Combat Challenges - Alternative Tracking for Powers

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This is the outline of an idea for alternative way to track combat powers instead of the encounter/daily power system.

Also posted on my blog.

There are other ways to use the basic idea of skill challenges. Here's another one...

INTRODUCTION
Several people have trouble accepting the new power system of D&D 4. They prefer a more simulationist or immersive approach where character and player perspective are not so distinct.
I like the new approach simply because it guarantees the play experience it wants to achieve, instead of trying to hide the game effects by complex rules. But it means that you directly "see" at the bare bones of the system and it's harder to pretend its not there.

INFLUENCES
My previous post on skill challenges or compensatory challenges were one influence for my ideas here. Another influence is Iron Heroes Token gaining system, and yet another the Tactical Feats of D&D 3.5.


THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY
There were a few other ideas that I had when I created the Combat Challenges, but I think I will reserve this for another post.


IDEA
So, the idea is we want to replicate the feel of characters using special maneuvers, but we don't want them to perform them all the time, because that becomes either boring or too powerful.
So, my idea was to use a skill challenge like mechanic to "qualify" for powers. Each attack roll is essentially a check of the challenge, and if you succeed the challenge, you can use the encoutner. In game, each success represents your ability to get your enemies into positions more advantagous to you, pump up your adrenaline, learn something about your foe and similar stuff.

COMBAT CHALLENGEs
A Combat Challenge allows you to perform an Encounter or Daily power you know, and is somewhat similar to a skill challenge, but it relies on attacks instead of skills and the DCs are based on your opponents.

Each successful standard attack you make causes as a success in a combat challenge, and each failed attack as a failure. You can gain only one success or failure per round.

To use an encounter power you need two successes and no more then one failure.
To use a daily power, you need four successes and no more then two failures.
Note down each round whether you had a success or a failure. Note success and failures seperately for encounter and daily powers.
If you have accrued enough successes, you can at any point after that time use one encounter power.
If you have to much failures for the encounter or daily combat challenge, start counting again. Once you have qualified for any such power, reset all your success and failure encounters, and note down that you have qualified to use a power until you have used it.
If you use a reliable power and fail the attack, you can continue to use it.

Recharge Powers work similar to encounter powers, but each time the creature rolls a succesful recharge, it gains one extra success it can only use for that power.

Variations
You can spend an action point to negate a failure.
You can spend an action point on an attack to gain an automatic success.
You can decide for any attack not to be part of the challenge (but you can't spend an action point to gain a success then.)


The default assumption is that each standard attack counts for the challenge, and you can chose any encounter or daily power.
You could further resrict the ability to say that the player has to declare which encounter or daily he wants to perform.
You could restrict the allowable attacks to basic attacks only, or at-will powers only, or expand them to also cover immedate attacks and opportunity attacs.
You could also say that you must designate the opponent for each challenge you perform, and even track challenges seperately for each opponent.

Disadvantages
This system doesn't ensure that people won't always go for the same powers.
I don't know if it would actually be balanced, or if some things have to become harder (dailies?)
The system requires a lot more book-keeping. (I think that is one of the reasons why power point or token systems were eventually not used for 4E.)
The system does not utility powers in this form.
The system also greatly limits the control over the use of powers, hinging it all on your luck with the dice. What might be missing is the ability to make a decisive attack when needed - you have to hope it works out and you get your daily effect when you need it. This can be very important for dailies that affect the entire encounter.

The system looks fine for martial abilities, but how does it stand for magical abilites? Does the fluff still work? I suppose each succesful attack against an opponent could represent you manipulating divine or arcana mana to "weave" your magic around the targets or in the area, and if you have have affected enough mana, you can create particularly strong effects.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I suppose people having problems with the 4E power system aren't really into House Rules, and are thus not looking into alternatives, eh?

(or in other words: *bump*)

 

[ziegander]

Personally I love it, especially for martial characters, but it does have exactly the disadvantages you listed - which in a game like this can be huge.

 

[Happy Funball]

I think the idea has merit. I am always concerned about pacing in the game, a major problem with the BO9S version of powers. The 4E pacing is not quite as bad, because you want to make sure you can maneuver to get the hit bonuses (combat advantage, etc) before you unleash your big guns. But you are still encouraged to unleash "early and often" in the main rules. So, I like that your idea makes people build up to their big guns.

However, it is a lot more complicated. I would count successes in general, not against specific targets. And I would double the failures. E.g. you need 2 successes before 4 failures before you can use an encounter ability. Or you could get 4 successes before 8 failures for a daily. Failing to hit will happen often in the core math of 4E (about 40% of the time), so you are looking at around 5 or 6 rounds of combat before you can unleash the daily. I have not really done the math, but your failure number just seems way too low for the number of misses in 4E.

I love this for martial powers, but it is definitely "odd" for non-martial powers.

I presume this allows you to use daily powers as often as these circumstances occur, not just once per day.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I presume this allows you to use daily powers as often as these circumstances occur, not just once per day.

Yep. Daily is generally just an abstraction for "very hard to pull off", and there might be many encounters where you just won't be able to get enough successes.

 

[infax]

I like the concept a lot, Mustrum_Ridcully.

As Happy Funball, I would not keep track of hits for different targets. Neither would I keep two tracks for daylies and encounters, so, if at a given moment the character has 3 successes, he can consider trying to garner a fourth one and delivering a daily in two rounds or blowing his successes with an encounter and reseting his count. I'm not sure I would want to keep count of failures either, it would diverge from the system's Skill Challenge roots, but I don't think it would make the concept overpowered and it would facilitate book-keeping.

My concern is that against high-AC creatures, the characters may never be able to pull off many powers. I imagine an alternative could be to allow a character to take a standard action just to "position" himself, gaining an automatic success for the power-use count, but without hitting anyone. This could work well for magic too if you imagine the mage is gathering power round after round with maybe a flash or two escaping to hit a foe during that time. I don't know if that would lead characters to do nothing for 2 rounds to be able to deliver the same encounter power continually?

Also, with the system only considering basic attacks, would that lead to a greatly diminished use of At-Wills?

A suggestion to avoid having characters using the same power continually could be simply to prohibit the use of the same power just after its use. You may not get to a point where all powers are used, but, at least, you will have more variety (and, quite frankly, I don't think it is appropriate to use different powers continually when it would make sense to use a specific one more than once).

Finally, I have concerns about scaling. It won't feel so different for 1st level and 15th level, except that the Encounter and Daily powers you be most often delivering will be higher-powered. The standard 4e system gives the high level character the ability to deliver Encounter powers continually for several rounds before falling back to At-Wills. Maybe allowing the character to start combat with a handful of successes according to level would offset that (or maybe it would render the system useless, approaching the original 4e system too much).

Any thoughts?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Also, with the system only considering basic attacks, would that lead to a greatly diminished use of At-Wills?

It would, but keep in mind that I wrote "standard attack", not "basic attack". The At-Wills were supposed to count as successes, and there are possible variation points to only count basic attacks or only count at-wills.

And I agree - against monster with a high defense against your attacks, it will be very hard to bring out a maneuver - basically when you need it most you will have the hardest time getting it. That is counter-productive, I think.
(Hope there are some Minions around you can "build up" successes off )

The idea that taking a standard action for gaining an automatic success has the disadvantage that you're not contributing that round. I am not sure it is good for gameplay.

If you hand out starting successes, you get closer to a "power point" variant of the system, without the limit of using the same encounter power only once.

The problem at this point (but it also exists in my system) is that all encounter and dailies are treated equally, so people will often go for the most powerful encounter or daily power.

 

[infax]

Still getting away from the initial idea of Skill Challenges, an option could be to ditch the successful attack and replace with a Save-like margin of success. Any attack for which you roll a 10 or better on the D20 could count as a "success" for the purpose of building up to a power use (Encounter or Daily).

That way, the character can contribute every round and even if the solo monster the party is fighting has a high AC and the character misses regularly, he may get a happy moment if he only scores a 10 on the D20.

On your consideration of all powers being treated equally (which I find a very pertinent point, indeed) an option could be to require successes according to the power to be used (or better yet, to the difference of power level and character level). Let's say you need 3 successes to use an Encounter and 6 successes to use a Daily of your level, you could require 1 less success for every 2 level the power is found below the character's current level, with a minimum of one. That would even allow high-enough characters to have their Encounter powers after just a single, misley successful attack. And it would still add a level of gambling while a 10th level character decides if, with 3 successes, he is better using that 8th level Encounter or trying to enable a 10th level encounter or even waiting to build up to a 10th level Daily with 6 successes.

Would that solve most issues? Without testing it I think it could be manageable even from first level. OTOH, it completely removes the option of getting a drop on unsuspecting adversaries and opening up with - say - a fireball. (something of a classic in my fantasy roleplaying)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Differing number of successes for different levels of powers is a sensible approach. I only didn't include the option yet because I think it might be to complicated to write-up.

I find the save-like approach interesting, though I dislike a little that it doesn't award skill, just luck. (Of course, skill is already awarded by the fact that you hit more, it's one of those psychological effects...)

OTOH, it completely removes the option of getting a drop on unsuspecting adversaries and opening up with - say - a fireball. (something of a classic in my fantasy roleplaying)

That's certainly the biggest flaw. Maybe one could allow a once per encounter "success debt". But then, this just invites people to always start off with their big daily/encounter power each combat, which might not be exactly creative. But it might be nice when fighting Solo monsters - initially strong, then weak, then strong again...