Multiple Opponent Combat

Battling multiple enemies at once has the potential to deliver interesting tactical situations not possible with exclusively one-on-one combat. Most text games and RPGs in general implement some form of group-on-group combat because it usually adds depth and challenge by giving players more possible future scenarios to consider when deciding which action to take next. In text games, it also presents a few unique design challenges - for example too much incoming text to read quickly, or difficulty targeting the right enemies via the command line interface.

Targeting
When there are two of the same type of enemy (for example two zombies), specifying one or the other can be difficult on the command line. For example if I type "punch the zombie", which zombie am I referring to? The problem can be much worse when there are many types of zombie, and attacking the wrong one can get you into trouble. Achaea "solves" this problem by asking players to do this: This is a bad player experience for several reasons. It's two command lines to accomplish a simple idea, requires players to accurately type a long number, screams "computer simulation, not a fantasy world!", and by the time you're finished with all that typing, the rat has often left the battlefield. Another game I played (was it DragonRealms?) did a better job by using single-digit numbers (rat 1, rat 2, rat 3), but left it up to players to figure out which were the first, second, and third.
 * 1) Type INFO HERE to get a list of unique enemy IDs, which look like this: rat18239582
 * 2) Type PUNCH RAT18239582.

Tohm eliminates numbers entirely and instead adds unique adjectives to enemies of the same type. You might encounter a smelly zombie with a fat zombie, or a tall zombie with a short zombie, but never two short zombies on the same battlefield. The adjectives are also optional, so when there's only one zombie, you can simply type "punch zombie" or an abbreviation of the same.

Melee Engagement
When one combatant successfully attacks another at melee range, they are considered to be "engaged" in ongoing melee combat for the next combat round. This makes it impossible for either to simply walk away from the other, instead only allowing them to either continue fighting or move closer together. The engagement can be broken by preventing your attacker from attacking you or dodging an attack, so that you have an opening to retreat in the next round.

While this applies to single combat as well, it's especially interesting in group combat because a faster opponent might engage you to slow your retreat while a slower opponent closes-in, or a tough opponent might engage you to prevent you from closing to melee range on a more vulnerable opponent like a spellcaster.

This mechanic also prevents players from easily fleeing almost any combat situation by repeatedly issuing the retreat command until they've escaped. Once a player gets embroiled in a battle, it's often difficult to disengage and escape (see also "late arrivals" below).

Challenge Calibration and Late Arrivals
Tohm's battles are somewhat planned. Unlike many text games wherein enemies roam about or spawn at random and players are permitted to enter and leave combat zones at will, Tohm's battles are balanced against player strength and instanced to ensure challenge.

"Balanced against player strength" means the enemy combatants arriving on the battlefield are calibrated to the size of the player's party. A group of players may be overmatched, but never undermatched because trivial is just a boring time-filler (future work: an opt-in for players who want easy fights with much-reduced rewards).

It's possible that some late arrivals on the battlefield are planned, meaning that after a few rounds, more combatants seem to wander onto the field and join the fray. This gives players the sensation that the area is dangerous and teeming with aggressive foes, but these are actually part of the battle calibration and decided before combat even begins. It also means that what seems like an easy win may actually be an even match or a losing situation, to be made clear later after players have engaged (see "melee engagement" above).

"Instanced" means that once players enter combat, they're placed in a special instance of their world location to prevent other players from wandering into an ongoing battle and interfering with the carefully-designed challenge level.

Flavor Text
We also tie flavor text to the adjectives mentioned above so that arrival text, death text, and any emotes correlate with the adjective to create flavor variety in bad guys. For example, when arriving on the battlefield, a smelly zombie might be preceded by its stench, while a one-eyed zombie might stumble out from behind a tree.

Future Work: Defensive Maneuver Modifiers
Eventually, defensive maneuvers like dodging, blocking, or parrying attacks will be less effective when facing multiple opponents simultaneously. For example, dodging two melee attacks in the same round will be MUCH more difficult than evading only one, or one each in two adjacent rounds. That means facing two incoming attacks in the same round is much worse than they would be separately, making relative positioning on the field and timing of maneuvers even more relevant. Suppose two goblins were both preparing to strike at you in the next round - maybe it would be better to stun one goblin and allow a single blow to land than to try evading both attacks? That sort of decision-making is one way experienced players will separate themselves from novices.