D&D 5E More Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock in Combat

[jodyjohnson]

I'd like to see more accessible defensive options versus various tactics and maybe less hyper-specialization into those offensive tactics in general.

Over the years there have been a number of offensive strategies which characters use: Action denial (trip, disarm, stun, daze, etc), charging or other movement based attacks, flurry of attacks, targetting weaknesses, or just plain old luck (crit builds, save or die).

Each of these can have inate specific counters which sometimes nullify them but it would be nice if all characters had options to choose effective or partially effective defences in response to either a telegraphed attack or repeated use.

These have existed already in the game, but usually as opposite pairs rather than a 2+ weak, 1+neutral, 2+ strong defense paradigm.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

... but I find that Thibault cancels out Cappa Ferro. Don't you?

 

[GX.Sigma]

I'd prefer it if everyone has rock so they don't make everyone else wait for 20 minutes while they decide whether paper or lizard is better.

 

[Jester David]

There's something like this in the game already, but mostly prior editions.

The PC builds a class around one thing (tripping, fire damage, flying). Rock.
The DM responds with monsters that negate the advantage. Paper.
The PC responds by rebuilding or tweaking the character to overcome the disadvantage. Scissors.

4e reduced this initially, pushing for all builds to function all the time (no paper for the DM). But this was tweaked in solo and elite monsters later on when it became apparent it was too easy to "rock" things into a stun-based coma.

You could certainly focus on this style of gameplay. Allowing people to focus on something for a fight-by-fight basis or round-by-round.

 

[slobo777]

Short version: Rocks shouldn't auto-defeat scissors, but might get advantage.

One of the core "atoms" of a game (almost any game more sophisticated than Snakes and Ladders or Tic-tac-toe) is player choice.

Games with more varied and meaningful choices have richer interactions (and sometimes as a unfortunate side effect, traps or breakage).

Definitely don't want to see rock/paper/scissors style of choice happening lots in PC builds, because the "wrong" choice for a particular game gets locked in for a long period. Playing a 3E rogue in an "against the undead" adventure for instance.

Definitely do want to see meaningful choices presented when playing the characters.

I don't want to see so much deterministic in-advance rock/paper/scissors that resolve around PCs detecting the situation and making a flow-chart like decision. E.g. "It's a troll, hit it with fire!" is not much of a choice. But "It's a troll, do I hit it hard with my axe, then go find some fire, or should I use fire to start with" is more interesting. To me, that means you don't ever want absolute easy-to-detect rock/paper/scissors setup. If a troll was immune to everything other than fire damage, it would be a more boring opponent.

 

[Animal]

Definitely don't want to see rock/paper/scissors style of choice happening lots in PC builds, because the "wrong" choice for a particular game gets locked in for a long period. Playing a 3E rogue in an "against the undead" adventure for instance.

Definitely do want to see meaningful choices presented when playing the characters.

I think 3E was all about meaningful choices in character builds.
Foe example, there were more than one viable way to play a rogue and still be pretty effective against undead. Feats, PrCs, items, class variants. You could do it, you just needed to invest in it first.

If you don't specialize in killing undead, you're not good at it. Don't know how you can make character development choices more meaningful.

 

[delericho]

The PC builds a class around one thing (tripping, fire damage, flying). Rock.
The DM responds with monsters that negate the advantage. Paper.
The PC responds by rebuilding or tweaking the character to overcome the disadvantage. Scissors.

4e reduced this initially, pushing for all builds to function all the time (no paper for the DM). But this was tweaked in solo and elite monsters later on when it became apparent it was too easy to "rock" things into a stun-based coma.

In that case, 4e provided the wrong solution to the problem. The right solution is two-fold:

Firstly, the rules should not allow a PC to be built as "a Rock" - the character should certainly be allowed to specialise (becoming "a bit rock-like"), and perhaps specialise quite significantly (becoming "really quite rock-like"), but should not be allowed to over-specialise to the extent seen in some (many?) of the "Character Optimisation" builds, where all the character can do is trip, or fire damage, or whatever. In particular, a base competence in all areas must be maintained.

Secondly, the DM should be provided with clearly labelled tools, coupled with advice to make sure he uses a diverse set. If the DM is throwing Rocks, Scissors, Lizards, Spocks, and Paper at the PCs, then that ultra-optimised approach doesn't work - sooner or later you'll meet your antithesis and be defeated. The winning strategy is a diverse skill-set. Most importantly, the advice needs to be quite clear: if your players do ultra-optimise their characters into one-trick ponies who rock 90% of encounters but will be wiped out by the other 10%, you must use that 10% anyway. Better to have one TPK, and any whining that goes with it, and then have the lesson learnt, rather than have to deal with the constant arms race.

The net effect of putting these together is that all characters should be able to contribute at least somewhat to all encounters, but they'll each get a chance to shine in the various different types of encounters - the Fighters will rock against golems, the Wizards against large numbers of weak opponents, the Rogues against single powerful (and sneak-attackable) opponents, the Cleric against undead, and so on.

 

[GreyICE]

I'd like to point out that 4E did prevent over-specialized characters. Most CharOp theoretical max damage builds are known to be inefficient on the tabletop. They might murder something, but taking hits on 5s they go down really, really quickly. 4E characters have to be, to be optimally effective, well-rounded. Single target damage is nice, but watch your defenses. Have something to do against swarms of creatures. Be able to take a few swings. Don't target Fortitude/Reflex/Will exclusively, mix it up.

4E also has a vast number of things to throw at the player - Soldiers (didn't keep your +hit up? Mistake), Brutes (you BETTER have good defenses), Skirmishers (back line? Sure), Lurkers (grab bag of irritating ways to test your party) and Artillery (ranged attacks, can't sit around and turtle).

On top of that, they fall into Minions (area attacks are good), Standards (a good mix of stuff), Elites (tougher, bigger, badder), and Solos (grab bag of everything).

So... yeah. 4E does all the stuff you suggested.

 

[Connorsrpg]

I kinda disagree, see to me 4E went too far. Not with PC choices and not with monster roles etc (even though most of those cases existed/exist in all additions).

The problem for the PCs was everyone can now do everything all the time! To me, that just was NOT fun. I liked earlier editions' powers/abilities that specialised vs certain creatures, and I certainly lked that all your powers did not work equally against all enemies (barring 1-3 defense differences here and there).

You 'can' defeat fire creatures with fire? You can just keep hacking away at bags of hps like undead, iron golems etc no matter what you brought to the fight. To me (us - our group) that was NOT fun.

And yeah, monsters had roles (as if they never did), but basing all stats purely on level also diminished inginuity in a fight. No longer were people thinking, 'How can we take advantage of this slow, dim-witted, lumbering ogre?' You just used your best powers (same as the last fight whatever that was against). At best you might select powers tarketing Will and Ref, but even the monster stats don't help much there. The ogre was okay in those too, simply b.c of level?

I am liking some of the choices PCs are getting so far and the idea of the OP, but there should be some situations where you simply had the best combination to win the day...and others where it is a real struggle to be effective without thinking outside the square, running away, planning ahead, etc.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Secondly, the DM should be provided with clearly labelled tools, coupled with advice to make sure he uses a diverse set. If the DM is throwing Rocks, Scissors, Lizards, Spocks, and Paper at the PCs, then that ultra-optimised approach doesn't work - sooner or later you'll meet your antithesis and be defeated. The winning strategy is a diverse skill-set.

Yet this hasn't been my experience. Make a character super specialized in fire damage means you get to do significantly more damage than everyone else. If 95% of all monsters are NOT immune or heavily resistant to fire, then your tactic pays off.

For instance, let's say this was the encounters in an adventure:

Orcs: Kill them in 1 or 2 hits with really powerful fire spells.
Kobolds: Do the same thing.
Oozes: Do the same thing.
Frost Giants: Do the same thing.
Fire Giants: Hmm...are they powerful enough that the rest of the party can't take them without my help? No. Good, I'll sit back and do nothing this combat while the rest of the group defeats them...after all, they have all of their abilities left, since I've been killing the rest of the encounters in one or two hits.
Zombies: Go back to your original tactic.
Goblins: Do the same thing.
Etc.

The problem is that D&D is still a team game and whenever one character runs into a problem with his specialization, he/she generally has 4 or 5 other people who can cover for them.

D&D encourages specialization due to feats, classes, PrC, PPs, and the like tend to give you more power the more you specialize. Got a feat that makes you do 10 more damage with fire spells? It's more powerful if you take nothing BUT fire spells. Have a PrC that let's you knock everyone down when you hit with a fire spell? Perfect, that just means you should have all fire spells. Then you just search the book for everything that gives you a benefit with fire spells. Then, if you run into something immune to fire...well, perfect, the other person in your group has specialized just as much in cold spells. He'll deal with it.