Please define 'swingy'

[billd91]

Cowardice is king when its always the best option...

Except that this is a game played with unreal characters dreamed up in our brains and not made of real blood and bone. It's a lot easier to do heroic or even blatantly stupid things with them than it is in real life.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There is also the benefit of swinginess in a system: great stories arising from the improbable actually occurring. Swingy systems can generate stories that you'll remember for your gaming lifetime.

1) The last long-term campaign I ran had 2 such events. The campaign was supposed to start with the party being seized by interdimensional buccaneers, and used for a "royal hunt." The dice seemed to favor the PCs heavily, and they almost won.

Later on, when facing the prospect of extricating a powerful Necromancer from his stronghold, the party instead ambushed him in the streets. They won initiative, doing impressive damage in the first round of combat, topped off by the Paladin landing multiple criticals. The Necromancer rolled a "2" for his save vs. massive damage and died as the Druid turned the party into ravens which flew away before the Necromancer's guard could even take an action.

2) The oft repeated tale of the Slaughter of the Harpies.

3) My 1Ed Darksun Dwarf who died due to a series of failed saves (vs magic, poison, death, and system shock) that essentially amounted to a 1 in 100M probability of occurring.

4) My 1Ed Ftr/Clc of Tyr who matched that Dwarf in improbability by rolls that resulted in her destroying a lich with a turning attempt while on a demiplane suffused by evil, which caused Tyr to take personal notice of her, appear, and grant her a boon.

5) My first EVER PC who, fighting alongside a Wizard down to his last Magic Missile (his last surviving partymate), almost took down a Purple worm. For a while, it was the Wizard who was landing blows with expert swings of his staff while my PC kept whiffing with his 2 hander. After the Mage got engulfed, the dice started coming up in the Fighter's favor. Both he and the Worm were down to their last 4 HP when we got a round with simultaneous initiative. The Worm hit, the Fighter didn't...and died.

(I still remember that sequence from 1977, and if I ever forget it, it will be due to brain damage.)

So...give me swingy!

 

[FireLance]

Eh? How is this not germane?

My main concern was that it would get into the fairly touchy "character death: good or bad?" issue, which (IMO) is a separate matter entirely.

The question is, afaik, answered. What is swinginess? It's the degree to which random effects will dominate a combat. A swingy combat will be dominated by random events while a grind will not be.

I'm not sure that randomness is the only factor that makes a combat swingy, though. To me, a swingy combat is characterized by significant changes (and often reversals) in the relative strengths of the participants. While randomness can make a fight swingy, I don't think it is the only factor that makes a fight swingy.

 

[Garthanos]

While randomness can make a fight swingy, I don't think it is the only factor that makes a fight swingy.

In magic the gathering, there used to be interrupt sequences that were very satisfying.

I cast an attack spell at you ... but I counter your spell.... no I counter your counter spell.... no I change the nature of my counter spell so it is a reflection and your counter didnt work ... so I change the nature of the spell you reflected so it is a buff... no I undermine the power source of the that spell (destroy the land).... until finally things fizzle or work.

 

[Garthanos]

To me, a swingy combat is characterized by significant changes (and often reversals) in the relative strengths of the participants.

Naruto, Wrestling and Many movies where the reversals are there to keep you guessing about the final result. Second Wind, emphasized... as a burst of increased ability... maybe more than just the moment gained in 4e?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I dislike the idea that no matter what plans we make, no matter how "good" or "skilled" a player is, he is guaranteed to die.

In D&D, at least for 3e and still for 4e, I absolutely don't mind this. Resurrection in 3e is a "known quantity" by default (that is, it's rare, but you can find it somewhere in the world, and it's been known to happen, for the Heroes). In 4e, this is a bit less true, but it's still an assumed character resource ("once a day, when you die..."). I really don't mind PC death, even if it might be permanent. Though I would be very interested in seeing ways to keep the player contributing after the character bites it (player boredom sucks infinitely more than character death), characters that die are not an inherent problem to me.

Now, Resurrection isn't something that is going to make an individual combat less swingy in either edition. It's a way to counteract some of the swing after the fact. I don't think this HAS to be true, it just has been true due mostly to legacy issues. And without resurrection, character death would be much harder to stomach ("Joe can't have fun anymore" isn't a desirable way to penalize). It makes the game as a whole less swingy, though, since the PC's have many ways of returning back to their starting point, even after catastrophic failure (and the monsters usually don't -- though sometimes the true villains do). It keeps the tension of death and failure (and even raises the specter of permanent demise if you're eaten by a Terrasque or something), but gives the PC's a way to bounce back.

Generally speaking, I prefer a combat that is "back and forth" rather than "slow, steady progression." That kind of shifting of tactics round-to-round is appealing to me, because it reflects the drama that should be inherent in a life-or-death struggle. Binary results aren't usually the best ("save or die"/"save or suck" is just a Don't-Have-Fun Button), but swingy results that aren't totally binary ("save or be down for a round"/"take tremendous damage and force healing") are exciting, because it demands that each turn you have, you have to do something different. Combat becomes fluid.

For instance, I am trying to make FFZ combat sort of "flip-floppy," in that the party that attacks in this round is forced to defend in the next round, and then switch back to attacking in the third, if they don't want to loose. Against enemies of equal or greater power, you NEED to pull out new tricks and stunts to win, or you will slowly be whittled down. Ideally, every player's turn will be spent carefully choosing which of these tricks to use in this specific scenario, because if they choose wrong, they could fail utterly, and rather quickly. I think a swingy (but not binary) combat gives a lot of narrative tension. Essentially, it makes each choice really matter, which is ideal, I think. It's not always realistic, but it's always pretty exciting.

 

[pawsplay]

In 3e, if you put a 12th level barbarian up against ten 1st level orc warriors, and they simply slug it out, the results are very random. However, in the end, you are mostly measuring how many swings it takes to kill all the orcs, and how much damage the barbarian takes. In fact, almost all "cake walk" battles, because they are approached with little creativity, tend to devolve onto die rolls. Randomness is one area that can introduce swinginess, but it is neither sufficient nor necessary.

 

[pogre]

I'm glad you started this thread, because I was misunderstanding what folks meant by "swingy." I always thought of it as combat that is more like a whiffle ball bat fight - where everyone in the combat is swinging like mad but not doing any real damage. The swinging pendulum type of swingy is much cooler.

 

[ryryguy]

If you didn't see it, Mearls posted about swinginess on his blog, apparently inspired by this thread: The Keep on the Gaming Lands: Swinginess and Balance

I think this is pretty insightful w.r.t. the questions of prep vs. swing that were being discussed earlier:

The biggest problem with a swingy game is that it produces outcomes that crowd out the rest of the system. 3e had a huge emphasis on pre-fight buffs and spells taken specifically to counter rare but catastrophic outcomes. It really favored players, because it was far more likely that they could plan and optimize to take advantage of the system's swing rather than fall victim to it. The reverse was true for DMs, who have multiple critters to manage and villains to create from scratch.

But read the whole thing!

 

[ExploderWizard]

My problem is guaranteed PC death. Because that's what swingy is. Guaranteed PC death. The longer you play, the greater the odds of the swingy result coming up.

I dislike the idea that no matter what plans we make, no matter how "good" or "skilled" a player is, he is guaranteed to die.

The law of averages will probably kill every adventurer sooner or later for sure. That is how we can say that we have beaten the odds when we do survive.

If the odds are stacked toward survival and you survive then what have you proven, that you are average? Congrats average Joe, you survived when you should have.

As far as planning and skill is concerned no matter how dangerous or swingy combat gets, good planning can always remain useful. In fact , the deadlier combat actually is the more planning matters.

Part of planning and skill involves knowing not only how best to engage the enemy but if such activity is a wise course under present circumstances in the first place.

This sort of skill is only useful if there is meaningful player choice. A DM dropping players into a meatgrinder gauntlet with few options other than fighting will severely limit the effect actual player skill has on the outcome of events. If this is the style of game being run then swingy/deadly combat will naturally result in a lot of dead PC's.