Fudge Playtest Report Part 3 (Combat)

Monday I ran another playtest of the roleplaying game I am working on that is based on Fudge and Fate.

I talked about the adventure I ran.
As well as some rules on the Characters.

Today's post is on Combat.

Combat Round
A combat round is six seconds with ten rounds in a minute.
In general characters can perform two actions one of which can be an attack (melee, missile, spell, item). In general the idea is that you can perform a move and then attack. Quaff a potion and attack and so on.

Character move in the order of their initiative roll. 4dF + Initiative. Or if you want they just move in the order of the their initiative score with dexterity breaking ties. I used the latter method for Monday's game.

Attacking

To attack with a melee or missile weapon is an opposed roll.

The attacker rolls 4dF+Dexterity+Skill.

For melee the defender has the options of blocking, parrying, or dodging.
Parrying the defender rolls 4dF+Dexterity+Weapon Skill+Shield Bonus
Blocking the defender rolls 4dF+Dexterity+Shield Skill+Shield Bonus
Dodging the defender roll 4dF+Dexterity+Acrobatics skill+Shield Bonus.

You can parry once, block once, and have unlimited dodges. Except that every dodge after the first one is at -1 accumulative. (-1 for the 2nd dodge, -2 for the 3rd dodge, and so on). You can only block or dodge missile fire.

If this sound familiar to GURPS it is. However what different compared to GURPS are maneuvers. In GURPS maneuvers are distinct actions to achieve a specific result. Maneuvers in the Majestic Realms RPG are lifted from Runequest II/Legends.

In Runequest you compared the degree of success c if the attacker and the defender have the same level of success, then combat proceeds. However if there a different whoever have the better degree of success is able to perform one or more special maneuvers. (Disarm, bypass armor, trip, etc).

I lifted this directly from Legend (Isn't the OGL great!) and applied this to game. I feel it really adds a lot to combat as the opposed rolls generate a richer set of results other than damage.

What I am not sure of is how to generate the number of maneuvers. Either to use the same degree of success as Runequest. Defining critical results as either a natural +4 or -4 or a +5 or greater degree of success.

Or just keep track of the relative degree of success from round to round allowing the person with a positive result to cash in for maneuvers. In previous playtest I allow players to hold their degree of success rather than just going for damage right away. It was felt that this represented gaining a positional advantage. The final damage roll represents exploiting the advent. The problem with this is what to do with the relative degree of success by the defender.

Damage and Injury
The degree of success is applied to the damage roll.

Attacker Damage = 4dF+Weapon Damage+Degree of Success+Strength+Scale.

The defender rolls his Damage Threshold which is

Defender Damage Threshold = 4DF+Fortitude+Armor+Scale.

If the attacker wins then injury results.

+1 to +2 a scratch
+3 to +4 a hurt wound
+5 to +6 a very hurt wound
+7 to +8 incapacitated.
+9 or greater dead.


A character can take 3 scratches, 2 hurts, 1 very hurt, 1 incapacitated and of course 1 death.

If you are hurt, you are a -1 to all rolls. Very hurt you are at -2 to all rolls.

If they are out of any level the damage is applied to the next worse level. So if you are out of hurts and you take another hurt it is applied as a very hurt wound.

So far the system feels fairly deadly.

Keeping Track

Finally I added a combat section to the characters that has everything pre-calculated. Hopefully this is to speed up play over the long term.

The total modifier for the Attacker is the Offensive Combat Value or OCV. For the Defender it is a the Defensive Combat Value or DCV. Yeah a little Hero System in those terms.

Next time the magic system.