Will we ever see an RPG with realistic combat mechanics?

[eschaton]

I realize that, in many ways, PE is going to hew to RPG standards, but I wanted to share some thoughts regardless.

 

By far, I find the weakest part of the RPG combat experience to be "hit poiints."  Somehow, everyone has a lot of them, and somehow, weapons do little damage, meaning you need to typically make lots and lots of hits against a target in order to kill them.  

 

This is ridiculous, and it always has been.  When you consider what happens in melee combat IRL, for example, basically the following things are likely, presuming you're talking about a bladed weapon and you are unarmored.  

 

1.  You parry or dodge a blow.

2.  You are hit by a glancing blow.  It could be quite painful and bleed a good deal.  You're still able to fight, but unless you have excellent battle training/conditioning, your concentration is sapped.

3.  You get hit in an arm or leg, and basically crippled for the duration combat.

4.  You get hit in a vital area, and are either bleeding out dead within two minutes, or otherwise so incapacitated you collapse to the ground.

 

The bottom line is combat is actually not about who can take the most punishment, it's about not getting hit.  If you get hit, you've essentially already lost.  Hit points are dumb - Gary Gygax swiped them off a Battleship game, where they made sense.  But humans can't take hits the same way battleships do.  

 

The minimal damage level of weapons also leads to absurd results in other areas.  For example, while rogues can backstab in D&D, even critical hits don't always lead to instant death.  It's even worse with games like the Fallout series, where you can shoot someone in the head (or eye!) and have them not only survive, but continue to attack you!.  As I said in a thread the other week, one low-point for me in Fallout: New Vegas was realizing I could not successfully kill a sleeping character with a shotgun blast to the head!

 

I think the ideal system would work something like this.  This is still more forgiving than real-life combat, but more like 

 

1.  Glancing blows (or hits to armored characters) are abstracted as stamina drains.  If your stamina drops to zero, you pass out.  You've basically lost too much blood and are in too much pain to go on.  But every decrease in your stamina also saps all of your combat abilities to some degree.  You hit less hard.  You're less likely to hit.  You find it harder to concentrate on anything as the pain level rises.  Of course, this is also true for your enemy.  In reality, it should take weeks after heavy stamina drain to recover fully, but I'd be fine with a shorter period

 

2.  If you get a direct hit on a limb, you're crippled.  Ideally, it should be months to never to heal from these, but given many RPG systems have magic or high technology, going to the appropriate healer would work.

 

3.  A critical hit and you're dead.

 

The beauty of the system to me would be it would provide great incentive to non-traditional means of dealing with combat, including assassination, ambush, use of terrain, etc.  In general, it would make combat much more infrequent, but this isn't altogether a bad thing.  Even soldiers at war are not getting into multiple battles with body counts every single day.  Just getting into one encounter every few days with a party of similar size should be a treacherous, literally death defying experience.  

 

While higher-level characters would not get additional hit points on leveling up, they would get other bonuses.  For example, a bonus to conditioning would represent battle-hardening, showing your character can deal with pain without getting distracted.  A bonus to dodge and parry is also realistic, as experienced characters have not been hit many, many times, and should know better how to evade hits.  

 

Thoughts?  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

While a person in real life might not be able to withstand fireballs or several critical hits with a greatsword, there is no reason to think that people in a fantasy setting who can use the power of their souls to alter reality play by the same rules as people in real life. Frankly, PE shouldn't try to apply realism-derived mechanics in a setting where almost everyone has access to supernatural abilities.

 

If you want to play a game that is realistic, try Age of Decadence.

[Nonek]

Severance: Blade of Darkness is also highly recommended, the best combat system in any game i've ever seen. Very hard, and each character has their own style of fighting that needs to be mastered, but highly rewarding once you've become fluent in the mechanics.

[motorizer]

I'd like to see an RPG that does for fantasy RPGs what the arma games have done for FPS's... a huge realistic world with realistic combat

 

I'm not expecting it from this game though, it's not really in their plan

 

Sui generis is doing away with hitpoints, and has physics based combat, will have to wait to see how it works out though (another game I backed on kickstarter)

Edited June 17, 2013 by motorizer

[Iucounu]

For example, a bonus to conditioning would represent battle-hardening, showing your character can deal with pain without getting distracted. 

This is especially a great idea for action games, but I would very much like to see it implemented in P:E too. 

 

What you are suggesting is basically to do without hitpoints, and go with more concrete, less abstract things to make combat more interesting. I think that in the end, that's where the future of RPG's is, and the only reason hitpoints are still in use, is that developers haven't come up with enough good things to make up for it. 

[TheTeaMustFlow]

If I remember correctly, hit points in ye olde d&d manuals were always meant to be an abstract representation of general grit, the ability to turn a deadly blow into a more superficial one, and plain luck (essentially, action movie plot armour), and most `successful` attacks were not meant to be direct stabs and shots to the gut, but rather relatively minor wounds - scratches, cuts, bruises and grazes etc. Getting your hit points reduced to 0 was, rather than arbitrarily falling down after one direct stab to the gut too many , either being slowed down enough by all the previous minor wounds to allow this attack to actually be a direct stab to the gut, or your `luck running out` and finally receiving a direct stab to the gut after so many lucky escapes.

If represented like this, I really don't have a problem with the hit point system - it was meant to represent `action movie physics`, which I generally feel fits better with the idea of a small team of misfits beating impossible odds than something more gritty and complex. Particularly in a game where we don't have direct control over making sure our character does not get a direct stab to the gut.

[Iucounu]

Perhaps it's also a question, how complex you want your game to be. But I think it's possible to simulate 'action movie physics' or the element of supernatural abilities without hitpoints. Or at least much less hitpoint dependent than in current games. 

[decado]

If I remember correctly, hit points in ye olde d&d manuals were always meant to be an abstract representation of general grit, the ability to turn a deadly blow into a more superficial one, and plain luck (essentially, action movie plot armour), and most `successful` attacks were not meant to be direct stabs and shots to the gut, but rather relatively minor wounds - scratches, cuts, bruises and grazes etc. Getting your hit points reduced to 0 was, rather than arbitrarily falling down after one direct stab to the gut too many , either being slowed down enough by all the previous minor wounds to allow this attack to actually be a direct stab to the gut, or your `luck running out` and finally receiving a direct stab to the gut after so many lucky escapes.

If represented like this, I really don't have a problem with the hit point system - it was meant to represent `action movie physics`, which I generally feel fits better with the idea of a small team of misfits beating impossible odds than something more gritty and complex. Particularly in a game where we don't have direct control over making sure our character does not get a direct stab to the gut.

 

This is also my understanding of how HPs were supposed to be working in the Gygax model.  Getting hit for 5 points of damage is just that -- damage.  Not all damage is critical, or even noteworthy.  

 

I view DnD HPs as an abstraction, with the nearest analogy being to boxing or something like that -- boxers get hit constantly and fights can last a long time, but you can also get whacked really good just once and that's the end of it, see ya!  HPs seem like a convenient way to keep track of damage that may or not be lethal.

 

Perhaps our conception of what HPs were/are changed with the advent of CRPGs, where graphical innovations led us to actually see our PCs getting hit and actually losing HPs.

Edited June 17, 2013 by decado

[mcmanusaur]

I'd like to see an RPG that does for fantasy RPGs what the arma games have done for FPS's... a huge realistic world with realistic combat

 

I'm not expecting it from this game though, it's not really in their plan

 

Sui generis is doing away with hitpoints, and has physics based combat, will have to wait to see how it works out though (another game I backed on kickstarter)

 

This, pretty much.

 

Although in response to the OP I'm sort of opposed to connecting stamina and health; however, I have toyed around with the notion of abstracting health as two components: "trauma/injury" and "shock/pain". The former is self-explanatory, and decreases as you take "damage" in the manner of HP, with reduction to zero resulting in death; I'm undecided as to whether injury localization produces enjoyable gameplay or not. The latter fluctuates on a more short-term basis, and shock/pain exceeding the trauma/injury threshold results in unconsciousness/incapacitation.

 

While perhaps only a bit more realistic than the standard HP scheme, this system hypothetically also makes the game more interesting by lending itself to two different schools of thought in combat. A traditional warrior might try to deal enough damage to bring a target directly to death via trauma/injury, a more subtle approach would be to saturate a target with shock/pain and thus render them unconscious, leaving them open for an easy coup de grace. The factors that influence how much shock/pain a target can endure would then be their trauma/injury level (obviously, since this sets the max), but I could see low stamina acting as a multiplier for shock/pain fluctuations.

 

This would allow health and stamina to be mostly separate so that performing actions doesn't directly reduce your health, which is sort of nasty. Stamina could refer to both physical and mental fatigue, rather than making some kind of artificial division. While in this system medical attention and rest would directly restore health and stamina, food and hunger level would only influence stamina's rate of change over time similar to how hunger in Minecraft affects health. So there, a pretty much complete system of resources, with some improvements over the usual, theoretically without making gameplay less fun. Hopefully that makes sense, and don't laugh at me if there are games that do this kind of thing already.

[Lephys]

Such a system would be pretty amazing. The only problem I foresee is, hitpoints are an abstraction in the midst of other abstractions. It's like your well-being is exchanged into the same currency as damage and all the other well-being-affecting aspects in the game. So, the problem isn't really how complex just the wounds/damage system would get, but also how complex it would be to handle all the other things in the game that directly or indirectly affect that system.

 

Take poison, for example... How do you know exactly what effect poison is having on your character? I mean, it's slowly killing you, but it's not actually causing injuries and bleeding. It's not opening up that sword wound even further. But, see, when we abstract everything (including HP) to numbers, now I can see that poison does 3 damage per second, and that I have 100 hitpoints. So, that gives me an immediate, intuitive grasp of how threatening poison is to my well-being, as opposed to a sword strike (I know that it does approximately 10 damage normally, and a critical could do up to 25-or-so damage). So, I know how I could POTENTIALLY die.

 

I think it would be a good idea to maybe take some steps in the right direction, though. Maybe have a critical hit, at the very least, inflict a state of sustained damage (bleeding, organ damage, etc.). AND, maybe have localized damage to some extent. Different fighting styles/stances/equipment sets (shield as opposed to dual-wield) could alter the chance of being hit in given regions. A dual-wielder's arms would be a lot more exposed, etc. And critical hits could simply be made to represent actual serious localized injuries, even. So a dual-wielder might have to drop a weapon (lose function of one of their arms), or at least suffer penalties to actions made with that arm/weapon, if critically stricken in the arm. Or, if a leg is hit, your character loses mobility (moves more slowly, and/or bleeds worse when moving, etc). If the torso is hit, your total HP could drop (and your current percentage of remaining HP, respectively), and/or your stamina regeneration could be affected, and/or action-speed, etc. (to represent general vitals being in worse functioning condition). Hit in the head? Your perception would be affected, and you'd probably take more damage than if hit in the arms or legs (and maybe even more than the torso, even though the torso would probably be worse than arms/legs, as far as abstracted, total damage).

 

It could work kind of like critical hit verification in D&D. You rolled a 20? Roll again to confirm! Except, your 2nd roll could simply be to determine, against percentage chances (based on stance/equipment/ etc) of hitting each portion of the body. Hell, the P:E attack/defense mechanics kind of already support this, as, if you have full plate and a tower shield (higher deflection), the opponent's critical hit range is pushed up toward the ceiling of the 1-100 range, resulting in a smaller critical chance range. Just like a person in full plate and wielding a large shield would already be much harder to strike the limbs/torso/legs/head of, to any effect.

 

*shrug*

 

The trick would be to not make it this completely random thing ("Oh, it JUST SO HAPPENS that everyone in your party just got shot in the eye by blowguns wielded by pixies, and are all dead!"), and for it to not be so detailed that you spend more time figuring out where exactly a sword blow landed and how badly your character is bleeding than you do actually playing the rest of the game and tactically handling combat.

 

I'm very much behind a full-on no-HP system, but I'm not sure I'd want to see it in P:E, simply because, without revamping the entire game (which is already partially vamped), I think it would circumstantially overcomplicate things.

[anubite]

The truth of the matter is that realistic fights aren't fun. They're dirty, brutal, and short. There's not much to the game if your opponent goes down in several hits, which is realistically what happens (unless we restrict ourselves to full medieval plate and give our fighters weapons ineffective at penetrating the armor). A street fight is usually over in the first strike, a large-scale battle you'll probably die from an errant bullet or arrow, or being trampled by a horse or crushed under the weight of a toppled ally.

 

People want their games to be "fair". Fights aren't fair in reality. A game which simulates realistic combat is frustrating at best, and really only suited for games like Dwarf Fortress (where the focus of the game isn't combat, but strategy and resource management), where combat is fairly realistic.

 

Massive Chalice, a recent kickstarter title, is the kind of game where combat could be ideally "realistic" - because the loss/death of your fighters is not that significant, as you're always popping out more. But since RPGs (like PE) are generally about a static cast of characters, realistic combat just can't be realistic.

Edited June 18, 2013 by anubite

[Micamo]

You could just make a CRPG version of The Riddle of Steel.

[mcmanusaur]

The truth of the matter is that realistic fights aren't fun. They're dirty, brutal, and short. There's not much to the game if your opponent goes down in several hits, which is realistically what happens (unless we restrict ourselves to full medieval plate and give our fighters weapons ineffective at penetrating the armor). A street fight is usually over in the first strike, a large-scale battle you'll probably die from an errant bullet or arrow, or being trampled by a horse or crushed under the weight of a toppled ally.

 

People want their games to be "fair". Fights aren't fair in reality. A game which simulates realistic combat is frustrating at best, and really only suited for games like Dwarf Fortress (where the focus of the game isn't combat, but strategy and resource management), where combat is fairly realistic.

 

Massive Chalice, a recent kickstarter title, is the kind of game where combat could be ideally "realistic" - because the loss/death of your fighters is not that significant, as you're always popping out more. But since RPGs (like PE) are generally about a static cast of characters, realistic combat just can't be realistic.

 

I'm going to have to agree with this mostly. I'll add that a complex wounding system is utterly pointless if the primary method of healing is through nonspecific cleric spells. The only localized wounding system (which is the logical step forward for "realistic" combat) I have decent experience with is from Fallout, and I have to admit it wasn't that great; it was basically replacing a single HP meter with five more.

Edited June 18, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Sedrefilos]

You do understand that when you say "realistic battles" you mean one-hit deaths, got injured and if you don't have advanced medical knowlege you die soon and so on.
To me a tactical rpg should simulate the combat in a way it makes sence and makes it challenging and strategic.

It's a bit naive, I guess, to have supernatural beings, magic and stuff (not realisting things that is) and a super realistic combat.

This is a game after all.

PS. don't know about Arma (haven't played the game) but fps's are the same way as rpgs are in their own genre. They have a realistic simulation of a gun fight but keep in mind that it must make sence gameplaywise too, since this is only a game. That's why you can run all the way without getting tired, survive multiple bullet shots etc.

[Randomthom]

To answer the thread title, we probably will, in fact I'd be willing to be that there's already one out there. The reason I'm not sure is that I'm 100% certain that it won't make a good game. at least not in an RPG setting.

 

Good RPGs are about good storytelling and action and a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the gamer. By-and-large we accept hit points as a passable mask over the general state of health of our characters.

 

If there was an element of realism I'd want to add, it would be to a characters combat effectiveness as they approach 0 hp. I'm also a fan of maintaining good control over hp bloat so that high level characters don't have massively higher hp values than lower level characters. This increases the jeopardy and tension in combat.

[TrashMan]

HP aren't dumb - they are often over-inflated and their implementation can make them look dumb.

 

For a sinngle-character game more realism in endurance would be OK. For example, Operation Flashpoint - you can get crippled or killed by a single bullet, and I loved it.

 

But this is a party-based game. You have several people to watch out for in real time. You NEED some buffer. I liek the directio nyoure going - as I want combat to be more wisceral and dangerous - but maybe you're going just a bit too far.

Edited June 18, 2013 by TrashMan

[Mico Selva]

An RPG with realistic combat would be great, but it wouldn't really fit into Infinity Engine Games Spiritual Successor term, so we should probably just accept breaks from reality in Project Eternity for the sake of the game. I think Josh Sawyer is already doing a tremendous job in getting rid of the most ridiculous legacy systems used in RPGs.

 

A good step towards realism would be the ability to be killed by a single hit. Some P&P RPGs have critical hit systems, which allow that. The chance of such an event is usually very low (the P&P games I've played had it happen around once in every 20 or 30 critical hits), but it is there.

[anubite]

You do understand that when you say "realistic battles" you mean one-hit deaths, got injured and if you don't have advanced medical knowlege you die soon and so on.

To me a tactical rpg should simulate the combat in a way it makes sence and makes it challenging and strategic.

It's a bit naive, I guess, to have supernatural beings, magic and stuff (not realisting things that is) and a super realistic combat.

This is a game after all.

 

PS. don't know about Arma (haven't played the game) but fps's are the same way as rpgs are in their own genre. They have a realistic simulation of a gun fight but keep in mind that it must make sence gameplaywise too, since this is only a game. That's why you can run all the way without getting tired, survive multiple bullet shots etc.

Um, no? I don't really mean that. I just mean, fighting is unfair. Yes, that means one-hit deaths ARE possible and happen often enough, but even if you don't allow one-hit deaths, generally speaking, fights are still brutish and short. A solid punch will knock anyone dizzy, allowing for following punches to send them to the floor. Jab my fingers in your eyes, now you're blinded, slap your ears, now you're defeaned and imbalanced, a kick to the crotch is so stunning there's little defense to it; even if you're a master of any kind of martial art, training your whole life day in and day out, the most novice opponent has a high chance of defeating you on the battlefield. Because battles are exciting, adrenaline clouds your senses, things happen, simulated combat isn't suited to games about character development, because real-life street fighters, warriors, and commanders of battle, have very short, very stunted lives, save a very select lucky few. In order for an RPG to feature modern or medieval combat, we need to give players ways to survive their battles consistently, otherwise the game becomes frustrating and obtuse. If I break both your arms, how do you have any chance of winning a fight? You don't, really. It's why true fighters do as Sun Tzu suggests - they avoid battles and win without relying on direct confrontation.

 

If the RPG is designed to accommodate battle simulation, you probably aren't playing a cRPG, but a sRPG, or a roguelike, where the game procedurally generates content, making individual failures and deaths less demoralizing, or gives you more units to work with should others falter...

 

Real combat isn't like the movies. It's honelsty over in less than thirty seconds for each individual, unless you're doing trench warfare, or you're a sniper sitting around for days. But for the most part, combat isn't extended, it's sharp and quick with very little room for reaction or strategy. It's about skill, luck, and finesse - people don't tend to enjoy luck-based games and RPGs tend to abstract skill/finesse to the point where a simulation of combat using RPG mechanics results in us watching our heroes get randomly crushed. You could be level 100 with 100+ in all stats, and a level 1 rat might bite your toe, make you stumble and fall upon your sword, a level 5 thief might nick an artery and spell your doom. Most players won't settle for stuff like that.

Edited June 18, 2013 by anubite

[Iucounu]

It doesn't need to be totally realistic, does it? Know it's not the actual topic, but I don't think that no HP -> totally realistic system. Of course when you go from general HP to more specific values and states, it's harder to find a system where you can keep the 'suspension of disbelief' when you try to realize more spectecular combat. But who is to say you can't find some sort of balance?

Although I have to admit that I rather thought of an single-player action rpg myself. I'm not so much into pure numerical stuff, when thinking about game systems. 

[Karkarov]

There are plenty of games out there already that do "realistic" combat in a fantasy RPG environment well.  I put realistic in quotes for a obvious reason ;p.

 

Do something insane and try to leave the comfort zone of isometric games and play something like Dark or Demon's Souls.  Or even go for Mount and Blade Warband is you have to get really bare bones.  Meanwhile look at the recent games like Chivalry and The War of Roses too.

 

An isometric view, top down, party based game will never have "realistic" fantasy combat.  For you to have the needed control in a game based on that type of combat mechanics you need to be considerably closer to the action and you can't do it while playing more than one character.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Karkarov

[centurionofprix]

Speculatively:

 

Um, no? I don't really mean that. I just mean, fighting is unfair. Yes, that means one-hit deaths ARE possible and happen often enough, but even if you don't allow one-hit deaths, generally speaking, fights are still brutish and short. A solid punch will knock anyone dizzy, allowing for following punches to send them to the floor. Jab my fingers in your eyes, now you're blinded, slap your ears, now you're defeaned and imbalanced, a kick to the crotch is so stunning there's little defense to it; even if you're a master of any kind of martial art, training your whole life day in and day out, the most novice opponent has a high chance of defeating you on the battlefield. Because battles are exciting, adrenaline clouds your senses, things happen, simulated combat isn't suited to games about character development, because real-life street fighters, warriors, and commanders of battle, have very short, very stunted lives, save a very select lucky few.

Probably your character would be one of the exceptionally skilled or lucky few rather than the rank and file (as usual - though the latter could be cool as well, the story of an individual soldier heading off to die for the machinations of those in power or for his God). Some fighters prevailed again and again, even against skilled warriors or in the chaos of the battlefield: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4 http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/Maupin/LaMaupin.html

 

In order for an RPG to feature modern or medieval combat, we need to give players ways to survive their battles consistently, otherwise the game becomes frustrating and obtuse. If I break both your arms, how do you have any chance of winning a fight? You don't, really. It's why true fighters do as Sun Tzu suggests - they avoid battles and win without relying on direct confrontation.

Yes! Diplomacy and intimidation would be crucial, as well as using tactics and subterfuge to tip the scales in your favour when you did choose to fight. Perhaps you'd even have to know how to back down sometimes. As you note, one possible mechanic would be the hiring of new henchmen, like in JA. Caution and survival through meaningful single encounters would the be central gameplay concerns, rather than wading through armies of enemies IE-style.

 

The combat could function consistently if actual hits were rare; instead of landed blows eating one's hitpoints, the central mechanic would be the defence and offence to land the one blow. Which, come to think of it, might function a lot like hitpoints in practise, but on a different level of abstraction.

 

I'm not proposing any of this for PE, mind, but would love to play an IE-like game with such mechanics.

Edited June 18, 2013 by centurionofprix

[motorizer]

PS. don't know about Arma (haven't played the game) but fps's are the same way as rpgs are in their own genre. They have a realistic simulation of a gun fight but keep in mind that it must make sence gameplaywise too, since this is only a game. That's why you can run all the way without getting tired, survive multiple bullet shots etc.

That's why I mentioned arma, it's not like other FPS's

you get tired, you can die in one hit, you can get hurt, you can't carry a million bullets and can only carry one rifle and a sidearm, the scale is realistic and the map huge so stuff actually can be miles away..... etc..etc...

 

It adds tension and fear and it does make you play the game at a slower, more careful pace.

 

but as I said...not for PE, it would be a complete redesign...but I would like to see someone do it...

[quechn1tlan]

Gameplay trumps realism.

/thread.

[motorizer]

Gameplay trumps realism.

/thread.

True enough, but having something which feels real can add to the gameplay experience, standing there taking hits like a bullet sponge can make the enemies feel less dangerous, which makes the combat less rewarding and makes the threat of the enemies seem more trivial.

[Iucounu]

Gameplay trumps realism.

/thread.

Signed. Perhaps take chess for combat mechanics then, and play a game of chess against the computer for every confrontation. The Endboss would have around 1600 Elo on normal, and 2000 Elo on Iron Man. Brilliant.