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

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

I'm all for focused, strong, forceful advocation of many things, including preferences. I'm not for incoherent babbling demands of essentially surface material.

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.

A terrific couple of posts. Unfortunately at the moment my XP supply is off-limits to you.

 

[pemerton]

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.)

Horror doesn't do a lot for me, but I am a bit of a sucker for atmospherically generated emotion from movies, theatre (not that I see a lot), literature and even music. But I don't roleplay to replicate that sort of experience. There's a reason that neither I, nor any of my players, is employed as an artist. (Two of us are humanities academics, and hence professional writers in that sense, but neither of us is winning any prizes for our evocative style!)

Considered as art, our game is hackneyed and emotionally lame even by the standards of B horror movies. It's the participant experience of play that makes it worthwhile.

Yes. This is the 4E bit that corresponds to Burning Wheel scripting in Dual of Wit, Fight, etc.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

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.

Yes. And there's a reason I'm looking at BW for our next game, once the 4e campaign comes to an end. I think it's a system that lovers of RM and of 4e could very easily get into!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

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.

Theoretically, this part can be squared with the kind of system TwoSix was discussing--if the linkage between resource and effect is able to be swapped out with something more suitable to the style being pursued. (I'm not at all sure about the other parts of your points.)

Instead of "resource" -> "maneuver or other effect", you need something like "resouce" -> "rationing system" -> "maneuver or other effect".

If your rationing system is "fatigue", then you turn any resource that is remotely D&D Vancian into the equivalent of "mana" points or overtly "fatigue" points. Then the "resources" say what is available to use those points with. OTOH, if your "rationing system is "drama", then you might have some limits on when the "big guns" can be used, that discourages nova effects on round one. There might be other rationing systems for explicit gamist play, and so on.

The only limit compared to 3E/4E here is that your set of resources and effects are constrained to those that will allow the swapping of the rationing system--or at least clearly call out which ones become unavailable in a given system.

Like I said, highly theoretical.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION], that makes sense and gives me a good idea of how modularity might be made to work! (As I'm sure I've said before, I'm not much of a designer.)

I don't get the vibe from the current round of WotC info/marketing that they are looking at modularity in this sort of way, though. But that may be simply be a decision about what they do/don't want to highlight in their current thinking.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Addressing the response to the rogue vs. goblins example from a page or so back, since I haven't been able to get to it until now:

Yes, absolutely.

Because your example doesn't work. The rogue kills goblin 1 and then trips Goblin 2. Goblins 3 and 4 run away and you don't get the chance to trip them. Why are they standing around waiting for you to trip them?

OTOH, if I have an encounter, or perhaps a daily power, that is considerably more powerful than a single trip attempt, I can trip targets in an area attack effect, tripping the entire lot of them in a single round.

But, if I do that, and then do it again, and then do it again, that's boring as hell.

You're assuming 1 attack and no ability to chase; a 3e rogue could have TWF to trip the two closer goblins and then charge after the third after it runs away (the goblin opens the door and moves 30 feet, and the rogue runs 120 feet past him; if the goblin tries to run past, the rogue can charge and trip). Yes, if you have exactly 1 attack and are on a featureless plain some combat maneuvers are less worthwhile...but then, featureless plains are fairly rare whether you're in dungeons or outside them.

And the above example brings up another advantage of an a la carte maneuver system: you can use them on attacks. If you have 3 attacks per round, you can attack/attack/attack normally, or you can attack/trip/attack, or disarm/trip/attack, or any other combination. Meanwhile, powers are atomic, so you can't combine them like that unless a power is specifically made to modify other powers.

The basic point here is that some attacks should be more powerful. Not every attack that the character attempts should be the same power. That's what we had in 3e and earlier. And, you get exactly that - the non-caster characters do the exact same thing, over and over and over again, round after round, level after level, with the occasional bright spot where they got to do something funky.

All because no attack option could ever be better than a basic, vanilla attack.

3e went some ways towards mixing things up - they added decent mechanical resolutions for various common maneuvers. However, the problem here is that the common maneuvers become better than a regular attack, thus, you simply shift from making a standard attack all the time to making a trip attack all the time. And, of course, this generally only applied to fighters because they were the only ones who could afford the feats to be able to spam special maneuvers.

It was an improvement over what came before, but it didn't go far enough.

4e says, as Pemerton rightly points out, "Look, some attacks are just flat out better than other attacks. This power here? It does twice as much damage as your regular attack. But, we can't really let you spam that because then, well, you don't need a regular attack. So, we make it an encounter power."

No one is claiming that martial characters should be spamming the same thing over and over. What people want in a general maneuver system that a power system doesn't have is combinatorics, as mentioned above. You should not have a Trip That Guy power in your system, because tripping a guy is something you should just be able to do--whether or not it is reliable or worth it in a particular situation is another story. You should have either a Be Better At Tripping Guys power (which makes the base maneuver better) or a Trip That Guy Differently power (which alters the way the maneuver is used, such as making it an AoE or a reaction).

Only things that legitimately should be rare would be good power candidates. Pushing a guy 20 squares is a power; pushing a guy 3-5 is not. Tripping something 4 sizes larger than you is a power; tripping something your size is not. Slamming someone into a wall and breaking their back is a power; slamming someone into a wall and doing some damage is not. One of those options in each case is a dramatic power-up, a scene-defining ability, and/or a powerful option to be used sparingly; one is a basic tactic that should be usable as the situation warrants.

Like Pemerton points out, it's empowering players to be able to decide when they want to be awesome. Or at least cool. If we go back to the idea that no attack can ever be better than a basic attack, but, you can do it all day long, we go back to the idea that fighter types basically do one thing most of the time, level after level.

Hey, if you like that, cool. Me, I don't. I don't want my moment of cool to be dependent on random chance. I want to be able to set it up. Now, I might fail, and that's fair enough. In the last session, I set up a nice little chain of powers with my human warlock, that utterly failed due to poor rolls. C'est la vie. But, the attempt was still under my control, not the DM nor random chance.

I see this sentiment in many threads. The 4e rules do not prohibit combat creativity, nor do they say what cannot be done. Instead, the rules say what can be done reliably. The rest has to be judged by the DM, similar to AD&D or OD&D. The DMG (p. 42) and the DMG2 (terrain powers section) give excellent advice on adjudicating these situations. I do agree that the rules could have been more explicit about trying things besides specific powers. I think that is a victim of moving combat rules from the DMG to the PHB back in 3e.

The new edition of the game need only provide a set of clear guidelines, similar to the 4e p.42 and the DMG2, and combat maneuvers will be used. They could even throw in some combat stunt rules such as in Iron Heroes. Didn't Mearls work on that or something?

You know, I hate page 42. I really hate page 42. The general concept is good, telling the DM what appropriate math is for various things at various levels, but the execution is terrible. Rant spoilered for length:

[sblock]First off, the numbers provided are weaker than powers. The rationale given is that you don't want to make situational abilities better than powers, but (A) situational abilities should be better than powers, just like dailies should be better than encounters, otherwise there's no point in using the brazier or the acid pit or the spiky wall or whatever in place of your powers and (B) it reinforces the message that using powers is better than improvising.

Second off, "have the DM make it up" is not a system, it's a suggestion. You can't codify every last bit of math and write up pages and pages and pages and pages of powers and then say "Oh, the DM can wing that stuff." Either the DM can make up everything, in which case you don't need powers, or you should provide rules for everything so you don't have such a stark disparity between powers and "everything else."

Third, having rules is essential for combat creativity. As Hussar said, players should be able to choose when to be awesome, not just hope that the DM won't put too many checks in their way to make them fail. If you have rules for tripping, jumping, shoving, chandelier-swinging, etc., a player knows what his chances of success are. If you have to play Mother May I with the DM, you're better off not bothering. Many people have praised powers for codifying rules and empowering players, for letting you do something, period, instead of having the DM ask you for 5 different checks when you try something out of the ordinary. Precisely the same problem occurs here: lack of codification is the enemy of creativity, because players can't accurately judge risk and reward and because choosing between reliable powers and unreliable DM fiat is a no-brainer.

Fourth, any rules are better than no rules. How well would combat work if the books gave no rules for difficult terrain and AoOs, instead saying "If a player moves into difficult terrain, assess appropriate penalties according to these guidelines" and "If a player does something that would probably be distracting, give their enemies AoOs"? It would be clunky as heck and wouldn't work well. If you have rules, DMs can use them, ignore them, or modify them as they see fit, other rules can reference them for enhancement or modification, and players are empowered; even bad rules provide a starting point for houserules. If you don't have any rules, their quality will vary proportionally to the DM's, and they live in a vacuum because no other rules can say how often or how well they'll be used. It is well within a DM's right to change the rules, and he should make rulings when needed, but he should not be required to continually come up with rulings on the fly for common situations when rules can be given instead.

Finally, page 42 is a cop-out. When people start talking about the various minutiae that the rules don't cover in enough detail, it is guaranteed that someone will say "Oh, just use page 42!" or "Just grab the numbers from page 42 and wing the rest!" or "You don't need rules; guidelines like page 42 are fine!" No, guidelines are not fine; D&D hasn't been codifying more and more rules with every single edition for kicks and giggles. Guidelines should be reserved for things like monster frequency, encounter composition, and other things that will vary by party, setting, and campaign theme; basic gameworld laws of physics like "How do I knock something over?" should have concrete answers.[/sblock]

TL;DR for this post: If you're going to standardize powers, you should standardize maneuvers instead of relying on rough guidelines; not everything should be a power, only legitimately special things; leaving holes in the rules for DM fiat to fill is bad.

 

[Zustiur]

Ahh, now there's a point I hadn't actually been considering to be honest. Food for thought.

If I can be blunt about it; I never found combat in the earlier editions to be lacking. 4E expanded combat in ways that I feel were completely unnecessary. Hence my gripe with it being slower. I see powers as a key contributor to that.


I don't know enough about terms like 'narrative game' to really contribute to that part of the conversation. What I do know is that I want mechanics that support the story. 4E's mechanics had too many issues for gamers like myself. Too often the mechanics caused the game to halt while we all tried to figure out a plausible way of explaining what just happened.

I'm not sure how to explain that better. Hmm.... I want to say "I do this" and then find the mechanics that match. I feel 4E puts the mechanics first and then leaves me trying to find a suitable description for what my character just did. Pre-errata monsters provide some of the most stunning examples of this - my favourite whipping dog being the fact you can knock a gelatinous cube prone. It's a nonsentient ooze, and yet you can stun it, daze it, blind it, deafen it, surprise it, and even dominate it.

I'm told that errata eventually fixed those issues, but I'm only using that as an example case. There were plenty of others. Having powers puts you in the mindset that 'these are the things I can do'. Often those things didn't make any sense within the context of the story. I do not find that part of gaming enjoyable. I like the game to make sense first, and then have mechanics that support the logic. This is why I put my faith more in the 'simulationist' camp.

If it's logical that a fighter can perform fancy combat manoeuvers all battle (such as Jet Li tripping over a room full of karate guys) then I want the rules to support that. Equally, if it's logical that the bookish wizard isn't as good at that, I want the rules to reflect that, while still allowing him to try it and get lucky.

Having a fighter with 18 strength push an orc off a cliff is cool, but not really that interesting. Having the weakling wizard try to push an orc off a cliff out of sheer desperation, and succeed, is amazing. It's logical that the wizard can make the attempt. It's even logical that he can succeed, but the mechanics should reflect the likelihood. In 3E and earlier games, this pans out as expected. In 4E, the wizard has a greater chance of success due to adding half level to attack than he would in any other edition. I don't find that logical, yet other players do. It's these differences of opinion that make game design really tricky.

[edit]Uh, I lost track of what I was saying there.
The point is that it's logical for a fighter to push his opponent off a cliff. It's not logical for that same fighter to 'run out' of push powers, and then use other powers that make no use of the terrain just because he has those powers left in his hand. Say he has a push 5 power and uses it, why would he use a 3[W] damage power instead of pushing 5 again?[/edit]


[MENTION=52073]Eldritch_Lord[/MENTION]
Your rant was excellent, and I'd like to summarize:
Page 42 is nice, but it's not a good substitute for fundamental combat rules that should have existed in the first place.

 

[Mattachine]

D&D went on a "rampage" of codifying rules that culminated in 3e. Everything was so well defined that many thought it stomped on creativity--in my interpretation.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are OD&D and BECMI, where certain things weren't defined or explained at all, and no guidelines were given, either.

For some, that meant a massive creative space, but for others it was a creative void.


Question: Who agrees that the next edition should provide combat maneuver rules for all, and that fighters and some other classes should be better at them than other classes?

 

[Sunseeker]

Question: Who agrees that the next edition should provide combat maneuver rules for all, and that fighters and some other classes should be better at them than other classes?

Unless combat maneuvers become a viable alternative to "hit with stick", no. Left as they are, they should be moved to minor/swift/free actions.

 

[Mattachine]

Unless combat maneuvers become a viable alternative to "hit with stick", no. Left as they are, they should be moved to minor/swift/free actions.

I agree--maneuvers have to be viable. That can be a trade of accuracy for effect (my least favorite option), trade damage for effect, or trade action for effect (such as your suggestion, above).

Once a good set of maneuvers is made, improvisation can work from that base set. Characters that are melee-focused, such as fighters, then should have ways to be better at these maneuvers: better accuracy, more damage, or faster (minor action instead of move action, for instance).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not sure how to explain that better. Hmm.... I want to say "I do this" and then find the mechanics that match. I feel 4E puts the mechanics first and then leaves me trying to find a suitable description for what my character just did. Pre-errata monsters provide some of the most stunning examples of this - my favourite whipping dog being the fact you can knock a gelatinous cube prone. It's a nonsentient ooze, and yet you can stun it, daze it, blind it, deafen it, surprise it, and even dominate it.

You are oriented more towards process instead of results.