Clogged Combats

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

IME, playing lots of 3E / 3.5 and Star Wars for the past 5 years, the single biggest frustration that my groups run into in combat is a bad run of dice, which can quickly make what *should* be a straightforward combat into a very annoying and drawn-out exercise in swearing at the dice.

Take, for instance, my last group's last combat in SW d20. We were in a modified light freighter coming to the aid of a Republic bacta transport, beset by pirates in another light freighter.

Over the course of the first 5 or 6 rounds of combat, we managed to beat the hell out of them while they plinked away at us. We took down their shields, swiss-cheesed their hull, and started taking out systems left and right when, suddenly ...

Neither of our gunners could roll above a 6.

The enemy ship had time to almost completely rejuvenate their shields and then finally got into position to let go with their concussion missiles.

We had to, basically, refight the entire battle. Thank goodness they were out of missiles.

We ended up limping away with them derelict and us with 4 hull points.

 

[Janx]

Henry's got some good insightful questions...

Another comment, I realize that everybody has their favorite rulesets and all, but do we have to insist he try your favorite ruleset to solve his problem, without trying to understand if there's something within the D&D rules that he can simply optimize?

I mean odds are good, Hypno's problems are process oriented, and not rules oriented. Sure, trying new rules might work for him, because it worked for you. But on the other hand, running the RAW optimally might work just as well, and certainly is within the bounds of the problem. He's not asking for a new system, he's asking how to drive his faster. It's the equivalent of me telling you that I can't do well at the race track, and you telling me to get a new car. I've got a friend who drives a Corvette who's been beaten by the friend in the MiniCooper. The problem lies in how it's being driven, not the car. Later on, once you optimize your style, you may still find there's a better ruleset for you, or a better car. But you might as well learn to drive the one you've got first, or you're likely to not do any better in a different one.

Janx