D&D 4E 4E combat and powers: How to keep the baby and not the bathwater?

[Janaxstrus]

I strive for fun all the time too. However not everything can be AWESOME all the time, I fully agree.

Your first +2 sword, AWESOME.
Your second? Cool
13th? Oh, great, more swords to sell.

If all I care about is an AWESOME story, I don't need to use dice or D&D, I can just have story time with the group. That way I can keep upping the ante to make everything AWESOME every time.
As it is, there are going to be times when "I attack twice", "I magic missile" "I flank and sneak attack" are going to happen. IN my opinion, that means the times when "My character has 1hp left and everyone is bleeding out, I really need a crit here" and the crit comes through, are that much more memorable.


I don't know from experience, but I have to assume that it's much more AWESOME and memorable for the avg Joe who gets a date with a super model, than it is for the Super Playboy who dumps super models on a monthly basis to get a date with one. Once you regularly experience "Awesome", it's no longer that special. Your mileage may vary

 

[JamesonCourage]

Fun isn't something that needs to be rationed out to be meaningful, especially in a GAME.

Exactly.

But who said it did need to be rationed out?

I'm wondering why we can't use an ability again, hoping that for some groups it will produce more awesome moments, and I'm getting back "no." I want more opportunities for awesome moments. I don't buy into the "5% is basically none, so rule it as none" logic. I've done and seen awesome things on 5% (throwing my javelin at the pict thief), 1% (PCs poisoned hand getting bitten off), and 0.1% (Blake getting permanently blinded on two back-to-back rolls).

I want that chance for awesome to emerge more often than the current "no" gives me. Does that make sense? As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

I strive for fun all the time too. However not everything can be AWESOME all the time, I fully agree.

Your first +2 sword, AWESOME.
Your second? Cool
13th? Oh, great, more swords to sell.

But this doesn't show the game can't aim at 100% awesome. It just shows that a drip-feed of +2 swords won't do the job.

 

[Hussar]

SNip for cool stuff

This is a lot like the way the Crusader class in Bo9S worked. You had your "powers" but, you couldn't reuse a power until you blew through your load.

It was an interesting idea. Not sure how well it worked in practice, as I never saw it used - anyone who used Bo9S used the Warblade IME. But, I did like the idea.

Tome of Magic (3e) also had some very interesting takes. The Shadowcaster was very cool, even if the implementation was a bit off. You basically got a limited number of uses of powers, but, that could be increased by focusing on a specific type of magic. Although, since this was a caster class, it wouldn't necessarily port over to melee classes.

The Truenamer used the scaling penalties schtick. Terrible. Didn't work. There were too many ways to up your skill check to the point where you could reliable spam the hell out of powers. Great idea, but, needed a LOT of work.

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JC - I get what you're saying, but, honestly, we're not going to agree here. IME, if people have a 5% chance of success, unless it's the only option, they'll never try it. It's just not worth it. And mandating that 19 tables have an average time so that one table can have an awesome time is not good game design.

We never, ever want to try to achieve game balance through disparities between tables. That's a very bad idea.

 

[JamesonCourage]

JC - I get what you're saying, but, honestly, we're not going to agree here. IME, if people have a 5% chance of success, unless it's the only option, they'll never try it. It's just not worth it. And mandating that 19 tables have an average time so that one table can have an awesome time is not good game design.

There will be 19 instances of "not this time" at each table for each "wow, that was awesome!" That's a 5% increase over "not ever."

And, really, each table will get the "that's awesome!" moment, it's just a matter of it eventually rolling around, which is inherent in the idea of Awesome instead of Cool.

We never, ever want to try to achieve game balance through disparities between tables. That's a very bad idea.

Good thing I want to give all tables the same thing! I'd like 5% more awesome than what Hussar's having, please, with just as much cool

Really, though, you don't need "boredom and suffering" to offset awesome. And, that 5% chance you'd never use would get use in other games. It doesn't hurt the game, in my opinion, but I can respectfully agree to disagree, if you'd like. As always, play what you like

 

[Zustiur]

"Martial classes are at a minus to AWESOME, while casters get AWESOME as a class feature", even with your mitigating factors.

Hmm. That's not how I see it at all. Martial classes get to be awesome at a penalty, yes... but they can do it all day. While casters get to be awesome through spells, which run out.

It's no use having unlimited access to maneuvers if the character is at a significant penalty to use them. All you will manage to accomplish here is incentivizing full-attack spam.

You're assuming full attack exists. I'm not. Particularly after the last rule of 3 I read which mentioned a fighter charging and tripping someone in the same round. Even if you must stand still to attack multiple times in one round, I see no problem with splitting your 3 attacks into damage/damage/trip.

Also, the idea penalizing AWESOME and charging feat taxes to mitigate those penaltiesis just wrongheaded in my opinion

I can understand that. But how do you avoid it other than including the 'awesome' as part of a standard damaging attack?
Do you agree that in order to perform a trip action, you must first not be doing something else?
I'm aiming for a system where 'trip opponent' is roughly equal to 'damage opponent'. The only reason the system I outlined at the top of page 15 includes penalties to rolls it that in those instances the character is performing two actions simultaneously. If you just trip, you have no penalty. If you just attack, you have no penalty. If you try to do both at the same time, there's a -5.

Fun isn't something that needs to be rationed out to be meaningful, especially in a GAME.

This is a serious viewpoint thing. I'm not rationing out fun. I'm balancing out attack types. I am not of the opinion that a standard weapon attack is 'unfun'.

I'd point out something else here.

By adding in a -5 cumulative penalty (or whatever the meaningful penalty is),

If that was aimed at me, I should point out that I did not mention anything about cumulative penalties.

And, if the penalty isn't cumulative, then we're right back into the same boat as 3e - the specialist spams the same thing over and over again, while the non-focused guy might try it once in a blue moon.

Again, that depends entirely on how much specialization you allow for.
My aim is to end up with a situation where the nonfocussed guy tries it occasionally. Say once every 5 battles. Where as the specialist tries it a bit more frequently, but still not all of the time. Say every 3 battles.

JC - I get what you're saying, but, honestly, we're not going to agree here. IME, if people have a 5% chance of success, unless it's the only option, they'll never try it. It's just not worth it. And mandating that 19 tables have an average time so that one table can have an awesome time is not good game design.

Ok, maybe I've lost track of who is saying what, but I'm really confused by this statement. If I'm not mistaken, you're arguing in favour of powers that can only be used once per encounter/day. Please explain how limiting something to 1/whatever isn't madating that 20 out of 20 tables have an average time in the situations described?


I'm hearing an awful lot of 'No no no' in this thread, and distinct lack of 'yes and' or 'yes but'.
I also get the impression that the three most frequent posters are all using different definitions of the word 'awesome'.

Let's have a little less of the argumentative tone and a bit more "here's the kind of mechanics I want to see".

I've outlined a system that I believe would work well. Please suggest improvements or alternatives.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, maybe I've lost track of who is saying what, but I'm really confused by this statement. If I'm not mistaken, you're arguing in favour of powers that can only be used once per encounter/day. Please explain how limiting something to 1/whatever isn't madating that 20 out of 20 tables have an average time in the situations described?

Just as a point, let's stick to encounter powers. Dailies are a somewhat different issue and, afaik, haven't really been discussed, so, let's leave them alone for a moment.

Your presumption here is that it requires very long odds in order to have an "awesome" moment. I disagree. The awesomeness isn't because you happened to get really lucky, it's awesome because the right thing happened at the right time.

What isn't awesome is when special maneuvers, not the bread and butter stuff like basic attacks or at-wills (to use the 4e term), but, the funkier stuff, happen.

I look at it like this. If you have a 5% chance of pulling off something awesome, then you have a 95% chance of failing and having an entirely forgettable gaming moment. I'd MUCH prefer that the awesome thing is very likely going to happen. In JC's dragon feeding example, it's awesome because the player fed his hand to a freaking dragon to poison it not because it only had about a 1 in 100 (if even that) chance of occuring.

So, we make "Feed your Hand to a Dragon" a Daily effect with some serious bonuses - make it reliable, since if you miss then the dragon didn't bite your hand off - pump up the damage several levels because you are chopping off your own hand to kill something! and bob's your uncle. It's not like you can do this one twice after all.

The goal here, at least for me, is to have multiple different effects possible in a given scenario. And, let's not forget, these effects should synergize with the effects that the other characters can reliably perform as well. If everyone only has a 5% chance of doing something awesome, then you will never get any synergy because the odds are just too long.

Trying to achieve awesome through long odds just means that most of the time you get plain jane boring.

Although, thinking about this, I wonder if my board gaming experience isn't cropping up here. I've been playing a lot of Euro board games lately. Catan, Endeavour, and a bunch of others. In Euro style games, the random element is greatly reduced compared to American style board games. Not that random is removed, that's not true. But, the games tend to really downplay random elements in favour of players cooperating/competing to achieve goals. It could be that I'm pulling that sensibility over to RPG's as well.

I have to admit, I'm becoming less and less enchanted with randomness in RPG's as time goes on.

 

[keterys]

Hmm. That's not how I see it at all. Martial classes get to be awesome at a penalty, yes... but they can do it all day. While casters get to be awesome through spells, which run out.

I'm not sure that "spells run out" is a terribly good balance point, unless the system _actually_ makes them run out.

For example, "You get 6 - 60 spells per day, and you can sleep almost whenever you want" is not a good recipe for making them run out.

 

[Ratskinner]

I can understand that. But how do you avoid it other than including the 'awesome' as part of a standard damaging attack?

I would suggest we include it as class features for the Fightery classes, different "awesome" for the rogue-y classes. For those types, it is part of the standard damaging attack. The caster classes have entire subsystems welded onto the game just for them, I think the fighter classes can have special rules for fighting...even if those rules don't work for pure casters.

 

[Ratskinner]

So, we make "Feed your Hand to a Dragon" a Daily effect with some serious bonuses - make it reliable, since if you miss then the dragon didn't bite your hand off - pump up the damage several levels because you are chopping off your own hand to kill something! and bob's your uncle. It's not like you can do this one twice after all.

I would think the third time would be the real trick .