Combat Questions

Hi,

A friend and I sat down recently to play test for our group how combat works before we tried to introduce the system to our main group. We were left with some questions about things. For our test we used Sir Mandallan (knight) and Selena (firemage) sample characters from the PDF and we had a them fight in a group against copies of themselves (ie. M&S vs Evil M&S). Here are some impressions and questions that we were left with:

1. Sir Mandallan has a really difficult time killing himself. It takes really good rolls to him himself even with Feinting on each round. Also, the combat between the twins was very boring. Just Feint, Attack, hit/miss, repeat. We had hoped to spice it up a bit but he is apparently unable to trip, disarm, etc. I thought that I had read somewhere that you could accomplish these as opposed checks instead of attack choices, but I have been unable to find anything. Coming from 3.5 and Pathfinder, we were used to having a few more options, even if we were poor at them. I was unable to find any rules for grappling.
2. Sir Mandallan is really good at killing Selena. This is not unexpected since it is a knight attacking a caster in close combat, but with Sir Mandallan's ability to charge, and charge through rough terrain, it made it very difficult for her to evade him especially with a movement disadvantage.
3. Selena has a hard time killing Sir Mandallan. Even if she maintains the gap, her poor range attack skill means she has to roll well to hit him and cannot do so without using Luck if she wants to be further than 30'. She can't really Aim since if she doesn't move and shoot then Sir Mandallan will close with her immediately.
4. Selena has an exceedingly hard time killing herself. Even forgetting the SOAK 5 (fire), she cannot hit herself at range without aiming (barring a rare triple 6) and cannot hit herself at all in melee. In fact, looking through the monsters she can't hit pretty much anything in melee.
5. Selena's magic is very underwhelming. For a caster who has done nothing but take casting classes, she cannot really do very much magic. Granted that my experience with the magic system is very minimal, she seems to have only 2 options Evoke Light and Evoke Fire. However her most damaging fire spell is the exact same range, damage, and hit chance as her Firebolt but have the drawback of taking 2 actions instead of 1. She also does not have the required magic stat to be able to Evoke Light at a level that would allow her to blind anyone.
6. Status effects seem to take forever to stack. For Sir Mandallan to get someone to start bleeding on their own, he would have to crit them 3x, in which case they are probably already dead (or a dragon).
7. Magic, in general, seems pretty weak. I am not sure if this is a design choice (it probably is) but magic seems to lag very far behind melee in damage. Also it seems to lag very far behind other systems as well. It may be that it is a low magic setting, or perhaps a starting character at Rank 5 is only equivalent to a level 1 from 3.5 or Pathfinder.

I know that most of these are probably answerable fairly easily or have been design decisions along the way. So far, we really love many aspects of the system (the Career system, modular spells) but are just looking to make the bridge to our regular group who have the most experience in other systems. Also we are looking to make combat more variable than people just standing and slugging it out or forcing them to take many exploits.

Thank you for your time in reading this and in advance for any answers you can give!

So, I think most of your issues result from comparing a combat character to a non-combat character. Sir Mandallan is a bit of a tank; for characters maxing dice pools out at 5d6, they're only going to hit a 22 about 15% of the time. Combined with his high speed, mount, and charge ability, and he's going to be pretty potent.

Selena is not really built as a combat focused character and yes, will probably lose one-on-one fights vs. combat-focused characters. Her best stats are LOG and MAG. Firebolt has a huge range, however, so in a party she might do okay standing back and aiming. She might also do okay overwatching from a safe place.

It's probably also worth considering that not every encounter will be maxxed-out combat NPCs vs. the party. A much more typical type of encounter might have a bunch of lower quality grunts and one high-powered villain. In such scenes, Selena is the one you have take out the grunts while Mandallan is the one you send against the villain.

On your point 7: your are correct that magic 'out of the gate' doesn't have the combat power of standard weapons. That's intentional; it's lower magic than sword and sorcery. What magic, alchemy, and herbalism provide is flexibility. Having said that, I somewhat agree that Selena as written is not very flexible. I'd probably give her Create 1 History 1 rather than History 2, that way she can create a variety of mundane objects to help the party in non-combat tasks.

Bump Sir Mandallan and Selene up to, say, 10th grade. Give her options along the lines of 8 ranks of movement and the Signature Spell (personal flight) exploit. She'll do much better.

That said, having played a mage/loremaster to grade 13 now, the adage that blasting is the least effective thing a mage can do is definitely valid in WOIN.

I'll take a shot at these!

It sounds like you have two issues:

1) Selena isn't much of a combat blaster; and
2) Magic is more Tolkien than Forgotten Realms.

Flips said:

Hi,
A friend and I sat down recently to play test for our group how combat works before we tried to introduce the system to our main group. We were left with some questions about things. For our test we used Sir Mandallan (knight) and Selena (firemage) sample characters from the PDF and we had a them fight in a group against copies of themselves (ie. M&S vs Evil M&S).

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That's definitely an oddly balanced encounter, and I imagine it would play a bit odd. They're not designed to hit themselves - Mandallan is a high defense tank and medium offence (his job is to be a meat shield) and Selena is a non-combat build. As pre-gens they are both very, very basic, simple characters designed for new players.

Sir Mandallan has a really difficult time killing himself. It takes really good rolls to him himself even with Feinting on each round. Also, the combat between the twins was very boring. Just Feint, Attack, hit/miss, repeat. We had hoped to spice it up a bit but he is apparently unable to trip, disarm, etc. I thought that I had read somewhere that you could accomplish these as opposed checks instead of attack choices, but I have been unable to find anything. Coming from 3.5 and Pathfinder, we were used to having a few more options, even if we were poor at them. I was unable to find any rules for grappling.

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You can always use opposed attribute checks to do things. Exploits don't list the only things you can do (there's no "eating a sandwich" exploit, for example), they just list some things you are particularly good at doing in an efficient attack/effect package. The rules FAQ talks about that a little more. Attribute check actions are deliberately freeform and allow the GM to judge what can and can't be done.

The exploits allow you to do things as a bonus part of an attack, which is better than just doing the thing separately.

Sir Mandallan is really good at killing Selena. This is not unexpected since it is a knight attacking a caster in close combat, but with Sir Mandallan's ability to charge, and charge through rough terrain, it made it very difficult for her to evade him especially with a movement disadvantage.

Selena has a hard time killing Sir Mandallan. Even if she maintains the gap, her poor range attack skill means she has to roll well to hit him and cannot do so without using Luck if she wants to be further than 30'. She can't really Aim since if she doesn't move and shoot then Sir Mandallan will close with her immediately.

Selena has an exceedingly hard time killing herself. Even forgetting the SOAK 5 (fire), she cannot hit herself at range without aiming (barring a rare triple 6) and cannot hit herself at all in melee. In fact, looking through the monsters she can't hit pretty much anything in melee.

Selena's magic is very underwhelming. For a caster who has done nothing but take casting classes, she cannot really do very much magic. Granted that my experience with the magic system is very minimal, she seems to have only 2 options Evoke Light and Evoke Fire. However her most damaging fire spell is the exact same range, damage, and hit chance as her Firebolt but have the drawback of taking 2 actions instead of 1. She also does not have the required magic stat to be able to Evoke Light at a level that would allow her to blind anyone.

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Combined these four, as they're really the same thing.

The tank is going to be a better combatant than the non-combat character. But yep, she's a weak combatant.

She has illusion, too. I will cop to the fact that she could have been designed a bit better in combat. If I get time today, I'll whip up an alternate version of her focused one doing a bit more damage.

[*]Status effects seem to take forever to stack. For Sir Mandallan to get someone to start bleeding on their own, he would have to crit them 3x, in which case they are probably already dead (or a dragon).

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At first they're slow, but they speed up later. Too many effects on low grade characters can be frustrating. As the dice pools grow, the conditions come into play more as the odds of rolling three 6s increases. For higher level characters, it's not so much that you do copious amounts more damage or have a lot more HEALTH, but you do start inflicting effects a lot more often.

I did see one group who houseruled that an attack can exchange all its damage for a status track bump. I haven't tried that myself, but if you find you do prefer the idea of status tracks having more effect in early play, give that a try (let me know how it works out!)

Magic, in general, seems pretty weak. I am not sure if this is a design choice (it probably is) but magic seems to lag very far behind melee in damage. Also it seems to lag very far behind other systems as well. It may be that it is a low magic setting, or perhaps a starting character at Rank 5 is only equivalent to a level 1 from 3.5 or Pathfinder.

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Think about magic as being more Tolkien than Forgotten Realms. It is definitely less firebally and flashy (although a higher grade mage can do some pretty potent stuff!); it is a lot more flexible, though.

Here's a quick, alternate build for Selena. I did this really quickly on a scrap of paper off the top of my head, so I hope I didn't make any mistakes. Basically focused on the firebolt. HEALTH and defenses end up low. Loses her flaming touch.

STR 3 (2d6) AGI 7 (3d6) END 3 (2d6)
INT 4 (2d6) LOG 8 (3d6) WIL 4 (2d6)
CHA 6 (3d6) LUC 5 (2d6) REP 2 (1d6)
MAG 7 (3d6)

HEALTH 16
MELEE DEFENSE 14, RANGED DEFENSE 14, MENTAL DEFENSE 14

SPEED 6; CLIMB 3; JUMP 14'/3'

evocation 4 (2d6), abjuration 3 (2d6), creation 1 (1d6), movement 1 (1d6)
perception 3 (2d6), running 1 (1d6), gambling 1 (1d6), dodging 1 (1d6)

MAGIC POINTS 21

Secret of fire
Secret of light
Fire affinity (+1d6 to fire-based attribute checks)
Firebolt, greater (3d6 damage)
Aim (1d6 to ranged attack)
Spellblaster (evocation crits on 2d6)

Greater firebolt 6d6 (3d6 fire damage; range 30'; crits on 2d6)
Dagger 3d6 (1d6+3 piercing damage)

Sample spells
- Shielding (3 MP, abjure self) -- +3 DEFENSE for one minute
- Blinding light (5 MP, evoke light) -- 1d6 damage, 10' cone, blinds targets
- Fireburst (7 MP, evoke fire) -- 2d6 damage, 30' burst around caster
- Fireproofing (7 MP, abjure fire) -- SOAK 14 (fire) for one minute
- Speedup (1 MP; move self) -- +1 SPEED for one minute

-----------------------------------
SELENA: MOBILE ARTILLERY

An alternate build might be worth trying is to try to get her levitation (would need movement 5) and just make her a very mobile hovering firebolt machine. Her magical skill choices would then have to be:

Wizards apprentice evocation, movement -- prestigitation
Mage evocation, movement -- arcane secret (fire)
Firemage evocation, movement -- fire affinity
Firemage evocation, movement -- firebolt
Firemage evocation, movement -- greater firebolt

In this build she has evocation and movement at 5 (2d6). She only knows the secret of fire, and loses the secret of light.

Sample spells:
- Levitate (4 MP, move self) -- move up or down 20' as single action for one minute; only one action per round can do this
- Zoom (7 MP, move self) -- +7 SPEED for one minute

Note that in the second of those builds she can get +1d6 for higher ground when levitating, attacking at 7d6. If she aims, 8d6. Mandallan would be toast!

Morrus - possible error. You can't give up flaming touch as it's a prereq for firebolt. Her firemage career exploits will need to be Flaming touch, Firebolt, Greater Firebolt. Which means losing Fire affinity, dropping her attack values by 1d6.

Of course, I tend to think the prereq for firebolt is a bit stiff, so I have no trouble if a later edition removes it. Given the higher deadliness of non-magic combat, I don't think it would be too unbalancing for a single exploit to give access to a 2d6 ranged attack (and two exploits to make it 3d6).

Morrus said:

Note that in the second of those builds she can get +1d6 for higher ground when levitating, attacking at 7d6. If she aims, 8d6. Mandallan would be toast!

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The "levitating artillery" version would be excellent at overwatch. I was initially going to say that that giant attack dice pool was a waste, given the 5d6 cap. But with an INT of 4 and a 7d6 pool, in overwatch she can attack (up to) 4 targets per round at 5d6, 5d6, 5d6, and 4d6, all while being essentially immune to melee and not using MP for blasting. Truly deadly.

Thank you all with your replies. We just thought that a mirror match would give us a "balanced" fight between two sets of combatants. I guess you are right, I had thought that Selena was more of a blaster than she really is, and seeing the retooled version give a good example of how a more "blaster" focused character would look. Although I agree with IvyMike about the adage, damage is one way that people tend to compare magical power.
[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: I know it isn't trying to be D&D, but I know that this system is meant to be quite flexible to be able to work in many different settings. If we were trying to more accurately replace the higher magic setting, other than increasing the MP slightly, do you have any suggestions about how to rescale the damage progression?

Thanks again so much. Everyone's answers have been very helpful.

Flips said:

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: I know it isn't trying to be D&D, but I know that this system is meant to be quite flexible to be able to work in many different settings. If we were trying to more accurately replace the higher magic setting, other than increasing the MP slightly, do you have any suggestions about how to rescale the damage progression?

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If you just want spellcasters to do more damage, just give 'em an extra d6 of damage when using evocation or something, I guess. Maybe tie it to an exploit ("Evocation Specialist") so it's not quite so easy.

Evoker (requires evocation 6+). When dealing damage with an evocation spell, you gain an additional +1d6 damage as long as you are doing at least 1d6 damage to start with.