I''m clipping well along on my first RPG game, and I''ve started coming to a point where I need to get some concrete system for combat down. This game is in a futuristic setting, and the characters will all use guns. I''m not sure if they''ll still use bullets ala Aliens or energy weapons ala Star Wars yet, but that''s beside the point. My first question concerns what type of HP system might best serve this system; one where the charactes have massive HP, almost always hit the target and do damage, or one where the characters have smaller amounts of HP and hit less. I''m thinking of putting an aiming system for head shots, body shots, limb shots, each doing more, average, or less damage and having a greater chance of hitting inversely proportional to the damage. My second question deals with the equations for armor and weapon damage, which I''ve never been real good at. Is there an industry standard for how armor values, damages, etc are supposed to be worked? Or is this just something I need to sit down with a calculator and crunch out? Thanks in advance for any and all replies and critiques.

Simple systems use a technique of "ablative" armor -- meaning that it slowly erodes as the entity is "hit". Armor in this sense just adds to your hit points. Somewhat simplistic, but effective.

Another technique is to assume armor removes some of the damage off the top. Like if it''s 10 points of armor, it''ll remove the first 10 points of damage, the rest gets thru and applies to the hit points. This is nice in that it seperates hp and armor, but doesn''t address the armor being tattered after numerous hits.

You could mix the two have armor serve as protection from damage but also get worn with time. I dunno of any pen and paper systems that encorporate this because, after-all, it''s a bit of a head-ache to deal with. But hey, computers don''t have heads to ache, so what the heck.

As for weaponry and actual armor tables, I would look to a pen and paper system and work from there. Most systems have real-world weapons to guage things by. You''ll need to figure out you hit point range and use whatever info you find as a relative measure.

Just a few thoughts...

Hey all I am either anon or listing as mellonsage (my former EQ name for any who play/played on druzzil Ro).

I am trying to answer these same questions for an RPG that I am trying to put into being but a fantasy based one like D&D or EQ. For the life of me I cannot get a satisfactory equation going but I just started on it so hey I got time.

Anyway I was thinking of doing a linear equation for stuff like hp and mana. I am betting that would work for you as well. Maybe something like dmg = weapon dmg - AC*wear and some catches there so that if the armor is dissolved then the next time a dmg roll/computation is made that is updated. The wear variable would be a number from 0 to 1 (i.e. a percentage) of how intact the armor still is.

Anyway I would love some ideas myself seeing as I am trying to work out how to do a time based attack system rather than turn oriented and to calculate to hits. Then the fun begins to make sure it all balances. joys

ME out

p.s. if you wanna email me about any of this danielwassenaar@hotmail.com is me addy but I doubt I can help much I am way NOOB at this.

I think the hp system is very much something you''re going to have to do yourself. Just sit down and figure out what sort of gameplay you really want to happen. Should objects get blown away in a single hit, or shrug under a rain of bullets? Your choice.

Now, once you''ve made that decision, maybe I can be more help.

This may be just me, but I''ve always disliked systems where you miss a lot. Give me crappy damage, anything, just don''t make me miss every 2nd time.

Rain of bullets seems to be what I''m leaning towards. I still haven''t made much headway determining if I want a maximalist or minimalist HP number, thus determining how the damage will be played out. This might lend itself to a smaller amount of HP, or maybe even big HP with adjusted damage and armor levels.

Some of the stuff I have decided on is the weapons my characters will use, and I''m not sure if this will help or not. The main characters will use twin pistols, then the other characters will use assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, and maybe, maybe, MAYBE, one guy with some sort of explosive lobber. I can whip out armor on a whim almost. The only thing I''ve decided on is the worst armor, a leather jacket.

Other stuff that might help is that the player''s party will range anywhere from one to three characters, and the opposing party can be anywhere from one to 8 or 10 enemies.

These things are quite simple once you have some basic probability theory under your belt. The best way is to think about what you want from the system (how often do you want an attack to hit? How many hits should be necessary to kill or defeat someone? How much should armour affect this? And so on. There can never be a standard because everyone has to do different things to achieve different results in their games. Some people take the ''easy'' way out by using a system from an RPG, but that rarely suits your game exactly. You just have to pick something based on what you want the results to be.

I''ve been designing my own RPG lately and working on the math behind battles. Personally I like there to be the possibility of a miss. So I give the player a base percentage to hit for any wepon then add a percentage/accuracy of the weapon. Different weapons have different accuracies. Shot gun wont be as accurate as a sniper rifle. Hence shotgun may have 50% to hit + Players % to hit. Sniper rifle would have around 80-90% to hit + Players % to hit. I could go into range of weapons reach having to do with chance to hit and damage but its a lot more complicated.

As far as hp goes. I like starting with a little hp so its SEEMS(only seems though) that I could die easily. Personally i like the dmg = weapon dmg - AC system but this is all your personal choice. I dont think theres an industry standard thats necesary to follow.

Forgot to to tell you how I get the Players base chance to hit. I used one of the stats to calc that. In my case its Vision. But a more realistic way might be to make to a combo of Vision/Dexterity or something for hand eye coordination. It might be to much hassle at this point to add a stat but maybe modifying an existting stat to include this might work. And a quick thought that just occured about taking damage. Endurance or something like that could have an effect. High effect= natural armor or damage points taken from damage being dealt.

Hmmm. Ok, with the varieties of weapons, what do you plan on the different functionality of each type to be?

Assault Rifle = multiple hits, medium sized ammo clips
Machine gun = multiple hits (fastest fire rate?), large ammo clips
Shotgun = mutliple simultanious hits, area of effect
Grenade launcher = slow loading, small ammo count, high damage, area affect

Ok, now how do you want armor to interact with that?

Another thing to question is the ability of your character to obtain more hitpoints. After all, if they can get a lot of hitpoints, that would make a gun that is supposed to be able to kill anyone in 1 hit have to do a lot of extra damage.

How should a relatively unexpiernced character, in good armor survive? Think a 10 year old in power armor.