CODA combat system

[Doug Burke]

What is this, choir practise?

You know, this is not the place to discuss whether people are overreacting or if you really are a jerk, Profit. You want to talk about the Coda system in a constructive manner, fine. Do it here. If not, take it somewhere else.

[Darth Sarcastic]

If I may interject as a master of saying silly shit around here...

Profit...they're right. You should've prefaced it as an opinion...you didn't and now you're taking the heat. Been there, done that, got the Bat'leth scars. Go look up threads about phaser banks and look for my name attached to it and look at the reactions I got. Watch what happens when I say "phaser banks vs. phaser arrays"...Don, put down that chair...

Now I'm sure if I had prefaced it as an opinion, then Don and the rest of Decipher might have looked closer at my "work"...I might have had a blurb in the Starships book or something. Instead I ranted like a loon and nobody will listen to my phaser bank idea...Don, put down the Bat'leth and take a deep breath.

As a former "eater of crow", I'm trying to save you a lot of heartburn...you guys get heartburn in Sweden don't you?

[PGoodman13]

Originally posted by Profit
How am I going to look my players in the eye when they assault someone with a Bath'leth, dak'tagh or whatever, score a solid hit and their opponent doesn't go down? If I tell them that they'll need five or six extra solid blows, they are going to think I'm nuts!

Have you considered running the game, instead of letting the dice do it?

[RaconteurX]

Profit, your assertion that CODA combat is not "thematic" is patently incorrect. If you would consult page 251 of the Player's Guide or pages 89 and 91 of the Narrator's Guide, you will notice that Stun, Kill and Disintegrate Effects are addressed in full and do not inflict damage in the usual, gradual fashion.

While I agree that the hit-point method for Health used in CODA is far from elegant, it works, is familiar to most players, and prevents player-characters from dropping off like redshirts rather than the series heroes that they are. If you don't like them, use the wound levels without the points and assign each weapon a base level it inflicts.

For each level of success above marginal, damage is increased by one step. A weapon which Injures as a base Wounds on a complete success, Incapacitates on a superior success, and leaves the victim Near Death on an extraordinary success. Allow a Stamina test at 10 to reduce damage by one step per degree of success, and you have a working system without the hit points.

Perhaps next time you will contribute ideas, rather than just criticisms. Solve a problem instead of presenting one, and people will not be so terse.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by Profit
Doug, when you tested the rules, did anyone get shot with a shotgun?

Of course not. We (my group) are playing Star Trek, after all.

The rules probably work just fine as long as it just has phasers on stun and kill and people fail the test, for who has ever seen anyone "normal" getting up after a phaser blast?

I can think of several.

How am I going to look my players in the eye when they assault someone with a Bath'leth, dak'tagh or whatever, score a solid hit and their opponent doesn't go down? If I tell them that they'll need five or six extra solid blows, they are going to think I'm nuts!

Six or seven hits with a Bat'leth is exaggeration. Rarely will it be that bad. As for how you can look them in th eye, well, try a "*kof* 'don't ask'" approach.

[Long Tom]

Gotta agree with PGoodman13's comment, I quote;

"HAve you considered running the game, instead of letting the dice do it?"

You're the GM....this is an RPG not a combat simulator. The rules are there to guide you. If one your players gets a good hit on a bad guy , he goes down, simple as that. If it suits the requirements of your episode, it happens.

Or have I been missing the point all along ?

Long Tom

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Profit
What is this, choir practise? If this is the reaction when I say something's silly, I can only wonder what you'd say if I told you it "sucked ass"...!

Well, if enough people ask, or if I or the moderators think you're just trying to cause problems, then I ban your ass. (For the record, you're not even close...yet.)

I've done it before (just ask Red Quacker) and I'll do it again. It's the whole "needs of the many versus the bitching of the one" argument. Plenty of people around here have said, or are known for, having unpopular opinions and they get along fine. (Waves to Phantom. )

As for your colorful opinions on the game system, I'll leave you to the "discussion" at hand. Perhaps if I see a question that needs to be addressed, I'll hop in and try to help.

[ImperialOne]

As stated earlier, as well as in the PG Errata Thread (sticky) and the NG, there is NO reaction roll (i.e. save) for a phaser on Kill setting. Try to dodge.

Better yet, play the game as is first and see how the players react.

Charles

[Erik Filean]

Originally posted by Profit
What is this, choir practise? If this is the reaction when I say something's silly, I can only wonder what you'd say if I told you it "sucked ass"...!

Just out of curiosity, when someone says "That movie sucks" instead of "I think that movie sucks", do you complain?

Doesn't it go without saying that if someone uses a subjective term (e.g. "it sucks" when talking about a movie), as opposed to objective (e.g. "it sucks" when talking about a vacuum cleaner) then it his/her opinion and not an attempt to present it as objective reality?

Or is it just that this is how we talk in Sweden?

//KJB

Don't blame the nationality. Every other Swede I've ever met was capable of common courtesy. The problem here is you, personally, individually.

[qerlin]

Actually, I kinda agree that the damages on some of the weapons is way low...or the vitality+str mod makes characters too resiliant. That said, when I disagree with the rules, I just crank up the damage. The lack of HTH rules is a bit of a downer, especially if you're a TOS fan, I would think...BUT, I just made rules with specialities for myself. i ignore retests on initiative. It you win the first go, you win...if you tie, the player with the higher quickness goes or the one with the quick draw. PCs always win the tie from NPCs (unless it's in the script.)

The rules are, for teh ost part, guidelines for me & my group.

And yes, Profit's tone was a bit over the top.

[Profit]

Ah. I think I've finally solved my problem. Voila!

Now that this issue is settled, back to the problem at hand.

First off, i think I should point out that I'm trying to create good rules and nothing else. My gaming group would never stoop down to actually using (God forbid!) any rules when we play. (In Sweden we call it "free form"?) I, as the GM, simply decide what happens and that's that. It's just like the series- if it's in the script, then it happens. But no, we don't use a script, we still improvise.
This does not stop me from trying to make up good rules.

now.

So one can only test to resist stun, not kill? How come it says:

Note that certain weapons can stun and/or disintegrate targets with a successful attack. When set to accomplish these effects... ...initiates a reaction test...

But there is no TN for resisting kill... is this just a blooper of some sort?

On the issue of theme; I must say that it is difficult if not impossible to make something completely thematic, since combat in ST follow no logic at all; sometimes you can hit someone very far away with a hand phaser (Miles o'Brian when storming a Cardassian labour camp) and sometimes you can't hit anything at all, even if you have phaser rifles and a fortified position and people are coming at you along a long corridor! (ENT, Fortunate son)
Now what you need (see disclaimer!) is a semi-realistic combat system where most non-blunt damage is very lethal but perhaps hard to deliver (they do tend to miss a lot...) with rules that give good bonuses for cover etc. Blunt damage on the other hand should be very non-lethal (how many seem to have as much as a broken nose after all the brawls?) and have good hth rules (ability to disarm, to knock people out, throws, holds and grapple, etc.)

I find that this, sadly, is missing in the CODA system.

//KJB

[PGoodman13]

Originally posted by Profit
First off, i think I should point out that I'm trying to create good rules and nothing else. My gaming group would never stoop down to actually using (God forbid!) any rules when we play. (In Sweden we call it "free form"?) I, as the GM, simply decide what happens and that's that. It's just like the series- if it's in the script, then it happens. But no, we don't use a script, we still improvise.

Then why bother? Either you need a detailed combat system, because you use a lot of rules in your game, or you don't need a detailed combat system, because you freeform a lot in your game. You claim your game is mostly, or perhaps entierly, freeform, so you clearly don't need "improved combat rules" in your game, so this is a wasted exercise at best, and a troll post designed to do nothing so much as raise tempers and stir up shit at worst. In either case, it's a waste of both your time and ours.

This does not stop me from trying to make up good rules.

Perhaps it should, though; as I pointed out earlier, there's no point in it for your game. Many of the rest of us have no major problems with the rules as they stand; those problems we do have we can apply as patches to the existing rules set without the false need to rewrite the rules wholesale because they don't reflect the way we see reality. (That's a silly argument anyway, since this is a game reflecting the universe of a TV show where we travel faster than light and teleport on a regular basis; reality as we know it has little providence there.)

So one can only test to resist stun, not kill? How come it says:

Note that certain weapons can stun and/or disintegrate targets with a successful attack. When set to accomplish these effects... ...initiates a reaction test...

But there is no TN for resisting kill... is this just a blooper of some sort?

It's called a typo, and has been addressed in errata. No, you can't resist a phaser set to kill. Your best bet is to get out of the way.

I'm not even going to address the rest of this, since I think most of your argument is, itself, kind of silly.

[aelius]

Without getting into the DEBATE!!!, I agree that characters seem to have a lot of hit points. This is not really a problem because I created a couple of house rules for myself.
If someone takes a full health level of damage at once I require a Stamina check of 5, two levels at once require a check at 10, and so on. On a failure, the character is knocked unconscious.
I also use the hit location table from R. Talsorian Games Cyberpunk 2020 game. It's a simple table
1:Head
2-4:Torso
5:Rt. Arm
6:Lt. Arm
7-8:Rt. Leg
9-10:Lt. Leg
If someone takes a full health level of damage to a limb a Stamina check of 5 is required, two levels require a check of 10, etc...
Failure leads to loss or incapacitation of the limb.
As to the hand to hand question, I again borrowed from the ever adaptable Cyberpunk 2020 rules for unarmed combat. They provide about a dozen maneuvers and even styled that give bonuses for them. It is even simple enough to come up with new styles.
With these modifications I find the system works quite well for my campaign and my players.

[Lancer]

IMO characters on average don't have too many wound points (Carefull aelius, they are not called hit points. Call them that and Don or Doug will show up right quick and complain that people allways draw parallels between Coda and D&D ).

From my POV the problem is more that characters get too many wound points for high Strength and Vitality.
Consider two average people (Str and Vit 6) hitting each other with swords. With 3 hits one of them is down to Incapacitated. That's not too much if you ask me.
But OTOH someone with Vit and Str 10 can take twice as many hits before he goes down and that is when in becomes something of a problem.

While I think the stamina check for lost health levels may be an option, I am not sure it really solves the problem, as someone with a high Vitality stat not only gets more wound points per health level, but has an easier time making his stamina checks as well.

Some other possible changes would be:
(a) Don't add the Strength bonus to the wound points.
(b) Give everyone a fixed amount of wound points (maybe 6 or 8) and just add the Vitality bonus to that number to get a characters total wound points.
(c) Both of the above.

[aelius]

Sorry Lancer, I call them hit points because I played GURPS for a very long time. I do not like D&D.