D&D 5E Dilemmas and decisions - an experiment in melee combat choices

[RangerWickett]

Sure, they're a bit like 4e at-wills. But this is meant to set up next round, whereas 4e at-wills usually just had an effect right now. Also, if everyone has access to the same suite of five types of attacks, it becomes something you can respond to and learn. Most of the time 4e critters died before you could learn their pattern.

 

[Wiseblood]

One of my ongoing frustrations with tabletop RPGs is that characters in melee combat almost never have meaningful tactical choices. You typically just make a roll and hope you hit for damage.

I like the ideas presented. I disagree about the meaningful tactical choices part unless the emphasis is on meaningful. The way I see it DM's and designers are afraid to allow tactical choices to be better or more meaningful than simple direct attack and damage. Players are discouraged from using or attempting because the tradeoff is less reliable or less valuable to the player.

Robin Hood could swing from a chandelier and attack the Seriff (after succesfully making an acrobatics check) without any appreciable
advatage over walking there. Why would he bother?

 

[RangerWickett]

If you swing from a chandelier, in addition to your normal attack roll, you'd force your opponent to make a Reflex save or else be bowled over?

I dunno. Once upon a time after I finished the 3.5 edition Elements of Magic, I considered making a martial version, where you'd earn Momentum or something by doing interesting things in combat, and you could spend Momentum to pull off cool moves. It never quite came together.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I honestly wasn't thinking of 'adding' this to D&D so much as taking the core engine of 5th edition, stripping out all the classes, and using this as the baseline for a new combat system. So this is the complexity. It wouldn't be added on top of existing classes.

Perhaps each player would have a stack of five cards - ABCDE - each a different color. On their turn they'd pick a card when they announce their action, and if they pick Bind they choose which enemy it applies to. So you can cast a spell and still wind up for an attack on your next turn. Or maybe I'd tweak the mechanics a bit so they have some sort of effect if you're doing magic.

Have you considered something like a stance mechanic? You could just say that, after making an attack (or whatever actions you want to apply it to), you then get to choose a stance which remains in effect until the end of combat or until you change it. Then you could just have a list of stances, some generic and some limited to certain character types, which give things like a bonus to attack at the cost of defense, or a push effect on hit at the cost of being unable to make opportunity attacks.

I would strongly suggest moving away from effects that apply to specific targets, like how you have Binding and Driving, because it's a lot to track from round to round. Tracking a buff on you is easier than tracking a debuff on someone else.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I dunno. Once upon a time after I finished the 3.5 edition Elements of Magic, I considered making a martial version, where you'd earn Momentum or something by doing interesting things in combat, and you could spend Momentum to pull off cool moves. It never quite came together.

Have you read Iron Heroes, by Mike Mearls? It's an alternate PHB for 3.x which posits the existence of nine different martial classes who each have their own resource which they generate and spend in different ways. The Archer, for example, gains points by aiming and spend them to make called shots with various effects.

 

[RangerWickett]

I never actually read Iron Heroes, but I remember hearing about it. Was there ever any reason for an archer not to aim?

I've had the "5 different options" core idea for a while. Blame Magic: the Gathering and its five colors of mana. One idea I tinkered with was that each time you took an action, you'd get a point of the right 'color of mana.' Assault attack would get green, for instance; bind would get black; careful would be white; drive red; and evade blue. Then there'd be a suite of special moves which you could pull off by spending enough mana of the right types. Sort of like a fighting video game with super moves.

I didn't like it, though, because either you had too many options which slowed play down, or you limited people to only a few choices in which case the 'charging up' felt like an unnecessary complication compared to just 4e-style encounter powers.

I might try, though, to do a game with minimal player knowledge. I as GM know what they're building toward, and when they hit someone with 2 or 3 mana, something cool happens. They aren't picking from a roster of choices, but after they play a while they might try to repeat certain combos. That's probably too complicated for tabletop, though.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I never actually read Iron Heroes, but I remember hearing about it. Was there ever any reason for an archer not to aim?

Aiming takes an action. From what I recall, you could aim as a move-equivalent action to gain one point, or as a standard action for two points, but spending a full-round action gave you four. Some of the better special abilities could take eight or more points to use, so you might end up aiming for multiple turns before making one awesome shot.

Other classes gained points differently, like the heavy armor class got points by absorbing damage with their armor, and their special moves had more taunt-like effects. The barbarian class got points whenever they were hit, or if a teammate dropped in combat. Stuff like that.

 

[Valmarius]

Have you considered something like a stance mechanic? You could just say that, after making an attack (or whatever actions you want to apply it to), you then get to choose a stance which remains in effect until the end of combat or until you change it. Then you could just have a list of stances, some generic and some limited to certain character types, which give things like a bonus to attack at the cost of defense, or a push effect on hit at the cost of being unable to make opportunity attacks.

I would strongly suggest moving away from effects that apply to specific targets, like how you have Binding and Driving, because it's a lot to track from round to round. Tracking a buff on you is easier than tracking a debuff on someone else.

This is how I would approach the mechanic as well. Have a set of cards or card-tents with the different stances (and their effects) spelled out on them, and let a combatant shift stances at the end of their turn.
It would give you your buffs/debuffs, which would be readily apparent on the card in front of you, and give your opponents a chance to react to your stance.
What's more is that clever fighters could use it to bluff. Go into Assault stance, the enemy dodges on their turn in preparation for that Greatsword Action Surge, then you grapple/potion/retreat etc.

 

[Random Bystander]

If you swing from a chandelier, in addition to your normal attack roll, you'd force your opponent to make a Reflex save or else be bowled over?

I dunno. Once upon a time after I finished the 3.5 edition Elements of Magic, I considered making a martial version, where you'd earn Momentum or something by doing interesting things in combat, and you could spend Momentum to pull off cool moves. It never quite came together.

Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of seems to use "momentum" in the way you describe, based on the reviews; you build up momentum, then spend it to spectacular effect. It is also something I am interested in purchasing, in the future.

In addition, at the risk of mentioning 4e, D&D 4e sounds like something you may enjoy. Based on what I have read on here, I would probably recommend the early core books, and the later monster books, if I were more familiar with it. Every class gains abstract, tactical abilities, which can be combined to increased effect.
For example, it is much easier to hit a boss with a devastating daily power if, first, another class hits it with a defence debuff, which can also be followed by, for example, a Warlord class hitting it with one of a particular set of abilities, allowing you to hit it again with an at-will attack, followed by some other devastating daily.
Classes gain a total of 2 at-will abilities, 4 per-encounter abilities, and 4 daily abilities, with each class typically adding, IIRC, what amounts to 2 additional at-will abilities, and certain races having their own racial ability.

I would also recommend GURPS if you want interesting, tactical combat. For example, one useful technique chain is to Feint, imposing your margin of success on the foes' defences for one second/round, then, if successful, perform a Strong attack, gaining a scaling damage bonus on a successful hit. I understand the Martial Arts supplement expands on that greatly, although I do not yet own it. I shall leave it to someone who knows GURPS better to explain further.

 

[RangerWickett]

I played 4e pretty extensively. I think it had good ideas but picked some of the wrong mechanics to make fiddly. There were, frankly, too many powers. It makes sense from the perspective of a "I want to sell a ton of products with new options" business plan, but it was too mentally taxing to keep track of all the variant ways folks could attack. Also, the attacks worked more as "respond to what your enemy hit you with" as opposed to "do something to avoid an attack you can see telegraphed."

Maybe I've been absorbing too much Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but I like the playstyle of avoiding death by picking the right way to dodge or counter.

I'm always a fan of Conan, though. A friend of mine GMed a Conan d20 game 10 years ago, and he'd start every session by playing the opening music from the movie. I can do a pretty good mimicry of Mako reciting, "Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis..." and the rest. I'll check out the new rules. Thanks.