Question: How do you do combat in game? My ST is having trouble figuring out the combat system.
Hmm. This is hard to answer, because said combat system belongs to Onyx Path and not us, and we don't want to just sit down and walk through all its mechanics because that kind of makes it unnecessary to buy the books and people get pretty mad and litigious when you encourage people not to buy their books.
Instead, could you tell us what you guys are having trouble with when it comes to the combat system? Is it the tick system? How or when to activate powers? Covering ground with Dash or Move? Damage and soak? DV and attack rolls? We'd be happy to go in-depth on any of those, but let us know so we can narrow the focus down instead of doing something that would just be a copy and paste from the rulebook.
It's the tick system and DV mostly
ReplyDeleteDV's pretty simple; if someone wants to hit you, they need to roll at least as much as your DV. If they don't, they miss. If they roll higher than your DV, they gain dice equal to the difference - called threshold dice - to their damage roll against you.
DeleteSo if you're fighting a monster with DV 6 and you have 5 Dexterity, 1 Epic Dexterity and 5 Melee, you roll 10 dice to try to hit and add 1 success from your Epic. If you roll and get a 6, you hit the monster and roll your damage as normal. If you rolled better than average and got an 8, you roll your damage roll with +2 dice from the threshold.
The tick system is pretty straightforward, actually, but the wheel the book comes with makes it look confusing. All you need to know is that everyone's actions take a certain number of ticks, and as soon as those ticks are over they can act again. Usually, a tick is roughly equal to a second, so if you take a 5-tick action and your friend takes a 6-tick action, you'll get to act again one second before he does.
There's an old vlog that might help you out some with how ticks work. We suggest not worrying about the wheel, since technically people can pass one another on it and then it gets all confusing, and instead do it in a straight line.
How do you do soak? Do you subtract the soak for each attack that hits it or only once? Like if it has a soak of 3 and I hit it twice for 4 damage each do I lose 3 damage for each attack or just lose 3 from my 8 overall damage
Deletealso the steps in combat has confused me. Can you clear up the steps?
DeleteEvery attack is soaked separately. In your example, you will do a total of two damage to your target; each time, you hit it for four and it soaks three, so you deal one damage per attack.
DeleteYou dealt four damage two times, not eight damage one time, so the soak is applied to both.
I'm not sure what you mean by steps?
Deletein the hero books it describes how to do combat.
Delete1) Declare Attack: The attacker’s player states that the character is attacking and what Boon or
knacks (if any) he will use to enhance the attack. The Storyteller tells her the (Attribute + Ability)
combination to use for the attack and awards any dice for stunts.
2) Declares Defense: The defender defends using best option of Parry or Dodge DV, unless he
declares otherwise. The defender’s player must declare the use of any defensive Boons or knacks. The
Storyteller awards any dice for stunts.
3) Attack Roll vs. Defense: The attacker’s player rolls the dice pool that governs the method of
attack used at a difficulty of (base difficulty + target’s DV). Epic Dexterity successes add to this roll. An
attacker may spend Legend for her player to reroll an attack roll in this step. A defender may also spend
Legend for his player to make a defensive reroll.
4) Calculate Raw Damage: If the attack hits, it has a raw damage equal to (weapon’s Damage +
attacker’s Strength + threshold successes + 1). Effects modifying the raw damage of an attack apply
accordingly.
5) Apply Hardness: If the victim has a Hardness rating against the attack’s raw damage type, compare
the Hardness with the raw damage. If Hardness is equal or greater, the defense absorbs the attack
without effect. Otherwise, the damage ignores the defender’s Hardness.
6) Roll Damage, Apply Soak: Roll dice equal to the raw damage of the attack. Next, remove the
target’s appropriate soak rating from the damage of the attack. Apply post-soak successes as health
levels of the appropriate type of damage to the defender.
7) Apply Results: Any non-damage effects of an attack occur at this stage.
and step 3 if the most confusing
DeleteSimiliar for us.
DeleteWe dont have declare defense really. There are no defensive boons or knacks that we allow before damage that dont take an action, so its unnecessary.
3rd step is stupid. Attacker rolls the dice, difficulty is defenders DV.
4. the +1 is dumb....and nonsensical....calling it raw damage is also silly.
5. Took away hardness....its also silly.
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Deletealright.
Deleteso how do you calculate step 4 then?
The same, just without the random +1....cause why is there a plus 1 there?
Deletehum. . . .typo or not really thinking about it maybe?
DeleteAnyway thanks for answering my questions. It's cleared up a lot of our combat related problems
Any time. Really glad it helped. Always feel if I had someone in person for just a bit I could explain things so much easier.
Delete