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CrimsonMars · **07-24-2014, 11:16 AM**

I'll admit... I'm not really the best at combat RP. I was never accused of god-modding, but because I'm so cautious (and because I don't want fights to drag on too much), my characters often ends up losing. I don't normally mind this, but I haven't had them win since last year. :/

My Chiyo for example, is primarily a pugilist (she can wield and axe as well). She has had a fair amount of training since her childhood and exercise almost daily. She's no Warrior of Light, but I would consider her to be well-verse in combat. When it comes to battlemages or even archers, she may at least have a slight disadvantage, but I do believe she could stand a chance against any other DoW character depending on there background.

So I was wondering, what does everyone else do?

Warren Castille · **07-24-2014, 11:31 AM**

For events, a lot of us use rolz.org and just oppose dice to see who lands what on who. For free-form stuff... Well, I'm not young anymore so the appeal has dropped off. Flowery prose tends to give way to DBZ-style powering up and meteors getting dropped and that's not my cup of tea.

I dislike RNG systems to determine victors on a superstitious level, but it seems to be the most "fair." I also adhere to the "logical out" method of getting my face wiped off of my face: The Grindstone's taught me a LOT about protected losses and not looking completely inept when someone breaks my face in. Distractions, not being in the right presence of mind, those sorts of things all go far in justifying how someone who's trained for combat can lose to a new person just trying a weapon out or something similar.

Personally, I find losing more fun.

Kage · **07-24-2014, 11:32 AM**

Honestly, I'm starting to prefer only having combat RP with people I know and trust in RP. I'm too cautious for myself to be god-modding or power-gaming but... sometimes you can't trust others to.

But in dice rolling, I have the absolute worst luck in the world. Absolute. Kage hasÂ not won a fight, through dice rolls. Oh, he'll get hits in but wins? The only times are when people retreat and he's left there or we speak OOCly "ok we'll make this a draw or somewhat win for him"

How is he supposed to be a competent Paladin if he can't even tackle someone down? ' ~ '

I like to roleplay combat out with a somewhat pre-determined outcome. It gives both people something to work with and surprises shouldn't happen.

I won't lie. I'm pretty tired of Kage losing ; ;

**Unnamed Mercenary** · **07-24-2014, 11:38 AM**

(07-24-2014, 11:32 AM)ExKage Wrote: Honestly, I'm starting to prefer only having combat RP with people I know and trust in RP. I'm too cautious for myself to be god-modding or power-gaming but... sometimes you can't trust others to.

But in dice rolling, I have the absolute worst luck in the world. Absolute. Kage hasÂ not won a fight, through dice rolls. Oh, he'll get hits in but wins? The only times are when people retreat and he's left there or we speak OOCly "ok we'll make this a draw or somewhat win for him"

How is he supposed to be a competent Paladin if he can't even tackle someone down? ' ~ '

I like to roleplay combat out with a somewhat pre-determined outcome. It gives both people something to work with and surprises shouldn't happen.

Well, a lalafell (at the time) trying to tackle a highlander wouldn't get very far. But Kage does have pretty bad RNG luck. *cough* stop rolling so many 1s and 2s against my 4s, 5s and 6s *cough*

Berrod Armstrong · **07-24-2014, 11:41 AM**

I tend to use rolz.org for a turn by turn attacking/defending format of combat. However, with players I've known and roleplayed combat with for a long time, I sometimes go for free-form. It's not something I would choose to do willy-nilly. When both my character's opponent and I have a general idea of how we want a fight to end, we both work toward that end and make the journey as engaging as possible.Â

Never forget to work your character's personality into combat as well! It's all good and fine to emote him/her throwing a punch or swinging a sword, but little hints of the character's essence make a simple 'X did this' post into something special. If they're calculating, put something about that in -- if they have a short temper, have them easily frustrated and angered by a missed blow -- it's not all about getting the fight done!

[sub]and goodness yes I love it when Berrod loses hngh so good[/sub]

Vysce the Lad · **07-24-2014, 11:48 AM**

Usually I combat rp with someone I trust, but in the event of stranger combat rp I'll use rolz. Mostly it's a emote war (within reason) when it's without rolz. But in that case, usually the winner and loser of the fight is dictated beforehand, or until someone "decides" to lose. Usually it's me Tongue

It'll be a lot cooler in 2.4 I think. I hear we're actually getting a /roll to roll a digital die~

Naunet · **07-24-2014, 11:49 AM**

I just... usually write out stuff and use best judgment when it comes to outcomes, based on my character's ability or lackthereof. Occasionally I'll go to random.org for a simple dice roll on something that could go either way.

But I'm pretty laid back.

FreelanceWizard · **07-24-2014, 12:35 PM**

Usually, I like to work out the results in advance with the other player for two reasons. First, the narrative often determines who wins or loses; in a plot, for instance, the bad guy might need to win for his plan to proceed, or the players might need to stomp the waves of bad guys to get to their objective. In both cases, the story makes clear what the appropriate result is. Second, outside of a larger story, the situation and character concepts can usually decide who would win. If some Roegadyn bruiser decides to crack L'yhta upside the head at a bar, she obviously loses (unarmed, not expecting an attack, etc.). Conversely, if some random thug tries to jump her while she's out adventuring, the thug obviously loses ("I run at you with a sword!" "In response, Flare.") Once the outcome is clear, we just write out how we get there.

I really don't like random rolls without any form of level or situational modifier. I understand the argument that even the mighty can be felled by bad luck, but it's quite immersion-breaking for me when Random Newbie Adventurer Who Just Grabbed a Sword can drop an archmage through sheer luck. That's like letting a critical hit from a level 1 fighter drop a dragon. It just doesn't work for me. Smile

I used to use more detailed dicing systems for combat and other uncertain situations, but having to tab out to roll is a pain, and I found that while people often enjoyed specifying their characters in fairly lightweight game systems, actually doing stuff with them proves to be challenging. One thing I've been kicking around is adapting a token-based bidding system I use for tabletop games to plots, because that serves the primary role of preventing people from dominating the narrative while dramatically simplifying the system's usage in play. In this system, if you want to win a fight, you just have to be willing to bid more tokens than the other guy (and more skilled people have more "free tokens" in their areas of expertise) -- but in doing so, you reduce the number of tokens you have available for other tasks in the plot.

In general, though, I typically run with whatever most people want to do. If the system really rubs me the wrong way, I'll just take a dive and quietly bow out. Smile

LiveVoltage · **07-24-2014, 01:08 PM**

This is going to be a long winded post so just throwing that out there beforehand so that way you're not shocked by a wall... lol, who am I kidding, you're going to be shocked by it regardless.Â xD

This is just a rough idea of what I have in mine for text fights but I think fights should be influenced by a series of factors similar to that of real life.

Mental State: as a fighter with a clear mind can think and observe his opponents attacks. This allows them to plan ahead and try to avoid, block or parry the next attack. That and psychological state such as the fighter is angry or scarred. If the fighter is angry then he can be easily read. They might be stronger when angry but strong doesn't mean faster, and slow but strong attacks are easy to read and a scarred enemy is more likely to hesitate or refuse to attack, or even run if they are scarred enough.
Combat Experience: ultimately this is a very big key factor into any fight. So you've slain one or two bandit groups and have trained/studied for a long time then that means you do hold practical skill in combat but full points go to people who have been in actual warzone, where the chaos of the battlefield can eat you alive if you're not careful or perceptive to you're surroundings. The few that survive war's can be considered to have extreme martial talent from that point. Bonus points go to if the character has been in more than one war and he lead's troops into battle. (Note that this point if you're character falls into the highest category does NOT make him/her a power play character. They aren't elite fighters that can summon meteors, or cleave rifts through time, or be H@x0rz. They are simply very strong within a believable level. They can still be felled in battle under the right conditions.)
Skill Set, training value, techniques: this here is influenced by who much you're character has trained with a certain weapon or skill and what different kind of techniques or skills he knows. This is partially influenced by combat experience as people who survive on the battlefield have obtained heightened senses and perceptive skills in a sense. While it isn't much or very noticeable, these little differences can make the biggest impact in a fight. Combine that with experience and the character becomes that much stronger.
Situational Awareness: While some fighters are focused on just staying alive, other things around you can happen while you're not paying attention, such as enemy reinforcements arriving, enemy's repositioning, flanking or retreating and so on. Character's who are more aware of their environment tend to react better to the changes of enemy positions and patterns but if they get to caught up in it then they will miss the minor or singular enemy's while instead focusing on the enemy's as a whole. This in turn can prove very fatal when caught off guard by a surprise attack form a single enemy.
Terrain: knowing where you fight and where you should fight at are key to battles involving numbers. Sometimes, its better to hold the high grounds, or bottleneck an enemy group into a pass rendering their numbers useless. That and certain characters might be more fit in a fight over other characters because they know the terrain there or have fought on said or similar terrain before.
Characters Physical condition: This is also terribly important as well. While it may be commonly overlooked since most fights start off with characters at full energy and physical condition, it is a different story for characters who have had to fight consecutive battle's. They will be wounded or drained of energy and their skills and situational awareness will suffer as a result and the enemy will have a advantage over them. This advantage can vary though pending on other variables such as how strong the opponent is versus how strong said character is at full condition.

These things factor into a believable fight and should influence the outcome of most battle's, but the RPers involved in said fight should decide how things turn out beforehand.

I personally prefer winning more than loosing ICly. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth otherwise but it doesn't bother me too terribly either way.

Also, I noticed that nobody mentioned anything about PC versus NPC fights.Â :I

For NPC versus PC fights, its better to just make it a forum RP event or something. Its much easier to put detail into those kind of fights and it allows better control over NPC's actions. This of course, only applies to NPC's that don't exist in the game, or the battle is not taking place in a playable area of the game.

EDIT: I'm also not a big fan of the dice role mechanic, just to be clear. I prefer everything to be predetermined and the writers write to the said ending, with loose restrictions as to how they proceed during the fight.

Hiro · **07-24-2014, 01:10 PM**

I personally avoid combat RP outside of friends and/free company members mostly for the reasons listed, but that may change once FFXIV updates with a /roll command.

I'm quite used to RNG combat. Most of the time my FC uses a modified D10 system contrived from MUD's of old or simple D20. Given the nature of the D10 system we've adopted it for smaller fights and duels as it adds more of an attack and receive feel with Dodge/Parry/Block - Clean Hit - Severe Blow.

I've even gone with pre-arranged rolls on occasion where one or multiple rolls dictate the outcome and/or flow of a particular fight which has lead to some interesting situations. IE: D20 vs D20 to Determine Winner; D20 vs D20 to determine Injuries; D20 to determine length.

In the end though its pretty much deciding what you're comfortable with, not everyone is as willing to test out any RNG system or capable of unbias in freeform.

As for vs NPC: I like forums better for large groups, otherwise as a DM I'm really not caring about minor NPC's. If it's something like boss combat I'll set a target number to hit, a range for big hits, and then go from there. When it comes to the finishing blow I'll pretty much throw down a quick roll off winner deals finishing blow in the next rotation after everyone else had had a chance to post.

Eva · **07-24-2014, 01:17 PM**

I don't like getting mired in rolls and having to rely heavily on other websites and such. This seems fine for some media, but for MMO where I prefer action-based RP to move at a quick pace I would much rather cut through any and all minutia. The old addage 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' usually applies, and I'm happy to explain my reasoning if anything seemed excessive or whatever after the fact, but not during the RP itself unless it is of major concern to someone (to date I don't think it's been an issue, but Eva as a fighter isn't much of a powerhouse anyway).

That said, I keep a d20 near my keyboard to serve as a guideline. I have used rolz.org on occasion as well just for when others wanted to see how I was doing things during a spar. But I prefer to structure things on a sort of turn-based system. And I only focus on my character and how she reacts. Unless my character is somehow taking initiative and attacking first (the RP itself often dictates this for me) than I roll twice - the first a "reaction" to the previous emote. The second is a sort of counterattack. Back when /random in 1.0 was a thing (I miss that so much) I would just use that instead of the d20.

I also weight the die rolls based on the character's natural strengths/weaknesses as well as factoring in the opponent and any environmental variables. I'm always happy to share these numbers. For Eva, her defensive rating runs a bit higher since she's pretty overly cautious about things and quite nimble, and her offensive rating runs lower, since she lacks physical strength.

I don't care how my character's opponent(s) determine their emotes. This is important to me. When I start getting bogged down in the math or seeing things as numbers, I totally lose the sense of immersion. In my mind I'd rather see a brute highlander bearing down on a buxom elezen and envision her leaping to one side to avoid the attack rather than getting mired down in how these things came to be. It's more important to me to visualize the actions rather than understand the reasons. Flukes happen. Luck is a thing. Except in really excessive situations I don't question when a sparring opponent is fighting flawlessly. Eva loses more than she wins. Ben wins more than he loses. Both win some and lose some though, but it's more important to me to convey the actions quickly but descriptively and keep the pace of the spar moving.

Nothing annoys me more than when things get held up to question a dice roll, or the action is paused to have a conversation about why something happened. I don't mind quick little back-and-forths in /tells that take place behind the scenes (stuff a passer-by would never see), so long as the pace of the fight keeps moving.

We used to spar a lot more in Everwatch in 1.0 but we've had a few in ARR in Crystalline (and will totally be scheduling some more) and they're a lot of fun when everyone's on the same page with things and when you know the people you're sparring with could even let go dice and just sort of wing it freestyle if they wanted.

I do like the dice rolls for myself because they do make that 'random element' a bit more apparent. And just to give a quick example of how I might do a thing I'll set up a little scene between my two characters:

Ben rolls (1d20): 14, 3

Emote: Blynbhar thrusts forward with his wooden practice axe, easily parrying off the blonde elezen's strike. Quickly drawing back there is an unnaturally awkward pause as he advances again, swinging the weapon laterally but a bit unsteadily.

Eva rolls: 1, 19

Emote: Eva notes the falter and takes a step to one side in an effort to avoid the attack entirely. Her foot lands oddly, however, and she stumbles forward, the wooden weapon crashing violently into the breastplate of her armor, knocking her down backwards and off her feet. With uncanny agility though, she rolls to one side on the ground, thrusting directly at Blynbhar's midsection with her practice lance.

The first roll is a reaction and the second is an attack, and I try to incorporate both in each emote. And of course I weight things. In the latter example, the defensive roll is low and she got knocked down, but the offensive roll was high, so the counterattack from the ground might still hit the mark, depending on how Ben wants to play it.

And of course I think it's important never to actually emote a "hit" unless you are really comfortable with the person with whom you are sparring/fighting. I wouldn't mind if most of my friends that do the dice thing rolled a 20 and punched Eva in the face wanted to emote it so long as there was still room for some sort of a recovery.

More important than anything else for me though is that a) the action is realistic and doesn't feel "manufactured" as turn-based combat sometimes feels (which is why I like lumping both the reaction and counter in one emote), and b) the action moves along swiftly.

Sorry if this got a bit longwinded, but sparring is fun!! Heart

Mercurias · **07-24-2014, 01:20 PM**

Unless it's with friends, intend to avoid combat RP whenever I can. It's a recipe for OOC drama when peoe take the characters they've put a lot of themselves into and then make them try to beat one another. There's too much desire to win, and people will power game like heck.Â

Like people casting Holy or Flare. That's sort of an instant win button, which is why the spells are, in lore, so amazingly rare. A lot if the time I see that sort of thing, or people shrugging off massive injuries because they're just so driven by the Heart of the Cards or whatever.

K'nahli · **07-24-2014, 01:23 PM**

So far I have just been predetermining an outcome and then doing whatever I see fit along the way. People I don't know make me nervous, especially since in the beastmen situation I tend to believe that they are highly competent foes that are not taken down easily by even adept fighters. It's difficult for me to get along with other people on that aspect because I can't turn around and tell them: "No, I don't like that".

I'll always be nervous with unfamiliars I guess but I had a great time RP'ing three villains that attacked a caravan on it's way to Gridania a long time back. Despite their indivisible strengths and talents every one was very fair and never overpowered the three characters I made which made it very fun and exciting. I truly enjoyed that scene.

Warren Castille · **07-24-2014, 01:25 PM**

Some folks I used to RP with tried to incorporate the baseline Exalted (1.0) system with no Charms or Essence, just because we liked the feeling of power the world offered. What we had hoped was that we'd have a fun bit of tabletop to go with our game world.

What happened was, since we were all playing fighter-types anyway, we were all more or less the same effing guy. Martial heroes are all usually the long-practiced, long-dedicated, strong-armed hero type guys; As a result we were basically throwing identical dice pools. We figured it was easier to just roll a d6 (we opted for a single d10) to determine who was winning; Was easier than counting 10s twice and removing 1s and blah blah blah tabletop.

Alternatives I've found fun that doesn't work so hot online: Roll a "bank" of attacks/defenses. Before a fight, both players roll a d20 3 (or ten, or fifty, you get the idea) times. Then you "play" those rolls like rock paper scissors, just more heavily weighted.

Works with a deck of cards, too, if you're into modifying WAR and poker. TCG-elements without buying decks.

C'kayah Polaali · **07-24-2014, 01:33 PM**

When I started roleplaying online, I played in MUSHes that only used freeform combat, and I tend to prefer that. That said, I've had enough problems with freeform combat that I tend to not play combat heavy characters. The main problem, in my experience, is that many people simply do not want to lose. This is completely understandable, of course, but in freeform combat someone is going to have to decide to lose, and that usually ends up being me.Â

These days, I've taken to doing a very technical Fritz Leiber-style description of combat, with very specific moves called out in a very technical style: "C'kayah faced his opponent with his sword in prime, point slightly ascending. He stepped forward, weight balanced between his feet, and swung a vertical moulinet towards his opponent's neck..." I still get faced with plenty of opponents who simply "easily parry, kicking a nearby sofa through the air at C'kayah's head while swinging their two-handed axe in a body-splitting blow", but I've had better luck with it.

I don't care for RNG based combat because the combat systems tend to be pretty simplistic and don't cover the sorts of things C'kayah does - he uses poisons, he fights dirty, etc.

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