[PoL] Some Thoughts on Action Denial

[C4]

There's quite a large difference between being dazed and being stunned. Even between being dazed and being staggered -- that's dazed, with the added restriction that 'you can only pick a minor or a move.' You might even say there's a huge difference.


A dazed enemy is somewhat constrained if not already conveniently positioned, but can usually still attack and thus reliably contribute to his allies' success. But a stunned or even a staggered enemy almost might as well not exist.


This is a problem for my Points of Light project, because each controller has a feature that upgrades certain conditions to more extreme conditions -- and a couple of them can upgrade dazed to staggered.


So here's an idea: instead of having multiple action-denial conditions, there's only one of them. Staggered, stunned, one of those two. Anyway, there's just the one, but there's always a certain 'probability of effect' associated with any given power that imposes the condition. Like a hit line might read "X damage, and the target is 50% stunned (save ends)." After being hit, the target starts each turn by rolling to see if it loses its actions that turn, and then ends each turn by rolling a save to end the condition as usual.


This allows more gradual transitions between 'different' conditions. I hate adding strange die rolls to combat, but I know that leaving dazed and staggered/stunned as they are now is going to create uncomfortable system mastery, and generate a bit of understandable annoyance in players. ("An at-will stagger attack? Suweeet!")

 

[Kinak]

My rule of thumb is "only include conditions you're okay inflicting on the players."

Action denial is incredibly unfun in my experience, whether it's locking players out of the game or locking the entire party out of the game by turning an enemy into a punching bag.

So, I'd go for the conditions themselves, if that's within the bounds of your project.

One direction I'd consider is making them instantaneous rather than lasting conditions. Something like stun is shorthand for "Your immediate action is expended, you no longer mark any enemies, and are no longer sustaining any effects." Throw in "drop any held objects" if you're okay with disarm.

Another would be having the effects be bad (combat advantage, no threatened area, vulnerability, etc.), but you can shake them off by burning the appropriate actions. This might work better with your controller set up, because they can upgrade them, increasing the penalties and cost to remove them.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[MoutonRustique]

Action denial is probably the hardest thing to design well... It's usually, very, very boring for the player (very bad) or overpowering for a monster (less bad, but potentially very bad - mostly story side).

The problem is it's just SO expected and possibly ingrained into our vision of combat... and it's almost always the best tactical choice...

I see a few paths possible, but nothing as useful as a concrete answer:
A) using the "off-turn" approach suggested by [MENTION=6694112]Kinak[/MENTION]. In essence, you're removing "true" action-denial from the game. This is the easiest answer to design for, but probably the hardest sell...

B) taking a cue from the 5e packets and making it "until you use X action to stop it" - you have the benefit of player "participation" so it's less boring and you can customize to hurt more of less depending on X. It has merit mainly in the psychological fast-one it's pulling on the player by engaging him to stop the condition (very much like the prone condition of 4e). Easier to sell, but system analysing players may see through it (CharOp will.)

C) reduce to the cost of the action-denial by reducing the value of the actions. (this is my favorite one) This can be accomplished by longer (in rounds, not real-life time) combats, higher prevalence of "opportunity defeats" where victory is gained by more by action X as opposed to X actions.

D) probably in conjonction with C) increase the value of the "not-standard" actions. This is harder to build into the core as it is more efficiently handled in encounter creation. Such as making placement as important as attacks and such. This, however, introduces new problems as these actions will always have greater value (not just when dazed or such) and so will create a new important decision point for the player. This will increase the time a player will take to complete his round, slowing down play - something 4e does not need help with...

OTHER no clue, but I highly doubt these are the only avenues.

Hope this helps in some way.

 

[Garthanos]

My rule of thumb is "only include conditions you're okay inflicting on the players."

Action denial is incredibly unfun in my experience, whether it's locking players out of the game or locking the entire party out of the game by turning an enemy into a punching bag.

So, I'd go for the conditions themselves, if that's within the bounds of your project.

One direction I'd consider is making them instantaneous rather than lasting conditions. Something like stun is shorthand for "Your immediate action is expended, you no longer mark any enemies, and are no longer sustaining any effects." Throw in "drop any held objects" if you're okay with disarm.

Another would be having the effects be bad (combat advantage, no threatened area, vulnerability, etc.), but you can shake them off by burning the appropriate actions. This might work better with your controller set up, because they can upgrade them, increasing the penalties and cost to remove them.

Cheers!
Kinak

I like both of those particularly the latter... very cool.