Breaking the Rules of Combat

[Zaphling]

DUDE, TRY THE NEW 'ESCALATION DICE' RULE IN 13TH AGE.

It will solve all of your grinding problems!!!

Escalation Dice: Use a separate d6. On the 3rd round, place it in the table and let it start at 1. Every successive rounds, increase it to 2 and so on until it reaches max at 6.

What this does is either you can apply this number as an attack bonus to your players and/or monsters as well. Attack bonus only.

This reflects rising momentum in combat, or fatigue.

 

[Saagael]

I'd be interested to hear what kind of system you used here, and what was hard to grok about it. Because I think the epic tier is perfect for mass combat and dynastic warfare -- with PCs being the patriarchs or matriarchs of entire dynasties, of course.

I made this post a few months back asking for input. I changed a lot of the basic rules since that post, so here's the quick-start rules I gave my players before the mass battle.

I think the reason why this system worked was because I had players used skills to train their troops and create squads of soldiers that had varying effectiveness at different roles. They ended up with 1 Paladin squad at level 10 that decimated almost all the enemy squads, followed around by a squad of medics, and 1 or 2 soldiers on the flanks. The rest of their troops were focused on defense, and manning siege engines.

A few players didn't like the Shadowrun feel to it, and would have preferred a d20 system, rather than a d6 system. The big issue was getting players to understand how initiative works, and taking their turns in a manageable amount of time. They also didn't seem to understand that they could move and control ALL squads, even if there were no heroes in that squad.

The whole combat took about 6 hours, and another 3 since in the middle of the mass combat there were 2 normal encounters that took place. I actually like the system, since it can be scaled to any size. In the future, though, I'd likely start off with a smaller scale. The players really like the skill challenges for training troops, building defenses, gathering supplies, scouting, and such.

I don't know if you've seen my Marvelous Monsters guide, but I've put quite a bit of time into play testing different strategies to address this very issue.

I'm going to take a look at this as well; I saw it when you first posted it, but never downloaded the pdf.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Mechanics of a high paragon or epic-tier free-fall combat:

• Newton's third law comes to the forefront when there's no ground to push against. Anytime somebody hits with a melee attack, both the attacker and the defender are pushed a square. Anytime you use a ranged or area attack, you are pushed a square in the opposite direction of your fire. Most abilities that negate forced movement are nullified in free fall (example, the dwarf's "ignore one square" ability).
• Regular movement is not allowed. Teleport, flying, and shifting work normally.
• In general, solos and elites specifically designed for free-fall should have movement speeds that give them mobility. Regular enemies and minions should suffer the same problems as the PCs - they must rely on cleverness and limited resources like encounters/recharges/dailies to get around effectively. Including both mooks and elites in a fight works well because the PCs can enjoy outsmarting the lesser foes while still being challenged by the innately mobile.
• There is large debris through the space that they're flying through, obstacles that the falling combatants can see coming a round in advance. Every round, demarcate a large zone of the combat area as "incoming debris". Anybody occupying those squares in 1 rounds time will be subject to tremendous amount of damage. In epic tier, don't be afraid to make this enough to bring them to 0 immediately. This adds a lot of tactical depth b/c movement in this scenario is both hampered in some ways and hardcoded into attacking options.

 

[Saagael]

Mechanics of a high paragon or epic-tier free-fall combat:

• Newton's third law comes to the forefront when there's no ground to push against. Anytime somebody hits with a melee attack, both the attacker and the defender are pushed a square. Anytime you use a ranged or area attack, you are pushed a square in the opposite direction of your fire. Most abilities that negate forced movement are nullified in free fall (example, the dwarf's "ignore one square" ability).
• Regular movement is not allowed. Teleport, flying, and shifting work normally.
• In general, solos and elites specifically designed for free-fall should have movement speeds that give them mobility. Regular enemies and minions should suffer the same problems as the PCs - they must rely on cleverness and limited resources like encounters/recharges/dailies to get around effectively. Including both mooks and elites in a fight works well because the PCs can enjoy outsmarting the lesser foes while still being challenged by the innately mobile.
• There is large debris through the space that they're flying through, obstacles that the falling combatants can see coming a round in advance. Every round, demarcate a large zone of the combat area as "incoming debris". Anybody occupying those squares in 1 rounds time will be subject to tremendous amount of damage. In epic tier, don't be afraid to make this enough to bring them to 0 immediately. This adds a lot of tactical depth b/c movement in this scenario is both hampered in some ways and hardcoded into attacking options.

This sounds like it'd be awesome, and will definitely be using it when my players assault Tiamat's fortress. (They got smart and installed Windows of Escape as cargo hatches on the underside of their airship, so falling damage is nullified, but that doesn't stop being impaled on large spires). Dragons as the standard monsters are nicely mobile, siege weapons for shooting at players from the area around them. Thanks for this, I'm totally stealing it.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Mechanics of fighting on a very large flying creature:

• I split up the creature into zones: (1) each wing was a large zone (~5x10 squares), (2) the back/neck (2x6), (3) the tail (1x12), and (4) multiple griffins that were flying somewhere alongside the dragon (1x1).
• Each zone had separate terrain properties that could be utilized. It's important, especially in epic tier, that zones don't "force" players to roll more dice each round. Combat is slow enough as it is, and dumb rolls to "not fall off the beast" slow things down. Your characters are epic tier. They can hang on if they want to because they're badass enough.
• Every round, the flapping wings and tail pushed characters towards the edge (no roll). The neck could be utilized to aim the creature's breath weapon at a griffin (some sort of skill check as a standard action).
• When I ran this combat, the players all had griffins that would automatically catch them should they fall off (note that there's no roll necessary). I also let the players jump onto the griffins if they wanted to without a roll. In addition, there were more griffins that carried minion enemies. Some of the players chose to leap onto those and wrestle the riders off (some kind of skill check). The tactical depth of this encounter is that it is advantageous to be on a griffin shooting at helpless melee enemies on the dragon -- however, controlling the dragon's back allows one to use the dragon to shoot deadly stuff at the griffins.

Other thoughts:

• There's more encounters like this that I've run. I can share the mechanics if there's interest.
• My philosophy when it comes to creating special mechanics like this is as follows. I first ask: in what way does my idea make the players think? The basis of D&D combat imho, and all wargaming combat including chess, checkers, etc, is that it rewards people for thinking tactically. One mire of 4E epic tier as written is that it becomes much more about what's on your character sheet than what's actually going on in the battlefield. The point of any unique terrain or mechanic is to add tactical depth to the encounter, to create a reward system for thinking. So I ask myself: what does this add?
• The second thing I ask is: how am I going to do this without increasing the length or complexity of any player's turn? Mechanics that force a roll are bad, because that takes more time. Mechanics that hamper player damage output or movement without giving them a way of mitigating that are bad, because it increases the total number of rounds combat takes. It's good to have a mechanic where there is a clearly dominant strategy on the field, but the player must use what's on his character intelligently sheet to execute that strategy. Avoid situations where you're just giving the player something another at-will or encounter power because epic-tier is already bloated with options.
• The third and final thing I ask myself is: is there narrative justification for this mechanic? A few years ago, I was very abstraction-friendly. My thinking was to that if I completely divorced mechanics and narration, I could have awesomely cool mechanics and narrate it however I wanted. A fighter on paper could be a wizard if I described him that way. Etc etc. I pulled monsters from the monster manual and reskinned them on the fly. Turns out that there is a pitfall to that. When my in-game casters turned out to have a melee 4 attack (b/c on paper they were chain fighters or something), the players didn't like that. They didn't understand why the caster had a melee 4 attack, even if it was mechanically balanced and tactically deep. Abstraction is a powerful tool, but mechanics are only "cool" if they make sense. Create awesome mechanics off the back of interesting and unusual creatures or terrain.

 

[Saagael]

Mechanics of fighting on a very large flying creature:

• I split up the creature into zones: (1) each wing was a large zone (~5x10 squares), (2) the back/neck (2x6), (3) the tail (1x12), and (4) multiple griffins that were flying somewhere alongside the dragon (1x1).
• Each zone had separate terrain properties that could be utilized. It's important, especially in epic tier, that zones don't "force" players to roll more dice each round. Combat is slow enough as it is, and dumb rolls to "not fall off the beast" slow things down. Your characters are epic tier. They can hang on if they want to because they're badass enough.
• Every round, the flapping wings and tail pushed characters towards the edge (no roll). The neck could be utilized to aim the creature's breath weapon at a griffin (some sort of skill check as a standard action).
• When I ran this combat, the players all had griffins that would automatically catch them should they fall off (note that there's no roll necessary). I also let the players jump onto the griffins if they wanted to without a roll. In addition, there were more griffins that carried minion enemies. Some of the players chose to leap onto those and wrestle the riders off (some kind of skill check). The tactical depth of this encounter is that it is advantageous to be on a griffin shooting at helpless melee enemies on the dragon -- however, controlling the dragon's back allows one to use the dragon to shoot deadly stuff at the griffins.

Very clever way of doing this, and will probably use it at some point.

Other thoughts:

• There's more encounters like this that I've run. I can share the mechanics if there's interest.
• My philosophy when it comes to creating special mechanics like this is as follows. I first ask: in what way does my idea make the players think? The basis of D&D combat imho, and all wargaming combat including chess, checkers, etc, is that it rewards people for thinking tactically. One mire of 4E epic tier as written is that it becomes much more about what's on your character sheet than what's actually going on in the battlefield. The point of any unique terrain or mechanic is to add tactical depth to the encounter, to create a reward system for thinking. So I ask myself: what does this add?
• The second thing I ask is: how am I going to do this without increasing the length or complexity of any player's turn? Mechanics that force a roll are bad, because that takes more time. Mechanics that hamper player damage output or movement without giving them a way of mitigating that are bad, because it increases the total number of rounds combat takes. It's good to have a mechanic where there is a clearly dominant strategy on the field, but the player must use what's on his character intelligently sheet to execute that strategy. Avoid situations where you're just giving the player something another at-will or encounter power because epic-tier is already bloated with options.
• The third and final thing I ask myself is: is there narrative justification for this mechanic? A few years ago, I was very abstraction-friendly. My thinking was to that if I completely divorced mechanics and narration, I could have awesomely cool mechanics and narrate it however I wanted. A fighter on paper could be a wizard if I described him that way. Etc etc. I pulled monsters from the monster manual and reskinned them on the fly. Turns out that there is a pitfall to that. When my in-game casters turned out to have a melee 4 attack (b/c on paper they were chain fighters or something), the players didn't like that. They didn't understand why the caster had a melee 4 attack, even if it was mechanically balanced and tactically deep. Abstraction is a powerful tool, but mechanics are only "cool" if they make sense. Create awesome mechanics off the back of interesting and unusual creatures or terrain.

I hear ya on these points. I avoid extra rolls, unless I'm removing them elsewhere; replacing attack rolls with skill checks, for example. If you've got other ideas I'd love to hear them, and I'm sure other DMs getting into epic tier could find use in them. I really like the point you make about having a dominant strategy, but having to act intelligently to use it.

The next encounter the players are in will be a face-off with several dozen monsters and swarms that are invading the characters' home-base. In this combat I'm including 3 NPCs that have so far just been non-combat NPCs. I want to make these NPCs prominent in the fight without overshadowing the players or adding grind.

My current idea is to make the NPCs act as combat objectives: Each NPC are in bad situations at the start of combat, and its up to the players to rescue them (skill challenges, most likely). If they succeed, the NPCs act in combat by providing different auras that give nearby characters a buff. I'm still pondering how to add in enemy NPC leaders that act similarly as combat objective, but rather than saving, must be defeated (preferably through some application of smarts and cleverness, rather than just bashing them with sharp pointy things).

 

[corwyn77]

I'd be interested to hear what kind of system you used here, and what was hard to grok about it. Because I think the epic tier is perfect for mass combat and dynastic warfare -- with PCs being the patriarchs or matriarchs of entire dynasties, of course.


I don't know if you've seen my Marvelous Monsters guide, but I've put quite a bit of time into play testing different strategies to address this very issue.

That link goes to the thread explaining Monster math. I get monster math.

 

[Saagael]

That link goes to the thread explaining Monster math. I get monster math.

There's a pdf attached to the post called Marvelous Monsters. I think that's what he's referring to.

 

[ender_wiggin]

That's a decent idea with the NPCs. I suggest two things. Either (1) the enemies have strong forced movement offensive abilities that make it hard for the PCs to camp the NPC aura and/or (2) have multiple NPCs in the same set, each of which is advantageous for parts of the combat but not others (a crude example being: gives extra damage to one enemy type but not another).

--

On another note, here's another "unusual" combat that I've run in the past:

Running an epic-tier combat with a shade ( a solo lurker ):

• This creature does not have its own body, but instead controls a shadow (including those of the PCs), in a room with several pillars and only 1 light source. It has all the status effects of its host, but any status effects put onto the shade go onto the host instead.
• The PCs have control of the light, although the shade can wrest control of it from them at certain points in the combat.
• The shade can jump from host to host for one of its lesser actions. It can also jump hosts as part of some of its attacks, or if it drops its host. The shade is also hidden within a host shadow (cannot be attacked there) unless it acts from that position or it is revealed in some way.
• The shade has two mechanical "stances", depending on whether the shadow is cast over an open area (ie it is a very large, blurry, shadow) or cast a very short distance onto an immediate background (ie a small, sharp shadow). In its diffuse form, the shadow has large size, threatening reach, and casts lots of damage spells over a huge area of effect, inflicting various status effects. In its sharp form, the shadow does devastating damage to its host (invariably dropping the PC if it has its full turn).
• The PCs can move the shade around by moving, or moving the light. They can make the shade go prone by dropping prone. The shade can also force move the host with one of its lesser actions. Most of the tactical depth of this encounter revolves around manipulating the shade into the form they PCs want as well as putting the status effects on the shade.
• When I ran this combat last year, I lit a physical candle on the battlemat that represented the light source, that made real shadows off of the player minis. This way, we never had to try to calculate where the shadow would be. For my group it worked very well. YMMV.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I made this post a few months back asking for input. I changed a lot of the basic rules since that post, so here's the quick-start rules I gave my players before the mass battle.

Good stuff! I'll keep this in mind when I eventually get around to integrating mass combat into my own campaign expectations.

That link goes to the thread explaining Monster math. I get monster math.

Saagael beat me to the punch. If you download the pdf, you'll find the anti-effect mechanic that eventually became my favorite on page 14. Basically, the elite or solo can take a small amount of damage to make a save at the start of its turn. This means that PCs who inflict lots of effects aren't totally gimped when facing an elite or solo, but the monster can actually live up to the challenge it's supposed to provide.

(Note: My elites and solos don't have always-active save bonuses. So if you use my mechanic with published monsters, it'd be simplest to ignore the +5 start-of-turn bonus I give my solos.)