In with STANCE, out with all the attack commands

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Rias
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In with STANCE, out with all the attack commands

Post by Rias »

Edit: **** NOTE!! The info in this thread is now obsolete. ****

STANCE is now a thing. Your stance adjusts your focus toward offense or defense, essentially. The three basic stances as of now are Offense, Neutral, and Defense. While every combat roll will have at least a d100 in addition to your skill, stance adjusts how much of that "roll" is guaranteed.

So let's say I have 50 Melee skill. My maximum both offensively and defensively are going to be 100+skill, so in this case, 150 (before considering things like balance, sitting/prone, exhaustion, and so forth).

My STANCE will determine how much of that "roll" is guaranteed.

If I go into STANCE OFFENSE, I'm putting all focus on offense. My attack roll is going to be skill+d100, so 50+d100 - ensuring my lowest roll is going to be my skill amount (again, before taking various balance/effects/etc. into account). My defense rolls, however, are going to 0+d150. I've shifted my defense skill into the die roll side, so I'm leaving my defense entirely at the mercy of the dice, no minimum guarantee. Risky.

If I go into STANCE DEFENSE, I'm putting all my focus on defense, so we reverse things. My attack roll is going to be 0+d150, having shifted my skill into the die roll side offensively. Defensively however, I will get 50+d100 - my skill guarantees my defense rolls will be at least 50. Safe, but attack rolls are left completely up to chance.

STANCE NEUTRAL is the middle ground. 25+d125 in both offense and defense, assuming our character of 50 skill.

These focuses will mean more at higher levels. At 500 skill, 500+d100 is a powerful roll, guaranteeing a minimum of 500. Just remember that leaving your defenses up to complete random chance is always a risk, so think twice before you just immediately go full offense against that enemy that's significantly lower-skill than you - you could get a bad defense roll and they could still take you out.

I'm not 100% sold on how this is set up currently, but it's where we're at, and I'm liking it so far. The basic idea is that you time your attacks - stay in a defensive stance until the enemy attacks, switch to offense to unleash your own attack and, ideally, turtle back up into stance defense before the enemy can attack again. Of course, some enemies may be too quick for this, in which case alternative strategies will be required, but this "stance dancing" should be the usual method of fighting NPC hostiles.

Oh, and now you only have to worry about ATTACK as far as basic attack commands. Jab, thrust, lunge, swing, crush, smash - all that stuff has been removed. It was awesome on paper, it was less viable in practice. Alas. There'll be specific attack moves for certain guilds to keep combat more than just attacking and stance-dancing, though.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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