Fixes for "niggling bonuses/penalties"?

[Siberys]

Yeah - In my group, only one PC does ongoing damage, and that's a daily that hurts HIM, too. (Execration, Invoker Daily 1)

 

[Wik]

PC powers rarely have ongoing damage. It's definitely not a boost for PCs.

There are a lot of powers out there that grant ongoing damage. They're just rarely taken, because 5 damage doled out over a couple of rounds doesn't seem that big - especially because once a monster is focused on, it rarely lasts that long.

Ongoing 5 that actually means "anywhere from 5 to infinity damage, immediately" makes those choices much more useful.

Ongoing 5 will deal 5 damage 50% of the time, 10 damage 25% of the time, 15 damage 13% of the time, and so on and so forth. +10 damage, immediately, is nothing to scoff at in the heroic tier.

 

[Wik]

Not to mention that it relieves leaders of one of their cool powers - the ability to grant saves. I know a few players who would be disappointed if they lost the chance to show off their shiny "I can grant you a free save" ability.

Our house rule on ongoing damage works like this:

1) If you're taking the damage, you take the damage. My players are very good at remembering this, and being honest about it all.
2) If my monster is taking the damage, you need to remind me on his turn. If I forget, and the fight goes on for a little while before you remember, oh well. The moment's passed - hope you remember next round!

 

[Siberys]

That is a bit of an issue... Perhaps the following addendum?

Saves can be granted against ongoing damage as normal. Such granted saves are not counted for the number of die rolls for determining the amount of damage dealt.

This does kind of shaft non-free or -immediate save grants, such as Sacred Flame, but ongoing damage isn't the end-all, be-all of save ends effects anyways.

 

[keterys]

I'll admit, the ongoing damage thing essentially fails for me because it's not actually ongoing damage anymore at that point. I'd just change every instance of it to a flat +X damage (where X is the amount of ongoing X it does) before this method.

Personally, I like moving ongoing damage to the end of the turn right before saves are made, but that doesn't simplify anything except make the damage and its save happen at the same time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Add the following new conditions;

Fatigued
• You take a -1 penalty to attack rolls.
• You take a -1 penalty to all defenses.

Empowered
• You get a +1 penalty to attack rolls.
• You get a +1 penalty to all defenses.

When to use Fatigued
Whenever an effect gives a single target a penalty to an attack roll, a damage roll, or a defense, and the effect does not last until the end of the encounter or remain while a certain game-state condition is met (such as bloodied) the target is fatigued for the same duration instead.

Whenever an effect gives a group a bonus to an attack roll, damage roll, or defense against a single target, and the effect does not last until the end of the encounter or remain while a certain game-state condition is met (such as bloodied) that target is fatigued for the same duration instead.

When to use Empowered
Whenever an effect gives a single target a bonus to an attack roll, a damage roll, or a defense, and the effect does not last until the end of the encounter or remain while a certain game-state condition is met (such as bloodied) the target is empowered for the same duration instead.

Whenever an effect gives a group a penalty to an attack roll, damage roll, or defense against a single target, and the effect does not last until the end of the encounter or remain while a certain game-state condition is met (such as bloodied) that target is empowered for the same duration instead.

Special
Second Wind remains as-is.

Design Notes[sblock]Goals;
• Remove any need to track small bonuses and penalties to attack rolls, damage rolls, and defenses.

This does that, and does it well. The only problem is with regards to damage bonuses and penalties, but a bonus to attack rolls is a bonus to damage in a sort of circuitous way, I guess. Additionally, this removes quite a bit of the granularity of the current system, but SOMETHING has to be sacrificed for this to work...

This is actually very similar to how I had the Condition Track set up; replace "fatigued" with "move one step down on the condition track" and "empowered" with "move one step up on the condition track", and you had it at its basic. The other rules that made it work were as follows;

• The condition track went from -5 up to +5, and started at zero. The bonus/penalty applied to the same things fatigued and empowered applied to - attack rolls and defenses.
• Duration wasn't tracked. Instead, at the end of your turn, your condition track would move one step closer to 0. Duration was instead determined by how big the bonus was, because bigger bonuses would take longer to 'decay' to 0. Save ends effects moved you up or down two steps; all other effects only moved you one.
• Finally, effects that granted a save could instead be used to move the target's condition track one step closer to 0.

In the end, though, fatigued/empowered seemed more robust.[/sblock]

Thoughts?

Hmmm, I actually like the condition track concept better. What if there was a -3 to +3 track? A daily could create a +3 bonus/-3 debuff, encounter +/-2, and an at-will +/-1. Now you can decay one value at the end of each turn in the direction of 0. There is no longer a difference between buff and debuff nor any need to deal with saves. Its all visible on one easy to use track. This should be VASTLY simpler than the existing buffs and debuffs. Its possible 3 isn't enough for daily powers but that can be tweaked and its fine if each daily has its own value with 3 being a fairly typical default.

Personally I think this would be by far the greatest improvement. It is a huge simplification and yet still retains a lot of the nuance of the existing system. I can live with marks and ongoing damage, its the buffs and debuffs that really toss things over the edge IMHO.

I also kind of feel like dropping ongoing damage is a bit sad. If a guy is on fire ongoing damage really gives the feel of that and I like the way it creates a lingering feeling of desperation. There's hardly a tenser point in the game than when the defender is down to his last few hit points and MUST save against ongoing damage or go down (and then the ensuing frenzy to grant him some way to stay up before the next turn comes around if he fails that save).

I just like marks too much. I agree that monsters could live without them, but at that point I'm not sure a specific general replacement mechanic is needed, though it certainly doesn't hurt to suggest one or two well thought out options.

 

[Siberys]

Well, like I said, the whole goal here is that I'd like to be able to walk away from the table for a week, look at the board, and immediately - sans any need to call on my memory - know the state of the board, condition-wise. Of the above, I'll admit, ongoing is definitely the weakest 'solution'.

Considering that the condition track / fatigued and empowered takes care of the most egregious tracking problems, I think I'll just let ongoing sit for a while, until I can come up with a better idea.

On the condition track - I really like it, but it's not as simple to run as a single condition. Granted, that loses almost all of the nuance, as you've noted, Mr. Mad Arab... Either way requires a fair bit of DM oversight and power-rewording. I'll pass the options by my players and we'll decide which to playtest first.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll admit, the ongoing damage thing essentially fails for me because it's not actually ongoing damage anymore at that point.

I agree that the naming for this new concept doesn't make sense as ongoing damage, I would say that ongoing damage be dropped in favor of a new concept, like "escalating damage".

The other advantage of these immediate type saves is because you are focusing all the tracking into a small section of time....it opens up a huge amount of possible complexity you can add without causing tracking headaches.


For example, lets say I want to have a poison that does 5 escalating damage, and each failed save does 5 damage + 5 per failed save (so 5, 10, 15 etc).

With the current system, that would be an anoyance to track, because you would have to record it over several rounds. But with escalating damage concept, I could have the player roll the saves...calculate the damage, and apply it immediately. I can add in the funky rules because you don't have to remember them, just use them for the moment and then drop them.


This also opens up a lot of options for saving throws. Right now the concept of powers with an innate bonus/penalty to the saving throw they ask for isn't a good one...because it causes a tracking nightmare. But with immediate saves, I can throw on whatever bonus/penalty I want...because its over and done with in an instant.

 

[Siberys]

I had a new idea for ongoing damage. Ongoing damage becomes a condition - tentatively called 'Bleeding', though it could of course cover a poison, being on fire, etc. Probably needs a better name. It'd read something like the following;

Bleeding
You take 5 damage per tier at the beginning of your turn.

The only problem is that it's untyped - it loses some flavor and stackability, but it's much harder to resist, too. This change would also accomplish my design goals - no need to remember damage type or amount, though remembering to apply the effect is still there.

Thoughts?

 

[eamon]

I had a new idea for ongoing damage. Ongoing damage becomes a condition - tentatively called 'Bleeding', though it could of course cover a poison, being on fire, etc. Probably needs a better name. It'd read something like the following;

Bleeding
You take 5 damage per tier at the beginning of your turn.

The only problem is that it's untyped - it loses some flavor and stackability, but it's much harder to resist, too. This change would also accomplish my design goals - no need to remember damage type or amount, though remembering to apply the effect is still there.

Thoughts?

How is bleeding much easier to track than ongoing damage? The real problem is that there are so many different things going on, not that the mechanics of ongoing damage are all that complex. We just use tokens for tracking this stuff - a light blue token for any kind of penalty, green for slow/immobilized, red for ongoing damage, wooden for marked, etc. It's the job of the PC that imposed the condition to remember the details.

However, keterys's suggestion of doling out ongoing damage at the end of the turn sounds good and is only a tiny bit weaker - and though it's no less to track, it is fewer moments to track.

@keterys: do you actually use that house-rule?