I felt that MIC helped some, and options from magic items were better than no options at all.
How did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat?
- Thread starter FireLance
- Start date
I felt that MIC helped some, and options from magic items were better than no options at all.
Gotcha. This hasn't been a problem for my group... yet. But I can see how a combat with a few bad rolls against one of the 'big pile of HP' monsters could be a drag.
Let me amend my advice. Maybe the thing to do it avoid using solo or elite soldiers for the time being, or use them very sparingly until some refinements/approaches to the system are made.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Yes, I meant to include something about that in my reply, but forgot.
Arguably "Big Six" didn't come up as an issue in 1e/2e because they just were not that significant - and there may have been a wider range of general fun magic items available for people too, perhaps.
It might even have been the case that in 3.0 the "big six" weren't as important - since in those days the empowered buff spell was where the ability improvements came from and there might have been more 'space' left over for the interesting items.
(Generally I found 3e seemed to have fewer low level interesting items to give to party members - but that is probably mostly an artefact of the 'expected wealth by level' and the way that various magic items were graded as anything else).
Cheers
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
I quite like the idea of Elites and Solo's having extra 'bloody' points, and that both the elites and solos (AND the party members) get their encounter powers recharged whenever an elite or a solo hits a 'bloody' point.
The other idea I was toying with was giving encounter powers a recharge number like the monsters have. Perhaps 5,6 or 6 to recharge an encounter power.
Having said that, I'm finding that recharge dice seemed like a good idea, but in practice I found it better to have a duration thing like "dragon can use breath again after 1d4 rounds" since I'm keeping track of rounds anyway, and it is one die roll instead of die roll(s) every round. Worked nicely with the 'metabreath' feats for dragons too.
Cheers
pawsplay
Hero
It's also one of things that makes it difficult for 4e to recreate a cinematic style sword fight. If 4e gives you lemons, you can make lemonade, but things just don't work like I feel they should.
LostSoul
Adventurer
What do you mean by cinematic?
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
The reason we saw it happening is because everyone who tried to vary their attacks soon realized that it was suboptimal.
For those who don't like detailed math, see the handy table at the end.
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Say, for example that you are a 20 strength half-orc barbarian who is raging with a +1 weapon and weapon focus at 2nd level. That isn't completely out of the ordinary for our group. You are up against a Hobgoblin, CR 2. You have +11 to hit and you do 2d6+11 damage with your attack(with a greatsword). They have 16 hitpoints, so you kill them 75% of the time you hit them and you hit 75% of the time. I believe this gives you a 56% chance to kill the bugbear each round you attack it(although I'm a little unsure of the math).
If you decide to grapple them and you have an AC of 16, then the grapple is immediately stopped by the AOO 50% of the time, resulting in you taking extra damage and negating your entire action for the round. If the bugbear misses then it is an opposed roll, your +9 vs his +4. I'm really not good at the math behind the probability of opposed rolls. But my best guess is that in the 400 possible combinations of rolls between 2 d20s, you lose 117 times. That means you succeed 71% of the time. You then do 1d4+7 damage to the bugbear, not enough to kill it. This means you only succeed on the grapple 36% of the time and when you do, you don't kill it, you simply give all of your allies +1 to hit it.
If you decide to disarm it then you are looking at the same 50% chance of immediate failure and extra damage. If the bugbear misses, you are looking at +15 vs its +5. You succeed 84% of the time. This means that any round your disarm you will succeed 42% of the time.
If you trip him then you have the same chance of succeeding as the grapple attempt. Only you don't have the 50% chance of failure due to the AOO. You still have a 50% chance of taking damage however. You still need to make a touch attack, which you hit with 85% of the time. This means you have a 60% chance of tripping him each round.
As for sunder, it provokes the same 50% AOO. However, it succeeds 84% of the time. You need to do 30 damage to destroy the weapon(10 hardness, 20 hitpoints). On average you do 18. This means, it'll take 3 rounds to destroy the weapon if you hit every time.
Out of all these options, only the Full Attack has any chance whatsoever to kill the Bugbear in the round you hit it. Out of all the other options, only grapple deals damage at all. The rest of the options still require that you use some way of killing or incapacitating the enemy after you do them. Normally this involves a Full Attack and only ends up extending the combat another 1-3 rounds.
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Chance of Success(Half-Orc Barbarian vs Bugbear):
Full Attack: 75% (56% to kill the enemy in one hit)
Grapple*: 36% (80% with Improved Grapple)
Disarm*: 42% (95% with Improved Disarm)
Trip*: 60% (68% with Improved Trip, which means a 38% to kill in one round)
Sunder*: 84% (95% with Improved Sunder)
* provokes AOO(50% chance to take 1d8+2)
Most people in our group figured out the odds within a short while and realized that the difference between the options was so great as to be overwhelming in favor of using Full Attack every round. When your choice is to have a 36% chance of grappling an enemy(with a 50% chance of taking damage yourself) vs a 56% to kill the enemy outright, the choice is fairly clear. Especially when almost every other option is negated when the target has a second weapon.
Remathilis
Legend
Tell that to everyone who expounds the virtues of Castles & Crusades.
For some, the concept of an RPG that is slightly "incomplete" is appealing. They feel like they have room to put their own mark on things. 3e was a closed system; to add anything, you had to double check and see what breaks. C&C is open; add what you want since we gave you just a skeleton anyway. 4e is somewhere in the middle; somewhat open (not every combat maneuver is detailed) somewhat closed (...except for those to which there is powers assigned).
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
The problem I see with this analysis is that it assumes the tactical goals of the combat are always kill everyone and everything, and while I admit that can often be the case - it does not need to be, and often most encounters (I run) have a mix of goals, either intentional to the scenario, or based on the desires of specific characters' goals, ethos, prediclection, speculation, desire for information, curses, promises, incomplete information or caution, etc. . .
If you reduce all the choices to math, then making the choice seems easy - but the game isn't about the math - it is about the events/encounters that are being played through and what they might require or inspire. . .
D'karr
Adventurer
And I have not seen anything in 4e that prevents/discourages this.
