Fighting Styles (giving us the ability to affect hit allocation of body parts)

[Vandala]

I've though of a way to spice up combat a tiny bit.

Please make a new set of skills our characters can train in called Fighting Styles.

The effect of these new skills will be to alter where your character hits other people or is hit by them.

Currently the odds of hitting whatever body part is completely up to a set range determined entirely by what race you are. (at least if I understand that right) This seems rather silly and very limiting to me. I would like the ability to give my characters an edge in combat by setting for them a fighting style that they will use in combat.

Differant fighting styles would alter where a character is likely to hit his opponent, a certain style could favor hits to the head, or to the arms or the legs. You can also create defensive fighting styles that do the opposite and makes hits to certain body parts less likely to happen. Or have combinations of both.

Acquiring these skills could be either finding a master to teach/train you or perhaps the research way of finding martial arts manuals/scrolls (which would represent blueprints or reasearch artifacts).

Having these kinds of skills in the game would allow players to specialise their combat characters to better fight certain factions or protect against them. For example, when expecting to fight the holy nation you might want a fighting style that favors hits to the 4 limbs due to the armor they wear having poorer limb protection. Slavers could be given a favored fighting style that targets their opponents legs and stomach to prevent their target from running away after combat. And if certain factions are known for using certain styles then you as a player now have the option to use defensive fighting styles to counter those.

You may also want to add a new special combat anatomy that when hit represents a missed attack. This would allow certain combat styles to also act as an extra way of defense by deflecting attacks away from your body entirely.

Ideas for fighting styles:

A assassin style: heavily favors hits to the head, also hits to the chest and stomach but offers no protection.
A soldier style: favors hits to the arms and head, lowers chances of hits to your own arms and head.
A slaver style: favors hits to the legs and stomach, lowers chances of hits to your own arms.
A deflection style: does not favor hits, instead slightly lowers chances of hits to all body parts and increases the odds for a missed attack.
A lifesaver style: does not favor hits, instead lowers chances of hits to your own head, chest and stomach.
A anti-shek style: greatly favors hits to the stomach.

The asshole style: adds a secret "groin" body part to your enemy, if hit there it causes extra long stun or counts as a short knock-out.
Dirty fighting style: you deal less damage but hits in different locations cause different cumulative combat penalties to the enemy.

Theres got to be more that can be done with this, if you allow fighting styles to affect other stats, maybe protection against getting stunned, bonus damage or armor, combat stat bonuses or penalties, converting cut damage to stun damage, cause extra bleeding, you name it. You can even add some cute new poses or animation to the different styles if you want.

[UltraDelux]

I like this alot. Maybe instead of premade styles, you could have your own set of them, maybe you could have more sets to switch between with lvls. Maybe as you get more powerful you could add extra chance to hit a particular spot or defend a particular spot. Every npc could have a semi random style, semi random being partially random, partially determined by faction, race, etc.

[lucidmadness]

I was thinking perception could increase your chance of hitting an opponent's openings. Adding this into the game, but without having to micromanage would be awesome.

[Xanti345]

This does sound a bit complex yet really cool. Not all complex things are bad mind you. This does sound like it could really make for some more interesting combat options.