Possible Large-Scale Combat System

[Mezrin]

Large-scale battles can be very unorganized. I've thought of a system that will hopefully help fix this.

Please note, that players should not emote (/e) until it is their turn. It makes it easier to follow the flow of combat. All rolls will use a D20 (/roll 20).

Each side chooses a leader and representative. These leaders than divide their teams into squads of four, each squad receiving a squad leader. After this is done, all squad leaders do two things; first, they roll for initiative. Second, they give their squad their own initiative (no rolling is needed, this is just to keep it more organized). Each squad receives 15 HP.

So, the squad with the highest initiative attacks a squad. The squad goes down their list, each member emoting an attack. Then the defending squad does the same, but defending. The squad leaders of the attacking and defending both roll. The lower roll loses the difference in HP.

So, Squad A attacks Squad B. Squad A Member A emotes, then Member B, ect. until all members have made an action. Then Squad B has its members post a defense. After that, both squad leaders roll a 20 sided die. Squad A rolls a 6. Squad B rolls a 9. Squad A takes 3 damage, and their turn has ended.

Now, that's it. It seems simple, but I want to set a date and hopefully try it out. Opinions? Criticism? This is still a rough draft.

[Abishua]

So wait, squad A takes 3 damage because squad B defended with a roll 3 greater than squad B? Or did they take 3 damage because defense successfully defended? It's pretty ambiguous what's actually happening with the system, can you clarify it some?

[Roxas65]

Actually, today, the event leaders of the "A reckoning has come" invented a pretty good, although flawed mayor battle roll system. It caught that chaos that a war SHOULD have.

[Mezrin]

I was at the event, and it was a headache to try and read everything. Actually what prompted me to write this.

Squad A took damage because Squad B rolled 3 higher than Squad A. You take the difference of the rolls.

[Jason]

There is a problem with the fact that barely any race besides humans, dwarves, and gnomes use "squads". Much of the warfare in WoW consists of guerrilla and front line mid-evil style. Because honestly, squad battle just isn't as cool in the long-run.

[Majyk]

He might be calling them squads just to simplify it.

Maybe they could be attacking groups and fight anyway they want to, but they all roll together.

I think after all the HP of the group is depleted, that group is out of the battle. Someway, retreat, KO, capture, death, etc.

That's just my opinion.

[Mezrin]

He might be calling them squads just to simplify it.

Maybe they could be attacking groups and fight anyway they want to, but they all roll together.

I think after all the HP of the group is depleted, that group is out of the battle. Someway, retreat, KO, capture, death, etc.

That's just my opinion.

Listen to Majyk. Majyk understands what I'm going for.

[Waffles]

Now, I may be the newbie here, but I think this has promise, personally. I'd like to see it used for large scale events, at least to see what it can do.

[Jason]

That wasn't the point I was trying to make. They wouldn't be attacking in nice little groups like this. The idea itself has probably been thought of in one version or another, and then halted when said person realized that almost nobody uses this system for massive battles. If anything, this is a tactic for modern day skirmishes. Back in the days of sword 'n board, cloak and dagger, etc. attacking together didn't really help anyone very much.

Essentially, I think a the system would fall a bit short if you wanted to introduce any alternative tactic in, like targeting certain NPC's/characters. The system could be modified for specific use for some guilds, however, like the Gnomish Special Forces or The Red Alliance. I can see how it would be useful for them, but guilds such as Heretic Circus, Bloodsworn Honorguard, Frostbrand Marines, and the like wouldn't benefit from it much. (Just as well, they've already developed their own, more suitable roll systems as it is.)

In short, I think it would be very restricting and only useful to a select type of organizations and combat situations, with not much wiggle room. For said types of situations and organizations, however, it could be very useful and an easy template to go off of.

[Wuvvums]

I think there was two problems with that event's roll combat that was expressed.

1) There was no turn order.

2) Everything was based on trust.

What did this mean? Well, there was roleplaying, and people could fight one another, but it also meant having a stream of emotes, and it also meant that in the end some people didn't understand what was happening. Also the fate of your character was determined upon the rolls of someone else. You pretty much had one or two people rolling to decide the fate of nearly 40 people.

Now I have been to some events that were pretty large but not as large as that. Even then, we had a turn order, and people were able to have a spot in the battle and what they did had some impact. Here are some suggestions that I picked up from the bigger events.

The final fantasy events had somewhere up to 20 people if I recalled. Everyone attacked in sets of three and monsters would target people in sets of three. The people in the sets still had their offensive and defensive rolls, but they were applied to only one roll. We could very well break people up into teams and process turns based on what teams were made.

Also a word of advice for people that run events: use a spreadsheet. If you can't get microsoft office, then you can always get Open Office for free. It's also good for school and stuff.

Also if possible you can designate OOC chatter to a different channel. If someone keeps chatting in raid even though you warned them OOCly you can give warnings or boot them from the event.

Either way there's probably no perfect system to deal with big, big, events, but I think no matter what it's best to maintain order.

[NodCommando]

I hate to sound like a buzzkill, but this just seems rather.. well.. like it won't work. It appears to be rather confusing, but then again, dealing with large amounts of people typically IS confusing. I suppose having a confusing system in place is better than not even having one. I think.

[Miah]

Sadly, i think this won't work simply because the more people are present, the more complex it becomes, add in ooc stuff and it becomes almost impossible to figure out what's going on. The only way to solve that is to dumb down what each person can do individually, but at that point it feels less like RPing your character and more like your character is a chesspeice in an elaborate combat.

[HownDoog]

I agree with Miah and NodCommando on this.
Any event I have been in with more than seven people
had been such a pain. It was too chaotic and jumbled.
Personally I can't stand an event with more than five or six people...
so I am a bit biased against this idea.

But still, the only way a large scaled event could
work smoothly and not be so chaotic is if it
was planned out for a while with a very complex system.

[Mezrin]

(( Afterthought: Sorry if this sounds incoherent, I'm also disciplining a little girl in between sentences (yes, she misbehaves that much) )).

It sounds iffy, I know, but that's why I want to try it in-game. I don't want it tested during an event, I personally find that to be a bad idea, but while it sounds too organized for such a chaotic event... Well, it just seems like some system is necessary. After the rolls, it didn't feel like anything I was doing was worth any weight in that event. I sat back and flung the occasional frostbolt or arcane blast.

The group-based system isn't necessarily IC. The group doesn't need to move and fight as a team, it's just for rolling purposes. They'd just happen to be attacking the same people as each other. The system isn't meant to encourage war-scaled combat, but when it takes place, there's hopefully a method to all the madness. The reason nobody's allowed to emote except on their turn is because that makes it easier to follow the battle, while still letting people say things and the such.

Before it's shot down, I'd at least like to test it out.

[Duraza]

The only way to solve that is to dumb down what each person can do individually, but at that point it feels less like RPing your character and more like your character is a chesspeice in an elaborate combat.

I just wanted to point this out because I agree with it. To be honest, in a real war situation no solider is more than a chesspiece. The individual in my mind has little effect on how things end unless there is some huge gap between the individual and the others fighting. And even so, I'm not sure how much that individual should effect things.

In small group battles the individual has a lot of power. But when it gets to twenty against twenty and your a single person? Five people might happen to single you out as their first target and then you're dead. War is a numbers game and a game of group tactics. The way an individual effects it is by tactic and lead. Not by happening to be doing a good amount of fighting and dodging. The hot shots we see on TV and movies who seem to win the war single handedly with awesome fighting don't really exist. If they did, -everyone- while RPing would want to be that person, meaning no one could anyways.

With that... I think that tactics, overall strategy is really what needs to be incorporated. To be honest, if that happens you'll probably feel even more like a chess piece... But that's really how it goes in my mind (Correct me if I'm wrong). Someone else is pulling the strings, making the calls. Sure, you can be the guy leading a group of reinforcements but the time of your entrance and how it effects the battle isn't really up to you individually. The reinforcements are really just another piece to be moved into play for an added bonus.

I know it feels un-epic in the way that you can't feel like 'well my character delivered the finishing blow on that monster' or 'well my character had good rolls and got a couple of crits' but the individual is wiped away, the unit exists. Unless you're a General calling the shots, switching tactics (which like I said needs to be more represented) you don't have any real power that changes things.