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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1198375" data-attributes="member: 10201">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.]   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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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. 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.</blockquote>

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