Will we ever see an RPG with realistic combat mechanics?

[teknoman2]

There is a reason handguards exist ya know.

 

In RL combat there would be a lot of grapling and twisting, and your opponent would know this. If you can disarm your opponet, good. But it's not an easy thing to do.

what i meant to say, is that actual sword fights between experts (and not sports), do not have the flashy, wide and long sequences of moves you see in movies and games. they consist of short feints and attacks of opportunity, and the guy with the best reflexes or the guy with the most tactical planing of his moves wins. after you stopped an attack you dont pull your sword back to make a strong swing (that would give the enemy the time to put his guard up), you just go for the most vulnerable spot you can reach, starting the attack from the position the sword is currently in.

[Tsuga C]

Thoughts?

Sounds interesting on paper, but in practice such ideas would result in a very harsh system that sends players scurrying to cast "Reload Last Save" to dodge the frequent maimings and deaths dealt them by their opponents. I'm in favor of more realism in the vein of weapon adjustments vs. armor type considerations, but largely "realistic" combat is Hobbesian: nasty, brutish, and short.

 

I'll pass. Quick 'n' dirty might work in a story or in a codified assassination technique a la the AD&D assassin, but cRPGs generally need to allow the player time to extricate the party or change tactics as needed if the excrement hits the fan. When my best melee and best arcane party members swiftly fall to fluke-but-realistic hits, I'll damn well be re-loading pronto, my friend. This goes double as companion deaths will be permanent (no instamatic Resurrection spells in P:E, nor do fallen party members pop back up after the fight as they did in NWN2). Realistic simply doesn't always translate to enjoyable.

Edited July 12, 2013 by Tsuga C

[JFSOCC]

 

 

normal fighting (no poisons, magic, etc.), would make priority targets on the enemy things that allow them to keep fighting, such as legs and arms.

 

Flase.

Arms and legs are parts of the body that move the fastest and are hardest to hit.

Fighting techniques focus on gettinga hit, thus targeting parts of the body that you are most likely to hit. Torso and head and the center focus of swordplay.

 

i have a friend who was practicing kendo and sometimes we sparred for fun. the thing he told me, is that most of the things you can do with a sword in modern sports is limited by the rules and the teaching methods of swordplay is thus limited accordingly. in some rule free practice matches he had, he found that a most effective trick, was to attack the opponent's attack move instead of defending. and the most vulnerable spot for this kind of trick, was the hands as he showed me.

 

Koté!

[teknoman2]

i dont really know what the moves were called, it's been years since then and i wasnt all that interested in kendo itself, i just played at fake samurai duels using his practice swords (i was 15 at the time).

if i remember corectly however, i think he said in kendo you are allowed to attack from above or the sides, but cant use attacks that start from below... and that's were most of his hand breaking hits were coming from. also you have to make a clean swing that connects with force to score a point, so most attacks that could score you a kill in actual combat dont count in kendo

later i started tae kwon do and as i learned more of it, i realized that most techniques taught were just those that were allowed in a match. there were a myriad of possible moves i could think of that would be far more effective if allowed by the sport's rules. i also realized that chess rules apply even on a one on one match: he who has a move ready for every situation and can execute it with the right timing wins

[Walsingham]

Just finished a pen and paper Warhammer RPG campaign ( write up in due course) , and that's a brutal system. Every fight feels hard won. Even the short ones.

 

But players 'die'. That is bits come off and blood comes out, and before you know it they've deflated like a month old party balloon.

 

Warhammer gets round this by using Fate Points. You have a bunch of these. Less if you are a ponce like an elf. Fate points don't mean get out of jail free. But they do mean you don't die. You get scars, and hands missing and so on.

 

Anyone else know the system?

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Anyone else know the system?

 

Yup, it's nice, but I like the lower-powered 40k lines (Dark Heresy, Only War) more.

[jamoecw]

 

normal fighting (no poisons, magic, etc.), would make priority targets on the enemy things that allow them to keep fighting, such as legs and arms.

 

Flase.

Arms and legs are parts of the body that move the fastest and are hardest to hit.

Fighting techniques focus on gettinga hit, thus targeting parts of the body that you are most likely to hit. Torso and head and the center focus of swordplay.

 

unless you using your hands to use tools to defend yourself, then you are using their speed to put them in harm's way.  for leg injuries, the legs are farther from your defense tools, and the stay under your body most of the time, so a sweep connects with them instead of the easier to defend body more frequently given an even distribution.

 

you are right that torso and head are typical targets, yet most excavations yield results of the forward arm as the most injured section of the body.  most likely it is due to putting it in harms way, and the lack of the desire to trade a limb wound for a body wound given the choice (like moving your arms out of the way without moving the whole body out of the way in the process).

[anubite]

Arms are easy to intersect and always get in the way of any kind of attack.

 

Legs are poor defensive tools, despite what you might see in Dragon Ball Z, or something. You can't block with your shins, your thighs really can't take a hit. Trying to block with your legs will prove painful and most likely result in you winding up on the floor - there are various muscles and nerve groups that when stimulated will cause you to collapse under the right pressure/strain, especially in the back of the leg. This is why sweeps and throws that hook the leg are pretty effective.

 

Mobility is probably the most important defense you've got, second would be armor, third would be your arms. Attacking/defending with your legs is only going to work in a "pressure" sense - martial arts with fast kicks can keep people at a distance, but once bladed weapons get involved... 

[exodiark]

Don't worry OP, PE can be modded.
Besides, I think the hardest difficulty + Expert mode will accomodate this

[jamoecw]

Arms are easy to intersect and always get in the way of any kind of attack.

 

Legs are poor defensive tools, despite what you might see in Dragon Ball Z, or something. You can't block with your shins, your thighs really can't take a hit. Trying to block with your legs will prove painful and most likely result in you winding up on the floor - there are various muscles and nerve groups that when stimulated will cause you to collapse under the right pressure/strain, especially in the back of the leg. This is why sweeps and throws that hook the leg are pretty effective.

 

Mobility is probably the most important defense you've got, second would be armor, third would be your arms. Attacking/defending with your legs is only going to work in a "pressure" sense - martial arts with fast kicks can keep people at a distance, but once bladed weapons get involved... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ZXqeUO3kU

shins work for martial arts, but ya, not so good with bladed weapons.  the reason has to do with the angle the protect from, which is from below you, and they aren't as easy to articulate to odd angles as arms, so generally they are only good at blocking sweeping kicks.  kicks are powerful and have better range than punches, but swords trump both.