Test 1, fight 1 -- Mojo vs. Yaw

[Yaw]

The sun is high as you walk into the centre of the arena for your first battle in the tournament. You wait through your introduction and the lukewarm cheers, eager to find out who your opponent will be.

As the announcer's voice fades into silence, you turn back to the entrance to see an Elf approaching. He stands about 5'9", thin and finely muscled. He is wearing loose grey cloth that affords him ease of movement, with a trapezoidal buckler strapped to his left forearm, covering it from wrist to elbow like an exaggerated gauntlet. As he comes closer, you can see his light brown hair is braided into thin ropes, and there is a piercing look in his green eyes. The announcer introduces him as Oduro bel'Anath to the same smattering of applause you received. He draws a thin sabre and waits for the battle to begin...

[Yaw]

Damn formatting. I'm copying in your sheet below, Mojo, because I actually have to be able to read it.

Vor McDoogel
Race: Slith

Description: With about 6'7 of muscles, Vor is a fierce fighter. He specialize both in polearms and swords. He uses 2 spears as main weapon, but also carries a two-handed sword with him. Vor is usually covered from head to toe with a full platemail. Although it slows him down, it gives him very good protection. Through Vor's helmet notches you can see his yellowy red eyes, staring at you, trying to see where are the week spots of your armor.

ATTRIBUTES (35):

EMP : 1 (2)
CHR: 1 (3)
ACU: 3
REA: 3
STR: 9 (7)
CRD: 9 (7)
POW: 5 (4)
PUR: 7 (6)

Skills (15):
Axes; Polearms (STR): 4
Evasion (CRD): 4
Observation(ACU): 4
Swords(STR): 3

Inventory:
2 Spears
Two-handed sword
A banana

hmph. This looks like an optimized character.

Reaction check:
Oduro -- 8
Vor -- 15

Vor goes first.

[Yaw]

Vor attack right:

Vor -- 15
Oduro -- 17

Attack fails

Vor attack left:
Vor -- 19
Oduro -- 19

Attack fails

Oduro attack:
Oduro -- 17
Vor -- 20

Attack fails

No damage this round.

[Yaw]

Oduro Focus check:

Oduro -- 11 < 12

Focus check fails

Vor attack right:

Vor -- 18
Oduro -- 17

Attack successful.
2 damage.

Vor attack left:
Vor -- 19
Oduro -- 19

Attack fails.

Oduro attack:
Oduro -- 10
Vor -- 23

Attack fails.

[Yaw]

Oduro Focus check:

Oduro -- 14 > 12

Focus check successful.

Vor attack right (thrown):

Vor -- 17
Oduro -- 15

Attack successful
2 damage

Vor attack left:
Vor -- 19
Oduro -- 15

Attack successful
2 damage

Oduro attack:
Oduro -- 11
Vor -- 15

Attack fails

Were this a real battle, I'd surrender it here.

[Yaw]

Oduro Focus check:

Oduro -- 7 < 12

Focus check fails

Vor attack (thrown):

Vor -- 21
Oduro -- 19

Attack successful
2 damage

Oduro attack:
Oduro -- 18
Vor -- 22

Attack fails

[Yaw]

Oduro Focus check:

Oduro -- 14 > 12

Focus check successful

Vor attack:

Vor -- 20
Oduro -- 11

Attack successful, critical hit.
4 damage

Willpower check:

Oduro -- 16 < 17

Willpower check fails.
Oduro mortally wounded.
Battle over.

[Yaw]

Name: Oduro bel’Anath
Player: Yaw
Race: Elf

Description: Young looking, 5’9” with fine features. Fair-skinned, green eyes, with shoulder-length light brown hair worn in thin braids.

Attributes
Initially start with 35 to distribute

EMP 5
CHR 6
ACU 5
REA 4
STR 3
CRD 6
POW 4
PUR 4

Skills
Initial value: 13
HEART Skills
• 2 Negotiation (CHR)
• 2 Intuition (EMP)

MIND Skills
• 2 Observation (ACU)
• 10 Language (Elvish) (REA)
• 4 Language (Trade) (REA)

BODY Skills
• 2 Swords (CRD)
• 2 Evasion (CRD)

SPIRIT Skills
• 2 Focus (PUR)
• 1 Willpower (PUR)

With the battle over, the thread is now open to comments.

[Yaw]

I know. I think we can agree Vor was broken.

I ignored the plate mail, because we simply had no rules for it. This shows we need some. Yes, it should have a detrimental effect on CRD, while helping with defense...although a suggestion Mojo came up with was to have the armour reduce damage, rather than increase defense. (If you hit armour, you've hit your opponent. It just won't hurt as much.)

I was applying a -1 modifier to each of Mojo's attack rolls while holding both weapons. It helped keep me close in the early going. That might not be enough, especially when dealing with two of a weapon that isn't normally used in tandem. (I think we were anticipating two Samurai-style swords when coming up with this, rather than unwieldy spears.)

At least we know we need to reconsider some things...

[Yaw]

Ok, stuff learned.

1 -- We need rules regarding armour. I'm now leaning towards a bonus to defense and a penalty to CRD for different kinds of armour, like with different shields. My reasoning for this is that reducing damage might lead to a situation (with characters like Vor) where you can't hit them, and even if you could, you can't do damage. This would just make him harder to hit. Anyway, this is something we can work on.

2 -- The numbers. Let's ignore the rolls and look at the rest of it.

Reaction:

Oduro -- 5+2 = 7
Vor -- 3+4 = 7

Vor's attacks:

Vor attack (double spear) -- 9+4-1 = 12
Vor attack (single spear) -- 9+4 = 13
Vor attack (sword) -- 9+3 = 12
Oduro defense -- 6+2+1 = 9

Oduro's attacks:

Oduro attack -- 6+2 = 8
Vor defense -- 9+4 = 13

The discrepancy here is just brutal. Oduro had to roll 3 more than Vor just to block, and 6 more than Vor to hit! I had to keep making Focus checks on Swords in order to bring that difference down to 5, in order to have a chance in that fight. Since it's Focus on a skill, though, that meant choosing between Swords and Evasion, essentially bettering only offense or defense. Fortunately, only two characters created by players so far even approach Vor's brokenness (those by mith and Otaku).

This fight

did

show that it is difficult to get a critical hit in on someone. Despite Vor's large advantages, he only got a critical hit in once, and only because he was using a slashing weapon at the time (the attack was almost, but not quite double the defense). I'm curious to see how this will play out in the other fights, which should be more balanced.

Extending this conversation a bit, the way this works now with XP, it would cost 10*(new level) in experience to raise a skill (like Swords), and 40*(new level) in experience to raise an attribute (like CRD). This makes sense -- it takes a lot more work to get your natural attributes better than to just acquire new skills. The problem with this is that the method of improving using XP means that natural attributes are unlikely to be increased. This means that players simply won't be able to match Vor's 9s in STR and CRD, because the XP won't be used for that. Even worse, when creating NPCs the XP we have to work with as mods to boost levels are much more likely to go into boosting skills than attributes. I have Level 2 NPC human guards made for combat that would get creamed in a fight by Vor, who is Level 0! So I'm thinking the Slith racial bonuses should be taken down a notch...

[Yaw]

Yes, an optimized-for-combat level 0 character should beat a generalist level 0 character. That's fine? Should the optimized character be unhittable in that combat? Should the optimized character be able to beat a generalist level 1 character? Level 2? The real problem here is that I'd need to make a level 4 generalist character to have a chance against level 0 Vor.

That's

the unbalanced part. It's more a question of degree.

I don't know if Vor could find a spot in the world. It might be worth running CHR checks any time two people meet. Even so, I worry about him fitting in as a "circus freak" kind of character, which would negate the pitfalls of his bad attributes. Come see Vor, the most hideous Slith! Watch him lift a Ford Pinto over his head unaided!

Sometimes you can become so good at one thing that your other attributes cease to matter to people.

[Yaw]

Well, adjust that analysis a bit. Normal human range for attributes is 1-7. So my Elf might not have been hot in the strength department, but had some excellent coordination on that scale. The Slith was well beyond human range into "Trained Olympic Decathlete Gold Medalist On Steroids".

[Yaw]

Otaku's character

mith's character

Those might not be Vors, but they get a bit too close for my liking. People have

already

made characters like Vor.

[Yaw]

Running a few numbers for this test battle...

Reaction Check:

Probability of Vor winning check = 50%
Probability of Oduro winning check = 50%

Vor's Attacks:

Probability of hitting with one spear, fighting double speared = 72%
Probability of critical hit in this instance = 4%

Probability of hitting with both spears = 51.8%
Probability of critical hit in this instance = 0.2%

Probability of hitting while fighting with two spears = 92.2%
Probability of critical hit in this instance = 7.8%

Probability of hitting while fighting with one spear = 79%
Probability of critical hit in this instance = 6%

Probability of hitting while fighting with sword = 72%
Probability of critical hit in this instance = 24%

Oduro's Attacks:

Probability of hitting with sword = 10%
Probability of hitting given successful Focus Check = 15%
Probability of successful Focus Check = 50%
Probability of hitting with successful Focus Check = 7.5%

All numbers calculated for this particular fight.