How did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat?

[Noumenon]

Lemme just mention that it's entirely possible for spellcasters in 3.5 to spam Magic Missile and Fireball at every attack. My party regarded my first character as experimental and then useless because he tried to memorize spells like Hypnotism instead. (One thing about 3.5 is, making humanoid opponents is so much harder than running out of the MM that I don't get to do a lot of bluffing, enchanting, or disarming. It's all big giant slaads and demons.)

 

[LostSoul]

Nothing will prevent me from doing it. However, improvising such a thing involves less on-the-spot game redesign in Basic D&D than it does 4e. With all the Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger exploits, your options are more hemmed in.

Disarm works fine if 1) it's a Standard Action and 2) the target drops the weapon in his space. Then you can use the fancy framework provided with no redesign needed.

 

[FireLance]

Disarm works fine if 1) it's a Standard Action and 2) the target drops the weapon in his space. Then you can use the fancy framework provided with no redesign needed.

But that would hardly inconvenience the target. Picking up the weapon is a minor action that doesn't even attract an OA. That kind of defeats the purpose of trying to disarm him in the first place.

 

[LostSoul]

But that would hardly inconvenience the target. Picking up the weapon is a minor action that doesn't even attract an OA. That kind of defeats the purpose of trying to disarm him in the first place.

It's a good trick if the bad guy is using his minor actions to do something else. This is a rare case.

What's more likely to happen is if one PC disarms the guy and then another Pushes, Pulls, or Slides him off that square and then picks up the weapon.

edit: It's this kind of neat tactical setup that makes me like 4E. It's one of those cool emergent properties you get.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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?

Well, I think that depended upon the PC and the player behind it. One way to avoid staleness is to design multifaceted PCs.

One of my buddies is blissfully happy to use a big weapon with the Power Attack Feat tree, PC after PC. Not much variation possible, there.

In my case, each one of my PCs is a different person, with different combat techniques. Some have been just like my buddy's. Others resembled classic archers- stay at range, because all you have besides your bow is a dagger.

Some of my PCs carried a variety of weapons for different situations or weapons that were inherently flexible in their tactical applications, like the Kusarigama.

Or I'd go down an unusual route- like my Wiz/Warrior who did 2wf with a Whip and Pick, my Dex-based Polearm-wielding Githzerai monk with the Combat Reflexes feat tree, my Halfling Barbarian with claw bracers, spiked armor and trog-stink grenades, or my scale armor-wearing, Maul using, Dragon breath breathing Sorcerer.

If my PC was smart, I'd try to optimize battlefield control by using terrain, intervening creatures, or ranged or alchemical weapons if he had the dex for it. If not, I'm probably running a basic brute.

IOW, very frequently, my characters DID bull rush, disarm, trip, fight defensively, etc. or the completely unusual. Sometimes, versus certain opponents, my PCs couldn't do anything effective at all, so I'd opt to guard another PC or a valuable resource.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't see how 4e is any more incomplete than Basic D&D. If you could improvise a disarm rule in Basic D&D, why stops you from doing the same in 4e?

Furthermore, we have decades of progress in game design since Basic D&D that have led to expectations that certain things shouldn't have to be improvised. They are supposed to be part of the basic game.

Thus, in the context of modern RPG design- especially in contrast to the particular game to which 4Ed is seeking to be the successor- 4Ed is incomplete.

Now, if it had been called Basic D&D 2...

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.

Not to mention that bull rush only pushes 1 square and if the dwarf bolter is anything like a standard dwarf he negates the first square of being pushed!

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.)

I could see this being the situation if the fighter didn't have any interesting magic items to use - but by the time you get into the teen levels, wouldn't you expect the fighter to have his Christmas Tree of items which give additional options?

Cheers

 

[Felon]

I think for elite and solo monsters having a single 'blooded' condition isn't sufficient. Having that 'turning-point' with standard monsters is fine, but if you double or quintuple a monster's hit points it becomes meaningless.

I think elite and solo monsters should have multiple 'bloodied' values (OR noticably fewer hit points). Whenever reaching a new stage of 'bloodied' they should recharge their encounter powers or gain the use of an entirely different power.
Take for example a dragon with 1000 hp. I think it should be able to use it's breath weapon at least five times (at 1000/800/600/400/200 hp), not just twice (at 1000/500 hp).

Some monsters already have the ability to recharge interesting powers either randomly or under certain conditions (that can potentially occur an unlimited number of times in a given encounter). I think these monsters are a lot more interesting to fight even if the fight takes a long time.

Similarly, player characters should get a chance to recharge encounter powers in long combats. I'm not sure if it would make sense to link recharging to hit points or use a mechanism similar to the rechargable monster powers. Maybe there should be some way to recharge them using a mechanism similar to the ones used in 3E's ToB to regain the use of maneuvers.

I think that we should do some "grind tests" here at ENWorld. Select a batch of monsters that people will volunteer to use in an upcoming encounter. Then we can see how pacing works out in different instances.

My intuition is that a 4e hydra will prove the king of grind.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I could see this being the situation if the fighter didn't have any interesting magic items to use - but by the time you get into the teen levels, wouldn't you expect the fighter to have his Christmas Tree of items which give additional options?

Cheers

The Big Six weren't interesting options, and that's what you tried to spend your money on.

(Also, IMO, character options are more interesting than magic items anyway.)