Ranged combat mechanics

[Jarmo]

Ranged weapons are considered by most to be much easier to use (and abuse) than melee; ranged does not need any more inherent advantages than it already does.

 

But could use a bit more realism then? Because I don't think medieval melee saw a lot of archers going all legolas.

Maybe higher chances to miss or hit friendlies when shooting into a melee? Because you'd have a high chance to hit your pal in the back.

[anubite]

Project Eternity is not about fielding a medieval army. You'll have at most, what, eight, ten characters? If you have eight to ten soldiers on the battlefield, your archers are going to "go legolas". In real life, archers sat en masse behind fortifications or on hills/defensive positions and just rained arrows down on their opponents. They didn't give armies room to "fairly engage" them. Fighting swarms of archers is scarcely a "fun" tactic. It's cheap. But hell, it's effective and safe. That's why they used them and said, "**** honor." Nobody likes dying in melee combat.

 

There is another side of the problem you guys aren't thinking about. If we change the rules for ranged combat for our party members, we have to consider the ramifications of enemies too. Enemies will use bows. If enemy bow users miss signifiantly less than melee... then players will be forced to spend more resources reducing ranged damage than melee damage. A room full of archers is now suddenly a lot more powerful than a room full of swordsmen. Get what I'm saying? This kind of design is problematic to balance. It's better to keep things straight across the board.

 

I wouldn't mind it if the rules were, "Ranged characters cannot crit, but they cannot have glancing blows." But many players enjoy ranged crits, it's probably fun to them. So, no, let's not justify changes to game mechanics based on some skewed idea of reality (archers miss all the time, glancing blows can happen if the arrow head isn't perfect and cracks against armor, or if the attack simply hits an ear. The "chances" of that happening probably aren't THAT high but for the sake of balance they need to be. This isn't about realism, because in reality we didn't have roaming bands of adventurers slinging magic and solving quests for phat loot).

 

In reality, a archer probably one-shot-kills you at fifty paces with an arrow in your spleen. That's not fun, end of story.

Edited July 16, 2013 by anubite

[Jarmo]

 If enemy bow users miss signifiantly less than melee... then players will be forced to ...

 

 

The original suggestion in this thread was to change hitting so ranged characters would have less glancing hits and more misses, not the other way around. Something I could agree with. I'd further like, if when shooting into melee, a miss would have a chance to hit someone else in the melee, so shooting into brawl wouldn't be so tempting.

 

Archers would still fire at enemy archers or spellcasters, if any, or join the hand to hand combat.

At very high skill or confidence level, they could continue firing not worrying they'd hit friends.

 

Yes, it's a game and it's inherently going to be unrealistic.

But if a fun gameplay can be reached by either trying to figure out what's happening in real combat and modeling that,

or by pulling arbitrary rulesets out of ones butt and rolling with those, I'd strongly favour going with realism. 

[teknoman2]

if for ranged weapons they go with the idea of arcanum, where accuracy decreased if an ally was in the line of fire (with a chance to hit the ally if missed), it's fine, but simply changing the % of hits, glances and misses for bows for no other reason except them being bows, i dont like

[anubite]

Here is what I'd suggest - consistent global rules that are balanced. If the original suggestion is something I misread, fine, whatever, but changing the rules at all based on realism is always a bad decision.

 

If it's such a big deal, just make it a passive skill for archers you can pick at character generation, "You have no glancing shots, your miss and critical strike rate are increased."

[decado]

I'm just jumping in here, not replying to anyone in particular . . .

 

Firearms in the Renaissance (and earlier) were essentially terrible weapons.  They were clumsy, hard to load, dangerous to handle and most importantly, they were largely inaccurate at anything other than point-blank ranges.  It took centuries before they became viable enough to be used strategically instead of just tactically.  So in this regard, I think the way P:E is using them as an available choice for a character is pretty neat: they are point blank face smashers that excel in taking down magical veils and delivering gross but unfocused damage.

 

The reason that guns outpaced longbows really had nothing to do with their individual lethality, because from that standpoint longbows were probably the more dangerous of the two weapons for a least a century or two.  Guns became popular because they allowed any doofus with a minimum of training to be a ranged combatant. Whole companies of men could be raised, men who had never drawn a bow in their lives but were now competent ranged attackers who needed only a little bit of training. Guns essentially sacrificed quality for quantity.

Edited July 16, 2013 by decado

[Lephys]

Well, here's my response to the "are we just changing mechanics just 'cause of bows, beacause realism?" sentiment (which is a valid question, I believe):

 

We already have factors at play for different weapons and such, right? Probably? I mean, polearms have already been mentioned as having a longer range. And different weapons might interact with different armor types in various manners. Maybe that dagger vs. plate has a greater Glance-to-Hit ratio than a dagger versus leather? And I already made the reference to DnD critical chance variance (some weapons had a crit range of 18-20, some 19-20, and some just 20).

 

So, imagine that two different melee weapons have 2 different crit ranges. Maybe a Rapier has 90-100 (on the 1-100 P:E attack roll range), while a broadsword has 95-100. Well, even if you're treating ranged weapons "the same" as melee weapons, why wouldn't an arrow (or even a specific type of arrow) be able to have a different set of ranges than a broadsword, if a Rapier can?

 

In other words:

 

A) If you already have some variation between different melee weapons, then having variation for ranged weapons doesn't actually require any change to the system, so it can't possibly even be an arbitrary change just for ranged weapons' sake.

 

B) Range is already going to have to factor in, unlike with melee weapons, so the Miss-Graze-Hit-Crit range is going to have to adjust no matter what. At what point will it mimic the melee weapon range? Who knows. Maybe at 5-10 feet (1-2 "people spaces" or "squares") it'll actually be slightly less accurate? Then starting at 15 feet, you're at the 5%-Miss and 5%-Crit spot. Then, every 15 feet thereafter, it shifts? Or some other increment.

 

Anywho, the point is, unless you're treating every weapon in the game in exactly the same manner and aren't factoring the effects of range into ranged weapon accuracy at all, there's no possible way not to treat ranged weapons in a different manner. So, as for the "why don't we actually consider the differing chances arrows and the like have to graze and crit, etc." argument, and the "Don't just treat ranged weapons differently just because!" counter-argument, you're al-READY treating them differently. So, it's not really an insane consideration to be made.

 

I don't think anyone's suggesting ultra-intricate physics-equations to determine the actual chance and degree of armor piercing as dependent upon angle, force, arc, etc, and/or the statistical probability that a "miss" of the target would actually strike a limb, inadvertently.

 

Just, if any weapon is going to function in any way differently from any other weapon in the game, then that's already reason enough to at least consider whether another weapon should, and exactly how it should within the confines of the existing combat system (in this case, Miss-Graze-Hit-Crit), regardless of whether it's ranged or melee.

[anubite]

The difference is that melee weapons having more reach effects strategy in some capacity, longer reach weapons probably deal only a certain kind of damage or less of it in exchange for wider-area attacks or just longer reach.

 

Bows not glancing as much just seems pointless. It doesn't offer any inherent trade off, just a pure benefit. It's also very intuitive to have a stat for a weapon called "reach" whereas it's not intuitive to have special hit-chance mechanics for bows over other ranged weapons/attacks. If you're playing an RPG, mechanics need to be intuitive enough you can do calculations in your head so you can compare items efficiently.

 

Glancing blows only exist because players whined about too much missing, to begin with. Glancing blow is a compromise, even if it's unrealistic (how do you glancing blow with a two-handed axe? You either cleave somebody's arm in two or you don't).

Edited July 18, 2013 by anubite

[Lephys]

The difference is that melee weapons having more reach effects strategy in some capacity, longer reach weapons probably deal only a certain kind of damage or less of it in exchange for wider-area attacks or just longer reach.

Wasn't comparing range to reach. I was pointing out that using a spear from 2 "spaces" away (Josh even mentioned the ability to attack with such reach weapons from directly behind another ally who's melee-engaging the same target) would probably incur different chances of hitting and such. I.e., same mechanic, different values. It's already a dynamic mechanic.

 

Bows not glancing as much just seems pointless. It doesn't offer any inherent trade off, just a pure benefit. It's also very intuitive to have a stat for a weapon called "reach" whereas it's not intuitive to have special hit-chance mechanics for bows over other ranged weapons/attacks. If you're playing an RPG, mechanics need to be intuitive enough you can do calculations in your head so you can compare items efficiently.

I don't even understand this. Is it not intuitive to have a stat for ranged weapons called "range"? You think a shortbow can strike a target at 7,000 feet? Obviously range has to factor into your accuracy and overall chances of even feasibly hitting a target at a given distance. Does the simple existence of range-effects mean that we're giving bows special hit-chance mechanics? No. It's literally the same mechanic, interacting in a different way with different factors. And who the hell is talking about making bows different from other ranged weapons/attacks? Bows were just an example. Archery is one of the most common forms of ranged combat, especially in these games. Obviously the same thing would apply to throwing weapons, slings, guns, etc.

 

Glancing blows only exist because players whined about too much missing, to begin with. Glancing blow is a compromise, even if it's unrealistic (how do you glancing blow with a two-handed axe? You either cleave somebody's arm in two or you don't).

Negatory, Ghost Rider. Glancing blows exist because the game's designers wanted them to. The only thing that's even remotely accurate about your statement would be the return of full-misses, after its removal, and even THAT wasn't due to players whining too much. The player whining was considered, alongside actual results of testing the mechanic without misses. The results were even cited by Sawyer, and he posted several tables of test data revealing the amount of objective testing they do with everything.

 

And, how do you glancing blow with a two-handed axe? I dunno... how does someone get all but 1-inch of their body out of the way of an axe swing, so as to have the edge of their shoulder sliced through? What, just because it's a big, mighty weapon, and you're probably swinging it quite hard, you think everyone just either makes a perfect connection in the middle of a vital part of the body and elaborately splits the person in 2, or completely misses, coming nowhere close to the target's body with the axe swing? That's just silly.

 

As for the "ranged weapons having a smaller chance to glance is dumb" bit, think about something for a minute. If you miss someone with the tip of a sword, there's still the entire rest of the blade continuing in the direction of the swing. They have to dodge/deflect the whole sword blade. Same with pretty much any other weapon. Then, with an arrow, if you dodge the tip of an arrow, the rest of the arrow isn't really going to do anything that the tip didn't do. The space occupied by the threatening object for the duration of an attack is quite literally lesser than with a melee/bladed weapon. Even more so with a bullet from a gun or sling.

 

So, yes, if a longsword can glance off of armor with the entirety of its swung blade, then I'd say an arrow, bolt, or bullet would have a much smaller range of glancing.