Interesting decisions in a turn-based combat mechanic

My boys and I just can't help ourselves; we're squeezing yet another design challenge into the cracks. This one is a turn-based combat game... think orcs, knights, and wizards duking it out.

The challenge is, how do you make this interesting? In far too many pencil & paper games, the fighter's choice amounts to "uh, swing my sword... again" or "run away." Yawn. We want to give players more interesting choices!

So I'm thinking things you can do should include at least the following options:

• something that reduces the other guy's ability to inflict damage
  • Hold Person or Shrink spell; disarming; ...?
• something that makes the other guy more vulnerable to damage on future turns
  • Vulnerability spell? something that removes the target's shield or armor?
• something that just deals as much damage as possible, this turn
  • traditional attacks

Basically we're trying to design a turn-based combat system with a little more depth to it than two guys taking turns bashing each other.

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Something that brings some strategy and depth to it. And, if it helps, each player actually controls a little squad of units — so it's fine (actually, great!) to have options that only make sense in the context of teamwork, e.g., one unit buffs another that then has a more interesting choice available.

Besides the big three classes of effects above, are there others we are overlooking?

And, are there other interesting interpretations (fictions) to layer on those effects than what I mentioned above?

 

I think your missed out on the classic movement related "attacks"

IE: A movement prohibiting attack (one that prevents them from moving or limits where they can move to) or an attack that allows YOU to re-position.

Just one of the many tbs classics.

Second item is attacks (or abilities) that change what the likely best target is: IE a buff that makes your adjacent allies more resistant but doesnt help you, thereby making you the easier target.

Generally things that trigger trade-offs are more fun than things like "this ability knocks someone over." - in my mind anyway

 

I suggest you take a look at the combat system of "Neo Scavenger". A demo should be on steam. My fav in turn based combat ist Jagged Alliance 2, but that is very firearm focused and I think it might not work so well for melee. Things that are not about numbers but about something more tangible like a state or an action usually feel better to me, both in terms of choice and in terms of results or feedback. If someone is on fire it should not mean +5 damage for 3 turns imho. I'd rather have a character throw himself on the ground, rolling around screaming, extinguishing himself after 4 turns, or if you let one from your team assist him it only takes 2 turns but the assisting character can't do anything else. Think about "states" and "narrative" would be my advice. What would you say to someone when you tell them about the awesome fight that you just had in that game?

 

I'd also suggest looking at the hero system (champions role playing game). Each character had base stats then could get extra points by taking on disadvantages which helped balance them. Then, because it was superhero teams, the characters worked together so you had your usual tank (very slow, does massive damage if they can hit, easy to hit them, soak up damage), a speedster (low attack damage but fast so can do multiple attacks (an attack roll for each one), high dodge so hard to hit), etc. Each round was broken into phases & the phase/s you acted on depended on your speed so players had to determine their action so that it helped the others acting after them.

If players had a pool of points to assign to their team & were required to have between say 3-6 in their squad then they can explore teams of 3 stronger people against teams of 6 weaker but more varied people.

 

This is a good chunk of the reason I like turn based strategy. Even in a mediocre system, you still have to worry about positioning and defense, so you have something else to consider besides all out assault.

It's hard to find an RPG that doesn't do this to some degree, but it's still not enough. Most of this just effects the variables in play without effecting the decisions the player needs to make, and that's the crux. If a player is only concerned about efficiency, then they aren't actually thinking.

Ideally the player is always trying to counter the situation they are in, while also considering how things could go horribly, HORRIBLY wrong. It's an interesting decision when the player is considering a move that might end his current problem, but it might also make the situation ten times worse, probably by being countered.

 

In turn based combat position and movement is more important and interesting then actual fighting. The most enduring turn based combat games are things like chess and go. There is no combat, only movement.

Make positioning important. Implement flanking, zones of control, back stabs and so forth. Have characters that provide others support based on relative location.

You probably don't have to go the the abstract extreme that chess does. But taking some lessons from it might be useful.

 

You could give your units particular items that grant them abilities. Using an example from Team Fortress 2, the Buff Banner replaces the shotgun, so you don't have as much firepower. However, you're going to cause nearby units to deal 35% extra damage for a few seconds, as long as the other team doesn't kill you while it's active.

In a turn-based game, this could last for e.g. three turns, as long as the unit that activated the ability is alive or conscious. That unit could then become a priority target for the other side, who in turn might leave a flank exposed.

 

Thanks guys, those are some thought-provoking ideas.

I agree with the comments that it should be more about status effects than just changing stats. We don't want players making spreadsheets trying to calculate damage/turn... indeed, as in Chess, it should be very difficult to calculate a numeric score for any position in the game, which forces people to really think about strategy rather than just crunch numbers.

I also agree that positioning is important — it wasn't the focus of my question here, but it's certainly a good point to keep in mind relative-position effects. There are also things like elevation and cover that come into play, and in our early prototyping we've already seen that make for some fun choices. So, yeah, effects that prevent the enemy unit from moving (or force it to move in a way you desire!) might be interesting.

As for trade-offs, so far it's mostly about the opportunity cost of doing something other than dealing damage. For example, if I try to disarm the opponent, then even if I succeed (which is not automatic), that's a turn that I'm not dealing damage. The problem with this one is that even if I do succeed, my opponent can pick up his weapon on his next turn (and that is an automatic success). So I've not really gained anything... unless I have a free hand, and use two actions to first disarm, then grab the weapon (or use two units working together to do so). I think we have some balancing work to do there.

 

I'm wondering if there are some more general decisions that should be made before you go so deep into balancing. How will the grid look like, hex based, tile grid or no grid at all? How will the chronological execution of actions work? In classic Battletech there was a complex system that made a lot of sense to me. From my memory a 2 player 4 vs 4 mechs turn would have been:
-Players roll for initiative, highest roll wins, no ties allowed
-Loser moves a mech on the board
-Winner moves a mech on the board (so the winner always can react to what the loser did and flank better etc.)
-Loser moves
-Winnder moves
[...] until all mechs have been moved exactly once
-Loser declares which ranged weapons to fire and the targets for 1 mech
-Winner does the same for 1 mech
[...] until all ranged attacks are declared
-Attacks are evaluated (do they hit at all, what do they hit, how much damage do they do, what are the consequences?)
and all damage is coming into effect simultaneously. So 2 mechs destroying each other in the same turn is a possibility.
After that, mechs that took too much damage or were hit in certain parts need to roll a check to see if they fall down and if so how exactly they fall etc..
-Then if mechs are in melee range and still capable of using melee attacks those get declared and evaluated (can't remember the order, but probably same principle as ranged attacks)
-Melee damage is evaluated.

It's a really complicated game and a 4 vs 4 mechs match could take a few hours for inexperienced players that don't have the ton of charts memorized where you need to look things up on. But I always preferred this complex ruleset over tabletop games that had a more simplified ruleset because it created a plausible and interesting narrative. Stories could happen where mech gets badly damaged, no weapons left to fire, and in a desperate attempt the pilot runs up on a level 1 cliff next to an enemy mech, kicks him, hits the cockpit and smashes the pilot.

Not saying this is the best or even a great system, it's just meant as food for thought.

Shadowrun V2 (again, from memory, didn't play that in like 15 years or so) had a system where during a round of combat every character would get a number of turns based on his abilites, for each turn he had a free action and either two simple actions or one complex action. And different things you could do would classify as one of the 3 action types. So activating a cyber implant with a thought could be a free action, reloading or shooting an easy to handle firearm could be an easy action, so either reload and shoot, or shoot two times for a turn, and doing something with a hard to handle weapon could be a complex action. It might even be possible, that free action meant you could do as many of them as you want (the name implies it), but I could be wrong. In a way that is very similar to the simplified action point system that the X-Com reboot has, where you could either run far, walk half as far and shoot, or shoot twice. It makes you commit more to actions, but also feels simplified and I bet a few people didn't like it and would have preferred an action point system like the original X-Com, JA2 or Xenonauts have.

You've got pretty clear goals about how you want the decisionmaking to feel. Before you go to deep into balancing tradeoffs vs each other I'd suggest to make sure you have chosen the best foundation of rule mechanics that support what you want to end up with. E.g. hex based gives you more options for firing arcs, adjacency patterns where units support each other and the angle of incoming attacks.
And if you choose to go with a system where 2 players or the player and the AI make decisions without knowing what the other chooses, and they then get executed simultaneously, that would open up a whole new dimension of complexity and in pvp battles it would introduce bluffing and trying to anticipate actions of your opponent.
So e.g. I choose disarm, your guy chooses block, I automatically fail. If you choose attack, a check is rolled and evalueted, if disarm succeeds, your attack fails, the weapon is on the floor and next turn you have to make a risk analysis and another choice. When you try to pickup the weapon and I choose attack, that's an automatic hit for me. If I attack and you dodge, that might be an automatic win for you and a possible stagger for my char that influences the next round. I like systems that have a bit of predictability to them, so stat evaluation could be capped on one or two ends of the spectrum. So if something would be super easy to do, it might be an automatic win. If something is super hard to do, you might want to always give the player a very little chance to still succeed, no matter what. The "against all odds" situation... The other way around where things are capped at the success end of the spectrum and you never know 100% that an action will succeed based on stats of chars and equipment I dislike, because I feel it diminishes the value of player choice, frustrates me if it goes wrong and makes everything feel more luck based. In the X-Com reboot I think they capped to hit chance at 99% and after I missed two of those in a row I felt like the enemy is cheating their RNG.

 

Good thoughts, Martin. We're pretty happy with the overall mechanic — turn-based, no grid, usually two actions/turn/unit (modified for certain unit types or spell effects). In fact we're enjoying the combat as it is, too; I just worry that, for fighters in particular, they don't have enough interesting decisions to make.

There's certainly fun value in simultaneous hidden decisions, but mechanically it's hard for us to do without making a completely different game. (Could make a really interesting card game though... from a good-sized hand of actions, both players place several face down, and then you turn them up and see what happens!)

 

With the Champions game a character could hold one turn for use at any time within that round so that overcame the disarm twice issue you raised, they'd just hold their turn until just before their next turn since those that had more moves per round also had a higher speed so went before the slower players. It also meant we could start a coordinated team move at the right time.

I played Missionforce:cyberstorm, which may have been a battle tech game & can be found for free download as it is abandon ware now, & it was nicely balanced between weapons, defence & healing. The mechs had an engine that generated a certain amount of power per turn & batteries that stored excess. This meant you could move the maximum & still possibly attack. Movement over different terrain hexes had a movement cost so you had to plan where you went. Weapons did shield &/or armour damage so often you had to balance your team & position them so they could take a shield down on the one hex face so that armour penetrating weapons could then get past the shield.
These forced you to balance a team for bother mech type & weapon combinations & then position them carefully in game. The bigger mechs couldn't move that far so you had to ensure the scouts didn't get to far ahead without finding good cover etc.
Shields could be positioned & balanced how you wanted on a hex based view so you could focus them all at the front & hope no one got behind you, or you backed into a mountain, hunkered down, & maxed shields at the front.
There also was an over watch system if you had enough energy left for them to fire in the enemies turn.

 

Is this a competitive player vs player game?

Is it an RPG with progression - or are there fixed unit types you pick from?

Is there a lot of variation in the number of units on each side?

Can you give a little more detail - a screenshot or something?

 

Interesting challenge. Melee can be a little wash, rinse, repeat.

You can always try a parry/counter-attack command. In a nutshell, the character forfeits attacking but goes into a prepared stance. If the enemy attacks during this next turn, zero damage is dealt to the defending character and a great deal of damage is done to the attacker, damage that ignores defense or that always hits critical. Maybe it stuns the bad guy with a healthy chance. In other words, it pays off if it works.

It's giving the player the choice to gamble on whether the enemy will attack or not. To me, that is very interesting.

 

I did see an implementation with a paper-scissors-rock actually built into the combat choices. I believe it was a martial arts style attack-block-throw. But it could be adapted to any system.

 

Yeah, that's a cool thing to have for sure. Any system that breaks up the monotony of repeatedly selecting the "attack" command and winning by having the highest stats is a good addition to a turn-based combat system.

When you have a rock-paper-scissors system in place (or a system with 37 different types) you're guaranteed at least that there is more to the game than just leveling up or spamming the most powerful attack. But you aren't guaranteed much beyond that.

You essentially have only a small handful of choices in a turn-based game. Attack or do not attack (and do something else) is the most fundamental choice. But it's not so much a decision, right?

Things I have found that make things interesting are things that add elements of unpredictability to the battle or those that require the player to analyze the battlefield and try to anticipate what the enemy is most likely to do. Then make a decision on what they want to do next. Things that can nullify enemy attack damage if the timing is right, are pretty cool. Things that can hit extra hard if the timing is right are also very cool. Things that take time to set up before they start doing damage can be excellent, here. They start requiring you to anticipate the length of the battle... should I start a long-term damage plan or do I expend my resources and finish this battle rather quickly? That's decisive battling.

Also, give the player multiple options of "stances"... essentially, a mode in which they can enter in which they are better suited to combat in different circumstances. The drawback being, switching modes will always waste a turn, and the enemy will be able to switch modes as well. So now there is even yet another thing to consider. Now you're not just slamming "attack" you're trying to decide what you need to do to maximize your odds of victory.

There are other things as well, but I digress.

 

Things like wizards building spells can add a lot. Do they fire off a quick fireball or build a turn or 2 then unleash a bigger one? Will the enemy still be in range when it is ready to fire or will the spell be wasted? How vulnerable are they while they are concentrating on building that bigger spell?

For defensive characters, maybe they can add a defence buff to characters nearby, they set the radius of the effect & then those inside get the bonus. The downside of this is 1) the bigger the radius the smaller the buff so everyone stays close & are vulnerable to area effect items & 2) the character itself is defended less as it is their own defence they are spreading out so for example instead of having 100 def they spread it out so they have 20 & everyone in range has their normal defence +20 buff from that character.

 

Radiant Historia (Nintendo DS) went in an interesting direction- the opposition was placed on a 3x3 tile grid, and all attacks would hit different tiles on that grid. You could use some attacks to move opponents around their grid (push back, push right ect.) to arrange them where you could smash them with a big nuke spell or something. I know you mentioned that positioning doesn't fit with your current system, but you may still be able to glean something from that game.

I've also seen some battle systems that eschew positioning in favor of attacks that stack on each other or combine. Some implementations of those I have seen lean more to the cerebral side and while being like chess in having depth of strategy, it can lead to much slower battle flow/progression as the number of levels of complexity the player has to think about increases.

Disgaea has a throw mechanic that they used brilliantly to change up the usual move-attack flow. Got me thinking about maybe a high risk grapple move that locks two units into a combat stance for a turn, any outside attacks hit both of them, they pick a second move rock-paper-scissors style, and if there is a winner, he does lots of damage or throws one unit into another or something. If they tie, they just break out of the grapple.

 

And that's not even getting into the weapon dynamics where weapon skills usually end up providing a particular role in combat. Axes were pure damage to a single target, swords were AoE, spears ended up moving the attacker, while fists/gloves pushed the defender. Then there are the class related quirks like movement and counters.


Rock, paper, scissors is a start. Pokemon is full of it, where you are constantly trying to maximize type coverage using pokemon with few weaknesses and a wide range of skills to capitalize on other's weaknesses. It's just that pokemon goes to an extreme with it.

 

This may not be a popular opinion, but I don't think the point of most western, turn based RPGs is to create interesting tactical situations. I really think the point is generally to present a space to highlight character progression and to build a narrative around the combat (based generally, on the character classes).

My suggestion is to not really focus on things like opportunity costs, or balance at all. Instead I think what you should do is create a set of classes that have abilities which are strongly rooted in some theme. These themes should match to both how they generally perform on the field, and match existing player expectations.

A 'fighter' should generally not have disarm. This should generally be assigned to a thief. Disarm requires 'finesse' - in D&D terms, disarm should be dexterity based. If you want to give a fighter some kind of debuff - generally you would look towards stuff like "knock down", "shield bash" - things that give a sense of a burly warrior that overpowers his enemies. A more 'berserker' kind of warrior would generally get something like 'shield cleave' or 'resounding roar' for an AoE debuff. You can have a finesse warrior, a duelist or swashbuckler type - but I think this would generally fall under your thief class.

For this kind of game, I really think that having clear thematic classes with satisfying effects is more important than anything else (assuming this isn't a player vs player skirmish game, in which case there are very very different rules).

If you want more strategic elements, JRPGs have better examples, as these tend to be more 'pure games' - Card/RPG Hybrids also have very convoluted rules - both of these tend to throw out 'simulating combat in turn based form' for more interesting tactics - and tend to do this very effectively. Personally, I think the card/rpg hybrids probably offer the most interesting options, since your decisions are really different every turn and can be totally different from fight to fight.

On Debuffs:
I've also found debuffs to be extremely hard to balance, they're either too binary (hold person is either super good or worthless) or they're unsatisfying (having a skill that reduces enemy hit chance is the worst, if the enemy lands the next attack, every player on the planet feels like "that daze skill is so S***ty and pointless").

In order to make debuffs satisfying for non-uber-min-maxers, they need to be really powerful or have really awesome visual effects. And even then, they tend to be very hard to balance.

Keep in mind that most players of most western RPGs don't really understand the combat mechanics under the hood, and just play by feel. The most important thing is the visual effect of the ability and thematic consistency of each class.

 

I don't think that matters, here. The question was about making turn-based combat require interesting decisions. To me and others, whether to attack or defend isn't very interesting. Adding some tactical elements spices it up.

 

Instead of thinking about it from "tactical elements spicing it up" - I've found that the tactical elements themselves don't tend to matter as much as building classes around theme and narrative.

Warrior: front line tank, high HP
Abilities: Shield Slam, Taunt, Knock down

Thief: back line sneak, moderate/low HP
Abilities: Dash, Poison, Backstab

Barbarian: AoE fighter, moderate HP
Abilities: Cleave, Roar, Ground Slam

Fire Mage: Ranged AoE, very low HP
Abilities: Fireball, Fire Wall, Delayed Explosion

Cleric: Healer, moderate/low HP
Abilities: Heal, Area Heal, Heal over Time

This is of course, assuming that we're talking about something like an AD&D game.

 

Forgive me if someone already mentioned this, but I found the turn-based combat in Project Cross Zone to be extremely thrilling.

As the battle starts, you input commands like "Forward + A" or "Down + A" and if your character's speed stat is faster, you go first. Some techniques are ineffective to the opponent so you have to switch up what party member you use and what inputs you press. In this video, Ryu and Ken are chaining combos because the npc is too slow. Every time it flips against the building, represents the turn is over and the player is inputting new commands. No need for wading through endless menus.