Combat Results Modification

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From: Charles C. Allen (cca@newton.physics.purdue.edu)
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST

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Combat Roll Results

			    Charlie Allen
			 ===================

Ignoring the effects of magic and fatigue, two characters with high weapons skills can fight each other a long time with no result. If you think this should be changed, two possibilites are:

Require a special parry roll to parry a special attack, and a critical parry roll to parry a critical attack (Dodge is treated this way normally). This results in no more "simple" attack successes, but many more specials and criticals.
As above, but a normal parry versus a special attack results in a normal hit, and likewise for other combos (normal parry versus critical attack results in special hit, etc.).

The second method can be summarised in an attack vs. parry matrix:

		 parry		results:
	       C S N M F	    c	critical hit
	a    +-----------+	    s	special hit
	t  c | * n s c c |	    n	normal hit
	t  s | N * n s c |	    *	"clash"
	a  n | S N * n s |	    -   miss
	c  m | C S N - n |	    N	normal parry
	k  f | C C S N - |	    S	special parry
	     +-----------+	    C	critical parry

How does this affect the combat? I'm glad you asked :-) I just happen to have some numbers for you to peruse:

A90 P90 CRIT SPEC SIMP MISS HITS CRIT/ SPEC/ SIMP/

old       0.01  0.01  0.08  0.90  	0.10  0.07  0.14  0.80
new       0.01  0.05  0.18  0.76  	0.24  0.03  0.21  0.76
new/old   1.00  3.85  2.36  0.84  	2.47  0.40  1.56  0.95

where	CRIT	means critical hit
	SPEC	means special hit
	SIMP	means simple (normal) hit
	MISS	means any "non-hit" (clash, miss, normal parry, etc.)
	HITS	is 1 - MISS
	CRIT/	is CRIT / HITS
	SPEC/	is SPEC / HITS
	SIMP/	is SIMP / HITS
	A90	means the attack % is 90%
	P90	means the parry % is 90%

The first 5 columns of numbers are the probabilities of the named result for the standard RQ3 system, the system described above, and their ratio. The last 3 columns shows the the relative numbers of the various types of hits.

The bottom line is that the overall number of hits goes up by a factor of almost 2.5 for this attack-parry combination. The effect is less significant at lower parry percentages, but still quite noticeable with low attack vs. high parry. At the end of this article are some further tables for 75%, 50%, and 25% attacks versus 90% parry. These are obtained by a simple program which I'll be happy to send to anybody who asks.

The result matrix really isn't that hard to get used to. If you use standard RQ3 rules, you have to worry about this sort of thing anyway for dodges, special parries with axes, etc. This solution simply regularizes (is that a word?) things.

Charlie Allen cca@newton.physics.purdue.edu

More charts for those who like to play with numbers:

A75 P90 CRIT SPEC SIMP MISS HITS CRIT/ SPEC/ SIMP/

old       0.01  0.01  0.06  0.92  	0.08  0.07  0.14  0.79
new       0.01  0.04  0.15  0.80  	0.20  0.03  0.21  0.77
new/old   1.00  3.57  2.40  0.87  	2.47  0.40  1.44  0.97


A50 P90   CRIT  SPEC  SIMP  MISS  	HITS  CRIT/ SPEC/ SIMP/

old       0.00  0.01  0.04  0.95  	0.05  0.06  0.15  0.79
new       0.00  0.03  0.10  0.87  	0.13  0.03  0.23  0.75
new/old   1.00  3.75  2.32  0.92  	2.45  0.41  1.53  0.95


A25 P90   CRIT  SPEC  SIMP  MISS  	HITS  CRIT/ SPEC/ SIMP/

old       0.00  0.01  0.02  0.97  	0.03  0.04  0.20  0.75
new       0.00  0.01  0.05  0.94  	0.06  0.02  0.19  0.79
new/old   1.00  2.32  2.58  0.96  	2.46  0.41  0.94  1.05

---

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