost while mooks take actions with higher tick costs and thus having really complicated accounting about how often mooks get to take actions and also locking player characters into a very small number of "real" actions that are the ones they can take without undue tick costs while the entire rest of the maneuver list can go fuck itself.

Real example: in Scion, if people were able to play the game at all, every single action the player characters took in combat would be "I fire my bow of speed" because any other combat action would have to be five or six times better than that and nothing is.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 2:37 pm

Like most of my rules (rules negative one and two) this is made up on the spot, but I've seen this fallacy of thinking so often that I'm going to make another one.

Rule 12: If your TTRPG mechanic requires players to do, after elementary heuristics are applied, a permutative calculation of n > 5 while more than one person is waiting for their turn, you're doing it wrong.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:42 pm

TarkisFlux wrote:
MGuy wrote:Counterattacking is a thing. I've never fenced but I boxed for a while and Hitting someone while they are trying to hit you is a thing that you do. You step in when you box (move and attack). You dodge and punch at the same time. You can choose to just dodge or choose to just parry but doing both at the same time is totes a thing you can do.
Genuinely curious, how does this work against multiple foes?

Against multiple foes, you're either fucked and you run or you try to maneuver about so your foes get in each other's way so only one guy is attacking you at any time.

Some kungfu styles focus a lot on hand trapping and pushing for old timey Chinese street gang violence reasons to maneuver enemies into a position where they can't gang up on you and your friends can gang up on them (but it doesn't do much in 1 on 1)

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 3:39 am

DEBO wrote:So when you're outnumbered it does start taking up actions, which isn't unprecedented, other games have 'full defence' actions.

However one of the ways the convoluted nature comes to a head and becomes are real problem is that, with what's been presented thus far, combats turn into ridiculous stalemates. If you get mobbed you don't just effectively give up an action to defend, you start giving up multiple future actions (even if team mates come in and deal with the other combatants you sit there doing a dodge dance for several minutes), and there's no benefit to stop defending, which you can do forever and it doesn't appear to lose effectiveness. Now half a dozen guys are wailing on one, he can't counterattack and they can't actually hit him. It's not an edge case either, this seem the likely conclusion of the party taking on a solo monster. Nothing about that sounds appealing.

I would see the best compromise being something like you can full defense at the end of any turn, though doing so costs you your next turns worth of actions. So you can use it as a response to getting hit by one monster to deter focus fire, or you can do it immediately to go full defense. Of course everyone else knows you're on full defense, so they don't have to attack you.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:58 am

if someone is just standing there to take a hit, then you have no problem with an automatic hit. you could add some sort of blindsided defense that ties to something like a reflex for mundanes if you are trying to avoid having random mooks killed off in the town when they dont defend themselves and end up getting ohe-shoted to death.

something like say, if i understand your abilities are all dice. a 1~3 on a d6 they dodged the surprise attack and take less than full from it, but not a successful defense so maybe take 75% of the attack.

after reading and rereading the thread still not sure i get your system, but automatic hits are something that helps keep an RNG in check. it means you cannot put something out of attack range of anyone due to luck so doesnt make any fight completely hopeless as there is still a chance you can fight back. not sure i ever had a case where there was no defense due to lack of action to defend. maybe that is what i am not really understanding about your system.

maybe i am missing something about your system.