How did you avoid spamming attacks in 3e combat?

[Scribble]

Grappling and the like are "excess" to you?

They may have clunky mechanics, as some contend, but they surely are not "excess." Almost any kind of hand-to-hand combat since we left the trees and started walking has involved grappling to some extent. Its so common that certain combat-based competitions have rules to prevent it.

Similarly, "disarming" is also not excess, yet it is absent from 4Ed.

It would seem that your "excess" is my "realism."

See I agree we should have rules for grappling and hand to hand combat and such. What we dissagree on is what you consider "realism" I see as a clunky mechanic that locks you into doing one thing.

IE The grapple mechanic allows you to do X. onmce you do X you can do Y or Z.

In 4e we boil things down to the basic primary step "Grab" and then tack on other elements to achieve whatever we want/need.

For example the troll can "grab" and then tack on an ability to use grabbed foe as a weapon.

The bugbear can grab, and then use the grabbed individual as a shield.

I feel that this lets me have those "realistic" elements without having to either clumsily bend a set of rules into place, or come up with an entirely new "subsystem" to handle each idea.

 

[Cadfan]

Well, to go for a more mechanical, rather than automatic, tech...

3Ed is like modern agriculture. Modern agribuisiness uses a lot of tech, but also a variety of techniques- crop rotation, planned hybridization, etc.- that use knowledge rather than or in addition to tech that has boosted crop yields. Without what we've learned about agriculture, many more people in the world would go hungry.

Likewise, 3Ed was built from an accretion of design decisions over the decades, resulting in a powerful gaming engine. Everybody can find something to enjoy.

4Ed is more like organic farming. While fairly advanced in many ways, it rejects certain design techniques- like detailed subsystems to handle a wide variety of combat options- and by doing so, it has "reduced its potential harvest." It may taste good, but some gamers aren't going to be eating because (to them) it doesn't bring enough to the table. They are "hungry for more."

It did add some features though. Like moving your enemy by pushing or pulling them around the field of battle. 3e provided Bull Rush, and then quit on us- I'm personally convinced that it threw in the towel because its simulation leanings meant that combat maneuvers any more complex than that just ground to a halt in rules bloat. Even classic maneuvers weren't possible- a giant large enough to pick up a small house and hit the PCs with it wasn't able to pick up a cleric and throw him, because the rules for it simply did not exist. 4e, by deciding to just go ahead and skip all the details that 3e cared about- relative size of combatants, grapple checks, weight, etc, etc, etc, managed to actually realize an entire classic aspect of combat that is unknown in 3rd edition.

Ok, technically its not completely unknown. There's a few powers in Tome of Battle that used the Trip mechanic to throw enemies. But generally speaking 3e shied away from plausible maneuvers that aren't easily simulated with the same degree of detail as the existing maneuvers like bull rush and disarm.

4e did the opposite, of course, with disarm. Its virtually impossible to design a good disarm mechanic in gamist terms. So its been minimized. But that's how it goes between editions, I guess.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Obviously, your experience in 3.X differs greatly from mine.

I never had a problem- from either side of the shield- with grapples followed by additional moves, like using a grabbed PC as a human shield.

 

[Scribble]

Obviously, your experience in 3.X differs greatly from mine.

I never had a problem- from either side of the shield- with grapples followed by additional moves, like using a grabbed PC as a human shield.

It's not so much a problem, as it is excess hoops to go through for each effect. As it stands now I feel like 4e gives me an easy starting point, onto which I can tack an unlimited amount of extra parts when I need to.

3e felt like it gave me a way to acomplish something, and if I couldn't find a way to bend it into shape, then it wanted a new subsystem.

4e just feels like it handles the same concepts ina cleaner way to me.

Thats all.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Grappling and the like are "excess" to you?

Similarly, "disarming" is also not excess, yet it is absent from 4Ed.

It would seem that your "excess" is my "realism."

That's kind of the point. I'm not trying to model real life at all. I'm trying to model defeating some monsters in a fantasy world that acts a lot like a fantasy novel or movie. And I'm trying to do it in the simplest and most fun way possible.

What this means is that most of the time heroes in the story are swinging with their weapons. Very rarely do you see them rolling around on the ground grappling someone. Even though you DO see fighters in Ultimate Fighting doing it all the time. I don't like UFC because it's boring to watch two fighters holding on to each other for minutes on end without even hitting each other more than once or twice.

We instead want a system that encourages people to hack their way through their enemies, dropping them quickly and efficiently but with the tension involved in the fact that they MIGHT die.

Grappling is rather difficult to come up with "realistic" mechanics for that don't slow the game to a crawl. In any good simulation of it, it still involves 2 of the combatants to hold on to each other and vieing for the upper hand in the grapple so they can finally make the move that will win. It's a good idea in real life, but it's really slow and undramatic compared to a couple of quick slashes of the sword.

Disarming has the side effect of pretty much ending the fight immediately. In any movie or book, anyone who is disarmed is entirely at the mercy of their opponent. They are defeated and pretty much only get to die or surrender. It provides a overwhelming advantage to anyone who succeeds in it. If it takes you 4 rounds of attacks to kill someone vs 1 round of disarming to win, you take the 1 round of disarming because it is more effective. Unless it is difficult to disarm. In which case, ideally, you want the fight to end at the same point regardless of whether someone decides to disarm or just attack. You want options, but you don't want an option that isn't "attack with weapon" to be the best one. Because in most movies and books people attack with their weapon more often than any other attack. So, you have to make disarm such a bad option that you only succeed in doing it every 5 rounds or so, so that it is less effective than attacking normally. In which case, it is so bad and boring that no one will ever do it anyways. Might as well remove it as an option and save space in the book. It also has the disadvantage that it is completely useless on anything that doesn't use weapons. Making the chance of using it REALLY low.

Bull Rush has a legitimate, although rare, use. That's why it stayed.

Sunder suffers almost almost all the same problems as disarm. With the added problem that destruction of enemies equipment often causes problems with expected treasure by level tables. Plus, it's no fun at all when the enemy uses it on you.

Trip happens to people all the time in books and movies, so it is certainly well represented. But, you still don't want it to be the best thing to do. You also don't want it to be SO bad as to not be worth doing. This means that you run into the problem I mentioned in a previous post: If the goal is to lower an enemy to 0 hitpoints and trip doesn't advance that goal by the same amount as just attacking an enemy, then it is worthless. So, the only real way to do this is to make sure it does damage AND knocks someone prone. But that makes it clearly BETTER than a normal attack. So, you need to give a normal attack some advantage over tripping to make it so tripping doesn't get done every round. The easiest way in 4e to do this is to make all the powers that trip people encounter or daily powers.

So, I submit that Grapple, Disarm, and Sunder are all "excess". Disarm is better modeled as a finishing move than anything else.

 

[Vegepygmy]

In 4e we boil things down to the basic primary step "Grab" and then tack on other elements to achieve whatever we want/need.

For example the troll can "grab" and then tack on an ability to use grabbed foe as a weapon.

The bugbear can grab, and then use the grabbed individual as a shield.

I feel that this lets me have those "realistic" elements without having to either clumsily bend a set of rules into place, or come up with an entirely new "subsystem" to handle each idea.

I don't understand this argument at all. What are the rules governing a bugbear's Body Shield ability if not "an entirely new 'subsystem' to handle" the idea of using a grabbed individual as a shield?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

That's kind of the point. I'm not trying to model real life at all. I'm trying to model defeating some monsters in a fantasy world that acts a lot like a fantasy novel or movie. And I'm trying to do it in the simplest and most fun way possible.

Please define "fun."

What this means is that most of the time heroes in the story are swinging with their weapons. Very rarely do you see them rolling around on the ground grappling someone. Even though you DO see fighters in Ultimate Fighting doing it all the time. I don't like UFC because it's boring to watch two fighters holding on to each other for minutes on end without even hitting each other more than once or twice.

I admit, I alo find UFC boring. However, Brazilian Jui-Jitsu matches (and Judo when it enters the ground fighting phase) can often be rather interesting to watch, like human chess. I'm not sure why there's a difference in (at least my) perception of UFC grappling and when it's done in those martial arts, but it's there.

We instead want a system that encourages people to hack their way through their enemies, dropping them quickly and efficiently but with the tension involved in the fact that they MIGHT die.

IME, that's the default kind of combat the players are inclined to go for, and the most fun combats are when environment, traps, and clever tactics prevent either them or the enemies from merely rushing in and hacking.

Grappling is rather difficult to come up with "realistic" mechanics for that don't slow the game to a crawl. In any good simulation of it, it still involves 2 of the combatants to hold on to each other and vieing for the upper hand in the grapple so they can finally make the move that will win. It's a good idea in real life, but it's really slow and undramatic compared to a couple of quick slashes of the sword.

It is hard to do, and 3E was far from perfect. But at least it tried to handle it. Any "realistic" grappling rules will be incredibly messy and complicated...much like grappling itself. I don't know if it's less dramatic to go for arm bars and desperately try to break out of choke holds compared to swinging around a sharp piece of metal, though.

Disarming has the side effect of pretty much ending the fight immediately. In any movie or book, anyone who is disarmed is entirely at the mercy of their opponent. They are defeated and pretty much only get to die or surrender. It provides a overwhelming advantage to anyone who succeeds in it. If it takes you 4 rounds of attacks to kill someone vs 1 round of disarming to win, you take the 1 round of disarming because it is more effective. Unless it is difficult to disarm. In which case, ideally, you want the fight to end at the same point regardless of whether someone decides to disarm or just attack. You want options, but you don't want an option that isn't "attack with weapon" to be the best one. Because in most movies and books people attack with their weapon more often than any other attack. So, you have to make disarm such a bad option that you only succeed in doing it every 5 rounds or so, so that it is less effective than attacking normally. In which case, it is so bad and boring that no one will ever do it anyways. Might as well remove it as an option and save space in the book. It also has the disadvantage that it is completely useless on anything that doesn't use weapons. Making the chance of using it REALLY low.

Depends what movies. In a European fencing match? Probably is a fight-ender. Jackie Chan gets disarmed all the time. Granted, he fights unarmed and improvised, but sometimes he also retrieves the lost weapon safely via some cool stunt. It's also often times part of the fight in anime. The whole "lose your gun only to desperately dive after it and get the winning shot off just in the nick of time" scenario is so common, it's probably a trope.

Bull Rush has a legitimate, although rare, use.

Like pushing someone out of harm's way!

Sunder suffers almost almost all the same problems as disarm. With the added problem that destruction of enemies equipment often causes problems with expected treasure by level tables. Plus, it's no fun at all when the enemy uses it on you.

Sunder is problematic. Still think it should exist in some form, though.

Trip happens to people all the time in books and movies, so it is certainly well represented. But, you still don't want it to be the best thing to do. You also don't want it to be SO bad as to not be worth doing. This means that you run into the problem I mentioned in a previous post: If the goal is to lower an enemy to 0 hitpoints and trip doesn't advance that goal by the same amount as just attacking an enemy, then it is worthless. So, the only real way to do this is to make sure it does damage AND knocks someone prone. But that makes it clearly BETTER than a normal attack. So, you need to give a normal attack some advantage over tripping to make it so tripping doesn't get done every round. The easiest way in 4e to do this is to make all the powers that trip people encounter or daily powers.

Wait...why can't it just be a basic melee attack for no damage (or maybe unarmed damage w/ no ability modifier -- cue in Monks to be awesome trip-monkeys!)? The benefit is it leaves the foe prone. How crappy is the prone condition in 4E? I know you don't provoke for standing, but how low is the bonus to hit, again?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'm personally convinced that it threw in the towel because its simulation leanings meant that combat maneuvers any more complex than that just ground to a halt in rules bloat. Even classic maneuvers weren't possible- a giant large enough to pick up a small house and hit the PCs with it wasn't able to pick up a cleric and throw him, because the rules for it simply did not exist. 4e, by deciding to just go ahead and skip all the details that 3e cared about- relative size of combatants, grapple checks, weight, etc, etc, etc, managed to actually realize an entire classic aspect of combat that is unknown in 3rd edition.

Ok, technically its not completely unknown. There's a few powers in Tome of Battle that used the Trip mechanic to throw enemies. But generally speaking 3e shied away from plausible maneuvers that aren't easily simulated with the same degree of detail as the existing maneuvers like bull rush and disarm.

It had more rules for hurling people than ToB. Check out the core Snatch feat: Monster Feats :: d20srd.org
"The creature can drop a creature it has snatched as a free action or use a standard action to fling it aside. A flung creature travels 1d6 × 10 feet, and takes 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet traveled. If the creature flings a snatched opponent while flying, the opponent takes this amount or falling damage, whichever is greater"

While Awesome Blow is described as a push, it could be just as easily flavored as a grab (or latching-on) after a melee hit followed by a throw, using the same exact mechanics. The reflex save would be to avoid getting grabbed, in this case.
Monster Feats :: d20srd.org

Races of Stone added the Fling Ally and Fling Enemy feats, as well.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Please define "fun."

Heh. I can't. Each person has to define that for themselves. I find it fun to to wade my way through orcs, chopping them in half with a weapon or blowing them to bits with fireballs, each round knowing that it might be my last if luck doesn't go my way or if I don't carefully plan my position and tactics.

I don't find fun any round that works like this: "I trip him, go." or "I'm still in a grapple. I attempt to pin him. Failed. Go." It becomes even worse if this is the 4th or 5th round of attempting to pin or attempting to escape a grapple while the other members of my group have killed 1-2 enemies each in the same time. It makes me feel kind of like my rounds are wasted doing nothing.

I admit, I alo find UFC boring. However, Brazilian Jui-Jitsu matches (and Judo when it enters the ground fighting phase) can often be rather interesting to watch, like human chess. I'm not sure why there's a difference in (at least my) perception of UFC grappling and when it's done in those martial arts, but it's there.

Glad to hear you enjoy it. It may even be somewhat interesting to watch. I haven't, so I don't know. Still, it just doesn't "feel" like heroic fantasy to me. I expect my fantasy heroes to quickly dispatching foes with their weapon. Almost any realistic or semi realistic depiction of grappling still involves extending the length of a combat by a number of rounds, and spending many of those rounds positioning. It causes the aforementioned situation of "This is round 4 of attempting to pin the enemy. All of the other enemies were finished off by my allies by sticking swords in them. I haven't heard my opponent at all."

IME, that's the default kind of combat the players are inclined to go for, and the most fun combats are when environment, traps, and clever tactics prevent either them or the enemies from merely rushing in and hacking.

I agree, that sort of stuff is fun. I try to use it when possible. Still, the goal in those situations is still the same. You want to hack your enemies up, you just need to be careful about it.

It is hard to do, and 3E was far from perfect. But at least it tried to handle it. Any "realistic" grappling rules will be incredibly messy and complicated...much like grappling itself. I don't know if it's less dramatic to go for arm bars and desperately try to break out of choke holds compared to swinging around a sharp piece of metal, though.

I do find it less dramatic. When you are dealing with a sword or a fireball, everyone knows those sort of things kill people. In one hit(in real life, maybe not in the rules). So, you get that sense that if you didn't just barely get out of the way of that last strike, you'd be missing your head. With grappling, I normally get a sense that if you fail your grapple check this round that the enemy will move your arm 2 inches downward. And if you fail 3 more of them, he might get it behind your back. Then it'll hurt for a while. In a couple of minutes of that, he might be able to break your arm.

Fighting should be quick and deadly.

Depends what movies. In a European fencing match? Probably is a fight-ender. Jackie Chan gets disarmed all the time. Granted, he fights unarmed and improvised, but sometimes he also retrieves the lost weapon safely via some cool stunt. It's also often times part of the fight in anime. The whole "lose your gun only to desperately dive after it and get the winning shot off just in the nick of time" scenario is so common, it's probably a trope.

Yeah, I tend to view fighting as more like Braveheart, The Princess Bride, Willow, and so on. You get disarmed and you have no way to defend yourself and you get run through. I admit, it DOES happen periodically. Most of the time the enemy stops to gloat and doesn't notice the hero pick back up his sword or he gets distracted for just one second and the hero leaps over and picks up his sword. But the actual combat tends to end at the moment of the disarm for at least a while. I still think it's best modeled by what happens when you reduce an enemy to 0 hitpoints and decide not to kill him. It makes for a perfect situation. You disarm him, you hold your sword to his throat. The enemy never "goes unconscious" and instead "wakes up" as if the PCs had taken a short rest. If you stop watching him for a moment, he has the opportunity to get up and grab his sword and continue the fight. But as long as you keep him covered, it's safe.

As for Jackie Chan. But he gets disarmed just to prove how good a fighter he is without a weapon. He doesn't really count.

Sunder is problematic. Still think it should exist in some form, though.

This is one I care the least about. Weapons don't break that easily. Certainly not from just attempting to break one in combat. Hitting someone's weapon over and over again should never be the slightest bit effective when compared to attacking them with your weapon instead.

Wait...why can't it just be a basic melee attack for no damage (or maybe unarmed damage w/ no ability modifier -- cue in Monks to be awesome trip-monkeys!)? The benefit is it leaves the foe prone. How crappy is the prone condition in 4E? I know you don't provoke for standing, but how low is the bonus to hit, again?

In 4e, you get Combat Advantage against prone people. Which is +2 to hit. It also doesn't stack with other ways of getting combat advantage like flanking, stunned, dazed, etc. Which means it's useful to knock someone prone, but if you already have any CA against them, it doesn't do anything at all. Besides, +2 to hit isn't huge.

The point is when you put something into the game it has to compare to the at-will powers in 4th. There is a cleric at will that attacks at range and does damage plus gives an ally +2 to hit for one attack. Which is ABOUT the same as what tripping someone does.

But if you had a choice between hitting with the cleric at will power and attempting a trip that only did 1d4 damage and knocked them prone, you'd ALWAYS take the cleric at will. If you have the choice between hitting with the fighter at will that did normal damage for your weapon AND moved your enemy into a possible flanking position, you'd never trip.

The name of the game is damage. So, for any attack to be effective, it needs to do damage or cause an ally to do enough damage to make up for your lack of damage.

Trip is the only attack I could somewhat see as a generic maneuver to all classes. In fact, I don't really have a problem improvising this as a Str vs Fort attack that knocks an enemy down as long as it is within 1 size category as you with no damage. However, as it stands, that ability is so weak in 4e that almost no one will use it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't understand this argument at all. What are the rules governing a bugbear's Body Shield ability if not "an entirely new 'subsystem' to handle" the idea of using a grabbed individual as a shield?

Because it was just one roll. Attack, if you hit, your grabbed and take damage. The monster has a power that only works when it has someone grabbed. That's it.

A subsystem has to be a multiple step process filled with rolls or processes that aren't shared with the normal system.

For instance:
Normal System: Roll an attack roll to hit, roll damage dice.
Subsystem: Roll a touch attack roll, which is like an attack roll only different. If you hit with that, then make a grapple check, which is a modifier you only use when grappling. If you succeed, deal unarmed damage, which you almost never use except when grappling. Once you are in a grapple, you make grapple checks every round to be able to do other things in grapple. The opponent gets grapple checks on its turn to break out of the grapple, however.