Combat: Fighting Styles Done Simple

[Rindan]

If I could change the combat code any, I would add styles.  Styles would simply modify current skills and stat bonuses up and down.  I think that a LOT could be done to make combat more interesting without breaking everything by adding in styles.  You could easily come up with a dozen or so styles that would all play out in very different ways.  Then make it so that styles can be learned and improved upon, set their skill caps low so that people are encouraged to learn more then one style, and I think you could really spice up combat.  

A few styles and how they could be coded effect wise off the top of my head:

Allanaki Style
This style focuses on quick, brutal, lightly armored combat.  The goal when fighting in the Allanaki style is to kill the opponent as fast as possible with little regard for defense.  

Effects: Large bonuses to hit damage, frequency of attack, and chance to hit.  Massive penalties to parry.  Large reduction in other defensive abilities.  Moderate bonuses to disarm and bash.  Absolutely insane penalties to all combat abilities for even moderate encumbrance.  Fighting even moderately encumbered with this style is asking for an ass kicking.  There is a bonus to the chance that weapons used in this style will break due the violent and frantic nature that they are used.

Tuluki Style
Is a style the focuses on heavy defense, heavy armor, and a more drawn out approach to combat.

Effects:  Large bonuses to all defensive abilities, including shield use.  The penalties for high encumbrance are reduced, allowing for heavier armor to be worn.  Moderate penalties to all offensive abilities are applied.  For a brief period of time (a round or two), an echo will be sent to the player informing them that have 'found an opening' in their opponent's stance.  At this point they will take a hit to their defensive abilities and receive massive to hit bonuses, reduce the opponent's effective armor class, and suffer minor penalties to their defensive abilities.  This simulates the Tuluki style which places heavy emphasis on defense and searching for an opponent's weakness, and exploiting that weakness when it is found.

Red Storm Style
Very similar to Allanaki style in all regards except that it places less emphasis on raw offense power in normal situations.  This style is really adapted to fighting in the low visibility and high wind situations around Red Storm.  Under normal circumstances this style seems like a less aggressive and less effective version of the Allanaki style.  In poor weather though, this style becomes extremely deadly.

Effects:  The same as Allanaki style except all the bonuses are moderately reduced and the penalties all remain the same.  Additionally though, bonuses are given based on the severity of the weather being fought in.  In extremely weather with both high dust and wind, a large bonus is given to all offensive and defensive skills.

Rogue style (for lack of a better name)
This style is meant to trick an attacker into assuming that he is fighting a defensively minded person, then surprising them with quick, sudden, highly offensive attacks for massive damage.  This style is extremely effective against someone fighting in a more 'berserk' style.

Effects:  For a semi-random amount of time this style fights purely defensively with large bonuses to defensive skills and large penalties to offensive skills.  After a period of time an echo is sent to the player informing them that they are now fighting aggressively.  During this time the player takes large hits to their abilities to their defensive abilities.  They also receive an absolutely insane bonus to the amount of damage they do and their ability to penetrate armor.  The basic idea is that if someone switches to a highly offensive style because the use of rogue style has fooled them into thinking that they fighting a defensive opponent, they will be grievously harmed when this style suddenly switches to doing massive damage.  The trade off is that even when the style is doing massive damage each time it hits, there is no bonuses to hitting.  Against an opponent who maintains a moderate defense this style would be utterly ineffective as they could not hit them while doing massive damage.

Assassin Style
This style focuses on absolute offense and a total disregard for defense.  This style is used when going in for the kill.  Failing to make the kill quickly when using assassin style is almost certain death.

Effects:  This style gives moderate bonuses to the chance to hit, and absolutely insane bonuses to the damage inflicted when hit and the speed at which attacks are made well above and beyond even Allanaki style.  On the flip side, this style effectively leaves user utterly defenseless and completely unable to fend off any blows as they assault their opponent with single minded determination.  Against most styles with any sort of defense, this style is pure suicide.  Against an unarmed, surprised opponent, and an already wounded opponent from a backstab, this style is extremely deadly.

Poisoner
This style focuses purely upon hitting the intended target just hard enough to break skin and deliver a poison.  This style uses careful, quick, well aimed jabs to circumvent armor, but does this at the expense of inflicting real harm and some defensive capability.  

Effects: Massive penalties to hit damage.  Moderate penalties to defensive skills.  Large bonus to the chance to hit.  Large penalties to the target's effective armor class.  This style effectively is very good at landing a blow that breaks skin, but is utterly worthless when it comes to dealing any real damage.

Frantic Defense
This style has no value in terms of offensive capability.  This style is used when attempting to delay the inevitable by using a purely defensive style.  While mostly effective in defending, staying on the defense for too long tends to give the opponent to find weaknesses.

Effects:  Absolutely insane penalties to all offensive actions such that it is nearly impossible to land a blow.  Absolutely insane bonuses given to all defensive skills.  Over time though, this defense begins to degrade as the defender becomes more tired and the attacker more confident that he can aggressively attack without fear of being harmed.  All defensive bonuses slowly start to evaporate the longer one remains in combat with this style.

Mercenary Style
This is a well rounded style used by mercenaries.  This style emphases a moderately aggressive offense, working in teams, and even a little bit of mounted combat.

Effects:  Moderate bonuses to offensive skills, and moderate penalties to defensive skills.  A moderate bonuses is given when multiple people are attacking the same target to simulate improved team coordination.  A small bonuses is given to mounted combat.  A moderate bonuses is given to the guard skill.

Body Guard
This style emphasis protecting a target above all other concerns, even one's own safety.

Effects:  A massive bonus is given to the guard skill.  Large bonuses are given to all offensive skills.  Absolutely insane penalties are applied to all defensive skills.

Fanatic Body Guard
This style is almost identical to the normal body guard with the exception that its fanatical nature makes it almost suicidal to use.  Only the most devote body guard would use such a style.  This style consists of the body guard throwing themselves into the blade of an attacker to buy their charge time.  While very effective, the body guard is almost assured to be grievously harmed, if not killed.

Effect:  Absolutely insane bonuses to the guard skill.  Absolutely insane penalties to all defensive skills.  Massive penalties to the body guard's effective armor class.  In essence, the body guard will almost surely be unable to fend off any blows when in this fanatical state of defense of his charge, but will almost certainly save their charge from an assassin's blade by using their own body as a shield.



This list of ideas are endless, and they all involve adding bonuses or penalties to existing combat stats.  Code wise, they function like spells that affect stats.  I think you could EASILY get a dozen different styles to choose from.  Throw low skill caps on these styles so that your average mercenary might learn three or four in his life.  You could even start seeing people have good reasons to fight like the documents say they should.  Throw in an effect where someone becomes 'unbalanced' when they change styles so that people think twice before changing in combat, I think you could really spice up combat without tearing out the combat code.  Just think of the possibilities...

[Ritley]

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!! Implement. It. Now. Thanks.

[Cale_Knight]

I would at least like to see two simple "stances" coded in.

Offensive stance: Small bonus to hit, small bonus to attack rate, small penalty to defense.

Defensive stance: Small bonus to defense, small penalty to hit and attack rate.

Neutral stance: No special modifiers.

[Desertman (not logged in)]

I think the vast majority of these can already be done with basic rp, our current skills, and different weapon and armor combinations.


Allanaki Style : Use two weapons and wear light armor.....You are already trying to kill them as fast as possible, you are swinging two weapons like a mad man.

Tuluki Style : Use a shield and a weapon and wear heavy armor. That would seem to cover it.

Red Storm Style : I wont go into this further for sake of an IC leak, but stick around Red Storm for a very long time and fight in that weather, you may be surprised.

Assassin Style and Rogue Style : Use smaller quick weapons and wear very light armor. Actually train that assassin/rogue first before you start trying to slay hordes with him and you will get that desired affect of people thinking you are defensless with your small blades before you whoop up on them lightening fast.

Poisoner : Backstab. Or use specific blades that are already in game and designed just for this purpose.

Frantic Defense : Wield your shield and hold your blade...Or even attempt at using two shields if you know it is hopeless anyways and you are just trying to hold out.

Mercenary Style : Use the weapons/armor of your choice and simply train your pc in all of these different skills and abilities ahead of time, you should get your desired result.

Body Guard : Just guard your charge, you are already trying to sacrifice your own safety for thiers. Just train your guard skill and you will end up with that massive bonus you seek.

Fanatic Body Guard : Become an expert guard first, then you are most assuredly going to have your desired result here, you will hop infront of your charge almost every time willing to take all damage for them.


While these examples may not be exactly what you want, they do cover a vast majority of what you are seeking here and I hope it helps. I personally dont like the idea of anyone getting bonuses to any skill instantly by typing in a simple command. I like the way the system works now...you want to be capable of jumping infront of your charge and saving his ass with reckless abandon, join a guild or house and train your guard skill. You want to be able to break the skin and poison Johnny Smartass, practice your backstab or seek out the perfect weapon for such it isnt as hard as you might think and being able to type one command in order to get a bonus to the chance to whap someone with an almost assured killer isnt something I want to see people walking around with, unless they have trained thier butts off and earned it. Anyways these are just some recommendations and though I know its not exactly what you wanted to hear I hope they will provide some alternatives for the time being.

[Larrath]

Though it's a nice concept, this seems to be something that could take positively ages to balance properly.  In addition, you'll inevitably have people starting in Red Storm and zooming to Allanak to get a 'better' fighting style, and other silly things like that.

I'd rather have five simple stances:
Berserk - major defense penalties, major offense bonuses
Aggressive - some defense penalties, some offense bonus
Normal - things as they are right now
Defensive - some offense penalty, some defense bonus
Retreating - no attacks, greatly increased defense.

The Berserk stance could also put Mercy on Off and maybe even penalize Flee, while giving a powerful attack rate and bonuses to skills such as bash, kick and disarm.
Aggressive would give a Flee penalty and increase/decrease Offense and Defense by 10% (60% Offense would turn to 66%).
Normal would be exactly like it is right now.
Defensive would be the reverse of Aggressive, with bonuses to Flee and to all sorts of saves (against bashing, disarm et cetera).
Retreating would give a very heavy Defense bonus, making the character extremely difficult to be hit by a peer with similar skills.

Naturally, the problem with retreating is that the other person could start Berserking on you.  Also, dexterity and Stamina could factor heavily into this.  If you're a dwarf and you're trying to hit an elf that keeps running away from you, good luck.
Being targetted by multiple opponents would make Retreating far less helpful since there's the risk of being surrounded.

Finally, both Retreating and Berserk fighting stances would make it impossible for both the defender and his attackers to improve in any combat skills while fighting.  Defensive and Offensive sparring is realistic.

I say, five basic combat stances, and make fighting drain away stamina.


I do like Rindan's idea in theory, but if every 15-day Tuluki warrior with their improved defense was suddenly able to beat up 25-day Allanaki warriors, we could start seeing some trouble.

[ArmWindworn]

The Simple solution is to  go to one of the Diku muds that has a good martial arts code...and   beg, borrow, or steal it .....


 Examples..

  get mining and foraging from Inferno  ... Find out how much they want for the code and set up a fund...  what they have is BETTER then any graphical game in terms of content.

  Remorting..   I realize you are all very fond of perma death and griefing.. but I'd like some way to make all the time I spend count.  (karma.. giggle like I'll ever see any).  I think  Veteran warrior, veteran scout etc should be there.. after the fifth (and gads the 50th)  time of making a warrior  the grind of getting your skills to the point where you can kill a rat has to put people off...

[Malifaxis]

Actually a couple of us like that challenge.

I think the styles, as listed by Rindan, are awesome.

I would like to see them simply compliment the classes as they stand. All allanaki start with allanaki style if warrior, but ranger and assassin can choose allanaki, assassin, or poisoner.  Rinthi have a few different options.

Another room, past Hall of Kings, the Hall of Blood, where one points to the option, would be perhaps a good way to go with implementing this, if it was chosen to occur.

[Rindan]

Desertman is right to a limited extent.  You can already roughly approximate these styles, but the truth is that the code barely supports them.  Yes, your Allanaki can wield two weapons and wear sandcloth, but you will quickly find it to be ineffective compared to wielding two weapons of moderate size and wearing armor.  Get good at combat and fight equally skilled people and you will realize that even if you are both fight "Allanaki style" the combat will drag on when one of you should really be dead in a few moments.

The problem is that you can't force your character to fight more or less in a certain way.  There is no way to tell your character to be very athletic, quick, and to completely disregard defense in favor of scoring a quick killing blow.

Now, that isn't to say that the bonuses need to be so extreme that a newbie can become a blistering nightmare of death.  An 'absolutely insane' bonus to a total n00b is not going to make him a Mek killer.  It might mean that he can hit someone who is moderately skilled who is also using an offensive style, but it will always be at the expense of a moderately skilled person tearing them in two in a couple of hits because of defensive penalties.  The idea is that all styles are just trade offs.  You can hit or defend against something you couldn't before, but you are going to be punished because now you can be hit or be unable to hit something you could before.

I think the best example is the Allanaki styles of combat.  Right now Allanaki style doesn't exist unless someone is doing it for pure RP sake.  Wearing nothing but sandcloth is suicide because there is no advantage in it.  Encumbrance means nothing until it starts getting heavy.  As it stands, you can easily get some nice chitin armor without weighing yourself down enough to worry about encumbrance.  Further, when you go into combat against and equally skilled person, combat takes a long time.  Allanaki style is described as being quick, brutal, and deadly.  That is hardly what you will experience if you try fighting that way today against an equally skilled person.  With the style system, Allanaki combat would work they way it is supposed to.  The sever encumbrance restriction would keep the armor VERY light.  The massive bonuses to offense and penalties to defense would make the combat quick.  When two people would fight using this style, the penalties and bonuses would effectively stack, resulting in two people using Allanaki style killing each other in only a few rounds.  This is the way it should be.

If nothing else, this would make combat a hell of a lot more interesting.  It would also let warriors have something else to work on other then the same couple of skills that they see from the beginning to the end of their miserable lives.  As to who should get what styles... I would simply assign them by guild and ignore geography.  If someone wants to fight Allanaki style in Tuluk, let them.  At most, I would throw in a geography modifier to starting skill.  'nakkies start with a higher Allanaki style, and Tuluki start with a higher Tuluki style.  I would set the skill caps on them relatively low so that people feel free to learn more the one style.  A few of them would probably be branching.  For instance, an assassin style might branch off of a generic offensive style.  A fanatical guard style might branch off of a normal guard style.  For further balance, make it so that when you first start working on a style you suffer all of the weaknesses in full, but only receive small bonuses.  Practice simply increases the bonuses but has no effect on the weaknesses.

I think that this change would make combat infinitely more exciting and entertaining.  I think it would do a world of wonder for warrior types in terms of helping them to define their RP and combat emotes.  You can emote all you want about leaving your defenses open in favor of attacking, but if the code blatantly ignores your wishes, you end up looking silly as you parry every attack and fail to land a single blow.  If nothing else, it would give warriors more interesting lessons other then another lesson on how to kick properly.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I'll work out a better system, cut down and sectioned, in a bit, if I have time. I completely agree with Rindan, however, and i actually think that it can be implemented with the current combat code, with no change to the actual code what-so-ever, but I may be worng, and I'll analyze it ... if I have time.

[Maybe42or54]

Tuluki Style


Effects:  Moderate penalties to all offensive abilities are applied.  For a brief period of time (a round or two), an echo will be sent to the player informing them that have 'found an opening' in their opponent's stance.  At this point they will take a hit to their defensive abilities and receive massive to hit bonuses, reduce the opponent's effective armor class, and suffer minor penalties to their defensive abilities.  This simulates the Tuluki style which places heavy emphasis on defense and searching for an opponent's weakness, and exploiting that weakness when it is found.

I really don't like that part at all. Especially against an allanaki warrior who is supposedly "Franticly attacking." Frantic, to me, implies no set pattern to what they are doing. Massive Bonuses to attacking while only taking a "hit" to their defense? If anything, it should be traded, massive negative to defense, and massive bonus to attacking. Tuluki's like flair too.. There is no flair in hiding behind a shield all the live long day to strike every once in a while when the mud tells them to.

Good thoughts all around, but...I'd really just prefer what someone else said, about defensive, offensive, insane, and scared, or what have you.

[jmordetsky]

All for it. As long as it all gets tested for balance and playability etc.

I think to start you could just create styles that add/deduct to certain areas of your ability.

IE

Beserk = +1 to 5 offense, -1 to 5 defense, +1 to 5 damage  done, +1 to 5 damange taken.

The range on the effectors should be based on your skill with the style. *shrug*

My two cents.

[Armaddict]

Er.

Dude.  What the hell happened to a loose guideline of RP styles.  Nothing too inhibiting, and certainly not -forced- by code?

I hate this.

[Rindan]

Er.

Dude.  What the hell happened to a loose guideline of RP styles.  Nothing too inhibiting, and certainly not -forced- by code?

I hate this.

How is the ability to modify your combat style inhibiting?  Inhibiting is emoting that you are throwing caution to the wind or fighting defensivly and having the code continue to plod along insisting that you are fighting the same way you always do.  Just open it up and let people learn the styles they want.  Allanaki don't have to fight with an Allanaki style.  They might very well fight normally, or pick up a mercenary style, or even Tuluki style.  The idea is to give combat flexability and flavor beyond the I hit you then you hit me that it is now.

[Lazloth]

This is a little too KaVir for me.