Innovative Combat mechanics for board games

Cheatsi

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/726117/combat-mechanics

I came across this on the internet and i just thought it would be really cool if a new board game combat and elimination mechanic was invented. Any Ideas?

Tuism

Hey, interesting :)

(if you put

http://www.

in front of your URL you can make it clickable, I think? :)

They seem to have missed the good ol' Magic the Gathering Strength/Toughness matchup mechanic. 5/1 creature vs 1/1 creature, if 5/1 has Trample then it's not wasted, else it's a double KO.

It's an interesting thing to think about, versus mechanics. There's so many though. Thunderstone's mechanic is having a hand full of cards that all add up to certain strengths with abilities, which the player takes to a creature in an open dungeon to take on one of them. The hand is discarded and a new one is drawn after each round.

Star Wars LCG has a blind bidding system which uses fate points which is something each card/unit (which works like regular MTG creatures outside of fate/edge battles) which has players taking turns committing cards to a battle, with no knowledge of how much the other side actually committed besides the number of cards.

So many mechanics!

edg3

Posting here to remind myself to share links. I read something interesting in terms of this the other day and it's probably worth sharing here.

also, I will detail the system I am planning for the game I am currently working on for feedback and general interest (at approx 8:20am)

EDIT:
Ran late -_-

This is the article I read that I used as a base to start building mechanics: http://mikeshea.net/Simplifying_Dungeons_and_.html

Essentially what I ended up with is the following:

EDIT 2: Completing the below explanation

I read up on different RPG stat systems, and tweaked and borrowed here and there and finally focused on 4 simple stats to control 9 characteristics of a character in my game.

The stats were worked at from a starting value of 10 and adjusted up/down as needed.

Strength: Melee hit / Melee damage / utilities like breaking doors
Dexterity: Ranged hit / Ranged damage / "Armor Class" which I cant think of a better name for / utilities like lockpicking
Constitution: Resistance (to bad statuses) / Health / utilities like hardiness (not suffering when taking heavy blows)
Intelligence: Skills per Level / Magic Damage / Magic hit / utilities like detecting traps

I wanted small rounded numbers that are easier to tweak to get the kind of characters I want. So I am borrowing heavily from DnD style mechanics, but I have removed as much complexity as I could and I will most likely remove some more.

Any check that you would do to hit would be calculated as the "Hit modifier" + a roll of a d20 (i.e. random number from 1 to 20), and this value would always have to equal or better the target's "Armor Class".

Damage would be mostly dependant on weapons and such, but each weapon would have a damage value associated with it (for example 1d8 (i.e. random number from 1 to 8) and you would add the appropriate stat modifier to it for that damage: e.g. a melee hit from an axe with 1d8 damage would deal "1d8 + strength damage mod" damage to the enemy if your attack would hit (the previous paragraph).

I have simple formulae I am using for the calculating of each characteristic, and I am over time tweaking and adjusting the values still as it doesn't yet feel 100% to me.

The characteristics and formulae (I use an excel sheet to fiddle) are:
Health: IF(CON>15,5+CON+FLOOR((CON-14)/2,1),5+CON)
MeleeHitMod: IF(STR>15,FLOOR((STR-14)/2,1),0)
MeleeDamageMod: FLOOR(STR/5,1)*3
RangedHitMod: IF(DEX>15,FLOOR((DEX-14)/2,1),0)
ArmorClass: 10+(FLOOR(DEX/6,1))
RangedDamageMod: FLOOR(DEX/7,1)*4
ResistanceMod: FLOOR(FLOOR(INT/16 + CON/10,1)*1.5,1)
SkillsPerLevel: FLOOR(INT/8,1)
SpellHitMod: IF(INT>15,FLOOR((INT-14)/2,1),0)
SpellDamageMod: FLOOR(INT/4,1)*3-2

Each "class" will then have stats that start higher or lower:
Nothing Class: 10,10,10,10 in STR, DEX, CON, INT respectively
Ranged lvl 1: 10, 14, 10, 14
Warrior lvl 1: 14, 10, 14, 10

Also, each of the classes has a single stat that grows each level. On the Ranger it is DEX. On the Warrior it is STR.

Players get a single stat point each level to put into whichever class they choose.

I want to also cap at 30, as it is a completely arb number that other systems use.

As a final note, some of the battles would be with a "Titan" in the game I am building. These are meant to be really difficult fights for level 30 characters. As an example a titan might have stats of (44,44,124,44) as a really badly balanced example. This gives it 184 health, a 15 hit mod, damage mods of melee24;ranged24;magic24, armor class of 17, etc.

A level 30 warrior might have stats of 74,40,44,40 if they just pumped their stats into STR. This gives them a 30 to their melee hit mod (so hitting that Titan isn't a problem) but only 64 health, so they would need to manage their healing.

There are 2 major reasons this system will work for me:
1. I am working in a turn based environment
2. The richness of gameplay, diversity and replayability will come through items (which will add modifiers to stats and characteristics) and abilities (I called them skills earlier, though that needs a slightly separated explanation).

The abilities system will consist of base knowledges of weaponry and/or mastery (So basic arcana for magic, one-handed swordmanship, two-handed swordmanship, etc). You can equip and use anything in the game, but if you use something you haven't got an ability with it will have a 33% effectiveness (rounded down) until you have the required ability (e.g. no axe ability will make you hit for 1d2 instead of 1d8 with the weapon), and this would happen for all rolls. If a weapon attack said it did 3d6 damage (3 1d6 rolls added together) it would still keep the minimum damage, but the dice rolls would become 3 1d2 rolls. The skill trees further than that will split off between weapon abilities (with cooldowns in turns) such as a lunging strike with a shortsword that will boost the weapon's damage (e.g. the lunge would move you one closer to the target and deal an additional 1d4 damage as a simple example off the top of my head) and "epic abilities" which are things that may (or may not) be hidden that need to be unlocked (e.g. a triple strike might require you to befriend a stranger in the game and he in return gives you the option in your skill tree to train it and it can be used with any weapon and it will do 3 strikes of weapon damage so a 2d6 weapon would deal 6d6 which is a lot).

I am still toying with numbers, items and abilities, and will be prototyping some of them in a very simple manner to get people to try out soon, but the idea is to keep numbers small and manageable.

Cheatsi

@edg3 will all combat outcomes be determined by player' strength or is there other factors that come into play?

I read the article and i agree with most of it I don't agree with the comment that there is no advancement in Magic' game play.

I'm really excited for your game haha wanna play it using that system i haven't played much d and d though. :)

edg3

Wall of text.

Other factors will come into play (like terrain/visibility), very much like when I was working on "False Eden", however like I said its up in the air and only when people start trying it out will I know if it truly works.

I think the point that the article made was more that when you play a game of magic there are a finite number of actions you can take given a single deck of cards. Further than that it stops advancing. Sure you can chain and loop things (sometimes infinitely, there are many infamous combos in magic that are infinite) but it still a limited environment and subset of a set of mechanics.

Cheatsi

Like in a game of poker all you are allowed to do realistically is what the cards allow you to do, then other factors like player decision come into play and change how the outcome affects the game play. That's kinda how i understand it however too many games even D&D to an extent follows that pattern, most games i'd say. So what sense they consider advancement doesn't really have an alternative.

dislekcia

I hope everyone talking about boardgames in any way, shape or form watches Shut Up and Sit Down. They recently reviewed a really interesting abstract combat game that does some neat stuff conceptually and positionally.

Tuism

Wow Tash-Kalar game looks very cool, like a chess game where cards make up part of the game while resources are things on the board and patterns... So cool! :D