Thread by @rdonoghue

Thinking out loud through somewhat crunchier Blades in the Dark Style combat. Stepping away from narrative for the moment and thinking about fights and effects.

At the heart of the system we have a 4 tiered resolution system. The 4 tiers map to harm (Minor, Medium, Serious and fatal) in approximately the same way they map to filling clocks. The dual track of health complicated it, but the structure is pretty workable.

So when w treat harm as mechanical, it begins at some level and is modified up and down by circumstance - abilities, stance, stuff like that.

(Bear in mind, I'm intentionally violating spirit here for purposes of investigation).

So, in the video game FitD combat system, the default harm inflicted by a player is probably 2. That's how much harm a 4-5 result with full effect will do, all else being equal.

I say this very casually, but it's a big assumption. I could argue for other starting numbers, and I might do so eventually. For now, I'm going to run with 2, and then see where the stress points are.

Now, curiously, one could set the 2 as a mid point, and say on a 6 you inflict 2, on a 4-5 you inflict 1 and take one, and on a 1-3 you take 2 (assuming a fair fight). That has some neat symmetry to it, but I worry it breaks in an unfair situation.

That is, it works if both sides have an effect of 2, but it has some issues when you're fighting something big and nasty.

Now, in that case you could say "On a 1-3, you do harm. On a 6 I do harm. On a 4-5, we both do harm" and that works out pretty well on paper, and works with each side having different harm values. BUT

The problem is that the ladder of outcomes is fairly short, so the initial advantage of the greater harm will overwhelm the fight in most situations.

This is, I should add, perfect for a situation like Blades, where there should not be fair fights. Keeps Things short & brutal

But the reason I'm engaging in this experience is applying it to a game which has more fighting as a function of genre (think anime/exalted/Final Fantasy) so Nasty, brutish and short is not totally desirable (though short has benefits)

Now, it's worth noting that in Blades, there's a big space of GM leeway around the 4-5 results, and that is probably a space where you want to be looking mechanically too. "We both hit" is functional, but boring.

The best mixed results make the situation worse, but don't actually diminish player agency. Which suggests the mechanical solution is not in combat design, but in *opposition* design.

Put differently, if I wanted to solve this for a game with monsters, then the monster stat block would look something like:

Ogre
Harm: 3
Moves:
* Knock a Combatant out of the scene
* Property Damage
* Ground Smash knocks everyone back

So now when the character rolls
1-3: harm 3
4-5: Monster Uses a move
6: Inflict harm on the monster

(Set aside how much harm the monster can take for now. Different problem, but not a hard one)

The monster's moves have fairly concrete effects (as well as clear fiction) and there's plenty of room to fiddle with them. Make some of them 1 shots, introduce a nomenclature of status effects or whatever.

Since Blades doesn't have initiative per se, it becomes very useful to lean into mixed rolls as the windows to allow opponent action. Potentially makes for a very dynamic cadence.

From a metagame perspective, this also reduces the necessity of defaulting to harm. This is good because harm is necessary, but also tends to be the least interesting option available.

Notably, this kind of writeup also moves opponents into effectively being *scenes*. Having the Ogre do harm on a 1-3 is easy and predictable, but what if he does something *worse*? Eat a bystander. Smash one of the city's defense crystals. Whatever.

Ok, I think I've just solved a problem, but it's not the problem I was looking to solve, so...well, 4-5 result there.

Also, just to state the obvious, this is a solid way to model a chase too. Progress on the ends, complications in the middle.

Also, if you treat the list of moves as a depleteable clock, then you can still briskly move the scene along while throwing in complications. That is, the ogre may have only 6 moves that are "used up". Doing "damage" to him uses up moves faster.

This could be specific or generic, but at this point we're gettign into how to handle damaging monsters, and that's a whole other thing. Plus. The game starts in 5 minutes, so I gotta go start the Zoom.