Should I know or care what Forge is? (I just looked it up, but let's pretend I didn't have access to the internet when I was making this post, or something like that.)(In fact, I've been playing D&D for 24 years and never heard of Forge-isms until this last week.)
If they say narrative is playing without a grid in the theatre of the mind, I understand that. I get it.
If they say tactical is high amounts of complex rules mostly combat related, I get that too.
Arguing over the terms is pedantic and redundant and repetitive.
What's important are there are 3 completely different styles and infinitely more combinations of styles to choose from in this upcoming version.
The problem is if you were already exposed to Forgisms, it's confusing. So we talk about it. And I think considering how often "GNS" or the Forge terms come up in discussions like these, it can't hurt to know them.
(Or maybe it can hurt due the way it shapes thinking of RPGs and there can be some concern whether the models are helpful or hindering, but sometimes they'll come up and you'll have to ignore the posts since you won't make sense of them.)
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Anyway, the rules remind me of Iron Heroes attack challenges and the Book of Iron Might, both works of Mike Mearls. And while I really loved the concept of Iron Heroes, I think the actual implementation was not that good in play, and the same will likely be true for the D&D Next take on it.
D&D Next's "bounded accuracy" has a certain advantage - it is predictable whether attack penalties are "worth" it. But this predictability is its own problem, because it will likely end up meaning that you either always better off using a maneuver, or you're always better off not using it. I figure a -5 or -10 penalty is more likely to end with the latter.
I think a better approach would be to have a few conditions that you can impose on an enemy that you then can exploit to use a maneuver.
We currently have only one exact condition that would fit - "Having Advantage". That's a little shallow, I think, but it can be a start. Maybe we even have a second condition with Bloodied.
I think there may be about 4 ways to go with maneuvers
- The way proposed here, using attack penalties to emulate the difficulty of maneuers and make them not always desirable to use.
The challenge in play is to decide when a maneuver can be useful.
- Condition Based. You need a certain pre-requisite condition to be able to start a maneuver. This will require a few more conditions probably.
The challenge in play is to impose the conditions you "need" for your maneuvers to be executed.
- Resource-Gathering: You gather some resource that represent you out-maneuvering or studying your foe and eventually can spend them to execute a special maneuver.
The challenge in play is to gather this resources quickly enough and spend them early enough to matter.
- Resource-Spending: You have a certain set of resources (encounter or daily powers for example) that you can spend to execute maneuvers.
The challenge in play is finding the best use of your limited resources.
Of course, you can combine these 4 in some manner, but there wil usually be some focus on one of the 4.
I dislike 1 and do not believe it will work - the penalties and the benefit cannot really be balanced in a manner that will lead to varied play. It also tends to be very "math" oriented "Okay, I know I can hit on 9, so if I take a -x penalty for +y damage, it's a good deal. Despite the attempt to "simulate" things with it, you end up being more occupied with the mathematical model than with the narrative it tries to model.
2 may be interesting, especially if the conditions are descriptive so you can imagine what's going on in play. It provides more focus on the story.
3 and 4 are more abstract.
3 has the problem that combat can sometimes go too fast so you'll gather a lot of tokens and use them on a foe that is about to be killed this round anyway. 4 is the D&D 4 approach, and while I think it works great in play, the abstraction has turned off many of D&D 4.
Note that the abstraction also has a certain advantage - you are more free in how you narrate what is going on, the rules don't enforce that much.