No full attack option?

[sidonunspa]

I'm sure you could. I however can describe all of those things in terms of the current combat system. Pretty much all of the scenes described are 'high level fighter vs. horde of dispersed loosely organized mooks', often with 'high level fighter wants to get somewhere and has to move through the mooks'. Run that combat in 3rd, and you'll have alot of movement too.

Yes and No...

I use "minion" rules in my game and have used them for a long time (since I played 7th sea, I just took the rules and made them work for d20) and if you use them in small amounts (not as the focus of the combat) you can make for some VERY dynamic combats in 3e. (Minions in my games don’t take attacks of opportunity; they die with any critical strike, and take 10 on saves)

With the "standard" 3e rules you can't have the characters face a TON of monsters and give them any real challenge... with minion rules; I have had the my players face an entire cult of Heretics lead by 10 ex-legionaries. The minions where easy to kill, but ended up “in the way” more often than not. (Like when they almost dropped a steal chandelier on the Altherian Artificer.)

You can make movement work in the game, you just need to make sure to keep the flavor... well..... flavor.

Now I think that 4e may go a small way to recreate what I created, which is cool.. what I'm looking foward to is new character options..

 

[frankthedm]

UPDATE: Let me add to that by saying that this is another example of 'not getting it'. Those 'high level fighter vs. vs. horde of dispersed loosely organized mooks' scenes that you like so well in the movies, work so well because they are visceral violent visual action scenes (and they are resolved very quickly). As such, they are alot more fun to watch than actually participate in as a player. Try to capture those scenes in your game, and your player will quickly get bored. He's moving all over the place and wading through mooks, but in practice its just redundant and gets tiriing in hurry.

It only gets tiring if the "mooks" are not actually mooks and have two or three hits worth of HP on them. If every first level orc warrior I would have encounterd becomes a 5th level orc Barbarian with improved toughness and die hard because i happen to be 15th level, then yes, it does get tiring.

 

[sidonunspa]

I think that the scene in the Caves of Moria can be recreated quite well with 3.5, it just takes some flavorful description from the DM, and that in my opinion is one of the very hardest parts of the game (other than roleplaying interesting NPC's). If we assume that in "gamespeak" that all the movement Aragorn and Gilmi and Legolas are taking DOES provoke attacks, they're either not getting hit, or their HP "luck" is getting ticked off bit by bit (until that critical from the troll where it slams Aragorn, and then another hit on Frodo). All of that can be enacted in the rules as is, except for the almighty No Cleric to Heal Them.

Very true..

But It's a lot easier to describe when you are running the game without a battlemap. Want to see more dynamic combats, get rid of the battlematt and let your imagination take over. Wow, what a concept!

 

[Celebrim]

sidonspa: I'm not sure I fully understand the point you are trying to make.

I use "minion" rules in my game and have used them for a long time (since I played 7th sea, I just took the rules and made them work for d20) and if you use them in small amounts (not as the focus of the combat) you can make for some VERY dynamic combats in 3e. (Minions in my games don’t take attacks of opportunity; they die with any critical strike, and take 10 on saves)

As I under your minion rules, they have the effect of making minions less challenging and more importantly speeding combat resolution with large hordes. I don't have a particular problem with that. But then you go on to say...

With the "standard" 3e rules you can't have the characters face a TON of monsters and give them any real challenge.

Wait a minute? Are you saying that the above minion rules make the minions more challenging? How? I would understand you if you said, 'With the standard rules you can't have the characters face a ton of monsters and resolve the encounter quickly enough to justify the low degree of challenge that the players will face', because abstracting rules like 'minion rules' of some sort do speed play. But I don't see how they make hordes more challenging.

...with minion rules I have had the my players face an entire cult of Heretics lead by 10 ex-legionaries. The minions where easy to kill, but ended up “in the way” more often than not.

I'm not seeing how that is different than what we already have. Nor do I see what it has to do with movement. It's topic changing - abstraction vs. detail. I can agree if the monster is not intended to be anything but in the way, you can dispense with certain die rolls and abstract foe resources. But that's a whole different thread.
]

 

[Celebrim]

It only gets tiring if the "mooks" are not actually mooks and have two or three hits worth of HP on them. If every first level orc warrior I would have encounterd becomes a 5th level orc Barbarian with improved toughness and die hard because i happen to be 15th level, then yes, it does get tiring.

I think that if by 'tiring' you mean, breaks versimilitude, then I agree. But if by tiring, you mean, more of an excercise in repetitive dice rolling than it would be, then I don't understand you. How would having your 15th level fighter face alot of 1st level orc warriors be anything but a pointless dice rolling excercise after a while?

 

[Felon]

Ever been in melee combat? It rarely moves more than 10' or so, and it just about never involves the combatants gaining a large separation between each other.

Sorry, your brusque tone doesn't convey the air of unimpeachable authority that you seem to think it does. Combat does often happen over broad spaces with significant separation--then again, in the context of 3e, anything more than five feet is massive.

Have you ever consider that the strong disincentive from moving being that the alternative is to fight is probably not a bad system? It's got problems, but the solution is not letting longer moves to take place.

Upon consideration, I think that a ruleset that create a world of difference between a five foot and a ten foot step is a bad ruleset. A ruleset that rewards characters for being sedentary and penalizes them for being active is a bad ruleset.

If a designer looks at the D20 system and says, "Gee.. this combat isn't particularly 'cinematic'. Well, this full attack mechanic makes movement an unattractive option. Let's change that and see what happens!", then to be fully frank, I think that's a sign of a pretty poor designer who can't distinguish what they imagine would happen, or what they want to happen, from what will actually happen. I see that sort of problem in the house rules all the time, but it comes from guys who aren't paid to do this for a living.

That's pure presumption on your part. The guys at D&D have seen as many games play out as you have--likely more. You brand their design as haphazard, but you have no basis for that.

 

[frankthedm]

As I under your minion rules, they have the effect of making minions less challenging and more importantly speeding combat resolution with large hordes. I don't have a particular problem with that. But then you go on to say...

Wait a minute? Are you saying that the above minion rules make the minions more challenging? How? I would understand you if you said, 'With the standard rules you can't have the characters face a ton of monsters and resolve the encounter quickly enough to justify the low degree of challenge that the players will face', because abstracting rules like 'minion rules' of some sort do speed play. But I don't see how they make hordes more challenging.

I think he was trying to say some thing like 'The simpler it is to use the minions, the more of them that can be used, thus the party is challenged more.’

The simplified rules takes out the hassle of the large units so the DM is not tempted to use an insufficient number of them.

 

[sidonunspa]

I'm not seeing how that is different than what we already have. Nor do I see what it has to do with movement. It's topic changing - abstraction vs. detail. I can agree if the monster is not intended to be anything but in the way, you can dispense with certain die rolls and abstract foe resources. But that's a whole different thread.

Very true, sorry A.D.D. moment...

Back to the original topic then... the loss of the full attack option.

I don't know if I like it, if they f-over two-weapon fighting, they lost me

 

[Felon]

And as a natural consequence 'party takes on 300 orcs on a largely open plain' has become a staple of D&D encounter design, so much so that its driven almost every other sort of encounter to the margins of the game?

Yeah, right.

Your reasoning is very circular. Horde combat doesn't work well in D&D for several reasons, some of which the recent design & development articles have gone into.

Any kind of drawn-out battle can get tedious, regardless of number. OTOH, a fight where you are facing a horde that can overwhelm you rapidly if you don't do something about immediately is not going to be a drawn-out encounter. I guess with all this mook talk that you're assuming a warrior who's moving around has to be dropping his foes from full to negative HP. That need not be the case. He may be topping off opponents who were scorched by a firebrand. Conversely, may be softening them up for a firebrand.

 

[hong]

Your reasoning is very circular. Horde combat doesn't work well in D&D for several reasons, some of which the recent design & development articles have gone into.

Any kind of drawn-out battle can get tedious, regardless of number. OTOH, a fight where you are facing a horde that can overwhelm you rapidly if you don't do something about immediately is not going to be a drawn-out encounter. I guess with all this mook talk that you're assuming a warrior who's moving around has to be dropping his foes from full to negative HP. That need not be the case. He may be topping off opponents who were scorched by a firebrand. Conversely, may be softening them up for a firebrand.

Or heck, he could be fighting "mooks" like in d20 Star Wars: all the firepower of a high-level character, but with crappy durability. With those, you do not want to get cornered, even if you can take each one out with a single hit.

But I doubt they'll do something like this for 4E.