[Mist] Dodge/Parry mechanic

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Does this combat mechanic sound cool or artificial?

A horizontal or vertical melee attack is at close range. Defend by making a Parry check.

A diagonal melee attack is at longer range. Defend by making either a Parry or Jumping check, whichever is higher.

This would push dextrous combatants into rooms, where they have room to dodge. Positioning might become more interesting.

[buzzkill]

What about weapon reach and AI to counter?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

What about weapon reach and AI to counter?

Dumb AI doesn't bother me in this or in similar cases. It's still an opportunity for the player to gain tactical advantage by making smart moves.

I thought about weapon reach. That's kind of problematic, because in real life spears would be most useful in tunnels. If they countered dodge, they would be most useful in rooms. That doesn't sound right. So perhaps it's best to leave weapon reach out of the equation.

[WaveMotion]

Originally Posted by Mikko Lehtinen

A horizontal or vertical melee attack is at close range. Defend by making a Parry check.

A diagonal melee attack is at longer range. Defend by making either a Parry or Jumping check, whichever is higher.

This sounds really artificial, yes. Why can the character only be at that range from his opponent from a certain set of compass directions? If diagonal distances are longer, shouldn't it take longer to move a space diagonally than it does to move horizontally? In my opinion it's problematic to base game logic on the idea that diagonal distances are not equal to horizontal distances, because so many other basic elements of roguelikes assume that they are equal.

This would push dextrous combatants into rooms, where they have room to dodge. Positioning might become more interesting.

This is a good design goal, however. Maybe penalize Dodge according to how many wall/occupied squares are next to the player?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

You're right. Mechanic trashed.

I have another weird dodge idea. You may start to dodge a melee attack if you make a Jumping skill check . Dodge is a move in a randomly chosen direction. If there's space there, you move there and dodge the attack. If there isn't space, the dodge was unsuccessful.

Well, something like that. Presumably you'd had to switch dodging mode on beforehand, and you couldn't try a normal parry if you were dodging.

But maybe it's too complicated. Something simple like "you may dodge instead of parrying if there's 5 open squares around you" might work better.

In all these ideas, it is presumed that Jumping score is usually higher than Parry.

[LostTemplar]

Parry and dodge may be goood if they cost some energy (as in real life they cost some time)
maybe about 75% of the normal action, this will be realistic and give some nice strategic choice (there should be some tactical settings to turn parry/dodge on and off). If you are not going to make them cost energy, you dont add anything new to gameplay, just complicate the model, so generic miss chance would be better.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In the future version of Mist, monsters don't roll to hit. Instead, the player makes a 1d100 under Parry check to avoid the attack. Making a Jumping check instead is simple.

In addition to that, player's armour reduces damage.

This is designed to speed up the analysis of combat situations. You don't need to look at monsters to find their to hit chance.

[Scatha]

If you want to salvage the idea you seem to have been going for, without adding player-complexity such as a dodging mode, the following seems fairly simple:

You always get a dodge roll and a parry roll. The dodge roll chooses a direction randomly and then if it's empty you get a jumping roll; the parry roll is straight.

This means everyone fights better in rooms, but some characters get a larger advantage than others. If you wanted your system to be symmetric you could have the same for monsters, but you generally don't seem concerned about this. It wouldn't need Jumping to be higher than Parry to work smoothly.

Some monster attacks could be un-dodgable, or un-parriable, so that you only get the one type of defensive roll.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Jumping is already higher than Parry in my plans, for other reasons, so that part comes free.

I'd like to show 'Dodging' in the status line when your positioning allows it and your Jumping is higher than Parry (almost always unless you are heavily armored). The simplest option would be to require free space in all eight directions, but not to count monsters as blocking your movement. Presumably squares of stone are a much bigger obstacle to movement than a monster somewhere in that square.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

How about something like this: "You get +10 to Stealth next to terrain features that block movement, and +10 to Parry otherwise because you can dodge freely to all directions."