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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8944892" data-attributes="member: 86653">Yeah, 4E mechanics produced a lot of boring combat.Yeah, that sounds like what I mean by clocks and how I ran skill challenges at the end of 4E and still do in other games.Each obstacle requires so many successes to overcome, the clock. The referee decides that up front and maybe some auto success and auto fail conditions. Like this guard is in debt so bribery auto succeeds but because this guard is in debt he's being shaken down by some serious leg breakers so intimidation auto fails. But then the players get to do whatever. Interact with the obstacle however they want, just like the regular back-and-forth conversational play loop.And yeah, instead of three failures and that's somehow the end, failures bring in new obstacles or increase the difficulty of existing obstacles. You try to intimidate the in-debt guard, it auto fails which makes it more difficult to deal with and it now requires one more success to bypass that obstacle.Success and failure should be directly tied to the narrative. The narrative is the important bit, not the mechanics. To me at least.Sure, why not? Like the clocks or dynamic skill challenges above only the obstacles are actively trying to harm you. You're only removing rolling damage and tracking hit points. If the monsters score a hit, remove a healing surge. Monsters could be one-hit minions, two hits, three, four...whatever. Players still declare and narrate their actions, the referee still adjudicates those actions, maybe calling for dicing, and narrates the outcome. The point of most filler fights is to whittle down the PCs' resources. In 4E that's healing surges, dailies, and consumables. So why not skip the intermediary paperwork step?Depends on the players, I'd guess. But I don't see it as zoomed out, rather reduced paperwork.My version skipped the points and just swapped out riders. In 4E, the damage is fairly fixed for all the powers by type (AEDU) and level. The only real differences were melee vs ranged and riders...which were largely determined by role or secondary role. Defenders could pick from this list, strikers from that list, etc. The idea being the player could have their list in front of them and decide which to use in the situation. Spend the resource and their attack now has that rider. Flexible at the point of use rather than pre-built. Fixed powers always strike me as kinda boring.Are you familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics and mighty deeds? It's like that compared to the 5E fighter's maneuvers. I vastly prefer the DCC approach to the 5E approach.Yeah, it sounds easy to say but it would certainly be a lot of work.</blockquote>

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