CoS Combat Review Revised

>Combat Mechanics
Alright this might get a bit heavy, but it's also half the quest so bear with me. Court of Swords has a unique combat system for it's duels and I'll try to summarize it the best I can. I'll also link a pastebin containing the rules that'll break it down better than I can at the bottom of this section.

Before a match starts the duelists pick six skills from their skill set and one ability. An ability is a passive skill that stays on all match. A duel works on a turn by turn basis, each turn called a queue, where a duelist picks three of their skills to use that queue. Order matters so it's important to make sure the skill picked in round 1 of the queue doesn't impede the skill in round 3 later down the line. The main flow and voting of the combat is trying to predict what your opponent's queue is going to be and picking your skills accordingly. The queues are compared to each other by the QM where we see the results and then we vote on what our next queue is going to be. Repeat until someone is beaten.

Well how do you beat someone or do damage? For that let's look at the dice pools this system uses and we've got three of them:

First up is the Composure pool. This is your life bar and if you lose all your dice in this you are opened up for a finishing blow. The main focus of the fight is to destroy the largest sided die in your opponent's Composure pool. Taking out other, lower sided dice won't break an opponent, but will Rattle them, preventing them from using certain skills for the remainder of that queue.

You do this by utilizing the dice in your Strike pool, the second dice pool on our list. Strike pool dice are utilized by using Strike skills (We'll get to skill types in a moment) and the dice in the pool are rolled with the sum of them all being the damage. So if a 1d8 and a 1d10 in the Strike pool are rolled to the result of a 13 and the opponent's largest die was a d12 then that opponent's composure is broken and can be finished off.

Now how do we get dice for the Strike pool? The main way to do this is through the Technique pool, the final dice pool. Flourishes, another type of skill, generate dice into your Technique pool. From there other skills can siphon those Technique dice into your Strike pool so you can do damage.

Now this looks all convoluted but the main take away is you generate dice with the Technique pool that the Strike pool can use to attack your opponent's Composure pool. There are exceptions of course, skills that mix things up, but that's the general gist of it.

There are four types of skills: Strikes, Flourishes, Tricks, and Stances.
Strikes attack the opponent in varying ways.
Flourishes generate dice for your attacks.
Tricks are generally defensive ways to fuck with your opponent.
Stances are passives, but can be broken by taking Composure damage.
They each have their own priority for which effects go off first when squaring off with each other.
TRICKS>STRIKES=FLOURISHES>STANCES

So a Trick could fuck over a Strike if timed properly. For example Circle Guard here:
>Circle Guard: [TRICK]Your opponent cannot siphon dice into their Strike Pool this round. If they attempt to, destroy the single lowest die in their Technique Pool. This Technique cannot be used if your Technique Pool is empty.
Can completely nullify an opponent's strike if you put it on the same round.

There is a lot to think about with this system and my summary probably isn't the best so here's the pastebin with the ruleset for those that are interested: https://pastebin.com/6eTp737y


Now to actually review this clusterfuck. Well what can I say, it all works really well once you wrap your head around it and see it in action. It's a cool little system that I think would be fun to play with a UI and automation sometime. New skills Ouro has made for our opponents are always novel to see as they are all unique and work towards a greater duelist build. Then brainstorming on how to beat those builds with Sofia's skill set. The system keeps that noggin joggin and it's a lot of fun. I'd like to see someday where the players create custom duelists on their own to see what they come up with (hopefully not all of them would be incredibly broken). It's extremely refreshing change of pace after the dozens of standard roll 1d100 best of three, tried and true as that system is.  It's 100% player agency in combat, and their victories and failures are their own.

The problem is, it's 100% player agency and not everyone wraps their head around it. And those people vote!

As you can probably guess from my crappy summary up top, there is a lot of rules at play here and a lot of moving parts. It's easy to forget something small but, important like the speed of the move you are using or certain conditions in a skill. Hell you can just take bad skills for this fight and not know it til you start fighting. Couple all that with trying to remember your opponent's moves along predicting how they use them it's really easy to make mistakes. The thing about this system, is that one or two mistakes can lose you the duel. There is no safety net, no failing forward, and the outcome of the duel is teetering on a knife's edge all the time. One good queue can give you a good advantage and you can piss it all away so bad the next queue that you can't recover. Naturally everyone has their own opinion on what queue to choose. Some know what they are doing, but don't explain it well. Some don't and are very adamant about why they are right. Some just second something without thinking. Some are just stubborn to continue a certain type of play. And once they see how they failed? The salt floweth and the finger pointing begins along with all the condescending hindsight you can ask for.  Clarity is in short supply here.

This is probably my biggest gripe with the mechanics, and it's not really the mechanics fault. Just the medium it's in. The combat requires the ability to read and predict the opponent's queue, find the optimal queue for yourself, and think ahead to the next queue. This many people can't do that and agree. It's like playing chess, but you got 8 dudes behind you each grabbing different pieces with completely different strategies. Ouro has a incredible advantage as our opponents in that he is one mind who doesn't have to argue with anyone and can work towards his goal without competing with people. It also doesn't help that Sofia's skill set is centered around prediction and your opponent's skills are hidden until they are used, adding another variable and a thing to argue over. I really think that this style of combat is meant for a one person or a small (2-3) group of people that can communicate well and know what they are doing. Any more and people will just trip over each other.

Another more minor issue I have with the combat is that it can be swingy when it comes to dice rolls. I mentioned earlier that combat is usually on a knife's edge? Where one mistake can end it for you? Bad RNG can do that too.

>Well you've done it. It was hard but, you've got a shitload of dice in your Tech pool and the Strike skill is going through! Roll 2d6, 1d8, 1d10 and try to beat your opponent's d10 in Composure!

>2,3,2,1 = 8

>Uh oh, it looks like everything you worked for went down the toilet. Now your opponent is super ahead and you're back to square one.

Now this usually doesn't happen because of statistics and odds, but it has happened. It's a bit rough to have RNG hanging over you along with all other things to worry about in the combat, but I'm not sure how you'd fix it without breaking the current system. A duel has lasted 3 real life days with active sessions because of a mix of bad decisions and poor RNG nullifying progress and would have gone on longer had Ouro not pulled the plug and had the opponent concede. Bad times.

Sofia also gains skills by stealing moves off her opponents and it's very possible to choose something that looks good at a glance but, has the effectiveness of a wet fart in practice. We only get them if we win too, so it's very easy to stagnate if you're losing a lot. Which ironically makes the prediction based Sofia, incredibly predictable. There is just a lot of things that can go wrong with this combat through dumb mistakes and some of them like picking a shitty skill to add to your collection are irreversible.

This is a really fun and innovative combat system that I encourage others, especially QMs, to take a look at. Not to copy it wholesale, but to take ideas from and see how they can innovate with their own combat system. In practice though I just don't think it works with a large amount of people and it's showing by Sofia's record. Ever since Ouro turned the difficulty up from 'You can't lose this' to 'You have to think a tiny bit' the players have been on a losing streak and I don't see it stopping any time soon. People need to git gud fast or dueling is going to be one of the many things Sofia is poor at.