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Has the wave crested? (Bo9S)
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<blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 3533672" data-attributes="member: 537"><p>What I especially like about Bo9S is not the per-encounter thing, or the beefing-up-the-warriors thing, but the fact that it shifts the emphasis and detail in combat to the characters, not groups. Well, okay, I ALSO like the per-encounter thing and the beefing-up-the-warriors thing, but the shift in emphasis is still good.</p><p></p><p>D&D combat for 25 years has primarily been designed around the skirmish level. You have the tank, the medic, the bomb-disposal guy and the artillery. Everyone is part of a team, and your tactics are to do with terrain, fire and movement. It doesn't matter so much how the tank hits the giant, as long the giant gets hit; hence 1 roll to attack, 1 roll for damage. 3E provides more details at the individual level, but ultimately most combats still come down to churning out the damage: it's still the fastest, most reliable way to defeat an opponent.</p><p></p><p>Contrast this to games like GURPS and HERO, where it's all about tactics at the individual level. GURPS takes combat down to 1-second rounds, where you literally roll for every swing and block. HERO isn't quite so fine-grained, but it's close. Bo9S doesn't provide as much character-level detail in combat as that, but it does provide more than vanilla D&D.</p><p></p><p>IMO it's still got some way to go, though. There aren't enough counters (or not enough good counters), so that one hit can still take a guy down. All that tactical complexity doesn't do much good if a fight can be decided by who wins init. Most strikes are basically just big damage bonuses, with some window-dressing so they're not all clones of each other. Some of these problems are because the book still has to work with the existing D&D combat system, but other things should be fixable without having to wait for 4E.</p><p></p><p>So, yeah, Bo9S is the first step in the Soul Caliburization of D&D. This can be contrasted with GURPS, which is more like Tekken, or pre-Bo9S D&D, which is Age of Empires/Warcraft.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hong, post: 3533672, member: 537"] What I especially like about Bo9S is not the per-encounter thing, or the beefing-up-the-warriors thing, but the fact that it shifts the emphasis and detail in combat to the characters, not groups. Well, okay, I ALSO like the per-encounter thing and the beefing-up-the-warriors thing, but the shift in emphasis is still good. D&D combat for 25 years has primarily been designed around the skirmish level. You have the tank, the medic, the bomb-disposal guy and the artillery. Everyone is part of a team, and your tactics are to do with terrain, fire and movement. It doesn't matter so much how the tank hits the giant, as long the giant gets hit; hence 1 roll to attack, 1 roll for damage. 3E provides more details at the individual level, but ultimately most combats still come down to churning out the damage: it's still the fastest, most reliable way to defeat an opponent. Contrast this to games like GURPS and HERO, where it's all about tactics at the individual level. GURPS takes combat down to 1-second rounds, where you literally roll for every swing and block. HERO isn't quite so fine-grained, but it's close. Bo9S doesn't provide as much character-level detail in combat as that, but it does provide more than vanilla D&D. IMO it's still got some way to go, though. There aren't enough counters (or not enough good counters), so that one hit can still take a guy down. All that tactical complexity doesn't do much good if a fight can be decided by who wins init. Most strikes are basically just big damage bonuses, with some window-dressing so they're not all clones of each other. Some of these problems are because the book still has to work with the existing D&D combat system, but other things should be fixable without having to wait for 4E. So, yeah, Bo9S is the first step in the Soul Caliburization of D&D. This can be contrasted with GURPS, which is more like Tekken, or pre-Bo9S D&D, which is Age of Empires/Warcraft. [/QUOTE]
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