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In Search of Flexible Defense Mechanics
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 9250222" data-attributes="member: 63"><p>I have pursued this for a long time. I've tried lots of things, but nothing that's really easy to just slot into existing D&D without a lot of changes.</p><p></p><p>It looks like you're trying to build a whole new combat system, though. Or are you intending to layer this over D&D as is?</p><p></p><p>I worry about the, like, ineffectiveness of many turns. If I roll dice and you roll dice, that's a lot of physical activity and number tracking, but about half of turns nothing happens, right? I mean, in a real fight, sure, there's a lot of probing that accomplishes nothing, but combat already takes a lot of time at the table. Personally I'd rather have a system where stuff happens each turn. </p><p></p><p>I think there's a way to get the feel you want with less time spent just chucking dice that don't actually progress the combat narrative.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well <em>that</em> is basically just Hit Points.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I've made a lot of attempts at building systems with flexible offense/defense systems. Let me mention a few in quick procession of increasing deviation from D&D norm:</p><p></p><p><strong>Stances</strong></p><p>Each turn you pick one of five stances at the start of your turn. The stances give you one reaction you can take. The default stance is Alert, which lets you make opportunity attacks. If you choose a different stance, you can't make OAs.</p><p></p><p>Brandish stance lets you use a reaction to attack someone who moves within reach of your weapon (or who exposes themselves within 30 ft if you have a ranged weapon), but after you use the reaction, enemies have advantage on attacks against you until the start of the next turn. High risk, but potentially high reward.</p><p></p><p>Close stance gives you no reaction. Instead you choose a foe within reach who has no weapons (or natural weapons), or a foe that either you're grabbing or who has grabbed you. You and that enemy are restrained as long as you're adjacent (speed 0, disadvantage on Dex saves and attacks, and attackers have advantage against you).</p><p></p><p>Defender stance lets you use a reaction to impose disadvantage on a single attack if the attacker or target is within your reach. (It's a bit more fiddly than that, because ranged attacks are weird, but that's the gist.)</p><p></p><p>Evasive stance lets you use a reaction to move half your speed when targeted by something, but then you're slowed on your next turn. After the movement happens, your opponent can use more of their movement to try to still hit you. It's most useful for leaping to cover to avoid ranged attacks or to get out of the area of fireballs.</p><p></p><p>Also I thought of maybe having a Focus stance, that grants no reaction but gives you some perk (like it charges up limited-use abilities) or lets you recover HP if you can go a whole round without getting hit.</p><p></p><p><strong>Aegises</strong></p><p>Inspired by the way the Fantasy Flight Games edition of the Legend of the Five Rings card game did its victory condition. In L5R you don't just have a life total like in Magic: the Gathering. You have four provinces and one stronghold, and with each attack your opponent targets <em>one</em> of the provinces (each of which has some effect - maybe a perk that helps you, or a backlash that punishes the attacker). </p><p></p><p>Only once they've broken three provinces can they attack the stronghold, and they have to break the stronghold to win the game.</p><p></p><p>In a TTRPG form, this would require a lot of special design. Like, maybe each turn you pick one aegis to be active, and if your enemies do at least X damage to you, they break your aegis and you've got to switch to a new defensive style. Like maybe one aegis is "swashbuckling" and it lets you move faster when you have it active, and attacks with light weapons do less damage because you can parry them, while a fire wizard might have "fire shell" which does a bit of fire damage to people who attack, but cold damage against them is increased?</p><p></p><p>It would require a lot of design to make interesting options that don't feel too "disassociated" from the narrative, though.</p><p></p><p><strong>Streets of Rage(sia)</strong></p><p>The War of the Burning Sky adventure path involves an empire called Ragesia. One of my friends made a joke about the beat-em-up video game Streets of Rage turning into Streets of Ragesia, and I, well, designed a whole combat system around it.</p><p></p><p>The gist is that each player has a pool of 6d6, and they have a roster of abilities that cost dice of a certain value. At the start of the turn, each player rolls all their dice and keeps the results. Then people take turns spending dice to do stuff.</p><p></p><p>A light attack might cost a die of value 2 or higher. A special move might cost 4 or higher. A super move costs 6. You can use dice of value 1 to do stuff like dash, grab, and trigger non-damaging abilities.</p><p></p><p>The thing is, you don't roll to attack. If you spend a die, you succeed at the thing (some exceptions apply with bosses). But it's engaging because you play your turn differently each time because you have slightly different options, and each character has some abilities that combo well with other players - but those players have different dice each turn, so you aren't always spamming the same combos.</p><p></p><p>As for enemies, mooks only roll 1 die, and they roll it whenever they take their turn. Each mook would have 2 abilities - one attack (that might cost 2+ or 4+) and one gimmick (that can be triggered with a 1+ die). If a mook rolls a 6, they roll an extra die and get to take two actions.</p><p></p><p>So if you've got like 4 PCs versus 12 mooks, the turn would start, and the four PCs would each roll 6d6 and set them aside. Then play would progress back and forth, with one PC, then one mook, then another PC, then another mook. Each time, someone spends a die (or a mook rolls a die to see what he does), and the mooks would typically end up finishing first because they have a total of 12 actions (well, 14 on average with exploding dice), while the PCs get 24 actions.</p><p></p><p>To add a smidge of complexity, each PC also gets a once per combat "defensive save" that blocks an incoming attack and does something nifty. </p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p>I really like my Streets of Ragesia design, but sadly I haven't managed to get my players to test it yet.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 9250222, member: 63"] I have pursued this for a long time. I've tried lots of things, but nothing that's really easy to just slot into existing D&D without a lot of changes. It looks like you're trying to build a whole new combat system, though. Or are you intending to layer this over D&D as is? I worry about the, like, ineffectiveness of many turns. If I roll dice and you roll dice, that's a lot of physical activity and number tracking, but about half of turns nothing happens, right? I mean, in a real fight, sure, there's a lot of probing that accomplishes nothing, but combat already takes a lot of time at the table. Personally I'd rather have a system where stuff happens each turn. I think there's a way to get the feel you want with less time spent just chucking dice that don't actually progress the combat narrative. Well [I]that[/I] is basically just Hit Points. I've made a lot of attempts at building systems with flexible offense/defense systems. Let me mention a few in quick procession of increasing deviation from D&D norm: [B]Stances[/B] Each turn you pick one of five stances at the start of your turn. The stances give you one reaction you can take. The default stance is Alert, which lets you make opportunity attacks. If you choose a different stance, you can't make OAs. Brandish stance lets you use a reaction to attack someone who moves within reach of your weapon (or who exposes themselves within 30 ft if you have a ranged weapon), but after you use the reaction, enemies have advantage on attacks against you until the start of the next turn. High risk, but potentially high reward. Close stance gives you no reaction. Instead you choose a foe within reach who has no weapons (or natural weapons), or a foe that either you're grabbing or who has grabbed you. You and that enemy are restrained as long as you're adjacent (speed 0, disadvantage on Dex saves and attacks, and attackers have advantage against you). Defender stance lets you use a reaction to impose disadvantage on a single attack if the attacker or target is within your reach. (It's a bit more fiddly than that, because ranged attacks are weird, but that's the gist.) Evasive stance lets you use a reaction to move half your speed when targeted by something, but then you're slowed on your next turn. After the movement happens, your opponent can use more of their movement to try to still hit you. It's most useful for leaping to cover to avoid ranged attacks or to get out of the area of fireballs. Also I thought of maybe having a Focus stance, that grants no reaction but gives you some perk (like it charges up limited-use abilities) or lets you recover HP if you can go a whole round without getting hit. [B]Aegises[/B] Inspired by the way the Fantasy Flight Games edition of the Legend of the Five Rings card game did its victory condition. In L5R you don't just have a life total like in Magic: the Gathering. You have four provinces and one stronghold, and with each attack your opponent targets [I]one[/I] of the provinces (each of which has some effect - maybe a perk that helps you, or a backlash that punishes the attacker). Only once they've broken three provinces can they attack the stronghold, and they have to break the stronghold to win the game. In a TTRPG form, this would require a lot of special design. Like, maybe each turn you pick one aegis to be active, and if your enemies do at least X damage to you, they break your aegis and you've got to switch to a new defensive style. Like maybe one aegis is "swashbuckling" and it lets you move faster when you have it active, and attacks with light weapons do less damage because you can parry them, while a fire wizard might have "fire shell" which does a bit of fire damage to people who attack, but cold damage against them is increased? It would require a lot of design to make interesting options that don't feel too "disassociated" from the narrative, though. [B]Streets of Rage(sia)[/B] The War of the Burning Sky adventure path involves an empire called Ragesia. One of my friends made a joke about the beat-em-up video game Streets of Rage turning into Streets of Ragesia, and I, well, designed a whole combat system around it. The gist is that each player has a pool of 6d6, and they have a roster of abilities that cost dice of a certain value. At the start of the turn, each player rolls all their dice and keeps the results. Then people take turns spending dice to do stuff. A light attack might cost a die of value 2 or higher. A special move might cost 4 or higher. A super move costs 6. You can use dice of value 1 to do stuff like dash, grab, and trigger non-damaging abilities. The thing is, you don't roll to attack. If you spend a die, you succeed at the thing (some exceptions apply with bosses). But it's engaging because you play your turn differently each time because you have slightly different options, and each character has some abilities that combo well with other players - but those players have different dice each turn, so you aren't always spamming the same combos. As for enemies, mooks only roll 1 die, and they roll it whenever they take their turn. Each mook would have 2 abilities - one attack (that might cost 2+ or 4+) and one gimmick (that can be triggered with a 1+ die). If a mook rolls a 6, they roll an extra die and get to take two actions. So if you've got like 4 PCs versus 12 mooks, the turn would start, and the four PCs would each roll 6d6 and set them aside. Then play would progress back and forth, with one PC, then one mook, then another PC, then another mook. Each time, someone spends a die (or a mook rolls a die to see what he does), and the mooks would typically end up finishing first because they have a total of 12 actions (well, 14 on average with exploding dice), while the PCs get 24 actions. To add a smidge of complexity, each PC also gets a once per combat "defensive save" that blocks an incoming attack and does something nifty. --- I really like my Streets of Ragesia design, but sadly I haven't managed to get my players to test it yet. [/QUOTE]
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