Combat Defence maybe too low?

[nakraal]

Hello to all and congrats for an exceptional game system.

In truth I have never played SIFR, as it is quite difficult to gather many experienced players who would like to play
a more mature medieval setting, but as I have managed to have my players enjoy my current Birthright campaign (which is quite close to a "game of thrones" style) I plan to prepare a short SIFR one hoping they will want more.

Now I checked the rules over and over and I keep stumbling on the Combat Defense thingy.

1. It seems that the majority of the NCs would have a CD range of 7-10 (with almost all majors NCs having a 10)

2. Comparing a char who has all 3 Combat Defense abilities on 3 who is opposed to a second char who has Fighting 3 (thus the ability to avoid hits of the first is equal with the ability to hit of the second) the hitter has an average of 10,5 score on every hit against the defenders 9, thus a clear advantage when it should be 50%.

A formula of Agility x 1.5 + Awareness + Athletics wouldn't be more balanced?

3. If you have Jaime Lannister fight with Sir Barristan using the SIFR stats and removing their armors, almost every strike would be a hit (each one averages a 20 attack on Combat def of 12) making the duel a DnD like combat instead of a block fest with a mortal blow in the end. Wouldn't that be fixed with more average CD?

Well of course I only question theoretically and I am sure that I miss something here, but if thats so I'd like to know what exactly

Thanks!

[aneirin]

Yeah. This has been a worry for me too when running a game. I am sure when I did run it it wouldn't be much of an issue, but if you get a rank 4 and two specialities you are nearly guaranteed to succeed with a few degrees of success, and when you get to five and six. The curve of the game seems quite immense. If you are bad at a skill, you are realy bad and simply cannot do it, but investing into it, they get up to completing even hard tasks rather easily.

How fast do characters advance? How easy is it to get over rank 5 for people? (I have been toying making it more difficult by having them have to find trainers of a higher rank unless the teacher has the teaching speciality)

Although I could just balance it out by making sure that a character who has given himself 5 fighting 4 athetics and so forth with a warhammer and 4 points in strength by putting him in possessions where he has to be stealthy or charming or survive in the wilderness. Not exlusively, but remind him of the fact that not all problems can be solved by fighting.

But my group likes fighting, and we have been rather spoiled in regards to figthing system. We have been playing legend and the skill rolls and the ability to parry and use combat manouvres ensures that even if an individual has a ridiculously high skill, combat is still a tense affair where they can be knocked out. I guess it would be the same here though...with intitiative being VERY important when it comes to higher skill levels, the faster person winning.

I may have been spoiled by fighting systems that let people parry and fight amongst each other for a while. But having done larping...even two even skilled people are going to hit each other, quite quickly, and repeatedly. Combat defences are low because you simply can't avoid attacks. Best I have managed to do was against two poor fighters, I would rank them as two or one, and I still could only parry them both for around 6 seconds before they got me.

It will just take some getting used to. Although I do really worry at what will happen if skill levels do get to 7 or 8, at that point it is looking like people will be doing one hit kills if wounds aren't taken, and it wil be whoever goes first who will win (a person with warfare to help initiative would be helpful I imagine)

[Zorbeltuss]

In my experience, you want to go around with Tower Shield and Splint Mail, with armor mastery benefit. And a combat build generally should have 4 or 5 in agility or athletics, whatever your weapon damage or special abilities are tied into (in smart builds, these are the same). I also like Awareness 4+, mostly because it increases both intrigue and combat defense, and read target action is awesome.

+3 defense in total, +8AR from gear.

Jaime vs Jaime clone, long blades: 7D+4B(+2) 7 Damage, will use cautious attack action so 6D+5B+2, 5 Damage for +3 defense. Bringing his defense up to 20. 8AR.

Average dice roll is 30, which is two successes, 21 damage, reduced to 13. (60% chance of 3 degree)
11% chance of 35+ which is four successes, 28 damage, reduced to 20.

If Jaime Clone instead opts to use standard attacks, he has a defense of 17, which means that the chance of a 3 degree success is now 85% and four degree is 40%. And there's a 20% chance of taking a critical hit.

On the other hand, he gets an extra dice to play with, meaning:
80% chance of three degrees.
41% chance of four degrees.
5% chance of critical.

It's going to be a short and brutal fight. And if you don't min/max combat defense, you're dead meat. I would test adding fighting rank to combat defense. Should equalize things a bit. But creates issues at lower levels.

The system works best when nobody, PC's and NPC's included, doesn't have more than 4 or 5 in anything.

[rumbleweed]

So if you disallow characters to start with more than 5 ranks in an ability, how do you compensate for that in character creation? Adult and Middle Aged characters normally have a maximum starting rank of 7 and 6 respectively.

[B-Type]

I think in some ways the combat system enforces the difference between Westerosi knightly fighting and other kinds of battle. Knights have shields and heavy armor: they have decent defense when have a decent shield as long as they're relatively skilled, but their primary defense is their armor absorbing heavy shocks.
They'll have Combat Defense high enough so that only extremely skilled fighters (5 or so) could easily get more then one extra margin of success, and then rely on their armor to absorb the damage.
Most example knights they give cap their weapon damage out at 4, for example, so if they're wearing splint armor or full plate then they're basically taking relatively little damage unless the guy is REALLY good at sword-fighting.
Compare to Braavosi fighters or low-armor fighters like Dothraki: they're harder to hit, but once you DO hit them they kinda fold up since they're taking maximal damage with minimal damage reduction.
The whole "Armor Sucks" thing has been proven to be silly several times in my game. One of my players is equipped with splint mail (brigandine), and has 10 combat defense with a shield, and he takes some serious hits without flinching.

[Lord Ben]

They'll have Combat Defense high enough so that only extremely skilled fighters (5 or so) could easily get more then one extra margin of success, and then rely on their armor to absorb the damage.

I guess I don't see 5 as being that "extremely" high. Using the secondary character generation of picking a persons primary attribute and giving it a 5 and then 2 4's and four 3's I see quite a few "named" sellswords, soldiers, etc as having 5 fighting. They'll be more important than "soldier #7" but it's expected that PC's run into important adversaries.

That said, it's not too low. Combats move quickly without a lot of back and forth missing going on. That's a good thing. Spending your injuries/wounds in an important fight is just as important as having a high fighting skill.

[aneirin]

I suppose when you consider that stats you need to be a good fighter (endurance for taking injuries and wounds, athletics for damage, fighting for hitting) that is already 90 Eco points.

I suppose players should rarely ever get to use all their dice as well. There should usually be something screwing them over. A fight I'd drift snow giving minus 3 or an injury from a bad jump, it being night time with no visibility, or being in cramped quarters giving them minus one dice as they can't use their whole weapons reach (for larger weapons)

[coldwind]

I suppose when you consider that stats you need to be a good fighter (endurance for taking injuries and wounds, athletics for damage, fighting for hitting) that is already 90 Eco points.

I suppose players should rarely ever get to use all their dice as well. There should usually be something screwing them over. A fight I'd drift snow giving minus 3 or an injury from a bad jump, it being night time with no visibility, or being in cramped quarters giving them minus one dice as they can't use their whole weapons reach (for larger weapons)

90? So a 5 and two 3s? Or two 4s and 3. That doesn't sound overly specialized in my mind.

I don't usually directly penalize the excellent fighters. They want to play the skilled warrior, so I let 'em. However, it may not be as satisfying, because violence doesn't solve every problem, and most of my antagonists (I rarely use outright villains in ASoIaF) are well-rounded, and seeing skilled fighters arrayed against them, will use intrigues to outmaneuver the warriors.

They either shape up, and invest in their own social skills, ir they quickly find themselves and their house in politica hot water.

[nakraal]

Wow, just missed the Cautious attack rule. If the 1D barrier is lifted all makes absolute sense.
A warrior could just use up his Fighting dices to get multiple +3s to his CD, so the better he is on swordsmanship the easier he parries. A can even picture it, Jaime using all 5 of his dices for a +15 CD, arrogantly parring all of his puny opponent's futile attempts to harm him with out even trying to attack back. Of course the bonus should apply only against one attacker (?)

On the other hand maybe the armor penalty could be reduced by the Athletics ranks of a character (e.g. a char with 4 athletics wearing fullplate gets only -2 AP) or is it too much?

[B-Type]

On the other hand maybe the armor penalty could be reduced by the Athletics ranks of a character (e.g. a char with 4 athletics wearing fullplate gets only -2 AP) or is it too much?

2
That can get really broken really fast. I GM a player with fairly regular knight who's a talented warrior with only splint armor and the Armor Mastery quality. With a large shield his Combat Defense is 10, which means he gets hit a whole lot, except that basic knights with longswords are doing 4 damage per degree of success, meaning they have to get at LEAST three degrees to even hurt him.
It takes a very skilled, well-trained fighter to even properly injure him when he's armored, or otherwise a warrior using weapons specifically designed to bypass armor through sheer force...which to be fair is actually how armor was bypassed once upon a time anyway.

[Pytorb]

I don't think its too low. I think its low enough to make fights deadly unless you fight defensively. That is what skilled fighters would probalby do when fighting other opponents of similar skill until they got the perfect opening. Against lesser opponents they probably wouldn't bother unless the opponents had suitable armour defeating weapons or were well organised and drilled.

[Azai]

I have come up with two rules to kinda help ease my mind about Combat Defense.

1. For major npcs and PCs, I allow them to roll 1D6 every time they are hit and add it directly to their combat defense. It gives a sense of 'randomness' that my group likes. Also it doesn't outright say they will dodge but may make the degrees a little less. (Especially for people they are trying to one shot kill too)

2. I also made a new combat action called parry. It is an lesser action and to use it, it must be your turn. It allows you to roll your fighting(Including bonus die of weapon you are holding) and take that result as your combat defense for the rest of the round. Even if it is worse. Obviously the narrator has to kinda pay attention, I don't allow those kind of rolls against arrows(Unless they are using a shield).

Though when reading through the thread maybe another way to approach it is to just add fighting value into combat defense?

[Pytorb]

Though when reading through the thread maybe another way to approach it is to just add fighting value into combat defense?

I've mentioned this on other threads as well but I've houseruled that when someone is fighting defensively their combat defence is increased by their Fighting Rank, not by +3. It gives the same effect but the characters have to sacrifice a minor action and a die of Fighting to do so. It thus makes it good for initially sizing up your opponent but stops combat defence being upbeatably high for the whole fight.