Test 1, fight 2 - Ambush, kerplunk (mod) vs. thorred

[Yaw]

Since thorred is on vacation, we've agreed that I can finish off the fight for her. No point in waiting a week to deal with what is probably a couple of rounds.

Both combatants slice with their weapons, and both hit. While the thief hits a glancing blow to Banus' forearm, Banus cuts deeply into the thief's left shoulder. The thief stumbles back from the blow, bleeding heavily.

Banus will attack with the sword. No focus check.

[Yaw]

Yes, you can. At least for now...

The thief manages another successful slash, nicking the front of Banus' chest. Banus' strike flails wildly, missing the thief.

Focus check, then attack with the sword.

[Yaw]

The thief makes a half-hearted attempt to slash at Banus, but is too far wounded. He is dispatched by a sword thrust through the chest.

Thanks for the modding and character sheet, Kerplunk. I'll try to run the full numbers for tests 2 and 3 today.

By the way, I'd like to come up with a probability for each test of a given character winning the battle. I know there's a lot of variables due to focus checks, changing weapons, etc. that would be excessively annoying to take into account in the calculation. Even for a simple battle (no tricks, one weapon) the calculations seem involved from what little I've thought of it. Ideas on how to approach this problem, or actually running the calcs based on the numbers for test 1, would be appreciated. (The idea here is to see at a glance of a single number how balanced each fight was.)

[Yaw]

Right. Naturally, very few combats are going to be 50-50. Nor should they be. This would give a way to evaluate relative combat strengths of different characters when pitted against one another, though, which could be useful. The big point here is that this number starts to involve the idea of the Hit Points (STR+CRD), which aren't in the other "round-based" probabilities. I expect this will show that combat is slanted heavily towards the combat-optimized characters, both because they have more chance of hitting during a round, and because they have more chances to hit by virtue of having more HP (they take longer to kill, meaning they'll be around for more combat rounds). It's this second idea I'd like to see taken into account -- by how much do high HP totals affect combat?

[Yaw]

The numbers:

Reaction checks:
Probability of Banus getting initiative when attacked: 20%

Were this a duel:
Probability of Thief initiative: 59.3%
Probability of Banus initiative: 40.7%

Quite the difference there.

Thief's attacks:
Probability of hitting: 63%
Probability of critical hit: 19%

Probability of hitting when Focus check successful: 72%
Probability of Focus check success: 30%
Probability of hitting and Focus check success in round: 21.6%

Probability of critical hit when Focus check successful: 19%
Probability of critical hit and Focus check success in round: 5.7%

Banus' attacks:
Probability of hitting: 55%
Probability of critical hit: 10%

Probability of hitting when Focus check successful: 64%
Probability of Focus check success: 40%
Probability of hitting and Focus check success in round: 25.6%

Probability of critical hit when Focus check successful: 14%
Probability of critical hit and Focus check success in round: 5.6%

This one looks more balanced than test 1. The battle, as it was run, was turned by the choice of weapons. The thief hit more often, but didn't hit nearly as hard as Banus (light weapon vs. heavy). I suspect the HP would have come into play (10 vs. 16 in favour of Banus) were the weapon choice more equitable.

That's a mistake, though, due to a character creation and strategy flaw on the part of Banus. A two-handed sword would be an STR weapon -- you aren't going to swing something that big with much finesse to put it into the CRD category. Had Banus' swords skill been assigned to STR, he would have had a 12-9 advantage on the attack, rather than 10-9. Even choosing an ax to fight with would have given an 11-9 advantage. Banus really should have been hitting as often or more often than the thief.