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

[Eldritch_Lord]

For those arguing about hard caps vs. cumulative penalties, I would point out that the latter case does not imply that you're either using it at full strength or have no chance for it to work.

To use a 3e example, let's say you're a rogue with a Kick Ogre Ass maneuver that takes a -4 cumulative penalty each time you use it after the first, and you're facing four ogres, so it's worthwhile to use over your normal attack. Your first time has a 60% chance or so to work, so it's plenty worthwhile to risk it. The second time has a 40% chance to work, still kind of worth it but very chancy. The third time has a 20% chance to work, so you don't bother, right? Nope--you can have the druid entangle an ogre (-4 Dex, so -2 AC) and then flank with the fighter (+2 attack) to cancel out that penalty and stay at that 40% success rate. You finish off the last ogre (also entangled and flanked) with your Kick Ogre Ass maneuver by feinting at him to drop his AC further.

Which is to say, you can't just look at numbers in a vacuum. Situational modifiers, buffs, etc. can all play a role, and in fact that would encourage tactical thinking and give players control over their characters' actions. One of the reasons 4e tightened the math up was to make maneuvering and tactics more important; the reasoning went that if you're struggling for every +1, higher ground and flanking and such become more desirable. The issue with that approach, though, is that they didn't look at it from the other angle--the reason few 3e fighters bother with high ground and flanking while their 2e and 4e counterparts want them is that (A) their primary tactics are already sufficiently focused to not need the minor bonuses from positioning and (B) any secondary tactics have penalties too large to be offset by the minor bonuses from positioning.

If you build in the assumption from the start that you want people to use combat maneuvers (but not too often) and want them to be unreliable (but not too prone to failure), you can avoid the problem of getting only 1 or 2 uses out of a particular maneuver and also avoid the problem of spamming. That the 3e devs failed to do this is an issue with their specific implementation, not the concept in general.

 

[Hussar]

Eldritch Lord - that's entirely the problem. I DON'T want a situation where using the same maneuver three times in the same combat is ever a good idea. It's boring. And, because you can start stacking on bonuses like you're talking about, you wind right back at the 3e place of the specialist spamming the same maneuver round after round after round. It's boring.

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Y'know, I was cogitating on this on my drive to work today and I realized something. JamesonCourage's examples don't actually say what he wants them to say. In all of his examples, the character does something awesome. That's great.

You get the same thing with a Daily power.

For JC's examples to be a good argument against AEDU powers, you'd actually have to do it again. He'd have to roll that nat 20 with the javelin, plug the bad guy, and then, in the same encounter do it again. The guy feeding his hand to the dragon would have to feed his OTHER hand to the dragon for it to not be exactly the same as a daily power.

Now, your odds of scoring the nat 20 twice are 1 in 400. I'm pretty willing to say that a 0.4% chance of something happening is the same as saying, "No, you can only do this once."

 

[Janaxstrus]

Eldritch Lord - that's entirely the problem. I DON'T want a situation where using the same maneuver three times in the same combat is ever a good idea. It's boring. And, because you can start stacking on bonuses like you're talking about, you wind right back at the 3e place of the specialist spamming the same maneuver round after round after round. It's boring.

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Y'know, I was cogitating on this on my drive to work today and I realized something. JamesonCourage's examples don't actually say what he wants them to say. In all of his examples, the character does something awesome. That's great.

You get the same thing with a Daily power.

For JC's examples to be a good argument against AEDU powers, you'd actually have to do it again. He'd have to roll that nat 20 with the javelin, plug the bad guy, and then, in the same encounter do it again. The guy feeding his hand to the dragon would have to feed his OTHER hand to the dragon for it to not be exactly the same as a daily power.

Now, your odds of scoring the nat 20 twice are 1 in 400. I'm pretty willing to say that a 0.4% chance of something happening is the same as saying, "No, you can only do this once."

To be fair, I wouldn't consider feeding your hand to a dragon even as a daily. Without regeneration, it's a 2 use power tops.

 

[billd91]

Eldritch Lord - that's entirely the problem. I DON'T want a situation where using the same maneuver three times in the same combat is ever a good idea. It's boring. And, because you can start stacking on bonuses like you're talking about, you wind right back at the 3e place of the specialist spamming the same maneuver round after round after round. It's boring.

Then choose not to do so.

 

[pemerton]

Then choose not to do so.

I think part of [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point is that 3E's approach encourages a type of specialist focus in build which makes it mechancially unviable to choose to to otherwise.

The thought can be fleshed out this way: if I'm playing my PC, and I'm inhabiting my PC as a player - so I'm not just an author writing about him/her indifferently, but I want my PC to succeed - then I want to do my best stuff.

If I decline from doing my best stuff not because my PC has a reason to ("Ha ha, you're so feeble I can take you with my left hand!") but simply to make the game better at some impersonal story level, then I've stopped playing my PC in the fullblooded sense I've described above. It's insipid.

What I want (and what I think Hussar wants) are rules that make sure that, even when I play my PC at full throttle, I don't get boring spamming.

Now perfection is a high ideal for any rules system. I've played games in which some secondary subsystems have been shown, in the course of play, to be broken, and rather than bother to rewrite them everyone at the table has just reached a gentelmen's agreement that we won't go there. That is, perhaps, a tiny bit insipid, but it's nothing like deliberately refraining from using your PC's best move - a move that your PC was built to take advantage of - in order to make the game a better one.

In my current 4e game, the polearm fighter has a feat that let's him immobilise any marked target that he hits with a basic attack. It's only been in play for a little while so far, but both I (as GM) and the player of that PC have agreed that the feat is on our house watch list, as potentially broken. If we decide that it is broken, he'll swap it out. But it would spoil the game for him to keep it, but only use it occasionally. His job, as player, is to play the PC he's built at full throttle. Corrections in the interests of better play and better story should happen at the extreme meta-level, outside the context of play, by mechanical reform or rectification. Whereas to ask the player to hold back in the actual course of play is, in my view, to ask the player to hold back from fully playing his/her PC.

EDITED to add: Although the discussion here is focused mostly on combat abilities, I think the above applies equally to social abilities, exploration abilities and the like. It's why I'm one of those who doesn't think a gentlemen's agreement that the wizard won't take invisibility or knock, but will leave it to the rogue, is not an adequate solution to the problem of spellcaster dominance. Because this is expecting the player of the wizard to play at less than full throttle. Just take the spells out of the game. Or at least make them no stronger than the rogue abilities.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Y'know, I was cogitating on this on my drive to work today and I realized something. JamesonCourage's examples don't actually say what he wants them to say.

I'll try to be more clear.

For JC's examples to be a good argument against AEDU powers, you'd actually have to do it again. He'd have to roll that nat 20 with the javelin, plug the bad guy, and then, in the same encounter do it again.

The guy feeding his hand to the dragon would have to feed his OTHER hand to the dragon for it to not be exactly the same as a daily power.

You've used two examples of mine... I'll mention the third below. I don't know if you left it out because it goes against your point or if you forgot it, but it's exactly the example to use against your point.

As for the other two examples, I'm showing how Awesome is represented in long odds and low frequency, which the third example is a paragon in expressing.

Now, your odds of scoring the nat 20 twice are 1 in 400. I'm pretty willing to say that a 0.4% chance of something happening is the same as saying, "No, you can only do this once."

No, it's not! That's my point! Blake losing both of his eyes? That was a 0.1% chance. It happened, and it was awesome. And you know what? He lost one eye that fight (daily? encounter?), and then the other one on a different attack. I've expressed exactly what I've wanted to, I feel:

There's a 1 in 100 chance of an eye getting hit, and it got rolled against the melee warrior from an arrow while he was charging into a battle (in the third session), and he took enough damage to lose an eye (left). Then, in a fight against Abelth (his former ally) in the same battle, he got crit on, and I rolled it again (except he lost his right eye). He was now permanently blind, but he ended up winning the fight

This is the exact thing you're saying I didn't say. His eye was lost on two different attacks. One eye, then the other. I said so in the post I first mentioned it.

Give me that 20% chance to push someone again, or 25% chance to knock them down, and so on. The first attack is with no penalty, remember (so not 5%), and the second might be as low as 5%. And that's if the second attack is at 5%; sure, it can get as low as 5%, but doesn't need to. The rest of the time, we'll both be doing cool stuff. As always, play what you like

What I want (and what I think Hussar wants) are rules that make sure that, even when I play my PC at full throttle, I don't get boring spamming.

How wouldn't this be accomplished with a penalty on encounter powers? I mean, if I use an attack that has a 60% chance of landing, which is better to use next, another attack at 60% (a second encounter, at will, or an unused daily), or the same attack at 35% chance to succeed?

If you're playing him at full throttle, I assume you're going for the mathematically better option (that's what it sounds like with Hussar, at least). That means you likely won't be choosing to take that 35% chance unless it's the best chance you have of success, which is what I want. That is, I want it to be "I'll use Attack A, Defense N, Attack B, Attack C... oh crap, he's going to get to Ally X if I don't stop him, and while Attack D deals more damage, I don't think it'll drop him. It's a long shot, but Attack B can immobilize him long enough for Ally X to get away... here we go!"

Whereas to ask the player to hold back in the actual course of play is, in my view, to ask the player to hold back from fully playing his/her PC.

This seems like the modifiers need to be kept in check. That is, no giant bonuses or stackable bonuses to attack rolls when we have flatter math, no highly powered broken "immobilize" power, etc. Keep those in check, and you should be able to use a second, mathematically inferior but more conditionally appropriate power again. Instead of "I use Attack D, he takes more damage, and gets to my ally; I wish I could have at least tried to use Attack B again!" As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

How wouldn't this be accomplished with a penalty on encounter powers?

<snip>

If you're playing him at full throttle, I assume you're going for the mathematically better option (that's what it sounds like with Hussar, at least). That means you likely won't be choosing to take that 35% chance unless it's the best chance you have of success, which is what I want.

<snip>

This seems like the modifiers need to be kept in check. That is, no giant bonuses or stackable bonuses to attack rolls when we have flatter math, no highly powered broken "immobilize" power, etc. Keep those in check, and you should be able to use a second, mathematically inferior but more conditionally appropriate power again.

As I understand him, Hussar's concern is precisely that the history of the game suggests that the modifiers won't be kept in check.

I think that that is a plausible concern, given the history of proliferating bonuses in every edition of D&D. It's very much a bonus-focused system, from its magic weapons to its feats and specialisation rules to its treatment of situational advantages.

I've played a different system - Rolemaster - using something like a cumulative penalty mechanic to moderate the use of an "encounter power" (for those who care, I'm talking about the rules from RCIV for sustaining adrenal moves). But Rolemaster is very different from D&D in it's approach to bonuses, to magic items, to PC building etc. It's also a much swingier system, with rules for open-ended rolls, crits, fumbles, etc.

Hussar noted in the post to which your replied that he's coming to have a distaste for randomness in his RPGing. I don't have the same distaste - I like randomness as one technique for generating the unexpected - but I think different systems work with randomness differently.

And on a somewhat related point - your example brings out for me a point that I'm pretty sure I made upthread (or perhaps I made it on a different thread), namely, that these "special moves" really occupy the same design space as "save or die/suck". They are end-runs around the hit point mechanic. And this is another thing that distinguishes a game like D&D from a more crit-based game like RM or even RQ, in which inflicting powerful status effects is part and parcel of the ordinary damage rules.

This is one consideration, I think, that tells agains "rationing by randomness" in D&D - because combat in D&D is heavily non-random, in virtue of the hit point attrition mechanic. But however exactly access to status-inflicting attacks is regulated, it seems to me highly desirable that it not make fighters either ovewhelmingly better at them, or overwhelmingly weaker at them, then PCs who are gaining access to these sorts of abilities via other mechanical paths (eg spells). And this is, I think, a further rationale behind 4e's encounter/daily approach.

 

[JamesonCourage]

As I understand him, Hussar's concern is precisely that the history of the game suggests that the modifiers won't be kept in check.

I think that that is a plausible concern, given the history of proliferating bonuses in every edition of D&D.

Yes, this should be an issue. It should lessen. If, however, a second (or third, or fourth) use of an ability helps more people enjoy/come back to the game, it should be designed in such a way where that's the case. Hussar's concern is valid, and should be kept in mind during the design process.

But however exactly access to status-inflicting attacks is regulated, it seems to me highly desirable that it not make fighters either ovewhelmingly better at them, or overwhelmingly weaker at them, then PCs who are gaining access to these sorts of abilities via other mechanical paths (eg spells). And this is, I think, a further rationale behind 4e's encounter/daily approach.

Couldn't the same approach across the board (the cumulative penalty) effect each different mechanical path to status effects equally? You can try the same spell again, but it's less likely to work. Maybe it's a more powerful spell that recharges quickly, but is less powerful without giving it time to fully recharge (via a longer rest outside of combat). There's certainly reasoning that can be used, especially on magic, which allows for a much higher suspension of disbelief quota with most people. As always, play what you like

 

[Mattachine]

If a special attack that is used situationally (like immobilizing a target to stop it from fleeing) doesn't work get reliably, I wouldn't use it. Neither would my players. If a PC had an attack with a 20% chance of knocking a target prone, that isn't very reliable. Experience would quickly tell us that trying to knock a fleeing opponent down generally doesn't work. Rather than focusing on the few times it worked, memory would remind us of the numerous failures--because the failure condition means the enemy escapes.

Having progressive penalties for repeat maneuvers does, in fact, give a slight chance of pulling something off. Great, but many players aren't hoping to roll that 20 every fight at just the right time--it's disappointing.

I favor a system where maneuver complexity can be traded for damage or actions (maybe even defense penalty). That way, reliability can be maintained, but with some tradeoff.

 

[JamesonCourage]

If a special attack that is used situationally (like immobilizing a target to stop it from fleeing) doesn't work get reliably, I wouldn't use it. Neither would my players.

I would occasionally. So would my players. But more on what I mean below.

I favor a system where maneuver complexity can be traded for damage or actions (maybe even defense penalty). That way, reliability can be maintained, but with some tradeoff.

You can have both. I'm talking about encounter powers, which combine damage + a status effect. You're seem to be talking about trading damage for a status effect. Those maneuvers should be available.

However, the encounter power that damages someone and immobilizes them (or knocks them down, or pushes them, or makes them afraid, or whatever) simultaneously should be able to be used again, kind of like a Hail Mary pass. "He's getting near that ledge while he's running... I can't reach him this turn with movement, but I might be able to push him back with the encounter power I used once already, knocking him off!" Awesome if it works, impossible as it currently stands.

I'm definitely okay with trade-offs normally with no cumulative penalty. It's the combination of such effects (as manifested as encounter powers in 4e) that I am speaking of, and how adding a cumulative penalty mechanic adds story options, mechanical options, and satisfies a portion of the population who dislike the current implementation. As always, play what you like