The Heart of the Matter

[Li Shenron]

Agreed. I had forgotten how quickly an encounter can be resolved in BECM. From rolling initiative to dishing out XP, a 4-on-4 encounter with a band of pirates took all of 7 minutes (I watched the clock.) A similar encounter would have taken half an hour under 3.5E...four times as long.

Simplified rules = faster combat = more combat = more excitement.

Well, personally my favourite things would be variety within the same ruleset... and that's exactly what I expect from 5e modularity!

What I mean is that 7 minutes for an encounter with pirates sounds great, if the encounter is not of major importance for the story, for example because the PCs are high level enough that pirates/bandits are easy foes.

However... I want unimportant encounters to be quick, but not trivial. For example, I'd like to see high-level PCs hack through a small army of goblins in a few rounds and disperse them (or just pass through the other side), without having to roll each attack, since they are probably all going to succeed, but then discover after the fight that one of the PC was hit by a poisoned arrow and this will carry consequences.

OTOH, I want the fights vs BBEG to be longer, more detailed (because they are more difficult therefore they should require more careful and detailed tactics) and more memorable. A 1-hour combat for the final adventure encounter can actually be quite fine for me!

 

[Scribble]

I don't want the RULES CYCLOPEDIA, I want a more AD&D like experience. With that said, I had nearly the same experience that you did with my now ongoing Friday nights game, except it was initiated by someone seeing my shelf of AD&D books.

Fight on!

I'd like the base game to be sort of somewhere in between.

 

[tuxgeo]

From my blog.

Last night, on a whim, my girlfriend and a handful of guests picked up the Rules Cyclopedia and decided to play. We didn't really plan it; we were just hanging out and sipping beer, when one of the guests saw the book on my bookshelf and said "Cool, D&D! We should totally play!" And I thought, "Why not?"
< . . . snip . . . >
I want game mechanics to be simple and intuitive. If Hit Points can't be defined in ten words or less, take them back to the drawing board.
< . . . snip . . . >

HIT POINTS:

"Your character's fighting resilience score, starting high. (Zero is bad.)"

There. That's ten words.

 

[JohnSnow]

Great story!

I've been thinking of getting my friends together and just playing some old-school Red Box D&D. I still have both my Moldvay/Cook and Mentzer starter set books. Would probably be a blast...

That's my hope for D&D Next. Ideally, it'll be simple enough for me to run a quick game with friends, but with enough added complexity to sustain a campaign. If that's the case, sign me up!

Fingers crossed!

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm inclined to wonder if inflated hit point totals would have something to do with that 7-minute comparison (yes, I know those charts don't list the hit points for BECMI/RC characters or 3.5E characters, but I think the point is still a noteworthy one).

I imagine that has a lot to do with it. But in my experience, most of the lag in combat comes from too many options and variables. It always seems to go like this at my table.

Player 1 looks over her character sheet and the PHB, trying to figure out which action to take. Then she studies the battlemat, to figure out how to best position her character for optimal effect. Then, she calls her action, plus maybe a move action and a free action, and we make some dice rolls. I check the numbers, maybe make some opposed dice rolls, and resolve the action. Then we move on to Player 2, who now has to re-think his action for the round because the battlemat has changed. And so on.

But in last night's game, Player 1 said "I cast magic missile on the closest pirate." I give the pirate some damage. Then I move on to Player 2, who says "I hide in the shadows, and try to creep up on the pirate in the back." One roll, then we move on to Player 3. Boom, boom, boom. Combat was fast-paced, which made it more exciting.

Sure, hit point bloat would have made the battle last longer. But we still would have been moving from player to player at a fast pace, so I don't think it wouldn't have felt as sluggish.

 

[Scribble]

That's my hope for D&D Next. Ideally, it'll be simple enough for me to run a quick game with friends, but with enough added complexity to sustain a campaign. If that's the case, sign me up!

I think that's kind of one of the things I really loved about AD&D... It was a relatively simple game but you could make it more and more complex by adding optional stuff and houserules from Dragon or your own head...

The problem (IMO) was that all those additional "packages" weren't really done with any kind of clearcut focus/balance... So it could be a royal mess...

If Next can generate the same sort of idea, but make adding different packages less chaotic then I think it will be a winner in my book...


Also I think it would be even more attractive for 3pp to make not just new versions of the same rules elements (ie not just more feats more spells, more PRCs etc...) but new rules ideas.

 

[CleverNickName]

HIT POINTS:

"Your character's fighting resilience score, starting high. (Zero is bad.)"

There. That's ten words.

Works for me. I prefer "The amount of damage you can take without dying." Nine words.

 

[BobTheNob]

However... I want unimportant encounters to be quick, but not trivial. For example, I'd like to see high-level PCs hack through a small army of goblins in a few rounds and disperse them (or just pass through the other side), without having to roll each attack, since they are probably all going to succeed, but then discover after the fight that one of the PC was hit by a poisoned arrow and this will carry consequences.

This just piqued an idea in my head. What if there was a way of determining the result of a combat, taking into account character and enemy capabilities, without resorting to turn by turn, blow by blow approach.

So, for instance "You smash into the room and engage the goblins in combat....By the time the bloody scrap is over'
* <Fighter with large axe but little armor> managed a huge amount of damage and fallen enemies, but took great wounds in the process
* <Other Fighter>Didnt take alot of damage, but did cop a poisoned arrow to the chest and is going to need to do something about it quickly
* <Rogue who snuck around the edges taking opportunity attacks>took little damage and managed to kill the goblin hexer before he really had any effect
* <Mage> spells didnt go too well this time and had little overall effect on the outcome

So instead of commiting the the time intensive turn-by-turn combat mechanics for EVERY last fight, a way that we can skip to the end result an not get bogged down. Which incorporates what characters and enemies are capable of and lets player know the effect their character had relative to their characters capabilities.

I might be dreaming, but its an interesting thought.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

This just piqued an idea in my head. What if there was a way of determining the result of a combat, taking into account character and enemy capabilities, without resorting to turn by turn, blow by blow approach.

...

I might be dreaming, but its an interesting thought.

This is "conflict resolution". I'd like some in my D&D. Whether they can do that well and still not royally tick off a large segment of the audience, by its mere existence, even as an option, is an open question. Some people are awfully wedded to that "blow by blow" being the essential nature of the game.

 

[RangerWickett]

Something like:

GM, build an encounter by picking from the following perils. For instance, if you have a gang of pirates, one peril could be 'hacked to shreds,' while another might be 'tossed overboard and nearly drowned.' Sometimes an encounter would have multiple instances of the same peril. PCs take turns picking from the perils, until every peril is being confronted. Then the PCs make a saving throw to mitigate the effect. On a success, he only suffers a weaker version of the peril. On a failure, he gets the full bad result.

PC narration can grant them bonuses to their save.