A long-winded opinion on melee combat

I've got some very long-winded things to say about melee combat.

Let's assume your character is a swordsman - he's gotten very proficient at swinging a sword around; the thing is practically an extension of his person and everyone in the village is afraid of him with it. But as it happens one day the sword breaks in a fight and he looks around him - there's a conspicuous pile of maces and axes, but no swords - and he hasn't put in any time or points, as the case may be, into his mace or axe proficiency! With a sense of doom and regret, and with mace in hand, he swings the thing around like a drunken epileptic until he's stab-murdered by a farmer who'd wisely put all of his points into his pitch-fork proficiency.

Now I understand specialized combat and skill-tree branches and all the inventive ways that video game designers present players with specific choices and consequences - but it's always confounded me that a swordsman would be absolutely baffled were someone to put a mace or an axe in his hands. Even if he had to write it on his forearm as a way of remembering - "1. Hit opponent with (insert name of weapon)" - I don't think it would exhaust his abstract mental capacities. I'm not suggesting we demand an impossible sense of realism but I'd love to play a game in which common sense is a feature - that novel experience in this tired genre would be profound.

Nail-biting forks in the road of magic-learning make a lot of sense - magic would be exactly the sort of thing that would challenge a person's intelligence and sense of conceptualization - its nature and power make it perfect for skill specialization and specialization would keep it from dominating all opponents all of the time. One fault I found in Ultima Online was that hand-to-hand combat was divided three-ways dependant on the weapon and magery was a single category no matter if it was used to summon blade-spirits, throw fire-balls, or rune-teleport home. Now I'm not a magician nor particularly enthused at contemplating whether a fire-ball mage would have to earn a seperate degree to use whatever in the hell Corp Por was exactly, but I'm sure someone would love to figure that out.

Melee-fighting is surely a hard-earned skill but I don't think weapon types should be a major point of division. A shield block versus a weapon parry; now those are different - and experience in swinging a weapon versus thrusting it would probably be a fair seperation - but I don't think it'd turn a grand-master fencer into a stammering idiot even if all you gave him was a club. Conversely I think that even with a club a grand-master fencer would pummel the piss out of many a challenger.

Let me be the first to say (which is easy having created my own thread) that I very much enjoyed the sort of tactical duels that emerged when a chain-mailed hammer-and-spear fighter fought a plate-mailed axe-and-shield-and-kryss fighter - the tactics would involve breaking armor, replacing shields, and switching weapons smartly and timely in order to win. Some skills like anatomy, tactics, and healing were almost obligatory so play-styles really came down to weapon and armor choices and what melee skills had been invested in. Now I'd love more than anything to see this sort of player-versus-player fight style re-created but it can surely be done in smarter ways - and in ways that make a player stop and think "Gee that makes sense." One of the implied goals of this new game is to prevent the creation of useless characters - which becomes paramount in the event that there's only one single character slot.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that Armed Melee Combat be its own single skill - and if particular moves or tactics are introduced that correspond to certain weapons or weapon-types then all the better. I think Ranged Combat should remain separate and include archery and gun-fighting if that's how the story goes - and Unarmed Melee Combat should be separate and attractive to all players; as a last-resort sort of judo for the unarmed fighter or rogue or for the mage fending off an opponent and creating space.

And in terms of "cards drawn" or skill sub-sets chosen before setting out on any particular instanced adventure - as Mr. Lord British himself has suggested will be the case - a choice could be a certain set of moves with a particular type of weapon. However if that weapon should break or be stolen or prove insufficient or sub-optimal a seasoned fighter should be able to confidently draw another killing-tool without turning into a 6-year-old at T-ball batting practice.

 

I like your point of view which made me think about it. Basically the idea is that you have slash, bash and thrusting swings. You can technically swing a sword in each of these motions with a different effect likewise with a hammer or a fencing weapon. My solution would be that instead of training weapon types you train swinging types. This would allow a player to utilize all weapons. If you were a master at thrusting an ideal weapon would be a rapier and secondly swords but there may be some types of blunt weapon such as a staff that could more properly use this swing type. You could have a pike that was a combination of type swith a spear point and hammer or axe. Or an axe with blade side and a reverse spike or hammer on the other end. Weapons that didnt have a natural blunt edge would use the hilt, such as a dagger.

 

The point I was trying to make - which could easily be glossed-over due to my long-windedness - is that melee combat should be ridiculously simple when compared to magic or craftsmanship. Being very good at it should obviously take a lot of time and experience - but the idea of swinging a sword shouldn't be terribly different to that of swinging a club. I don't think I'm not demanding some high expectations of realism; to me it's common sense.

Your solution about thrusting versus slashing versus bashing is one take on it but I'm afraid it's going in the opposite direction - making combat more complicated again. After writing my original post I thought about it - look at a few major world-wide professional sports today; there's fencing (thrusting), kendo (slashing/bashing), boxing/karate/taekwondo (unarmed pummeling), wrestling/judo/jujitsu/sumo (unarmed grappling/throwing), archery (uh, archery), javelin-throwing/shot-putting (non-archery ranged combat) and all sorts of firearm marksmanship competitions - which is obviously only relevant to this topic if guns are made a thing in this game.

Now I know there are probably professional Chinese halberd-dancers and Philippino stick-fighters and Irish dart-throwers and all sorts of nonsense - but stay with me here a minute - sometimes the way to make something better is not to make it more complicated but more simple instead. Here's a break-down of this idea - try to shake the notion that the first two are weapons-based - they'd both include swords, hammers, knives, spears, halberds - 1-handed and 2-handed. You might protest this - it flies in the face of all the role-playing-game combat parameters - but it would make being a fighter much less restrictive and probably more fun to play. These things are important if the game wants to offer you only 1 character slot and not quit at the idea of having to re-roll or re-invent your character as your personal experience evolves.

1. Advanced Combat - this'd be using a more accurate style of fighting; the draw-back could be that it becomes crazy slow if the player is wearing heavy armor or inaccurate if un-trained in another skill like Anatomy. Unlike other melee fighting that'd require a shield to block a direct attack fencing could have a built-in weapon-parry.

2. Melee Fighting - this'd be a more traditional sort of fighting; a lot of sword-and-shield or halberd-switch-to-hatchet combinations and folk running around in metal armor - where a dueler would be more of your damage-per-second player, a melee-fighter would be more of your tank wading through the crowd.

Now how would a player choose Advanced Combat instead of Melee Fighting or vice versa in a given situation - what if he wants to train both? If not for the weapon in his hand how should a player go about utilizing one of these skills instead of the other? Well this could make use of the card-draw system that Mr. Lord British has mentioned in previous interviews. Or it could be a matter of utilizing a particular "stance" upon entering combat mode set by a toggle-switch - so that you could start a battle like a brawler and then switch and finish off the survivors like an assassin; this might be a convincing method to helping to break up the "holy trinity" of tank/damager-dealer/healer that'd been mentioned in a previous topic.

3. Unarmed Pugilism - that's a fancy word for boxing; I guess you could just call it boxing. I personally think it's a stupid skill to have in a world filled with things like giant monsters and magic and weapons but I know someone will ask for it and there's really no reason not to have it exist - even if I think it's stupid.

4. Unarmed Grappling - a very useful combat-related skill to have; not very useful on its own but vital to mages in the same way that Wrestling was in Ultima Online - it could be used for no other purpose than to judo-throw an opponent in order to create space when attempting to cast a spell or when re-loading a gun or crossbow. Depending on how combat is designed it could be a timing-sensitive button or simply a button-press that'd make the attempt the next time an opponent attacks. A fighter could also use a handy judo-throw as a last resort in a losing fight or if disarmed or just before a finishing move. Maybe Unarmed Pugilism can be useful if an opponent is thrown and then immediately pummeled to death on the ground - yea I've seen a few kung-fu films.

5. Archery - pretty self-explanatory and I don't have any sort of new ideas here because I've got very little personal interest in it; I'm sure someone out there does though. Yea this one is pretty weapon-specific.

6. Throwing - haven't seen a lot of javelin or rock-throwing or sling-shotting in video games even in the ones set in time periods where these were just as common as bows and arrows; something sounds incredibly heroic about running and throwing a spear at the start of a fight so I think this should be considered. Also, bola balls.

7. Firearm Marksmanship - if the game goes the whole steamp-punk route; which I'd like to say I think it should.