How did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat?

[Lacyon]

His basic attack didn't have any special effect? He didn't have any situational powers that hinged on the special effect created by his basic attack (so that he has to hit with basic to use the more powerful ability)? He didn't have any rechargeable powers?

Unfortunately, quite a few Solo monsters don't have these kinds of things. They really should.

 

[billd91]

Unfortunately, quite a few Solo monsters don't have these kinds of things. They really should.

That might vary things up for the DM, but is that really going to help the player who has shot his wad of higher powers and is down to ablating the solo's hit points with his at-wills?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Crappy damage is certainly possible, but dailies never miss altogether.

Some of them might as well! Last Sunday a wizard launched his first ever fireball, and rolled 4 on his 3d6. Total of 12 damage, except that he missed all his attacks so the targets took 6 damage each and that was the end of the 5th level daily. Everyone round the table raised their eyebrows and said "was that it?

 

[Noumenon]

However, we mostly played Living Greyhawk when we played. So, we had to run published adventures as written with no changes. We followed the rules of the game exactly as they were written and intended.

I was definitely too quick to judge then, you have to play your hardest for that to be fun.

 

[el-remmen]

I'd like to address a couple of the specific examples.

[snip]

My examples weren't meant to be of just opportunities to use special manuevers like disarm - they were examples of combat encounters where just lining up and trading blows was not really an option, or at least not the best option.

It may also may a BIG difference that my players play their characters as if they existed in a "realistic" world - in the sense that - any foe potentially has the ability to defeat you, either through luck or because they are just that much better than you (on the other side of the coin, some foes are ridiculously easy as well).

The players know that I don't necessarily balance all the encounters against their level. To them a bulette (for example) is a fearsome monster that could kill their horses (even if it may or may not kill them) and leave them stranded in the wilderness making a trip of 10 days take twice as long and thus twice as dangerous. And that is assuming that the monster just doesn't kill one of them, and then carry them off to eat and then attacks again later. . .

I am in the middle a computer transition, so I don't have access to my records right now, but I think we might have had maybe two or three combat encounters out of 43 session that lasted 3 rounds or less - as I said in an earlier post, average combat length in my games is 12 to 13 rounds.

 

[el-remmen]

Nothing that can't be solved with ranged weapons and full attacks. Although, I'm wondering in particular why movement was dangerous due to flanking archers.

I was using the term "flanking" in the generic sense, not in the specific D&D sense. Basically, to pass through the end of the hedge maze they had to go through a gauntlet of archers that were above them and out of reach of melee weapons and hard to hit in general. The archers had a good view of the whole maze, while the side were so tall, that whenever PCs passed through a more open area they were targets for readied arrows.

Almost every circumstance that I've found where an enemy could be bullrushed

Yeah, but bullrushing people out of a tall tree is more fun.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I felt that MIC helped some, and options from magic items were better than no options at all.

We're talking about 3e? I actually might have bought that book, but not for the items.

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.

I didn't allow that kind of abuse when I was DMing.

(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).

I thoroughly agree.

Wasn't the Big Six due mainly to the fact that players could actually choose their magic items and not actually have to spend major campaign time to create items?

Be that as it may, I can hardly fault players for wanting good items.

The system forced PCs to have good defensive items, as your saves didn't advance fast enough, and your AC didn't advance at all.

I'm sure players would have appreciated being able to buy cool-but-inefficient items, if only the system made that not a losing proposition. By the same token, players never seemed to want to spend money on mounts or other cool-but-inefficient stuff. (I could say the same thing about castles, etc, but that latter bit was more my running style than rules issues.)

In 4e, you could run a magic itemless game with little problem, so you can also run a "can't buy any items" game with little problem.

Think about that question for a moment. How many of us that played this game in the somewhat early days (1980's) sat around and wondered why we constantly spammed attacks in combat?

Terminology aside, this has been a problem since the 1980s. Wizards always had the more fun options (although it took a while for those options to be useful).

 

[pawsplay]

What do you mean by cinematic?

"In the manner of a movie." Specifically, let's say the Star Wars films, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Princess Bride, Iron Monkey, Spartacus, Gladiator, and Braveheart.

 

[MacMathan]

Some of them might as well! Last Sunday a wizard launched his first ever fireball, and rolled 4 on his 3d6. Total of 12 damage, except that he missed all his attacks so the targets took 6 damage each and that was the end of the 5th level daily. Everyone round the table raised their eyebrows and said "was that it?

I remember that feeling when I hit 5th level in 3e and rolled poorly on a 5d6 fireball and all the targets made their reflex save. WoW things have sure changed

 

[LostSoul]

"In the manner of a movie." Specifically, let's say the Star Wars films, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Princess Bride, Iron Monkey, Spartacus, Gladiator, and Braveheart.

Yeah, but in what manner? To have action sequences like in those movies? To tell a story like those movies do? (eg. In the Braveheart vein, PCs suffer penalties if they are betrayed.) To have cool quips like they do in those movies? Or something else?