Idle Musings: Inverted Interrupts, Focus Fire, and Combat Flow

[Crazy Jerome]

This idea attempts to invert assumptions about "being engaged/distracted" so that the default is that you often are during combat. However, if you aren't, you get extra opportunities, as opposed to penalties/limits when so engaged/distracted.



Help me determine if something like this could work:

• There are no interrupts of any kind. No opportunity attacks, no reactions, etc. If this system leaves any need for such, they are built into stances or something similar (perhaps along Jester's recent proposals), and much diminished in any case.
• If someone tried to nail you last round--melee, missile, magic--doesn't matter--with a direct attack that does hit point damage, you are "engaged". If someone has anything like a 4E mark and applies it you (not already covered by being directly attacked, naturally), you are likewise "engaged".
• If you try to move out of melee at any point during your action, regardless whether someone went after you specifically or not, you are "engaged". If someone draws a bead on you with a ranged weapon or spell but holds it, you are "engaged".
• There might be other things that make you "engaged" (though need to be fairly clear cut) and/or extensions to this framework.
• Being "engaged" doesn't particularly restrict you in the normal rules. It merely keeps you from getting any advantages for being "disengaged".

If "Disengaged", you get one or more of the following (depending up what works--I'm not at all sure):

• You get an "action" point, which you can use this round only. In this system, the actions you can do with such a point are probably a bit more limited than 4E's extra standard action, but maybe not.
• You get some kind of Iron Heroes-style "free" token, which you can use to boost attacks, possibly even accumulating these over time--and that last part being the major difference between the token and the action point.
• You get a bonus to initiative next round (either rerolling, or simply moving you up in the fixed order). For a really nice option here, go with a Dragon Quest mechanic where all "engaged" folks must limit their actions to each other, but then you get to pick freely after they have gone--or alternately, all "disengaged" creatures can act before all "engaged" creatures, regardless of other initiative concerns.
• Certain powerful magic and/or items are only usable when "disengaged," or not nearly as risky when so used.

Comments:

If the rewards for being "free" or "disengaged" are substantial enough (and should be to make this work), then there is a built-in, but unforced disincentive to use "focus fire" to bring down an opponent. It doesn't completely counter (nor should it) the real benefits of putting an enemy down by focusing fire, but it means that doing so has a natural cost in any enemy you leave "free" in the meantime.

The combat might flow more smoothly without any interrupts. Yet there is a strong incentive for anyone "free" to use their more powerful/flexible options to lockdown any "free" enemy. This should give some of the same results as interrupts. There are some possibly interesting dynamics here for warriors and other armored characters trying to protect weaker characters, in that once engaged, enemies will have a harder time getting to the relatively more mobile characters (i.e. more freedom to act). However, enemy ranged attacks can "engage" these weaker characters and make them vulnerable to someone slipping through.

Area effects or "indirect" effects (i.e. debuff as opposed to outright damage) can be relatively powerful in their own sphere, since they don't generally "engage". (You might have alternate rules for things like "fireball" where the direct target of the blast is "engaged", but no one else in the area is.

Thoughts?

 

[Frostmarrow]

Very interesting. Focus fire is not something most people see as a problem at first glance, at least in my experience. I always thought of focus fire as a tactic I could employ to win in wargames. Very interesting indeed to make such tactics less of a no brainer.

I think it's very important for this to work that the circumstances surrounding your engaged status to be simple. Compare, if you like, how opportunity attacks being applicable in a wide range of situations in one edition and only in a few select circumstances in the next.

* If you took damage during the last round you are Engaged. Or if you somehow missed a save or defense.

 

[Dragonblade]

I don't think you necessarily need a whole mechanical framework built arounding being engaged or not. Simply allow players to spend actions to achieve certain combat benefits and you achieve the same effect.

If you use Action points as the currency of combat, you can use them as a sort of cross between IH tokens and how they work in 4e now.

Assuming a 4e style Standard-Move-Minor action system, allow a PC to give up a Standard action at any time to earn an Action point. Then allow players to expend action points for things like bonus Standard actions 4e style (which can be traded for moves or minor actions), to activate more powerful abilities and attacks/damage, recover expended abilities, grant a significant bonus, or a reroll to a die roll, etc.

I also don't think Focus Fire needs mechanical incentives beyond the pros and cons inherent in the tactic.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I also don't think Focus Fire needs mechanical incentives beyond the pros and cons inherent in the tactic.

Currently, those cons would be what?

 

[Minigiant]

Very very interesting. Focus fire was always a simple rpg issue. In a more tactical encounter, focus fire can be mitigated with multiple strong threats (which can cause many near-deaths or deaths).

This system does seem like it will change the feel of the game. It'll go from an old school "control and focus" style to one more like an online co-op shooter where dragons shoots at everyone as "free" guys get headshots and falrag kills.

When the interrupt question came up and opportunity attacks were brought up, I was kind of for not allowing actions that provoke when they would provoke. No casting with a sword in your face. No point plank shots. Running from melee forced a saving throw. Then the different classes would have ways to break the tends. In Crazy Jerome terms; rogues, monks, and assassins can move out of combat without engaging. Half caster classes can cast spells when engaged. Etc.

 

[Gryph]

Why do you think focus fire needs disincentives?

 

[jodyjohnson]

Focus fire makes more narrative sense vs. siege engines, or dragons, or oliphants but not as much against normal humanoids in proportionate numbers.

It seems very metagame (gamist) to have 4-6 attackers target a single humanoid because they know he will be hard to take down (high hp) while ignoring the others because they look like minions. It bothers me in ttrpg and in MMOs

The inverted advantage seems a little cumbersome for the fights with large numbers of combatants where it would be most useful to disincentivize focus fire.

 

[Sunseeker]

How do classes that are "engaged" more often than others benefit?

It seems to read that a lot of ranged, blackup, and general non-front-line classes who it may take a round or two for the enemy to decide to attack, would be benefitting from not being "engaged", while those who would generally benefit the most(ie: the ones surrounded by enemies) would benefit the least.

The point of opportunity attacks and "threatened squares" is battlefield control. The fighter goes up front and basically makes a wall between the enemy and the fighter's allies.

It is however, very simple to fix what you're missing, which is causing a person to be "engaged" when they engage someone else, regardless of if that someone engages them in return.

Essentially, it would limit the bonuses of disengagement(which are quite strong) to immediately at the start of combat, and immediately after you drop your foe.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Why do you think focus fire needs disincentives?

See a couple of good answers in quote below, plus, as implied in Minigiant's reply, heavy focus fire skews the game by causing an arms race--we better get your tough guy, healer, glass cannon (whatever is deemed most effective) down before you do the same to our most effective guy.

A more subtle but pernicious effect of the gamism is to often make sensible actions in fiction sub-optimal. In reality and much of the fantasy fiction, there are times for the sensible course of "you, me, and Fred go hold off the orcs while Wizbang and Five O'Knives take out the evil cleric." This practically never comes up organically in RPGs, but has to be drug kicking and screaming towards that end by mechanics that can only do so much, by definition.

Don't get me wrong, I like 4E-style marking as a very effective example of such a mechanic, but the thing it is trying to solve--don't let the enemy gang up on the wizard or other "softie"--would largely go away if focus fire has sufficient disincentives. Sure, the enemy would still try to get someone on the wizard--or else. But the same thing would now apply to the fighter!

Take two orcs in a corridor, coming around the corner and seeing a fighter a few steps ahead of a wizard. This puts a risk on everyone. If the orcs gang up on the fighter, the wizard will fry one of them fast. If they gang up on the wizard, now the fighter will smack one of them fast. So they quite naturally split. Now, if the fighter tries to gang up on the orcs confronting the wizard, the orc on him will hit that much harder. And same if the wizard, perish the though, should ignore the orc on him to help the fighter out.

There might be special abilities that will help some--almost assuredly will be, since characters will often be out-numbered. It's possible that the fighter, for example, merely by being in front, can force a round of engagement on anyone passing them. An orc can charge the wizard at the cost of diminished actions when he gets there (possibly next round, not now). So maybe 3 orcs versus this party is a better example. Those are the devilish details.

Focus fire makes more narrative sense vs. siege engines, or dragons, or oliphants but not as much against normal humanoids in proportionate numbers.

It seems very metagame (gamist) to have 4-6 attackers target a single humanoid because they know he will be hard to take down (high hp) while ignoring the others because they look like minions. It bothers me in ttrpg and in MMOs

The inverted advantage seems a little cumbersome for the fights with large numbers of combatants where it would be most useful to disincentivize focus fire.

For it to work, it has to be truly inverted from the intent of opportunity attacks. OAs (and OoAs) are designed to be relatively rare, but still allow you to determine what happens if you want to risk one. In this system, it would have to skew heavily towards wanting each opponent engaged as much as possible, so that being "free" is a relatively rare state.

That's one aspect of the "inversion". The other aspect is the nature of the exception. An OA is inherently "interrupt"--in that you "Do X; cause change in flow." Being "free" reverses that thinking. "You are free (change in the flow); Now what do you do with that advantage?" My idle, ivory tower musing thinks this will be an improvement in handling time. (Obvious playtesting required here.)

 

[Frostmarrow]

So basically Five O'Knives has two attacks: Basic and Sneak. The basic attack does modest damage and can be performed whilst engaged and the sneak attack can be executed when free and does massive damage? Same goes for Wizbang with his spells magic missile "Keh!" and fireball "Ignatius yadda yadda burn". The interesting thing is what can Fred do? –Two basic attacks while engaged, maybe.