Fecht-Club Experimental Dev Build

[Agamemnon]

The fecht-club has been going pretty strong over on discord, and it's turned out to be a very useful tool for evaluating rules changes on a short turn-around. To that end, I've started releasing experimental rules modifications on discord that adjust various aspects of the combat system for fine-tuning.

I thought I'd release a copy here as well, for those of you that hang out on the forums:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-a9 ... sp=sharing

Happy fighting!

[pepe_andre]

Why did you choose to half the impact of the wounds? Is that a change that would translate into the next S&S version?

[Agamemnon]

S&S has a pretty hardcore death-spiral. The first significant hit usually decides the fight. Some people have argued that the death spiral is a little too hardcore, so we've been experimenting with what happens when you turned it down a bit.

The ultimate purpose of the dev builds is to work out the fine-tuning on combat, so when that settles the main game will be updated accordingly. As for that particular change, I'm not yet certain. It doesn't break anything, but more testing may yet be required.

[pepe_andre]

S&S has a pretty hardcore death-spiral. The first significant hit usually decides the fight. Some people have argued that the death spiral is a little too hardcore, so we've been experimenting with what happens when you turned it down a bit.

The ultimate purpose of the dev builds is to work out the fine-tuning on combat, so when that settles the main game will be updated accordingly. As for that particular change, I'm not yet certain. It doesn't break anything, but more testing may yet be required.

I personally like the system because of its death spiral. That distinguishes it from other systems for me. But that may be taste.

[Agamemnon]

If it's any consolation, even with the reduced impact, the death spiral is still there. Losing even a couple dice is still a pain, particularly when coupled with a TN shift. The main difference we've found in testing is that when you change the impact ratings, you end up making the non-damaging maneuvers more viable. So instead of going directly for the Thrust, you might want to open up with a Hook or Slam to put them at a more immediate disadvantage before you try the Thrust.

The main benefit so far has been that it's a little easier to recover from one bad roll, and that you can take a little more risk. The main drawback so far is that it places a much larger focus on restraining and disabling attacks when there's any danger of the other person hitting you back, as you can no longer count on the impact consuming their dice pool.

[pepe_andre]

If it's any consolation, even with the reduced impact, the death spiral is still there. Losing even a couple dice is still a pain, particularly when coupled with a TN shift. The main difference we've found in testing is that when you change the impact ratings, you end up making the non-damaging maneuvers more viable. So instead of going directly for the Thrust, you might want to open up with a Hook or Slam to put them at a more immediate disadvantage before you try the Thrust.

The main benefit so far has been that it's a little easier to recover from one bad roll, and that you can take a little more risk. The main drawback so far is that it places a much larger focus on restraining and disabling attacks when there's any danger of the other person hitting you back, as you can no longer count on the impact consuming their dice pool.

Well, that may be, at least to my understanding, even be a more realistic approach, since in real-life sword fights you have to restrain and disable your opponent, too, in order to avoid getting hit after a risky thrust or slash. And, of course, this leads to much more interesting fights. I would argue that an exponential increase in impact seems more accurate to display the severity of the wound. For example: A Level 5 Wound for the shoulder reads: Arm severed clean at the shoulder in a spray
of blood. Barely a stump remains. BL3, 3d. A decent swordsman with a rating of 15 dice would only lose a third of his dice pool after losing his whole arm. I may overlook something but that doesn't seem right to me. So I would opt for a house rule that combines the two approaches: maybe {b]1/2/4/6/10[/b]?

[Agamemnon]

A couple factors play into that:
1. A "decent" swordsman is going to be ~10CP. The average fighter will have a reflex around 4, and a trained soldier will have a proficiency of around 5-6. So off the bat, said decent fighter is going to lose half their CP, rather than a third. Getting to 15CP is actually a pretty big investment. Prof 10 is fencing master territory, and you'd still have to have pretty high reflexes on top of that.

2. Regardless of what portion of your CP was consumed by the impact, you're also at TN6 and in in your specific example you're also now missing your sword arm and going to bleed to death in relatively short order unless someone does something about it. Realistically, TN6 is going to be what ends the fight regardless because at that point the odds of you making a comeback are slim to nill unless the other guy is also at TN5 or 6.

This is ultimately the trouble with the argument about impact. At lower levels of injury, it's not really going to matter all that much whether you're losing 1 die or 2, but by the time you get to the higher levels where the discrepancies are significant you're already so heavily penalized that they seem somewhat unnecessary.

[Agamemnon]

The fecht-club tree has born fruit. I've drafted an updated version of the combat chapter using the successful experiments from our previous fecht-club builds. This version also includes new changes to Stealing Initiative and Red/Red. Reach Control has been updated into a new system and moved over into the advanced melee systems. This both makes reach control better model what it should and helps streamline the new-player learning curve.

Full Melee 0.2.2 Combat Overhaul
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UPk ... QN-m8/edit#

Enjoy.