Touch attacks: is it just me..?

[Saeviomagy]

One problem with any form of initiative system which gives the 'fast' character lots of goes.

Anyone without a 'fast' character will become dead-set bored out of their brain once the ratio of actions a 'fast' character gets to those a 'slow' character gets approaches 2:1.

So don't let it happen. 3:2 is about the most you want to have.

 

[woodelf]

One problem with any form of initiative system which gives the 'fast' character lots of goes.

Anyone without a 'fast' character will become dead-set bored out of their brain once the ratio of actions a 'fast' character gets to those a 'slow' character gets approaches 2:1.

So don't let it happen. 3:2 is about the most you want to have.

That's a good point. I'm not sure what the threshhold is, but it's definitely not that high. The system i'm looking at would give an average person 2 actions (same as D&D3E), and a fast person probably 4 or maybe 5--i'm still working it out, so not all the options are set yet. And it would go up with level, same as BAB does now, for everyone, to some degree. So that should mean that by the time the fast people have 5 actions, the slowpokes have 3.

But i'll point out that right now D&D accepts a 4:1 ratio: a high-level warrior has 4 attacks to the spellcasters single spell.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Basically, D&D needs a Fighter who doesn't wear armor. You can accomplish this below (which is a class I'm writing up for my website, in nature).

Take a Fighter. Give him no armor profs, limit his weapon profs. Maybe drop the HD to a d6. Give him sneak attacks like a rogue, and a flurry like a monk. Maybe give him Wis bonus to AC like a monk (or maybe switch it to Cha...but make sure you drop the HD if you do this). Limit the bonus feats to "Dex-Monkey" feats. Switch the good save from Fort to Ref. You could maybe even get away with bumping up the skill points a bit, but it's not essential. You probably want to fiddle with the list to give them 'agile' Dex feats, but not 'sneaky' Dex feats, stuff like Tumble and Slieght of Hand, but leaving out Hide and Move Silently. Maybe give them a bonus to speed like a monk if you want to excentuate their mobility, or just give them a flat +10 like a barbie.

There. You've got a character who benefits a LOT from going first in battle (striking a flat-footed creature and gaining sneak attack damage), can strike rapidly (flurry of blows), and is still mostly fighter (not that skilled, no supernatural shtick, good BAB). If you give him a mental-bonus-to-AC-ability, the character becomes a viable front-line fighter, even with a dip in HD, potentially.

This is a hole in basic D&D that a Monk/Rogue/Fighter probably comes closest to emulating well, but is too multiclassed to be effective. The "Slicer," (as we'll call this proto-class) is a good fit.

There. Now you don't have to mess with Dex, which, I agree, is one of the most munchy of the stats out there.

A STR gives you bonus to hit and damage. You can avoid this partially by taking a feat, and by using a lot of magical effects.

A DEX gives you bonus to AC, to hit, to a save, and to a lot of useful skills. The skills and the save can be partially solved with magic, but there's no feat that lets you use STR for your ranged to-hit, or CON for your AC (this latter I think would be a viable feat, myself).

The STR bonus to hit and the DEX bonus to AC cancel each other out, but that leaves STR with one thing: an easily-compensated-for damage bonus (a first level cleric, or 1,000 gp will more than outclass that). Dex still has the save bonus, the ranged to-hit, and the skill bonuses. Of these, only the skill and save bonuses can be compensated for, and even those not extremely easily.

 

[WizarDru]

But i'll point out that right now D&D accepts a 4:1 ratio: a high-level warrior has 4 attacks to the spellcasters single spell.

Not an apples-to-apples comparison. No fighter I know of can cover a 30' area with damage, or cast a spell that can, theoretically, hit 50+ opponents in one action. An archer, however, would have a 5:1 ratio, by the same equation.

Well, since Dragon is now bagged, care to summarize? I check out an issue of Dragon every now and then (either risk the money if it looks like it's a really good article, or read a friend's copy), but i haven't seen any content worth the cover price in years--i dropped my subscription when they dropped Roleplaying Reviews (which, for the two years prior, was about the only thing of value to me in the magazine).

Well, I don't have the issue in front of me, but essentially it introduced about five or six 'alternate' core fighter classes. They were tailored towards specific designs, and modified the class slightly to tweak to that end. So, for example, you would have a fighter with Improved Initiative as a bonus feat at 1st level, a good Reflex save instead of FORT, and he wouldn't get the medium or heavy armor proficiencies. They weren't radical departures, but changes to the core class to achieve a more specific design. They still were fighters, but balanced against the core class. I really liked the cut of their jib, as it were. The idea was to encourage a specific kind of fighter, as opposed to forcing you to become a rogue to get more skill points or a different skill list, a common problem for the normal fighter. In return for buffing up the classes customizability, you lost versatility with weapons, armor or feat chains, as often as not.

 

[woodelf]

Not an apples-to-apples comparison. No fighter I know of can cover a 30' area with damage, or cast a spell that can, theoretically, hit 50+ opponents in one action. An archer, however, would have a 5:1 ratio, by the same equation.

Speaking in terms of player boredom, not character effectiveness. OTOH, since all of a fighter's attacks happen at once, maybe it's not the same thing as having more actions.

 

[bardolph]

[deleted, 'cuz I sounded like an idiot...]

 

[Mystery Man]

[deleted, 'cuz I sounded like an idiot...]

Couldn't have been worse than anything previous.

 

[bardolph]

Note that you said "one in a million"--not "one in twenty". The problem is that the system errs, IMHO, too far in the direction of making things common, and thus un-special. Now, if the die roll was open-ended, that'd be great (roll a 20, roll again and add), 'cause then you could have those 1-in-10000 chances, and the like. Right now, it's pretty much 5%, or 0--nothing in between. So if it's possible at all, it's fairly frequent, in the grand scheme of things. [i suppose you could argue that there is support in the following sense: say a creature has DR20, and the person attacking does d8+5, and needs a 20 to hit. The odds of actually doing damage would then be ~.09%, which is a reasonably small number. It'd also be a horrible combat to actually play through, unless the creature also only had 5 or 10 hps.]

This is intentional, and has a lot to do with why D&D is such a successful game.

While it might be fun and "heroic" to have a single blowdart needle get "lucky" and kill an Ancient Red Dragon with one hit, it certainly isn't quite so "fun" when a 1st-level kobold commoner gets "lucky" and kills a 15th-level PC Fighter in one hit.

You see, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, too.

And remember, the character who sees the most combat is most likely to be the VICTIM of such "lucky" rolls. And guess who this is going to be?

The PC's.

I think the DMG talks about this. "Adding randomness favors the underdog." And in the vast majority of situations, it is the PC's enemies that are the underdog.

All this means is, more dead PC's.

And, while this may be more "realistic," it is usually not more fun.

Now, i accept that such long odds need to be less-long for RPG purposes--you're not gonna make a million attack rolls against Great Wyrm dragons during your entire RPing career, so one-in-a-million odds may as well be zero. But you still need something a fair bit rarer than 5% for those long-shot odds. Heck, i probably make 20 rolls in a single session--and i'm sure the group, in aggregate, does--so 5% means it's gonna come up at least every night, on average. Hardly fits the trope of "one-in-a-million."

But also remember that, even when the natural 20 hits an otherwise unhittable creature, it only does normal damage. How many more natural 20's have to be rolled before the Old Red Dragon goes down? Now that would be a one-in-a-million chance!

Now, if your 1st-level archer has a single arrow of dragon slaying, and both

(a) needs a natural 20 to hit, and
(b) needs the dragon to fail the DC 20 Fortitude save (which, for older dragons, only happens on a natural "1"),

I'd say that the odds are still heavily stacked in favor of the dragon, and in a game, the odds are small enough that if it actualy succeeded, I would consider it a miracle (even if the relatively "high" 1:200 odds are still a far cry from the "one in a million" you are looking for).

Sort of. I want some sort of difference between the guy with high init and the guy with low. With the cyclic init, the advantage disappears after the first round.

It really depends on how well equipped the character is to exploit that first turn. Remember that the loser is Flat-Footed for that first round, and hasn't had the opportunity to declare Dodge targets, Combat Expertise, etc, etc. Plus, if you've got a Sneak Attack, you could do some pretty serious damage on that first round.

Also, if you gain surprise in addition to winning the initiative, you can get a Partial Charge, plus a Full Attack option (including iterative attacks) while the opponent is still Flat-Footed! Again, if you can exploit Flat-Footed opponents, here is some serious nastiness.

Plus, if you use that first round to conduct Trip/Disarm/Sunder attacks, you could very well create an advantage which will last well into the battle.

That advantage could be more attacks (it's how i'm currently tackling it in one system). It could be having a real advantage to going first (such as actions/conditions lasting to the end of the round, or end of the next round, rather than until your initiative count on the next round). Even having strict declarations would be an improvement and give the high-init guy some advantage (that is, the person with the lowest init declares what she's going to do, then the next-lowest, and so on, up to the highest, so that the fastest person gets to plan based on what everyone else is doing, to simulate faster reaction time).

The single biggest advantage to going first is that, once you've dropped your enemy, they don't get the opportunity to strike back. This means that the faster character always has an advantage of one round's worth of attacks.

um, did i miss something? If you're moving, you don't get multiple attacks either--and that means no point to TWF. Even with Spring Attack, you can't run in, hit with both hands, and then run out.

No, but imagine a Spring Attack with a reach weapon. That's run in, strike, run out, then Attack of Opportunity when the enemy tries to close in.

And if you use that AoO to trip the opponent, you can get another AoO when they get up.

This is the character that, IMHO, is warped by the rules. Specifically, sneak attack damage is really a mobility thing, mechanically, not a precision thing. You don't get sneak attack damage for having a good hit, or high BAB, or antyhing like that, you get it for outmaneuvering your opponent, catching her by surprise. IOW, it conceptually supports the swift fighter you talk about above. Also, i don't think this is the character concept i've been envisioning--this sounds like an archer, not a swashbuckler.

With Feinting, it's also a precision thing. Besides, wouldn't Tumble, Bluff, Dodge, Expertise, Mobility, Disarm, Trip, and Sneak Attack all be very "swashbucklery" things to do?

Conceptually, it bugs me, mind you--it's yet another case where the rogue is being used as a "dirty fighter", rather than a deceiver or skillmonkey. But that's another rant, so never mind.

Keep in mind that Sneak Attack damage is an abstraction. It doesn't have to be "dirty," if "dirty" doesn't fit your character. There's nothing wrong with saying that Sneak Attack damage represents "honorably" running your opponent through the heart!

Anyway, back on topic: i'm not a super-expert with D&D3E, but i'm going to toss out an example from soemone who shoul be: Monte Cook seems to think that the system as written doesn't support the light fighter, as evidenced by both his inclusion of the unfettered class in AU, and the ways in which it behaves that no PH class (or multiclass) can mimic.

What are some of the features of the Unfettered class?

OK, this i can't argue with. I haven't run into it much, but i see what you're talking about. In short, good tactics, combined with getting the first strike in, can make a significant difference. But, wouldn't surprise rounds be just as effective, even if you lose initiative?

No. If you lose initiative, you get one free standard action. If you win initiative, you get one free standard action, plus one full round (all the while the opponent is flat footed)!

I understand what you're talking about with setting the tone of the battle. Just that in my D&D3E experience, it wasn't necessarily the side that won initiative that got to set the tone. Often the deciding factor didn't happen until the 2nd or 3rd round, and it could be either side that does it.

This has mostly to do with how well prepared and how well coordinated the initiative-winning part is. Winning initiative is only an advantage if you know how to press it.

I agree ,conceptually: dash in, attack, dash out. Problem is, the freezeframe init system means that it doesn't matter how fast you are--no Spring Attack, no dash-in-and-out. I was particularly frustrated by this because it makes a classic strategy of the cinema impossible: rush in, piss off the [dumb] bad guy, then back pedal, staying just out of reach, in order to taunt/lead her into a trap of some sort. Because of the timing, my choices are: (1) rush in and bash (on my turn), get bashed (on her turn), bash and retreat (on my turn), or (2) rush in and out (on my turn)--which doesn't provide any incentive for the enemy to follow, 'cause she can already see where i'm going. In short, the strategic feint is essentially impossible, unless you have Spring Attack (at least lvl6 for the monk). In short, i agree that that's what the mobile fighter does, but i think you're glossing over the difficulty of actually creating such a character, especially at low levels.

But wouldn't you agree that a "low-level" character should find such behavior dangerous?? After all, the reason that they are Big Bad Evil Guys in the first place is because they can hurt people!

Besides, even a low-level character can (1) Rush in and bash "defensively", plus dodge (that's +3 AC!). (2) Pray the bad guy misses. (3) Run away and hope said bad guy gives chase.

I agree that the freeze-frame initiative system has its problems, but it's SO much better (and more playable) than the simultaneous systems of previous editions!

Which just aggravates the problem, IMHO. Forcing someone to take a bunch of feats to play a swashbuckler is, IMHO, just adding insult to injury. You don't have to take any feats to play an effective tank (just have a high Str and Con).

unless you want to have effective offense...

Besides, isn't that exactly what feats are for??? So you can customize your fighting style??

And hey! You can be a swashbuckler without taking a bunch of feats. Just dress smartly, learn the rapier and keep a sharp wit, right?

But if you want to fight with all kinds of fancy schmancy maneuvers, then take the bloody feats! That's what they're for!

This particular trade off--power vs. mobility--should be better handled by the basic combat rules, IMHO.

I think it's handled extremely elegantly, with the Attack of Opportunity system.

Funny you should mention that. I just pulled out my copy of GURPS a couple of days ago, specifically to read the advanced combat rules for ideas. Anyway, GURPS is even more complex, and thus even less desirable to me. I want *less* number-crunching, and *less* mechanical detail

D&D3e abstracts all of this mechanical detail by introducing Feats.

In GURPS, you're supposed to get an insanely high weapon skill, and then trade your score for various kinds of specialized attacks. Which more or less works, but requires some hard-core number crunching to figure it all out.

In D&D3e, you just take some feats, and suddenly you can do all these crazy things in combat, that other people can't do.

--i was reasonably satisfied with the non-tactical AD&D2 combat rules (while they also didn't support this archetype, at least they were less of a pain in general, and combats required less thought and usually went faster).

Except when you're the DM. Well that depends on whether or not you used all those ridiculous "weapon speed" and "weapon type versus armor" modifiers (has ANYONE ever tried to use that stuff??)

Now, long drawn-out fights between master swordsmen, especially fencing-style, are very cool--but only if they have the tactical livelihood of te one duel from The Princess Bride. IOW, a 30rd fight in which each combatant used 10 or 12 different strategies (each for a couple of blows), would be interesting. I haven't seen a system yet that supports that, however. Also, at least in GURPS, the fight could easily be over in one blow--30 rds to land a blow is acceptable if, as i said, thefight is interesting as well as suspenseful, and that pretty much decides the fight. If it were D&D style, where it's gonna take you several blows--possibly dozens--to decide the fight (much less end it), then you want to hit every time, more or less.

Well, D&D has the abstract hit point system, where hit points also represents "luck," "near misses" and that kind of stuff. But since critical hits are less-than-rare, and because Feats tend to mix it up a bit, I'd say that even a long D&D battle can still have plenty of dramatic flair -- more so than the "hit/parry/hit/parry/hit/parry/hit/parry/hit/parry/hit/parry/hit/miss-parry/die" cycle of GURPS.

Oh, and from a cinematic standpoint, favoring the swashbuckler is no better--the complaint would switch to "i want to play Conan--Conan doesn't parry, Conan doesn't work for advantage, he just cleaves right through the guy's defense".

In 3ed, even the Conan-style characters have feats! However, they will probably pick a different set than your swashbuckler.

 

[woodelf]

edit: double post, or editing gone awry, or something. all gone now.

 

[woodelf]

This is intentional, and has a lot to do with why D&D is such a successful game.

While it might be fun and "heroic" to have a single blowdart needle get "lucky" and kill an Ancient Red Dragon with one hit, it certainly isn't quite so "fun" when a 1st-level kobold commoner gets "lucky" and kills a 15th-level PC Fighter in one hit.

You see, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, too.

And remember, the character who sees the most combat is most likely to be the VICTIM of such "lucky" rolls. And guess who this is going to be?

The PC's.

I think the DMG talks about this. "Adding randomness favors the underdog." And in the vast majority of situations, it is the PC's enemies that are the underdog.

All this means is, more dead PC's.

And, while this may be more "realistic," it is usually not more fun.

What you say is perfectly true. But, let's talk about what constitutes "more randomness". Right now, you always have a 5% chance of hitting (or being hit), but no guarantee of good damage. 2/3rds of rolls will be within 7 points of your average, and the chance of getting +10 [from your average] is 5%, but that's the best you can do. What if we had a die roll that changed that to, say: no guaranteed-hit, 2% chance of getting +10 and 0.1% chance of getting +20 (with no absolute ceiling to the roll), and 2/3rds of rolls within 3 of your average? is that "more random" or "less random"?--it lets you get more-extreme results, but less of the time. And, if you've read te whole thread, you'll see that i think the game is *already* too random. I'd actually rather my character get clobbered by the kobold than kill the ancient red dragon. Extremely bad luck can be fun, for me. Extremely good luck tends to ruin the game, for me. [I never intended to advocate instakill results, btw--i'm not sure where you got that idea from.]

But also remember that, even when the natural 20 hits an otherwise unhittable creature, it only does normal damage. How many more natural 20's have to be rolled before the Old Red Dragon goes down? Now that would be a one-in-a-million chance!

Now, if your 1st-level archer has a single arrow of dragon slaying, and both

(a) needs a natural 20 to hit, and
(b) needs the dragon to fail the DC 20 Fortitude save (which, for older dragons, only happens on a natural "1"),

I'd say that the odds are still heavily stacked in favor of the dragon, and in a game, the odds are small enough that if it actualy succeeded, I would consider it a miracle (even if the relatively "high" 1:200 odds are still a far cry from the "one in a million" you are looking for).

1 in 400. But, yeah, there are ways to do it, given the interactions between hit, damage, hit points, saves, etc. Which i suppose just points up that, for me, the whole AC/hp abstraction thing causes more troubles than it solves. YMMV.

It really depends on how well equipped the character is to exploit that first turn. Remember that the loser is Flat-Footed for that first round, and hasn't had the opportunity to declare Dodge targets, Combat Expertise, etc, etc. Plus, if you've got a Sneak Attack, you could do some pretty serious damage on that first round.

Also, if you gain surprise in addition to winning the initiative, you can get a Partial Charge, plus a Full Attack option (including iterative attacks) while the opponent is still Flat-Footed! Again, if you can exploit Flat-Footed opponents, here is some serious nastiness.

Plus, if you use that first round to conduct Trip/Disarm/Sunder attacks, you could very well create an advantage which will last well into the battle.

None of which is a counter to the complaint that high initiative doesn't have an effect after the first round. At best, you've demonstrated that the perks of going first in the first round are potentially huge, and could have repercussions for the rest of the combat. That is not the same as having *new* effects later in the combat.

In short, let's hypothesize that i get initiative, but somehow fail to press it in the first round (circumstances don't allow it, or something). It pretty much doesn't matter that i have the advantage in init for the rest of the fight.

What are some of the features of the Unfettered class?

AC bonus (and, like D&D3E, most classes don't have a defense bonus); parry; sneak attack; evasion. Little changes--and ones i can obviously make on my own. But it's nice to have them all there in a neat package--and i think it points up their absence in D&D3E.

No. If you lose initiative, you get one free standard action. If you win initiative, you get one free standard action, plus one full round (all the while the opponent is flat footed)!

I was unclear. What i meant to say was that getting surprise, but no init advantage is pretty much the same as getting the init advantage, but no surprise. And thus, you could theoretically construct a combat system where the surprise rules adequately handled the "getting the drop on them" trope.

But wouldn't you agree that a "low-level" character should find such behavior dangerous?? After all, the reason that they are Big Bad Evil Guys in the first place is because they can hurt people!

Not necessarily. Given foes of an equivalent power level, i see lots of balanced strategies (in the abstract). Certain combat archetypes shouldn't get hit by appropriate-level challenges--the swashbuckler/martial-artist/speedster--but if they do, they're down. Others aren't particularly good at dodging--bruiser/knight/viking--but you just can't put them down. Both of these, of course, scale for the character/setting/powerlevel. So, for the former archetype, dashing into combat nad then back out again should be a piece of cake--but charging a formation, going toe-to-toe, or clobbering the Big Bad woul be hard or impossible. For the latter archetype, all those things are easy, but dashing in-and-out just isn't an option. D&D3E instead assumes a scale, wherein the bruiser strategy is easier than the swashbuckler strategy--the former can be accomplished at low levels and with no feats, the latter takes feats and/or higher levels.

I agree that the freeze-frame initiative system has its problems, but it's SO much better (and more playable) than the simultaneous systems of previous editions!

Um, what simultaneous systems? AD&D1, AD&D2, and some variations in Players' Option all had initiative counts, with each person going in turn. The only changes to this are (1) rolling init for the encounter instead of the round, and (2) giving people all of their actions at once, instead of all the first attacks, then all the second attacks, etc. If anything, actions were *less* simultaneous in previous editions, because they had variabl durations.

Oh, and one nice thing about the speed factors was disrupting spellcasting. In D&D3E, as near as i can see, the only way to clobber a spellcaster is by readying or having simultaneous initiative (unless you're close enough for an AoO, of course). In AD&D2, most spells took more than one segment to cast, so there was such a thing as having an attack happen during the casting of a spell.

Besides, isn't that exactly what feats are for??? So you can customize your fighting style??

And hey! You can be a swashbuckler without taking a bunch of feats. Just dress smartly, learn the rapier and keep a sharp wit, right?

But if you want to fight with all kinds of fancy schmancy maneuvers, then take the bloody feats! That's what they're for!

Well, now we're veering into yet another topic, but what the hey:
No, they aren't. Or, rather, to the degree that they are, i think they are a design flaw. Only really exceptional activities should be restricted to needing a feat. Most basic and not-so-basic combat maneuvers should be available to anyone, without a feat, and without being a fighter-type class. Everybody should have the option of spring attack, just as everyone can charge, shield-rush, or fight defensively. The problem with assigning these sorts of things to feats is that it builds in a presumption that you can't do them without the feat (speaking specifically of actions that aren't in the core PH rules--like swinging from a chandelier to attack). Combat-maneuver feats can all-to-easily eliminate options, rather than create them, because it's not "fair" to those who take the feats to let others do the thing without the feat.

Yes, customizing fighting style is a worthy use of feats. But not at the expense of "reserving" all the cool stuff for those who spend feats--use the feats for more extraordinary abilities, not basic maneuvers.

D&D3e abstracts all of this mechanical detail by introducing Feats.

In GURPS, you're supposed to get an insanely high weapon skill, and then trade your score for various kinds of specialized attacks. Which more or less works, but requires some hard-core number crunching to figure it all out.

In D&D3e, you just take some feats, and suddenly you can do all these crazy things in combat, that other people can't do.

Huh. I never had a problem in AD&D2 letting everybody do most of the combat-related things that feats allow in D&D3E. All it took was a list of simple modifiers on 4 axes (-4 init, +2 to hit, +0 damage, +0 AC, perhaps) to characterize all sorts of maneuvers. No one seemed to have a problem with them, and it meant people didn't have to plan ahead (by selecting a feat, and thus a fighting style)--they could just do it when the need arose.

Except when you're the DM. Well that depends on whether or not you used all those ridiculous "weapon speed" and "weapon type versus armor" modifiers (has ANYONE ever tried to use that stuff??)

I was just about always the GM when i was playing AD&D2. And i used armor vs. weapon type modifiers (in AD&D2--just 3 types, same as D&D3E) and weapon speed. Neither is at all difficult. For the weapon type thing, you just record 3 ACs on your character sheet, and when the GM says "she swings her sword at you" you give the slashing AC, and when she says "the archer fires a flaming arrow at you" you give the piercing AC--and so on. For weapon speed, it's no harder than attack rolls are now: you record the total init modifier for a given weapon, right along with your attack bonus and damage with that weapon, and then add the number to your init roll.