More Movement In Combat!

[MortalPlague]

As a DM, I love to design combats that range all over the battlefield (Like this one, for instance). It warms my heart when a battle starts in the tavern, spills into the street, makes its way along the docks and crashes into the smithy next door. 4E brought in some great tools to help with that, particularly with forced movement, but it kept a few things that really bogged down this sort of motion. So to see more mobility in combat, here's a few things to look at:

1) Opportunity Attacks - There's a good thread about this already, but like 'em or loathe 'em, they do stop people from moving around in combat.

2) Marking - Fighter marks in particular were a great touch, but they force fighters to stay next to their target. Then they force the target to stay next to the fighter. Some of the other tanks are better, but tanking is all about stopping movement. The other problem here is that when someone else hits the tank's target with a forced movement power, the optimal strategy is usually to 'leave him where he is'. There ought to be a better way.


Potential solutions? There's a few I've seen:

1) Skirmishing Bonuses - There's a number of monsters who gain extra dice of damage when they move more than 4 squares, or end their move more than 3 further, etc. If PCs had that rolled into their class, you'd definitely see movement in combat. Simple fix, and fun for the players.

2) Make Bull Rush Better - As written in 4E, you can only ever move someone on space with Bull Rush, and you don't deal damage. And you give up your attack to do it. If you could push a certain number of squares, or do it as a minor / move action, you'd see Bull Rush far more often. Or let a PC take a penalty on the attack to add it to the effect of that attack.

3) More Forced Movement - There's some, but there's room for more, especially on PC attacks. I'd love to see it as a bonus rider for a particularly good hit... (get 5 higher than the defense, and push 1 square).

4) Damage On Forced Movement - We'd see a lot more use of forced movement if you could slam enemies into things for damage, I suspect. Model it like falling damage, and you've got some awesome, cinematic, bad guys flying everywhere kind of combat.

Thoughts?

 

[Hassassin]

Thoughts?

One problem is that frequent movement makes the grid less optional.

 

[MortalPlague]

One problem is that frequent movement makes the grid less optional.

True enough. I use the grid quite a bit, so that's something I don't mind. I can appreciate that others don't, so perhaps the rules should be optional?

I just hate the grid-lock that always seems to happen. These characters and monsters have such great movement powers and options, but the rules encourage them to stand still and battle.

 

[Imperialus]

I'm not totally opposed to the idea, but I must admit that the combat movement in 4th really didn't make me a happy bunny. On numerous occasions it felt as though a fight would turn into a massive game of pinball. Once a few powers that forced movement were in play all of a sudden people were getting pushed, pulled, teleporting, cartwheeling, skipping rope, all over the freaking place.

 

[hanez]

Towards the end of 3.5 and full bore in 4e we went with an lcd projector, with minis and detailed maps and all the tactical stuff.

What 4e taught me is that stuff bores me and my group. Some of my best campaigns ever had the DM simply verbalizing the battle, and people verbalizing what they would do, no maps beyond some ticks on a blank piece of paper.

We want grand stories, and long battles get in the way of that. THere need to be battles, but short, and there needs to be enough room for the player to say Ok I jump and swing off the chandelier and the DM to roll some dice to say, ok, heres what happens. The more focus the rules placed on battle, the more generic and routine the battles felt for me at least.