An idea for turn based combat

[Stark]

BTW read somewhere that Arcanum awards exp based on number of times hit. Wonder if they've changed it to "number of hitpoints damaged" it would have been more balanced. still, it does not favour magic casters that affect attributes and not hit points...

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

you could easily balance that by having the thiefs aap attacks far less devastating than the barbarian etc or by giving him less aap for each consecutive hit.

.. or award the AAP according to "hit points incurred in this round". it'll make some sense that way too.

regardless, the system doesn't sound too intuitive/elegant once we pile up all these exceptions/rules to balance it. may seem convoluted to a player. The combat system is suppose to be simple, elegant yet deep.

It may seem convoluted but ths would only be in the implementation. the user would see the result which would be simple and effective.

 

[Country_Gravy]

Wouldn't you make focus just a variation of the regular attack? It would happen in the first round (not the AAP round) and could just be a way to increase to hit %, critical hit %, or armor penetration. You could just have a "Focus Attack" use more action points than a normal attack and the amount of extra action points would be determined by the type of attack, if different attack types are implemented. Like a "Focused Power Attack" would take more extra action points than a "Defensive Power Attack", if you catch my drift. That way the thief with a dagger wouldn't have to use as much action points to make a focused attack as the barbarian, but the barbarian would do a lot more damage. That way it sort of balances out. It wouldn't be too hard for the player to figure out. You could make the focus attack a toggle button, and let them know how many more action points the focus would take with that particular attack. Either focus is on or it is off. During the second round with the AAP, focus would just not be available. You could have certain stats or perks reduce the amount of extra points needed for the focused attack, so it could add quite a bit to strategy both in combat and in character development.

What do you dudes think of that?

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

think ur system is equally open to exploits. it favours a series of small, easy to hit attack combos over devastating, hard to pull-off ones. hence people may keep utilizing easy to hit combos to build up the, err, AAP. An example would be thief with a little dagger and high hit probability would stand to gain more (getting more hits per-round) from this system than a lumbering barbarian with high strength but low hit probability.

Well, you could scale the amount of "momentum" gained to the amount of damage dealt and the location it's dealt to.

In my momentum concept, I'm trying to find a way to balance the Fighter with the honking big sword and the Monk who's just fighting with his fists--all the while trying to dispel the idiotic notion that SUPAR MONK POWAR makes his fists +6 weapons of doubledeath, instead of piddling 2-3 Subdual meathammers.

Look at kung-fu movies. The monks in those always do rains of tiny blows on opponents before fly-kicking the motherfucker in the face... see what I mean?