Do you mean in D&D, or in general? There are certainly RPGs that have different rules for "boss fights". HeroWars/Quest is one, Burning Wheel another.
D&D 4E Healing and combat tension between 4e and Next
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
My apology for the lack of clarity I was speaking of D&D. It would be great if 5E found a way to to let me have my cake and eat it too but given the commandment of thou shalt make a game that feels like D&D I won't be holding my breath.
Which is not to say that feel isn't important but an obsequious devotion to it could be a self imposed limit on creativity. WotC has felt the sting of loosing that feel and one can hardly blame them for being hypervigilant in that regard. If there can be only one I would have to choose a faster playing combat as much as I love 4Es drawn out tactically detailed boss fights.
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[MENTION=23464]ranger[/MENTION]Wicket great post, couldn't give you more xp though, because you are too awesome. 
Anyway, I don't quite agree with your description of combat. With a bit more experienced players they will most likely identify the situation as a deadly one quite quickly (within the first round) and use some daily powers ASAP. This usually cuts down the monsters pretty quickly and takes away from the tension.
What I do agree on is that the HP in a 4e fight is very dynamic, going up and down. Unlike in 3e where it went down mostly, except when Heal was available. (Using cure x wounds spells was a waste of time. Too little healing compared to incoming damage).
I do dislike the 1-3 round fights of 3e (nuke until dead), but I also dislike the 6-10 round fights you often got in 4e (chipping away). Something in between would be nice.
Personally what I dislike most in fights are status effects (slow, stun, daze, immobilized, sleep, weakened, knock-down and so on) that disables a character or monster. They just makes the fight slower and there was waaaaay to much of it in 4e.
Anyway, I don't quite agree with your description of combat. With a bit more experienced players they will most likely identify the situation as a deadly one quite quickly (within the first round) and use some daily powers ASAP. This usually cuts down the monsters pretty quickly and takes away from the tension.
What I do agree on is that the HP in a 4e fight is very dynamic, going up and down. Unlike in 3e where it went down mostly, except when Heal was available. (Using cure x wounds spells was a waste of time. Too little healing compared to incoming damage).
I do dislike the 1-3 round fights of 3e (nuke until dead), but I also dislike the 6-10 round fights you often got in 4e (chipping away). Something in between would be nice.
Personally what I dislike most in fights are status effects (slow, stun, daze, immobilized, sleep, weakened, knock-down and so on) that disables a character or monster. They just makes the fight slower and there was waaaaay to much of it in 4e.
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UngeheuerLich
Legend
I believe, the usual fights need to be done with in 15 minutes real time. It does not matter, how many rounds a fight is.
Also I don´t like the expected number of rounds thing. This is too much "combat as sport" to my liking. If you go into a fight with advantage, it should be heavily weighted to the players side and be a short thing. (An alpha strike with surprise should make a combat short.)
On the other hand, if you don´t have the advantage and you are facing a prepared enemy of equal power, the combat may last 1 or 2 hours, with recoveries and so on. But this may never be your standard.
4e is very good in epic fights. But its strength is also its biggest weakness. Every fight on an evening shortens your progress in the actual story by a large amount.
Also I don´t like the expected number of rounds thing. This is too much "combat as sport" to my liking. If you go into a fight with advantage, it should be heavily weighted to the players side and be a short thing. (An alpha strike with surprise should make a combat short.)
On the other hand, if you don´t have the advantage and you are facing a prepared enemy of equal power, the combat may last 1 or 2 hours, with recoveries and so on. But this may never be your standard.
4e is very good in epic fights. But its strength is also its biggest weakness. Every fight on an evening shortens your progress in the actual story by a large amount.
Kinak
First Post
I like tension in my fights (who doesn't?) but I don't know if D&D's healing style really provides for that.
Without combat healing, you are basically just watching your HP tick down to doomsday. This can create tension in a good fight.
With restricted combat healing (limited by surges or encounter/daily powers), you're just watching your healing tick down instead. This can also create tension in a good fight, but the burden is still on the fight and mechanics.
Personally, I think combat healing is a godsend for tactical games. It provides a unique role for characters to fill. For a looser game, I don't think it really adds much.
For tension, the more important part is having fights that escalate as they go. The most simple example is 4e's bonuses when bloodied, but I think the 13th Age escalation die and certain Iron Heroes token pools are better examples.
But if you bake escalation into the classes, the enemies, and/or the combat system itself, that tension will emerge naturally. Hit Points don't need to move back and forth over the line if the stakes grow higher with each passing round.
Cheers!
Kinak
Without combat healing, you are basically just watching your HP tick down to doomsday. This can create tension in a good fight.
With restricted combat healing (limited by surges or encounter/daily powers), you're just watching your healing tick down instead. This can also create tension in a good fight, but the burden is still on the fight and mechanics.
Personally, I think combat healing is a godsend for tactical games. It provides a unique role for characters to fill. For a looser game, I don't think it really adds much.
For tension, the more important part is having fights that escalate as they go. The most simple example is 4e's bonuses when bloodied, but I think the 13th Age escalation die and certain Iron Heroes token pools are better examples.
But if you bake escalation into the classes, the enemies, and/or the combat system itself, that tension will emerge naturally. Hit Points don't need to move back and forth over the line if the stakes grow higher with each passing round.
Cheers!
Kinak
It's a "perfectly viable thing" that I have no taste for, I suppose. I also dislike "swingy" combat where one die roll decides way too much.
I want it to be a given thing that will be expected to be used often (if not all the time). At the very least, there should be the option to have a combat healer, as in, one who focuses very much on healing in the middle of the fight. One who doesn't have ritual-based healing as the "default," because I think having most healing out of combat is kinda lame.
To me, what makes healing magic "magic" is that you don't have to stop everything to patch up the wound/stop the bleeding/revive an unconscious ally. You cast the spell and the person gets back up. Keep the grim and gritty out of my heroic fantasy--at least, out of the default.
GameDoc
Explorer
If magical healing is relegated to a ritual, then it expends no spell slots and has a component cost. The cleric is limited only by the amount of magical reagents they carry. It also puts more value on potions as the best option in combat so the cleric doesn't have to take himself out of the fight or become a sitting duck while he casts a healing ritual. This way, it's gold that dictates the party's healing resourcs.
If you equate the reagent cost of the ritual with the cost of a potion, it goes back to 4e's idea of making the cleric a class played because it was interesting to the player, not essential to the party. No cleric (or druid)? Stock up on potions at the same cost it would have taken to stock the healer up on reagents.
That's an interesting idea. I don't know how I feel about it, but it is interesting.
If you equate the reagent cost of the ritual with the cost of a potion, it goes back to 4e's idea of making the cleric a class played because it was interesting to the player, not essential to the party. No cleric (or druid)? Stock up on potions at the same cost it would have taken to stock the healer up on reagents.
That's an interesting idea. I don't know how I feel about it, but it is interesting.
Basically the same idea as 3.5E, only with rituals subbing in for Wands of CLW.
Primitive Screwhead
First Post
Upon reading the OP I had a collision of ideas that had to percolate for a while before posting here.
The OP contention is that there should be a tension and swingyness in combat that leads to a feel of 'epic' sort of fights. The difficulty is balancing available healing, hit points, and damage thresholds to obtain this.
What if.... instead of messing with those three, we change a definition?
The OPs definition of 'win' is defeat by way of slaughter. Just expand that definition a bit.
1> Morale rules: There was a post in the 4e forum regarding a set of morale rules that I really liked. Basically there were trigger events that might cause the enemy to flee.
This gives you one more lever and the players have to pay a bit more attention in combat. If they come in with 'I Win' moves, the surviving enemies might immediately flee and take the mcguffin or find help.
Having the 'Boss' on the scene makes it less likely the NPCs will fail a morale check.. meaning you don't have different mechanical rules for a boss fight, but you have a story reason why the enemy fights like cornered rats.
With this setup, your encounters need to be amped up as you expect some to flee or surrender. And surrounding can add some cool RP aspects to the game.
The morale rules should have graduated effects:
Fail by 10 or more: flee and treated as a 'mere mortal'
fail by 5 to 9: flee and grant advantage to the next attack
fail by 1 to 4: flee
save by 0 to 5: no change
save by 6 to 10: 'fight tooth and nail', gain advantage to the next attack or grant disadvantage to the next attack.
Save by 11 or more: 'cornered rat' gain +2 to attacks until next morale check and gain advantage to the next attack.
Specific backgrounds like Beserker might give a bonus to the morale checks, making them mechanically more likely to be 'beserk'
2> the 'Mere Mortal' rule. If a creature has less current hit points than the attackers level + 5 {subject to change}, the attacker may spend a standard action to declare a death blow. Players are encouraged to develop the fluff 'signature' deal blows, but can adlib. There is no attack or save. NPC Solo's can have 'mere mortal' attacks.
Of course the DC, graduated scale, and threshold for 'mere mortal' will need tweaks to fit into the final rules. But this gives two more levers for building that 'back from the brink' fight and puts two more weapons in the players kit for 'defeating' enemies.
The OP contention is that there should be a tension and swingyness in combat that leads to a feel of 'epic' sort of fights. The difficulty is balancing available healing, hit points, and damage thresholds to obtain this.
What if.... instead of messing with those three, we change a definition?
The OPs definition of 'win' is defeat by way of slaughter. Just expand that definition a bit.
1> Morale rules: There was a post in the 4e forum regarding a set of morale rules that I really liked. Basically there were trigger events that might cause the enemy to flee.
This gives you one more lever and the players have to pay a bit more attention in combat. If they come in with 'I Win' moves, the surviving enemies might immediately flee and take the mcguffin or find help.
Having the 'Boss' on the scene makes it less likely the NPCs will fail a morale check.. meaning you don't have different mechanical rules for a boss fight, but you have a story reason why the enemy fights like cornered rats.
With this setup, your encounters need to be amped up as you expect some to flee or surrender. And surrounding can add some cool RP aspects to the game.
The morale rules should have graduated effects:
Fail by 10 or more: flee and treated as a 'mere mortal'
fail by 5 to 9: flee and grant advantage to the next attack
fail by 1 to 4: flee
save by 0 to 5: no change
save by 6 to 10: 'fight tooth and nail', gain advantage to the next attack or grant disadvantage to the next attack.
Save by 11 or more: 'cornered rat' gain +2 to attacks until next morale check and gain advantage to the next attack.
Specific backgrounds like Beserker might give a bonus to the morale checks, making them mechanically more likely to be 'beserk'
2> the 'Mere Mortal' rule. If a creature has less current hit points than the attackers level + 5 {subject to change}, the attacker may spend a standard action to declare a death blow. Players are encouraged to develop the fluff 'signature' deal blows, but can adlib. There is no attack or save. NPC Solo's can have 'mere mortal' attacks.
Of course the DC, graduated scale, and threshold for 'mere mortal' will need tweaks to fit into the final rules. But this gives two more levers for building that 'back from the brink' fight and puts two more weapons in the players kit for 'defeating' enemies.
RangerWickett
Legend
Warning, this post contains game theory stuff that might get a bit divorced from narrative storytelling.
The trick, to my mind, is to make the players think they won't win, because the enemies are too powerful or numerous. But then, due to the mechanics of the game, they pull ahead incrementally, because the PCs actually have more resources (HP) than they think they do.
That was the genius of healing surges. You see on your sheet that you have 40 HP, and so a monster that has 60 HP and does 20 damage in one hit feels horrifying. But you actually have 60 HP over the course of the fight, thanks to healing powers using your surges, so what looks like an impossible fight is actually fairly balanced.
The trouble, of course, is that 4e expected you to have a lot of "HUGE EPIC FIGHTS" every day, or at least the adventure writers designed modules that way. And people get fed up with having "HUGE EPIC FIGHTS" as random encounters.
I think hit dice actually work fine right now, since you only have a handful per day. I just want some way to use them without having to spend an action (standard action by 3e/PF/4e parlance). Or maybe magical in-combat healing just needs to be strong; I spend 1 action and you spend your hit dice, and we undo 2 or 3 actions worth of monsters-dealing-damage. We get ahead in the action economy by using up a different resource.
The trick, to my mind, is to make the players think they won't win, because the enemies are too powerful or numerous. But then, due to the mechanics of the game, they pull ahead incrementally, because the PCs actually have more resources (HP) than they think they do.
That was the genius of healing surges. You see on your sheet that you have 40 HP, and so a monster that has 60 HP and does 20 damage in one hit feels horrifying. But you actually have 60 HP over the course of the fight, thanks to healing powers using your surges, so what looks like an impossible fight is actually fairly balanced.
The trouble, of course, is that 4e expected you to have a lot of "HUGE EPIC FIGHTS" every day, or at least the adventure writers designed modules that way. And people get fed up with having "HUGE EPIC FIGHTS" as random encounters.
I think hit dice actually work fine right now, since you only have a handful per day. I just want some way to use them without having to spend an action (standard action by 3e/PF/4e parlance). Or maybe magical in-combat healing just needs to be strong; I spend 1 action and you spend your hit dice, and we undo 2 or 3 actions worth of monsters-dealing-damage. We get ahead in the action economy by using up a different resource.
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