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

[TwoSix]

If the mere flavor is enough for someone, then the above is not likely to register as useful. It is not enough for me. I want some support from the mechanics that is inline with the flavor--or at the very least, not actively opposing it.

I agree that flavor without mechanical support is a very bland flavor, at best. It's why even for narrative games, I prefer something crunchier like Dresden Files.

I'm trying to parse exactly where the point of difference is between the pro-4e and anti-4e camps on this issue, and where the difference between them is simply not bridgeable.

It seems that in 3.5/PF and prior, all mundane combat maneuvers have a certain baseline effectiveness. You can modify this effect by doing things like fighting defensively, or attempting to do tricks like tripping, disarming, sundering, etc. While the power of these modifications can be enhanced by feats or magic items, they're all baseline abilities. There are no in-fiction constraints on their attempt by any character (although I acknowledge there are system-based practical restrictions), and there's no ability to enhance their effectiveness by use of metagame resources.

I don't believe that encounter powers cause any consternation in and of themselves, it's the lack of tie between them and in-game fiction. If you know a special sword maneuver that's more effective, why aren't you using it again and again? "It's boring" is a metagame answer to an in-fiction problem.

But, at the same time, 3.5/PF acknowledges that mundane characters can have expendable resources, as the best-known example, a barbarian's rage. Resource expenditure is not limited to spellcasters in the traditional model, but the explanation must have a plausible fictional explanation for the ability's activation, duration, reuse, and recharge.

So, if we say a combat maneuver cause in-fiction fallacies, is there a model where a mundane character could have access to a resource that has one or two uses but recharges after a brief rest (say at the end of combat, and no exertive activity for 2-10 minutes afterwards, a "catch your breath" period)?

Say, some sort of token that represents a well-rested state? The character gains a +1 bonus while they have that token, but they can expend that token to do double damage on the next attack, or gain a +4 bonus to their next combat maneuver? Would such a system cause a breakdown in in-fiction cohesion for a traditional player?

I think it seems like a plausible system, but I'm trying to gauge the mindset of people who play differently then I do.

 

[TwoSix]

This narrative awesome of which you speak tastes distinctly like weak sauce*.

* A semi-technical term. Means stuff that could be achieved just as well if not better by freeform play.

Although I gave a snarky answer before, let me give a more serious one.

I have to disagree. Although most narrative games tend towards a rules-light approach, I don't think it's a necessity. I think for narrative play, the rules have to include a system of player mediated risk vs reward mechanics, and a system for linking resource expenditure to character motivation.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So, if we say a combat maneuver cause in-fiction fallacies, is there a model where a mundane character could have access to a resource that has one or two uses but recharges after a brief rest (say at the end of combat, and no exertive activity for 2-10 minutes afterwards, a "catch your breath" period)?

Say, some sort of token that represents a well-rested state? The character gains a +1 bonus while they have that token, but they can expend that token to do double damage on the next attack, or gain a +4 bonus to their next combat maneuver? Would such a system cause a breakdown in in-fiction cohesion for a traditional player?

The problem you are going to run into is that the views of in-fiction fallacies are not consistent across any significant set of such people--and often not even consistent in the individual. They've rationalized some things and refused to rationalize other things--and that's that. You can't reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into in the first place.

It is possible to develop some kind of "fatigue" system that will appeal to large swaths of them. You'll note how quickly they latch onto various hit points split into hp/wounds options. Can you make a version of D&D that sticks to some of the traditional D&D ease of play, more abstract mechanics, that appeals to them, while also accommodating the rest of us. I don't think so. People that demand* that options they don't like not even be present, lest these offend their delicate sensibilities, are not capable of any kind of meaningful compromise on these issues. (They may parrot the tone of compromise as a debating tactic.) You'll have to cut them out somehow from the conversation to discover reason from the remainder. (Nevermind the ones pissed at WotC for not continuing the OGL, and using such discussions as stalking horses.) Good luck with that.

* Lest someone with logic issues be confused on the distinction being made here, "demand" is not a synomym for "strongly advocate." For example, I strongly suggest (with certain possible exceptions) that rangers not have spells as core feature, and that rangers having spells is a symptom of wider issues in a system that should be addressed, not swept under the rug with a kludge from early D&D giving Aragorn the "hands of the healer." But I don't really care about the ranger spells, per se, but the larger issues behind them. I'm not emotionally invested in there being a class labeled "ranger" having some abilities labeled as "spells"--for or against. I'm all for focused, strong, forceful advocation of many things, including preferences. I'm not for incoherent babbling demands of essentially surface material.

 

[TwoSix]

Can you make a version of D&D that sticks to some of the traditional D&D ease of play, more abstract mechanics, that appeals to them, while also accommodating the rest of us. I don't think so. People that demand* that options they don't like not even be present, lest these offend their delicate sensibilities, are not capable of any kind of meaningful compromise on these issues. (They may parrot the tone of compromise as a debating tactic.) You'll have to cut them out somehow from the conversation to discover reason from the remainder. (Nevermind the ones pissed at WotC for not continuing the OGL, and using such discussions as stalking horses.) Good luck with that.

So cynical, but probably also correct.

My primary interest is in discovering where the truly unbridgeable divides are between the camps (while keeping in mind that even the two "camps" are nowhere close to homogeneous). I think encounter powers are simply a stand-in for the higher-level differences between those who believe Actor Stance verisimilitude is the heart of roleplaying and those who don't, which I think is an unbridgeable divide within any one game system.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So cynical, but probably also correct.

My primary interest is in discovering where the truly unbridgeable divides are between the camps (while keeping in mind that even the two "camps" are nowhere close to homogeneous). I think encounter powers are simply a stand-in for the higher-level differences between those who believe Actor Stance verisimilitude is the heart of roleplaying and those who don't, which I think is an unbridgeable divide within any one game system.

I'm normally an optimist, but hit me around the head long enough ... I learn slow sometimes, but eventually I do learn.

If you find somewhere that you can have this discussion unimpeded, I'd really like to know about it. I think there is a lot of depth to explore if we can get out of the shallows long enough to dive.

 

[Ratskinner]

Even with players who know the rules and characters really well, the combats take longer. They're just more wordy. If cinematic combat is what you want; that's great. If cinematic combat isn't one of the things that draws you to the game, it's kind of frustrating.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my great fear for any system of combat maneuvers. It really does need to be dirt simple. Personally, I hope that whatever system (if any) remains in the basic game is extremely simple, and that any complicated system is in a module. However, I do think they need something to "empower" players to be more cinematic with their fighters, and say something in the DMG to "encourage" more DMs to allow it. Too many of my DMs from the days of yore didn't want hear any fancy talk from anybody but a wizard.

However, I think it can be done. I had a lot of cinematic things go on in a session of Old School Hack that I recently ran. The Awesome Point subsystem from that game truly evokes it, without bogging it down with rules. Whatever else is available in 5e, I plan on bolting that on somehow. I really appreciate efficiency in mechanics more than detail or even balance, nowadays.

 

[pemerton]

The fact that encounter powers are 'always' better than basic attacks and at will attacks means that you'll use them up every encounter, whether their effects are appropriate to the situation or not.

Maybe the players in my game just have odd builds, but I don't find it to be true that encounter powers are always better than at will attacks.

Most of the fighter's encounter powers, in my game, are close bursts of one sort or another, which are better than Footwork Lure in some circumstances but not others. And the only one that does better damage than Footwork Lure - his Warpriest encounter power (Battle Cry?) - doesn't have forced movement, which means it doesn't trigger all his special abilities that Footwork Lure does trigger.

The archer ranger has some encounter powers that are just better - Greater Twin Strike, in effect - but others are interrupts/reactions that trigger in particular circumstances.

The sorcerer has an at will area burst, and encounter multi-target close and melee attacks, and so chooses which to use based on the particular circumstances of the combat.

Several of the paladin's encounter powers bring healing or marking as well as an extra die of damage, or attack multiple targets, so the player often holds off on using them until the effect or a multi-target attack is needed.

The wizard is the most likely to run through his encounter powers first, because they tend to be strong area bursts (eg Twist of Space) and he has Enlarge Spell to make sure they are big enough. One of the many respects in which I've found 4e PCs don't all play the same, despite the comparable build structure. (Just as clerics and MUs don't play the same in AD&D, despite the comparable build structure as far as their spells are concerned.)

I therefore don't find combat in 4e all that same-y.

 

[pemerton]

4e isn't really a narrative game. At least from my perspective.

I see 4E as essentially neutral on the question of a narrative game, with mild, active support for a certain slice of narrative combat. It won't do much to help you run such a game (or teach you how to do it), but it won't get in your way, either, if you already know how.

I basically agree with CJ on this, though probably incline a bit more towards the view that there is mild, active support for some narrative elements outside combat (eg I find the integration of many of the PC build elements into a tightly designed cosmology provides active if modest support for narrative scenario design).

There are multiple features of power design that support narrativist play, in my view, but probably the most important are the ways in which they support rather than undercut scene framing that is (by traditional D&D standards) pretty forceful (even if by Forge standards it would be scene as pretty wimpy).

Here is one such way: by giving each player a suite of effective resources to bring to a scene, they reduce the pressure on players to question the framing of the scene, to try and push it this way or that in order to increase the resources they have to bring to bear, and instead give players confidence that if they let the GM frame a tough scene, the players will still have the resources to deal with it without having to rely on the GM to cheat. Contrast this with, for example, 2nd ed "storytelling" or classic Dragonlance, both of which want the strong scene framing but, lacking the mechanics to support it, rely upon the players just punting ultimate control over resolution to the GM.

Here is another such way: by confing the duration of effects within a scene, they enable scenes to be brought to an end without dragging on for ever, requiring minutiae of durations, bandaging of wounds, etc to be tracked.

And in my view 4e has a lot of other features like this which, while not providing strong active support for narrativist play, create a game in which a fairly vanilla narrativism can flourish (vanilla both in mechancial terms, and in the fairly light and traditional nature of the themes that the game best suppots).

What 4E brought to the table was p. 42 as a way to make such adjudication readily balanced (without much time or thought invested in it). More subtle, the serious competence of the characters in earlier scenes is what made this scene really click--and made the players desperately seek alternate means without any prompting from me.

<snip>

So encounter powers (and dailies) are not themselves that interesting, but they do set a framework and expectation that can make the interesting things more likely.

<snip>

If the mere flavor is enough for someone, then the above is not likely to register as useful. It is not enough for me. I want some support from the mechanics that is inline with the flavor--or at the very least, not actively opposing it.

Good examples and good analysis. And it fits with my experience. My group is very mechanics-focused - long time Rolemaster players, some former 3E players who were running some fairly complex builds, tactical wargamers/boardgamers, etc - and we want mechanics that deliver. The GM just telling the players that their PCs are hard-pressed, when the mechanical resolution of the scene is indistinguishable from the mechanical resolution of any other scene, won't do the job. They know they're hard pressed - I don't need to tell them! - when half the encounter powers have been used, they're out of dailies and APs, there're 3 surges left in a party of 5, the ranger-cleric only has 13 hp left, and there are still 3 mooncalves to take down! And they'll pull out all the stops, mechanically and creatively, just like desperate adventurers would.

Or in a different context: When the sorcerer is on the flying carpet being chased by 3 wyvern-mounted hobgoblins who he knows are faster then him, and the player knows that I'm resolving it as a "4 before 3" skill challenge, and he's rolled a 3 for his two Acrobatics checks to try escaping via clever aerobatical manoeuvres, then he will have his PC unstopper a vial of pure elemental fire to find out what it does when mixed with his ordinary Blazing Starfall attack used both to try and hold off his pursuers and to try and alert the other PCs to his difficult situation. (Answer: when coupled with another 3 or thereabouts for an Arcana check, it will cause an explosion that causes damage to all involved, and that leads to the carpet crashing 50-odd squares away from the other PCs - in turn leading to excited and clever play with the timing of actions, the use of Arcanae Gate, the fighter Mightily Sprinting, etc).

For me and my group, at least, this sort of thing is intense and immersive play (immersive in the sense of being immersed in the fictional situation).

Anyway, these ares some of my "babies" in the 4e power system that I personally feel D&Dnext is in danger of throwing out.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

... My group is very mechanics-focused - long time Rolemaster players, some former 3E players who were running some fairly complex builds, tactical wargamers/boardgamers, etc - and we want mechanics that deliver. The GM just telling the players that their PCs are hard-pressed, when the mechanical resolution of the scene is indistinguishable from the mechanical resolution of any other scene, won't do the job. They know they're hard pressed - I don't need to tell them! - when half the encounter powers have been used, they're out of dailies and APs, there're 3 surges left in a party of 5, the ranger-cleric only has 13 hp left, and there are still 3 mooncalves to take down! And they'll pull out all the stops, mechanically and creatively, just like desperate adventurers would.

Yes. This is the 4E bit that corresponds to Burning Wheel scripting in Dual of Wit, Fight, etc. Scipting Fight is perhaps the one easiest to explain, though it applies to any BW scripting. Basically, the script goes hard after a particular piece of verisimilitude -- when scripting in Fight, the scripts carry only token relations to the actual actions, timings, reflexes, options, etc. being simulated (though they aren't totally off, either), but are primarily designed to make the player sweat over the fate of the character while still leaving the player with some control.

IMHO, this is why the choice to use resources in 4E is important for scenes like this from a narrative perspective. The player may identify somewhat with the fictional space and care on that level. The dice introduce an element of uncertainity that is not controlled. The DM is playing the foes as adversaries. To this, the player has the chance to decide and to act. It is precisely having such decisions to make that can cause some players to feel the danger of the character.

And of course, not everyone feels with those motivations, which is why narrative play is not going to appeal to some--or even make much sense. It's like people sitting around listening to a horror story or watching one (or a true thriller with some horror, for perhaps a stronger example). For some, the atmosphere is enough. Simulate the atmosphere, they put themselves into the character and feel that way. For others, the likely result when the chainsaw starts up on screen is to laugh. (This is pretty much my reaction.) With nothing at stake for me personally, or under my control but the remote, I simply don't care that much. (I'm not always this way on more historical pieces of fiction, BTW.)

With a game, if the mechanics back up the emotion being put forth for the atmosphere, then the players' dread over the fate of their "pawn" in the game world is connected to the atmosphere, to charge the atmosphere with some meaning.

 

[pemerton]

I agree that flavor without mechanical support is a very bland flavor, at best.

I think for narrative play, the rules have to include a system of player mediated risk vs reward mechanics, and a system for linking resource expenditure to character motivation.

What you say here is highly plausible, but if it were literally true than (mechanically) vanilla narrativism would be literally impossible - wherea I believe (from my actual play experience) that it is not.

I think if scenes are framed where the fictional dynamics are such as to give the players reason to align their resource expenditure with their characters' motivations, then narrativist play can emerge without the tighter mechanical link that you posit.

A concrete, if simple, example: The PCs stumble onto a group of goblins. One of them is the leader who killed the dwarf fighter's sidekick in an earlier fight. Therefore the dwarf fighter charges that leader, leaving the rest of the group to deal with the rest of the goblins.

In this example, we have resource expenditure (in combat actions, any resources - like powers, APs etc that might be spent to boost that action, etc) being linked to character motivation. But not via mechanics, but rather via fiction (plus clear if informal flags being run up by the players in earlier episodes of play, and the GM responding to those flags in subsequent encounter building).

But this sort of example can only work if the game won't break down, at the mechanical level, when the dwarf fighter charges the goblin leader leaving the other PCs to deal with the rest of the goblins. That is a system design issue. My understanding (based on the reports of others, not my own experience) is that 3E can't handle this sort of play, because its "rocket tag" nature means that if one PC goes off on a frolic of his/her own, the rest of the group may well be hosed. My own experience with 4e has shown that it can handle this sort of play, because the PCs are mechanically robust enough that there is a very large and viable "space" for play that is within the realm of the dramatic, but well away from the realm of the TPK.

I'm trying to parse exactly where the point of difference is between the pro-4e and anti-4e camps on this issue, and where the difference between them is simply not bridgeable.

<snip sound exposition of the gap between purist-for-system simulationist sensibilities and a willingness to have pure metagame mechanics>

is there a model where a mundane character could have access to a resource that has one or two uses but recharges after a brief rest (say at the end of combat, and no exertive activity for 2-10 minutes afterwards, a "catch your breath" period)?

Say, some sort of token that represents a well-rested state?

<snip>

I think it seems like a plausible system, but I'm trying to gauge the mindset of people who play differently then I do.

I'll let those on the anti-metagame mechanics side speak for themselves. From my point of view, I worry that a fatigue-style system will not give me what I enjoy in 4e's power system.

We've already seen suggestions (on this thread, I think) that it be linked to hit point expenditure - and others have called in other threads for 4e healing surges to be renamed "heroic surges" and used as a type of recharge mechanism - and that creates the prospects of martial PCs having to manage a single resource pool whereas casters have two such pools to draw upon.

Second, a fatigue-style system is not going to give me something like pre-errata Come and Get It. It's probably not even going to give me something like the archer ranger's immediate actions, which (at my table, at least) go some way to reducing the "stop-motion" feel of turn-based combat.

And it will also get in the way of narration and visualisation. At present, for example, there is no reason to think that the fiction of a single-target Footwork Lure, in circumstances when the polearm fighter in my game is surrounded by foes, and a multi-target pre-errata Come and Get It, is all that different. In both cases he does fancy stuff with his polearm, taking advantage of his reach to outwit and wrongfoot his opponents. Sometimes he succeeds against one. Sometimes he succeeds against several. There is a lot of fluidity here, and it helps both reduce threats of same-y-ness, and also support for some narrative twists and turns to smooth over gaps in the correlation between mechancis and fiction that might otherwise come up in a turn-based, discrete-action-based, combat resolution system.

Once the encounter powers are locked into a fiction-expressing, fatigue-based system, though, that narrative fluidity will be lost. If the mechanics are turn-based and discrete-action-based, there will be pressure to understand the gameworld itself in such terms. And other pressures will emerge too, to make the fatigue system more verismilitudinous in this way or that.

Now all the above is pretty harsh on your suggestion, and I don't want to say that I think it's unworkable from the outset. But I do think there are underlying pressures from the players on each side of this divide - what they are wanting the mechanics of the game to do for them - that may tend to make any compromise inherently unstable.

My primary interest is in discovering where the truly unbridgeable divides are between the camps (while keeping in mind that even the two "camps" are nowhere close to homogeneous). I think encounter powers are simply a stand-in for the higher-level differences between those who believe Actor Stance verisimilitude is the heart of roleplaying and those who don't, which I think is an unbridgeable divide within any one game system.

I tend to agree pretty strongly with this, which is why I think any compromise will be hard to pull off.