Combat mechanics: likes / dislikes?

[seepage]

Playing two recent games now which have no roll to hit, and weapons do a fixed amount of damage (no RNG) apart from a chance of a 'critical' e.g. double damage.

Also, in the last one physical/magical resistance and reduces an effect or damage by that percentage instead of negating them completely e.g. if Stunned, 50% resistance halves your action points instead of either full stun/no stun according to whether you make the roll.

Are you down with this sort of thing or do you like RNG for everything?

[Mister Six]

I don't have a problem with rolling to hit. Not sure how I feel about the partial stunning. Which game?

[oggyraiding]

When I first played Morrowind all those years ago, I could never get the grips with the combat. The RNG element meaning if you have a dagger, but only have 30 in the Short Blade skill, even if your weapon physically makes contact with the enemy during an attack, it will cause no damage more often than not due to the RNG element. I think that's a shit mechanic. I could only really get around it by picking a Redguard and choosing all the weapon skills so I could use most melee weapons fairly well right from the offset.

[The Crumb]

When I first played Morrowind all those years ago, I could never get the grips with the combat. The RNG element meaning if you have a dagger, but only have 30 in the Short Blade skill, even if your weapon physically makes contact with the enemy during an attack, it will cause no damage more often than not due to the RNG element. I think that's a shit mechanic. I could only really get around it by picking a Redguard and choosing all the weapon skills so I could use most melee weapons fairly well right from the offset.

Yep, I get they were going for full RPG behind the scenes dice rolling, but it was a terrible way to represent it visually and was just outright irritating to play until you levelled up.

On the other hand I liked that in the original Deus Ex having low weapon skill meant the aiming and recoil were hard to handle,but the guns were still lethal and bullets didn't just pass through enemies. Until you trained up, you could make shotguns effective by pepper spraying people then shooting them at point blank range.

Silent Storm (WW2 Xcom type thing) has some of my favourite dice rolling combat. The destructible scenery and ballistics modelling means missing shots is often more entertaining than hitting.

[Mister Six]

When I first played Morrowind all those years ago, I could never get the grips with the combat. The RNG element meaning if you have a dagger, but only have 30 in the Short Blade skill, even if your weapon physically makes contact with the enemy during an attack, it will cause no damage more often than not due to the RNG element. I think that's a shit mechanic. I could only really get around it by picking a Redguard and choosing all the weapon skills so I could use most melee weapons fairly well right from the offset.

Oh, yeah, it's a different matter with FPSes, where the dice rolls are counterintuitive to the fast action.

[seepage]

I don't have a problem with rolling to hit. Not sure how I feel about the partial stunning. Which game?

That was King Arthur: Knight's Tale that I've been banging on about. Instead of the usual Attack+Move/Move+Attack/Move+Move you have e.g. 10 action points to divide between actions, skills & movement how you wish, some of which can only be used for movement. 

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

You can't get shitter than a Kwik Fit fitter.

When I first played Morrowind all those years ago, I could never get the grips with the combat. The RNG element meaning if you have a dagger, but only have 30 in the Short Blade skill, even if your weapon physically makes contact with the enemy during an attack, it will cause no damage more often than not due to the RNG element.

This sort of thing was a bugbear of mine in Fallout 3/New Vegas. You could fire a shotgun point blank at a baddie's head and they'll be fine if your small guns stat isn't high enough to make lead shot deadly. It might make sense for turn based combat, but it doesn't really translate to doing violence in real time.