Lightsaber Duels & Combat Pose Etiquette

This is a relatively light topic, but worth floating. Okay, picture this ...

Darth Vader raises his blade above his head, and the flickering of red fire catches on his mask, glittering in the soulless transparisteel gems of eyes. "You should not have stayed," he says in that echoing metallic bass: "It is futile to resist the power of the Emperor." And with that, he brings his lightsaber down two-handed, aiming to cleave Kelewan Noobin's head from his neck.

COMBAT: Darth Vader swings his red lightsaber at Kelewan Noobin's head!
Kelewan Noobin dodges Darth Vader's red lightsaber.

Kind of ... anticlimactic, huh?

This happens fairly often. It's been proposed to me that we consider posing -after- any given attack is resolved, so that we can save the really dramatic poses for times we won't look silly. Lightsaber combat is just the most dramatic way to make the case and run the thought experiment.

COMBAT: Darth Vader swings his red lightsaber at Kelewan Noobin's head!
Kelewan Noobin parries Darth Vader's red lightsaber with his blue lightsaber.

Hhhhh ... prrr. Darth Vader glides forward, his red lightsaber probing Kelewan's defenses. "You have learned much since Denab, but you are just a boy. Your skills will not save you."

COMBAT: Kelewan Noobin gestures, and a statue of the Emperor hurtles toward Darth Vader!
Darth Vader slashes at the statue of the Emperor with his red lightsaber, cleaving it in half.

"Vader." Kelewan is panting from exertion. Slowly he backs away, opening up a gap between the dark, masked warrior and himself. His blond hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. "You love the Emperor so much. Why don't you get to know him better?"

Suddenly his free hand comes up, and with a roar of shattered stone and a whistle, the statue of the Emperor rips free of its plinth and comes hurtling down at Vader, while Kelewan backpedals toward the open door ...

-----

I don't see any major cons with this proposed convention of posing. It seems as though it has the potential to let the drama of the scene match the progression of the action a little more closely.

And on a related note, it would make the "finishing move" of lightsaber duels (or other duels as well, I suppose) a little cooler. If you know you're going to vaporize their hand, you can focus your pose on it; and if they know that's the hit that ends the fight, they can pose their lightsaber and hand falling away into the bowels of Cloud City while they scream, "Noooo!"

Random thought: Maybe Darth Vader didn't have an industrial accident. Maybe Darth Vader has a -lot- of different combat injuries from a hundred different battles.

Good idea, i'm all for it.

The only possible con I can see is that it will encourage people who have no ability, but get lucky with a roll, to pose as if they are the finest gunslinger/duelist/whatever in the world even when their skill indicates they should be a bumbling fool who manages a lucky hit.

True, a fair point.

On the other hand, if someone manages to land a hit on Darth Vader, he deserves a chance to strut for a moment, flex his muscles, let it go to his head.

Because a moment later his head may be somewhere else.

I really like this idea. Pose after.

It worked out great when I tried it.

I like the idea of posing after.

The same could go for +cover-ing yourself. Then you won't find yourself hiding behind an unexpected, desperate prayer after meticulously describing the wrecked spaceship you THOUGHT you went to cower behind.

It works awesome in starship combat, too. So you don't have more poses of 'Ship X flies a little bit, then shoots.' You can actually pose with a little bit more information etc.

Here's another aspect of lightsaber dueling I'm going to put out there. Having seen a large number of them. It is the combat messages. People feel obligated to get wtfpwn'd by them and always tend to get a little antsy with it. I feel that the lightsaber duel isn't so much a duel as it is a who can get the luckiest roll first.

The changes I would propose is in lightsaber versus lightsaber conflict maybe to rework the combat messages to make it more like dueling, fencing, where it isn't just who gets that one strike first but rather to reflect the give and take, jockeying for position and working to find a weakness. To make the duels more epic. How many players are going to enjoy:

Darth Vader wields his red lightsaber.

Darth Vader swings at Luke Skywalker with his Red Lightsaber

Luke Skywalker tries to Parry but his head is vivisected

Luke Skywalker collapses unconciouss.


End Scene.

It ties into that exact sentiment of anticlimatic. The system screams one-shot wonder, what if it were reworked to have a give and take, widdling defenses. It gives the avenue that way for a player to realize his positioning is falling fast and force them to withdraw. Just an idea.

A sense of a progression or extended contest to lightsaber dueling is a good idea. That said, the math of the system tends to support that; if someone with utterly no lightsaber skill were to face Darth Vader himself, Darth Vader's maximum hitrate with the lightsaber is 50%. Lightsaber combat is designed to last longer and have more unpredictability than most combat.

However, it's not perfect, and I'm open to ways of tweaking it. One way would be to have each mounting attack in a lightsaber duel fill up some sort of coded gauge, such that there is a "balance" to the fight which trends in favor of one warrior or the other. While the "gauge" was low, hitrates would be lowered even below the 25% range; as the "gauge" filled, it would build up to a finishing move. All that would be under the surface, though; the syntax and command use wouldn't change.

Thoughts? Worth it or not?

I actually implemented such a system once in a sword dueling aspect on a fantasy based game. The response was generally positive with it as it did have the give and take. With our current system set up the way it is, it gives that epic quality.

Now here is where a guaged problem or something akin would lie, when you start tying in other forms of combat. Blasters shooting in, etc. Although... in thought.


This could be very good. A player has 10 'Lightsaber Guage points' or what have you.

Darth Vader is fighting Luke, Vader is parryign off the attacks. Luke is winning the rolls so Vader is losing his guage points. (Ignore the typos, I'm having keyboard issues and too lazy to fix) Anyway, Vader is fighting Luke and getting pushed back. Suddenly Han shows up and starts shooting. Vader deflects the shot but doing so obviously weakens his defenses, the gauge goes lower.

This would address one of the biggest jokes that we have on DH. The Jedi who sit there and deflected 50 shots from people and fight off 7 opponents without getting hit. Each of those actions of parrying and deflecting could drain the gauge, and each advancing action, could raise the gauge. I like this.

Limit breaks. Sweet.

I'd love to see this sort of love added to normal combat, as well. Maybe not quite the same way, but there is quite literally nothing more ridiculous than watching a man survive several hits to the head in a gun duel and keep going. More lethality and more cinematic combat would be awesome.

Well, we're talking lower hitrates and higher damage. More misses, but when it hits ...

I could probably work out a "limit break" system that applied to combat in general, though. The key would be making it simple and effective.

It isn't just the aspect of lethality, it's making the combat more give and take before getting to the lethality but making it reasonable. Someone getting shot in the face and trucking is a joke. But, someone getting shot in the face on the first shot of combat is also a joke. Players know how to min/max the system and that's what they'll try to do when they are trying to win. In a competative game, winning usually is the focus.

Maybe that needs to be a consideration overall though, a sort of 'energy' or 'stamina' aspect. The more you dodge, the lower your stamina and dodging ability or some such, I don't know. I'm mostly focused on the Lightsaber aspect to be honest because most of us have seen those ridiculous moments of things that make you go' Well that's cool but there's no way a group of 20 people could defeat that person'.

An aside though about 'regular combat' Quickdraw quickly draining stamina or some such, or making it difficult would be good. I love the quickshot to knock off an incoming shot. But to quickshot 12 people standing around you and KO them all? Wtf Wyatt Fett.

I think the targetted attacks in general are a bit of a mistake as it is put in. As pointed out, head targetting is just daft. I can get allowing for a disarming shot or what not, but targetting as it is now is just restrictive to the person having to pose and stretches the credulity of all involved.

I think I like there being a level of energy/stamina to a combat situation, and that being what differentiates a soldier or gunslinger from, say, an officer or assassin, rather than constitution and actual ability to get shot in the face without dying.

So you start with a reserve of energy, where your defenses are a lot more effective, including dodging, parrying, quickshot, etc. For the assassin or officer without a high stamina, this is probably long enough to get a few shots off and escape or summon reinforcements. For the soldier or gunslinger, this is long enough for a sustained fight with one or two people, or to last out a barrage of attacks and then presumably get away.

I guess the essence of what I'm saying is, instead of relying on actual hitpoints (which, honestly, no matter how you look at it, tends to be really unrealistic), have attacks erode someone's defenses, with better-aimed attacks doing so more. It shouldn't be impossible to hit someone with high defenses, but it should be difficult, and the moment should be appropriately cinematic and rare that it's noteworthy.

I'm not sure if there should be a point at which someone is fatigued and actually takes a penalty to his defenses. If so, there needs to be a way to replenish them.

I was talking to Gulp about this very subject just yesterday. I came up with a couple ideas... but I really like what's been said here.

But just for the sake of ideas, here was mine:

Fatigue. This was basically like the opposite of what was suggested. Each unsuccessful attack made you fatigued until you ran out of stamina and... I dunno. Had to flee or died.

"Race to 100" this was a little more like a buildup. Say we were doing lightsaber duels with checks.

+check LightsaberAttack=average
Firehawk gets a 65

+check LigthsaberDefense=average
Gulp gets a 40

Firehawk now is at 25

Gulp attacks:

+check LA=average
Gulp gets a 90
+check LD=average
FH gets a 50

Firehawk is at 25
Gulp is at 40

We continue until one of us reaches 100, at which point we can... do whatever. Slice a hand off, a leg, an arm, a head... you WON and you can kill them. With +escape as the only way for the loser to get out of it.

I really liked this "race to 100" idea, as it allowed a really good defender to keep other people's numbers low (since if defense beats your attack, your score gets lowered) and allowed multiple lightsaber attacks on one target (you just adjust the defense higher per attacker.)

The trick I didn't know about is how to incorporate blaster shots, etc.

How's this as an idea for blasters, etc:

It increases the defense difficulty. However, lightsabers can still reflect shots back if the defense roll is high enough over.

What if this applied to ALL PvP combat?

Forget fighting vs NPCs, but all PvP is done up as "race to X" with different numbers for different weapons. Blasters you might want to get deadlier faster? But do a fixed amount of damage. So a blaster guy that reaches 100, just hits his opponent. And the gun does ABC damage which either maims you, kills you, burns you, whatever.

Think about when Leia got shot in RotJ. She was burned and in pain, but not dead.

I think this is a pretty unique way to have PVP combat, the real trick would be people attacking others and properly adjusting difficulty for defense (or offense? Isn't it harder to shoot at someone in melee without hitting random targets?)

I think this is in effect very similar to the gauge idea that's being batted around with lightsaber dueling.

My own thoughts are duel aspects (Lightsabers/swords/melee/fists) should have more grapple give and take. Blasters aren't so much, they really aren't. You're not giving and taking postion, you're avoiding, and really mostly only avoiding.

But what I do like as opposed to a count up or countdown, is for each individual to have a straight up 'combat gauge' stat or whatever. Each action y ou take drains it for whatever amount.


Lightsaber attack - 1 pt
Lightsaber defense - 1 pt
Blaster shooting - 1 pt
Quickshot - 2 pts
Lightsaber deflect - 2 pts
Dodge - 1 pt
Force Throw - 1 pt.

The goal being to knock your opponent's gauge down to 0 before yours gets there. So if you over attack and attack and attack and attack, you're going to drain your gauge and leave yourself open. This gives imo many more windows for RP and character types.

You could have the uber defender Jedi who never attacks but just wears his opponents down until they can no longer fight and then strikes. Your hyper aggressive sith who has no defense, only assaults and batters away.

You have your sniper who takes very careful shots and your blaster psycho who unloads with everything they have. Each has their own method to get to the same end goal and all of it without one shot insta-killing people to create actual scenes.

The only trouble with multiple-points or the like... it seems a bit complicated.

I would REALLY like a combat system where people generally understand how it works and is rather easy for people to understand intuitively. The gauge idea is pretty simple... whether the gauge goes up to 10/100 or down to 0 is a minor detail.

But would you leave blaster combat the SAME? And just mess with the melee fighting?

No, you could include blaster combat in it. The reason I like the gauge system is the severity of hits can remain, just take more gauge points off. HP gets to stay the same, it just means when your gauge is drained, that's how much HP is lost. Where the challenge lies is in balancing the difference. I'll be honest, Lightsaber vs Blaster combat. If someone swings a lightsaber at a blaster wielder, I would think that's a -3 gauge for a dodge. Whereas if someone shoots a blaster across the marketplace, that's a -1 dodge. But that's my opinion, that's where the real challenge would be. But no, I think this system could include all combat, the problem is simplifying it and tying it into the current system which I think is quite doable.

So, this is the part where I mention that I think the SW d20 revised core rules of 'vitality/wounds' is one of the best abstractions of a combat system out there, in terms of believability, though not necessarily mechanic. Where you have a pretty static number of wound points, which represent you actually getting hit, but your vitality points, which increase with level, represent your ability to dodge and parry and disrupt attacks--so you're slowly getting worn out over the course of the battle as your enemy makes near misses. While normally vitality is a shield against your wounds being depleted, you can take a critical hit and damage will be dealt directly to your wounds.

Taking that as a model, I think PC combat would be much more interesting if it went this way, though obviously it's better to see descriptions of your overall stamina level along with your condition: something on the order of 'fresh / warmed up / winded / tired / very tired / exhausted.' (Not lifted from Total War at all.) It shouldn't be /impossible/ to hit someone when their stamina is high, but it should be more difficult. (Aside: if we get rid of targeting the head it will definitely help everything, including world hunger.) A hit might also do reduced damage, but definitely knock them down the stamina trail a few levels.

There should also be ways to boost stamina, though not too many, so you can make a heroic and cinematic resurgence. Perhaps a +rally command, which is usable once every X large number of turns or Y lengthy period of time. Perhaps successful hits on your opponent('s stamina) will help increase it marginally.

In essence, I think it should be slightly leaky. You are never immune to being hit--if getting shot in the face is a rarity on the first round, it actually makes it a little cooler when it does happen. The climactic anticlimax of a fight scene, Indiana Jones-style!

Yeah, but those rare moments. I can' ttell you the number of scenes I have seen that start with face shots and incaps. Then well, no RP. Just horrific.

I like the idea as well of regenning that stamina/gauge or whatever you want to call it. The rally, or what not. Imagine if you could tie in something like an entertainer calling out encouragement or something that could bolster someone's stamina, or strippers that make you feel more invigorated so I would be able to make Jim-Bob the male dancer.

Whatever we do, I'd strongly prefer it to be a "limit break" system:

Luke can get lucky and hit Darth Vader early on in the fight. Sure. Why not? It happens. Not every fight is going to last until the "limit break".

BUT when the limit break hits, that usually ends the fight, and usually does so in favor of the guy who hit limit.

You can drive someone off by firing blaster shots at them, and may in fact land a nasty hit or two (ow! my hair!). But if you're doing a Wild West-style shootout, and each shot pushes you closer to the limit, and then when it's hit you get an awesome emit --

COMBAT: With a sudden surge of power, Darth Vader swings his red lightsaber at Luke Skywalker.

-- and the fight is over.

I can pretty easily add an elaborate mod to the combat system; I think I'd prefer that to totally redoing the way we handle combat and making it pure formal roll-to-100 duels. Ideally, you wouldn't even know how close to limit you were or which person would win when you got there, just that you were getting closer to the decisive moment. Cinematic battles ALWAYS look really close just before someone wins.

Edit: I see rcrantz is reading my mind. Thank you, rcrantz. Go to your room!

Yeah, I think most of this stuff has all been along the same lines. The limit break build up would be awesomesauce mixed in with things. Then making those non-limit fight ending moments a lot more minimal. Cinematic, epic, story.

Well, where I see non-limit happening a lot:

4 young Jedi decide to take out Darth Vader. Three of them are incapacitated well before the fight reaches its climax (come on, they're fighting someone WAY stronger than they are).

The fourth, lucky bastard, hits his limit and hacks off Darth Vader's left arm. Vader skewers him through the chest and they both collapse, critically wounded. A stormtrooper enters and lifts Lord Vader to his feet, and Vader gestures with his hand, ripping free a pillar and flinging it down upon the heroic Jedi. Then the Dark Lord of the Sith stumbles away, carrying the mark of their fight forever upon him.