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[Tibbles]

At the moment, the DF combat system is very basic. The only thing that separates it from most other combat systems is the detail of injury, and there are other games (IE Unreal World) who do it better. There are a few things that can be done to make the combat of this game truly epic and Legendary, as befitting of this game.

1. A greater difference between the Novice and Legendary Levels of Skill.

At the moment, the only thing that separates novice from legendary is hit chance, block chance, and damage. Higher levels of skill should come with perks.

Examples:

A novice swordsman can hit a cat without cutting his own arm off. A swordsman can fight a trained war dog and come out the winner nine times out of ten. A professional swordsman can block twenty-five percent of hand to hand attacks with his weapon. A Master Swordsman can hit projectiles out of the air. A Grandmaster Swordsman can break a lessser skilled opponent's weapon in two, and a Legendary Swordsman can deflect arrows back at their owners, or cut flying Balista Bolts in two.


2. A greater effort required to get to the higher levels of skill.

At the moment, a dwarf (or human, or Kobold) can get to legendary levels of skill within a year by practicing against unskilled opponents. While this may be enough for up to professional levels of skill, to become elite, you should have to train with a wandering Hero, defeat fearsome beasts in single combat, or be taught by someone in the fortress who has a higher level of skill.


3. Discontinued use of the Wrestling Skill as a catch all skill for Wrestling, Punches, Kicks, and attacks with objects that are not nessecarily weapons.

As said above, the Wrestling skill is a very broad skill, and governs many different types of attacks. The other problem with this skill is that it doesn't work very well in combat, often leaving you to do useless things such as grabbing your opponent's nose, and twisting it, or even just letting go. The wrestling skill should be spilt into several skills, maybe Wrestling, Unarmed Attacks, and Improvised Weaponry.

4. Botches.

Right now, you will always succeed at an attack, or making something. You just might miss, or it might take some time to create the object. There should be a small chance of a botch, with severity depending on your skill.

Examples:

A minor fighting botch would be swinging too hard and throwing youself off balance.
A Significant fighting Botch would be dropping your weapon.
A major fighting Botch would be hitting yourself with your weapon.
A legendary fighting Botch would be killing yourself with your own weapon.

You should also gain some experience, on par with a successful attack, from botches. You learn as much from your failures as you do from your successes.

[Footkerchief]

High-level melee users have been able to bat projectiles out of the air for a while.  It's basically the most badass thing you can do in adventure mode, even though it happens automatically.  I'm pretty sure parrying is already implemented too.  Deflecting arrows back lightsaber-style is kind of absurd, though I could maybe see an expert hammerdwarf whacking slingstones back at enemies.

Wrestling has already been broken into several separate skills for the next version:

The "unarmed" skill, aka "wrestling", has been broken up into four skills. In particular, dodging is now a separate skill ...

For unarmed, the count is actually five (I hadn't included the unwieldy objects, a skill I haven't named but it seems there should be *something* for that).  Then there's wrestling, dodging, grasp strikes (needs name), stance strikes (needs name, probably kicking).  Breathing fire and bites and so on are awaiting skills that I haven't set up yet.  There are also general skills for melee/ranged combat that pick up some of the slack that used to depend on "level" (counterstrikes, noticing charges, etc.).  Those just need to be handled with the new atts and so on, but there's also something to be said for keeping the new "melee combat" skill, as somebody that has been using a sword and fighting in real fights with it for fifteen years would be able to pick up a spear or a mace and have a real advantage over a completely inexperienced person, and not just because of atts.

[ZeroGravitas]

2. A greater effort required to get to the higher levels of skill.

At the moment, a dwarf (or human, or Kobold) can get to legendary levels of skill within a year by practicing against unskilled opponents. While this may be enough for up to professional levels of skill, to become elite, you should have to train with a wandering Hero, defeat fearsome beasts in single combat, or be taught by someone in the fortress who has a higher level of skill.

This is the biggest one for  me.  You should not be able to get to be a legendary champion through sparring  in the barracks, even for 10 years.

[Tibbles]

High-level melee users have been able to bat projectiles out of the air for a while.  It's basically the most badass thing you can do in adventure mode, even though it happens automatically.  I'm pretty sure parrying is already implemented too.

IIRC, just about all levels of skill above Dabbling have a Chance, no matter how small, of a parry, or deflection.


Also;

Deflecting arrows back lightsaber-style is kind of absurd

>Thrown vomit making your enemies explode
>Biting a chunk out of someone, spitting it back so hard they explode.
>Throwing a fly at someone and breaking their spine.
>Perpetual Motion Waterwheels

[Footkerchief]

>Thrown vomit making your enemies explode
>Biting a chunk out of someone, spitting it back so hard they explode.
>Throwing a fly at someone and breaking their spine.
>Perpetual Motion Waterwheels

Those are all going to get removed though (if possible, anyway).  Liquid projectiles will probably be useless in the next release, since the blocking calculation will take material and phase into account.

Anyway, I'm not saying that idea is totally bad.  Arrows would just be particularly bizarre since they have to be launched by a force oriented along their longitudinal axis -- good luck hitting the tail of an arrow that's flying AT you.  But a slingstone is basically just a sphere -- you can launch it from any direction, no problem.

[Tibbles]

>Thrown vomit making your enemies explode
>Biting a chunk out of someone, spitting it back so hard they explode.
>Throwing a fly at someone and breaking their spine.
>Perpetual Motion Waterwheels

Those are all going to get removed though (if possible, anyway).  Liquid projectiles will probably be useless in the next release, since the blocking calculation will take material and phase into account.

Anyway, I'm not saying that idea is totally bad.  Arrows would just be particularly bizarre since they have to be launched by a force oriented along their longitudinal axis -- good luck hitting the tail of an arrow that's flying AT you.  But a slingstone is basically just a sphere -- you can launch it from any direction, no problem.

Well, if not straight back at the firer, then the arrow should be launched in a random direction. A Legendary Axeman deserves to be able to deflect that Goblin +Iron Bolt+ into the troll to his left.

While I'm on this subject, I feel the need to talk about the term 'Legendary' in this game. Being Legendary Implies that you've done something that people years in the future will talk about. Creating an Amulet with the History of the fortress Incribed into it with Rubies is a good way to get to a Legendary Teir. Killing the Bronze Collussus that has killed hundreds is. Sparring in a barracks for half a year is not.

[Granite26]

Try 'improvements'

It's not broken

[G-Flex]

IIRC, just about all levels of skill above Dabbling have a Chance, no matter how small, of a parry, or deflection.

Hardly broken if the chance at low skill levels is significantly small. Sure, your novice dwarf might have a chance of 0.0003% of deflecting an arrow, but... so what? And if he DOES it once or twice, good for him, he got lucky.

[bjlong]

1. A greater difference between the Novice and Legendary Levels of Skill.

At the moment, the only thing that separates novice from legendary is hit chance, block chance, and damage. Higher levels of skill should come with perks.

Yay!

Examples:

A novice swordsman can hit a cat without cutting his own arm off. A swordsman can fight a trained war dog and come out the winner nine times out of ten. A professional swordsman can block twenty-five percent of hand to hand attacks with his weapon. A Master Swordsman can hit projectiles out of the air. A Grandmaster Swordsman can break a lessser skilled opponent's weapon in two, and a Legendary Swordsman can deflect arrows back at their owners, or cut flying Balista Bolts in two.

First: Change "novice" to dabbling.

Second: A proficient swordsborgle should be able to block 90% of all attacks. If not more.

Third: No. No cutting weapons in two, or deflecting arrows back at the owners, or cutting ballista bolts in two or glaring at people strongly and having your sword spin around you, cutting them into bite-size bits. None of those things can be done. (Also, even if you did cut a ballista bolt in two, then it'd just turn into two ballista bolts behind you.)

A master swordsman should be able to kill any one person he sets his eyes on using physically possible techniques; a legendary swordsman should be able to stand before a brigade of mixed (novice to proficient) troops, both melee and ranged, and cut them all down. How? Through manipulation of his position relative to their weapons, the legendary can bind up the brigade so that s/he's only fighting one person at a time.

2. A greater effort required to get to the higher levels of skill.

At the moment, a dwarf (or human, or Kobold) can get to legendary levels of skill within a year by practicing against unskilled opponents. While this may be enough for up to professional levels of skill, to become elite, you should have to train with a wandering Hero, defeat fearsome beasts in single combat, or be taught by someone in the fortress who has a higher level of skill.

Yes, but should wait until you *can* be trained.

Footkercheif's got 3 down.

4. Botches.

Right now, you will always succeed at an attack, or making something. You just might miss, or it might take some time to create the object. There should be a small chance of a botch, with severity depending on your skill.

Examples:

A minor fighting botch would be swinging too hard and throwing youself off balance.
A Significant fighting Botch would be dropping your weapon.
A major fighting Botch would be hitting yourself with your weapon.
A legendary fighting Botch would be killing yourself with your own weapon.

Footkercheif and I were talking about how to throw people off balance from swings in this topic. Warning: Lots of text. As someone who's fought with fake swords, dropping your weapon only really happens when something connects with you or your weapon, so we'd have to think about this some more.

Speaking of, Footkercheif, this is a poke to get on that wall of text thing.

You should also gain some experience, on par with a successful attack, from botches. You learn as much from your failures as you do from your successes.

Er.
Not quite. Botches let you know that your grip or stance was wrong. As you get those down, you can preemptively feel botches. As you get more proficient you get more experience from seeing your attacks countered or parried, or seeing your counters or parries fail. So the experience per botch versus level should probably look like an exponential decay.

[Rysith]

... to become elite, you should have to train with a wandering Hero, defeat fearsome beasts in single combat, or be taught by someone in the fortress who has a higher level of skill.

How do you get your first elite in fortress mode, then? Especially on old worlds with few megabeasts? Does this mean I would have to set up cage traps to trap goblin ambushes and wild animals for my military to execute, so they become legendary?

I think that the "title for notable kills" makes a fine distinction between "has killed things" and "is very good with their weapon". It's perfectly possible to become very good with your weapon through sparring alone. At that point, it just sounds like you have a quibble with the terms "legendary" and "elite".

[ZeroGravitas]

... to become elite, you should have to train with a wandering Hero, defeat fearsome beasts in single combat, or be taught by someone in the fortress who has a higher level of skill.

How do you get your first elite in fortress mode, then? Especially on old worlds with few megabeasts? Does this mean I would have to set up cage traps to trap goblin ambushes and wild animals for my military to execute, so they become legendary?

I think that the "title for notable kills" makes a fine distinction between "has killed things" and "is very good with their weapon". It's perfectly possible to become very good with your weapon through sparring alone. At that point, it just sounds like you have a quibble with the terms "legendary" and "elite".

I think you people are forgetting that when the army arc is completed, you'll be able to send your army out to attack stuff. The guy who was a hero at a battle, even with kobolds and goblins, could become "elite" or a "champion"  and then be capable of killing a megabeast and becoming "legendary".

[Tibbles]

None of those things can be done.

>Deposits of Magical Metals surrounding bottomless pits that spawn demonic warriors.

ITT We forget Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy game.

I think you people are forgetting that when the army arc is completed, you'll be able to send your army out to attack stuff. The guy who was a hero at a battle, even with kobolds and goblins, could become "elite" or a "champion"  and then be capable of killing a megabeast and becoming "legendary".

More or less this.

[Sowelu]

ITT We forget Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy game.

A fantasy game that at least pays homage to the laws of physics!  Besides, find me a fantasy example besides Star Wars or Looney Tunes that has 'reflecting arrows back at the guy that fired them'.  Even the movie Hero has people deflecting hundreds of arrows at a time with a wave of their arm, but they don't *turn them around*.

[Pilsu]

Well, if not straight back at the firer, then the arrow should be launched in a random direction. A Legendary Axeman deserves to be able to deflect that Goblin +Iron Bolt+ into the troll to his left.

He's so legendary he doesn't even need to care about laws of physics I see. Might as well block it with his beard if we want to be ridiculous. Just because it's a fantasy game doesn't mean it has to have the physics from Animaniacs


As for the Elite status troops, I think the dwarf should require say, 10 notable kills before the advanced training becomes available. You'd then request a veteran from the mountain homes who watches any applicable troops spar and gives them pointers until they level up to Great. After that, they could spar with other elites all the way to Grand Master while another elite watches, giving pointers. Champion status would require say, 50+ notable kills. If you had a Master in your own ranks, you could give him a noble position that allows him to train new recruits, doing away with the need for diplomacy. Though, I think one should become Elite a bit earlier, at Professional

Has the benefit of allowing you to train civilians self defense without accidentally making them overspar and become elites. I don't know how hunters and adventurers would be handled. I guess adventurers could just get a bit of training back home to get over the threshold

[Felblood]

I am opposed to making the combat system uberjilliously over the top. Home run, finishing blows I can tolerate, but that approaches my limits. I don't want to balance on a flying arrow in DF.

Maybe ranged shockwave attacks with melee weapons, but you're going to have to really sell it, before I'd buy in.

The real problem with sparring to become a legend is that these guys all learned from each other. Their skills have no basis in the techniques used in the outside world.

Put a bunch of swordly minded dudes in a dojo and have them spar for long shifts, every day, for twenty or thirty years. By the time their done, you're going to have some pretty good swordsmen, as far as fighting other people from that program is concerned. --but there's going to be gaps in their fighting style, due to the self taught nature of their skills. Even if several of them are brilliant in combat theory, and they developed a very robust system of tactics that naturally spread through the dojo, there's going to be something they haven't covered.

There should be a limit to how broad of an education you can get by sparring with the same bunch of guys all the time. Larger armies, armies that get actual combat experience, or armies with immigrant soldiers trained in other schools to broaden their horizons, should be able to reach considerable heights.

I'm eager to see how the new squad changes affect this area, since Toady has said that some of the skills will require combat experience or a veteran trainer to acquire.