Don't know if this has come up before, and sorry if it has, but are Melee attacks too easy? Should they not be an opposed test, representing the skill of your target, and their ability to defend themselves?

It's yet to come up in games I'm running, but the flat 2 purple difficulty (and yes I know Adversary and Destiny points can upgrade it) seem to make it too easy to hit someone skilled.

Whenever you see fights in films between 2 skilled opponents there's always a lot of blocking ducking and cool martial arts shenanigans, and so it just makes more sense to me that all Melee or brawl attack difficulties should be based on the target's skill and stat. With maybe some boost/setback if one is armed and the other not.

Anyone tried this? How did it work out? Can you foresee any major problems with trying it?

Most of the time in those scenes you are talking about, it would be covered by talents like Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, or Parry/Unarmed Parry and weapon qualities like Defensive.

If anything, I think Average is too hard for many opponents. When was the last time you saw a Jedi miss a B-1?

The way we've been considering breaking it down in my in-person group is: Simple if the target is immobile, incapable, or unwilling to resist. Easy if the target is less mobile or relatively unaware. Average+modifiers in all other situations.

Here's an example of the breakdown: Droideka: Not moving, makes a big target. Simple with appropriate modifiers. B-1: Not really resisting or attempting to dodge, but still mobile. Easy with appropriate modifiers. BX droid commando: Jumping around, dodging, generally much more mobile and athletic. Average with appropriate modifiers.

The issue with making it harder is that Melee/Brawl becomes even more underpowered compared to ranged skills. If you've got 3 Brawn and 2 Melee/Brawl, you are decently likely (probably around 60%?) to score a hit. Anything under that, and you're fairly likely to miss (50% or so).

6 minutes ago, Stethemessiah said:

It's yet to come up in games I'm running

Look... It's a massively hard thing to do, in this system, to bring a knife (or barehands, or even Lightsaber) to a gun fight, and to stay conscious...

First, you have to close distance and engage. Meanwhile you're getting blasted. Even once you're engaged, it's then very easy to "kite" melee folks in this system. Ranged attacker moves out of Engaged to Short, and they have a 1 Base Difficulty to light you up. You must Engage, to attack at 2 Dif. Rinse, repeat, if you're dumb. Melee is constantly grabbing the short end of the stick, in general, in combat.

Second, in melee on melee, it's the same Dif for both parties, so there is no net gain or loss. And from their individual combatant skill is then represented by Talents that improve your defense/Difficulty to be hit. So it's there. If you want to have a good melee combatant character, what sets them apart are their defensive Talents.

Everywhere in this game, the "theme" is - it's very easy to deal damage, it's very hard to stay conscious. B Everyone, by default, unless they build their PC specifically not to be, is a glass Cannon in this system.

There is no problem with the mechanics here.

You admit you've never used them yet, so please believe several hundred hours of actual play experience here, when I tell you: "It's fine."

This question inevitably comes up every few months for those new to the game.

other than the points made above, another huge reason to play by RAW is pacing. Opposed combat checks really slow down combat, which can be lengthy as it is. And constant missing is very dissatisfying to the player and will ultimately dissuade people from using melee or brawl. Why go against that fighter 2 red and a purple when I can just draw my blaster and shoot him for 1 purple at short range.

It sounds like you don't have much experience with the system just yet. I suggest getting several more sessions under your belt using RAW before trying to monkey with such a core mechanic.

48 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

If anything, I think Average is too hard for many opponents. When was the last time you saw a Jedi miss a B-1?

Not that very often. Now at the other hand:
http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=2&ability=2&boost=2&difficulty=2&force=2

Almost impossible to fail.

1 hour ago, kaosoe said:

another huge reason to play by RAW is pacing. Opposed combat checks really slow down combat, which can be lengthy as it is. And constant missing is very dissatisfying to the player and will ultimately dissuade people from using melee or brawl

Indeed. This is the best argument against my reasoning, pacing and the need for a fast, fun combat that doesn't grind to a slog.

Thanks.

1 hour ago, emsquared said:

You admit you've never used them yet, so please believe several hundred hours of actual play experience here, when I tell you: "It's fine."

Alright dude, no need to be so confrontational. Apologies if you're not being but that's certainly how it reads.

And it's not that combat has never come up, just not between 2 skilled opponents, as my PCs are all pretty shooty.

TBH, was just pondering it after watching John Wick 3, and how long those combats sometimes go without anyone ever connecting. But as Kaosoe said, game pacing is what matters.

31 minutes ago, Stethemessiah said:

TBH, was just pondering it after watching John Wick 3, and how long those combats sometimes go without anyone ever connecting. But as Kaosoe said, game pacing is what matters.

Keep in mind, this isn't D&D. One roll in this system never ever represents one swing or even one action. It's always representing an extended exchange of actions (lower case 'a'). Up to one whole minute's worth of action, in fact, according to the book I believe. Lot of swing-and-misses that could go on in a minute.

As for pacing, you do an opposed check in one roll, just like you do with static Difficulties. You're just using the opposing party's Characteristic/Skill combo as the negative die, so pacing really isn't too relavent. There's opposed checks everywhere in this system, and the speed with which they are able to be carried out is a strong feature of the system, because you can do it without two parties rolling.

But, sure, you'd conceivably save some breath not having to say "What's your Melee diff?", "It's RRPP." every time, (except of course with static difficulties you still have to ask about Adversary, Defense, and other Talents, so what are you actually saving?) but all in all pacing isn't really impacted by opposed checks THAT much.

The main reason not to do what you're asking about is because it's a well designed system, and there's no mechanical reason to do it.

Indeed, you'd be rendering entire classes of Talents, and really entire Specializations, useless. Because why buy a Talent to upgrade your Melee Diff (which several Specs center around), when you could buy the Skill for a similar or lesser amount of XP, AND get offensive capabilities out of it...? Yea, just, no.

And I'm trying to present a complete and convincing argument in an efficient manner, not offend you. But part of arguing a point is confronting that which you disagree with, so... Appy polly logies, but I wanted to put this notion down, with no room for doubt, because it's a misguided notion.

12 minutes ago, Stethemessiah said:

TBH, was just pondering it after watching John Wick 3, and how long those combats sometimes go without anyone ever connecting. But as Kaosoe said, game pacing is what matters.

All the minions are out instantly though (if I recall correctly, only watched it once). The longer fights are presumably against rivals/nemeses, who probably have a rank or two in Parry. Keep in mind too that Brawl can take forever. You add your Brawn to damage, but you still have to get past Soak, and even the average scholar with "heavy clothing" is going to have a Soak of 3, which neutralizes base damage for most participants. So you need to be able to hit easily to get anywhere.

19 hours ago, Stethemessiah said:

Alright dude, no need to be so confrontational. Apologies if you're not being but that's certainly how it reads.

Everything thing he writes is laced with a confrontational tone. 🙄 Don't worry about it. That's just the way he is

On 1/9/2020 at 1:19 PM, emsquared said:

Keep in mind, this isn't D&D. One roll in this system never ever represents one swing...

Old gamer asks: he said what?

I can't speak to D&D 3.0 and beyond, but I was reared on B/X, and 1e and 2e AD&D. Arneson and Gygax's explanation of armor class, hit points, and to-hit rolls, and combat rounds emphasized that they were all heavily abstracted . One roll did not represent one swing there, either. There were even articles in Dragon about how to spice up combat with "narrative description" to bring it all to life. In fact, FFG Star Wars is more granular in terms of its combat rules than D&D originally was. You have dodge, feint, parry, reflect, and other combat talents to alter dice rolls in combat that D&D didn't. If new D&D is one swing one roll, great, but let's not pretend abstracted combat with narrative description started here.

D&D5 reduced the round to 6 seconds but it's still abstract. Actually very few RPGs seems to use one attack roll = one swing. And it's usually RPGs that don't use a fixed time for a combat round but a fixed time but a fixed time for a swing or a fixed number of swing in a single round. Imo, the difference is a game design decision. For trying to simulate combat closer to the real world, one attack roll = one swing is better. For trying to simulate combat closer to cinematic way of doing it, one attack roll = abstract number of swing and parry is better.

In movie all fights are heavily choreographed to both be very spectacular and to give the illusion of lethality. Doing the same moves irl will get you hurt or dead quickly because you offer to much opening to your opponent(s).

11 hours ago, Vondy said:

Old gamer asks: he said what?

I can't speak to D&D 3.0 and beyond, but I was reared on B/X, and 1e and 2e AD&D. Arneson and Gygax's explanation of armor class, hit points, and to-hit rolls, and combat rounds emphasized that they were all heavily abstracted . One roll did not represent one swing there, either. There were even articles in Dragon about how to spice up combat with "narrative description" to bring it all to life. In fact, FFG Star Wars is more granular in terms of its combat rules than D&D originally was. You have dodge, feint, parry, reflect, and other combat talents to alter dice rolls in combat that D&D didn't. If new D&D is one swing one roll, great, but let's not pretend abstracted combat with narrative description started here.

I have the inverse experience so I can add to this a little.

The six second round actually started with 3.0e and has been the standard model ever since for D&D, so most new role players have encountered one of four editions (3.5 and 5e. 4e was a system that entirely reinvented the wheel that a lot of people really hated for some reason.). Those systems had the very literal, granular interpretation that those attacks made per turn were the only attacks you made, and pretty much every GM runs rounds as a strict, six second round. Grappling in that system was literally 5 paragraphs worth of rules to describe that single interaction.

i mean, correct or incorrect, combat being entirely literally blow by blow is something that has to be dealt with coming into this system. Direct combat has actually been my least favourite experience of roleplaying, aside from using unmatched devastation as for most part the roleplaying simply stops the second we “rolled” initiative because of how crunchy the game has gotten. It’s like Jojo where everyone is stopping time for six seconds in isolation, forever. XD

I guess compared to the more recent additions to D&D this system is just alien. It’s literally come full circle. XD

10 hours ago, WolfRider said:

D&D5 reduced the round to 6 seconds but it's still abstract. Actually very few RPGs seems to use one attack roll = one swing. And it's usually RPGs that don't use a fixed time for a combat round but a fixed time but a fixed time for a swing or a fixed number of swing in a single round. Imo, the difference is a game design decision. For trying to simulate combat closer to the real world, one attack roll = one swing is better. For trying to simulate combat closer to cinematic way of doing it, one attack roll = abstract number of swing and parry is better.

In movie all fights are heavily choreographed to both be very spectacular and to give the illusion of lethality. Doing the same moves irl will get you hurt or dead quickly because you offer to much opening to your opponent(s).

R.Talsorian Games’ Fuzion System is definitely the former. This is especially true of Cyberpunk. One round is roughly three seconds, one one attack roll is one hit.

The idea of one roll = one swing probably was extrapolated from the fact that most flavors of D&D have rules for tracking crossbow bolts and arrows. It's a bit jarring to narrate multiple shots of a bow but only using one arrow in your inventory. Fortunately, melee can be more abstract.

On 1/9/2020 at 11:27 AM, emsquared said:

Look... It's a massively hard thing to do, in this system, to bring a knife (or barehands, or even Lightsaber) to a gun fight, and to stay conscious...

First, you have to close distance and engage. Meanwhile you're getting blasted. Even once you're engaged, it's then very easy to "kite" melee folks in this system. Ranged attacker moves out of Engaged to Short, and they have a 1 Base Difficulty to light you up. You must Engage, to attack at 2 Dif. Rinse, repeat, if you're dumb. Melee is constantly grabbing the short end of the stick, in general, in combat.

By my reading of the rules, this description appears to me that the ranged combatant is receiving 2 Action and 1 Maneuver per turn. Disengage:Move:Attack.

I don't have my book with me to confirm Disengage as an Action; but at the very least it should be 2M&1A, causing two strain each time performed.

My apologies if this is a repost from me prior, the account sign up at 4 am had me a bit confuddled.

The time it takes to fire a bow (at least, when you want to actually hit something) is greater than the time it takes to throw a couple of punches.

1 hour ago, Fistofpaper said:

By my reading of the rules, this description appears to me that the ranged combatant is receiving 2 Action and 1 Maneuver per turn. Disengage:Move:Attack.

I don't have my book with me to confirm Disengage as an Action; but at the very least it should be 2M&1A, causing two strain each time performed.

My apologies if this is a repost from me prior, the account sign up at 4 am had me a bit confuddled.

Moving into engaged or out of engaged is a move, so it can either be an action or a maneuver. Most people will likely elect to have it as a maneuver since you can then fire at whoever swung at you from short range, which is an easy test for them. If they have two advantages they could even move another time out to medium, after firing, for free and then force the melee combatant to make two maneuvers and eat two strain just to get back into attacking range. The main benefit of going melee combatant is that you need to focus brawn to be decent at it, which means you can soak a lot of damage. Which you need since you are going to be shot a lot, like a whole lot.

1 hour ago, Darth Revenant said:

Moving into engaged or out of engaged is a move, so it can either be an action or a maneuver

Doesn't this require to Disengage, before Move? Do most not require that two combatants who are not just in the engaged range, but Engaged with one another, Disengage before doing their Move to a different combat distance? I certainly do; is that incorrect RAW?

11 minutes ago, Fistofpaper said:

Doesn't this require to Disengage, before Move? Do most not require that two combatants who are not just in the engaged range, but Engaged with one another, Disengage before doing their Move to a different combat distance? I certainly do; is that incorrect RAW?

Disengage automatically puts you at short. Since you're no longer engaged with them you're not in the engaged range band. You're considered to be engaged with everyone you're in the engaged range band of. So the moment you disengage you're at short range and can light up anyone you wish without any downsides.

59 minutes ago, Darth Revenant said:

Disengage automatically puts you at short. Since you're no longer engaged with them you're not in the engaged range band. You're considered to be engaged with everyone you're in the engaged range band of. So the moment you disengage you're at short range and can light up anyone you wish without any downsides.

That makes sense, and I must have missed that regarding the Disengage move while reading. Thanks