[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

[David Kennerly]

Byron Ellacott wrote:

> Or, as you said, defense won't get your opponent to 0 or fewer hit
> points.  It's just not limited to D&D style combat - all combat
> follows this property.

All styles of combat that use hit points.  :) But, yeah, you're
right: Any survival game (by which I mean any game whose major score
of victory is attrition of other players) can only have as a victory
precondition the attrition of an opponent's survival.  Thus, no
nonattrition move can be the last move of such a game.  Logically it
follows that no non-attrition-only strategy can win any such
survival game.

Yet note all the words that limit the scope of the proposition.
There could be alternative combat systems which do not meet the
definition of a survival game.  For an obvious example, Rock Paper
Scissors.  In RPS, none of the strategies are necessarily defensive
or offensive.  It is only the interaction of the players that makes
them so.  Now they could be mapped that way, as I wrote a few days
ago (e.g., rock==defense, paper==feint, scissors==offense).  But
even then one could play defense consistently and win if the
opponent had played offense consistently.

David
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