Legends and Lore - What Can You Do?

[Mark CMG]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (What Can You Do?)


Well, he's strictly talking about combat when asking the question here (which is an interesting thing in and of itself) but one of the quotes I find interesting enough to discuss at length is -

"I think there's something to be said for doing less more often than doing a lot of different things on your turn but only getting a few turns."

So, what are your thoughts on the matter?

 

[JamesonCourage]

Well, I prefer having a few actions you can perform on your turn. I made rounds 10 seconds in my game, and I only have full-round, standard, move, and free. Things like drawing a weapon are free actions, while really time consuming stuff is a move or standard (or full-round, obviously).

He hits the nail on the head when he mentions people would want to do something like attack each turn, rather than move or do something else. Yeah, it'd be somewhat more palatable if turns were faster, but people would still want to attack every turn, cast a spell every turn, etc., more often than not. Why? Because it's usually combat where rounds get broken down. And, in combat, you're trying to fight other creatures, which is mostly expressed through attacks.

I think that people would be okay moving around, but I don't think a three minute combat round would be enough for everyone to feel good spending a move. It would definitely be a change in tactics, which is interesting, but I don't think it's good for the game, overall. This is, of course, just for my group.

I never really liked immediate actions, swift actions, minor actions, etc. I think that you can definitely afford to cut down on action types. I think that'd be good for the game. It's just where each individual or group draws that line, I guess.

Action types only really contribute to the game when you make each of them relevant in every round. That is, if every character is supposed to be able to make a standard, move, minor, and immediate action every round, then the rounds will slow down pretty quickly. If every character can reasonably make a standard and move every round, and maybe pepper in minor, immediate, or free actions when circumstances call for it (but designed in such a way that this isn't every round), then I think that would speed up play considerably.

Action types are definitely either a symptom or part of the sickness, but they aren't the cause. Monte's right about them not being solely responsible for quick combat rounds. I really want to hold off on a final judgment until I hear more about the other ways he'd speed up combat. As always, play what you like

 

[Dragonblade]

My group plays both 4e and PF regularly.

4e does combat really well, and the codification of the action types works very smoothly. I have no interest in going to a 5e that gives you one action per turn. I like the interplay of Standard, Move, Minor along with Immediate Interrupts and Reactions.

And for the love of God, keep the save every round system. Playing PF with its failed save and you are hit with some nasty condition for X rounds that you often have no way of mitigating brings gripes and complaints from us every PF session. And we LIKE Pathfinder. There are no edition wars in our group.

Combat in 4e takes about as long as it does for us in Pathfinder, but the individual turns in 4e go faster so people get to go more often which is good and a positive of 4e combat for us.

Really our primary issues with 4e combat are the reliance on movement based powers which all but necessitates minis (We prefer a mix of narrative and mini based combat depending on the scenario), and the sometimes overly gamist nature of the 4e powers system.

We like the PF class structure better than 4e's cookie cutter classes, but for mini based combats, 4e is a lot of fun and we like how it plays out a little bit more. Its just a tad too gamist overall in a big picture sense, whereas PF feels more organic and free.

 

[howandwhy99]

Move & Attack has been around forever, but I could definitely see ditching it, especially for a freer and faster game.

What if it were made an optional rule? Simple starting combat could be orally narrated by the core rules (without figures, grid movement, or marching orders), but an "added complexity module" would include all that stuff - AND bring back in the Move + Action for those who wanted it.

In the older 1 minute Rounds (and even 10 minute Turns) Movement had a defined limit, but Actions were less codified beyond a simple core. Move 12" and... cast a spell, stab an orc with a dagger, fire an arrow (this was actually 2x), use a magic item, etc. Bull rushing or moving an opponent or grappling and stuff we hand waved into "You can also do that in the time allowed." The question was: "Can you or I do it in a minute?" If so, then okay, you can do that. However the rule-based combat actions were still limited to only 1/Rd for any of them. It's was just a 1 Move, 1 Attack, And... game.

 

[delericho]

Better column this week.

I think combat needs speeding up dramatically (from both the 4e and the 3e standards), but I doubt this is the way to go. Moving to a "you can do one thing" model will see a lot of complaints from the melee types as they have to spend several rounds closing while the Wizard and/or archer-types spend that same time blasting away.

Honestly, 4e has the right mix of action types, and the right amount of stuff you can do each round. Where it goes wrong is that there are too many fiddly options, there are too many reactions/counters/counter-reactions, and there is too much micro-management of conditions, saves, power recharges, and so on.

(Plus, although it should be dead easy, it seems that many players have big difficulties keeping both the Standard/Move/Minor and At-Will/Encounter/Daily axes straight. Plus, psionics appear to be utterly broken, but that may just be a symptom of the same confusion.)

 

[Stormonu]

Call me an old fogey, but I don't want to see the game go to "one action a round". I like my "move & attack", even if I'm standing in the opponent's face and have nowhere I need to move to.

Besides, if you do go to a one action a round, you'll end up penalizing the melee attackers. The person who moves up first doesn't get to make the first attack, he moved after all. Ranged attackers can't circle & attack (shot on the run) and so on.

(I also agree somewhat on saves. I prefer the "save every round", but I think it's too easy in 4E's system. I'd prefer something like saving against the original DC/hit total, with a +1 bonus to the save each round).

 

[Baumi]

Only one Action per Round would be really bad.

That would mean that you will have many rounds where you cannot do something interesting and Leaders could easily become simple heal-bots again (no time for other non buffs or heals). Also while the rounds would go faster, because of the non-attack rounds you would need more rounds to kill the enemies so it might even take longer than before.

But Minor Actions, Interrupts and other types of actions could need some simplifications.

 

[nedjer]

Move, act, roll. It just works

 

[LurkAway]

Playing devil's advocate, is move + attack so important as to enforce that status quo for the entire battle?

This makes sense to me
1) Move (or charge) into melee (1 action)
2) Attack while 5 foot step (or draw new weapon, etc.) (1 action)
3) Repeat from #2

(maybe even get rid of AoO because using up a round just to withdraw/reposition is almost like a penalty in itself)

But I'm not a rules/tactical guy, so maybe I'm way off.

If this doesn't offer enough flexiblity, perhaps warrior-types and rogues can do a sideswipe or slide-while-attack (technically combining an attack with a move in one action).

 

[delericho]

Playing devil's advocate, is move + attack so important as to enforce that status quo for the entire battle?

Probably, in at least some form. As discussed up-thread, restricting characters to "one thing only" will vastly impact on the fun of melee types vs ranged types, since the former will need to spend rounds moving into position, while the latter can just get stuck in immediately.

If this doesn't offer enough flexiblity, perhaps warrior-types and rogues can do a sideswipe or slide-while-attack (technically combining an attack with a move in one action).

The problem with this is that they'll very quickly start adding in all manner of special combined actions to cover all the bases. Instead of having 3 different actions each with a small number of options, players will have to juggle a single action picked from a list of huge numbers of options.

What they could do is remove Minor actions (most become Free; anything that is too powerful as a Free action becomes Standard or is just eliminated), and reduce Move actions down to a choice of one: "you may move up to your speed".

If they also eliminate Opportunity Attacks, or better still break the use of the combat grid (perhaps in favour of "Old School Hack"-style combat zones), this could also make movement a lot more freeform, and cut down on the counting and re-counting of squares. This would go a long way towards speeding combat.