Vapourware How would you design a RPG combat system under this constraints?

[adrix89]

I already have some ideas in mind for a project that I am doing but I want to bounce some ideas so as to not be locked in them.

Restrictions:
You control only one character. No party, no companions.
Tactical turn based combat or at least Real-time with Pause. No twitch combat, no careful timing. Pure cerebral tactical challenge.
No grinding. Especially no grinding by repeating the same monotonous action over and over again with no challenge until you are god. If you didn't take the hint I am talking about DF Adventure skill grinding.
No guns. And range weapons must not be the dominant strategy for the player. Think the old medieval melee.
The same goes for magic, no range dominance but you can have enchantments, magic attacks or other skills and abilities including maneuvering. The combat could even be only between magic users as long as its still melee.
Encounters are mostly human. Either one in an epic duel or a group of 4-7 weaker characters. You can try some monsters if you want but its not the focus.
Other methods to resolve the situation are beyond the scope of this discussion, but things like stealth can be used if its relevant to combat. We already know how to make a good stealth game with the classic Thief so there is no point to reiterate it again.

Make it challenging as fuck.

 

[GameGear]

To be honest, based on those restrictions, I just wouldn't.

I mean minus the real time and "No twitch combat, no careful timing." as you put it, aren't you just describing the Witcher games? I'm not sure how you'd make that fun or tactical. Pointed swings at specific body parts?

 

[adrix89]

To be honest, based on those restrictions, I just wouldn't.

I mean minus the real time and "No twitch combat, no careful timing." as you put it, aren't you just describing the Witcher games? I'm not sure how you'd make that fun or tactical. Pointed swings at specific body parts?

Well its precisely because its such a complicated system that I want to see a second opinion on what it could be out there.
You have to really distill what the challenge from tactics games comes from, what is the essence of fighting.
Based on the actions the player can do, attacks, abilities, movement.

Its not like they are no examples. Roguelikes are already like this to some extent although the combat aspects are pretty simple compared to resource management and when to engage.

 

[Niektory]

Have you played Age of Decadence? It seems to match quite closely what you have in mind.

 

[adrix89]

Have you played Age of Decadence? It seems to match quite closely what you have in mind.

Not yet. I thought it had multiple controllable characters in combat? Can it be done pure solo?

 

[Niektory]

You only control a single character. You occasionally fight alongside AI-controlled allies, but most of the time you are alone.

 

[adrix89]

You only control a single character. You occasionally fight alongside AI-controlled allies, but most of the time you are alone.

I will check it out. Been meaning to anyway for some time.

However if people have other ideas I want to sample as many as I can.

 

[J1M]

-Multiple damage types
-Abilities that don't involve percentage modifiers
-Player can catch opponents flat-footed with planned approach in 35%-65% of encounters
-Boss encounters with unique mechanics

 

[Tigranes]

You basically described Age of Decadence.

On top of what AOD does, I'd argue that with a focus on thinking through few well designed encounters controlling one dude against several, the kinds of things that you normally abstract out of practical necessity are now fair game. Things like limb-based damage / effects, e.g. not only slowing people down by hitting them in the legs but having 'balance' (affecting aim, dodge and movement) tied to leg health, or watching enemies get broken/disabled limbs as a result of your targeted attack (or you yourself). The player's combat competency should also be designed keeping in mind what kind of skills and tricks a dude who regularly goes up alone against superior numbers is likely to gain: e.g. strong players might get a feat-based active ability to grapple an opponent and use him as a shield or throw him at another opponent, lithe characters might be able to trip enemies up or jump over battlefield obstacles, and so on. After all, how many times is such a person going to just walk into a wide open area and just swing his sword at 7 people (unless he has invested everything on his sword mastery)?

Instead of discrete action model where players stand there not affecting the world until they are given an order (whirling power super slam!!!) and then they deal 20-30 HP, we might also consider modelling player action in terms of upkeep. Typically when a character is surrounded by 4 dudes and dodging like crazy in a turn-based game, we presume that is an abstraction of a real-time/life fight where it's all happening together. Each turn players might invest their action points into different things that character needs to keep track of to not die that turn. This might mean 5 AP to keep that magic spell alive; 3 AP to dodge next attack from the opponent to the left; 5 AP to attack the opponent to the right. This probably works best with a simultaneous system where the turns are planned and then both sides' actions resolve simultaneously. Maybe the 3 AP combined with your dodge skill was enough in normal circumstances, but that opponent, without anything else to worry about, used all his AP for his attack (i.e. he focused) - and manages to graze you.

There are ways to make this simple and ways to make this complicated, but these are things that I could imagine taking proper advantage of the setup instead of a 1-player version of a 6-player system. This way even a 1-to-1 duel would involve many more tactical choices.

 

[adrix89]

...

This is precisely the kind of ideas I was looking for. Many interesting ideas that I think made the thread worth it.

 

[laclongquan]

Hand-crafted Battle Maps. Since you eschew careful timing, this factor is becoming even more important.

Map need to be varied with chokepoints, walls, etc... To prevent ranged combat's important and raise the important melee. Urban map perhaps?

Combat techniques need to be varied. Think Fallout2's HtH and body-location with different AP cost. You need a quick jab and move to cover instead of a fullhouse swing and stand there before a group of hostile.

Destructible environment? It would raise battle sophistication up many times.

 

[Karellen]

As I see it, the real problem with single-character tactical gameplay, especially duels, is how to successfully implement interesting positional play. This is very difficult to do, as almost by definition meleé combat happens at close range, so once characters have closed in, nothing really happens anymore until somebody drops dead. This is all right in party-based tactical RPGs with melee, because you generally have multiple characters and ranged characters mixed in, so you can have meleé tactics revolving around concentrating firepower, containing enemy movements and all that fun stuff. Unfortunately, all of this goes out of the window when you only have a single character, so you either get extended, immobile close-range brawls or awkward turn-based kiting which is basically just about abusing AI stupidity rather than anything actually resembling real combat.

My suggestion, unorthodox as it might be, would be to make a system that puts extreme emphasize on motion, range and positioning. In real meleé combat the distance between the combatants shifts constantly, and staying at a point-blank range is usually dumb because you'll just get tackled or joint-locked, while depending on the distance you have different options for attacking. Now, combat in games doesn't actually have to be realistic, but for all practical purposes I don't think it's possible to get really dynamic single-combat meleé encounters without somehow getting something like this in; all good fighting games have a ton of positional play. In a turn-based system, I think a similar effect might be achievable with a type of simultaneous-resolution system, in which both offensive and defensive maneuvers always shift the position of the characters; this would result in the range between the characters changing in unexpected ways while both try to manipulate the system to bring the fight to a range and position favourable to themselves. In this case, it would also be possible to have meaningful environmental elements; getting someone against the wall might be an interesting result, if it means that they can no longer dodge backwards, for instance.

Alternatively, if that doesn't work out, it might be a good idea to drop the tactical map entirely and make the combat blobber-style and just go all-out on status effects, modifiers, different weapon effects and all that stuff. But there's no point having cool maps if, for all practical purposes, the characters will meet in the middle and slug at each other until somebody keels over.

 

[adrix89]

My suggestion, unorthodox as it might be, would be to make a system that puts extreme emphasize on motion, range and positioning. In real meleé combat the distance between the combatants shifts constantly, and staying at a point-blank range is usually dumb because you'll just get tackled or joint-locked, while depending on the distance you have different options for attacking. Now, combat in games doesn't actually have to be realistic, but for all practical purposes I don't think it's possible to get really dynamic single-combat meleé encounters without somehow getting something like this in; all good fighting games have a ton of positional play.

The problem is you can't really do that much in a turn based tactical system. That works well with action games that are all about position,range and timing add in abilities and you get DOTA.
Turn base is about discrete actions and the challenge is in really making you think how you string this actions together and manage risk.
The problem is how you implement steps. If you make the movement system too complex where you have to confirm and specify every little step you will make the gameplay into a crawl. Rouguelikes have very simple one step,one time, one attack bump but at the cost of the melee not being that tactical and focusing more on range and abilities.

I think a similar effect might be achievable with a type of simultaneous-resolution system, in which both offensive and defensive maneuvers always shift the position of the characters; this would result in the range between the characters changing in unexpected ways while both try to manipulate the system to bring the fight to a range and position favorable to themselves. In this case, it would also be possible to have meaningful environmental elements; getting someone against the wall might be an interesting result, if it means that they can no longer dodge backwards, for instance.

Yes that is also how I see in doing it.
And we can merge specialized attacks and movement into one as well as other maneuvers.
But even then its very hard to not devolve into a slogfest. You need a system to make players want to disengage or keep moving for some reason. But I am not sure how that system would work.

The idea was that instead you have smaller hexes/squares (I'm not going to say hexes/squares again) and the average human fits within, say, 2x2.

Actually the right answer is to NOT span the character over a 2x2 grid.
Instead just scale the character up but keep the grid as a single movement step.
If you make sword 2 steps, knife 1 step and spear 3-4 steps that is all you need.

 

[TigerKnee]

You might want to look up the Roguelike Sil, especially what it does with positioining in melee combat compared to others of its genre.

 

[J1M]

The idea was that instead you have smaller hexes/squares (I'm not going to say hexes/squares again) and the average human fits within, say, 2x2.

Actually the right answer is to NOT span the character over a 2x2 grid.
Instead just scale the character up but keep the grid as a single movement step.
If you make sword 2 steps, knife 1 step and spear 3-4 steps that is all you need.

"Don't do X, X is wrong. Do X instead. X is all you need."