How did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat?

[Ifni]

The only pure noncaster I played in 3.5 was a dervish. He had far less tactical options than my spellcasters, but he was extremely mobile and could go nearly anywhere on the battlefield. He had to make decisions about where and how to move every round - which can be nontrivial when you have both Cleave and Acrobatic Strike and there are multiple monsters on the battlefield - as well as deciding on Power Attack (his optimal PA was normally pretty high, as he had a very high attack bonus). He frequently used Jump to clear difficult terrain or obstacles, exploited flanking and higher ground obsessively, and sometimes used his adamantine weapon on walls/floors/ceilings as well as enemies (useful in dread wraith fights, if you have an idea where they are). He also had a lot of swift-action magic items (mostly from the MIC) that expanded his capabilities significantly. I think he had about the same variety of tactical options as a high-level 4e ranger, though - nothing close to my 3.5 casters.

I like complex characters. My dervish was too simple for my taste, but when he got too boring for me, I would just take a break from playing him for a while, and play my sorcerers or cleric instead (these were all Living Greyhawk characters). You might expect sorcerers to have a spam-the-same-action problem, but mine never felt that way, at least past the low levels. Some tactics I used repeatedly, sure, but the situations that came up in gameplay were normally varied enough to let my sorcerers use a wide variety of tricks. Just in my last game at L15 for example... there was a fight I won solo in the surprise round with a pair of empowered moonbows, there was a fight which consisted almost entirely of both sides throwing piles of GMWed weapons at each other telekinetically, there was a fight where our usual tactics didn't work too well and we resorted to a lot of area spells, wall spells and readied actions, there was a fight where I delayed and watched happily while our fighters splatted the dumb assassins... and none of these matched the most common pattern of that group's combats, where mobility magic is used to move the superbuffed frontliners into place and then they shred the flatfooted opposition. The reason I didn't use the same tactics in every fight was that they wouldn't have worked, or at least would have been very inefficient (only one combat in the game wasn't immune to electricity, only one fight had low enough ACs to make Telekinesis worthwhile, etc).

One other comment: I like complex characters and get bored even with PCs like my dervish (who was relatively versatile for a pure meleer), but not everyone feels that way. I have friends who are perfectly happy to play Grog the Int-6 half-orc barbarian whose combat options are "charge!" and "full attack!", so long as Grog is good at what he does - they just want to roll dice and smash things, and not have to think about it. (Grog, incidentally, was VERY good at what he did - friends with more system mastery helped his player with the build, and provided a table of optimal power attack values as a function of AC.)

 

[LostSoul]

snip

Good post.

 

[Mallus]

Without being edition specific at all, D&D combat is abstract and largely ablative in nature. The original intent was for the combat system to resolve conflicts quickly and return to the exploration/adventure.

Good point. I'd just want to add that the original intent of the design didn't survive long after contact with the players... many D&D fans liked to hack-and-slash, and so they did, through several iterations of the rules, even though the original focus of the game was exploration, puzzle-solving, and, dare I say it, combat-avoidance.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Good point. I'd just want to add that the original intent of the design didn't survive long after contact with the players... many D&D fans liked to hack-and-slash, and so they did, through several iterations of the rules, even though the original focus of the game was exploration, puzzle-solving, and, dare I say it, combat-avoidance.

Well thats the thing isn't it. I would say it didn't survive contact with a great many players but not all. If everyone abandoned that playstyle then older D&D editions wouldn't be popular enough to still have players much less dedicated websites.

 

[mmu1]

I think this thread response boils down to "Death is the ultimate condition".

While not fancy, killing your enemies in one or 2 strokes is fun. So even if the fighter's method of doing that was limited, the ability to lay down death to enemies very quickly can be exciting, especially when they are doing the same thing to you.

I think why 4e gets accused of spamming is that you can hit the same enemy 4 times and its still not dead, and that gets discouraging.

Well, yeah.

I have been thinking more about this, and a couple of other things have occurred to me as reasons why I enjoy "just spamming" attacks:

1. It takes almost no skill to play a well-designed fighter effectively, but any class takes thought and tactics to play really well.

2. If your character is at the front lines, dealing and taking massive amounts of damage, and your party is tactically minded, you often end up driving the action. Much more so than an ostensibly more complex class like (for example) a Rogue, who's the one running around taking advantage of the opportunities you create.

 

[Mallus]

I would say it didn't survive contact with a great many players but not all.

Sure.

If everyone abandoned that playstyle then older D&D editions wouldn't be popular enough to still have players much less dedicated websites.

A lot of people abandoned, or at least moved away from, the playstyle you described during the heyday of the older editions. My experience is that mode of play, while more faithful to the game's original intent and design, fell into the minority long before 3e. Didn't 1e cement D&D reputation as a hack-and-slash game?

 

[Gothmog]

I disagree with this premise.



"As opposed to spellcasters, who get spells AND feats, the only OTHER way to customize..."

At the very least, a fighter should be ready to grapple an enemy spellcaster, demoralize something with a low Will save and an even lower Reflexes save, or use an appropriate magic item. Playing a fighter without tactics is like playing a wizard who always memorizes the same spells.

You're right- I should have been more careful with my wording. Any character can shine when roleplayed well and integrates well into the campaign/world. However, in a strict mechanical sense, martial classes (fighter, barbarian, and to a lesser extent the paladin and ranger) really had their moment in the spotlight in combat, the system encouraged them to spend their feats towards customizing a given combat schtick, which in most cases (but not all) was dealing damage. APAATT greataxe barbarian with cleave and great cleave anyone?

The difference between a non-caster and a caster in 3e was immense in their flexibility and general usefulness. A character gets one feat every three levels (more if you're a fighter), so even a 20th level fighter has 18 feats (the highest possible in game), and a 20th level barbarian has 7. In comparison, a cleric/wizard/druid has a few HUNDRED ways to branch out and customize by learning/using different spells. Its not even close- the non and semi-casting characters were second-class citizens in 3e in regards to their usefulness, customizibility, and worth, and it only got worse the higher level it got.

Now I agree in theory that grappling an enemy spellcaster, or disarming an opponent, or bull rushing can be a worthwhile tactic. In fact, I even tried to get players to do those things during combats. However, unless the character were geared towards such a thing, those tactics were decidedly subpar and not likely to succeed. For example, what fighter with iterative attacks would give up full attacking for a bull rush, when its more effective to just stand toe-to-toe and full attack the enemy. Or try a disarm when it provokes an immediate opportunity attack, and if it fails the opponent can immediately try to disarm you without an AoO. And the rules for grappling were so screwy, most people I played with said "screw it, I just attack." Do you see what I'm getting at here? While these actions were available, the system itself was set up to discourage such actions, and encourage the full attack slugathon.

This is one of the things I think 4e did right, even if I don't agree with how they parsed out the ability to use powers according to encounter/daily powers. The actions in a 4e combat are a lot more varied, AND you still have the option to bull rush, disarm, grab, etc- AND you're not penalized for doing so. I've seen a LOT more varied use of tactics in 4e than I did in 3e, because the rules don't try to penalize you for trying creative stunts.

 

[ExploderWizard]

A lot of people abandoned, or at least moved away from, the playstyle you described during the heyday of the older editions. My experience is that mode of play, while more faithful to the game's original intent and design, fell into the minority long before 3e. Didn't 1e cement D&D reputation as a hack-and-slash game?

A lot of players moved to hack n slash before then. We played a mix of roleplaying/exploration and meatgrinder games with Basic before even using 1E. The further away from the designed play style that actual play gets, the more perceived shortcomings in design are noticed.

1E wasn't completely a hack n slash game. The reputation for that style of play came from the players rather than the game design itself.

 

[Felon]

Usual "don't turn this into an edition war" caveat.

One of the more common complaints that I've noticed about 4e is that the PCs end up using the same powers over and over again.

What I'm curious to know is, how did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat, especially if you were not a spellcaster of some sort? I know that theoretically, you could bull rush, disarm, trip, fight defensively, etc. but how varied were the PCs' combat actions in actual gameplay?

Do you think that the perception of spamming was avoided simply because the fights lasted fewer game rounds due to the base assumption of 4 PCs vs. 1 equal-CR monster as a standard encounter?

3e spamming: SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!

4e spamming: dink...dink...dink...

Hear the difference?

Had a final boss fight last night. Dispatched the elite boss's cronies, dailies expended to either do crappy damage or miss altogether, and the next half hour was just chipping away with at-wills, while the BBEG in turn fired back his basic attack.

 

[Mallus]

Dispatched the elite boss's cronies, dailies expended to either do crappy damage or miss altogether, and the next half hour was just chipping away with at-wills, while the BBEG in turn fired back his basic attack.

The way around this is to have a DM wise enough to realize when a fight is essentially over even it's not technically over and just end it (boss dies, boss surrenders, etc.).

Or, if that isn't palatable, litter the boss fight combat arena with objects/terrain that can be stunted into attacks that do powerful daily-sized damage (a la DMG page 42) so they have something to hit the boss with when their big attacks are expended and the minions are cleared.