How did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat?

[Janx]

traditionally, the standard 3e D&D combat takes 6 rounds, not 3. It's been fairly well documented, and meshes with my experience.

And doing Full Attack was usually the best option. The exception was usually when the party discovered that wasn't going to work well, so a more extreme method was needed. For instance, disarm or sunder whent he enemy's weapon is particularly dangerous (Mordenkainen's Disjunction ruining your gear dangerous or Vorpal).

Trip or Wrestle when you find it's easier to take him down, than out.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I'd like to go on record and say that a spammed attack can be okay, the biggest difficulty being its tacticalness.

Example: In D&D (3.5) doing something something crazy like using an improvised weapon nets you a -4 to the attack. In less tactical systems it'd doesn't really matter that much what you made the attack with, all that matters is what you intend to get out of it. So grabbing a nearby chair and breaking it over your enemy's head is a perfectly viable alternative.

The need to restrain myself because of tactical considerations is usually what makes me find D&D combat boring.

 

[Imaro]

The need to restrain myself because of tactical considerations is usually what makes me find D&D combat boring.

This... QFT!!

It's one of the reasons I don't get it when people claim 4e doesn't penalize you for trying crazy stuff... Yeah, it does. A simple example is that you loose anywhere from a +2 to +3 if you hit somebody with an improvised weapon as opposed to a normal weapon you are proficient with...and depending on the particular creature even doing an ad-hoc attack against one of it's other defenses can be suboptimal...

Quick question in a fight with a Dwarf Bolter do you have a better chance of running up and hitting him with a weapon power or running towards him and pushing him (Str vs. Fort)? Answer: Tactically the weapon is a better choice since his Fort def is only one less than his AC and this is easily accounted for by the prof bonus of your weapon. This only gets worse when your character begins investing in feats that affect his damage and chance to hit with certain weapons and/or gains magic weapons.

In fact I was thinking this might be one of the reasons people, in 4e, stick with powers (a known quantity) VS. ad-hoc maneuvers (unknown in both DM's ruling on damage... and whether you have a better, worse or the same as your regular attack chance to hit.). Tactically it is better to stick with your powers rather than attempt a maneuver with totally unknown variables.

EDIT: And before anyone jumps down my throat...yes 3e/3.5 penalizes you as well, but I've never seen that disputed so I didn't mention it.

 

[Felon]

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.).

But see, it wasn't over. Because our big guns fizzled, the BBEG wasn't even bloodied by the time were down to at-wills. The boss was in it until the end. The warlord got dropped. The fighter was hanging on by a thread. That would have left my warlock facing the guy alone.

It was actually up for grabs, with a few hits and misses determining the outcome. But it was monotonous attack-spamming all the same.

 

[Lacyon]

Tactically it is better to stick with your powers rather than attempt a maneuver with totally unknown variables.

Strictly speaking, it's better to guess at the unknown variables before making your decision

Per your own example, I wouldn't think most veteran gamers would have a very hard time guessing that dwarves (generally described as tough and stocky) have a good Fort defense - they're dwarves for crying out loud!

The key is for the descriptive (and other) cues for a creature to be reasonably accurate and consistent (and, of course, for players to pick up on those cues).

 

[Imaro]

Strictly speaking, it's better to guess at the unknown variables before making your decision

Per your own example, I wouldn't think most veteran gamers would have a very hard time guessing that dwarves (generally described as tough and stocky) have a good Fort defense - they're dwarves for crying out loud!

The key is for the descriptive (and other) cues for a creature to be reasonably accurate and consistent (and, of course, for players to pick up on those cues).

I totally agree... but again, instead of doing something cool without a penalty, you analyze and do what is tactically sound.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I was also referring to things like Attacks of Opportunity. AoOs I find more of a tactical mood killer than a tactical encourager.

 

[Lacyon]

I totally agree... but again, instead of doing something cool without a penalty, you analyze and do what is tactically sound.

I'm not sure you can have a system where "doing something cool" is both without penalty and not tactically sound.

I mean, if all you want is "describe an awesome action, then roll my normal attack and damage numbers", you don't need a system for that, Nike.

If what you need is "describe an awesome action, then roll my attack and damage with a bonus" is what you want, you're still doing what's tactically sound, with possibly less analysis - though there will necessarily be some, because somebody has to decide what counts as an awesome action and how much bonus you recieve, and your analysis will merely shift to "what is the DM likely to think is awesome?" instead of "what can I do to target the opponent's weakness?"

 

[Imaro]

I'm not sure you can have a system where "doing something cool" is both without penalty and not tactically sound.

I mean, if all you want is "describe an awesome action, then roll my normal attack and damage numbers", you don't need a system for that, Nike.

If what you need is "describe an awesome action, then roll my attack and damage with a bonus" is what you want, you're still doing what's tactically sound, with possibly less analysis - though there will necessarily be some, because somebody has to decide what counts as an awesome action and how much bonus you recieve, and your analysis will merely shift to "what is the DM likely to think is awesome?" instead of "what can I do to target the opponent's weakness?"

Actually... Exalted pulls this off pretty well with stunt bonuses, where how cool an action is, whether it interacts with the environment, how original it is, whether it makes everyone at the table go "DAMN!", etc. gives you bonuses to your action. As far as someone deciding what is or isn't cool... the DM already has to decide DC's and damage dice and whether you can try something at all anyway... doesn't seem all that different.. Or it could be a group decision thing.

EDIT: The thing is you can use this stunt bonus to make up for the loss bonuses that are a result of doing something cooler but less optimal.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

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?

IME,

1) Fighters had one option: attack. (Occasionally you would use Power Attack - which is purely a numeric penalty/bonus, or maybe the lame Whirlwind Attack, but generally you just attacked.)

2) Combats in 4e tend to take more rounds. However, a 4e fighter, at least early in the fight, will have way more options, and even when they run out of powers, they still have two at-wills. That's just less fun than the options available earlier in the fight.

So, IMO, 4e fighters are more than than 3.x fighters in every way. They're just not as fun as, say, 3.x wizards.