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View Full Version : idea for a rather scary combat system...



His Noodly Appendage
09-08-2008, 06:02 AM
Maybe for JADE 3.0 or so :D

Okay, scary idea. Bear with me. I've always wanted a combat system that relied at least partially on player skill, rather than just character stats, not to mention one that was a little more related to the parameters of actual, well, melee combat.

One approach that's always appealed to me, at least in theory, is a weighted state machine.

Instead of a single [DV,PV], you have one for each body position/strike-type combination. And instead of a single (to-hit, damage) and crithit,critfail, you'd have one for each combat action, defined as a transition between one position and another (for non-strike positions, these would of course be zero).

Ferinstance, if you slash high across your opponent's face with your right arm, you leave your entire right side exposed to counter-attack - but stand a good chance of killing your opponent if you connect with a decent weapon. Or, thinking in Judo terms, an overextended strike can leave you liable to get dumped on your ass, if your opponent is in a position to take advantage of it...

Now just attach all this data to a digraph of which positions can be reached from which others, and you have the basis for a Strategy Description Language. Give each edge a weight (such that all exit-edges sum to 1), then each turn roll a D100 and move accordingly. All that's left for the player to do is re-weight the edges to something more effective than an equal split, which would be equivalent to purely random action.

At fight-time, you'd have access to a whole bunch of variables: your own state and stats, your opponent's size, speed, race, class, state and last action, what your character might notice them telegraphing ahead (PE-based?), etc

A strategy description could thus consist of a base set of weights, with rule-based modifiers added on the end.

And to prevent there being one 'perfect strategy' to rule them all, it'd be straightforward enough to make it necessary to customise the strategy to each individual character, and to update it as they develop.

First up, include a hidden layer of random offsets ('quirks', in other words) on the dv/pv/hit/damage/crithit/critfail for each node, so that only by observing your character in a whole bunch of fights would you come to realise that he couldn't high-kick his way out of a wet paper bag, but that he has a mean left cross...

Also, you could place stat/XP requirements on certain moves so that 'unlocking' them would change the whole ballgame, so to speak - and you could also place an IN-based limit on the number of strategy rules you could have at once. After all, you can't expect a troll who has just about worked out how to walk and breathe at the same time to fight like Erol Flynn - but a brainiac weakling could still stand a chance of outsmarting their opponent.

Of course, in the course of actual gameplay, everything would be completely automated from the player's POV - you'd still just walk into monsters to fight them - and if you didn't want to see the details of a fight, you could just hide them and get on with it. But if you found yourself getting your ass kicked by jackals more often than seemed reasonable, you could reach under the hood and tune things up a bit.

What does anyone reckon? Would this rock, or would this rock?