Condition track - wishful thinking, rumor or confirmed?

[RFisher]

Of course, if you're more of the fiction-ism bent than realism (...& D&D is fantasy...) then moving down the condition track should give you bonuses instead of penalties. Heroes have to be bloodied before they really start shining.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

If you strip all conditions out and make a condition track, that greatly limits the number of spells you can produce. Think of how many dnd spells cause nausea, or fatigue, stunning, etc. In the end you would have 1 spell that just knocked you down the track. That's not a bad way to go, but perhaps its a bit too simplistic for dnd.

Just like we have only one spell to cause hit point loss and only one that restricts your movement? I have a feeling that many many flavorful spells could still exist doing greater and lesser amounts of condition movement, with different saves and different rules of how far they could move you.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Of course, if you're more of the fiction-ism bent than realism (...& D&D is fantasy...) then moving down the condition track should give you bonuses instead of penalties. Heroes have to be bloodied before they really start shining.

A combination would work best, imo. One possibility is action points becoming more and more powerful the farther down the track you are. A last ditch heroic effort needs that extra boost more, ya'know?

 

[Felon]

Firstly, it removes masses of complexity by taking away disease, poison, permanent injury, fear, nausea, morale failure etc. etc. etc. and making them all modifications to the condition track.

Swap dozens of conditions for one easy to track thing? Pure gold!

In addition, a single flat penalty is much easier to manage in practice than either changes to abilities which have knock on effects to derived bonuses or masses of different penalties.

True, D&D has always had a "death spiral". It's just that it took things like wights and wraiths to inflict them. People who think otherwise are kidding themselves.

But when you say a "single flat penalty is much easier to manage", I cringe a bit, because that's blandisement for the sake of simplicity. Conditions should not be homogeneous and interchangeable. I don't want reams of spells that all just impose the same effect. I don't want players to fight three separate monsters whose abilities are only superficially different, because mechanically they all wind up doing the same thing to their victims. I want some conditions to be scarier than others. I want energy-draining creratures to engender their own special kind of fear in a player.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the condition track, but it is far better than you assume here.

Firstly, it removes masses of complexity by taking away disease, poison, permanent injury, fear, nausea, morale failure etc. etc. etc. and making them all modifications to the condition track.

Swap dozens of conditions for one easy to track thing? Pure gold!

In addition, a single flat penalty is much easier to manage in practice than either changes to abilities which have knock on effects to derived bonuses or masses of different penalties. Quick! What is the overall penalty from 3pts Dex damage from poison, being shaken and being nauseous at the same time!

Finally, PCs are in control of the condition track, because they can take actions during the combat round to move themselves back up the condition track, thus it isn't a death spiral (which doesn't give you any way off the merry go round of death)

Cheers

Since I hadn't seen any copies of SWSE in my area I was going on descriptions of the system. Which talked about a threshold and that above that level injuries knocked you down the "condition track" resulting in increasing penalties to actions. Which sounded a lot like the WW deathspiral of increasing penalties as you took more damage. Previously with D&D you only got a "deathspiral" as a result of certain monster special abilities like wraiths rather than simple damage to hitpoints. I'll need to take a closer look if it's different, though I'm still leery.

Now about unifying all the various conditions into a single track with various penalties at each level, that would make things easier to keep track of. But it would also mean tying in the various monster special abilities into the condition track which I'm not sure about. There's only so much you can do to differentiate things with fluff when their mechanics are the same or similar.

 

[Felon]

Since I hadn't seen any copies of SWSE in my area I was going on descriptions of the system. Which talked about a threshold and that above that level injuries knocked you down the "condition track" resulting in increasing penalties to actions. Which sounded a lot like the WW deathspiral of increasing penalties as you took more damage. Previously with D&D you only got a "deathspiral" as a result of certain monster special abilities like wraiths rather than simple damage to hitpoints. I'll need to take a closer look if it's different, though I'm still leery.

It is a death spiral. It's what should happening when a character suffers heavy damage, rather than merely as the result of monster abilities.

But it's not an inevitably lethal spiral that's inescapable once you're in it. It can be mitigated, just like any negative effect in D&D.

 

[JohnSnow]

Firstly, it removes masses of complexity by taking away disease, poison, permanent injury, fear, nausea, morale failure etc. etc. etc. and making them all modifications to the condition track.

Swap dozens of conditions for one easy to track thing? Pure gold!

In addition, a single flat penalty is much easier to manage in practice than either changes to abilities which have knock on effects to derived bonuses or masses of different penalties. Quick! What is the overall penalty from 3pts Dex damage from poison, being shaken and being nauseous at the same time!

Finally, PCs are in control of the condition track, because they can take actions during the combat round to move themselves back up the condition track, thus it isn't a death spiral (which doesn't give you any way off the merry go round of death)

Cheers

Plane Sailing pretty much captures the salient points, except for a couple. Some Conditions are "persistent" (poison and disease come to mind) which means they cause effects which don't go away, and can't be gotten rid of until the character gets first aid or rest (some last even longer).

So, if you're poisoned and fatigued, you might be able to take an action to lose the fatigued condition, but the poison is going to stick with you for a while.

I'm all for a system that lets you track all those multiple penalties in one place. I sincerely HOPE they use something like the Condition Track in 4e.

 

[KarinsDad]

If by '1/3 wounded' you mean 'at 1/3 hp', then that isn't a condition track but a bog standard death spiral. I really hopr they don't put on of those in 4e.

Death spirals are realistic and force PCs to be heroic to overcome. Just lowering hit points and sucking up Cure Potions after a fight is boring. One might as well be playing WoW.

And at -1 (-5%) per category, they are not exactly death spirals. More like hinderances.

Why is that a problem? It is pretty much what happens in real life.

Uh huh.

There is a street fight filmed on YouTube where one guy is slightly smaller (real big in real life, but slightly smaller compared to the other guy) and faster and he is basically winning until the big guy lays a serious one on him. After that, it is downhill quickly for the smaller guy.

Ditto for boxing, football and any other "non-make believe" (i.e. not world wide wrestling) physical confrontation situation. It's harder for a quarterback to throw a good pass when he has a twisted ankle or a broken thumb. And the only reason boxers sometimes overcome minor injuries is because they get breaks to recover a bit (and they almost never overcome serious injury, regardless of what happens in Rocky films). A real fight doesn't typically have timeouts.

Serious injuries significantly decrease performance. Ask any professional sports player. People don't get better when they get injured and the concept of a lot of feats and talents in 4E that only work when "bloodied" will be lame. Having a few will be fine. That's fantasy. Having a boatload for every class will turn the game into a joke.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

It is a death spiral. It's what should happening when a character suffers heavy damage, rather than merely as the result of monster abilities.

In your opinion, I don't play D&D for realism or what should happen. I play it because it's more fun and one of the things that's always been most fun to me was the HP mechanic and how it allowed high-level characters to do and survive the impossible.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Conditions should not be homogeneous and interchangeable. I don't want reams of spells that all just impose the same effect.

Well, the nice thing about the condition track is: It doesn't impose different penalties, but it tracks the source of the penalties.

If you're venomed, slowed, and whacked - you'd be three steps down (i.e. -5 to everything). And to get rid of the penalties... you have to remove each separately, which keeps them apart.

And honestly, if you take 2 Dex damage and you're scared - you get -3 to a bunch of stuff. Now say the 2 Dex critter scares you and the touch moves you down two steps - that would be again three steps, i.e. -5 to a bunch of things. Mechanically, that's very similar (in principle).

Just don't think of a condition track, think of a "total penalty counter". Because it's that what's the condition track is doing - it adds up all your penalties. The individual reasons remain the same.

Sprinkle in some unique conditions (charmed and similar stuff), and you're golden. Just because the "total penalty tracker" does the work of adding up all the stuff, instead of the player.

Cheers, LT.