   Combat without Finite Resources
How could a combat system be designed such that a player is give more interesting interactions than damage against a finite resource such as health?I am inspired here by the idea that many simple games have lose conditions that do not track a recourse. Chess for example has the checkmate. There is not loss by taken resources. A players last piece(s) can still checkmate his foe who may have most or all of his. How can defeat conditions be implemented in the typical fantasy RPG setting where fireballs fly, swords clang, and arrows whistle without tracking health at all.
  Vital organs?   Lose your head = combat over.Are we talking about parties or single combat?  I recall an interesting turn-based 1v1 kickboxing simulator a few years ago where the winning tactic was usually to kick and punch the right bodyparts in order to knock your opponent off-balance (at which point the match was won, since there was no way to recover due to bad design).Combat between groups of individuals can end when one side surrenders.  I think an easy way to track this is to track avenues of retreat.  As long as each member of a group has a valid path to run away from a conflict, they wont feel the need to lay down arms and surrender.  It is only when all vectors of retreat are cut off that a combatant must make a decision to fight and die, or kneel and (hopefully) live.If you're just looking for ideas to mimic the mechanic in chess that allows a win without complete attrition, then you need only look for flags to be captured and assaulted.  In the Total War games a valid tactic is an all-out assault on the enemy general, while keeping your own high-ranked general alive.  When the enemy general dies, his troops lose a great deal of morale and will flee shortly thereafter.   ;  One way is to keep track of hits. Normal hit = injury, critical hit = death.Which applies to normal combat as well, a person may get injure quite a number of time with arrows sticking out of him, but what kills him is that sword that went pass his armor and into his torso causing him to bleed to death.In your chess context, it will be a peasant armed with a crossbow killing a full plated knight.   ;  You could have a game in which each player is trying to finish off a combination of moves before their opponant, whilst disrupting their opponants combo. Which is sort of what Chess is. The trick is to have it so that a combo, once disrupted, can be changed into another combo.  Finite resources are usually used in order to increase the chances of a finishing move later in the game, instead of being a victory condition in and of themselves.   ;  That sounds very much like what I had in mind really. What I was thinking about ended up involving a stamina bar to record the break point (empty) where he is vulnerable to a finishing move. Without such a bar, how to you modify the state of each fighter as the moves are preformed successfully or blocked such that they result in a path to a finishing move? In other words, the game play of chess creates opening and defenses, and openings taken advantage of can create bigger openings or even checkmate. How do I do this?(I know what I'm trying to get at here, though I'm just not sure if I'm getting it out coherently...)   ;  I'd like to put The Guild 2 on the table here. I think they did a really good job at giving a fantasy game alternative goals besides fighting off and killing the enemy. The game involves trials, bribery, theft, magic, and building a successful business. You also have the choice of influencing your way to the top of the town political hierarchy. A must play for anybody tired of the ol' fantasy RPG.On a side note, I think the most powerful idea of chess is that the ends justifies the means. Your pawns need to be sacrified in order to bring the opponent to a checkmate. Chess has resources, which must be used strategically. I think most games have a resource or another to keep track of, which directly or indirectly determines your success.   ;  Go is a very good example of a game without finite resources, insofar as you can win by taking almost no guys, simply by controlling a large enough area.Other games, particularly of the turn based variety (battle for wesnoth is a terrific example, since killing the enemy recruiter auto-wins most scenarios) have victory which isn't defined by killing every opposing unit.;Quote:Original post by JasRonqIn other words, the game play of chess creates opening and defenses, and openings taken advantage of can create bigger openings or even checkmate. How do I do this?(I know what I'm trying to get at here, though I'm just not sure if I'm getting it out coherently...)Each piece in chess expands the number of valid moves that you can make. The more pieces that are taken, the less moves that you can perform. So if you were to make a combat system based on something similar, then each successful block would limit the amount of moves that their opponant would be able to make. Eventually one of the combatants would be able to perform a move that the other wouldn't have a counter for, and would win. This is still a finite resource though, although it is more discrete than continuous.   ;  But enless we are being literal here and dismembering our enemy, then the closed off options from blocks are temporary effects which can be manually reversed or wear off. For instance, maybe I smack an arm and that arm goes weak for a few seconds, maybe even a significant amount of time, but its not forever. Also, there is no escape in chess, in fighting though, you can retreat, unless that has been removed by a net over the head, which could be cut out of. So this is even more dynamic than chess really.   ;  Super Smash Brothers does this.  While there's "Health," there's no level at which you "run out" of health.  Instead, getting knocked off the stage kills you, which can happen even with almost no damage done.   