Character combat strength.

A topic which I have often pondered about, and formed a rather strong opinion about myself.
I am very curious how others view this subject.

Sometimes roleplay leads to in character conflict, to the point where blades are drawn, spells flung, and rifles fired.
I've seen a lot, ranging from a boring *swings at her enemy* *dodges, and attempts to punch her in the face* to characters unleashing their full detailed and beautifully described battles which had me on the edge of my seat.
Also I've seen max level players dropping a duel flag, simply destroying the lower level character, yet on the other hand, I've seen the fate of entire guilds hang in the balance of a single well balanced duel.

How do you prefer the outcome of a battle to be decided?
Do you leave it up to a dice roll, or do you and your opponent discuss which would be the most logical outcome, or which result might make for the best story?
Or do you perhaps rely upon the game mechanics to decide whom would triumph in combat?

Solanum wrote:How do you prefer the outcome of a battle to be decided?
Do you leave it up to a dice roll, or do you and your opponent discuss which would be the most logical outcome, or which result might make for the best story?
Or do you perhaps rely upon the game mechanics to decide whom would triumph in combat?

I use a hybrid system of dice rolls plus logic. I'll roll for most things, usually with 50/50 chance. If it's something I know my character has a particular strength or weakness in, I'll apply a bonus or negative to the roll. If it's a bonus, I'll only apply it after informing my opponent and making sure they're okay with it.

I won't roll for guaranteed things. If it's obvious that an attack would hit and there is no realistic, logical way it could miss, then I'll just take the hit without rolling (though I may make a survival roll to determine if I live through it).

My emotes will also take into account the situation, regardless of the rolls. If the enemy scores a high roll, but the attack they're making is very awkward, poorly thought-out, or otherwise impossible, then I'll typically limit the amount of damage it does. For example, strikes to the head or to pressure points will never knock Dru out no matter how high your roll is, because she's undead. Similarly, unless you roll over 90, I typically won't have a ranged weapon pierce exactly where you fired at. It will still hit somewhere, just not exactly where you aimed at, since even with modern, rifled firearms, targeted aiming at heads or limbs is very difficult to do (hence why police and military are trained to fire at center mass). Likewise for my own attacks, I keep in mind my character's momentum (often testing my emotes out IRL to get a sense of the flow) and will base my attacks (or ability to attack) on what I could logically do at the time. Not casting spells while hands are bound, for example, or dropping weapons after a strong impact, or skipping a round because of being off-balanced or fatigued, etc. On Areyah, I treat my pistols as proper early modern weapons: smoothbore and muzzleloaded with a single paper cartridge. So if she's using pistols, it's always one shot, very inaccurate and so only aimed at center mass, and then a round to reload before being able to fire again.

Essentially, I use dice to add an element of chance to the fight, but I don't consider rolls to be a binary "success/failure" mechanic. The fight should still flow according to realism and have a logical outcome. You can still lose a fight even if your rolls were high, if the enemy is smart or you make mistakes.

For formal duels, where challenges are sent and gauntlets are thrown and the outcome is more important than the actual fight itself, I do occasionally use actual game mechanics (such as when Dru challenged Vaell to a mage duel). This is pretty rare, though, as my characters are usually not the dueling type.

Drustai wrote:

Solanum wrote:How do you prefer the outcome of a battle to be decided?
Do you leave it up to a dice roll, or do you and your opponent discuss which would be the most logical outcome, or which result might make for the best story?
Or do you perhaps rely upon the game mechanics to decide whom would triumph in combat?

I use a hybrid system of dice rolls plus logic. I'll roll for most things, usually with 50/50 chance. If it's something I know my character has a particular strength or weakness in, I'll apply a bonus or negative to the roll. If it's a bonus, I'll only apply it after informing my opponent and making sure they're okay with it.

I won't roll for guaranteed things. If it's obvious that an attack would hit and there is no realistic, logical way it could miss, then I'll just take the hit without rolling (though I may make a survival roll to determine if I live through it).

My emotes will also take into account the situation, regardless of the rolls. If the enemy scores a high roll, but the attack they're making is very awkward, poorly thought-out, or otherwise impossible, then I'll typically limit the amount of damage it does. For example, strikes to the head or to pressure points will never knock Dru out no matter how high your roll is, because she's undead. Similarly, unless you roll over 90, I typically won't have a ranged weapon pierce exactly where you fired at. It will still hit somewhere, just not exactly where you aimed at, since even with modern, rifled firearms, targeted aiming at heads or limbs is very difficult to do (hence why police and military are trained to fire at center mass). Likewise for my own attacks, I keep in mind my character's momentum (often testing my emotes out IRL to get a sense of the flow) and will base my attacks (or ability to attack) on what I could logically do at the time. Not casting spells while hands are bound, for example, or dropping weapons after a strong impact, or skipping a round because of being off-balanced or fatigued, etc. On Areyah, I treat my pistols as proper early modern weapons: smoothbore and muzzleloaded with a single paper cartridge. So if she's using pistols, it's always one shot, very inaccurate and so only aimed at center mass, and then a round to reload before being able to fire again.

Essentially, I use dice to add an element of chance to the fight, but I don't consider rolls to be a binary "success/failure" mechanic. The fight should still flow according to realism and have a logical outcome. You can still lose a fight even if your rolls were high, if the enemy is smart or you make mistakes.

For formal duels, where challenges are sent and gauntlets are thrown and the outcome is more important than the actual fight itself, I do occasionally use actual game mechanics (such as when Dru challenged Vaell to a mage duel). This is pretty rare, though, as my characters are usually not the dueling type.

this for me to.. thow i tend to go over bourd and to heavy on the rolls.. this is what I aspire to acheve on all my toons

Concerning dices, I agree with Drustai.

I've found that the key to a fun RP battle is knowing when to lose. An epic loss is always much more satisfying than being victorious just for the sake of winning.

I avoid emote duels like the fiery hell they are.

but if for some reason i do get dragged into them, i tend to use common sense, and try to resolve the conflict as fast as possible. which mostly leads to me losing.

I don't tend to do roll nonsense, unless pre-determined. I'd rather be surprised by emotes and skill, then simply: "swings at x" because that's something i'd always be able to parry >.>

In spite of my main role-playing character being healing and therefore not too fun to duel with, I've grown increasingly fond of using duels to measure combat strength. There's just something intensly statisfying about using the game mechanics for what they're intended. It just feels right, you know? Why shouldn't your skill and prowess as a player translate in the skill and prowess of your character?

I detest rolling, to the very core of my being. It just doesnt take into account enough factors, its either duels or respectful emote fights from my personal preferance. then again, Krogon solves things with trickery so i never really even have to get that, often.

For me it often depends on who it is that is fighting.

I really like both systems, both have their pros and cons.
Emote fighting can get really creative and engaging, but can sadly take quite a while to do - And if done incorrectly, can be qutie annoying for all participants and viewers.
A good rule of thumb I use for emote figths is that they're good as long as those doing it realise that they're RP'ing with each other, and not against each other.

Duels however are short and sweet, and you cannot argue with the outcome, and they certainly bring their own satisfaction as well.
I like the mentality that the prowess of your character in PvP, also reflects on his/her strength in combat, especially since we're a RP-PvP realm where we have alot of war going on.
So if you play some badass warrior who can take on five soldiers by himself- You better be available to back that up out on the battlefield!

I've lost every emote battle i've ever been in, both because i believe my character to be a rubbish fighter, and because i let my opponent beat me as quickly as possible just to avoid emote fights .
Rolls work perfectly for thing's like sparring between...for example...privates of the Stormwind regiment, because generally the skill would be similar between them, so it's the easiest (and quickest) way to decide the outcome.
In The Three Hammers we usually duel mostly from what i've seen, because of the type of guild we are and we have a lot of members max level. That's how we like to prove our skill!

Rargnasha wrote:For me it often depends on who it is that is fighting.

I really like both systems, both have their pros and cons.
Emote fighting can get really creative and engaging, but can sadly take quite a while to do - And if done incorrectly, can be qutie annoying for all participants and viewers.
A good rule of thumb I use for emote figths is that they're good as long as those doing it realise that they're RP'ing with each other, and not against each other.

Duels however are short and sweet, and you cannot argue with the outcome, and they certainly bring their own satisfaction as well.
I like the mentality that the prowess of your character in PvP, also reflects on his/her strength in combat, especially since we're a RP-PvP realm where we have alot of war going on.
So if you play some badass warrior who can take on five soldiers by himself- You better be available to back that up out on the battlefield!

I couldn't have phrased this better, and wholeheartedly agree.

Agree with Rargnasha.

I myself always make sure that a character (when I got around to leveling them) that I believe to be good at wat she does, has some adequate PvP gear. I've always seen Emrys as someone not very adapted to dueling (and gamemechanicwise it is extremely boring, so...) but I do see her as a very capable healer in battle that can channel massive amounts of light, thus I want to be able to live up to that.

On Siluen I once had this situation where two Night Elves came to attack Falconwing Square, Solanum told me to deal with them IC, and I managed to kill the both of them on my own. Which she bragged about wholeheartedly afterwards. xD

There is a couple things I dislike, for example, another situation I experienced. We were training outside our base and at the end we shouted a couple of phrases. This Elven rogue from the base opposite to us shouts that he will kill anyone that dares to shout again. I shouted again, because my rogue wanted to take him up on that challenge, they came outside with two people, noticed how many we had lined up, and went back in without saying a word. When we followed them to ask if they could not be little bitches about a training session, they still had a big mouth. But when Cross invited them to take it outside, he got a whisper they did not want their charcter's strength to be based on Cross' skill in pvp. Pffff, if you are going to chicken out like that, don't be an obnoxious loudmouth that threatens to kill people.

Another thing I sometimes dislike is the state PvP is in. With the current burst and CC, especially as a priest, it is impossible to survive three people charging you with their cooldowns up. Almost full PvP epics, but they do not help you at all in this situation. Fuck, this is not representative of my character at all! D:

I also had an Alliance player in an RP-PvP event (previous expansion) with Sin Belore and the Cult of Shadows log over and compliment me. Which was also very cool!

So, concluding: I prefer actual PvP, even if the state of it can be frustrating at times.

While I mostly agree with Rarg... I don't fully agree.
Blizz aren't so good at class balance, and by saying your characters RP 'strength' is dependant entirely on your PVP skill kinda jars me a little bit.

This is a PVP server, so getting geared and being prepared to fight in your RP is essential but I think there's more to it than skills = power.

By that logic all monks are rubbish fighters IC and my beloved enha shammy Grim is for some reason incapable of fighting against warriors.
Neither of those make sense!

I'll use pvp if the other person bluntly demands it. Other than that? Not at all.

Pvp is (in my opinion) a terrible way to decide character strength. Not everyone is as good at pvp as their character is strong. You might be playing a weaker class and let's not even get started on the burst.

Usually I'll just emote fight and use common sense, unless it's a DM'd event, which is usually the only time you'll see me rolling. I'd rather be creative and react to everything myself. Rolling takes the fun out of it for me.

Personally, I think PvP is a quite bad way to solve an in character dispute. Why? Because of the possible level differences, gear differences, even specialised PvP/PvE gear differences. Not to mention you could end up in a fight against a class which would have quite the advantage over yours.

Rolling, I'd say would be good if two characters of equal power are fighting each other, but neither one wishes to use common sense and analyze who would be the winner of the fight.

Emote fights would probably be the best case scenario, if the players would agree on it. For example, it would be extremely unbelievable for a character like a petty thief with only his fists to defeat a seasoned war veteran, through a couple of lucky rolls, that would be just unbelievable as the difference in skill and strength would be massive. I see emote fights and rolling as the first and second best option, leave the PvP Down to the World-RP-PVP events, which can still be fun.

I chose this realm because most of my friends used to be in this realm and it does add an extra dimension to questing and all. But I don't like PvP, and I am never that good at it anyways.

So, with the logic of PvP = true power would make all of my characters weak, which I do not like to portray myself. So, I am afraid I just have to stick with words and RP-actions, rather than PvP.

I do not mind rolling though, the system is good and it does randomize the outcome. Or, a pre-set fight with who's going to win and who's going to lose... that's fun is well. A random fight is nothing for me though...

I used to be horribly opposed to rolling for emote fights, but after joining the Forlorn Cartel (who use rolling as the default) I've come to discover that since I used to hate emote fights direly, rolling actually takes much of the negative parts out of it for me. Also, because most of us in the Cartel are "just" lowly criminals with little to no formal combat training we're usually pretty evenly matched anyways.

Rargnasha wrote:A good rule of thumb I use for emote figths is that they're good as long as those doing it realise that they're RP'ing with each other, and not against each other.

I believe this is most important. I absolutely adore a good emote fight with the occasional roll for randomness tossed in there.

But emote fights only work if both parties are interested in making it a good and entertaining story, and can let go of the selfish urge to win. You won't see me engaging into an epic emote fight with a played I don't know and trust very soon, the chance of drama is usually higher then the chance for fun.

But when an emote fight is good, it can be really good. They can be a fantastic way to bring a good story-line to it's epic conclusion.

The "rp'ing with and not against" argument is a good one.

In general I just use emotes. Rolls if people ask to fight after those rules, otherwise I only use rolls if I end up in a situation where I gather the outcome would be based a lot on luck.
There have been several times where I ended up forfeighting the emote fights though, because I could tell the opponent would never give anyway, and I didn't bother dragging it out. "Meh, I'll just lose this and get it over with...."

Pvp... never done that. I'm a nub who came on this server with friends, not for pvp, sorry to say!
That's not to say I'm opposed to trying it if it ever came up, I've never actually been asked to do it.

Rolls are a good way to make sure an emote fight with someone you're not familiar with goes right; if you both agree to follow the dice, you can't deny a succesfull attack against you.

What works even better is to have an impartial judge. Make a raid, stick three players in there. Both fighters emote their attacks, and the neutral "judge" tells the players the result by raid warning.

I would like to add to my previous pro-PvP statement that emote fights can be amazingly well executed and are a lot of fun to do with people that know how to be creative in such situations. Another thing I prefer to RP out with emotes is healing. I can throw some creativity into how a certain injury should be healed, if it takes a long time, if it goes fast, describe how the healing process looks...

Although on Emrys, when it comes to dueling with emotes I would quite likely make myself yield very often as she does not like being in pain. (Or she would let Solanum handle it.) Or she would use a bit of mindcontrol to neutralize a threat.

Oh and another thing that differs: Emrys vs undead. She can channel massive amounts of light, not really relevant in PvP duels, but I should think it is relevant IC. (Any other oppinions on this I would love to hear)

Personally my biggest problem, even in good emote fights, where you know the guy, you're both being fair, the emotes are great etc. I dislike the time-dilation nature of emote fights. something as simple as a slash --> Parry ---> Riposte --->Block

Can take up between 10 and 15 minutes, which in reality takes 5 seconds, if not less. 10 to 15 minutes where every random passer-by or allies, will want to rush in and help etc.

Considering most of them will have plenty of valid IC reasons to join in.

and those things tend to ruin my immersion.



ps: I do loathe that blizzard has removed the ability to emote while using /duel.

Amaryl wrote:Personally my biggest problem, even in good emote fights, where you know the guy, you're both being fair, the emotes are great etc. I dislike the time-dilation nature of emote fights. something as simple as a slash --> Parry ---> Riposte --->Block

Can take up between 10 and 15 minutes, which in reality takes 5 seconds, if not less. 10 to 15 minutes where every random passer-by or allies, will want to rush in and help etc.

Considering most of them will have plenty of valid IC reasons to join in.

and those things tend to ruin my immersion.

I can't agree more with you Amaryl, the time-dilation is what mostly prevent me from ever actually enjoying an emotefight in itself rather than the RP before and after, that said I've had a few really epic battles together with the Chapter.
The epic ones have been outside of Stormwind in pretty deserted areas however, so the time-dilation have not been an issue.

On a sidenote I would never use a duel to represent the fight, first it would not give an accurate picture of what my character is capable of or what magic he/she would use (IE a firemage not using much else IC would have it rather hard in a duel), second is perhaps the most important, it would limit my characters potential to my personal pvp skill (and class imbalance ofcourse) and that's just wrong to me, while I am the creator and the one who decide what my character do, I try my very best not to -be- the character, it's another individual with his own skill/philosophy/history not just an extention of myself.

Why must your character be better at combat than you are at PvP?

None of my characters are great combatants, solely because I don't consider myself a very good PvPer and wouldn't be able to back it up in a "real" fight. You don't have to be an epic awesome badass. Makes things more interesting actually, since it encourages you to seek other paths to success.


Also, agreed with the time dilation. I enjoy emote fights, but the time issue grinds my gears as well. I try not to prolong fights when I can help it (which often makes me lose, but oh well).

Duels
The last thing I'd ever really want to do. It is bringing in what you have achieved OOCly into a character and can limit RP. Playing a mage as my main character, most of the base spells are boring - but the concept of magic in WoW opens you up to a world of creativity with spells. E.G, one spell I created is to form arcane mosquitos that draw mana, not blood, from the body. Duels puts me down to using stuff like fireballs in a silly, far too fast manner.

I don't have the time nor patience to level up every char to 90 and gear them, so does that mean I shouldn't rp those characters with any moderate skill? By dueling terms, my level 64 half-ogre could be one shotted by a level 90. Dueling is a shit system to focus RP around - PvP realm or not.

Rolls
I use this system if I am not familiar with the other person and it often makes sense to use it. It is quite fun putting it all down to luck. I do moderate it by adding bonus 'points' or minus 'points' for if my character is in his comfort zone or not but @Amaryl, you say you could always parry a sword swing? Add 35 to your roll, you'll probably parry most hits but no character (no soldier) can ever say they'd always be able to parry.

Emote Fighting
The best system if you're with competant people who you can trust to RP with. Fighting Naz'aya by the ruins of Dalaran was outstandingly fun because neither of us cared about winning or not, it was entirely about the story. The only flaw to E.Fighting is the fact it can be time consuming/some people are slower typers. I'm a fast typer but because I sit waiting for responses, I get bored quickly, tab out and by the time I've tabbed back in - they've been waiting on me (cruel irony).


@Drustai, why must your character be as good at combat as you are at PvP? Duel fighting lacks the creativity of Emote fighting, I can't stand it.

Vaell wrote:@Amaryl, you say you could always parry a sword swing? Add 35 to your roll, you'll probably parry most hits but no character (no soldier) can ever say they'd always be able to parry.

You missed the part about,

Amaryl wrote: I'd rather be surprised by emotes and skill, then simply: "swings at x" because that's something i'd always be able to parry >.>

Yes, if i'm standing in front of someone with my shield and sword out.

and i see the emote: "bob slashes at Amaryl with his sword"

I will always parry or block. Yes. There's no concievable reason, Amy couldn't parry a simple swing, when she's prepared and facing her opponent. Unless, i'm occupied by a second attacker, or my previous emote had me over-extended/ open to attack.

That said if I see: "Bob, side-steppes and lunges with his sword, trying to slip past the edge of Amaryl's shield in an attempt to pierce her thigh"

I'd be far more likely get hit. because, that emote actually shows forethought and an attempt to work against Amy's primary skills. Since it has misdirection, it has a target, and it has an idea of how to move past my defences.

Edit: My main rule of thumb here is this: If you force me to think about how i should be defending myself, i'll most likely get hit.