Combat

Eh, while Shadowrun is slow and clunky it can and does offer interesting options in combat. And it can also, despite the clunk, be surprisingly fast to resolve if the dice go for or against you.

But yeah. Shadowrun is not a good game, despite the fun I've had with it, and its combat system leaves a lot to be desired.

>I keep throwing dice at the problem, but it wont go away! How many dicepools do we NEED?!
-Shadowrun developers meeting

Combat (IMO) isn't really the biggest part. For the most part I don't even mind the slog that Pathfinder is, it's mostly EVERTHING else which bugs me.

That said, two things I think are very important.

One is that there is a seamless transition from In combat actions and out of combat actions. Some games handle the two like different beasts, with jarring transitions. I wouldn't even call Pathfinder the biggest offender on that front. Mouseguard certainly is up in the running for first here.

Second, I rather have games that able to handle "Non-Combat" stress situations nicely. Not just social stuff, but like running a race for instance.

>/off-topic

I'm curious, could you go into what about combat/non-combat being distinct bothers you? It's actually something I like about systems, since it's usually a sign that the combat system is well crafted and does its job well, trying to treat combat with the same general approach you apply to non-combat often ends up feeling very unsatisfying to me. Not that you shouldn't have the two modes mirror one another, but the two different sorts of scenes do have different requirements for making them work, IMO.

What I consider important for it to be good: allows for quick decision making; scaling lethality; varied and distinct actions.
What I consider most often neglected: functionally distinct actions; ramifications of actions outside of using up and action and dealing damage; narrative involvement of mechanically interesting combat.

Different games deal with different parts of these things better. I usually prefer something that is simple enough on resolution but varied enough in impacts. Albeit that balance is a hard line to walk and most games lean more heavily to one or the other.

Bullshit. Combat mechanics are often the only real mechanics of any system, and their use is incredibly important to making a game work.

Combat mechanics are almost always how a group interacts with the world mechanically, everything else is usually roleplayed or otherwise dealt with simplistically.

I would disagree that faster pace removes tactical depth. In general tactical depth doesn't come from the roll and the resolution in the first place, but through action/item/environment/etc. use.

Specifically your "Fast v. Deep" isn't even accurate as you can structure a game with very clearly defined rules with varied interactions that still utilize quick decision making and simple to resolve rolls.

Variety of possible actions == closer to realistic variety of actions. I think that was the intent.

You have not been in combat if you feel that the transition from a non-combat situation into a combat situation is anything smooth or seamless. Let alone functionally similar.

>what is Gamist v. Narrativist goals

Honestly, it's important to realize that there should be situational detractors for treating any situation you shouldn't be ready for combat (such as interacting with a shop owner or bartender) but you've still got your hand axe or shotgun or whatever in hand because you have to be ready for combat at any second.

The more tactical depth there is in a combat system, the more things there are to consider for a player taking their turn in the combat, the slower the combat will be to resolve. This is a relationship you cannot avoid.

If a combat system is simple, you can just throw the dice, fluff and move on. If the combat system is complex, even if it conveys itself as intuitively as possible, there will still be a greater amount of time taken to consider, analyse and usually resolve a more complex action in the context.

Like I said, isn't a straight one to one, it's possible to speed up a combat system without losing depth, and vice versa, but once you get to a certain point there is a fundamental decision that needs to be made about which you favour. Although, it's also true that there are combat systems which include bullshit that doesn't add to the depth and just makes things slower to resolve, which is always just straight up bad.

...That just feels like a non-sequitur? I've never really been in a game where I felt that situation was happening, or was happening as a result of the system. I'm not really sure how it connects to the points made earlier in the thread?

I can't speak for what's objectively good or bad, but what I'm getting tired of is wearing down huge pools of hit points, and wasting actions with whiffed attacks. I've been playing some D&D 5e lately and while I've been having fun, I've also been deeply dissatisfied with how it does certain things (for example, caster supremacy still existing). I've also been reading 13th Age and I really like some of the things it does to keep players engaged, like the escalation die, and dealing damage even on a miss to keep the battle moving forward.

One thing I like about 5e is how the numbers stay small and characters grow outward almost as much as they grow upward. They still get more hit points, more attacks, and ways to deal more damage, but they also get more interesting things to do during combat. Of special note is the fighter archetype, the battlemaster, which I feel is an excellent but underutilized piece of design.

They have a list of maneuvers they can perform and a number of dice they spend to fuel those maneuvers. It's very smart design, because a player can set out those dice in front of them to show how many uses they have of those maneuvers, and those dice more often than not add damage to their attack.

The second thing that stands out to me is that the battlemaster decides to use a maneuver AFTER he sees whether or not he hits, which means that even if the target succeeded on a saving throw to resist whatever special effect the maneuver had, adding that die to the damage means it's never truly wasted, and it's never really possible to waste a maneuver. It's good design to make each attack and maneuver feel important.

For those of us who played the 5e playtests, it's hard to appreciate the battlemaster. The playtest version had their prototype superiority dice refresh every round, and seemed like an amazing model for an interesting, engaging to play Martial fighter instead of the watered down crap they eventually published.

I remember reading that all martials were going to have superiority dice and maneuvers, and the battlemaster was just going to be the best at it and have the most dice and maneuvers.

WOTC continues to find new and exciting ways to disappoint me, especially in how fervently and enthusiastically they fellate spellcasters. Caster supremacy is for-real driving me to play other games, or to gut 5e and pull out the bits I like to make something without caster supremacy.

>stand still and perform the basic attack until someone runs out of hit points
Guess what game I'm thinking of?

You don't have to let a player have 5 minutes to decide an action that should be occurring in a 3/6/10/whatever second time frame. Obv this is GM discretion, but I don't like people having all day to make a decision.

I make that clear from the beginning, though. Make your tactical considerations and decisions while other people are taking their turns if you need to. I don't think the end result is that you hit a point where speed/depth is lost in favor of depth/speed. Speed is always at the mercy of how you manage your game up to the point of calculating resolutions, which can be kept quick even with depth, depending on whether it is well baked into the system or not.

At the extreme:
>I have my axe in one hand and a shield in the other, but the bartender is totes okay with me having a threatening posture and picking up my flagon with my otherwise occupied hands
>best not put my axe away so that I can maximize my damage if an encounter occurs here
Because realistically you should have your weapon, etc. stowed and so if an encounter starts you have to start with a distinct reaction of going from "not combat" into "combat" and this means that your initial turn is reacting to contact first and being ready to fight second.

Obviously, if you are only having encounters where you are expecting to have them it might not be important to how the game is being run, but I've run into enough cases where someone goes "I attack them" and then get pissy when I tell them to roll an unarmed attack because they were at a bar. Or improvised if they want to use their drink.

I don't like combat as a transitional screen wipe any more than I like it as everyone is always fully prepared for combat.

Good ol' 3.PF, where if you're not a caster, you don't fucking matter, your abilities are an afterthought, and every splatbook is a bandage on a bullet wound for martials and a steroid shot for casters.

>Our game isn't broken, it's working exactly as intended! Caster supremacy doesn't exist! The martial players in my campaign have fun! Okay, maybe caster surpemacy exists, but it's not a problem in my campaign! You're reading too much into it! It's system mastery, you're just bad at the game!

>Good ol' 3.PF
Wrong.

It's WFRP.

But even with the most efficient group in the world, depth inherently means bookkeeping. More things to keep track of, to be aware of, to note down and monitor and adjust over the course of the fight. Adding depth innately increases complexity, which adds time. No matter how well you know a system or how quickly you can take account of it, it will still be more time than in a super rules light system where there is minimal decision making or things to keep track of.

And the latter thing just... Still confuses me? I've just never ran into that problem. I guess I've basically always been okay with abstracting it out unless there's a surprise round, in which case the rules already account for the players being caught by surprise and not being entirely ready for the fight, so I'm honestly not sure where the problem arises?

You tricked me, you sassy bastard!

>>Good combat mechanics
>Agency
>Active defenses
>Tactical strategery
>Armor which behaves like armor
Damage Reduction, not AC, you boobs
>Muscle-powered weapon damage scales with strength
>Different damage types with different applications
>Viability of weapon depends on context
No weapon should be
>Optional location targeting
>HP isn't bloated
(relatively speaking) Lower HP values that don't inflate arbitrarily is good for tension, and keeping encounters tight. Also, if everyone's HP grows at the same rate, you have much less balancing bullshit to worry about. I'm not saying HP has to be meat-points, but it typically works much better if it is.
>Ultimately, everything anyone rolls for directly helps the narrative of combat
>Die rolls have distinct or atomic meanings
Dice checks to beat AC are an example of how this is done poorly. One dice check means many things, potentially, between "couldn't penetrate the armor"; couldn't find a chink in the armor; you missed; he dodged; it glanced off; etc. It doesn't help the narrative at all.
>Optionally degrees of success

The dice mechanics matter less, but ones based on averages rather than flat distributions make for more consistent, and therefore more tactical play.

Basically GURPS. You can swap out or leave out parts of the rules which you don't like, don't apply, or are too crunchy for the game. You can add rules pretty seamlessly.

>>Armor which behaves like armor
>Damage Reduction, not AC, you boobs
It still burns my ass that 5e still has this. I've put up with it since 1995 when I first started playing and it's made no goddamn sense to me ever since.

I like Song of Swords. It obviously could use some tweaks, but I guess nothing's perfect.

>Weapon viability incomplete thought
No weapon should be the exactly correct choice in every single situation. Even halberds, which are cool as fuck, shouldn't be the perfect choice for every melee situation.

Can you clarify your point about dice rolls having distinct meanings?

I guess I'm curious because I've come to prefer the opposite, with actions being more broad and open to interpretation instead of always being precisely defined. Why do you think rigid definitions are helpful to a combat system or a narrative?

Leaving fluff open, providing mechanically interesting combat options while letting players describe them as suits the context and character, is something I've enjoyed as a player and I've seen people enjoy as a GM. This isn't even getting into systems like Legends of the Wulin, which rely on broad actions that can be fluffed a variety of ways, with the fluff actually keying into the mechanics of the action via the systems more narrative mechanics.

This all seems very simulationist and realistic in its perspective, rather than a more general point.

This is kind of broad but I always liked taking damage to reflect a decrease in general ability to function proportional to HP loss. I currently have a preference for this being accomplished by rolling for hit location and applying a specific penalty but a mere percentage based decrease equal to amount of health currently missing would also be acceptable. I just really hate the whole idea of there being nothing between perfectly fine and dead.

Pretty much sums up what I think.
It's why I play Hero System

Death spirals are appropriate to some games, but aren't to others. Generally they work best in grittier games, while in more over the top cinematic ones those kind of penalties tend to go against the intended tone of the system, hence why they're often not used.

I actually enjoy it when systems do the opposite, and have characters gain dicepool penalties as they get more beaten up. It's an interesting sort of comeback mechanic, and can link into the rules in some rather cool ways. Tenra Bansho Zero has a cool approach to this.

Each character has, in addition to an HP-esque pool of Vigor, a number of Wound boxes they can tick off instead of losing a point of HP. Depending on the highest wound box you've ticked off you get a dicepool bonus, but you also suffer long term consequences for the injury after the fight.

The most interesting part of this is the Dead box. Unless you have ticked it, your character cannot die in the combat. They might get killed after it, but without ticking it the worst that can happen to you is getting KO'd. Ticking the dead box gives you a massive dicepool bonus- But if you go down in the fight, you're dead. It's a really interesting decision to put in a players hands, power but at a terrible risk.

One idea I had for a homebrew was to use hit points, but when it hits 0, you don't fall unconscious and start dying. Instead, damage past 0 starts reducing your max, representing actually taking hits and getting wounded. Max HP returns as you rest and heal, representing the wounds healing.

Still not sure if I'd ever use it, or if it's even a good idea.

But you don't hit some arbitrary threshold because it is about the people playing it. Depth, for most people, assumes complexity which is more an issue with systems getting bloated due to disorganization. Something can have depth without extreme complexity due to reasonably understandable granularity.

Beyond pure narrative systems or simple "roll for success failure, no variable" system you are getting negligible time differences on your resolution. Adding a cover system doesn't make it take longer to read dice so long as it doesn't add a whole bunch of other steps for the sake of adding in more steps.

>And the latter thing just... Still confuses me?
The abstraction doesn't get across the actual tension of entering combat. There are people who are totally okay with abstracting all shop interactions (I roll to barter /checks shit on and off sheet) or other social encounters (does a 14 mean I have convinced her to trade me sex for secrets?) which is also sufficiently jarring to me. I'm sure the disconnect here is that what you look for in a game is markedly different from what I look for.

Allowing the players to manipulate their odds is very important. For instance, the GURPS Martial Arts supplement adds new maneuvers and options that a player can do in order to improve their odds of landing a solid hit. If a player knows the rules well enough, they can chain together different options and score a horrifying hit: like a feint (a contest of weapon skills, that if you win you subtract a margin from the opponent's defenses), followed by a riposte (take a penalty to your own parry stat, to decrease your opponent's defenses), followed by a deceptive strike (take a penalty to hit, to decrease your opponent's defenses) to almost guarantee a hit.

This, of course, has the effect of causing the game to slow down if a player wants to always make optimal strikes every turn. This can be avoided by making up some sort of "default attacks" that the players can choose if they can't think of anything, or give them 10 seconds to declare their action.

Adding a cover system does make it take longer to take your turn, though. You have to check line of sight, you have to clarify whether that counts as hard or soft cover, you have to check what the penalty is or if you can reduce/ignore it, etc etc. The relationship is not absolute, but the trend is a clear present design trait throughout basically all RPG's, and it's worth acknowledging and taking account of.

...And again, more confusion. I really enjoy RPing social downtime stuff or interactions with minor NPC's. I don't see any connection between that and having to waste a round of combat fiddling around rather than skipping straight to the actually enjoyable part, and I don't really see what you believe you're gaining from it.

I'm not saying that I'd never make it a factor, but I'd only do so if the specific context meant that it added something to the scene, when in most places I can't see it doing anything but being an odd stall in the pacing for no good reason.

>Muscle-powered weapon damage scales with strength
This is such a boring disconnect, though. Because the damage caused by most weapons isn't proportional to the strength of the wielder, and shouldn't scale linearly with it. The required force to deal damage is usually met through design of the weapon first and added muscle power is generally minor from a blow dealt in vacuum.

The application of strength is in the capacity to use a larger or otherwise cumbersome weapon or to deflect/block the blow of a large weapon.

Naw, the weapon variables is something that can even be brought up in very narrative driven combat systems because in order to have reasonable challenge one should have risk/reward built into decision making. Having a weapon that works perfectly in all cases removes that, whether or not you are simulating the real interaction or not.

It depends a lot on the game you are running thematically. But you can apply such things in any setting, really. I like to treat HP as your resilience to light damage or near misses depending on what it is, but when a player gets knocked unconscious there is a permanent effect that they can either learn to overcome or seek a way to get corrected. That, however, usually works better in highly lethal settings because that hit that brings you down really brings you down and the character (and player) keep feeling it.

This is interesting. In a sense you have double HP, but you are actually getting fucked up by hitting your lower portion. I would expect 0-to-Full is fast, while Reduced-to-Max is a longer healing time?

Not if cover is functionally built into a system? Like, I don't need to confirm line of sight when the enemy is taking cover behind an object that provides 50% cover. There is no such thing as "soft" or "hard" cover. There is only what will stop an attack and what won't. What won't is concealment. Which you can also include but it can just apply a different modifier. That's no different than any other variable applied.

If 50% cover is always 50% cover then it is exactly the same as including it with the calculation for what your weapon skill or whatever the enemy defense rating or whatever the system uses includes.

The mechanical design is more important than what is included. But that can still include depth. A good GM will ensure that it doesn't bog things down, will appropriately arbitrate any disagreement (and reliably answer the same way to future disagreement) and it doesn't require it to change the practical time to resolve an action. Unless you design your system to require that.

And my point about the entry into combat is that very few systems involve that. Yes, many are coming out of a heroic "everyone gets a spider sense on when to pull out your weapons" direction. But very few, even ones which try to treat things more realistically, actually relate entering combat to an appreciable fashion. There are a lot of actions involved with entering combat that disregarding that transition gloss over and go straight to trading hits to HP.

Curiosity: have you ever been in a gunfight before? A fist fight?

But there's no reason you can't add decision making in other ways.The sense of investment a player gets from their character having a distinctive weapon, along with how well it emulates the fiction, is more of a benefit than a loss IMO.

I just think you're being delusional. Everything you describe in your posts are things that will innately take more time to consider and resolve in combat. How much you integrate it doesn't matter, because you'll still need to take it into account, which will take more time than not having to do so. Adding depth does, at a very basic level, decrease the pace of a combat.

And, okay, right. So it's not a problem with the system, it's just a niche playstyle preference you have which you wish was better catered to, and has caused you problems in trying to adapt existing systems. That makes more sense.

There are no guns in my country, but I've had to fight with fists and sticks a few times. It's also entirely irrelevant to how I personally like combat in my games. I much more tend to the 'awesome fight scene from a movie' than 'realistic brawl'. But, again, that's just playstyle differences.

>Dice rolls have distinct/atomic meanings
The simplest reason is that it helps inexperienced GMs suck less in their narration, and gives players a consistent understanding and worldview. Experienced and good GMs can do wonders with broad rolls like in d20, but boring ones will give boring results, and scatterbrained ones won't know what to do with the information given them by the roll. Bad or weeb-y GMs will do too much with the information given, and narrate ridiculous eye-rolling shit. Bad GMs can fuck up with any system, but the less room a system gives them to fuck up, the better.

Basically, broad/fuzzy rolls are enough rope to hang crappy GMs, but good ones can work with it fine. Atomic rolls provide much less of that rope, and get in the way less. The tactical decisions translate directly to mechanical and narrative effects.

This happens to respond to also:
Ultimately, it depends on what someone wants from the system. LotW is inherently pretty goofy, with plenty of weeaboo fightan' magic, right? That is the tone of the system, and it does a good job of imparting that tone through mechanics. In the end, DnD's tone is pretty cartoony per its mechanical effects, but I'm not sure that this is the original intent.

I suppose I can see that, although I think that's more an argument to design with intent rather than doing so thoughtlessly, rather than saying you should use one over the other. Still, it's an interesting point I hadn't really considered before, and one that was well made. Thanks for putting the thought and time in to write it up, user.

If they're investing themselves in a weapon, then it isn't problematic to ensure that they invest in using that weapon how it will be beneficial to them. Otherwise their investment is a different coat of paint on 2d6+whatever instead of the other players 2d6+whatever. Personally if all the weapons are interchangeable I am not going to be narratively invested in that weapon. It would require getting some weapon with a unique and interesting effect.

Example: I do not have a temporal distinction between calculating 1d20+5 (die + skill) against 1d20+5-2-1 (die + skill - 50% cover - concealment) because the math isn't hard. That already exists through rote memorization. That is added depth based on positioning, but the time it takes for the move action and the attack action are the same.

>has caused you problems in trying to adapt existing systems.
No problems. It's an irritation because it is not thematically consistent with a lot of games that it should be in before I get to them. Thus, something "often neglected" per the OP.

So, I'll skip over the context of gunfights. In a fist fight, do you always know it is coming? Are you usually an instigator? Have you ever been sucker punched? These are rhetorical. The purpose is that between that fight "starting" and you actually throwing a punch or swinging a stick or bat or something there are a lot of decisions that can be made that can increase the depth, the level of accomplishment or excitement and the overall cinematic nature of an encounter.

I get disappointed that many PnP games could be automated spreadsheets of number comparisons + variables and that is why a screen wipe or assumed actions are less interesting to me and I feel detract from a good combat experience.

Weapons having distinct traits doesn't necessitate weapons not being useful in some contexts. Every weapon can be useful in every fight, while still having its own distinct mechanics, combat style and so on. Some might be more or less useful, but they can all still matter.

But in an actual practical situation the time taken for both won't be the same. You talking about it in abstract right now, but in practical terms that's just not the case, especially considering a group who isn't intimately familiar with the system. Every game is someone's first, assessing a game as if it's always played by an extremely experienced group just gives you a skewed perception of it.

>What makes for good combat mechanics in your opinion?
Combat mechanics that allow you to feel as though your actions have done something awesome while giving you a wealth of options for you to utilize during the actual fight.
>What's most often neglected and where have you seen it go right?
STR as a concept is by far the most underutilized resource in most fantasy games I've played. A dude who has 20 STR in D&D should be able to lift and toss a boulder and hit a stone wall with the force of a catapult or easily grab a dude by the arm and bat him around to smack his buddy in the face but instead, they only deal marginally more damage as a dagger that rolls full damage and can only carry 300 lbs. of bullshit.

The system I've played where it gets it right though IMO is Shadowrun, if only because a character with 10 STR can easily one-shot most unarmored creatures and adepts get a wealth of interesting abilities that actually make them feel like martial artists.

>So, I'll skip over the context of gunfights. In a fist fight, do you always know it is coming? Are you usually an instigator? Have you ever been sucker punched? These are rhetorical. The purpose is that between that fight "starting" and you actually throwing a punch or swinging a stick or bat or something there are a lot of decisions that can be made that can increase the depth, the level of accomplishment or excitement and the overall cinematic nature of an encounter.

>I get disappointed that many PnP games could be automated spreadsheets of number comparisons + variables and that is why a screen wipe or assumed actions are less interesting to me and I feel detract from a good combat experience.

I can see the sense in this, but it's also fair to say that it's only really suitable to a certain genre and tone. More cinematic, over the top or abstract/narrative games wouldn't benefit from this, and I think it's understandable why most games don't emphasise it in the way you'd prefer.

Yes and no. A bow is inherently not useful once an antagonist is close enough that you can no longer draw it and release. Obviously you can use it to hit them with as is a popular presentation, but that is neither your best option nor what the bow was designed for. In a similar regard. A knife used at too long of reach can still cut or stab someone, but it will not be effective. You may as well be slashing air. To use the halberd example you result with something similar to the bow. Once someone has negated your reach benefit, the weapons primary purpose has been circumvented and is likely being used in a many counter to the weapons benefit. You are better off dropping the halberd and drawing a better suited secondary weapon than continuing to swing it around.

It doesn't make the halberd disappear, but you're no longer going to be getting the same benefits you would using it at its intended engagement range.

If that is the argument for time, even a d6 "hit on 5+" can be substantially difficult to parse out. At which case speed of system matters even less. The speed of the system will always be the speed of the people involved with it.

It also depends on what you mean by cinematic. If I wanted to do a WWII game like Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers I could make a definite argument for combat stress and the importance of non-engagement actions to support an otherwise cinematic experience. In the same way a John Woo inspired "I am Inspector Bourbon" shoot out your choice of dramatic movement is even more important than the act of shooting in combat, so why not underscore that?

Most narrative games I've played don't have it built into the system but do encourage it through narration. Because they are abstracting location you're more likely to take actions outside of just direct engagement because "I punch him for 1d6 damage" is not and interesting narrative. Games that focus on describing things out actually more often get that worked in, but that is because they aren't relying on a threat of enemy action to counter their maximizing damage per turn to finish out the encounter.

>A dude who has 20 STR in D&D should be able to . . .
It is really sad that they never identified that a martial character in DnD should be doing crazy ass shit that competes with the caster power levels. Definitely not as encouraged in the system as it should be.

>I would expect 0-to-Full is fast, while Reduced-to-Max is a longer healing time?

That was something I was considering, yeah. Regular HP would come back after a few minutes, since all you're doing is catching your breath and working out soreness from the bumps and bruises of blocking and dodging. Restoring your max HP requires rest (which takes days, if not weeks or months if we're going gritty), magic (if it's fantasy), or advanced medical technology (if it's cyberpunk or scifi).

It's the kind of system that would clearly and obviously show that hit points are not just "meat points" but it needs some work before it becomes a usable mechanic, and I'd need to work out what kind of tone I want for the game in which I use it.

>>Muscle-powered weapons
>linear scaling is boring
True. Don't scale linearly, if it can be reasonably achieved in some other, interesting way. It should still scale, though. A sword which always does 1d8 damage, no matter how strong or skilled the wielder, is even worse. Adding dice to bell-curves is cool. Logarithmic scaling can be interesting. Distinction between thrusting and swinging, and their scaling, is patrician-tier.

>Damage caused isn't proportionate to the strength of the wielder
What is force = mass * speed^2
Muscles make it easier to accelerate a weapon. Getting heavier weapon will do less to increase damage than getting stronger and faster with your current weapon will. There is, of course, some threshold where the mass is ideal, neither too light to be meaningless nor too heavy to swing quickly. Also, leverage helps a lot; it is part of why polaxes are so fucking powerful, and why swords were balanced around the hilt to aid control over acceleration.

>Required force met through design
What are damage types which mechanically convey these differences
What are flat damage bonuses which mechanically convey design
An axe, warhammer, or falchion, swung properly, should impart more damage than an estoc or rapier being swung, and the reverse is true for thrusting. You don't need much force to damage flesh, so among the same class of weapon it would likely be design which makes one better than another. For any given weapon, strength absolutely still amplifies this.

Strength obviously enables using heavier weapons more effectively, but the reason you'd choose those weapons is for their tactical utility. Yes, something with high inertia is good for blocking. These all come with trade-offs, however. If you can move a warhammer fast enough, you might as well use it, but against bare flesh a cutting edge or impaling body is still more useful.

Would you treat magic/technology healing as identify to rested healing? Probably also a tonal question. But something that seemed like an interesting consideration. Like, can someone dispel your magical healing if you haven't had enough time that your body would naturally heal? Is there anything that would counter that with technology?

>always does 1d8 damage
Oh, that's a disgusting thought one way or another. My point was more about scaling with diminishing returns. If you're working on a setting where damage is trying to be relatively realistic you eventually hit a point with any type of weapon where applying more force doesn't deal appreciable more damage.

The amount of force necessary to break skin, or break a bone, or what have you doesn't change with the force you're applying and the trauma probably won't increase with a stronger swing or thrust. More specifically a thrust, due to the centralized damage being dealt and the fact that the wound is based entirely on the weapon. Which is why some weapons in DnD go with a DEX instead of STR design. But that's overall disappointing in implementation due to the very abstract function of everything in that game.

The solution of shifting damage types and having strength increasingly benefit certain damage types, which I think may have been what you were getting at, is an elegant way to include strength as a benefit, but it isn't a linear change of potential damage in everything.

You know what is a good, if a bit abstract, way to deal with this chunkiness of damage?
First of all, don't do two rolls per attack. It's retarded and makes combat slower than necessary.
What you should do is bake both the hit check and damage into one roll. Introduce damage scaling from the numerical value of your hit roll, like it is done in 13th age, but add granularity. It won't work for certain weapons, but it will for those which it is beneficial for.

Let's do an e.g. for d20. You have your fighter, he has a d8+strmod greatsword. Now you roll your d20 with whatever modifiers vs TN. Then look at the degree of success or failure. Let's renormalise (and buff a bit) the d8+strmod to {1, 5, 8}+strmod. 1 is the lower bound, 5 is the zero value, 8 is the upper bound. If your degree of success is 0 (your roll plus mods = TN), you do 5+strmod. If your degree of success is -3, do 2+strmod damage.

It may sound clunky, but mind you, it's the most granular option out there. It also can make you do 0 damage. Crits may be appended as 16+strmod on natural 20s.

This way your damage depends on your stats, the stats of enemies and circumstances. And this dependence is not that long-ass "expected average over 10000 rolls" bullshit. It actually is present in your every roll.

It will work wonders for melee weapons, because you get this granularity which you can build narrative upon. Also it does make sense that the better, the more accurate your hit is, the more damage you do. Have you ever got a natural 19 on the hit roll only to roll 1 for damage moments later? "You happened to hit your enemy's arteria, but only skin-deep". Ridiculous.

I'm not sure about ranged weapons, those should actually deal damage in the chunky way: you either hit or not.

I guess what he means that going in-and-out-of combat should be fluid, I can get that, since you may not want an abrupt transition from one set of mechanics to another whenever a fight happens, because it might be just a couple swings at eachother before it calms down and you're switching gears again. It's definitely something you want if you're running enemies and encounters that are more complex than "X number of hostile Y enemies appear, now fight". If, for example you get into a random fistfight that ends after a few landed or missed punches, or use guerilla tactics where you get into a scuffle and leg it real quick, or are fighting in more interesting and interactive environment, *while* trying to solve a puzzle.

Continuing, you then can classify damage sources based on chunkiness. Say, if it's a huge-ass fireball, you may leave it as a hit or miss thing.
If it's shit like hundreds of tiny magic missiles, then add granularity however you wish.

Also, you are not bound to the dice sizes now. The {1,5,8} from above might as well have been {2,4,9}. Different properties for different weapons. Does it look scary and mathy? Yes. Will an average Joe prefer 5e to this? Absolutely yes. Is it realistically possible to spark an average Joe's interest in something other than 5e? Doubt it.

Now, the d20 implementation is still waaaay too clunky to my tastes, so I'll be now introducing the 3d6 variant.

You roll 3d6 to hit. You then look at the values of individual d6s. Let's name them L (low), M (middle) and H (high).
The d8+strmod greatsword now can be an [H]+strmod (average 4.96).
Because this is 3d6, the way that modifiers interact with the resolution mechanic is such that better skilled characters will hit reliably, while unskilled characters won't basically at all. There's no DnD syndrome when you are unskilled, but get lured by that baked-in 30% chance and still fail 70% of times leading to frustration. 3d6 would make players adequately judge their capabilities, and instead of bashing with your staff repeatedly with 30% to hit, maybe think laterally.

Generally, upsides of 3d6 are that when you factor in all the variables, a +1 modifier will have the greatest impact around base 50% success chance and the lesser the closer you are to the extremes of 0 and 100. Wonderful.

I was working on a system similar for firearms, but it was not based on d20. But that your actual roll included your hit and you damage. It was convoluted, but aspects of it could be reworked. You would need to abstract the accuracy of the hit to the level of importance to where it impacted.

I would probably structure it with a the zero value being higher base damage and a negative hit value dealing no damage. This narrows the scope of how much damage you do (resembles actually having an arrow or bullet enter you, it's bad) but makes for higher risk higher reward.

I don't think DnD has reasonable damage values for most of their weapons for it to really be the most suggestible way to go, though.

It still keeps it abstract but avoids my desire to include vital hits.

>Scaling with diminishing returns
Patrician taste. Get you some square-cube law type shit.
>Thrust should scale differently (more slowly) than swinging
Yep. GURPS does that.
>DnD is a mess
Also yes.

>... you eventually hit a point with any type of weapon where applying more force doesn't deal appreciable more damage.
Complex, depends on scale and what you're damaging and how. Some poor sod can't get any more dead from a giant's club falling over on them or the giant actively squashing them, true. Within the context of humans fighting other humans in melee with conventional weapons, though? Halfthor Bjornsson will absolutely wreck your day with any weapon way worse than Schwarzenegger could.

At some point you are just wasting excess force for no return, but for human-ish characters the upper bounds of their strength is not past that point.

DESU, I was never concerned with minute realism and how well does a system simulate whatever details. But I do value an elegant, quick, balanced and tactically deep combat system that is able to tell me 'you are good at X'. Even if it doesn't make any fucking sense in the 'simulationist' sense.

The gripes I have with DnD (let's say 3.5/5) is that:
1. You miss too often, and a miss is 'nothing happened'. It's dumb and ruins momentum.
2. It's actually a steaming hot pile of mess in the abstract sense. Inelegant, arbitrary, unbalanced, trying too hard to sell itself. Nothing wrong with that per se, it's just money-makers catering to those who pay.

For the record, I think you're spot-on.

>Shadowrun is not a good game
I think it is and the enduring popularity of the game proves it to be, to some extent.

>I rather have games that able to handle "Non-Combat" stress situations nicely. Not just social stuff, but like running a race for instance.
I actually prefer non-standardized mechanical resolution methods rather than one method of resolving anything (like a race).

>Complex
Doesn't even start on it.

Due to the way the human body takes damage, even in the middling upper bounds of general human strength if you're playing with realistic lethality you really do hit a plateau. Most impacts will be fucking someone up, but most of it is recoverable.

Causing someone to bleed out isn't gonna be based on the force of the impact but on the location. Breaking a bone or crushing an organ is where you have a maximum resiliency that is overcome by most weapons. Someone with more strength will more easily hit those thresholds. But, as with ballistics, unless it is a CNS hit most things can be recovered from. Bjornsson will have a much easier time doing most of the more extreme levels of damage than Schwarzenegger, but even then it will be minimal in the actual trauma caused.

That's part of why I prefer it as diminishing returns, because a bigger person can break you more easily, but it's still really hard to break someone more than a human body can break.

Now, if the game you are playing has any flash put above of realism (specifically in the way trauma leads to organ failures and loss of life), then definitely you can push those upper bounds. I actually really like super powered fisticuffs and melees for that reason. I like the increased brutality you can work in.

There is a third way (between hit points and a straight death spiral): a mitigated death spiral. A mitigated death spiral allows you to negate hits with metacurrency until you run out ot of luck and start taking wounds and wound penalties. According to my analysis, this approach captures cinematic action the most faithfully. Action heroes rarely get wounded and when they do it generally only underlines their heroic nature when they prevail in spite of.
As for the approach you outlined that is great but not all cinematic action works like that. If you aspire after Game of Thrones, for example, the first serious wound means that you're as good as dead.

Sure. Though now the scope has changed away from strength and how it relates to damage, and moved toward the location and type of damage, as well as injury and recovery. You use those systems in tandem to define lethality in combat. For rules-light games, I might ignore damage type and location, but not strength-scaling. The scaling of strength on damage is not how you impart that nuance; it's a different scope and mechanical system entirely.

I'm pretty sure we're on as close the same page as can be, at this point.

>Reasonably believable simulationist combat mechanics
Or
>High lethality, mechanics are quick to resolve, combat is over in one or two rounds and surprise is close to a guaranteed win
Or
>Medium lethality, highly tactical play

I will not tolerate padded sumo bullshit.

Yeah. I think that is a fair assessment. And most folks really don't want to get into damage type and location because scary levels of crunch. It is always nice to get to flesh out concepts that I know in my head but rarely come up in casual conversation. So, thank you kind person.

>Halfthor Bjornsson will absolutely wreck your day with any weapon way worse than Schwarzenegger could.
I would like to challenge that notion. In fact, I would argue that in movies a simple stab with a dagger ist just as lethal as being struck by a two-handed sword in the hands of a behemoth. Even worse: attacks by giant creatures, such as dragons, frequently end in characters merely getting tossed away and to the ground.

>ist
Are you German, or is it a misspelt "isn't"?

>What makes for good combat mechanics in your opinion?
Meaningful damage without HP bloat.
Nobody likes stabbing someone in the face 10 times before the other guy starts getting nervous. It's boring, it makes combat drag on, and makes numbers difficult to implement because of all the extra combat hours.
One, two hits stress-free tops before penalties and more meaningful shit starts rolling in. Honestly, DtD does a pretty good job of this. It has a couple ways to negate damage, which make taking damage that much more unusual, which combined with HP levels that generally don't increase substantially from creation, means taking damage is both noteworthy and anxiety inducing, but being attacked is still a pretty calm experience. Things die very quickly if they are very unlucky or helpless.

>What's most often neglected
Consequences and Opportunity cost. Most games offer little incentive to NOT stab every bad guy in the face as many times as possible, and usually encourage it. This is GM-side, but a game where players are regularly encouraged and rewarded for not fighting something, and can be punished in a way that doesn't seem dumb, arbitrary, and wrist-slappy whether by way of making people not trust the party, or by letting a competing band of adventurers swipe the goodies while the players were committing ogre genocide

I love games where it’s resolved in a single roll or two.

>Argument to design and intent
Sure. Opinion thread has opinions. It is my opinion that what I advocate in atomic or distinct rolls is superior to broad rolls as a baseline, for the reasons I stated, and others I didn't have space to go over. My experience has shown me that the more a roll guides the narrative, the better. This is in the context of once having been a crappy GM and not being so crappy anymore, but still not terribly creative, as well as being hostage to bad and weeb GMs.

Again in tone and intent of design. LotW's rolls seem to wholly guide the narrative, but you don't declare tactical intent. The tactical decisions are in how you use the rolls, what you give and take in narrative and mechanical power to control conflict. It plays and narrates very much like wuxia as a result. Importantly, it is not really comparable with DnD and GURPS in this respect.

In GURPS and DnD both, you declare tactical intent and receive narrative results from the rolls. The difference is largely in the discrete rolls.
>DnD
Attacking, defending, and armor are all balled into one roll, damage into another.
To narrate this consistently or effectively, all the stats need to be kept in one's head so as to relay the most appropriate or dramatic result from the roll.
One failure or success has many possible results.
Tactics+stats+drama+roll: (Fuzzy) Narrative
>GURPS
Attacking and defending have two different rolls, both with tactical agency. Armor affects damage.
Ultimately, you have two skill rolls instead of one, but _what_ they are skill rolls for affects the narrative directly. Each failure or success affects a discrete part of the narrative. Narrative consistency is a function of the choices made by the players, narrowing the scope of narrative results in the process. There is no mental upkeep, just a creative choice of how to word it.
Tactical+roll:Narrative

It has also been my experience that limitation- narrative scope in this case -breeds creativity.

The best combat system would probably find a good balance between depth and speed. The ability to make interesting decisions and resolve them fast. Where that exact balance lies will probably vary between groups and game styles, though.

I have found Strike! to strike a good balance for me, as it's tactical and hella fast.

It was meant to be an 'is'.

You were an excellent conversation, user! It is satisfying to talk about the consequences of design like this. This is the part where I shill GURPS to you, because you can totally ignore all the super crunchy parts but still keep the strength scaling and it works fine. I would try to avoid attempting to patch holes in the DnD mechanics or plastering over rough parts; it'll just look ugly and taste bad. Skim through pic related, licensed for free distribution on forums. Notice the (lite) combat, wounding, and strength scaling.

>can't into reading comprehension
Granted, I probably should have said "...worse than Schwarzenegger could with the same weapon.", but that was implied in the context. We're controlling variables to talk about comparable conditions, not completely different wounds. Yes, a bleeding dagger wound would likely be as lethal as a deadly sword-strike. That's not even in the same class of weapon anymore though, so strength isn't a useful axis to consider in that graph.

Well, you have to ask the question how much of the damage of a sword cut comes from the strength of its wielder though. I would argue that being very strong doesn't cause more damage at all. Having a good sword technique, having proper edge alignment, is far more relevant.
Strength is important for blunt weapon damage, less so for cut or thrust weapons.

>technique is important
No shit. Landing a telling blow is baked into the skill check to hit the fucker. Landing a strong blow is the second part of things. Strength doesn't mean shit if you barely clip the dude, but it provides a much higher ceiling for damage potential you fucking walnut. A weakling weighing 98 pounds who swings a sword with good technique will never have the damage potential as a beefcake barbarian who swings a sword with good technique.

What the fuck. You're right, that d20 implementation is clunky as hell and it needs to sit in a corner and think of what it did. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of adding the margin of success on the to-hit roll to the damage roll, that's cool.

But you know what baffles me? It has nothing to do with armor. It does absolutely fuck-all with how fucking broken AC is in every edition of DnD. The reason I bring this up is because that was the complaint of the user to whom you were responding.

wth, user

>A weakling weighing 98 pounds who swings a sword with good technique will never have the damage potential as a beefcake barbarian who swings a sword with good technique.
The damage potential in either case is death. Also, note my phrasing
>being very strong doesn't cause more damage at all
That has nothing to do with being very weak. I am saying it's sufficient to be somewhat athletic and skillful with the blade. And even that ignores that you don't necessarily cleave with a sword.

>First of all, don't do two rolls per attack. It's retarded and makes combat slower than necessary.
This is a meme. The average individual combat turn takes about 1 to 2 minutes. What percentage of that, in your estimation, is consumed by taking an additional roll for damage? Or, on top of that, an additional roll for parry for a grand total of up to 3 rolls for attack resolution?
In my mind, all of this is misoptimization. Just like the people who think d20 is superior to 3d6 because 3d6 takes longer to resolve with all the adding up and shit.

>It is sufficient to be somewhat athletic and skillful with a blade
The most unequivocally correct thing you've said in this exchange. It is not necessary to be the chad barbarian to kill someone, and that wasn't the point of the conversation or any of its component statements to which you originally replied.

>How much damage from strength, what about technique
Is like saying
>How much damage from technique, what about sharpness, material, serrations, curve, surface area
It is not in the same scope. In the context where you interjected, I was talking about strength:damage scaling. This ignores all other considerations.

Strength -> acceleration -> force -> raw damage.

Wounding damage is a different scope entirely, and that's what you want to discuss.

Assuming all other things are equal, including weapon, technique, etc, the stronger person has better potential to impart more force and resultant damage. If you want to get grittier and talk about wounds, damage type, location damage, and the resultant trauma of an attack, then you need to discuss other mechanical systems in addition to damage imparted by strength. Without isolating the different variables, the discussion isn't meaningful.

That's ultimately what I'm so grouchy about. The worlds strongest man would still have greater potential for raw damage than the runner up. This shouldn't be an issue. It's probably overkill on the average white-collar worker, but to say that it's meaninglessly strong when other beefy guys exist is foolish.

Thrusting damage as a function of strength should climb slower than swing damage does, no doubt. As a result, this would make an above-average fighter and a beefy barb competitive with thrusting swords. The smaller guy would never hope to output the same kind of damage with a swinging strike, though.

>In my mind, all of this is misoptimization.

What benefit does rolling multiple times have? Yeah, it's a small time-sink, but why have it at all?

>Just like the people who think d20 is superior to 3d6 because 3d6 takes longer to resolve with all the adding up and shit.

d20 is superior to 3d6 because it's easier to adjust the math to it to do what you, as a designer, want it to do, and is also faster to calculate probabilities for the player on the fly.

Blades in the Dark is great

Making it an interesting minigame

>Strength -> acceleration -> force -> raw damage.
You're still talking cleaving only. Thrusting through someone is surprisingly easy, draw or push cuts don't rely on high strength at all. But then again cleaving is fine in the context of cinematic fantasy combat. You got to have to ask though if the damage potential of an average movie hero is lower than that of a strong one. Does Boromir amputate less limbs than Conan due to the difference in build? I consider that doubtful, it's probably more the weapon type that matters.

Song of Swords
/thread

>What benefit does rolling multiple times have? Yeah, it's a small time-sink, but why have it at all?
What you fail to realize is that a good attack roll is first for overcoming the defenses. The higher you are the more skillful your are exploiting a vulnerability, a moment of distraction. It does not necessarily equate to superior hit placement. A critical success is both.

You dense motherfucker.
No, I'm not still talking about cleaving only. Read my fucking words and pay attention. Strength increases the capacity for acceleration and control of momentum and inertia in all contexts. In the context of thrusting, the body mechanics required mean that strength increases potential thrusting damage less than it does swinging damage, but it still increases it.

>Damage potential of an average movie hero is lower than a strong one
Yes, at least for good movies that aren't popcorn schlock. Boromir and Conan, all other things being equal, the two of them using the same weapon the same way, Conan will amputate limbs more frequently. In movies where all that matters is that they look cool, it isn't a useful discussion.

Weapon damage potential should increase with strength. Not necessarily linearly, and not the same for thrusting vs swinging.

You're still not separating your thoughts into discrete systems. Damage as it scales with strength, especially the different scales of thrusting and swinging damage, is the most basic way to handle increases in raw damage. It is at the core of my discussion. If you want to handle wounding damage and the difference between impaling and cutting, then you need to add damage types. If you want to handle the injury to specific parts of the body and susceptibility to damage types, you need location damage. If you want to handle physical trauma and recovery, then that's another discrete system. You use all of that crunch together to handle the whole. Get you a good system which does this, certainly not DnD.

DnD gives a linear bonus for your strength mod and it kind of sort of works, except for where there is HP bloat. However, it does that poorly and it doesn't handle any of the rest of it at all in the core rules except for borderline meaningless damage type and very basic hp recovery. Damage type in DnD is fucking dumb, too, being almost entirely used for fantasy immunity to certain kinds of damage.

FAST FAST FAST

Speed of resolution is #1.

Fucking autists with their muh tactical depth and simulation. Roll to hit and roll to damage and roll to dodge and roll to soak. Fuck off. I want combats to be resolved quickly so I can spend more time using the surroundings strategically to win before the fight even starts.

>You dense motherfucker.
>No, I'm not still talking about cleaving only. Read my fucking words and pay attention. Strength increases the capacity for acceleration and control of momentum and inertia in all contexts.
And I informed you already that it's of little relevance for standard cut and thrust attacks. Moreover, pure muscle mass does not translate into faster acceleration, more agile fighters than Schwarzenegger or the Mountain can reach higher speeds.

>Read my fucking words and pay attention.
I read them and dismissed them because the actual difference is not very pronounced. Sean Bean can cut his medium-rare steak as well as Schwarzenegger for all practical purposes.

>Boromir and Conan, all other things being equal, the two of them using the same weapon the same way, Conan will amputate limbs more frequently.
That's what you think but in actually their physique bears has no relevance to that. The most impact has genre, the second the size of the weapon and the third the skill of the fighter in that order.
Anyway, I am breaking off this conversation here, I realized it's useless.

Ok I've been trying to post a new thread but I keep getting an "upload failed" whenever I try to upload an image regardless of which browser I use so I'll just post this here because it's relevant.

I was reading through the rulebook of Bolt Action (the mini wargame) for shits and giggles (don't even own any minis, just been reading wargame PDFs lately)

One thing that struck me as odd is that Automatic rifles and LMGs have much longer range than rifles. In fact it doesn't strike me as odd as it does just downright wrong. Now I know that the game is intended not to get bogged down in intricate differences between weapons, which is why they just picked a "rifles" category instead of getting into the debate over weather british .303 had better or worse ballistics than 8mm mauser or whatever. But I think it's safe to say that generally speaking, rifles in WW2 were more suited toward taking long shots than LMGs and Automatic rifles were. I mean sure there are some weird exceptions like the Bren Gun vs. a Carcano or a Mosin, but for the most part I think that a rifle would be much better suited for taking long shots than an LMGor an automatic rifle. Not to mention there doesn't seem to be any penalty on LMGs for advancing (maybe there is and I missed it) and firing.

I mean if you had a squad of Americans that needed to drill a jap from 500m away I have no doubt in my mind that they would use a rifle to get the job done, not a BAR. Am I wrong?

Amazing, everything you just said is wrong. You haven't informed me of anything, you smarmy ass. You have demonstrated a meme-informed and demonstrably incorrect understanding of force, leverage, and the affect of mass on all of this.

>Pure muscle mass doesn't translate into faster acceleration. More agile fighters can reach higher speeds
This is a meme informed by movies. You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. This isn't about how quickly the person moves over all, this is how easily they can overcome inertia and handle momentum, this is how much leverage they can impart on a weapon, how quickly the thing in their hands goes from 0 to fuck-you-up. Raw output of force and raw damage potential. That's dependent on strength.

>Cutting steak
That is not an analogous situation and you fucking know it. A reciprocal motion with a small serrated blade is not at all comparable to a cut or thrust with a weapon.

>Their physique is not relevant to amputation chance
>Genre
By genre, you mean in the context of if the movie is silly action popcorn schlock, right? Lets get that out of the way, and dismiss shallow action popcorn shlock which inform your dumb ideas.

>Size of the weapon, skill of the fighter
>He didn't pass 4th grade science
Those variables aren't changing, you fucking mong. "All other things being equal" is conversational shorthand for "control all variables except the one we want to test for". That's how you conduct scientific experimentation.

>Agility/skill in combat
Yes, a competitively athletic or strong fighter who is very skilled is more likely to come out on top over an unskilled beefcake because they'll actually land blows and avoid blows more often. Agility is not damage output unless it means getting around defenses, which has much to do with skill. If they can't parry, if you hit a chink in their armor, if you get around their shield, if you can target a particularly vulnerable part of their body, that's agility and skill at work. That is outside the mechanical scope of scaling damage with strength, though.

>Speed as a factor of damage in thrust attacks
This is entirely in body mechanics and how one performs a thrust vs a swing. When it comes to actual wound trauma, the bulk of the damage from a thrust is in the impaling tip fucking up flesh. Speed isn't suddenly irrelevant, but it is inherently lower in thrusting. Raw damage should reflect this, see wounding damage for the nuance of the matter.

>Speed as a factor of damage in swing attacks
The goal in swinging is to accelerate the cutting edge or tip quickly. That's where the raw damage comes from. Strength being equal, speed of halberd edge > zweihander > falchion.

Remember the whole thing where swinging and thrusting should use different scaling with strength? Yeah. I've been saying that repeatedly, that thrusting damage as a function of strength should grow slower than swing damage. If you want maximum autism in your game like I do, get a system which does this.

>Speed -> Force -> raw damage v. wounding damage from how force was applied
Damage type mechanics are how you implement this nuance. If you have a blunt object or a broad surface, it is going to distribute that force over a wider area as compared to a sharp object or an impaling tip. The more you concentrate force, the more wounding damage it will do. Crushing < Piercing/Cutting < Impaling. Get you a system which does this. not DnD

But that's not how WFRP runs.
Here's how it goes:
>Fire weapons and try to jump into cover
>If you survived to the 2nd turn, either reload in cover and fire again, or charge together with the rest of your party
>if you surive the counter-charge and go into 3rd turn, stand still and perform basic attack (or more like, disengage and run into cover)

Here's how it actually goes in the real world:
>fire weapons
>miss
>enemies charge
>miss
>attack enemies in return
>miss
>enemies attack again
>miss

Repeat until you roll low and your enemy rolls high on their parry.