Speculation on Combat with regards to Stats

[Woe]

Old school D and D is a simple and pretty effective way of working out combat resolution. Characters hit and miss, they kill things, they get injured, and they die. And if you add in more and more crunchy rules it often ends up meaning that they die less often. Which is less realistic all round.

Works for me!

[black1blade]

Damage reduction on armour would make sense and many system do it I believe. It is more about being able to deliver an effective hit that is expressed with the AC system.

[lars_alexander]

The use of certain weapons actually allows combatants with relatively low strength to inflict serious damage. Pick up a sharp object (knife or spear) and let the opponent run into it, slash here and there. So, DEX might be applicable. However, I interpret STR as the ability and skill (though it's not a skill score) to use muscle power, movement, techniques more effectively. DEX is more fine-motor skill related and comes in handy when switching weapons, applying dirty tricks or some special movement maneuvers.
I generally treat 1st-level characters as experienced and not as beginners. When hordes of 1st-level fighters fight each other they generally know what to do which is reflected in the 50% probability to hit an unarmored opponent and inflict lethal damage (1d6 points against a 1HD opponent) in a single round. So, any character who advances in experience levels is already way ahead of so many others.

Why is INT or WIS not used for missile attack modifiers? Some zen archers could argue that this might be relevant, too.

[spaceLem]

When it comes to D&D, I've pretty much always played it as is. However, were I to consider adding realism to the game, there are a few things I'd examine.

First: sword fighting. This has almost nothing to do with strength. D&D treats weapons like you're trying to chop down the mightiest tree, which might make sense for some monsters with really tough hides (e.g. dragon hide), but swords are not axes. And I'm not sure axes really benefit from strength much, either. In general the most strength does is allow you to keep going (fighting is really tiring), so maybe a moderate minimum strength to handle heavy weapons.

Instead, I'd use Dex to modify to-hit for all weapons, and let the actual properties of the weapon be the defining factor. This models the way that combat is mostly about trying to position your body through footwork, and your weapon in order to get the advantage when the opportunity presents itself. Maybe Wis could modify to-hit too, since reaction time is critical.

Next: armour. Much of your defensive potential comes from your weapon. Has D&D ever made a person with a sword harder to hit than a person without? Why not, does that even make a lick of sense? Okay, they're probably not great against arrows, but I'd definitely take a sword over a shield to defend myself. So really, weapons should have an AC bonus. And AC makes for a much more satisfying system than DR (*whiff* vs *dink*). And it does makes sense some of the time because if your weapon isn't about denting or puncturing armour, then it really is about finding that small hole.

There's lots more I could say, but this was starting to turn into an essay, and I don't know if any of these changes would actually improve gameplay, so I'm not implementing them myself.

[Solomoriah]

Another thing that seems a real can of worms to me is the whole armor thing. We all know that armor basically absorbs damage, it doesn't make it intrinsically harder to hit a person and in fact heavier armor, unless well designed, actually makes a person easier to hit.

You've made a rookie error here.

Medieval armor doesn't absorb damage, so much as it makes it harder to injure the wearer. Leather armor is stiffened by boiling it; plates are, obviously, already stiff, while chain mail basically resists cutting or stabbing. While chain mail might be considered to "absorb" damage, neither of the other two do that.

Hit a man in a suit of plate or plate and mail with a sword or axe. He does feel the impact, of course, but the plates spread the impact over a larger area, reducing possibly bone-breaking injuries to mere bruises. Is this absorbing damage? Maybe. But the real damage that a sword or axe is SUPPOSED to do is to hack away at your flesh, and the armor prevents that; thus, the effect really is more along the lines of avoiding injury rather than reducing it.

So you have a sword, let's say, and you're facing a man in plate mail to whom you wish to do harm. Hacking at his plate-covered chest or arms or legs or whatever isn't going to get you anywhere, so you go for the weak spots... the bits of softer chain mail at the joints, the eye-slit in his helmet, or whatever. The crucial bit here is, if you manage to penetrate his armor, you absolutely should do full damage.

A standard tactic for fighting armored opponents in the late middle ages was to shove a slim dagger, or poignard, through the opponent's eye-slit. Footmen would try to pull a knight from his horse and then attack him in that fashion, when their larger, more impressive weapons failed to actually injure him.

Such tactics don't map very well to a game like ours, but you see the point... if you penetrate the enemy's armor, you absolutely should do full damage. Systems that deduct points from the damage die rarely allow for that.

You have three systematic choices:

1) Armor reduces the chance to hit, or
2) Armor reduces the damage roll, or
3) Armor does some of both.

Relatively few systems do the 3rd option, as it's more complicated in play; the other two have deficiencies as simulations. BFRPG (and it's spiritual ancestors and numerous cousins) simply chose option 1, and there are good arguments that its deficiencies are less than those of option 2.

[Mint]

Lars Alexander said:
Why is INT or WIS not used for missile attack modifiers? Some zen archers could argue that this might be relevant, too.

Yeah. I wasn't going to bring that up directly because that was part of the whole thing where I really started thinking in depth about combat because, when you get right down to it, you could legitimately say that all stats contribute in some way to combat effectiveness. Even CHA because in some sense it's not just a measure of someone's ability to get what they want but their general strength of character as well. A person who is convinced that they can do something is much more likely to win a fight than a person who mopes about feeling sorry for themselves.

[Mint]

Solomoriah said:

You've made a rookie error here.

Medieval armor doesn't absorb damage, so much as it makes it harder to injure the wearer. Leather armor is stiffened by boiling it; plates are, obviously, already stiff, while chain mail basically resists cutting or stabbing. While chain mail might be considered to "absorb" damage, neither of the other two do that.

Sorry about that. More Mintish misuse of terms. I do know that armor doesn't technically absorb damage though, as you pointed out, it does in some cases disperse or defuse or deflect it (eg: like late breast plates were designed with pronounced curve to help deflect crossbow bolts and bullets instead of trying to add inches of metal - something you'd think tank designers of later centuries would have grasped earlier on than they did). And then there's the whole wear and tear factor of the armor and the weapons and the list goes on in an ever increasing spiral of trying to reach reality until it gets to the point of ridiculousness.

[Mint]

Oh, and as I said, this thread is just me speculating on things and not at all a bash on BFRPG. If it wasn't for BFRPG I'd have given up on the whole medieval rpg thing a while back.

[Solomoriah]

My still-in-process Realms of Wonder rules do apply damage reduction rather than damage avoidance; but that game has you rolling to hit against the opponent's Defense Rating, which improves with combat experience. So, unlike BFRPG, a successful hit means your weapon did touch the opponent, and a miss means it did not.

Just a different way of doing things.

[Dimirag]

You have three systematic choices:

1) Armor reduces the chance to hit, or
2) Armor reduces the damage roll, or
3) Armor does some of both.

Other choices include:
-Armor Saving Throw to negate or reduce the damage.
-Armor Hit Points that are lost first.
-Armor multiply your hit points.

I rule that all attack that hits up to AC+4 are non-lethal making defeat a more common thing among highly defensive opponents.

Has D&D ever made a person with a sword harder to hit than a person without?

Yes, it has, in several places:
-AC bonus from weapon proficiency
-Attack penalties on unarmed attacks vs armed opponents
-Weapon qualities

IIRC the combat system is based on two knights fighting each other in a time period where armors where defensive enough that shields where options and that parry was a minor thing (which was contemplated as part of the 1 minute melee).
But when you wanted to parry more efficiently you have that choice, which required you to be wielding a weapon able to parry the opponent attack.
The fighters are more on a "full attack" mode letting only their DEX and armor deal with the incoming blows rather than a 50/50 attack/defense combo.