Combat/Exp systems

Before you sort out combat and xp, sort out what's important about 'things' in your game world - specifically living things and characters.

For example UO has:

Strength - carry capacity, max hitpoints, equipment limitations, HtH combat.
Dexterity - endurance/fatigue, speed, reaction time.
Intelligence - magic, magic resistance, lore, crafting, mana points.

You may have 'derived' or secondary stats which are a direct result of the base stats - carry capacity is a good one - whilst strength might be an abstract 1-19/18(00) in DnD games, what you can carry is usually in lbs, or kg. Or perhaps inventory 'box size'. Or both.

Then sort out how those things work in the system - are they a component with other stats in a standard skill or stat test against a known 'difficulty' (the method I use), are they an absolute test (you need strength 5 to open the door) or a bonus to a random test(D6+strength = 5 or more to open the door)? You will usually have a mix of both (carry capacity checks are invariably absolute checks).

It's possible to go overboard and produce a very complex system with dozens of stats and varying methods of testing against them (if you actually include the THAC0 and saving throw tables for class/level from DnD (include saving throw bonuses from base stats), and the non-combat skill levels (which are derived from base stats) you get a lot of these 'derived' stats. This isn't a great idea - although you can get very subtle resulting behaviours as stats are altered, it makes it harder for players to judge what's going on. Everything should be intuitive.

Once you've got a system that works with 'starter stats' you can look realistically at how persistent improvement should be done. Do you maintain levels for each skill / task type done (a 'true' skill based system), or do you maintain levels for groups of skills (a forced 'multi-class' system) of which all are available, or only allow subsets of skills, perhaps with a common core of skills (a 'class' system)?

How much xp you give for tasks of a certain difficulty compared to overall level and how much xp it takes to achieve those levels is a balancing issue. There's no magic 'make this fun' wand that can be waved. Personally I feel that in order to level up most efficiently, increasing difficulty tasks should be done, and I reward purely based on the difficulty of the task. As such, each level requires progressively more xp to gain.

You can use any D&D rules that appear in the d20 SRD. Also, to nitpick, THAC0 is not D&D, it's AD&D [wink]

When I start working on an RPG system (I have worked on a few PnP RPG system of my own design), I will write down what I think a typical scene (a combat, haggleing, etc) might play out. I try to avoid numbers and use relative descriptors (eg the dragon is far stronger than the swordsman, but the swordsman is stronger than the Mage).

This usually takes the form of a 1 to 2 page "story" of the scene (you are not going for litterary awards so it doesn't have to be a work of art, just make it evoke in your mind what might be happening in it).

Once you have this "story" it give you a working moddle to fit your system to. Take note of such things as howmany times your heroes and monsters get hit, the relative abilities they have (who is stronger, who is smarter) and what effect these have in the scene (how does the strength effect the swing of the sword, are all intelegent characters mages, are all mages intelegnet, etc).

I will neraly always find that I have not covered some needed details, or that I wnat some clarifications. Because of theis, I will usually go back over the initial story and refine it and also write more than 1 story. These extra stories can give more details that can be used to flesh out the system.

Once you are happy with it so far, you can start to look into statistics (the raw model) that will allow you to work on the system.

If you have done any algabra then you will know the use of letters to stand for unknown numbers. This is a good way to avoid using specific numbers at this stage.

Once the statistics are worked out, you can start playing around with specific numbers.

Finally you need to spend a bit of time tweeking the whole thing to get it working as you wnat. remember to go back over your initial writings and check if the system is producing the style that you envisioned at the beginning (and don't mind too much if it doesn't, just make sure that first and foremost it is fun).

This is prehaps one of the most frequently asked questions concerning a players first RPG-type game. I myself have put hundreads of hours of thought into it (which is reflected by the sheer length of this post)... and I'm going to share my 2 cents whether people like it or not :) Take it or leave it for what its worth... I'm going to cover some other basic game design aspects while I'm at it (for those who will say I'm getting off topic).

First, will the combat in your game be animated? If not, you're going to eventually need to start figuring out a system/chart to show a player why/how he won/lost a battle. But, we'll get to that later.

Second, the most basic pricipals of combat (that I have identified) are as follows:

Health
Power/Damage
Ability to Strike
Ability to Dodge
Weapons/Armor

You can get into other attributes like wisdom, intelligence, speed, beauty, initiative, etc.... but in 'most' games, its hard to do without the above.

So, now you need to pick which elements you wish to incorporate, and begin designing your combat system. Here are a few more questions you need to ask yourself first:

How many warriors can I own at a time?
If the answer is one, then you need to start thinking about 'what will a user do each time they log in'. If your answer to this second question is 'attack, spend gold, log out'.... then there is already a problem. People will get bored way way way too fast. At this point, I hope your combat is animated and you have a lot of quest programmed into your system.

If the answer is 5-15, then there are a variety of options you can explore in terms of game play. You can go from a very strategic player vs. cpu type game to quest style to player vs. player. However, I will leave the exact nature of this up to you.

If the answer is 1000-50000.... then you're going to require a very very very basic combat system. You simply will not have the processing power to simulate battle otherwise. Not only that, but you're probably going to be limited to player vs. player at this point.... unless you're designing a game like rise of nations, an expanded version of startcraft, etc.

Now, onto the combat system itself. If your battles are animated, then you can allow for random chance to play a part of the game. However, I will warn you that you should only allow for a VERY SMALL margin of random chance. Most designers instinctivly want to add a +/- 10% to power, +/- 10% to strike, +/- 10% to dodge, +/- 10% to health, etc etc just to have 'lots of chance' in the game. The negative result of this (that designers do not anticipate) is that players get frustrated very very quickly with this system. They will have no way to predict when they will win/lose a battle and become frustrated because the chance varies so much.

Ok, lets assume you went with senerio 1 in which a player only owns 1 warrior. Also, I am also going to assume this is an animated rpg-style game where the warrior walks around the map and has random encounters. Here is the logic you immediatly need to go through:

1, I need to design the game such that the players warrior has, on average, 12-15 'times' the amount of HP the average group of bad guys has in the area. Or, conversly, a much greater combination of health and strength. And here's why:

You want the player to be able to engage the enemy 8-10 times in the area he is 'suppose' to be in before he has to heal. The best way to do this is set your ability to strike/dodge equal to your opponents and then set health/power approx. 10 times greater. This is a bit confusing, I'm sure, but come back and read this later if need be.

Now, you need to figure out how many battles you want the player to have before 'moving on'. I'd say you want the player to battle about 200-300 creatures in an area before he (levels up enough)/(has enough gold to train) to go elsewhere.

So, I battle 250 Creatures, gain... lets say 2500 gold (or 2500 exp... it really doesn't matter)... which allows me to pump up my stats just enough such that I still have the same relative ratios of strength, health, dodge/strike as the bad guys in the next 'region'.

Hopefully you see how this is all coming into place. The health/strength thing should be fairly easy to understand.... the math behind strike/dodge can get tricky. Generally, if Strike < (Dodge - X), the player simply cannot hit the creature. If Strike > (Dodge - X) < dodge... then you deal some small % of your full power with maybe a small % chance of missing completly. If Strike > Dodge.. then you deal full hits every time with no chance to miss. The exact math of that is up to you to tweak. Weapons/armor can add to sheer power, ability to strike/dodge, etc... or can add 'bonus damage' to each sucessful hit (and, for armor, just take off a set amount of points).

And that is really all there is to it. You can add attributes like 'speed' which may help you cross the map faster... or endurance which lets you heal faster.. stuff like that, but the above is the basic background for what you need.

The best thing to do is to identify what variables/attributes you want... then place them all in a spreadsheet and try to identify what you want a player 'to do' when they log in to play your game. If you don't have a clear idea of what you actually want the player 'to do' each time..... then your game will go nowhere fast. Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

Player Logs in, checks to see if he's fully healed, goes out and fights monsters while trying to complete quest x, goes back to town to heal once he realizes he isn't strong enough and looks at upgrading his armor, gains enough exp/gold to increase his attributes, listens to new hints/rumors that get revealed as time passes, checks the guilds for any new quests, chats with other players, attempts to find item y, attempts to explore other areas of the map, logs out.

The above gives a player enough to do each time they play. If a players options are only 'upgrade, fight' or 'quit'.... then its boring, and the 'quit' option will be taken by many.

And.... thats my 2 cents. If you found this usefull and want more info... then just let me know.

Normally with any system, you add up the values and compare them between the levels...for example:


Level 1
Str 8
Dex 18
Con 12

Total = 38


So all Level 1 creatures should have a total of 38 (well, this isn't entirely true...you have to actually add skills also, each skill has it's own pointing system, like a fireball from a magician causing 50 points of damage would be worth more points than the skill of lockpicking which really won't help you in battle). If you gain a level and add 5 points to the total from the gain, then you should also do the same for all other classes/races/creatures (you don't need to gain in the same stats or skills, but the total values should be around the same)...this will eliminate any thought of a character being "more powerfull" than a higher level character.

To figure out how much experience to gain, simple:

pick a very high number like 1 million
figure out how long you want players to play before reaching maximum level (like 120 hours)
considering it will usually take 5 minutes average for a person to kill a monster (because of questing, a person is not usually killing nonstop), figure it will be 120 hours * 60 = 7200...and then 7200 / 5 = 1440...so that means a person will kill roughly 1440 monsters at their standing level to reach the maximum value of 1 million...so....1000000 / 1440 = 694 experience.

You may think that this is outrageous, but if your quests are giving experience, then half that amount and you get 350 (roughly). This amount is actually for a character to kill another character of the same level, if a character kills a lesser creature, of course give out less experience. And if you think that 350 is a lot and pointless, then just give 35 and make the maximum experience be 100,000 instead...or make the game hours longer, whatever, just a beginning basis. You first want to make like level 30 be your highest, and if you see people are gaining too quickly or too slowly, adjust the points and raise the level cap...that's what WoW did!

-Sabriath

Think outside of the box and use something other than DnD and its derivatives. Copying something like UO would be worlds better than just doing yet another DnD game.

wow such great feed back =) I know I dont want to use DnD's system its THEIR system.

Basically at the moment because I've been very busy I have

Str- Hit ammount, Carry and other things needing strength

Agility - Dodge Chance, hit speed

Wisdom - Mana, Magic resistance

Fortitude - Battle Power, Non-magical defence

Each time you gain a lvl you get a Power Point to put towards one of those

Your mana is 50 + (Wisdom * 10)
Battle Power (used for melee specials) is 50 + (Fortitude * 10)

Thats about it I have some notes joted down on the actual damage equations somewhere but I lost the scrap of paper 0_o

But thankyou for the feedback! Some of the posts I'm yet to read, I forgot about some things and my life became very busy so yah. But thanks and I'm sure to read them!

Just a naive question:

Why copy when it is so easy to create something different?

Just inspire yourself from what you liked in those systems, and blend it in something new.

Maybe you wanted to copy DnD because the system is simple and yet efficient? On the other hand, it is also full of imperfections and relies too much on "ingame" descriptions. Therefore, maybe a system that creates more descriptions, and gives an illusion of something natural, because you dislike the level system on the whole?

Maybe you liked UO's system, because it avoided levels completely, while remaining accessible and yet limited copy'n paste characters? You could play and enjoy the game while remaining away from archetypes?

Maybe you liked the organical character growth in the Elder's Scrolls series, but thought it wasn't going far enough, or something?

I could just whip you a system in no tiem using these descriptions, and adjust it to suit your tastes, but what would YOU want for your game? If you already know of a system that works and dare use it without a modification, then you're on for something that works. Why bother? Everyone will recognize DnD system? so what? WHo cares? As long as it works, and the game is smooth, then it's a good choice.

Fournicolas is right. I don’t know the UO system myself but its so easy…SO EASY to create one off the top of your head. Why? Because you make the rules. You say what goes. You’re the man.

Try this. .02 seconds of thought..(maybe it’ll show ;)

Forget all the strength, dexterity, agility stuff. break it down into very very simple steps.

“To attack” my character is “Less than average”
“To dodge” my character is “Of average quality”
“To parry” my character is “far less than average”

so instead of using dexterity, strength, agility and the gift of luck to calculate your tohit%, simply apply a rating the same descriptive rating or grade like so.

Far less than average
Less than average
Of average quality or skill
More than average
Far more than average

These 5 steps can be applied to anything. Breaking a lock, swimming, archery, riding a horse, the ability to convince someone you’re a palace guard etc.

Now, give each of them a value. I like % and d20’s personally.

On a “Far less than average” rating my character will hit with a broad sword on a 1 through 5

On a “Less than average” rating my character will hit with a broad sword on a 1 through 7

Of “Average quality or skill” rating my character will hit with a broad sword on a 1 through 10

Of a “More than average” rating my character will hit with a broad sword 1 through 14

Of a “Far more than average” rating my character will hit with a broad sword 1 through 18

Those numbers don’t make a whole lot of sense…but you get the idea. LOL

Now you can have millions and millions of different modifiers.

Are you fighting a beast that “strikes fear”? go down 1 whole rating for 3 rounds (15 seconds).

Are you trying to use a lock pick with a lot of guards in the general vicinity? Go down 2 numbers on your rating (if you were a “more than average lock pick” at 1-14 to pick it, now you’re at 1-12 to “make a successful roll”.

Any number of things you can do!

For me, its not the number crunching system that makes skill checks cool. It’s the millions of modifiers you can add onto it in specific scenarios.

And I only used a very basic skill gradient of 5 levels from really lousy to middle of the road to really good. You can have as many as you want.

And here is the best part…the most important part…my character is NOT a level 36 to use a bow and arrow.

My character is “Exceptionally skilled” at using a bow and arrow. Or “Known in the Realm” for my skill of archery or “Prized above all others.”

Catch my drift ;)

No longer is the player a skinny dork living in his mom’s basement who meekly states “im a level 14 swords man”.

No, now the player is a skinny dork who lives in his moms basement who can proudly state with a somewhat booming voice “MY HAND TO HAND SKILLS ARE GREATLY TREASURED WITHIN THE KINDGOM!”

No offence guys…lol
There goes my rating!






[edit] its sort Of the same thing I suppose but it come at it from a different direction. It’s simpler too. the KISS principle. Basically what I am saying is you can do anything you want because it’s all under the hood anyway. The player could care less as long as it “feels” right.

I have to disagree to some extent with your concept here - attaching titles to levels is basically meaningless, unless there is some limit on those levels and/or the characters that can achieve them. If everyone is level 14 swords, or just a lot of people, why would that character's skills be treasured over anyone else?

If you have a fixed level cap, then you can assign 'grand master' titles to the top (as UO did) and any number of lower titles underneath. Without a level cap, there's no clearly defined field to segregate into titles, unless you automatically take account of the 'highest level known' to the game, which would result in titles being gained / lost as competitors for the title gain or lose levels.

Alternatively, and for some description, 'average' NPC levels could be taken as baseline for comparison, but this is effectively a false level cap, and would work much the same way.

i was making an example that he can do anything he likes and that he is not bound by the standard run of the mill STR DEX AGL etc system. my example was a product of perhaps 30 seconds continues thought. if you cant disagree with the concept i did something amazing! :D

Here is a simple action resolution system that I made for a PnP RPG:

The player has 4 "Stats"
Strength
Reflex
Mind
Body

Each stat can have 1 of 5 level.
At level 1 any checks use a base of a 4 sided die (random number between 1 and 4)
At level 2 any checks use a base of a 6 sided die (random number between 1 and 6)
At level 3 any checks use a base of a 8 sided die (random number between 1 and 8)
At level 4 any checks use a base of a 10 sided die (random number between 1 and 10)
At level 5 any checks use a base of a 12 sided die (random number between 1 and 12)

On top of this basic check, the player has a number of skills that they can use. Each skill has a rating of 1 to 5 (it can go higher but I limited them to this to stop uber skilled characters where the die roll would be meaningless).

The skill value is simply added to the stat roll.

Any modifiers are added to the check total as you would a skill.

All checks were eitehr made against a set number or against a difficulty roll (the difficulty roll was exactly the same as a stat check). The difficulty had a level which specified the die used (same as for the stats) and any modifiers were added on to that roll.

The real beauty of the system is that it allowed for "Bonus" stats. These were stats that were not essential, but could be included without changing the basic system.

An example is how I added magic to the system:
I included all the basic stats and added Bonus stats for Manna and each school of magic. Individual spells were specific skills the player could learn and use.

When a player cast a spell (that they knew) they would choose a power level (maximum of their "School" bonus stat). This influenced the specific spell effects and the chance of it draining the manna of the caster.

After choosing the power level they would make a drain check on themselves. This would be a check using their Mind Stat level vs the Power level of the spell cast.

Failure of this check (the Stat roll is lower than the Power level roll) then the caster would loose 1 level of manna (it could be recovered by resting).

The individual spell would have an effect specific to that spell and power level (it usually drained or boosted a stat or bonus stat).

This allowed a player to adjust the amount of power they wanted to place into a spell and its effects. They could choose the risk they were willing to take (and there was always the chance of failing the drain check to loose manna), and even exceed their abilities once in a while.

Hrm.

Stats/combat can vary so widely from game to game that I see no point in posting my system here, but I'm using a fairly basic level-gaining system (an idea that seems incredibly unpopular on Gamedev, but I digress) for combat classes, so here's how I figured out my numbers:

1. I hate the feeling of treadmill hopelessness as you advance to higher levels in RPGs and how it starts to take multiple hours of soul-crushing fights to level your character. Thus, I determined that a number of fights of the appropriate relative level should be enough to level up your characters.
2. Numbers should be descriptive, but not overwhelming. In this vein, the level 1 character will start with 1,000 XP, and every thousand experience points thereafter will be enough to gain a level. XP earned will be modified on the fly based on character and monster levels.
3. Now for the meat of it (this part makes a lot of idealistic assumptions): if I'm aiming to have level 40 be the highest level to which characters will ascend in the course of normal gameplay, and if there are 60 hours of gameplay to be had in the normal game, and if one quarter of that time is spent in combat (far less than most RPGs of this type), then there are 15 hours of leveling in which to reach the fortieth level of experience. That's 54,000 seconds of gameplay. 54000/40 (for simplicity) = 1,350 seconds = 22.5 minutes to level a party of four throughout most of the game (assuming that they're fighting "average" monsters, which is almost never going to happen).
4. I really like the "most battles are easy; only a few are soulcrushing" feel of Dragon Quest, so for my purposes, "average" battles consist of enemies with a (non-curved) strength equivalent to one-fourth that of the party's.
5. I have a chart written up detailing how long (in seconds) a battle should take at varying levels of experience. By dividing 1350 seconds by the number of seconds a battle should take (24 seconds, at lower levels), I get the number of battles required to level a party of four (56.25).
6. I will round that down to 50, for mathematical convenience and to accomodate slightly higher-level parties (battles will inevitably take longer at higher levels, thanks to a greater profusion of options and strategically more complex battles), and find that a balanced fight grants 20 experience points each to a party of four.
7. So... ExpGranted = (80/numberofpartymembers)*(monsterlevel/usualmonsterlevel) or, more simply, (80monsterlevel/(numberofpartymembers*usualmosterlevel)).

I'm turned off by a lot of mmorpg combat/exp systems. Grind gets boring. Waiting while combat happens and watching damage bars is boring. Having to do the same thing 1000 times to get some 14 to change to a 15 is boring.

I like a lot of action and magic systems, but waiting to recover stamina for actions or mana for spells is also boring.

I like exploring new areas, but waiting for my character to run from point A to B the 1000th time is boring.

I like balanced PvP, but find unbalanced PvP to be boring.

So I say make your combat based on actions and spells. Get rid of grind experience and make everyone good at any action or skill they buy. Make recovery quick so there's not much downtime, make the world ever changing, and make communication well organized.

Am I asking too much? ;)

I am not going to copy anyones system I'm not a copier I want my own system But unfortunatley some Marching Band and School Stuff has bounced in so suddenly I barely have time to do anything I'm still reading posts its so much helpful information, the last time I asked for help I got a single post which didnt help at all so this is really great I cant thank you all enough.

Can you imagine a branching tree? Good. This is where the system comes from.

Can you visualize a spiral? Good. This is what it looks like.

Can you think of particular moves combinations? Excellent! This is what is the core of the game!!

Okay. Let's forget all this stats affair. Let's concentrate on player action through his character, and on player choices and strategies.

What if everyone started more or less equal, in terms of combat skills? You would most likely end with a draw if two fighters started equal, right?

Wrong.

You would only end with a draw if both fighters used the same strategy.

Let's say a fighter starts with five basic moves: Aggressive swing right, Aggressive swing left, Defensive swing right, Defensive swing left, and Dodge.
We'll assume that an aggressive swing is made to connect with your target. You cannot miss a standing object. But your opponent may parry or Dodge it.

Parrying an Aggressive swing right with a Defensive swing right makes both swords connect at a right angle, which presents a static quality. It may will have particular effects on the combat. (more on that later)

On the other hand, deflecting a Aggressive swing Right with a defensive swing left means that you accompany the blade of your opponent to move it elsewhere than on yourself, making it go faster than your opponent can hope to master. You open his guard and get ready for counter attack. (More on that later again.)

And if you simply Dodge the attack, your opponent remains in control of the fight ascendant, and you remain on a defensive stance, but it drains his energy, exhausting him.

It is a fact that you spend more energy attacking than defending, because you simply produce more efforts. Usually.

So let's imagine comparative scales. (Still with me?) Each fighter has a personnal scale. It grows and lowers depending on what moves he makes. An aggresive move will drain points from the personnal scale, and put them on the Combat Scale. A defensive move will add points to your personal scale. A dodge will neither add nor drain points.

What these scales do is measure fight ascendant. This is where most fights are resolved. If you've watched the Highlander series, you may have noticed that the fight went both ways. It was seldom a one way fight, with one character outrageously dominating the other. This was because the fighters were more or less of the same "level"...

The Fight Ascendant is a measure of your domination of the fight. You may still dominate when defending against a desperate slash.

It's a simple check. If your personnal scale divided by the combat scale is over 0.5, then you're probably dominating, which means that you'll have an extra chance for a counter-attack after an opponent's aggressive move, because he is exhausting himself at attacking, while you're saving your energy for precisely this moment.

When attacking, you're draining from your personnal scale (or energy pool, call it like you want...) and adding to the combat scale as many points as your opponent's move's particular level, and when you're defending, you're gaining as many points as your opponent's move's level. (More on move levels later) Basically, it means that if you're attacking with a powerful attack, then you're draining yourself of much energy while maybe not gaining that much of an advantage, whereas if you're defending against a powerful attack, then you may even gain more!!

After Parrying an Aggressive move, what happens is that the attacker's scale gets drained of as many points as the opponent's parrying move levels, and the defender's scale gets drained of as many points as the attacker's move levels, while the combat scale gains both points.

After a Deflection, the attacker's scale gets drained of as many points as the addition of the attacker's and the defender's moves levels, while the defender's gains as many points as the attacker's move level, and the combat scale gains the difference[/] between the attacker's move's level and the defender's move's level.

Exemple: A attacks D with a level 5 right swing, while D deflects with a level 3 left swing. A's scale lowers by (5+3), D's scale augments by 5, while the combat's scale augment's by (5-3). At a low level, this could make quite a difference, because the Attacker looses 13 points to the defender in the ratio balance.

And after a Dodge, only the Attacker's scale gets drained of the points, whereas the defender's doesn't change. The combat scale still gets the points, though.

Now the moves levels.

Let's consider them like UO's skills. Or like Mortal Kombat's Fatalities, maybe. Each move is performed with a different coordination, and requires a different training. Which means that you can improve one move instead of another. You can choose to concentrate on Left Aggressive, so as to properly hack your opponent (more Strength, probably), or on Defensive moves, so as to drain your opponent of his energy, and leave him open to counter-attacks. Or maybe on Dodges, which exhaust the opponent as well, but don't get you a real advantage other than the mental... You can also open new avenues of fighting moves. Like learning the vertical slashes, the diagonal slashes, the thrusts, the shoulder pushes, the hilt punches, the leg sweeps, the rolls (for when you hit the ground), the spinning slahes, the jumps, the presses and many mores. Each move you learn is a new way to escape a particular position, and to drain your opponent of energy, or to preserve yours, or to modify the combat scale, and most importantly, to give a new opening to victory.

What is important to understand is that you can only use a particular move if you're in the right position for that. You can only use a swing right if your weapon is already on the left. Swinging right after a first swing right would only show your back to your opponent, while you would be cutting air thinner...

As for levels, well... They are a measure of the way you fight. Think of them as skills in UO. If you use a particular move more than any other, because you favor that one more than the others, then it will become more efficient. More difficult to parry (because you'll put more strength and more cunning on this one), but the same basic move nonetheless. It's like playing Battle with a Uno game. You may counter a red 4 with another red 4, or with a blue 4, or with any card higher than a 4, or with another trick card. You're always thinking of the cards you want to put down, while trying to guess what are the cards (moves) your opponent could put down, and forcing him into avenues that won't allow him to use them. While counting.

Your moves will gain one XP per use, on a very personal scale, while you will gain the combat scale points in Overall XP, which may enable you to buy other moves, or to transfer them on a single particular move you favor. But a single hit that connects with you, and you're dead.

So maybe, having the possibility to buy more Health levels, would be a nice option, on the long run... Like Hearts in Zelda, or in Metroid...

On the other hand, I fully realize that this system is best used when two characters (or players) are facing each others. It may not be easy to automate it, because it would require more AI than many people can manage on themselves. But the nice part is that you CAN automate this system for Mobs. They may have up to five or ten different chains of moves per mob, so as to make it more difficultly predictable, but once you've learned how to beat them, it's just a dance. Maybe animals aren't even submitted to the same rules, like maybe a leopard can slash twice with the same paw? a bear can try to crush you under him as many times as he wants?

Anyway, I think this fighting system would modify nicely the usual fighting systems, and could be played easily and more instinctively than most...

Fournicolas that is an interesting system.

If I understand it correctly, you are saying that each character has several positions/stances and that from each position they have a limited number of moves (like if they have just slashed right then they can't slash right again, but can slash left or do some other move). The actual mechanics of the resolution (what happens when you hit and the costs of each move) is a different thing.

You consept of "Fight Ascendant" is also interesting in that it attempts to moddel a dramatic fight (rather than wadeing through Mobs).

Instead of having Hitpoints or Heath, you could have a "Threashold" value of the Fight Acendant score. Once your opponent has reached this they win the fight (strike a killing blow). This can easily be handeled by animations.

Making an aggressive move could be seen as a gamble. Each time you attack you are gambeling that the cost (stamina?) that you spend to make it will have a pay back by injuring your opponent (and you card game annalogy is good for this).

Your opponent has the ability to dodge or block (or counter attack) in a variety of ways. Defending in thess ways means that your efforts in the attack were negated and your gamble didn't pay off. If they don't succeed in their defence, then your gamble has payed off.

By combineing these aspects of the "Gamble" and the network of posible actions can create a situation where a player can control the fight by the action they choose.

For example:
If Player A attacks Player B with a Right Swing, then Player B could block the attack, which leave Player A able to do a Right Swing again (or other action where their weapon in on the Left side). Player B, however still has their weapon in the central position and so could do a quick thrust, or move it into a left or right position.

If Player B then choose to thrust, Player A can then choose to block the attack with a sweeping right block (puting weapons of both players to the right) or dodge back.

So at each point the players must make a decision as to what move they wish to make, this then effects their the moves that they themselves can tdo afterwards as well as their opponents.

this could create a very styleistic battle system where the players as they gain experience, don't get better at attacking, but get more options for attacking (more moves that they can do at the various positions). The way In which you land a hit on your opponent is to force them into a position where they can not stop your attack (either by not having enough moves, or can't make the moves in time).

As a matter of fact, the core concept is that of a system I had used in a duelling PnP RPG. Most of the social interaction was resolved through Pure RolePlaying, whereas the combat, being the meat of the game, was solved through a card combat. It also included a hex-based board, with triangular shapes showing the characters, and the board could be modified to include landscape, in order to use strategically again.

But the essential part of the combat system was that, a little like in MtG, you could build your deck overtime, by "buying" new cards, or by boosting your old ones, a little like with UNO, you could force your opponent to remain unable to answer your cards, and that meant that you had to think ahead of times, and a little like Open Battle, you could choose to counter your opponent's move or not, depending on what your strategy for the next moves was.

But unlike those, you could also choose to bet on your successes. If a static position occured (like a blocking move, where both blades were tied, or in Battle, two cards of equal values faced eachothers) you could try and and add ONE other card to your first card, this card was the number of additional points of strength you invested in pushing your opponent back. If a new equality occured you could invest a second card, and on and on. The trick was that you were supposed to always have the same number of cards in hand. YOu started with a set number of cards in hands, and could try to force your opponent to land more cards than he could afford (draining him...) because landing an extra card in battle meant that that card was lost for the rest of the fight. You could draw only one card from your fighting deck per turn, whereas you could land more than one. It all depended on your strategic choices. You could accept your opponent's domination and try to lure him in believeing that you were not as strong as you really were, or try to fight back and impress him with your moves. In the end, it was all reduced to your possibilities after a particular move.

Exemples:

You could accept your opponent's domination by letting him push you back and NOT using a second card in the same turn, therefore NOT reducing your possibilities for the following turns. But you would have to sacrifice your next turn, basically, as you would not be able to fight back. You could still use a trick card to escape again and be ready for the following turn. Like accepting to go down, but at the next turn, instead of waiting while your opponent idly kebabs you, you would use a "roll" card, and roll away from him, or left or right and wait for him standing the following turn.

Or you could try to outbid him and use a second card to give more weight to your push. It was all a gamble. After that push, you lost a Strength point until the end of the fight, meaning that you were a little exhausted. Since the push was equal to the card's value added to your strength, one early push could very well put you in trouble if it had almost no effect, but could also win you an early victory. It all depended on your appreciation of your opponent's hand.

In a computer game we can track many variable very easily. This opens up more posabilities than you can with a PnP RPG.

You could track each move that is made and that each time you use it, it become less effective (as your opponent learns your move they will be better at countering them, also if you are too predictable your opponent will have an advantage). So the player could start with a collection of moves that can be applied in most positions, but in a fight against a good opponent, this player would be at a disadvantage as the more experienced character would have more options open, and so not have to rely on a few moves (thus keeping their effectiveness).

The less experienced player might be able to defeat the better opponent by good strategy (channeling them into situations where they don't have many moves).

In the card annalogy, you potentially have access to all your cards in your deck (you never discard cards so you can't use them again), but you only can have a set number of cards in your hand at any one time (dictated by your position and the enemies position).

You cna never be absolutely sure that an opponent will make a particular move, but you will start to learn strategies and tactics that will allow you to make the most of what your character can do.