Skill Combat - quick combat resolution

[LostSoul]

Well, he would still only do the regular amount of damage, wouldn't he? (Or am I misunderstanding something?)

Yeah, just normal damage. You could have it mean the rogue's hand is chopped off, or not, but that's the sort of thing that should come up in the declaration phase. It's a DM call. (I would only do that if the character dropped to 0 HP from that attack.)

It seems like that could get tedious if basically every time the fighter does his action he also has to say "oh, and by the way, I maneuver so that if he attacks someone else or tries to move away I can hit him, and if someone else tries to move past me I can hit him" every round in order to be eligible to use OAs and Combat Challenge.

Yeah, I noticed that. I'll have to see how it goes.

Another thing; can someone declare multiple actions in a round? For example let's say in the rogue example, after the rogue's arm was pinned the rogue said "I wriggle out of the pin and then stab the guy in the back." Is that two separate rolls (an acrobatics roll or something to get out and then an attack roll) or just one roll? How does that work with the initiative? Can the character even do this? Basically, are characters still bound by the "move, minor, and standard" action limit? (Even if they were the situation above could still arise, because getting out of a grab is a move action.)

You are bound by the move/minor/standard suite of actions. There's no clear "you can do this" stuff, because it's up to the DM to use his judgement to decide what's acceptable and what's not. That move by the Rogue seems acceptable to me.

There's only one roll made*, and the DM determines what the modifier is. The guideline is whatever fits best. That's another DM judgement call.

* - There are actually cases where more than one roll is made. If you're making a close or area attack, you roll once to set the order your action comes up, and then you roll the rest of your attacks. This can mean stuff like friendly fire or dropping a fireball on a vacated area. The chaos of combat is maintained!

The other case is when your roll ties with someone else. Then you roll init to set the order - the winner going first. I might drop that, though. I think I added it in just to make Init checks matter. I guess you could roll Init for other actions, if it fits best.

 

[vagabundo]

Have you playtested this more? I'm interested in any updates/ideas you have for the system.

 

[LostSoul]

Not yet; I keep putting it off.

I am looking at the "Currency" of play and how everything works together right now. It's pretty interesting stuff, actually.

By Currency I mean how the different elements of the character sheet interact with each other, how a change in one place leads to a change somewhere else. I am including how the character relates to the setting as an element of character, even though I'm not sure how it will end up on the sheet yet.

For example, with Divine characters the currency should make the choice of god or worldview an important element of play, because how the character decides to uphold the tenets of the faith, spread the word, perform his duties, and relate to other brothers of the cloth all relates to stuff on the character sheet. All the stuff on the character sheet points at these decisions and leaves a blank space to be filled in by the actions of the character during play.

It's about how you refresh Daily powers, why you'd want to go on a specific adventure, and how you spend the GP and XP you get on those adventures.

I'm reworking this right now and I'm not sure how it's going to work for Martial characters.

 

[Ferghis]

Sorry about the necro, but this was the best thread I found, and I'm sure folks have thought about this before, so I wanted their feedback on the idea.

I'm looking for a way to resolve trivial combats VERY fast at high paragon and epic levels. Something involving very few rounds of die rolls. I have not tried this yet. Again, this would be good when dealing with trivial combats, where there are more monster HP than PC HP, but the outcome is nonetheless heavily skewed in the PC's favor. It basically figures out the number of surges used.The idea is this:

1) If one side has surprise, only that side attacks on the first round.
2) Each sides sorts the order in which their actors take damage. Damage is allocated in that order.
3) Each actor calculates the maximum damage it can inflict with a standard action using only non-daily powers, add one round of ongoing damage (if any) without including crit dice or using action points. For monsters that boost damage in certain situations, assume those situations are the case. If the power attacks multiple targets, note how many (I would use a 25x3 kind of notation). If it is a blast or burst power, DM determines the number of additional targets it has, perhaps averaging on one target per every 4 squares affected.
4) Everyone rolls a d20 and adds either their initiative or attack bonus.
5) The highest roll applies their damage to the targets as listed in the initiative order (basically assuming everything hits and does max damage).
6) Rolls that damage targets that have not had a chance to act yet apply the following additional effects (multi-role actors can choose):
- Defender/Soldier: deny one enemy's additional effect
- Controller: one enemy moves to bottom of enemy damage order
- Striker/Skirmisher/Lurker/Artillery: select targets (ignore the order list)
- Leader: do no damage; instead, apply one ally's damage to an additional target
7) Leaders calculate the maximum amount they can heal with non-standard action non-daily powers in one turn, the number of targets, and apply that healing every turn.
Repeat 4-7 until only 1 or 2 monsters left, who flee or surrender.

As an example, let's assume a party with a striker (110 HP), a defender (130 HP), a leader (110 HP), and a controller (80 HP) encounter (sans surprise) a group of 4 minions, 2 soldiers (165 HP), 2 artillery (130 HP) and a lurker (90 HP).
1) No Surprise
2) The players sort their damage order as defender, leader, striker, controller. DM decides that the minions take damage first, then the soldiers, then the artillery, then the luker.
3) Damage:
- Defender: 40
- Leader: 35
- Striker: 80x2
- Controller: 30x4
- Minion: 15
- Soldier: 35
- Artillery: 40
- Lurker: 40x2
4-6a) Roll results (sorted):
- Striker: 41 (applies damage to first soldier, who has 85 HP left and first artillery, who has 50 HP left)
- Minion: 40 (defender has 115 HP left)
- Defender: 39 (kills one minion (3 left) and denies lurker's additional effect)
- Controller: 39 (kills other 3 minions, first soldier now has 55 HP left, and moves other soldier to bottom of enemy damage list)
- Lurker: 39 (leader: 70 HP left and striker: 70 HP left; additional effect removed by defender)
- Artillery: 37 (controller has 40 HP left)
- Soldier: 36 (defender has 80 HP left)
- Minion: 35 (leader has 55 HP left)
- Artillery: 34 (striker has 35 HP left)
- Soldier: 28 (controller has 5 HP left)
- Minion: 28 (defender has 100 HP left)
- Minion: 25 (leader has 40 HP left)
- Leader: 23 (first artillery now has 15 HP left, no additional effect due to low roll)
7a) Leader heals surge value +20 HP to controller (controller now has 45 HP left)
4-6 b) Roll results (sorted), damage order starts from top of list:
- Artillery: 40 (selects striker as target, who is now dying - will not act next round)
- Striker: 39 (kills first soldier)
- Controller: 38 (kills first artillery, second artillery has 100 HP left, kills lurker, second soldier has 135 HP left, and moves second artillery to bottom of damage list)
Since only second soldier and second artillery are left, they flee.

I particularly need feedback on the additional effects and need other ways to heal PCs.

 

[LostSoul]

Heh, thread necro.

I am playing tonight and I'm still using this combat system, though it's come a long way over the past two years (or whatever it's been). Here are my current thoughts:

• I'm not sure how fast it is, but I never think about combat length any more, so I guess it's good enough.
• I'm not sure HP work out "right" but it seems to work ("feels right").
• I could probably use something easier for morale checks.
• Movement works but whatever rule I use at the table is hard to describe.
• Moving from damage based on weapon type to the attack's action has really made things come alive.

Here's the current "one-page reference sheet" (it's actually 3 pages). I don't know if it's going to help that much for what you're looking for, but maybe it's worth a look.