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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5744141" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes. I took that to be implicit in the "I find" in the sentence that you quoted.What I personally like in an RPG combat engine is that it be able to produce drama and tension even though the PCs do not have a good chance of failing. (Because if the game is to (i) last 30 levels with a high degree of PC continuity, and (ii) have an average of at least one combat per session, and (iii) not to have a cheesy amount of resurrection, then it had better be the case that most combat are ones that the PCs do not have a good chance of failing.)AD&D generally, in my experience, does not do this. Because it is generally a system of pure hit point attrition, if the PCs are almost certain to win then this becomes clear early on, and combat consists in rolling dice until the hit point counter reaches zero. 4e, on the other hand (in my experience, at least) does do this.One way to generate drama and tension even though the PCs are almost certain to win, is that the certainty in question be conditional on mechanically clever play by the players. Rolemaster is better in this respect than Runequest, because it has many more player decision points in its action resolution mechanics. 4e in turn has more, and also ameliorates the effects of die rolls (whereas RM, with is open-ended rules and its crit and fumble rules, exaggerates the effects of die rolls).What 4e also does better than RM is to mechanically configure things in such a way that the players' mechanical decisions will also tend to produce little microcosms of story - rising drama, climax, denouement, etc - within the course of the resolution of a single combat.For the reasons given above - plus others - I don't. I wouldn't go so far as to say that combat in Traveller or Runequest (and other BRP games) is tedious, but it certainly has a crap-shoot element that I don't find very satisfying.That is one thing that they can do. I'm not at all sure it's the most important thing. The way in which the mechanics create decision points, and make those decision points matter to the overall prospects of success, seems to me generally more important.The mechanics of skill challenges provide one example of how mechanics can produce a situation of gripping drama even when success by the PCs is guaranteed. Because a certain number of successful checks are required to win in a skill challenge, the fictional positioning generated by the making of each skill check may make a significant difference to the final outcome even though that outcome is guaranteed to be a successful one. For example, in a social negotiation, it may be that in order to generate the requisite number of (say) Diplomacy checks (and hence Diplomacy successes) the players have their PCs offer various compromises, which then signficantly shape the final outcome of the negotiations.Or consider a quite different example, from games like HeroWars/Quest, or The Riddle of Steel: if a player gets his/her PC into a conflict that engages all the PC's relationships, passions etc - so that in TRoS all the Spiritual Attributes are contributing bonus dice, or in HW/Q all the relationships etc are contributing augments - then the PC will have only a very small chance of failure. But this should still be a gripping challenge, because in order to have all those mechanical benefits in play, the player must have maneouvred his/her PC into a situation in whch everything the PC (and presumably, therefore, the player) cares about is at stake.4e doesn't have this particular feature in its combat resolution, of making emotional/thematic connections contribute to success. (At least not directly. The closest it comes that I can think of is with radiant-heavy divine classes fighting undead.) But the same sorts of reasons that make even easy skill challenges potentially drama-laden apply to 4e combats. Decisions have to be made, and these have implications for fictional positioning. I think your focus on chance of failure and on danger is distracting you from what I believe to be the more significant mechanical issue, namely, the character and importance of player decision points in action resolution. And this is where combat roles make their contribution.But if every PC has the capacity (for example) to open up access to healing surges in a similar way, or to debuff enemies in the same sort of way as does a defender or a controller, then the force of a range of decision points is blunted. Questions about who to heal when, and how, become sharpened when it matters that the healer is unconcious or not. Questions about how to shape or reshape the front line become more pointed when it makes a signficant mechanical difference who is trying to hold that front line. Conversely, the more homogenous the PCs, the less sharp these questions and the less at stake in these decisions - where "the stakes" aren't necessarily success or failure (in my experience, at least, 4e is very forgiving of a wide range of player decisions) but rather the character of the play that results from the decision (both its mechanical character, and the fiction that correlates to those mechanics).</blockquote>

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