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ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes.

Posted by SaviorOnEdgeFor group 0
SaviorOnEdge
Sat 1 Aug 2020
at 09:11
  • msg #1

ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

ok

so

There are, or may be, a few misunderstandings about why I have chosen to some things certain ways.

My PM is always open for questions of this nature, and I am happy to debate any point.

Hopefuly, I will not give the impression that I am seaking permission.


Damage;

When I first played TORG, I thought the damage system was awesome: the better the hit, the better the damage. Only, RAW isn't that; it's the luckier the hit, the better the damage.

I have tried Eternity's Bonus Dice; but that's the better the hit, the more chances for lucky damage.

And there's this game's optional rule. Result Points truly is "The better the hit, the better the damage," but there's no glancing blow. You can't do below base damage, so every hit is a solid blow.



Proposal for thought/discussion:
RAW with a modifier to Damage Bonus of (=INT(ABS(ASV-DSV)/3)*SIGN(ASV-DSV)
ASV=Attacker's Skill Value  |  DSV=Defender's Skill Value
The rest is Excell Formula code
This is essentially applying a modified Power Push of the skill difference to the Bonus Number

So, if your skill (after Options) is 22 to hit attacking something with a 10 dodge, the difference of 10 converts to a +3 damage bonus, so when you roll a 2 (-10) and hit, you apply the -10 & +3 net -7 to damage. And if you need a +9 bonus to hit and roll a 28, you only get +6 (+9 -3) to damage.

I'm not sure this is worth the effort. I don't know if I want to introduce this for the next fight, next act, or next adventure. I do want to test it out and see if it fixes or at least touches upon the issues I have with current damage systems.

If an attacker's Intimidate is 35 and the defender's is 5, a Player's call result is guaranteed; only in Hit-Damage can someone with that overwhelming superiority fail to do anything after succeeding with the task under RAW. Under BD, he gets 2 bonus dice, if he didn't roll a 1.


Thoughts?
Sapphire
player, 126 posts
Sat 1 Aug 2020
at 09:58
  • msg #2

ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

Stick with the torg as written

It works. It works for games where you play it for years. It scales well. It's well thought out. It allows multiple character types because they have play tested it and the games creators reacted to feedback

Accuracy has hardly anything to do with damage: default assumption is 'aim at center of mass'. If you hit the center of mass 1 millimeter closer than not, it makes no different. If you want want accuracy to make a difference take a head shot (i.e. a vital blow) again after a certain point accuracy makes no more difference. Either you hit the thing you were trying to or you didn't.

In the real world luck has a major part to play in damage. Stab someone with a rapier in the guts and maybe they are fine. Maybe they die. That's the way it is. Remember Luck is under the character's control. We have cards, we have possibilities

Most importantly: the game works. You can play with published monsters. You can play published scenarios (if you toughen up the baddies - but you can do it and it works - which you can't with the 'accuracy result points' rule). You can adjust bad guys to create different types of threats... it's really hard to do that if you break the system in the way the 'results point' system shatters it.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:27, Sat 01 Aug 2020.
Matthew Matherson
player, 57 posts
Sat 1 Aug 2020
at 22:17
  • msg #3

ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

In reply to SaviorOnEdge (msg # 1):

My thought is to use the damage RAW.

But I am saying that as someone who is in the far minority of "I like the glass-jawed ninja effect."  I think it actually fits the Torg setting quite well.

Cinematically, often a person who can't hit the broad side of a barn with their pistol will take shot after shot after shot at the slick ninja missing and missing again... then they'll land one hit and blow him away.  They never have a glancing hit in those cases.  It's fun.

My other thought is, I'll play whatever way you want to run it and I'm happy.  Even if it's just temporarily to test out your new rule which I had a hard time reading let alone understanding (to be fair, I'm laying down and my brain doesn't work as well when I'm laying down).
Whistler
player, 10 posts
Sat 1 Aug 2020
at 22:24
  • msg #4

ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

In reply to SaviorOnEdge (msg # 1):

I may have misunderstood, but I thought it was based on result points, which is how I developed my character.

But I guess one thing I should clarify is if this is only damage or all effect rolls, such as miracles and spells.
Apeiros
GM, 119 posts
Gathering Stories
from the Storm
Sat 1 Aug 2020
at 23:44
  • msg #5

ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

In reply to Whistler (msg # 4):

Only Damage. Every thing else, Effect is still RAW.

I like Result Points for damage better than RAW because I think being able to hit the heart on every shot, compared to needing a 1:1000 shot to hit at all should matter to damage; I don't like luck being more important, and skill being inversely Effective for damage.

But, Result Points makes every hit a solid hit. There is no "grazing" with straight line Result Points, and I don't know if I like that.

The intent of this proposal is to allow for grazing hits from either bad luck or lack of skill, while allowing for higher skill values to mitigate bad luck.
Sapphire
player, 127 posts
Sun 2 Aug 2020
at 07:15
  • msg #6

ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

I should start by saying that whatever we end up playing it's all good. I have played and enjoyed diceless and lightweight systems. I feel the result points system is almost identical to diceless as it happens, and that's OK. ROFL stomping our way through the scenarios can be fun. I want to do RP more than combat

So here this is just about games design and rules. I like games design and rules. I am a mathematician by trade, and I like modeling the real world, or modeling 'movies and comics'. There is emotion attached to this, because I get excited about modeling things, but the level of emotion is that of a 'chat in a pub over a beer'.

Aiming
It's the moment of aiming that when what you aim at makes a difference
  • If you aim of the center of mass and hit you will do damage appropriate for weapon, the armour and the toughness
  • If you hit a millimeter further away you do the same damage
  • If you hit a centimeter further away you probably do the same damage (depends if you  were aiming for the eyes or not)
  • If you hit three centimeters further away you probably do the same damage
  • As long as you get a solid blow you probably do the same damage


In maths we have a technique known as 'reduction to absurdity' and the following two examples do a reduction to absurdity just as a way of demonstration that in the real world the theory is wrong.
  • if you are aiming for the center of mass and exactly hit it you clip the heart. If you are less accurate you have a chance of bullseyeing the heart.
  • If there is a hole in the armor, and you are off target and hit the weakness you do more damage. The more accurate you are the less chance there is of hitting the armour.


Another way of viewing the issue of accuracy

The bullet doesn't suddenly change what it is hitting when you are more accurate
  • If you aim 'at the person' if you are more accurate you will hit closer to the center of the mass.
  • If you aim more accuractly you don't suddenly hit the head instead of the chest
  • If you aim ultimately accuractly you don't suddenly hit the eyes instead of the head

Torg handles this adequately well. it has vital shots. Actually I think the rules could be a tiny bit improved: if you aim for the eyes and miss you might still hit the head... But that's such a small difference that I am not too worried about it from a 'realism' point of view.

Realistic????
Can someone explain to me how 'once the bullet has landed within a centimeter or two of the target' it's somehow 'realistic' that suddenly we hit the eyeballs instead of the center of mass? It doesn't feel realistic to me at all. I can see it for melee combat a little. In melee I don't 'aim' attacks. I rely on muscle memory and body coordination at the point of collision. But it's only a little.

Most game systems decouple the 'tohit' from 'the damage' because for most people it's more realistic. Many add in 'critical rules' to capture luck. Concrete examples: d20 (all variants that I am aware of including all the pathfinder), AD&D, Mutants and Masterminds, Torg. There are exceptions: White Wolf, Shadowrun (almost the same system anyway), Rolemaster (laughs... that's a well broken system). These systems that couple the two ideas were designed from the ground up with the coupling... Torg isn't. Torg is designed from the ground up with the two being separate.

For missile combat it's (for me) totally unrealistic

Locations
If you want a more realistic accuracy based systems add locations and put an accuracy modifier and a damage modifier on the location. You can have two flavours. One is 'if you don't say what you are aiming for it's the chest' (which is what every police officer is trained for I think). The other is 'you randomly roll location'.

I've run with these kind of location rules and Torg die rolling for over 10 years and they are quite good (we were just doing 'Aylse' in a non possibility based game for most of the time). In melee combat we mostly used random locations, in missile it defaults to chest because that's what you are 'supposed' to aim for if you aren't doing something special

I think it's a degree of complexity not needed in RPOL. In tabletop it's good because people like rolling die in tabletop, and it adds more to the drama.  I've tried location systems in RPOL and most people just forget to roll them. That's why I think the vital blow rules are good

Accuracy having some effect
I use the following (house) rule to simulate the importance of accurately hitting the target
  • You exactly hit it's a 'grazing blow': maximum one stun
  • You hit but only by 1 or 2:  it's a 'glancing blow' (does half damage after armour subtracted)
  • You hit by 3 or more:  you do full damage

This captures my feelings on the realism of accuracy, and the limits of it's ability to do damage. The location you hit is the one you aimed at, and we don't have bullets teleporting away from the chest to the head when a high bonus number is rolled. If you hit it solidly you do good damage.

Effects: Mostly none when players attacking bad guys. Players tend to 'roll well, or roll bad'. When they roll bad not much happened anyway, and when they roll well it's exactly in line with the game designers aims and objects. When the bad guys hit the players though, it gives the players a big bonus in survivability which I like. Basically it fixes the glass ninja problem.

This has no impact on the games designers calculations and allows me to use standard scenarios and models. It doesn't have the flaws of the 'result point based' system while still having accuracy being really important

Flaws of the Result points system
The flaws include
  • Destroys (and I mean destroys not weakens) the value of toughness and strength. Dex already is the best physical attribute, and suddenly it becomes better at doing damage than strength (which is all strength does), and at not taking damage than toughness (except for surprise attacks it is just better). Anyone who has tough>dex or str>dex (as long as they have about 6 points of toughness/str) is measurably inferior to a person that has dex > any other physical attribute. This is not anywhere near as much the case in the standard rules.
  • The damage done by weapons is for some characters +10 to +15 more than the game is designed for. That makes it fantastically hards for the GMs to create monsters that are a reasonable challenge. For reference +10 can turn 2 stun into 'you are dead'. This turns the game into 'might as well be diceless rules systems' (which are OK we just need to realise it).

Matthew Matherson
player, 58 posts
Sun 2 Aug 2020
at 15:02
  • msg #7

Re: ideas, Thoughts, complaints, likes, dislikes

Sapphire:
I want to do RP more than combat


Them's fightin' words!  ;)

I enjoyed your write up and talk of emulating realism but I would counterpoint (in this case) that Torg mechanics were not designed to be an abstraction of realism but an abstraction of summer blockbuster movies.  Realism does not apply to Torg much there (the way I look at it).

I completely agree with your assessment of the flaws of the results points system.

And like you, I'm happy as a clam to use whatever rules are decided upon.  No matter what Apeiros wants to use I'm still going to be delighted playing classic Torg.
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