Legends and Lore - What Can You Do?

[LurkAway]

Closing to melee gives the opponent the first attack. Against an opponent of equal skill, that means you'll almost certainly lose. The orcs will have grown up fighting opponents of equal skill (other orcs), so they'll know this.

Still not following. Take an orc (in 3E and 4E). Have them frequently fight one on one (for bloodfeud, hierarchy, whatever) across all the clans over centuries. Per your logic, whoever wins initiative wins the combat. The orcs knows this, so they breed themselves for the highest Dex.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The example postulated that some PCs used their ranged attacks, while others with melee weapons formed a defensive line. It's not an either/or proposition.

The party would still have melee combatants - they just wouldn't get to do anything.

I would also be extremely surprised if "draw a weapon" didn't become a free action under this system - spending an entire round doing nothing else is going to really suck even if a round is only a couple of minutes long.

Edit to add:

Combat starts. Round one:

Fighter: "I draw my sword!"
Wizard: "I cast fireball!"

Round two:

Fighter: "I move to attack!"
Wizard: "I cast creeping obligation of doom!"

Round three:

Fighter: "I attack!"
DM: "Actually, that orc died last round."
Fighter: "Okay, I move over to attack the next one!"
Wizard: "I blast him with a magic missile!"
DM: "Okay, that orc is dead."
Fighter: "Noooo!"
Wizard: "That's okay, maybe you'll get to attack next combat. After all, fireball is a daily, so I not kill them all..."

Yeah, but it's not like you often can't walk around the defensive line in D&D. (Actually, that should probably be looked into- making it harder for enemies to walk around a Defender.)

If both sides have some ranged and some melee, it's a wash. The ranged will target each other, while the melee try to stop each other from interfering with the ranged. No side loses any attacks.

If the PCs have a mix of melee and ranged, while the Orcs are purely melee, the PC melee will try to stop the Orcs from engaging with the PC ranged but they will likely fail to some extent. Giving the Fighter and the Rogue the job of stopping 4 or more bloodthirsty orcs is a losing proposition. Without some kind of bottleneck, it just isn't going to happen. If the two melee manage to stop 3 orcs, I'd say they're doing a great job! That still, however, leaves at least one orc to interfere with the Ranger or the Wizard. If the PCs were outnumbered at all, it means at least one orc on the Ranger and the Wizard, each. Either way, even with excellent tactics, it doesn't ensure victory at all. The Wizard is now busy trying to escape the orc attacking him, rather than contributing to the battle. Better hope that the Rogue can finish off his Orc quickly, so he can go rescue the Wizard!

Of course if you require an action to ready weapons, there should be an equivalent action to ready spell components. Perhaps that means the Wizard only gets to cast (at best) every other round, because he has to ready components each time he wants to cast. That gives the designers space to make Wizard spells more powerful to compensate, which I expect would detract from the current complaints that martial and arcane attacks are the same.

There are ways to build the game so that a single action works. I'm not certain that it's desirable, but I don't tink it will break the game as you suggest. Personally, after reading [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] 's post, I'm leaning towards a Standard + Move action, myself.

 

[LurkAway]

I see your point. However, if you make a one action per turn type of game you have to make changes. You can't take the 4e rule of prone and then try and stick it in a none 4e system.

There are ways to build the game so that a single action works. I'm not certain that it's desirable, but I don't tink it will break the game as you suggest. Personally, after reading @Balesir 's post, I'm leaning towards a Standard + Move action, myself.

I'm also ambivalent, but I think Naszir is correct to argue that this isn't 4E.

I imagine that, with single actions, "prone" is a serious condition, moreso than in 4E. That is, with all the implied movement that goes on anyway in combat, that sometimes getting knocked down and heroically rolling up is part of standard melee. But getting kicked by a giant or caught by a dragon tail swipe, tossing up like a ragdoll and smacking the ground, blacking out for a second and then getting up -- that would be a 5E single action "prone".

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It seems to me that, "single action, you can either attack, move, or do some other thing," is one obvious place for a game designer to start an RPG combat design. So if it is all that, in all the hundreds of games done so far, surely someone has tried it, liked it, and used it.

Someone name me a published game, which has been played by at least a few people, that uses that model, with each creature taking a turn (i.e. not side vs side, which has its own set of benefits and drawbacks). Then we can talk about how well it works, and what if anything it does to supplement that model (i.e. different abstraction of movement or extra rewards for positioning or whatever).

GURPS might qualify, but for bonus points, name one that does this without using extremely short and limited turns. Hero System doesn't count, because the nature of the speed chart is such that characters are seldom each taking equivalent turns.

In the dim recesses of my mind, I think I remember some wargames that used this model, and didn't work particularly well. Or maybe a few that used it ok, because you'd sacrifice a few units to pin down movement so that your other units can kill. (An overly crowded Ogre or GEV map could be like that at times, though artillery tended to discourage such crowding except in a rush.) But that was a long time ago, and doesn't necessarily translate to an RPG design. (Units representing multiple individuals, and multiple units, changes everything. After all, "Fire and Movement" is really "some fire while others move--then we swap" because moving and firing in a unit is difficult. It seldom translates well to a handful of people in a skirmish.)

 

[Fanaelialae]

It seems to me that, "single action, you can either attack, move, or do some other thing," is one obvious place for a game designer to start an RPG combat design. So if it is all that, in all the hundreds of games done so far, surely someone has tried it, liked it, and used it.

Someone name me a published game, which has been played by at least a few people, that uses that model, with each creature taking a turn (i.e. not side vs side, which has its own set of benefits and drawbacks). Then we can talk about how well it works, and what if anything it does to supplement that model (i.e. different abstraction of movement or extra rewards for positioning or whatever).

GURPS might qualify, but for bonus points, name one that does this without using extremely short and limited turns. Hero System doesn't count, because the nature of the speed chart is such that characters are seldom each taking equivalent turns.

In the dim recesses of my mind, I think I remember some wargames that used this model, and didn't work particularly well. Or maybe a few that used it ok, because you'd sacrifice a few units to pin down movement so that your other units can kill. (An overly crowded Ogre or GEV map could be like that at times, though artillery tended to discourage such crowding except in a rush.) But that was a long time ago, and doesn't necessarily translate to an RPG design.

I think some edition of Shadowrun worked similarly. It's been a while since I looked at the rules but, IIRC, everyone rolls initiative. Everyone takes one action in initiative order, then 10 is subtracted from everyone's roll, and everyone with a positive initiative goes in order again. It's not exactly the same, because those with exceptional initiative get extra turns, but it's close since that's how the first round of turns works.

A Shadowrun game with low initiatives (no wired reflexes) would work pretty similarly, I think.

I can't think of anything that uses this model exactly though.

 

[mrswing]

Everyone seems to be overthinking all this 'actions'-stuff. One action/round is self-explanatory, isn't it? I ready my weapon. I close in on the enemy. I cast a simple spell. I leap down from the balcony. I hit him with my sword . I dodge the blow. I try to pick the lock. I push the table against the door.

I think the Omni-system (Talislanta, the original d20 system which only used a d20 for every action in the game) had one action-rounds.

Advantage of this type of approach is that it becomes so much simpler to teach the game, and it's so much more intuitive. Anyone, gamer or no, can grasp the concept, whereas move vs. standard is already counterintuitive. 2 move actions = 1 standard + 1 move action or 1 full-round action. But 2 standard actions is not equal to 2 move actions. Whereas they occur in exactly the same span of game time.

And once you start with free and swift and immediate actions, you're just complicating things unnecessarily. And, in the case of swift actions, basically to allow for the creation of a whole new slew of feats.

I also don't think that with one action/round, it would take forever for a melee character to get up close and personal. Especially with mini-free or light combat, the declaration of 'I close with the nearest enemy) should be enough. Unless the terrain is especially difficult or hazardous.

And there's also a balancing factor present for magic users vs. melee users: level of spell determines how many actions (= rounds) it takes to cast. A 9th-level spell becomes very hard to pull off in the midst of combat. But if you do make it, you probably win the battle.

Granted, it would make for a very different experience from the current gamist combat in both 4E and 3E/PF. But it would allow new gamers to pick up the basics far quicker, speed up actual play (no more analysis paralysis or painstaking combinations of several types of actions) and in that way improve the sense of immersion. Because in real life and in fiction, this actions budgeting never occurs.

(BTW, a game round should probably be approximately 3 seconds long in this system)

 

[pemerton]

Nah. Get rid of in-combat healing entirely (except Second Wind).

Give every character easy access to out-of-combat healing (via Surges, rituals, whatever). Let the Leaders buff characters, perhaps in a manner supplemental to their attack, but not heal (in-combat).

So in-combat healing may have its perks, but somehow the consequence was that combats became longer, and monster have hit points exactly because PCs are more sturdy (a combo of more hp, surges, and in-combat healing).

It might be nice to have the best of both worlds. Somehow have clerics "go nova" in the "boss" battles, in-combat healing auras allowing for long dramatic battles.

I think that the point of in-combat healing isn't just to make combats last longer. It's to make players have to play the game in order to have their PCs be robust.

Leader buffs, or healing auras, don't have this effect, and so are no substitute for in-combat healing as it currently works (or, at least, as I have experienced it working in 4e).

 

[pemerton]

It seems to me that, "single action, you can either attack, move, or do some other thing," is one obvious place for a game designer to start an RPG combat design. So if it is all that, in all the hundreds of games done so far, surely someone has tried it, liked it, and used it.

Someone name me a published game, which has been played by at least a few people, that uses that model, with each creature taking a turn (i.e. not side vs side, which has its own set of benefits and drawbacks). Then we can talk about how well it works, and what if anything it does to supplement that model (i.e. different abstraction of movement or extra rewards for positioning or whatever).

GURPS might qualify, but for bonus points, name one that does this without using extremely short and limited turns.

I can't earn the bonus points. HARP does it with 2-second rounds, Rolemaster (in at least some versions) with 10-second rounds - although in RM (and maybe HARP - my memory for HARP is a bit patchy) you can trade off the effectiveness of your main action to get some movement back.

Does it work? It tends to produce very non-mobile combats. It produces the problem of getting "round purged" by closing, and then getting whacked before you can whack back. And I suspect the rounds in HARP are far too short and produce strange differences in play for ranged vs melee builds.

Giving a player one action to do each turn (and this is not the same as doing one thing) isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as A) the player still has a good amount of choices to make and B) all play styles are still covered. B means that the round should be structured in such a way that doesn't punish either skirmishers, nor melee types or ranged types. We have that right now with 3e/4e turn structure. We can also have that with a single action per turn. I can think of at least two ways to do this:
1. You have one action per turn and you choose it from a list. Each choice incorporates both activity and movement in varying capacity. For example you have full move action (move up to your speed), skirmish action (move up to half you speed and attack), charge (move up to your speed in straight line and attack), focused attack (move up to 1 square and attack with +2 bonus to hit), etc.

This is getting close to how HARP, and some versions of RM, do it. It has problems - for example, moving and attacking means, in effect, taking a -2 penalty to hit (because you forego the +2 bonus) which strongly discourages movement (although obviously the balance between attacks and defences can make the penalty more or less significant).

I think all Monte is looking for here is for his reader's to genuinely think about how the game would work with just one main thing your character does (such as move or attack or cast) so that the supplementary stuff (picking something up or down, opening a door etc.) can be hand-waived. He's not saying that this is the way it should go, he's just asking us to think about the ramifications.

In this regard, I think there might be a neat way of framing this:

Imagine that a round is 3 seconds long.

Now at the moment, it would seem that attacking trumps moving every time. What could be done to "moving" so that the choice between movement and attacking is a little more balanced? How would you make this work?

Good questions. HARP doesn't really provide any answers, in my view.

 

[Mark CMG]

* Mobile Combat (e.g. Move without sacrificing attacks) - it doesn't matter whether characters get a move action distinct from the standard action, or whether characters can move a decent amount (whatever that is) for free, but it important that characters be able to move around without sacrificing attacks.

Perhaps some sort of To Hit penalty for moving certain distances?