Legends & Lore: Combat and Other Forms of Violence

[Keldryn]

Mike Mearls' latest Legends and Lore column is up:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Combat and Other Forms of Violence)

He talks about combat length, tactical options, and how D&D should allow players to find a balance that suits them.

Ideally, a DM could adjust an encounter to make it run from a few minutes to several hours, depending on how the group likes to play, while also scaling its threat as desired. If AD&D combat was fast but presented few options, modern D&D combat is slow and presents lots of options. Why not let the continuum rest in the group’s hand, or even in a player’s individual hands? Let some players opt for simple characters, and allow others to build complex ones regardless of class. Let some groups speed through fights to get to the roleplaying or exploration, while other groups focus on tough, complex tactical problems.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Interesting. He's certainly moving from nostalgia towards more definite statements about his design goals going forward.

 

[hayek]

The idea that different groups might like different rulesets is some very important insight (albeit pretty obvious if you think about it). What's more important (and maybe less obvious), is that the rules system should have flexibility to change complexity within a single game session. It's great to think that D&D might make a ruleset that allows uber optimizers to tweak out their characters with 100 options, or make characters with only 2 options, attack or move. But, it's a false assumption that every player either wants 10 minute fights or 2 hour fights. Ideally, I would like to see a ruleset that allows players to have some very simple, 10-15 minute fights when the conflict isn't too crucial to the plot, then break out the serious tactical options for the 2-hour back and forth epic battle with the BBEG.

I hope that Mearls and WotC realize that with DDI, they can actually effectively deliver this kind of system to players. It would have been ludicrous to think of publishing a massive variety of systems in paperback. But through the "magic of the interweb", WotC could support a user-driven community that could mix and match simple or complex rules elements to offer tailored rulesets that are combat-intensive vs. social encounter-intensive vs. rules-light narrative focused vs. intense tactical options for every decision, etc...

With a laptop in front of me, i could switch between rulesets at the table, changing to the stripped-down, simple version of my character to take out the castle guards in a quick and dirty 10 minute fight. Then pulling up the fully flushed out version for the 90 minute fight with the vampire lord and his array of minions.

Of course, given the history of WotC's digital offerings, I have no faith in their ability to deliver such a system, but a man can dream, can't he...

 

[delericho]

Strictly my opinion and, what's more, strictly my opinion today. Tomorrow, I may feel differently.

Length of combat is my #1 issue with 4e. I don't buy into the "you can't roleplay in 4e" argument, but I cannot tell the stories I want to tell using the system - length of combat causes the pace of storytelling to collapse to near-Lost rates.

In my opinion, the default game should play without miniatures and the 'standard' combat length should be about 10 minutes (longer for 'showpiece' and boss fights, of course). Indeed, there should be support for a 'quick play' game model where you play an entire adventure in 40 minutes *.

Support for additional levels of complexity, and the full-blown miniatures support, should come later as a supplementary option.

Why? Because it's dead easy to add complexity to the system for those who want it. It is nigh-impossible for a supplement to remove complexity from the system.

* Though the quick-play mode is probably best achieved by adapting the board games, rather than building it in to the RPG itself.

 

[Windjammer]

This article is interesting for all sorts of reasons, but to me these two statements stand out:

I like combat in Dungeons & Dragons. It’s not my favorite part of my game, but it’s definitely fun.

I think D&D should also enable groups to focus on tactical combat, or dial down to simple, fast fights. At the end of the day, the gaming group, rather than the rules or a distant game designer, should determine the game’s focus.

Not only was 4.0 very solidly designed around a particular focus, that focus was also what Mearls here calls "not my favourite part of the game".

I'd be interested in a follow up article where he not only references which parts of the game he likes best, but also how to effectively design around various levels of rules complexity and focus variety. Both constitute significant departures from the 4.0 philosophy, so I expect that going forward (if Mearls will have anything to do with it) 5e may be a very, very different game. Certainly the idea for D&D to be a wide tent game that accomodates all sorts of play preferences seems to be back on the menu.

 

[RangerWickett]

I kinda like the idea of quick-play mode for different classes. That system itself would be pretty complicated unless you want to really simplify things. Like:

Monsters
Standard monsters have 2 hp. They can attack a single target as a standard action, and a hit does 1 damage. Elites have 4 hp and either deal 2 damage or make two 1-damage attacks. Solos have 10 hp and split up 5-hp worth of damage. Critical hits deal 1 extra damage.

PCs
PCs have 4 hp. They can attack a single target as a standard action, and a hit does 1 damage.

• Strikers deal +1 damage.
• Defenders give a -2 penalty to attack rolls of adjacent enemies.
• Controllers can choose to either hit area burst 1 for damage, or to make a single target they hit also grant combat advantage.
• Leaders can let allies spend healing surges to heal 1 damage.

But that's probably too simple.

 

[Markn]

RW,

In a nutshell, that really IS what D&D is. If you simplify the math, it pretty much comes down to about 4HP per PC and monster, with adjustments for elites and solos. Damage IS about 1HP.

In the past I have looked at this kind of method to speed up the game, and it does have merrit.

I'd say your "simple method" is really the heart of D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I kinda like the idea of quick-play mode for different classes. That system itself would be pretty complicated unless you want to really simplify things. Like:

Monsters
Standard monsters have 2 hp. They can attack a single target as a standard action, and a hit does 1 damage. Elites have 4 hp and either deal 2 damage or make two 1-damage attacks. Solos have 10 hp and split up 5-hp worth of damage. Critical hits deal 1 extra damage.

PCs
PCs have 4 hp. They can attack a single target as a standard action, and a hit does 1 damage.

• Strikers deal +1 damage.
• Defenders give a -2 penalty to attack rolls of adjacent enemies.
• Controllers can choose to either hit area burst 1 for damage, or to make a single target they hit also grant combat advantage.
• Leaders can let allies spend healing surges to heal 1 damage.

But that's probably too simple.

Eh, I don't know about the specifics, and I'm sure you're not intending to make terrible specific suggestions either, but something that simple could be QUITE tactical. I recall developing a mass space combat system that was at approximately that level of complexity, 2 types of attacks, 2-3 stats for each unit, simple single die rolls to resolve everything, and just a couple pages of basic rules. It was quite popular and worked really well. Tactics were quite effective, it was quick, fun, and while your average person that wasn't into tactics would get eaten alive by someone who was sharp in that department pretty much everyone had a lot of fun playing it.

Here's a question for people though. Would it be troublesome in a meta-game sense to have 2 radically different combat resolution systems? Would most groups be stuck with some people who hated the 'detailed' system and others who hated the 'quick' system? How hard would it be to write adventures for something like that? I won't say it isn't feasible to do, but it seems to me the existence of 2 substantially different systems might create almost as many issues as it solved.

 

[TerraDave]

Would it be troublesome in a meta-game sense to have 2 radically different combat resolution systems?

Sight unseen: yes.

You can have optional rules and tinker at the margins. D&D has done that in the past (combat and tactics, which he references, is probably the most extreme case) and so have many other games.

But two radically different systems to be used in the same game or campaign...hmm...

4E combat can be a little long and predictable. This is the grind. You avoid the latter by things that may amplify the first. Recent changes have reduced this a bit, but not 100%...One implication is that "easy" combats can still take too long and be sort of boring.

It would be nice if you could do smaller combats with basically the same system, not have them take too long, but still have a cost, or at least possible cost, for the PCs. Notable attrition, or at least a threat of a devasting crit or some other impact. I do think some simple steps in this direction include:

*Fewer hp/more damage, and maybe less regular healing.
*More risk through critical hits or other mechanics.
*More strategic resources that could be tapped for the big, long, fights.

One metagame difference might be set up:

*Running by the same rules, but without minis.

 

[Scribble]

I think this would be a perfect opportunity for them to roll out a D&D "lite" that uses char-gen rules a little closer to Gamma World.