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

[billd91]

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.

In my view, the player's job isn't to play his character at full throttle, but to play him in a way that satisfies him without pissing off the rest of the game table. That has absolutely nothing to do with any full throttle pressing of the rule system.

I would also submit that an option being mechanically advantageous doesn't make alternatives unviable. In some ways, options may be less attractive, but that's a far cry from unviable. Most options a character may pursue on the Page 42 table in 4e are likely to be less optimal than their own powers, yet you wouldn't call those unviable, would you?

 

[pemerton]

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.

Sure, but I think the likelihood of adopting this sort of mechanic in the "unity" edition is near enough to zero.

 

[Zustiur]

Just as a point, let's stick to encounter powers. Dailies are a somewhat different issue and, afaik, haven't really been discussed, so, let's leave them alone for a moment.

Agreed.

Your presumption here is that it requires very long odds in order to have an "awesome" moment. I disagree. The awesomeness isn't because you happened to get really lucky, it's awesome because the right thing happened at the right time.

Then this is the point where you and I differ...

I look at it like this. If you have a 5% chance of pulling off something awesome, then you have a 95% chance of failing and having an entirely forgettable gaming moment. I'd MUCH prefer that the awesome thing is very likely going to happen. In JC's dragon feeding example, it's awesome because the player fed his hand to a freaking dragon to poison it not because it only had about a 1 in 100 (if even that) chance of occuring.

This is the thing. To me, having a thing that is 'very likely going to happen' ceases to be awesome. I've been thinking about this. During the 3 years I've been playing 4E, there has been very few moments in combat that I would call truly awesome. Most of them involved rediculous setups.
Example1: having high perception and rolling well to pin point (by sound alone) a LBEG in total darkness and kill him with a critical hit.
Example2: Again in darkness, finding myself more or less surrounded and going to town with a new daily blast power, at point blank range, getting several OAs against me, and coming out completely undamaged.

Neither of those situations was likely, let alone 'very likely'.
In fact, most of the moments in battle that actually stick in my memory involve Crits. That is, 5% chances. Or less.

So, we make "Feed your Hand to a Dragon" a Daily effect with some serious bonuses - make it reliable, since if you miss then the dragon didn't bite your hand off - pump up the damage several levels because you are chopping off your own hand to kill something! and bob's your uncle. It's not like you can do this one twice after all.

And this is exactly the opposite of where I want to go.
There are several reasons for this.
1) The character did not 'feed his hand to the dragon'. The dragon attacked the character.
2) [As I understand it] the character would have been able to poison the dragon with a normal attack.
3) Poisoning the dragon through an attack would not have been awesome as that was what they were all trying to do. It was also established as being about they only way of killing it
4) Killing a creature in the only way that you can kill it isn't awesome.
5) I gather this was some sort of boss creature that they'd built up to fighting. That renders the encounter 'cool' automatically. It would not have mattered how they killed it, the encounter still would have been cool.
6) The dragon bit off the character's limb. Meh, that doesn't really fall one way or the other on it's own because that character can regenerate limbs.
7) The fact it just happened to be the limb which was poisoned is what makes the event awesome.

You see, for me to use the word awesome, the event must be quite extraordinary. Using a power that is near guaranteed offers no 'awesome' for me. It might please me, it might be cool, it might make me smile, but it won't have me saying 'Holy crap, that was awesome!'.

The goal here, at least for me, is to have multiple different effects possible in a given scenario. And, let's not forget, these effects should synergize with the effects that the other characters can reliably perform as well. If everyone only has a 5% chance of doing something awesome, then you will never get any synergy because the odds are just too long.

Agreed on the goal, but this is where I seem to have been taken out of context. The system I proposed has far fewer penalties than base 3E. At this early design stage I'm already factoring in a limit to how many bonuses you can apply - thus preventing the overuse problem.
Let me therefore repeat, in 4E terms:

Unarmed Trip
At Will
Standard Action, Melee
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs Reflex
Hit: You knock the target prone.

The only 'penalty' to using this is giving up a basic attack.


Armed Trip
At Will
Standard Action, Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength -5 vs Reflex and AC *Special
Hit: If you exceed AC, you deal [W] + Strength modifier damage. If you exceed Reflex, you knock the target prone. If you exceed both, apply both effects.

The only penalty to using this is the -5. It is there simply because you are doing two things at once - damage and knocking the target prone.

NOW I must point out, my system is built around the idea that a 'melee basic attack' is the default standard against which things are measured. I do not like the way at will powers are always better than MBA in 4E, that's my personal beef. Hence, my system is balanced in a way that no 'at will' effect should ever be a complete replacement for MBA. This is why the -5 penalty exists. This is also why the Unarmed Trip does no damage.

In terms of actual chances to hit, this is no where near the 5% chance you seem to be worried about.
If you're willing to give up damage for one round, you can make an attack with what should actually be better than average odds of succeeding (REF is usually lower than AC).
If you're not willing to give up damage, you can take a penalty to the attack roll in the hope of dealing both effects. This is a -25% on your basic attack, yes, but it comes with the added bonus that you only have to beat the lower of AC and REF in order to have some effect.

I want these special attacks to be balanced enough that they're valid tactics in any encounter. I do not want to see the same ones every encounter.
* 3E penalties make the effects not turn up at all.
* Powers make the same effects turn up every encounter.
* I want something in the middle.

Trying to achieve awesome through long odds just means that most of the time you get plain jane boring.

Without the odds, what should have been amazing is merely expected. I find that plain Jane boring. Our tastes differ.

 

[pemerton]

In my view, the player's job isn't to play his character at full throttle, but to play him in a way that satisfies him without pissing off the rest of the game table. That has absolutely nothing to do with any full throttle pressing of the rule system.

I think there is a contrast between "full throttle pressing of the rule system" and "playing the PC at full throttle". My post relied on that contrast to distinguish between meta-level discussions about rebalancing/nerfing mechanical options, and expecting a player to hold back in the course of actual play.

I also think that if playing the game will piss of the rest of the table, something is wrong with the mechanics. As I posted above, when it's some secondary mechanical system I think that a table understanding not to go there can work, but on more than one occasion the solution for my group has been to dump or rework the mechanics. (This has particularly been the case with Rolemaster, which is very toolkit-y in its design.)

I would also submit that an option being mechanically advantageous doesn't make alternatives unviable.

Of course not. I didn't say it does. I suggested that when a system rewards hyper-specialisation as Hussar seems to be suggesting 3E does, then pursuing options other than one's specialisation may be unviable. Rolemaster also provides examples of this - skill bonsues for different weapons are distinct, making it near-suicidal for a high level PC to fight with anything other than the particular weapon type in which they are specialised.

Most options a character may pursue on the Page 42 table in 4e are likely to be less optimal than their own powers, yet you wouldn't call those unviable, would you?

This is a different matter again. I tend to think that, for page 42 to work, it has to provide options that either (i) enhance existing powers, or (ii) are at least as good as existing powers. At my table (i) is the more common route - just this evening I was having an email exchange with a player about the prospects of his PC using some copper wire to enhance his Spark Form.

 

[BryonD]

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.

I think the important question here is: Is this a practical reality for a significant portion of 3E players?

It is easy to get the idea of a niche build character optimized around a trick. And, as with so many other points, I completely concede that 3E has no barrier to prevent that. But lacking a safeguard against something is one thing and actively encouraging it is another altogether.

Now, if you presume that the players are coming from a gamist take and "winning" is everything, then it is easy how to see that those players are going to be pulled into a min/max approach and won't care about "spamming" their abilities. I can see how that would be boring to me.

But what I don't see is that actually happening in play. IME narrative driven gaming is an automatic cure (or preventative) for this issue. This works from both the player and DM side of the table. The players make cool characters, not spam tricks. Yes, the barbarians tend toward cliche and I've seen many a fireball loving wizard. But there is a very real gap between those things and spamming one thing. And from the DM side, it is easy to imagine how a "win" perspective would lead to a lot more very consistently themed combats that would lend themselves to "spamming". Whereas a more natural narrative driven game has a much broader more organic variation of circumstances. The question isn't a simple tactical matter of how best to spam power A against monsters X, Y, and Z this time, but rather a consideration of how this character will deal with this set of circumstances.

If the gamist option was typical, then I think these concerns would be valid. But I also think that 3E would have flopped massively and PF would not exist. 3E may not work for you or Hussar, but it works for a huge chunk of the little teapot community that is TTRPG players. The option to go into spamming doesn't equate to a reality of being driven or even "encouraged" to do so for many of us.

So that problem doesn't strike me as valid on the one hand. And for the 4E approach the mechanics are mandating a "solution" to a problem I don't have. Telling me "thou shalt not use this power more than once per encounter" is a major flaw for a system to overcome.

 

[BryonD]

It's boring.

Question: Do you think all the people playing PF and/or still playing 3X are bored? Or do you think maybe they don't have the problem you have identified?

I'm not disputing the legitimacy of this issue for you. But for the market as a whole, how do you reconcile your declaration of boring with the current face of the marketplace?

 

[Hussar]

Jameson Courage - I'd actually forgotten your third example. Mea culpa.

But, I would point out, that your third example has nothing to do with active maneuvers used by players. It's an artifact of your critical hits table, nothing more. No one at the table TRIED to blind the character deliberately.

Now, for the blinding example to apply to this discussion, you'd actually have to have some sort of maneuver that blinds a target in one eye. A called shot maneuver, for example. But, permanent blindness is way too powerful to allow someone to spam this attack, I think we'll all agree to that.

You're comparing apples to oranges. A random critical hit table is a whole 'nother kettle of fish from the idea of spamming special maneuvers.

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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.

That presumes that you have only one encounter power though. There are numerous powers that have similar effects. Sure, you might not be able to push/immobilize/whatever him in exactly the same way the next round, but, you've got a bag full of other tricks that you could apply.

To me, doing the same thing twice in a row is never awesome. It's boring. Note, I said doing here. Rolling two crits in a row is awesome because it's fun. It's a jackpot and everyone likes getting the jackpot. But, that's entirely random and the players have no control over it. No problems.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Sure, but I think the likelihood of adopting this sort of mechanic in the "unity" edition is near enough to zero.

Considering they want you to be able to run any style of game from OD&D to 4e, we'll see. It might be via feats or a module, but I'm not ruling out encounter powers and the like yet, even if they aren't my preferred mechanic.

And this is exactly the opposite of where I want to go.
There are several reasons for this.
1) The character did not 'feed his hand to the dragon'. The dragon attacked the character.
2) [As I understand it] the character would have been able to poison the dragon with a normal attack.
3) Poisoning the dragon through an attack would not have been awesome as that was what they were all trying to do. It was also established as being about they only way of killing it
4) Killing a creature in the only way that you can kill it isn't awesome.
5) I gather this was some sort of boss creature that they'd built up to fighting. That renders the encounter 'cool' automatically. It would not have mattered how they killed it, the encounter still would have been cool.
6) The dragon bit off the character's limb. Meh, that doesn't really fall one way or the other on it's own because that character can regenerate limbs.
7) The fact it just happened to be the limb which was poisoned is what makes the event awesome.

You see, for me to use the word awesome, the event must be quite extraordinary. Using a power that is near guaranteed offers no 'awesome' for me. It might please me, it might be cool, it might make me smile, but it won't have me saying 'Holy crap, that was awesome!'.

I can't XP you again yet, but this is exactly where I'm coming from.

Jameson Courage - I'd actually forgotten your third example. Mea culpa.

No worries

But, I would point out, that your third example has nothing to do with active maneuvers used by players. It's an artifact of your critical hits table, nothing more. No one at the table TRIED to blind the character deliberately.

Technically, it's a Hit table (not just crits). But, yes, that's true. Then again, I don't have encounter tables, so I don't expect perfect translation from my experience to this one. Just my experience on when I achieved by my "Awesome" moments.

Now, for the blinding example to apply to this discussion, you'd actually have to have some sort of maneuver that blinds a target in one eye. A called shot maneuver, for example. But, permanent blindness is way too powerful to allow someone to spam this attack, I think we'll all agree to that.

I have called shots as part of my system. You can take out an eye permanently. Admittedly, it's usually not easy unless you surprise them or you're a lot higher hit die, but investment in feats helps as well, as does having advantages from previous exchanges.

But, if you made it a character focus point, you could spam the attack and I wouldn't consider it too powerful at all.

You're comparing apples to oranges. A random critical hit table is a whole 'nother kettle of fish from the idea of spamming special maneuvers.

Yep. I've worked on that premise, too. You're a lot more likely to succeed than my 1 in 1,000 blinding situation, for a lot more "balanced" effect.

That presumes that you have only one encounter power though. There are numerous powers that have similar effects. Sure, you might not be able to push/immobilize/whatever him in exactly the same way the next round, but, you've got a bag full of other tricks that you could apply.

That's if you haven't used it yet (he's used 3 different attacks, and 1 defensive trick), and if it pushes someone like he needs it to right now, which could go either way (some characters will take other options to give more variety to their maneuvers, others will take similar powers to form themes).

To me, doing the same thing twice in a row is never awesome. It's boring. Note, I said doing here. Rolling two crits in a row is awesome because it's fun. It's a jackpot and everyone likes getting the jackpot. But, that's entirely random and the players have no control over it. No problems.

To you. I accept that. You would never, ever have to. You can choose the mathematically better choice and not, in fact. It's not like you'd be penalized for choosing other options. Me and my players, though, would get to use things again if we wanted to, even if it's not rewarded as mathematically as our at-will power. Again, win/win. As always, play what you like

 

[Zustiur]

I'm not sure that "spells run out" is a terribly good balance point, unless the system _actually_ makes them run out.

For example, "You get 6 - 60 spells per day, and you can sleep almost whenever you want" is not a good recipe for making them run out.

Indeed, but we know we're heading for a Vancian system, so let's make the most of it. Like it or not, having to forget and re-prepare your spells IS part of the balance of spells. Being able to sleep almost whenever you want is not actually a problem caused by having Vancian casting. Being able to sleep whenever you want is a sign that:
* The dungeon (or whatever) is not dangerous
* The characters aren't under any time pressure

If you have infinite time, why wouldn't you be cautious?
On the other hand, take away either of those statements, and suddenly your spells do start to run out. That's really a module and DM specific thing. It's not strictly a fault of the system.

I would suggest we include it as class features for the Fightery classes, different "awesome" for the rogue-y classes. For those types, it is part of the standard damaging attack. The caster classes have entire subsystems welded onto the game just for them, I think the fighter classes can have special rules for fighting...even if those rules don't work for pure casters.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much 4E. Fighters get fighter effects. Rogues get rogue effects. Wizards get wizard effects. And everyone does damage all the time.
While I accept it's a valid gamestyle, I don't think that's where 5E is, nor should be, headed.

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.

I do. I find using the same manoeuver every encounter more boring than using the same manoeuver 3 times in a single encounter (and then not using it again for a while because the situation doesn't warrant it).
Example situation 1: You're chasing the bad guys and you need to slow them down so that the guards can shut the town gate before they get away. Slowing them down by knocking them prone is appropriate, so you do it as much as you can.
Example situation 2: You're fighting a troll, your only purpose is to kill it and get the treasure from behind it. You want to do damage and take it down as quickly as possible. Why on earth would you take time to knock it prone instead?

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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Originally Posted by Pemerton
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.

So why not write bonus-stacking limitations into the rules from the start? I agree with the concern, but I don't see it as a fait accompli. 3E and 4E both did badly at this. There's no reason 5E can't learn from that lesson.
[Hint for WOTC]If it's a FEAT, and it gives a BONUS, it should always be a FEAT BONUS, which therefore does not stack with other feats![/Hint]

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.

Believe it or not, I think we all agree on that.
The question is, 'HOW, other than powers, can you make this happen?'

No, it's not! That's my point! Blake losing both of his eyes? That was a 0.1% chance.

Nitpick, it's actually 0.01%

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.

Neither would I. Which is why I'm arguing for a system that doesn't have a 20% chance or a 5% chance as its baseline. I want the chance of success to be roughly the same as the chance of doing normal damage. An even tradeoff if you will. If you hit and do damage on an 8, I expect to be able to knock prone on a 7-9 (dependent upon that target's defense scores).

Damage or knock prone, with the same chance at either, is a valid choice.
Damage or barely a chance to knock prone (3E) is not a valid choice.
Damage AND knock prone is not a choice at all.

If the chances are the same, or at least very close, people will choose the appropriate one for the situation. If knocking the target prone doesn't serve a purpose at the time, they'll do a damage attack. If stopping the target moving is more important at the time, they'll do a trip and forgo the damage.

If they want to gamble, they can take my 'Armed Trip' option, and have a chance at getting both results, with a risk of getting neither. If they find themselves wanting to do this often enough, they can take the Improved Armed Trip feat (to a limit of 2 times) to reduce the penalty. Doing this doesn't make them Uber-Trip-Masters. Not doing this doesn't make the attack useless.

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.

I prefer a flat penalty on doing two things at once, and no penalty on the one where you make a clear trade-off. Doing no damage that round is sufficient 'penalty' in my books.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Nitpick, it's actually 0.01%

True. It's 1 in 10,000.

I prefer a flat penalty on doing two things at once, and no penalty on the one where you make a clear trade-off. Doing no damage that round is sufficient 'penalty' in my books.

I was talking about encounter powers, not something you can just use over and over. I'd personally prefer your method, however. As always, play what you like