Grid Attacks

So I'm doing a system with grid based fighting and I want to think up the kind of attacks that might be used. I know war games have stuff similar to this with their plastic attack cones and stuff, but I don't know if this stuff specifically has a name. I'm not looking for any kind of balance considerations either, just ideas on the kind of attacks and how they look. I'll give some examples.

Here's a thrust, such as a forward rapier stab. Black is attacker, red is the area hit.

A wedge, like a shotgun blast

A strike that hits a single block, like a downward pickax blow or maybe the stomp of a big critter.

Scythe attacks that fan a line across a 180 degree arc, advancing every turn.

a beam sweep, ie sweeping a projectile in front of you in an arc.

So kind of like this but with the attacker and the attack advancing forward each turn?

I tried this before, and it's a bloody nightmare to balance effect versus area.

I hope you do a better job though.

Do you want to go full touhou with it, and have patterns that move across the field?

How does initiative order work in your system?

Me too.

Thats a really interesting idea actually, a table top bullet hell. hmm. But no, not my idea for this. This is a game of fighting giant monsters and giant monster attacks are not just "attack whatever is adjacent" it is "Attack this area and anything in it."

Initiative is a bit weird; There are 10 "Time slots" per round and depending on how fast you are, you get 1 or more of those slots. So if your speed is 4, you go on slot 4. If its 8, you go before the speed 4 guy, on slot 8. And if you have 15, then you go at both 10 AND 5, doing two actions in one round. And some of these attacks take multiple actions to complete, so a monster could swing its tail halfway through a sweep on one action and then people could react and move out of the way before it finishes.

What happens at 20+ initiative

I like what you're telling me. It seems like a more elegant system than the tick based system that I had for my Monster Hunter system, which did it's job in that it emulated timing and aoe avoidance, but was clunky as all fuck.

Ah, so almost like FFX's turn system? I hope your math isn't too difficult with that.

For something like say, 26 you would do two actions on 10, one on 6.

I should also say that you can choose to slot yourself into any slot lower than your current ones. So a guy with 26 could instead act on 6,5, and 4 if he wants to see how things play out.

No idea, never played it. And I don't think it will be. The splitting attacks is only something done by NPC critters and its generally only gonna be in half or in thirds at worst.

>I don't know if this stuff specifically has a name
Templates. You're looking for grid templates.

That makes more sense.

I was just figuring there would be a disproportionate number of actions on the 10s

Actually, ruminating on that a little more, it adds a nice element of risk to the proceedings. Do I choose three numbers close together so I can get the big hits off more quickly, or do I pick numbers far apart so I have time to maneuver or counter?

How do you decide who picks first?

Line
Cone
Area of Effect
Inverted cone

You have options based on the emanation point and target location.

If a power emanates from the activation location, you have choices like
Single target
>close range to far range
>modifying legal targets for things such as a trajectory, for example a gunshot following a straight path that will be obstructed if other objects are in the line of sight or an arrow which can arc over things.

Area of Effect, with the AoE being based on the sources location
>Linear area, a straight line starting from the source out to a number of spaces
>Wave, an arc in front of the source
>Cone, a growing area in front of the source
>Burst, an area surrounding the source

Then you can use those Areas for ranged attacks

Then you have to modify all of that based on the strength of the ability and what you're targetting. - how far does it reach, does the power dwindle near the edges of the area, are you targeting an actual unit or are you targeting the ground around them, etc.

And you need to be able to codify all that information into an easy to read format

Personally, I recommend a 'tag' system, or keywords, like MtG uses.

For example, you have an attack that requires you to roll a d10 when you use that attack, and then depending on the result, the template moves X squares in the direction the dice denotes, 1 being north and then going clockwise, 9 and 10 being a direct hit.

Obviously including that rule in every attack that you want to scatter would be dumb as hell, so you just use the keyword 'Scatter X'.

Neat, thanks.

Whoever has the highest speed.

...Yes? Those also describe them.

Makes sense, standard tags for certain actions that are predefined. Would help in keeping templates less cluttered.

You mentioned that the system was designed with big monster fights involved. Does each section of a monster have it's own statblock and attack type, or is it all rolled into one? How do you handle the damage tracking?

Giant monsters, ie anything over 20 ft tall or so, are treated differently than more humanoid monsters. They don't follow the same stat setup because, well, trying to force godzilla to fit into a stat system designed for humans is completely nutterbutters. What am I gonna do, give him a strength of 39,000,000? Nah, thats silly.

They have a speed stat, as with players, to show their reactions. It gets smaller as they get bigger.
They have HP, which is broken down into individual sections of their body.
They have Reach, which can actually be several numbers since it is determined by the limbs used.
They have Movement, which is their number of moves on the map. Bigger creatures skip squares as they move because their stride is greater, so even if they have similar move, they cross greater distances.
They have turning, which determines how many move points (or whatever you wanna call it) they have to use to turn. Bigger creatures use more.
And they have their attacks, part of which you're seeing here. I treat their attacks like a level thing to avoid, so they don't roll, players roll to avoid.


They also have a body map which breaks them down into sections and sides of those sections. Players can climb them, and the sections they're on get assigned a grade each turn depending on whats going on. Higher grades use more stamina to keep hold to or move though. It's all very SOTC or Dragon's Dogma.

Rolling to avoid vs rolling to hit makes sense.

Alright, so monsters have a body map. How does the game handle multiple Z levels, exactly?

You've piqued my interest with this system, do you have any sort of playtest documentation available or is it still initial planning?

That was a hard point for a while, since mapping a giant moving thing seems like a nightmare. In the end I stepped back and thought about exactly what info this map needed to provide and came up with the idea that doing it textually would provide everything I need. For example, here is godzilla's "map" both in a failed image version and in the text version.

Right Leg (6 sides)
Right Foot
Right Ankle
Right Lower Shin
Right Upper shin
Right Knee
Right Lower Thigh
Right Upper Thigh

Left Leg (6 sides)
Left Foot
Left Ankle
Left Lower Shin
Left Upper shin
Left Knee
Left Lower Thigh
Left Upper Thigh

Tail (6 sides)
Tip
Tail section 1-16

Right Arm
Right hand
Right Wrist
Right lower Forearm
Right upper forearm
Right Elbow
Right Upper Arm
Right Shoulder

Left Arm
Left hand
Left Wrist
Left lower Forearm
Left upper forearm
Left Elbow
Left Upper Arm
Left Shoulder

Torso (10 sides. Back sides have lower grade due to spines acting as hand holds)
Pelvis
Abdomen
Lower Chest
Mid Chest
Upper chest

Neck
Lower Neck
Upper Neck

Head
Back of head
Muzzle

In that failed image every square is 10 feet. In the text version, each listed section is 20 feet. For things big enough to warrant it, 20 feet or so is the default section size. For smaller creatures, it tends to follow anatomy. So a cave troll might have its entire left arm be 1 section. Everything is considered to have 4 sides unless it is very fat, which is why Godzilla's torso there has 10 sides. Because a player is considered to be able to move from one section to another or one side to another during each action, and it would be real weird for someone to circumnavigate Godzilla's big gut in a few actions. And here are the grades


1. Flat
2.Hill or incline
3. Scramble, hands and feet but not a real climb yet. .
4.Easy non-vertical climb
5.Medium non-vertical climb
6.Hard non-vertical climb
7.Vertical with good hand holds
8.Vertical with Ok or scattered hand holds
9. Vertical with few or bad hand holds
10.Over-vertical good hand holds
11. Over-vertical with ok or scattered handholds
12. Over-vertical with few or bad handholds.


So, for instance, lets say that you are on the front of godzilla's knee. That gives me location and side, and I'll have an HP number associated with that section. And I'll know (because I can count up the sections) that you're roughly 90-100 feet off the ground. The grade, assuming he's standing, Will probably be 7 or 8, because its vertical but his skin looks pretty rough and easy to get a hand on. If it were furry, it would definitely be 7. And I can adjust the grade depending on what he's doing at the moment; or give players a test to hold on if he starts kicking or something.

The system lets me keep track of where people are and their difficulty of movement without requiring much fiddling or changing anything. It requires a lot of being able to visualize and think about how things would work, especially on weirder shaped monsters, but it works.

I represent them on the combat map as a single circular section with an arrow showing the facing. It might seem odd, because clearly godzilla should have a sort of fat circle footprint with a giant thing trailing behind to for the tail, but considering that the tail is moving and might be off the ground, its easier to just represent it as a single body moving around. If someone wants to jump on the tail, then they can just behind it and I give them some leeway on proximity.


And this is still all in initial development. I want to get it into at least a skeletal system with no real fluff before I test it and work from there.


The fluff, in case you're wondering, is 1970's cosmic horror where transcendental meditation accidently released untold horrors into the world. Think something like Bloodborne crossed with Monster Hunter set in a psychedelic nightmare. Its got Nixionite Crusaders attempting to purge the horrors, its got Hari Krishnas with enormous extradimensional fractal bird wings replacing their heads as the spawn of an outer being cracks out of them like an egg. It's even got self immolating monks who fight via kungfu that summons elder god fists. It's silly, but I like it.

Neat. It's a little clunky, but I like it.

I feel like you could potentially do something like this, instead. It's a little extra prepwork but I figure it's easier to understand. You could also take this, and add symbols to the corners of the squares to indicate special features, events, or terrain.

Maybe four grids would be better. Front, back, side, and then a top view, which would effectively allow you to cover the entire creature, and there's nothing stopping you from overlaying an image afterwards, even if that image is just a rough outline to match the boxy shape.

How do the grid-based attacks and the big-ass monsters interact with each other if you're climbing on top of them, incidentally?

Wrong image wew

Oh yeah man, it's clunky, but its a lot better than everything else I tried.

Your idea there is actually something I tried out, basically what you saw with that unfinished failed map. I stopped for one major reason: What happens when it moves? Or falls over? Or generally diverges from a nice static orientation. Then all those grade indicators get fucked. I mean, think about it like this.

Look at your forearm. Imagine you are a little person crawling on your forearm. Depending on how the arm is oriented and what side you're on, you have everything from grade 1 to grade 12 terrain.

I think that the map like that would work well as a sort of visual aid for players, but not mechanically on a living, moving creature. Like I would probably create a front and side drawing of the thing and present it to the players so they could get a good idea of what the creature looks like, and then actually run all the interactions using the text map.

I dunno, I think you might be overthinking it.

A red square when moving is still harder to cling onto than a green square when moving, but both are more difficult than when the creature is stationary.

I think some level of abstraction is necessary here, otherwise it quickly turns into a bookkeeping nightmare.

I guess we'll see once I start testing.

Ah but thats not the thing too.

Alright, let me explain a bit more. You ever played shadow of the colossus? Remeber the last boss when there's the section when you're on his arm? He would hold it up near his face to look at you and you could stand on top of it. Then he would roll it so that the top was facing the ground. That simple movement, the shifting of his arm, would shift the grade from flat (1) to probably 10 (over vertical, but with good fur to hold to).

Thats basically why I didn't go with the static map. Because green and red squares are not always green or red squares.

That system looks interesting.

Is there a pdf floating around?