Re: Sources for factual combat statistics, was Re: Modern Close Assault

Andy Cowell wrote:
> 
> In message <oeom1tos1qbvjrinnkk3oprh0rhp4rkbst@4ax.com>, Allan Goodall
writes
:
> >
> >
> > However the stats for the characters were essentially made up out of
> > thin air.  An olympic class marksman was an 18. A pure novice was a
> > 3.
> 
> Out of curiosity, what would be an example of comperable non-arbitrary
> stats?

I think Allan misremembers about stats, a little. I don't recall a
shooting stat that ran from 3-18. What you have are five 3D6
stats: Strength, Intelligence, Will, Health and Agility. You could
potentially roll a pathetic Strength 3 weakling with a Health of
18. The shooting stat is called Skill Level. Old Dungeons and
Dragons hands should recognise the "level" idea... not only does
your level influence your to-hit rolls, it is multiplied with your
Will stat to provide a Knockout Value, against which your
cumulative damage point total is compared to determine if you are
hors de combat. In other words, a Level 10 character will have
twice the "hit points" he had at Level 5. Also, the melee
supplement had an exact analogue of D&D Armor Class.

Isn't it ironic that Leading Edge went broke before WotC released
the base system for D&D as an open system? They could have peddled
PC as a combat supplement for WotC/TSR-type RPGs.

Even more bizarrely, having rolled up these stats you then mostly
threw them away and used different stats produced by strange
processes involving tables. The real stats are Skill Accuracy
Level (derived from Skill Level) and Combat Actions per Impulse,
which involves Skill Level, Intelligenge, Agility, Strength,
Encumbrance and five different tables. (!)

As for non-arbitrary stats, I recommend a look at Greg Porter's
CORPS. I think a freebie 2-page version of the rules is available
as a PDF file somewhere. Game stats are constructed using points
which equate to handy quantities of SI units. Each point invested
in Agility, for example, gives a sort of base shooting range of
that many metres. To keeps things simple the actual numbers used
in the mechanics use the square roots of these numbers, so a
character with 25 points invested in Agility will have a stat of
5, and the range bands that the target fall into run from
1-4-9-16-25-36-49-(etc.) metres giving difficulty rating of
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-(etc.). Other CORPS stats work similarly, with
points mapping to encumbrance in kilograms, Awareness points
mapping to spotting ranges in metres.

Ironically for such a simple, tidy (2-page) set of rules, CORPS
has more range bands than Phoenix Command, and I'd suggest it is
more mechanically realistic. Mechanical realism isn't so important
compared with a colourful game and good suspension of disbelief
but I think those generally come from the ref, not the rules. 

I wouldn't call Phoenix Command a realistic game, but a game that
uses OTT detail as a sort of game colour. I could whinge about it
for hours, but I won't. It has served me reasonably well as a
source for... interesting... ideas about rules.

-- 
David Brewer

"It is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a stone at every
dog that barks at you." - George Silver, gentleman, c.1600