Hi,
A friend and I sat down recently to play test for our group how combat works before we tried to introduce the system to our main group. We were left with some questions about things. For our test we used Sir Mandallan (knight) and Selena (firemage) sample characters from the PDF and we had a them fight in a group against copies of themselves (ie. M&S vs Evil M&S). Here are some impressions and questions that we were left with:
I know that most of these are probably answerable fairly easily or have been design decisions along the way. So far, we really love many aspects of the system (the Career system, modular spells) but are just looking to make the bridge to our regular group who have the most experience in other systems. Also we are looking to make combat more variable than people just standing and slugging it out or forcing them to take many exploits.
Thank you for your time in reading this and in advance for any answers you can give!
A friend and I sat down recently to play test for our group how combat works before we tried to introduce the system to our main group. We were left with some questions about things. For our test we used Sir Mandallan (knight) and Selena (firemage) sample characters from the PDF and we had a them fight in a group against copies of themselves (ie. M&S vs Evil M&S). Here are some impressions and questions that we were left with:
- Sir Mandallan has a really difficult time killing himself. It takes really good rolls to him himself even with Feinting on each round. Also, the combat between the twins was very boring. Just Feint, Attack, hit/miss, repeat. We had hoped to spice it up a bit but he is apparently unable to trip, disarm, etc. I thought that I had read somewhere that you could accomplish these as opposed checks instead of attack choices, but I have been unable to find anything. Coming from 3.5 and Pathfinder, we were used to having a few more options, even if we were poor at them. I was unable to find any rules for grappling.
- Sir Mandallan is really good at killing Selena. This is not unexpected since it is a knight attacking a caster in close combat, but with Sir Mandallan's ability to charge, and charge through rough terrain, it made it very difficult for her to evade him especially with a movement disadvantage.
- Selena has a hard time killing Sir Mandallan. Even if she maintains the gap, her poor range attack skill means she has to roll well to hit him and cannot do so without using Luck if she wants to be further than 30'. She can't really Aim since if she doesn't move and shoot then Sir Mandallan will close with her immediately.
- Selena has an exceedingly hard time killing herself. Even forgetting the SOAK 5 (fire), she cannot hit herself at range without aiming (barring a rare triple 6) and cannot hit herself at all in melee. In fact, looking through the monsters she can't hit pretty much anything in melee.
- Selena's magic is very underwhelming. For a caster who has done nothing but take casting classes, she cannot really do very much magic. Granted that my experience with the magic system is very minimal, she seems to have only 2 options Evoke Light and Evoke Fire. However her most damaging fire spell is the exact same range, damage, and hit chance as her Firebolt but have the drawback of taking 2 actions instead of 1. She also does not have the required magic stat to be able to Evoke Light at a level that would allow her to blind anyone.
- Status effects seem to take forever to stack. For Sir Mandallan to get someone to start bleeding on their own, he would have to crit them 3x, in which case they are probably already dead (or a dragon).
- Magic, in general, seems pretty weak. I am not sure if this is a design choice (it probably is) but magic seems to lag very far behind melee in damage. Also it seems to lag very far behind other systems as well. It may be that it is a low magic setting, or perhaps a starting character at Rank 5 is only equivalent to a level 1 from 3.5 or Pathfinder.
I know that most of these are probably answerable fairly easily or have been design decisions along the way. So far, we really love many aspects of the system (the Career system, modular spells) but are just looking to make the bridge to our regular group who have the most experience in other systems. Also we are looking to make combat more variable than people just standing and slugging it out or forcing them to take many exploits.
Thank you for your time in reading this and in advance for any answers you can give!