Combat balance

[ExploderWizard]

Yes. Now, how often did the Roman legions go up against a dragon. How often did the Roman legions so much as operate in mildly confined space (like a dungeon room, or take that formation in a bar brawl?

The legion formation was good against an army - not so much against highly mobile skimishers.

Oh yes of course. There are times and places where tight formations will not work. There are other times when living in a gridded world doesn't work either.

 

[MerricB]

Have you seen any depictions of the roman legions in action?

That really is a special case which might be worth exploring at some point, but, as noted, phalanx fighting and similar is very different to the mobile combats you have with most D&D fights. Orcs swing axes around, kobolds scatter everywhere.

Hobgoblins might need an option of standing together, but it's not worth making the core system one that assumes side-by-side fighting when it's actually quite rare.

How many shield-and-sword fighters are in the standard group? Many groups will be lucky to have 2 characters who stand side-by-side in the front rank.

Cheers!

 

[I'm A Banana]

It is entirely possible to have dynamic movement that matters in comabt without having to push little pieces of plastic around a map grid.

Abstraction, baby.

With a little more robustness, Page 42 is all you need for it.

 

[joethelawyer]

Fights in previous editions often felt like matches of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots into which fireworks were occasionally shot.

and thats how we still do it, when it comes to the actual combat itself. we don't use attacks of opportunity or anything that leads to an attack of opportunity. we don't use rules for all those special combat moves in 3.x like trip, disarm, grapple, sunder, blah blah blah. we dont use rules for terrain factors, or square occupation, or movement.

we swing, miss, swing, hit, fireball, arrow, swing, arrow, lather, rinse, repeat.

thats the way we like it.

thats not to say we dont make use of movement, terrain, and all that tactical stuff. we just dont use rules for it. though we play 3.0 rules, we never changed our combat style from 1e. meaning anything goes. we just say what we are going to do, and do it. we don't need no stinkin' rules! the dm assigns a chance. we get pretty exotic and creative sometimes, and dont need a feat, or 4e style power to do it.

the only time we use a combat map or minis is when the combat is so large that our usual narrative style of combat can't describe the whole battle and where everyone is in relation to each other without confusion. like when we are talking 20-30 combatants. we don't use them for purposes of movement or grids or squares or attacks of opportunity.