Why Must I Kludge My Combat?

[Scribble]

Scribble, you just seem to be coming off as unnecessarily passive-aggressive and snarky. Perhaps I'm reading you wrong dude, the internet isn't the best place to get a feel for someone, and if you are being genuine I apologize... but I just don't see the point of discussing this with you as you seem more intent on nit-picking details than actually discussing the issue of the thread.

No hard feelings though, because in the end it's just a game.

Imaro- I think you're right as I get the same feeling with you? Maybe all the long edition wars have put us all on edge about everyone else?

My intention isn't to nitpick details- I'm just trying to find where people are coming from as far as play style, as it appears mine is different then others.

When you asked your question, honestly I wanted to know when you considered a fight over.

So if we can keep discussing this, without getting snippy at each other- I'd like too, as I think talking with people who have different opinions then I do is a good way for all involved to learn things...

Hug it out?

We could argue semantics all night, so let's change the term to "DM judgement." I think we can agree that monsters running away, without an Intimidate check, is a DM judgement call in 4E.

I think this is key though, as to me DM judgement and DM fiat mean two different things. (Maybe I'm the only one that does?)

To me DM judgement is the area that is kind of coded into the rules to allow a little more leeway with whatever situation presents itself. The important part though, is the DM is doing it based on his reading of the rules in combination with the situation at hand. There isn't really a rule there because a rule would most likely cause more problems and weirdness then it would resolve.

DM fiat on the other hand I've always seen as a little more heavy handed, in that it's more the DM deciding this is how it should work normally based just on his/her idea of how something should work, or simply because no rule exists in a place that a rule probably SHOULD exist.

In 3e I remember reading that they specifically removed the "morale" rules to give the DM a little more leeway in running the encounter. He could use his own best judgement to decide if a monster should stay, flee, or surrender. It just (in the designers eyes) wasn't something a hard coded rule really worked for. It seems to me, that the 4e designers had the same opinion.

If that's what others consider fiat, then thats where my confusion lies because making monsters run away or surrender when it would be the best tactic to survive (and possibly fight the PCs again) has always seemed like it should just be a judgement call to me, and as such just a part of the game as it should be (as opposed to something the DM does to fix what's missing.)

Now, DMs vary in level of skill. One of the explicit design goals of both 3E and 4E was to support the novice DM, by providing a ruleset which didn't require a lot of DM judgement calls in the regular course of play. Obviously there is room for DM judgement, and players will always do wacky things that aren't covered by the rules, but when the game is running squarely in the center of the intended design space - a straight-up fight against a bunch of dungeon denizens, no tricks - an inexperienced DM should be able to just run things out of the book and have it work.

For the most part I agree, but I think it also for the most part does work, and level of skill just increases someones ability to make it work better.

 

[MerricB]

Sure, this could have been part of it.

And part of the complaints are now that 40-60 minutes is too long for a single basic combat (though 4-8 rounds might be solid).

Could you look to the link I post in my thread?

I think reducing the "moving parts" of D&D combat would be an admirable goal for the game. Less sim in combat, more game, a higher level of abstraction, with easier, less complicated, and, yes, less tactical rules.

The trouble with all of this is too much dialling down leads to a game where you stand in front of a big red button marked "Swing Sword". No tactical positioning, no choice of action. Interesting variation comes from DM Fiat.

Plenty of systems have this type of combat. AD&D (1e) melee combat is very much like this - the fighter is so limited in action, and there's no movement once melee is entered into (save withdrawal, rarely a useful tactic). Of course, it's entirely as a reaction against this form of combat that D&D has moved the way it has. The first big move was in Combat & Tactics back in mid-2e days, where the idea of using miniatures on a grid was properly formalized. From there the 3e system embraced miniatures and combat positioning.

4e definitely hits a high-point for D&D in terms of importance of the battlefield (with all the forced movement options). It's still a fair below the most detailed systems I've seen for such; consider games such as BattleTech!

4e also is pretty high on the "Conditions affecting combatants" list. 1e was mostly "I just deal damage" with spells providing relief from the monotony (as much as you can ever call dealing damage monotonous! ) The joy of 4e is that it cuts down the lists of conditions to an easily memorizable list; it's a fair way away from the 3e list which seemed to be added to whenever a designer had an idea. 3e made things difficult with a lot of stacking and non-stacking bonuses and penalties everywhere. (Did I forget Bard Song again?) 4e is probably easier to track, but for some reasons the tracking seems more difficult and pervasive. (3E combat probably had more modifiers all-up, but as most just affected the PCs, it wasn't such a burden on the DM).

Of course, the reasons we *have* conditions is so that every attack isn't just "I hit for X damage" again and again and again. Still, for some people this is too complicated.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

In 3e I remember reading that they specifically removed the "morale" rules to give the DM a little more leeway in running the encounter. He could use his own best judgement to decide if a monster should stay, flee, or surrender. It just (in the designers eyes) wasn't something a hard coded rule really worked for. It seems to me, that the 4e designers had the same opinion.

Sort of, but in actual fact the Morale rules wandered off to the skill marked "Intimidate".

Cheers!

 

[Imaro]

Imaro- I think you're right as I get the same feeling with you? Maybe all the long edition wars have put us all on edge about everyone else?

My intention isn't to nitpick details- I'm just trying to find where people are coming from as far as play style, as it appears mine is different then others.

When you asked your question, honestly I wanted to know when you considered a fight over.

So if we can keep discussing this, without getting snippy at each other- I'd like too, as I think talking with people who have different opinions then I do is a good way for all involved to learn things...

Hug it out?

Hey no problem, I certainly wouldn't mind continuing the discussion.

 

[Dausuul]

4e also is pretty high on the "Conditions affecting combatants" list. 1e was mostly "I just deal damage" with spells providing relief from the monotony (as much as you can ever call dealing damage monotonous! ) The joy of 4e is that it cuts down the lists of conditions to an easily memorizable list; it's a fair way away from the 3e list which seemed to be added to whenever a designer had an idea. 3e made things difficult with a lot of stacking and non-stacking bonuses and penalties everywhere. (Did I forget Bard Song again?) 4e is probably easier to track, but for some reasons the tracking seems more difficult and pervasive. (3E combat probably had more modifiers all-up, but as most just affected the PCs, it wasn't such a burden on the DM).

While I mostly agree with this, I think 4E to some extent confuses quantity with quality. Many of 4E's tactical elements have limited impact on the flow of combat - a situation exacerbated by the increase in hit-point-to-damage ratios - but still require tracking. Conditions seldom force a drastic change in tactics. They're just annoyances to be suffered through until you make your save.

(On the other hand, forced movement has a huge effect on the battle, which is why interesting terrain is so important in 4E, and why the 4E fighter's "You shall not pass!" shtick puts her head and shoulders above every other defender class. IMO, of course.)

My hope is that 5E will refine and focus 4E's tactical aspect. Design conditions and effects that alter the nature of the battle and force combatants to shift gears; at the same time, limit the number of conditions that get imposed. Strip away the fiddly little modifiers.

Ideally, 5E's math would also work such that a low-powered monster group (relative to the PCs) deals damage quickly and is then slain, 1E-style, while a high-powered group (again relative to the PCs) results in an extended, dramatic combat, 4E-style. This would make it possible to incorporate a mix of "skirmish" and "set-piece" encounters, rather than having nothing but HUGE AWESOME EPIC BATTLES which can too easily become slow sloggy grinding battles instead.

 

[FireLance]

Two main complaints about 3e combat was 1. it was usually over in 3 rounds and 2. it took forever for people to take their turn.

4e addresses #1 with the encounter design, leading to longer, tactical encounters where you can do cool stuff. 4e attempts to address #2 by giving people a handful of powers to choose from rather than a long list for casters and fighters just throwing out attack rolls.

4e's attempt to address #2 fails when you have players that are indecisive, overly tactical, and don't really pay attention to what is going on until it is their turn. The result is you have people taking 5 minutes to take their turn. That's a people issue. There's a guy in my group who takes forever on turns because of that, even when it is a character who is a smashy smash fighter in 3e.

I beg to differ. 4E's attempt to address #2 just flat out fails. Unless you take extraoridnary measures to stop it, 4E is combat is going to take a long time barring some inordiantely good luck on the part of the PC's. Indecisive players can add to combat length (I personally know someone that is very bad for this) but that really doesn't have as much to do with the system as the person. You can't blame long 4E combats on slow players, because they will most likely be slow regardless of the system. The problem is that 4E combat takes a long time by default with or without indecisive players. The indecisive players just make it take longer.

I would distinguish between the total amount of time that combat takes and the amount of time that each individual player takes for his turn.

I think that 4E changes such as reducing the number of options available to spellcasters and requiring PCs to share actions with their mounts, companions and summoned creatures was an attempt to reduce the time taken by individual players on their turn. I might have made an argument here that 4E could have increased the time taken by melee characters on their turns since the number of options they have been given has increased, but it has been pointed out that melee characters actually had more options in 3E since they are no longer able to trip, sunder, disarm or overrun in 4E without selecting specific powers. Hence, melee characters should also take less time on their turns than they did in 3E.

However, the desire to have more tactically interesting fights (by which I mean fights in which it is advantageous for the PCs to change tactics from time to time) also necessitated more combat rounds per fight. This would (of course) offset the time saved on each player's turn. If each player takes half the time for his turn in each round, but combats are twice as long in terms of rounds, the total amount of time spent in combat will still be the same.

Nonetheless, even if the length of time spent in combat is the same, players will have less time to wait between turns, and that might help to keep them engaged in the game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Could you look to the link I post in my thread?

Yeah, I'm basically in agreement with the ideas in your LJ post.

I do wonder how "combat should take about an hour" became a design goal, because it would seem that the problems in that would become evident in playtesting, even for "lunch hour games" and the like.

The trouble with all of this is too much dialling down leads to a game where you stand in front of a big red button marked "Swing Sword". No tactical positioning, no choice of action. Interesting variation comes from DM Fiat.

...and then you have Skill Challenges.

I think there's a fertile middle ground. Consider Skill Challenges at one unpleasant extreme for me, and 4e combat at the other. Closing the gap between them would improve both. I should have powers I can use that aren't combat-related (personally, I've been giving Rituals a close look for this). I should also have fewer choices to make when beating the face of some goblins in (personally, getting rid of the grid and using abstract battlefields with binary melee/ranged powers makes a lot of sense).

The joy of 4e is that it cuts down the lists of conditions to an easily memorizable list; it's a fair way away from the 3e list which seemed to be added to whenever a designer had an idea. 3e made things difficult with a lot of stacking and non-stacking bonuses and penalties everywhere. (Did I forget Bard Song again?) 4e is probably easier to track, but for some reasons the tracking seems more difficult and pervasive. (3E combat probably had more modifiers all-up, but as most just affected the PCs, it wasn't such a burden on the DM).

4e making many conditions more codified, and reducing the buff effect, was a great thing. But there's still a lot of fiddly moving parts. As it ramped down the random +1's, and clamped down on sim-style moves like disarm and grapple, it ramped up the "pull, push, shift, slide" and the "cover, concealment, difficult terrain," and the "minor, free, standard, move, reaction, daily, at-will, encounter, burst, blast, close," and simply upped the quantity of stuff to do (more powers! more stuff in a turn!).

4e slightly diminished bookeeping overall, but also ramped up the raw information that you need to juggle overall. Which is part of what the OP was griping about.

Of course, the reasons we *have* conditions is so that every attack isn't just "I hit for X damage" again and again and again. Still, for some people this is too complicated.

For me, I'm comfortable making one choice on my turn, and seeing the results of that choice.

A simple cause-effect.

Even if that effect can be quite varied, only being able to do a single thing, from a limited list, makes deciding what to do quicker, which streamlines combat overall.

I don't care about the raw quantity of conditions in existence, really. There can be a new specific condition for each individual power, if you wanted. The trouble comes when you're juggling more than one condition per creature over different durations. When the moving parts increase. When it's less "fire and forget."

This helps to approach that middle ground I was talking about, where you have some interesting options, but where you don't loose the momentum picking a card from your deck of a dozen, deciding 6 different times which squares to occupy, carefully parceling out actions to different abilities, and doing at least 4 other things, all on one turn.

Long turns, I think, grind combat more thoroughly than long combats.

 

[Ariosto]

Of course, it's entirely as a reaction against this form of combat that D&D has moved the way it has.

Of course, it's partly D&D moving as it has that made it a big issue in the first place.

In shooting and throwing, 4e I think has to stretch further to come up with funky stuff at its level than is the case with hand-to-hand fighting. Fortunately, there's no shortage of inspiration in such sources as Hong Kong "gun-fu" movies. (I don't think it's just coincidence that, as in Exalted, the powers have names evocative of Asian cartoon martial arts.)

That funky stuff, though, is not what "tactics" means in military-historical terms. We're really getting down here to fine points of individuals' techniques or moves, albeit fantastic ones. From these, small-unit tactics peculiar to the game emerge, but the building blocks are more along the lines of choosing particular parries in a game of fencing duels.

O/AD&D is, properly speaking, an eminently tactical (as well as strategic) game. One can apply lessons from Kadesh or Culloden -- provided one has the forces.

Having the forces in the first place, though, has been pretty generally deprecated. Instead of mustering combatants enough to deploy into useful formations, the 4e adventure more probably amounts to but 4 or 5 individuals. Worse yet, the fashion in tactics seems too often to be "split up, rush to engage, get pinned down and surrounded, call for fire support".

I would even say that making fights take longer probably came first. Way back in the 1970s, going back even to Arneson's Blackmoor, people were adding complications that did not really add so much in the way of decisions to make round by round, as simply in more numbers to add, dice to roll, and tables to look up.

Sort of, but in actual fact the Morale rules wandered off to the skill marked "Intimidate".

The first time I ran 4e, I didn't know about that -- so, when the players took out the enemy leader in a spectacular first-round assault, I made off-the-cuff checks vs the rank-and-file Will. That was just because it made sense to me, considering the situation, but it turned out to be fortuitous because a couple of the players had to leave before we would have finished the fight. In the event, there was some interesting intra-party conflict over how to treat with the foe.

 

[xechnao]

The trouble with all of this is too much dialling down leads to a game where you stand in front of a big red button marked "Swing Sword". No tactical positioning, no choice of action. Interesting variation comes from DM Fiat.

I am positive that a game can be designed where this does not happen. Interesting action choices for fighters without the grid. There is a bunch of games that have been doing this, for example "The Riddle Of Steel". It uses no minis but the system has tactical choices that have to do with medieval martial equipment esoterics. Personally I am not interested in this kind of thing -but it is proof that what you are talking about is not true. Personally, I want combats to play out like what you see in "Prince of Persia" and this to be done on mechanics that support this sort of thing. I am trying to see how to design something that can be like this.

4e definitely hits a high-point for D&D in terms of importance of the battlefield (with all the forced movement options). It's still a fair below the most detailed systems I've seen for such; consider games such as BattleTech!

BattleTech uses a grid. Battlefield importance is not the same as grid gameplay. You could abstract the important points of a battlefield and the way of interacting with them. There are many ways to implement battlefield importance. Depending on the media itself, a narrative will approach it differently than a cinema film, a tabletop game will approach it differently than a video game. Moreover, narratives, cinema, tabletops and video games, all within their own medium have possibilities of different ways and techniques that can have different results and effects for the final product.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I am positive that a game can be designed where this does not happen. Interesting action choices for fighters without the grid.

I am absolutely certain as well. I played in such a game last night.

For those interested in modifying combat in 3e-ish D&D, Codex Martialis is a fantastic system that captures individual tactics very well without using a grid.


RC