Design Log Part 2: Combat Conceptualisation

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Lab Zero Games and this project is a fan project and is not endorsed by Lab Zero Games or any of its developers and employees.

The following was posted on the Indivisible subreddit. It is copied here for completion of the blog. 

 

Welcome to the second log for my ongoing project of an Indivisible Tabletop Roleplaying Game. This log focuses on the mechanics of one of the more exciting aspect of the system: the combat. The explanation is mostly conceptual for this post, but in future posts I will present actual mechanics (and maybe actual play!).

The Design Philosophy

Most RPGs tend to veer towards being simulationist, that is, it tries to mimic real life: fast people act first, and slow people act later (according to initiative), attacks are mostly separate from each other, etc.. I want to go in the opposite direction. I want to instead capture the feel of the combat in the videogame without outright copying it. While I could have easily make the Player Characters slot into the four positions like in the videogame, I think it is severely limiting and I would rather use a map or grid-based system where more interesting strategies and tactics can emerge. This is my "Play Description" (especially regarding combat) before I proceeded with the mechanics design:

“Overcome Together”. These words are printed on the back of the plastic sleeve on the Collector’s Edition of the game. These words are also the core of the design process. In Indivisible Tabletop Roleplaying Game, characters may have different backgrounds, different goals (which sometimes clash with other party members) but in the end they must overcome the obstacles together. As such, I go into the designing process making sure that players must rely on each other to solve problems and each and every mechanic must work towards that. No class or character can be completely self-sufficient, either in combat, social setting, etc.

In combat, I want the players to be able to execute satisfying combos. This can be a setup from a character followed by other characters until a finishing move. To make this satisfying, this should not be routine to do and requires both luck and timing. I don’t want to see players ‘do their own thing’ till the combat ends like many RPGs. Instead, I want to see them set up conditions and bonuses for other players to follow up. Some types of enemies should require even further neutralising of their defensive special abilities before such combos are even possible. I also want players to have decisions to perform Blocks and Perfect Blocks similar to the feel of the videogame.

Basic Combat

I initially was happy with players having attacks being quite basic based on their weapons like in many other RPGs. You have a bow, you shoot, done. But that falls into the “players do their own thing till combat is over” kinda deal. You have seen it in most RPGs you may watch or listen to (or if you’re lucky, played in!). So I took inspiration from the videogame and ported the Combo system over as well as some monster abilities that require special ways to deal with, such as the Guard some opponents has that require an up and then down attack or vice versa, and the Kabandhas that require you to launch them first before you can deal damage.

To keep with the flavour from the game, I decided that, instead of one basic attack, each PC can have three slots for their attack, with each one having different abilities. Some players may set an attack (their UP attack, if you will) to deal high damage at the expense of less accuracy, their neutral attack to be the basic one, and their last attack (DOWN) to be a launch. Another player may have their neutral attack have a Combo ability (which I’ll get into later) and so on. I want to have a large enough variety of attacks you could make that one player can’t simply have them all. That way, they must rely on each other in combat.

I then wanted to port over the Action Points system where each Incarnations can attack several times if they have the Action Points for it…but this have several problems.

One, I can foresee each player’s turn taking a very long time especially in higher levels when they have more Action Points and more attacks to resolve. Combats in RPGs should be snappy and frantic. Each PC making four or five attacks each turn takes a long time. Plus, it will be ridiculously difficult to balance.

Two, this Action Points system is a direct contradiction to the design of everyone working together. If one PC can combo off himself in the same turn, what’s the point of the other PCs? Everyone would just design their attacks to work with themselves and now we’re back to the “each PC do their own thing” problem.

And so I dropped the Action Points system in favour of each PC having one action to make an attack. That way, any bonuses from their attacks MUST be used by other members of the party.

Initiative

The traditional way that initiative works in most RPGs, barring some more modern ones, is that each Player rolls for their character’s Initiative. The ones with highest Initiative scores go first, then second highest, and so on until everyone has a turn. While this works for most RPGs, this initiative system makes it very hard to coordinate attacks or plan.

At first, I wanted to use a flexible initiative system as used in Fantasy Flight Game’s Genesys and Warhammer Fantasy where each person rolls their initiative as usual, but instead of having their turns follow their initiative score, they make a “slot” in the initiative for the PCs named ‘PC’. Enemies make their initiative slots as well, named ‘NPC’ or ‘Enemy’. Then, when a ‘PC’ slot comes up, ANY PC can take a turn. So if the Ranger rolls really high on initiative, but the Wizard wants to set up an attack first, the Wizard can take the initiative slot rolled by the Ranger and take her turn instead. It’s a great system but it still makes it relatively difficult to set up long chains of combos. Additionally, I already thought of a weird disconnect where an enemy is launched by a PC or is in the middle of a Combo, but somehow able to take its turn to attack (assuming these conditions clear at the end of the round). So I went to a system dubbed “Popcorn Initiative” with all credits to the AngryGM. In this system, everyone rolls initiative as normal, and the one with the highest Initiative goes first as normal. Then, this character CHOOSES the next character to take the turn. That character takes the turn, and when it finishes, they then choose the next character to take a turn, then so on, until everyone had a turn. The last character of the round then chooses the first character for the new round to take their turn, which could be themselves. It’s a slightly abstract system with a little metagaming, but as you will see the advantages it gives to Indivisible RPG really make it suitable to this system.

This initiative system enables PCs to dole out a relative long chain of attacks, with the caveat that once their attack chain is done, the enemies will then have their own attacks as well. This mirrors the videogame very well where you can have a chain of attacks and combos, but that will leave you with Action Points recharging and the enemies barraging you with attacks in the meantime. Perfect.

You remember I mentioned that weird thing where enemies could be launched or in the middle of a combo but somehow take its turn and attack (with the combo still going or while still launched)? Well, what if these effects don’t disappear at the end of the round, but rather at the BEGINNING of that enemy’s turn? In the videogame, when you finished your attacks for whatever reason, your combo stops and the enemies are no longer launched. Then the enemies can make their attacks. With the Combo and Airborne tokens (see explanation for this later) clearing at the beginning of an enemy’s turn, this represents the enemy recovering before they can make this attack, and, naturally, they can only do this when the PCs voluntarily pass the turn to the enemy. A perfect reflection of the videogame combat.

With the main concept for combat done, I move on to ancillary systems in the combat that exists in the videogame: combos and dealing with enemy defensive abilities.

Combos

In the videogame, a mechanic that they have but not explained in a tutorial (you have to talk to George IIRC) is that the higher your combo is, the more bonus damage you do. This is perfect for carrying over to the TTRPG while having it encourage cooperation between party members. Some attacks (and I’ll get into designing attacks in later posts), some attacks can apply a Combo token on the target. As long as the target hasn’t taken its turn, other PCs can attack this target and they will inflict 1 additional damage to the target for each Combo token on it. This means that the more Combo tokens you put on the target, the more damage you will do as a party. This should encourage Players to set up combos initially to be followed up by other party members for maximum effect.

Enemy defensive passive abilities

Following up from Combos, I thought about how to apply the blue Guard that some enemies in the game have, as well as that ability that Kabandhas (the tree monsters) in the game have where they can only be damaged if they are launched. For Kabandhas, I made it so that they have a Rooted passive ability where, initially, I thought that they take a maximum of 1 damage unless it is launched. How do I represent them being launched? I decide to make a condition called Airborne that launched enemies and flying enemies have. That way, some attacks can interact with it. In this case, an enemy with an Airborne condition, represented by a token, loses its Rooted ability if it has any. Then the rest of the team can attack the Airborne target as they so desired.

But for the “take a maximum of 1 damage” (while Rooted is active), I ran into a problem. This is a serious hard counter for any parties that has no launch, and with enemies like Kabandhas possibly having 20 Hit Points, it’s going to be a slog. Therefore, I currently make it so that damage is reduced by half instead, which is still a serious headache for Players to deal with but at least they have a chance if they have no attacks with launches.

As for the Guard? I thought about the up attack then down, or vice versa, but that needs some tracking no matter how minor, and also up and down attacks don’t mean a lot in the RPG (it’s just an attack slot, not a well-designed move set a character has). So instead, I opt for the gameplay feel that it should mean two characters doing attacks in quick succession to break the Guard. Therefore, I went with monsters with Guard preventing all damage from the first attack it receives, then its Guard ability is gone until the beginning if its turn arrives. In effect, this means a player should optimally start the attack with a weak but accurate attack to “break the guard” then the other players can lay onto the enemy with later attacks. I think this captures the feel of guard break as well as again reinforcing the design dynamic that players must work together.

Finishing up

I would write more but it’s already almost 2000 words and I don’t know how many readers actually care about the development process. I welcome feedbacks, criticisms, concerns or solutions you may have to any problems I may describe in the logs. Next time, we’ll go into ACTUAL combat mechanics and even, if luck is on my side, an illustrated and narrated sample combat using the current mechanics!