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Project: Combatant
Project Started: 16th November, 2008 Last Update: 18th July, 2010
Project Owner: Muz Project Members:
Project Type: Turn-based RPG Project Progress:

Modern RPGs vs old ones
Posted 1st Jan 09, by Muz  
Another writing to myself log. But this one could help anyone else who's making a similar type of game.

RPGs were born out of board games, tabletop games. They were meant to be ultra-simple, to keep calculations to an absolute minimum and with a big sheet full of information that one can get at a glance.

Computer games are quite the opposite. They can look at only one bit of data at a time, not a page full of them. They can calculate a long formula in less than half a second, compared to a human, who'd take a few minutes to determine the Attack Bonus of a character with armor, dexterity, and keeping track of all the spell bonuses.

The concept of Attack and Defense is greatly outdated. Hit Points is also outdated [sic]. 80% of the work I've spent on this project is in finding a new way to do it.

Attack
Good attacking skills does not make a good warrior. Good defense does. Ask any martial artist. Training will make you hit faster and harder, but it's really the defense and counter-attacking skills that make them heroes.

The attack roll is quite misguided. With it, you could miss an armored person sleeping. Attacks are based on two things: distance and time. A person who has 2 seconds to aim his sword will do better than someone quickly taking advantage of an opening. And for any ranged weapons, there are attack rolls.

I find defense check to be a better system. The opponent is the attacker, the better his skill, the harder it is to block. Then the defender rolls his defense. It seems like the same thing, but here, the player will focus on building up his defense, with the attack being something that he has to take care of. Instead of the other way around.

To conclude:
1. The attacker tries to hit a spot.
2. The defender tries not to be at that spot.

Hit Points
The concept of hit points is quite ridiculous, frankly. If a person has killed a thousand orcs, it doesn't mean that a mace to the head in his sleep will only scratch him. Neither does it make healing spells less effective. A true fighter survives on loosening his body, much like a person trying to punch a piece of paper. He takes less damage from blows by instinctively avoiding them. The concept of hit points abstracts this, but it's got lots of flaws, especially when some forms of attacks are supposed to deal more damage.

Unfortunately, it's a delicate system to mess with. Nobody likes being insta-killed because of a single bad check. It has to have resistance to bad luck, perhaps by requiring two checks or something (like the new D&D critical hit checks). Hit points will always work, but it's just not fun in itself.

I want to make something where it's hard to hit, but when it does, the player will be jumping. Kinda like scoring a goal in a football game.

Posted by Fanotherpg 1st January, 2009

Maybe good idea would be from Fallout. You had there complicated system but simplifying it we can say that attacker has got his Attack Skill and defender Armour Class (which is sum of armour, dexterity, avoiding etc.) and Attack is successful if AS - AC >0 And there depending from weapon type and armour is how much hit points are taken but there was also something awesome in this system.

It was based on percentages and D100+ and in it from the 1 was Critical Hit chances (depending from luck and skills (perks/traits) so if you had 5 luck and +10 critical chance you had at D100 from 1 to 15 critical attack which gave more damage than normal and also there was critical mistake (from 96-100 <- this is why your maximum percentage shown 95 ) but in Fallout Tactics they added also perks which can lower that thing and for example if you get something like critical mistakes +5 you made mistakes from roll 91-100.

It was quite simple to count and realistic because always (even if you had +50 critical chance) you could made a mistake and hurt yourself, or do anything other which also was stupid. And the lower levels could kill with one shot higher levels thanks to critical hits! Of course it was harder cause they had better armour and more health but it was possible thanks to luck and proper skills.
 
Posted by Fanotherpg 1st January, 2009

BTW old ones wasn't so easy. Counting TRACO / TRAKO or whatever it call was hard to count :/
 
Posted by Muz 2nd January, 2009

Yeah, I liked Fallout's critical hit system, and the crippling system. Was the best. I'm still not too fond of the HP system, I think there's a way around it, but can't really think of it. Dwarf Fortress got it right.

It was THAC0, I remember that because I actually made a program to do that for me. They called it Advanced D&D for a reason. The newer ones still have the same math problem, but they sorted it to make it easier
 
Posted by Fanotherpg 2nd January, 2009

You know in Poland I meet name 'Traco/Trako' and didn't have ever ADnD book. But I've got one to DnD1

And hit points maybe use also Fall system and don't change statistics from begining and then it's each level only half of your Vitality level + 1 (in Fall max was 10 so it was max 6hp for level) and initial is 15 + half of vitality.

It could be modified for each race (initial value) but it should be good mechanism.
 


 



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