Tired of hearing people hate on longer battle times in strategic RPG's

[billd91]

I think this bears repeating.

The cost for trying anything other than a straight up attack in many games is higher than the reward thus doing anything other than a straight up attack is almost always a poor choice. Presuming a rational actor, most of the time, simply making a straight up attack is the way to go.

Take a 3e D&D example. If you throw a pot of boiling water on someone, how much damage would it do? d6? D10? It shouldn't hurt much more than a flaming bottle of oil, so, that sounds about right.

So, who in their right mind is ever going to give up their regular attacks just to throw a pot of boiling water on someone? Improvised weapon gives attack penalties and it's going to do a fraction of the damage you would normally do.

Your typical improvised weapon generally does have penalties, yes. But if all the DM can come up with for you is penalties, then he's probably not doing as good a job as he can. For those of us who also played Champions, a standard suggestion was for surprise maneuvers to generate a GM-adjudicated attack bonus. I would consider doing the same in D&D or any other RPG. Or in the case of the boiling water, shift the attack from AC to Touch AC.

But important with the idea of choosing to use an improvised weapon instead of regularly attacking is the idea of necessity. Why throw a pewter tankard at your enemy rather than stab him with your +5 sword of feat-based benefits? Because you don't have your sword with you (or you don't want to completely gut the fool). If the DM is never giving the PCs a reason to use anything other than their fine-tuned benefits, they'll never use anything else. But hang the first PC who draws naked steel in a bar fight and they may sit up and take notice.

People are quick to claim that earlier editions let you do anything you could think of. The problem with that is that earlier editions based damage on a relative scale. Dropping an anvil on someone's head does X damage regardless of who is doing the dropping or who it's being dropped on. Most RPG's, particularly mainstream ones, work this way.

Frankly, I think this is the way it should be. Though I wouldn't be opposed to adding something like SWSE's level-based damage bonus that applies to all attacks. Kind of a nice idea, that one.

So, while you certainly can do anything you can think of, the vast majority of the time, those things at best the same as what you normally do. If I swing from the chandelier and attack someone, how much more damage do I have to do in order to make it worth it?

I'm taking a penalty to the attack (most of the time in most systems) for trying this, so, in order to make it worth it, I have to do signficantly more damage and/or gain significant effects. Maybe when I swing from the chandelier, I get to attack everyone in my path.

That's what the 4e D&D solution would be. The damage and/or effects of your stunt would be commensurate with your level. You wouldn't just get +2 to damage because it wouldn't be worth it. You'd get a Burst 1 attack Dex vs AC attack for swinging from the chandelier.

Until your system actively rewards doing things other than standard attacks, it could be as wide open as you want it to be, but, no one's going to take advantage of that because it would be a bad idea to try. Hrm, give up mostly guaranteed lesser damage to try something that has a significantly reduced chance of success and only a moderate improvement over my regular attack.

Most people can do that math pretty well.

This is why I'm not so sure that page 42 and 4e's methodology is as good as people are saying it is. With 4e's "fixing" of the math, the game's not particularly tolerant of PCs attacking with non-prime stats and has some of the same issues with feat/weapon-based bonuses to attacks that won't be available if, for example, the rogue tries to push a table into a pursuing guardsman in an effort to slow him down. If he's an artful dodger type, his attacks will be based on Dex, not Strength (which he's probably dumped since he gets more benefit having a better Con) so a Strength vs Reflex table-shove won't do very well compared to his normal attacks in 4e either.

 

[Hussar]

Your typical improvised weapon generally does have penalties, yes. But if all the DM can come up with for you is penalties, then he's probably not doing as good a job as he can. For those of us who also played Champions, a standard suggestion was for surprise maneuvers to generate a GM-adjudicated attack bonus. I would consider doing the same in D&D or any other RPG. Or in the case of the boiling water, shift the attack from AC to Touch AC.

Getting an attack bonus might be nice. But, if I'm doing 1/5 of my potential damage, I'm going to want a guaranteed hit, not just a bonus, if you get my meaning. If my fighter type can regularly do 50 points of damage (assume 3e for a moment) and a pot of water does d6, there's just no way I'm going to throw that pot.

But important with the idea of choosing to use an improvised weapon instead of regularly attacking is the idea of necessity. Why throw a pewter tankard at your enemy rather than stab him with your +5 sword of feat-based benefits? Because you don't have your sword with you (or you don't want to completely gut the fool). If the DM is never giving the PCs a reason to use anything other than their fine-tuned benefits, they'll never use anything else. But hang the first PC who draws naked steel in a bar fight and they may sit up and take notice.

So stunting is relagated to those times when the DM deliberately takes away your good stuff? Stunting must always be second class? I'd much rather see stunting be, at the very least, equal to my regular attacks, because then people will actually do it.

Frankly, I think this is the way it should be. Though I wouldn't be opposed to adding something like SWSE's level-based damage bonus that applies to all attacks. Kind of a nice idea, that one.

There are a number of ways of doing this, yes.

This is why I'm not so sure that page 42 and 4e's methodology is as good as people are saying it is. With 4e's "fixing" of the math, the game's not particularly tolerant of PCs attacking with non-prime stats and has some of the same issues with feat/weapon-based bonuses to attacks that won't be available if, for example, the rogue tries to push a table into a pursuing guardsman in an effort to slow him down. If he's an artful dodger type, his attacks will be based on Dex, not Strength (which he's probably dumped since he gets more benefit having a better Con) so a Strength vs Reflex table-shove won't do very well compared to his normal attacks in 4e either.

Your character's base stat bonus is going to be pretty secondary to his level bonus fairly quickly. A 10th level rogue is going to have a +5 on that push table attack meaning he's still got a decent chance of hitting. Not as good as the Warlord's, true, but, it's not like it's impossible either.

In earlier D&D, he flat out wouldn't have any chance of success because the attack penalty combined with his abysmal THAC0 would mean he'd miss every time. Plus, simply slowing down the guard would play such a HUGE second fiddle to stepping up and splatting the guard.

In 4e, there's no reason that throwing the table couldn't be treated as an encounter power, doing encounter power level damage and having an Immobilize (Save Ends) power attached to it.

 

[billd91]

Your character's base stat bonus is going to be pretty secondary to his level bonus fairly quickly. A 10th level rogue is going to have a +5 on that push table attack meaning he's still got a decent chance of hitting. Not as good as the Warlord's, true, but, it's not like it's impossible either.

Base stat bonus secondary to level? Not at 10th level it isn't. It would be for, say, a 1-3rd edition fighter whose BAB (or equivalent) could be expected to be at least twice his stat bonus by that point. But for a 10th level artful dodger rogue in 4e, the +5 he gets for level has probably finally caught up to his bonus for having a 20 Dex (which he could easily have by then). The +2 short sword he has would be giving him another +5 net bonus (+2 magic, +3 proficiency bonus).
So right now, the rogue gives up a +15 to hit with his primary weapon in order to get a +5 with the table. Targeting Reflex, I can see that being a bit easier than hitting the AC so that -10 point shift in attack bonus should be a wash, right? But with the monster design guidelines in the DMG, the Reflex defense is probably going to lag only 2-3 points behind AC.
From my perspective, the incentive to engage in non-standard tactics - using something other than your primary weapons - is no less dubious in 4e than previous editions.

 

[Hussar]

The lag behind for defenses will vary by creature, but, yeah, probably not a whole lot more than 2-3.

But, then again, we're using a pretty sub-optimal tactic for our rogue. He's trying to brute strenght push a table in the way. OTOH, if he chucked a chair at the guard Jackie Chan style and tried to tangle the guard up, now it's a Dex attack vs Ref and we're good to go. And, it fits much better with the character.

So, he gives up his weapon attack bonuses, not an inconsiderable disadvantage, in order to gain an extra encounter, or possibly daily, effect in the combat. I'd call that a fair trade off.

OTOH, if the high strength warlord is there instead of the rogue, pushing the heavy table in the way makes a lot more sense, while chucking a chair doesn't.

There may certainly be situations where a stunt just isn't really feasible with a particular character, and that's fair enough. But, the difference here is that in earlier editions, stunts were almost always less effective than just whacking something with your primary weapon.