D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[Micah Sweet]

I'm confused. Yes, there's all sorts of feinting and parrying and such in real sword fighting, but that's not part of D&D. All that stuff is abstracted away in the game. The decisions you actually make are the ones I described: choosing which square to stand in, choosing which target to attack, weighing the trade-off between provoking an opportunity attack and moving yourself to a better position, choosing which spell to cast, etc.



Well, you'd be wrong. I've thought about it a LOT. (Also, I'd love to hear your thinking on these topics, but I find conjectures about my own to be unnecessary.)

I could offer lots of examples that are somewhat analogous to the feinting/parrying/etc. examples in combat, but...again...that's not what is modeled by most RPGs (at least in D&D derived RPGs, which is the forum we're in).

We could lay out...or create random tables for, or even write software to automatically generate...climbing "routes" that required genuine decision points. An example of a decision point could be the choice between grabbing an easy hold that looks like it might be loose, or dynoing past it for the ledge, but risk missing. Or between a friction move requiring finesse or a brute force one-handed pull-up. Or a resource decision: do I put in a piton now, or save it for later when I might need it more?

But all of those are still an individual making decisions, and the cliff is not responding to those decisions. It would still miss what makes combat engaging in RPGs: a team of people all contributing to the group effort, opponents making their own decisions, all those dice rolls smoothing out the curve to mitigate lucky and unlucky rolls, and the situation evolving turn-by-turn because of those decisions and their outcomes.

So, sure, it could be a clever mini-game within the game, but more like a board game and not like an RPG.

Those aren't modeled in every D&D style game, but there are in some. Lots of more specific maneuvers in Level Up, for example.

 

[Bill Zebub]

There have been countless RPGs created, with an astonishing array of creativity. Surely if it were easy...or even really hard...to develop skill mechanics that were as engaging as combat, they would exist.

What are some examples, and how do they work?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Those aren't modeled in every D&D style game, but there are in some. Lots of more specific maneuvers in Level Up, for example.

But are they really "modeled" or just game-ified abstractions? I.e., "Spend a finite resource to gain a benefit, or impose a penalty." And then flavor text is added. "We'll call it....Parry!"

Which I'm totally fine with. But I really don't see how to do it in an analogous way to activities like swimming, or forgery, or recalling lore. Or...god forbid...lie detection.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There have been countless RPGs created, with an astonishing array of creativity. Surely if it were easy...or even really hard...to develop skill mechanics that were as engaging as combat, they would exist.

What are some examples, and how do they work?

Level Up's skill specialties, expertise (and hindrance) dice, and the journey systems with their exploration challenges are to me just as engaging as combat.

 

[Corinnguard]

5e had it where only one Fighter archetype was known for using combat maneuvers during a fight. The Battle Master. Level Up has every martial character, including the Fighter, as being something of a Battle Master. And given the number of Combat Traditions in Level Up, no two 'Battle Masters' enter combat in quite the same way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But are they really "modeled" or just game-ified abstractions? I.e., "Spend a finite resource to gain a benefit, or impose a penalty." And then flavor text is added. "We'll call it....Parry!"

Which I'm totally fine with. But I really don't see how to do it in an analogous way to activities like swimming, or forgery, or recalling lore. Or...god forbid...lie detection.

I don't see combat maneuvers as mechanics first, and I see no reason to assume the game designers do either. They are IMO attempting to model different styles of fighting. That's what it's about.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Two (related) thoughts while driving home just now:

A very common complaint is about monsters sometimes feeling like "just big bags of hit points" and combat consisting of trading blows until somebody falls over.

I have never seen a skill system (leaving out games such as Torchbearer or Blades in the Dark, which IMO are so distinct from D&D-like games that they are almost in a different category) that attempted to be more interesting by requiring multiple dice rolls that did NOT feel like "big bags of hit points".

Second, I used to love the book-based game "Ace of Aces" (and really wish I still had my original copy). And I've long wished for an RPG combat system based on the same concept: you and your opponent simultaneously declare your next move, and the two actions are resolved concurrently. It would be awesome! (And maybe not achievable for anything except duels. Using specific weapons.)

But you couldn't do the same for climbing or swimming or forgery...because those activities are not done against an opponent making difficult-to-predict decisions from a finite but known set of choices. Which is why I think skills are simply an entirely different beast that cannot be treated like combat.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't see combat maneuvers as mechanics first, and I see no reason to assume the game designers do either. They are IMO attempting to model different styles of fighting. That's what it's about.

Yeah, I expressed that a little bit snarkily: I suspect those kinds of things are not usually designed "mechanics first" (although sometimes). But I think the end result is the same: a highly abstracted mechanic that could have all kinds of labels attached to it.

And here's the thing: the reason it can't possibly actually model "Parry" (or any of a number of other real-life maneuvers) is that D&D...and most RPGs...are turn-based games. But IRL you don't take turns: you anticipate and react to your opponent's moves, and vice versa.

Which is really the point of my Ace of Aces example in my last post. Anticipation and reaction just doesn't exist in most out-of-combat skills, so even poor modeling (like a turn-based Parry skill) isn't an option.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm confused. Yes, there's all sorts of feinting and parrying and such in real sword fighting, but that's not part of D&D. All that stuff is abstracted away in the game. The decisions you actually make are the ones I described: choosing which square to stand in, choosing which target to attack, weighing the trade-off between provoking an opportunity attack and moving yourself to a better position, choosing which spell to cast, etc.

That's tautological though; its not part of D&D because they decided not to do it. There's no internal logic for doing climbing and swimming by descriptive decisions that wouldn't work just as well with combat.

That was my point; if you don't need to have mechanics for climbing or swimming, you don't need them for combat either. If you're going to draw a line, drawing one between physical activities and mental/social ones can make some sense, but drawing it between different physical activity doesn't. Its, at best, just naked preference with no internal logic to it.

Well, you'd be wrong. I've thought about it a LOT. (Also, I'd love to hear your thinking on these topics, but I find conjectures about my own to be unnecessary.)

I'm sorry and I sincerely don't want to be offensive, but unless its a case of "I know so much about it that I'd have trouble designing a systemic approach to it that wouldn't be excessive" (which can absolutely be a problem with systems designed by people extremely knowledgable in a field; its why usually the best thing to do when someone starts getting overly antsy about how hacking or similar systems in SF gamesare done, who are coming from a position of knowledge is to ignore them, because they're running into problems with any abstraction at all rather than with how the abstraction is done in the majority of cases), I'm finding it simply impossible to square "I know a lot about rock climbing, but can't think of a useful interactive way to mechanic that" when I can think of ways to do that with swimming where there's a lot less situational decisions to make. Call it the limits of my imagination if you prefer.

I could offer lots of examples that are somewhat analogous to the feinting/parrying/etc. examples in combat, but...again...that's not what is modeled by most RPGs (at least in D&D derived RPGs, which is the forum we're in).

It is, however, how you'd need to do it if you wanted descriptive narration to do the lifting the way some people seem to think would have been appropriate back in the day. My only point was "Yes, you could do that, the same way you could do it with combat." That we don't do that (at least to those degrees) was rather my point.

We could lay out...or create random tables for, or even write software to automatically generate...climbing "routes" that required genuine decision points. An example of a decision point could be the choice between grabbing an easy hold that looks like it might be loose, or dynoing past it for the ledge, but risk missing. Or between a friction move requiring finesse or a brute force one-handed pull-up. Or a resource decision: do I put in a piton now, or save it for later when I might need it more?

Yup. That's the kind of thing I'm saying it seems some people wanted to do with climbing if they didn't want some kind of resolution mechanic.

But all of those are still an individual making decisions, and the cliff is not responding to those decisions. It would still miss what makes combat engaging in RPGs: a team of people all contributing to the group effort, opponents making their own decisions, all those dice rolls smoothing out the curve to mitigate lucky and unlucky rolls, and the situation evolving turn-by-turn because of those decisions and their outcomes.

I'd find that a little more credible if D&D hadn't been from day one so incredibly non-interactive in how it ran the defensive end of combat, especially in the OD&D days. There were no defensive rolls, and really no defensive choices short of "run away" once you engaged. You were effectively standing there with two relevant traits: your AC and your hit points. There was no decisions to make.

There are games that are more interactive than that, but OD&D in particular was certainly not one of them.

So, sure, it could be a clever mini-game within the game, but more like a board game and not like an RPG.

I think you're privledging RPG mechanics over board game mechanics in a way I don't think stands up.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There have been countless RPGs created, with an astonishing array of creativity. Surely if it were easy...or even really hard...to develop skill mechanics that were as engaging as combat, they would exist.

What are some examples, and how do they work?

Its not common, but you do see some of that in a few games, but usually only for other skill areas that are heavy focal points of games; the two I've seen happen more than once are hacking and magic (you see both of those in Shadowrun, for example). I want to say I've seen it for non-combat space piloting on occasion too, but I can't pull up an example so maybe I'm just conflating it with space combat in some games.