I would agree. Probably add a clause that says "you cannot interrupt a creature that you have been engaged with this round".
This sounds like a very good solution, which I immediately took to playtesting! But in 5e, the concept of round for powers in general is not meant to be "until the last count of initiative", but instead it's meant as "until the creature's next turn". And when you have a lot of creatures in combat, this becomes a nuisance to track... so I took your solution, but limited to the current turn instead:
- If a creature Disengages, all the creatures it were Engaged with cannot Intercept it until the end of its turn.
I've always been interested in trying 5E with TotM, but the few times I've attempted it with other systems it's just never clicked.
This is the best looking TotM style I've seen to date.
I do have a couple questions though. Maybe I missed it in the document, but hopefully it wasn't something obvious I glossed over.
1. Is there a limit to the number of creatures that can Engage another creature?
This one seems to be no. If there is no limit, then in a scenario where the party is vastly outnumbered by enemies (say an orc horde), what would stop 10 of the 20 orcs from all engaging a weak character like the Wizard? In a standard 4 man party, the max your party could Intercept is 3 of the 10, leaving 7 of them Engaging your Wizard.
It's possible this is by design.
Yes, this is by design.
As a DM, you can always limit the number of simultaneous engagements, but in practice this rarely comes into play.
As an aside... even when using a grid, there is nothing preventing 10 orcs from engaging the wizard, except for the physical space itself, which is already pretty generous (up to 8 squares surrounding the wizard, up to 24 squares if the enemies are using reach weapons). And much before that, by the time you have 2-3 orcs engaged with a wizard, things are already going downhill...
2. Is there a limit on how many creatures can Intercept a single enemy's movement?
By my reading, I do not see one. In a similar scenario of 20 enemies to 4 PC's, what would prevent 10 enemies from all Intercepting the Fighter's movement in a single turn? In grid play, the maximum number of creatures that can be adjacent to you is 8. In this TotM system, that number is either limitless, or limited by DM adjudication. For the most part, those 10 enemies don't gain a benefit from all Intercepting until the Fighter wishes to break the Engagements and move away. At that point, he either uses the Disengage action, or suffers 10 separate opportunity attacks.
This may also be by design.
I actually had to reread this a few times to understand what you wanted to do.
No, it's not possible for a Fighter to be Intercepted by 10 enemies simultaneously in a single turn.
When a Fighter attempts to Engage a creature, he can be Intercepted by another enemy. Even if there are 10 enemies willing to Intercept him, as soon as the first Interception happens, he is already Engaged with this enemy, and his original engagement failed. The other 9 enemies cannot keep on Intercepting, as there is nothing to Intercept any longer...
I'm also curious about the choice to have Engage be an Action if already Engaged. I agree with some of the other posters than an Action is a large investment in an average 3 round combat. As a Bonus Action it would still compete with many class features and therefore require tactical use, but it would not in most cases take away your ability to affect the encounter for a round.
For what you've said about the Fighter being able to Engage all combat long, isn't that a perk of the class? Fighter's do still have Second Wind that requires a Bonus Action, and may be two-weapon fighters that require their Bonus Action. Even if a battle goes on for 5 rounds, the Fighter has only accumulated an extra 4 Engagements, and during those 5 rounds, enemies might have moved away and suffered the opportunity attack, or Disengaged and what have you. Unless those enemies already had planned to battle the Fighter, I don't believe you will often see enemies sticking to the Fighter if they don't want to. The point of the Fighter collecting Engagements is to prevent those enemies from Intercepting the Fighter's allies, and to force those enemies to either sacrifice their Action with Disengage, or suffer an opportunity attack cost to Engage someone else. All in all, I think that sounds like exactly the kind of thing a front line combatant is all about.
Thoughts?
Let me try to clarify this, as it comes up often.
There are actually two separate systems in the same PDF:
1. The Engagement Rules + Freedom of Movement + Range and Area Conversions, this is the "core system".
2. The Roshambo-Style Tactical Movement, this is the "expansion to the core system".
The first part ("core system") is intended to make TotM easy to track and adjudicate. If you want to play TotM with minimum modifications to the current rules, you can completely ignore the Roshambo Tactical Movement ("expansion"). You will Engage with creatures in combat as part of your movement (in the same way that happens in Grid combat). And just like Grid play, you will usually stay Engaged with this creature until you kill it and move on to the next one...
What I mean is: The main form of engaging creatures is just moving up to them and becoming Engaged (or having they Engage you in their turn). You don't have to spend an Action to do that, and all the perks of the Fighter class work as intended.
But in TotM play, this quickly degenerates into boring combat, as the tactics are very, very shallow.
Tactics are basically reduced to "will I spend or save a power, and, will I attack or support"...
And that's where the second part, the optional part, the "expansion" comes along:
It gives every combatant "small tactical powers", that simply add more depth to the tactics in TotM, to make combat more interesting. Now you have more
decision points in combat: Will I spend my reaction to Intercept, or save it to make an opportunity attack? Will I spend my Action to Dash, or should I trust that the enemy won't Intercept me? Should I burn an Action to lock down an additional enemy now and be able to make an opportunity attack later, or risk being unable to do anything if it goes for a weaker party member when its turn comes up?
It's just options.
Combat already works without them.
@
volanin
The update looks great!
I finally had a chance to look at the Roshambo update. It handles spell areas elegantly. Converting area shapes (cones etcetera) into a maximum number of targets is probably the friendliest way for mind style.
The way that the number of targets counts any allies who are Engaged with a hostile target as extra targets − in order to avoid hitting these allies − is excellent.
Note, for a spell with an area shaped as a circle/sphere/cylinder, the Zone Of Truth example makes ‘size /5’ refer to radius. But perhaps it should refer to diameter?
So, for example, ‘
Fireball (Far 8)’:
20 foot radius sphere ( ≈ 4 five-foot square radius ≈ 50 five-foot squares)
→ 40 feet diameter → ‘8’ targets
Then a 40 foot square (= 8x8 = 64 five-foot squares) → 8 targets
and a 40 foot diameter sphere (about 50 five-foot squares) → 8 targets
are roughly comparable.
Going with diameter also helps ‘aura’ spells. A five-foot radius aura of fire, thus a diameter of 10, would then affect up to 2 targets (who are engaged?).
Actually, it's easier, you're just overthinking it!
The table (which actually comes from the Dungeon Master's Guide) already lists what you want:
Cylinder, Circle and Sphere areas are actually written as
radius ÷ 5 (and not size ÷ 5) and need no extra conversion to "five-foot squares". So, in your example, the Fireball with a 20 foot-radius-sphere would convert directly to
radius ÷ 5, which are 4 targets!
Don't complain about the number of targets being only 4!
These are the official WotC variant rules, not mine!
