D&D 4E 4e-inspired modular combat system

[RangerWickett]

I dunno. Somehow 3rd edition was fine to me when fighters pretty much just did a "basic attack" each round. But 4th edition's attempts to make every round have a special move makes special moves not be special. I expect that in my system normally players will just have one or two baselines that they stick to, and they'll only get creative when the situation calls for it.

Re: LostSoul. Sure.

DM - Room full of baddies. Wizard at back, protected by a tiger. Soldiers in front. One soldier has two swords and looks bad-ass.

PC 1 (dreadnought) - I move to get within reach of as many soldiers as possible, then combat surge (+2 PR) and whirlwind attack.

DM - You hit and bloody three of them. [[I use a variant minion rule.]]

PC 2 (duelist) - I engage the swordsman, positioning myself so it's harder for him to get around me to the archer. I attack him with my main hand and off hand weapon. DM - You deliver grazing blows, but he seems unperturbed.

PC 3 (archer) - I shoot the wizard, then move to cover. DM - The wizard grimaces and shouts at you.

PC 4 (assassin) - I can't make it to the wizard this round, so I'll throw 3 shuriken at three of the soldiers the dreadnought hit. Do they die?

DM - You hit two, and yes, they die.

PC 4 - Okay, now I move up beside the dreadnought.

DM - The surviving soldiers swarm the dreadnought. The swordsman attacks the duelist and hits for a lot. The wizard traps the archer in a ring of fire, then sends out his tiger. The beast pounces upon the dreadnought and knocks him prone, clawing at your face.

Round Two
PC 1 - I wrestle the tiger. Heck, I'm not using my move action for anything else. Combat surge again, then grab attack and restrain.

DM - It's restrained.

PC 1 - Great. Assassin, you'd better kill this damned thing.

PC 2 - Keep fighting. Same as last round, and then I shift slightly closer to the wizard.

DM - Your light hits get through. He's starting to look worried, but he's not bloodied.

PC 3 - I'm in a ring of fire? I can't see? Well, I just heard the sword fight, so I'll careful aim, and shoot at the swordsman.

DM - You hit, and he's bloodied.

PC 4 - The tiger grants combat advantage? Ok, I'll combat surge as a minor action, and go for a wounding attack. Then, I'll move action to combat surge again, action point, and go for another wounding attack.

DM - The slashes bleed nastily, but the huge tiger doesn't seem to care too much. (Maybe RangerWickett needs to increase the damage wounding does, or make it cheaper to select.)

PC 4 - Well, this is just a playtest.

... And from there the fight continues.

I guess I can't quite put my finger on how that's different than 4e as I've played it. Maybe it's that 4e is in love with adding conditions for a round or two. Maybe it's that the power system encourages you to use 'special moves' that aren't appropriate or helpful, simply because they deal more damage.

 

[LostSoul]

Thanks!

What do you think of this:

A rogue and a fighter are facing off against a hobgoblin elite. He has the following power: Shield Expert, any attack targetting Reflex instead targets AC.

The Rogue wants to use his vs. Ref power to break through the formidable AC. The guy playing the Fighter says, "I am going to smack his shield out of position." He rolls and hits; now the Rogue can use his vs. Ref power.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The more general concern I have over ideas like this is that it's often possible to find the most efficient choice and keep repeating it. For example, in your system, an epic tier character can get 8 light attacks per round - every round. And at that level there are so many ways to get static damage bonuses and passive ways of doing other things on a hit that the fact that you're not getting the +stat to damage is largely superfluous. The encounter/daily system specifically avoids this problem by making key powers usable only once per encounter so you can't do the same thing over and over.

If you're going to get rid of the encounter/daily system it might be a good idea to put in something else to solve that problem. For example:

- Extra PR cost for multiple attacks in a round.
- Extra PR cost for using the same option over and over.

Yeah, this is exactly where my thinking is. Once the players come up with a few good attack routines they are just going to use them over and over again. Then they'll have a few more that they can use with their "surge" and maybe one or two they pull out whenever they (by whatever mechanism) get extra PR.

If you want the characters to use different attacks every round, I don't think "build your own power on the fly" system will help you. It makes it highly likely the player figures out the optimal set of "improvised" powers and repeat them over and over again.
The alternative is that they suffer an analysis paralysis far greater than the existing power system already causes, because they choose from a large catalogue of options they have to create in their head.


If you want characters to use different powers every encounter, force them to "retrain" all their encounter powers after every short rest and every daily power after their extended rest. No repeated power selections between extended rests for encounter powers, so every fight sees a new combination of powers.

But even that won't avoid your players using the highest damage power available regardless of secondary effects. If the players do that, the fights are probably to easy and they haven't had the need to actually use the secondary effects to get tactical advantange that aid them in dealing more damage or avoid taking damage.

---

Though I must admit I am still always interested in "buy-the-numbers" system for combat maneuvers. I just don't believe it will ever actually work that great in actual play.

Yeah, I think basically you took the words right out of my mouth MR .

Players are just going to "cook up" a small number of "powers" that they find really work well and then you might as well be using the existing power system. In fact I thought about this quite deeply and played with some numbers and different possible options way back last year some time and the conclusion I came to was that having a system where the players can use the same elements turn after turn to compose their attacks just doesn't really work. At best it looks VERY similar to the 4e power system in actual play. At worst it looks like someone with a super-optimized at-will they can spam all over the battlefield all day and virtually lock down all opposition.

Then the problem is if you add in various mechanisms of "points" or whatever that restrict the players to only a few really nasty maneuvers each combat (or day etc) then you're likely to get analysis paralysis as the player says "oh oh, things are getting bad, I better come up with a super slick nova move" and then they spend the next 5 minutes trying to decide just exactly what combination of 42 different options to combine in order to get the most out of this super move.

Finally I don't think it solves ANYTHING narratively. The main objection people have had with powers is that certain things don't always make sense. Like using Come and Get It to force an enemy through a wall of fire or knocking a Gelatinous Cube prone, etc. This issue is still there and hasn't been addressed at all really because it isn't an issue that was caused by powers, it is just an issue that exists because of the players insistence that non-magical actions must make sense and that they have to be described the same way all the time. Of course you can just say "well, the GC isn't knocked prone, that can't happen" but that's the same option you have right now, and the player's other option would be to use a different power that does more damage or something else, which option exists in both the existing 4e system and your modular system.

Basically in other words, combat will be slower but not much else will change. I really think of the existing powers as sort of just combos that the characters have practiced. From a narrative perspective I don't even necessarily distinguish the use of a daily power vs using an at-will. It just happens that sometimes the character sees a good opportunity or gets lucky and dramatic things happen. So using a more organic and natural kind of flow to your narration really makes power based combat seem quite cinematic.

For example if a PC finishes off a monster using an at-will power its just as dramatic as anything else. I just describe it as the enemy ran out of luck and the character figured out his fighting style and that at-will turns into a grand finishing move where he finally nails the enemy a good clean shot and it goes down. All the hits that went before that were (mostly) fairly trivial in narrative terms, even if they were accomplished by expending a daily power.

Anyway, its always fun to play with numbers and I echo MR in saying it will be fun to see what you can do with the idea. I just don't think it will play all that differently than the existing system does or offers a lot of advantages as it stands now.

 

[Alex319]

Let's back up a bit and run down some of the issues with the existing combat system that you've identified. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding the issues.

1. Players don't "react to the situation of combat" enough, because they don't have enough versatility to tailor their action to the combat situation.

2. There are too many nonstandard attacks (i.e. attacks that do "extra" things) making each one less special.

3. Players often use encounter/daily powers with rider effects even when the rider effects are unnecessary in the situation, because the only other option is an at-will that does even less damage.

4. The powers often don't make sense "narratively" in many situations.

Let's look at possible solutions:

1. A build-your-own-power system could provide more versatility. However you would have to avoid the traps we've already mentioned with regards to spamming the same attacks. Here's another way to look at that problem. Basically there are two things you want:

(a) Players to use different things each round.
(b) Players to use things appropriate to the combat situation.

In order for this to work, through, the "combat situation" has to be different enough round-to-round or encounter-to-encounter that it's actually "appropriate to the situation" to use significantly different attacks. And that's an encounter design issue as much as it is a power issue.

Can you give an example of the kind of "flexibility and ingenuity" (your words) in adapting attacks to the combat situation that you are aiming for?

2. This seems to conflict with (1). In (1) you basically say that people are using the same powers over and over, and want that to change. Here you say that you want people to use the same powers most of the time.

3. One way to fix this is simple: say that when you're using an at-will, if you hit then you can burn an encounter/daily to get bonus damage based on the level of the power burned (say 1W/2W/3W for heroic/paragon/epic encounter powers and 2W/4W/6W for dailies, or something) Then if you can't use the rider effects, you can just burn them on at-wills for extra damage, and don't have to worry about "wasting" anything. This also means you're not actually using those moves in situations where they wouldn't be appropriate.

4. I don't really see how the BYOP (build-your-own-power) system solves this problem. Since players can choose any effects they want up to the level of the power, then they can still choose things that "aren't narratively appropriate." Although if your players take "being narratively appropriate" into consideration when choosing powers, then this could help if it gives them more flexibility.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Alex319
This is a good analysis. Better than my own critique. I can see some minor advantage with point 4 to a BYOP system. On the other hand with the current system you really do have a lot of flexibility. Because powers always "do their thing" mechanically regardless of what the narrow description of the power would sensibly allow from a fluff standpoint the definition of what is appropriate needs to be mechanical. That shouldn't cause a narrative problem. "Prone" just means "can't move, grants CA, etc" so how often is it IMPOSSIBLE to come up with some rationale for a condition or other effect when you attack something? Whatever the power did, it had the given effect and only an insufficience of imagination can account for it being a "problem".

So, yes, it would be easier, perhaps, to narrate where your power could produce one of a variety of effects, but that still assumes the player is willing to give up a mechanically superior option and presumes he's going to use an inferior one simply because he can't adequately narrate the better one. But what if he still uses the better one? SOME narrative has to exist and so the issue remains.

Admittedly it can strain people's imaginations to explain things, but in the entire 6+ levels of the campaign I'm running currently nobody has yet been totally stumped at describing what happened when a power was used. Not every explanation was brilliant, but it still works.

I think it would be excellent to have an example of how this whole BYOP should work. An idealized transcript of how it would work in play.

 

[RangerWickett]

I have no problem with people having one or two ideal moves that they use most of the time. I just want it to be easier to try other things when the situation warrants.

 

[LostSoul]

How do you want to decide when the situation warrants a different manoeuver?

 

[Garthanos]

I dunno. Somehow 3rd edition was fine to me when fighters pretty much just did a "basic attack" each round.

Well you lost my attention completely with that right there... snooze "I hit it with my sword" now I wait for the other characters to do something interesting ... was a primary reason for leaving the game years ago.

 

[RangerWickett]

On the 'basic attack' thing, I certainly don't mean "stand and hit" round after round. I mean that I made characters who had options in their tactics, and I didn't need pre-written 'special moves' to make combat fun.

For instance, the warrior type characters I played in 3rd edition included:

Grim - mounted archer with quickdraw and a handy haversack full of cheap alchemicals. Usually I'd pepper weak foes while keeping my distance atop my mount, but occasionally I'd ride in close and let my animal companion warhorse tramp and stamp as I tossed tanglefoot bags and such.

Gregor - reckless fighter/barbarian who threw himself into foes with wild swings of a greatsword on full power attack. When faced with a tougher foe, I'd wrestle or climb the guy to make his attacks less effective, and often get nearly killed for it.


With each character, combat was most fun when I was either a) killing weak foes every round or two, or b) facing a foe against whom simple hacking away was a losing prospect.

I dunno. Maybe an actual system to make moves is unnecessary. I could just say, your basic attack does more damage, and if you come up with something cool that you potentially _could_ do, you can try it. Which basically is how the system works now if you liberally apply page 42 in the DMG, but the power cards and everything sit in the forefront of players' minds.

 

[LostSoul]

Using page 42 as the main guideline for resolving actions was what I had been thinking.

You could still use powers, but they might look a little different. Since you love aspects ( ), maybe stealing a page from SotC would work.

You have a number of "powers" dependent on your level (maybe your class, too). Those powers are descriptions of special moves that you've taken the time to master - similar to the fluff text from the PHB's powers.

Can these tricks/exploits/powers be applied in this situation? That's a DM call, just as judging if an aspect can be invoked is in SotC.

What exactly do they do? That's another DM call. This is the tricky bit and the part where you can get creative with your system.

I'm going to brainstorm a few ways of dealing with that off the top of my head.

DM uses page 42 for damage.
DM awards more damage/rider effects based on "realism" - what would logically happen in the game world.
DM selects the effect of the attack (damage and/or conditions, forced movement, etc.) from a list of options based on the situation.
Each trick/exploit has a specific, fluff-driven trigger ("When your target is off-balance...").
Each power needs to be activated via a healing surge in order to be used at all.
Using a power can be done at-will with no cost, but in order to deal more damage and/or another effect, the PC must spend a healing surge.


What to do with other power sources is another question.