Iterative Attacks

[Wulf Ratbane]

Originally Posted by Scurvy_Platypus

I'm just trying to figure out why they need to be kept is all.

I actually had a longer reply typed for you yesterday, but the BSOD ate it.

They don't need to be kept-- except in the sense that rejiggering all the monster ACs and hit points for a rule system with 10 years of supplements would certainly be the "hard way" as opposed to what I finally settled on.

But they should be kept because they improve the play experience. The game feels "sweetest" when combat is a series of infrequent failures, combined with successes of varying degrees, all contributing to the slow but inevitable ablation of resources.

As opposed to a boolean system where each roll is either hit and kill, or miss and suck; where each roll is either save and nothing happens, or you fail and die.

Victory should come like the dawn, not like a light switch.

You want a system that can be swingy without breaking: A system that will support a run-of-the-mill hit for 10 points of damage and a power attack critical for 50+ points of damage.

There are other reasons-- economy of actions, meaningful tactical choices, etc. Iterative attacks are part of a design package I'd call, "More fun."

When iterative attacks were slowing down the game, more fun was being suppressed. It was less fun because nobody wants to sit and wait on the player to roll multiple times and recalculate each hit or miss on the fly. Designate ONE target number you're looking for on the dice, and throw the batch.

My change was made to speed up play, not to remove some specified number of attacks and reduce it to a smaller "correct" number of attacks. Why did I choose two attacks? Because I found that to be the right number of attacks at the attack penalty that produces results the most similar to the damage output I wanted to see.

Errrr... these look the same to me. Am I missing something else?

Funny, in the light of a new morning they look the same to me, too. I think I was rattled by the BSOD when I came back to post a reply. Substitute some other way of getting an additional attack.

[Scott DeWar]

Originally Posted by Wulf Ratbane

edit...
As opposed to a boolean system where each roll is either hit and kill, or miss and suck; where each roll is either save and nothing happens, or you fail and die.... edit

Caution: Humorous comment approaching:

this is only a joke!

what about nand gates and nor gates? do they exist in dice rolling?

hit and suck or save and die

are schmidt triggers found on traps?

hope it was worth a chuckle.

[ValhallaGH]

Originally Posted by Scurvy_Platypus

Sorry, it sorta seemed to me like ValhallaGH was implying/suggesting that.

I wasn't. I was talking about player controls over probabilities, that's all. The "inflated AC" thing was all you.

Originally Posted by Wulf Ratbane

The game feels "sweetest" when combat is a series of infrequent failures, combined with successes of varying degrees, all contributing to the slow but inevitable ablation of resources.

As opposed to a boolean system where each roll is either hit and kill, or miss and suck; where each roll is either save and nothing happens, or you fail and die.

Victory should come like the dawn, not like a light switch.

...
That is a brilliantly elegant summation of where most gaming is fun. I'll just be sticking that into my sig now....

[kerleth]

In general I agree with your replacement for Iterative attacks wulf. One point, though. If I'm not mistaken you can make your first attack and then decide whether or not to continue into a full attack action. While I suppose it rarely matters, your system would not allow that since you have to decide beforehand whether or not you'll take the penalty on your first attack.

[Wulf Ratbane]

Originally Posted by kerleth

In general I agree with your replacement for Iterative attacks wulf. One point, though. If I'm not mistaken you can make your first attack and then decide whether or not to continue into a full attack action. While I suppose it rarely matters, your system would not allow that since you have to decide beforehand whether or not you'll take the penalty on your first attack.

You're right. You can't do that anymore.

You're either going to "hurry" your attacks (-2/-2), or you're not.

You can either aim for the bullseye, or you can squeeze off two shots. You can't do both.

[Kid Charlemagne]

You could allow the option to abort the second attack to take a move action - meaning that you'd take the -2 penalty on the first attack but wouldn't totally lose out if you drop the foe in one blow.

[Wulf Ratbane]

Originally Posted by Kid Charlemagne

You could allow the option to abort the second attack to take a move action - meaning that you'd take the -2 penalty on the first attack but wouldn't totally lose out if you drop the foe in one blow.

Of course.

[Papa-DRB]

My search-fu stinks.... With that in mind, When can I purchase this, and Where will it be available via PDF... thanks

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Download the free Trailblazer preview from drivethrurpg.com, rpgnow.com, or the enworld.org store.

[Set]

Seems like a nice workable system.

My own tweak was to allow anyone able to make an iterative attack to instead make a Mighty Blow as a full attack action.

For each iterative attack lost, the single attack gets bonus damage equal to the base damage of the attack.

Example: Tyra the 11th level Paladin has BAB +11 and would normally get three attacks, at +11/+6/+1 with her Greatsword. Instead, she makes a Mighty Blow as her full attack action, making one swing at her full attack bonus, and getting +4d6 damage added to her base damage of 2d6 +Str +enhancement bonus +smite, etc.

This only works with iterative attacks. Extra attacks from haste or two-weapon fighting (etc.) cannot be combined with a Mighty Blow.

[Wulf Ratbane]

Originally Posted by Set

Seems like a nice workable system.

My own tweak was to allow anyone able to make an iterative attack to instead make a Mighty Blow as a full attack action.

For each iterative attack lost, the single attack gets bonus damage equal to the base damage of the attack.

There's nothing wrong with that approach per se, but as I mentioned upthread (a few times) it will dramatically undercut the amount of damage your melee classes can dish out.

If your 2nd, 3rd, 4th iterative attacks previously included power attack, or flaming, aligned, holy, or sneak attack dice, you're losing all that damage. Adding in any amount equal to "the base weapon" means that anybody with more than +2d6 in bonus damage loses out in the bargain.

This is important because high-level monsters are designed to get hit. They don't survive contact with the PCs by making the PCs miss; they survive contact with the PCs by having an assload of hit points. If you curtail the damage of the fighting classes, combat will last longer. See various 4e "grind" threads for evidence of the unpleasant side effects. And 4e at least has the advantage of not having a lot of save or die effects; increasing the duration of combat by "just a couple of rounds" in 3e might mean "just a couple of rounds" of extra save-or-die effects coming at you.

[Blue]

I really like this. Came here from a link so I missed the meat of the discussion.

Another place this is interesting is places where cumulative attacks have special meaning, like grapple. If makes changing from grappled to pinned and vice versa a bigger state change since you only have two attacks to do so instead of more.

I've got a couple of corner cases that I wonder if someone familiar with the math can look at. The system looks to work from my side, these are occasional things.

1. Value of "other" attack types. For example, tripping an opponent gives a bonus to hit for later attacks, but if you only have one other attack max that seems to devalue this.

2. Mixed normal and touch attacks. I've seen players do normal attacks for 1st and 2nd iterative attacks and then things like trips for the low end because it's touch attacks so still has a reasonable chance to hit.

3. Power attack, combat expertise and others that "spend" attack bonus. It seems like CE becomes more powerful (since you have a better overall chance to hit over your attacks), but it's not underpowered. PA has it's balance changed. Higher AB for some but lower for that first strike, and less attacks to add to. Don't know if it's weaker, stronger, or just has different balance points.

[Forgefly]

I am really impressed with the solution and am excited to implement it in my games. I do however have one player who will howl with frustration at the proposed change and wonder if someone could explain how the proposed change impacts the improved critical rapier fighter.

Just on the surface it seems that his damage will mirror the curve described by Wulf earlier across the center of the bell, but that the damage will be much lower against the high ac opponents.

Is this accurate? Does his damage output in the corner cases drop more than the "average" fighter

Secondly how does this impact character classes like the duskblade who get to cast a rider spell into each strike?

My understanding is that most characters will see an increase in hits per round across the majority of cases and so such a character will be better off (even though they are giving up an extra two swings which might be carrying phantasmal killer or disintegrate)

I appreciate any answers to these questions which will help me start using this idea much sooner. That and my Probability-fu is very weak.

[Wulf Ratbane]

Originally Posted by Forgefly

I am really impressed with the solution and am excited to implement it in my games. I do however have one player who will howl with frustration at the proposed change and wonder if someone could explain how the proposed change impacts the improved critical rapier fighter.

Critical damage is accounted for in the DPS calculations.

Yes, your player will 'lose' more damage strictly in numbers, but he loses the same percentage of damage as everyone else. He also gains more damage than everyone else against "the field" of average monsters (about 15%).

Is this accurate? Does his damage output in the corner cases drop more than the "average" fighter?

So, again, yes it drops "more." If he loses 10% of 30 damage, he's lost 3 points; and the fighter loses 10% of 20 damage, he's only lost 2 points.

3 is certainly more than 2.

I suppose how he feels about that will depend on how he feels about, say, progressive taxation rates.

Secondly how does this impact character classes like the duskblade who get to cast a rider spell into each strike? My understanding is that most characters will see an increase in hits per round across the majority of cases and so such a character will be better off (even though they are giving up an extra two swings which might be carrying phantasmal killer or disintegrate).

Your understanding is spot on. Damage that goes "asymmetrical" like that is certainly going to take a bigger hit against the edge cases, because you haven't just lost a chance to do X damage, you've lost a chance to do "infinite" damage (ie, save or die).

Those are the absolute worst cases of the edge cases-- when you really just want more actions, period. No way around that-- but one could argue that such builds are pretty broken to begin with.

(Of course my understanding of the duskblade was that he could cast spells as a swift action, and you only get one swift action per round, so he would not be affected at all.)

[Forgefly]

Many thanks.

I love the idea and I was hoping your explanation would provide me an easy way to sell it to him, but the simple elegance of the solution may sway him over to it even so.

(Vis a vis the Duskblade it is the Arcane channeling full attack which allows him to cast a spell into his weapon and have the spell effect everyone hit that round, thus iterative disintegration at high levels)

[Wulf Ratbane]

Minor quibble, but Arcane Channelling only works on touch spells. Under the spell description, Range will say Touch.

Don't let the inmates run the asylum up there at your home game, bub. Crack down.