Combat Ratings

[Vorce]

This topic is in relation to Grakor's The Direction of CotH Post.

I propose that for character profiles, instead of just receiving GM approval, that they should receive a 'Combat Rating'. Allow me to explain. Combat RP here on CotH mostly revolves around /roll fights. Therefore, in order to prevent a scenario where a normal person without fighting experience entirely beats a hardened and trained war veteran, it all comes down to the rolls. Combat ratings would be used to determine the effectiveness of a character in combat. For example, a character with no fighting skills -at all-, would receive a combat rating of 20, while a character who is a war veteran and undergoes continuous training, would receive a combat rating of 100, and maybe prestige classes could receive combat ratings of up to 150. How would this work? A person with a combat rating of 50, would /roll 50 for all of his fights, and the combat rating effectively becomes the extent of which a player can roll during a fight.

The system for combat rating allocation would be left to the GMs to decide on, and the combat ratings would be shown clearly somewhere on the character profile. I understand that there are two main problems behind this. Firstly, that there are over 200 approved profiles and even more on the way, taxing the GMs even further. Therefore, manpower for implementation becomes a problem which I have a minor solution for. Active players could PM a GM to be issued a combat rating, so that the active characters could be focused on first. This helps increase efficiency, yet it is still lots of work to read a character's profile and decide on a rating for the character, so whether this idea is implemented or not, I'll leave to the discretion of the GMs. However, since the server is going to experience a 'restart', this system could be implemented after the restart. Still, this is not my decision to make, so I won't push for it.

The second problem with this system would be characters who's profile haven't been written / approved, and would still like to /roll battle. Honestly, I cannot find a solution to this, other than banning combat RP for unapproved characters, which would be unrealistic.

How else could the combat rating be used ICly? Think of NPC interaction. If a player has a low combat rating, he wouldn't be picking fights all the time, despite any personality traits. Also, NPC reaction to a person in a fight could be greatly determined by the person's combat rating, allowing a reference for all forms of combat RP, be it /roll, trust, or any other method. Also, it wouldn't be impossible to lower or increase one's combat rating. IC posts / In-game RP training / lack of training could have an effect on a person's combat rating, to be decided on by the GMs.

In conclusion, this system is going to be more work for the already burdened GMs, so I would understand if it is not implemented. However, it does address the issue mentioned in Grakors post, so if it were to be considered, I could help out with the specifics and the details, if any help is needed (:

[Kaghuros]

It seems a bit... Complicated. I think it's an interesting concept, because I love PnP games where stats are a big part, but what we tend to do is have combat be GM hands-off. Heck, most of the staff prefer trust fights over rolls, but we roll just because it's the easiest way to RP with people we don't know. In the end, the players choose how they fight, or if they fight at all, and I don't know if I would feel comfortable with adding a new rule about combat.

[Vorce]

Well, GM control won't go past profile approval methinks, and this system wouldn't be only for /roll fights ^^ For example, it will give a person better understand of where their character lies in comparison when having a trust combat with another, making things go along much more smoothly. It could also be used out of combat in that it might give a deeper understanding into a characters current situation. Like, is he a nimble and agile old man or just an old man? However, it's still up to you guys, and I'm just glad that this idea got a look through, so, yay! =D

[Zunaj]

Something like this would really solve a lot of issues with roll fights today.

For something like, say, the tournaments Ognor, and later Athalbaug(And for a brief time, myself) hosted every week, this often turned into an issue. A random blood elf mage entered once, without realizing magic was banned. He proceeded to fight, wearing robes, wielding a small knife, and fought with the same odds as every other warrior in there. (He also lost, but purely due to bad luck)

A system like this would add a lot of realism by improving the odds for the obviously better warrior, while still keeping that little "chaos factor" that allows a poor fighter to get one or two lucky shots, or win if he's lucky enough.

[DaveM]

Fights are realistic, because everyone has an objective rating, yaay! (No)

I think there are two underlying issues here:

1: Desire for your character to be cool.

Nobody wants to be told: Your char rolls only 80.
GMs can't be there to say: This situational modifier (no magic, mage) makes you roll 60.
If 150 is the max, determined by profile - people will start tuning their profiles to reach the 150. (And bitching when they get a low rating, because it -is- subjective to give a combat rating by looking at personality and history of one page)

(And this is not necesarily because they want to be bad ass, but because they loathe the moment some other "150" would come their way rolling "bad-ass 150 This is Spartaah".)


2: If we're here to have objective combat, in any serious sense:

That's a different game to play all-together in the end.
It can be spliced with RP, but many of us want combat -RP- and would rather not play PnP fights here.
So I think a universal solution does not exist to cover all, and having a server rule that makes you play fights off of a character sheet of numbers all the time would not be CotH to me, because it would be sacrificing RP smoothness for a brand of realism that isn't necessary. Let me explain that one.



(bonus )3: Realism: what is it good for?

Any system that makes a char. better than another in combat is inherently flawed because it allows for the bad-ass character that is in your face and pwns you if you get confrontational. I wouldn't like that.

I want my doctor/apprentice/commoner to have a shot at stabbing that bad-ass dude off of the same 100 roll, discouraging "bad-ass OP" RP. And I can explain in the emotes why there's a shot there. That kind of thig happens extremely often in many adventure fiction scenarios. It should here. (rolling off of 80 vs 100 - with crits, is sure to a sure-loss)


TL;DR The problem is cloth scholar knife-elf pwning armored warrior axe-orc, both entered into a no-magic tournament. And why does that problem occur? Because of lack of common sense. Will any system you can devise short of the DnD rulebook add common sense to a fight despite the player not having it? No.

If we don't want to build stories together that are not just about our character being better than others, then we won't, combat system or not.


TL;DR was too long, got shorther?: If it's an issue that players are treating their characters as too strong when they shouldn't, legitimising that with any system that makes some better at fighting is the last thing we want to do.

[ThePharaoh]

Just a suggestion, I think Duskwolf's roller should be implemented server wide. Because it has a DnD-esque character sheet where you can distribute points or tickets to each of your stats. So if I am a mage, my strength wont be so high, effecting my attack roll. But if I am nimble my agility stat will be higher making me a little harder to hit.

It's basically Roll fighting just with different commands. /atk /def /dmg /ran /dmgo being some of the commands. Attack, defend, damage, range attack, off-hand damage respectively. I have seen a lot of positive feedback, and I enjoy the system myself. There are limits to the character sheet. Duskwolf only wants regular players to only have 8 tickets to disperse amongst their stats of. Strength, Agility, Charisma, spirit, stamina, and another one I'm not sure at the moment.

This can be used for over all RP. If someone is on the verge of meta-game. (walking past a Warlock) and instantly emoting. "I smell fel magic" You could just do a spirit roll which is basically like an awareness roll. Or if you are trying to persuade a character you could use a Charisma roll. Prestige characters I believe Duskwolf said would get 12 tickets to distribute from. Making them slightly more powerful, but still beatable.

My only thing against such a roller is leveling up, which would be damn near impossible and a hassle to do Server wide. What would exp. points be? and how would you earn them? ect. That is why Duskwolf didn't want to level up CS (character sheets) In my opinion. I can't speak for him but this is only my speculation.

He kindly has made a similar roller for my character, Kyjael, which I do plan on passing out tickets as the story progresses to level up my characters so they improve. But my roller wouldn't be compatible with Duskwolf's stable roller since my characters have leveling capabilities.

Something to think about, I guess.