Trip is an Encounter Power now

[HeavenShallBurn]

You don't whittle away at someone's "chance to suddenly take a mortal blow"; nowhere does that happen. Yet you accept hit points without them violating your believability.

Just for the record believability=/=realism
Like me KM describes HP in game as actual physical damage. The high level character is so unnaturally tough that despite being pincushioned with the arrows of lesser men he laughs and kills them with the jawbone of an ass then makes a throne of their empty skulls. Why because he's high level and that's what it means to be high level, to leave the limitations of mundane humanity behind and be mythically badass.

I have a dozen explanations, each less flattering than the last.

Keep them to yourself please these boards are already full of enough vitriol. In fact can't we all just keep some of these debates just a little less strident?

 

[Moochava]

Actually, the idea of wearing your opponent down through repeated assault is one of the most basic and most believable fighting strategies around.

Hit points seem to reflect that.

Hit points reflect precisely nothing that is in any way realistic. Any attempt to rationalize them as "realistic" involves so much hand-waving it's easier to say "We do this because it's fun, so deal with it." If "hit points are believable" is one of the foundations of your objection to 4E, you're...well, being able to say that is impressive, I'll give you that. Let me try:

Hit points are realistic.
Experience points accurately model learning.
The falling rules;fnsodfsdfhs

See, I can't do it. So good for you.

(Now I taste pennies.)

"You can only do it once per encounter" is perhaps the most ham-handed and unsatisfying way of enforcing that, though.

Do you have an alternative that's mechanically viable? If you do, please share it. I mean, I have a few, but all of them are more complicated and less believable than the one in place.

Here's one: Every round, roll 1d6, or 2d6 if you don't take a standard action. Once you reach 10, you can perform a per-encounter action. Once it reaches 20, you can perform a per-day action. It's kinda cute, and you could say the roll is for "tactical positioning," but it adds an extra roll and ZOMG LIMIT BREAK IT'S SO ANIME, so I think I'll stick with the system the pros cooked up for us.

I'm all for making trip a rarer event, but I'd like to be believably made rarer, not arbitrarily made rarer.

Believability for maneuvers is now ad hoc, just like believability for hit points has been ad hoc since...1975 or so. If one doesn't bother you, the other shouldn't.

For me, hp are believable enough as "You are this hard to kill. If someone tries harder than this, they might kill you."

Fits with the heroic action genre, and is basically believable.

Just as believable as per-encounter maneuvers; that is, laughable if intended as realistic; useful is intended as a means to give players control of something that should be far more random. I'm glad to substitute realism for mechanical fun in D&D; when I want to do the opposite I play Call of Cthulhu.

I can buy a lot on this line. Tripping is something I can't really buy on the line. I don't understand why I loose the ability to trip after trying to trip someone. All the explanations have been very hollow and transparent so far.

If I were the sort of player that I've had to eject from campaigns before, I would sit on my thumbs and demand explanations for why a 50-foot tall can only kill my character after he fights the ogre, not before. I would of course be rude and missing the point, but clueless discourtesy hasn't stopped people before.

No doubt I will have at least one new player in 4E who will throw precisely an analogous fit when presented with per-encounter powers. He'll last about as long as the "Oh my God wizards are dumb they forget spells" guy from when I was fifteen.

 

[robertliguori]

Well obviously. But it doesn't work to the extent that it does in D&D, where you just can't kill some people with a knife-thrust, despite all real-world logic. Congratulations on spending a few paragraphs to rationalize it, but it's still the same sort of thing as per-encounter powers: an event converted from "mostly random" to "mostly controlled by the players" because the latter is more fun.

Only insomuch as you assume that the 'real' reality is that high-level characters can die of lucky stabs in a D&D world.

It is true that all people can die of a single unlucky blow in reality. That doesn't mean that a system that models high-level characters is unrealistic; it simply means that our reality doesn't contain high-level characters to model against. In the world of D&D (or, to be more precise, in the world that the rules of D&D model), it is actually impossible (luck or no) for a high-level character to die from poor luck (luck being defined here as random chance and not the effects of a +50 luck bonus to damage). This is how the world-as-modeled works. If you want it to be actually true that you can kill anyone with a single lucky blow, then the world D&D makes is not for you. If you want a world where you can (basically) kill most people with a single lucky blow, but some people are so heroically badass that it is physically impossible for this to happen without counteracting force of badass making the blow more dire.

Again, this is a situation that does not conform to our world. Given that D&D does not represent our world, or even our world plus a few fringes cases of magic, but an entirely different world that happens to approximate ours in most cases but can be reliably pushed into territory that our world does not cover, with equally-reliable results in these cases, this is not a problem.

It does not make sense for a system that modeled reality that dragons can fly, or can breed with the incarnations of moral and ethical forces. D&D does not model reality.

Now, that being said, you can run with the same arguments in 4E. In this universe, skill isn't skill as we understand it; it's another ability to bend the laws of the universe. The fact that you've trained endlessly to trip someone doesn't mean that you actually know how to trip someone; it means that, like the wizard who can conjure an entangling tentacle from the ground, you have a chance to violate the laws of reality in such a way that your foe ends up on the ground.

The fact that D&D models tripping like this is not exactly unbelievable, but it is lame. Heroic characters should be able to do at least what we in our unheroic capacity can attempt; rules that let them try and fail are much, much better than rules that don't let them try at all.

To some extent I agree, but in D&D I don't really care how realistic a farmer's wife-vs.-housecat fight is, because those fights don't happen in my games and if they did I probably wouldn't waste the players' time by rolling it out. Nor do I care about footraces or arm-wrestling matches, because those don't come up in my games either. (Seriously, arm-wrestling matches? When does that happen. Don't answer--I'm sure dozens of people have dozens of thrilling arm-wrestling-themed campaigns.) I don't need D&D to accurately simulate a welterweight boxing match; in fact I'd consider page count dedicated to such a simulation a big fat waste of time. I have dozens of systems that can simulate "reality," but there are only a handful of systems that are both geared toward interesting tactical play and that aren't freakin' awful.

It's interesting that you mention the commoner-vs-housecat argument. I'd call this part and parcel of the same thing that makes trip as an encounter unpalatable; we all know that if it comes down to it, we can kill a damn housecat and not risk dying in the process. This representation of ordinary people as not being able to do something that we know ordinary people can do rankles, and produces either handwaving or hilarious results ("Goblins are coming! Lock up the children, and release Flopsy and Muffins!") I'd argue that any game system that takes something that should be ordinary and within the capacity of an untrained human and turns it into a special, trained-only skill or gift risks running into this same phenomena.

 

[outsider]

Per encounter isn't a perfect fix, clearly. But as a martial arts(real and fantasy) fan, the way 3e did it (performing the same manuever over and over again in every round) harmed the believability for me FAR more than per encounter does. Not only did I find it less believable, I found it mindnumbingly boring. D&D will probably never have a perfect fix for this kind of thing. To do it, you'd have to try to model different opportunities opening up depending on what your opponent does. I just don't see that happening in anything but a simulationist martial arts game, and that isn't D&D.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hit points reflect precisely nothing that is in any way realistic.

I don't care about realism. Or simulationism, for that matter.

Try a different pigeonhole!

Do you have an alternative that's mechanically viable? If you do, please share it. I mean, I have a few, but all of them are more complicated and less believable than the one in place.

I can probably put money on the fact that in June, I will have one that works just fine for my purposes.

As it is, I can still come up with something that solves the problems of the 3e mechanic without taking on the problems of the 'lost ability' that 4e has.

So, let's see, the problems with the 3e mechanic, unless I miss my guess:

#1: Too complex, no one wants to reference the rules in the middle of combat.
#2: Too good. With AoO's, spiked chains, and improved trip, you can shut down almost anything.

My possible solution, using 4e-speak:

#1: Tripping is a standard action melee attack vs. Reflex. A succesfful attempt knocks the victim prone. A failed attempt gives them combat advantage against you on their next turn. The usual common sense rules apply to tripping, like, you can't trip something that is flying, and you can't trip a slug. If it's a corner case, use the Great Equalizer of a -4 penalty on the attack role (grapple, disarm, sunder, etc. all would basically follow this mechanic).
#2: While prone, you give those who threaten you combat advantage. You can fight from prone; the Great Equalizer (-4 penalty) applies to your attack rolls.
#3: You can stand up from prone as a full-round action to avoid provoking opportunity attacks from those who threaten you. You can also "roll away" by shifting. Or get up as a move action and take an OA, you maniac.
#4: Those proficient in tripping weapons add their proficiency bonus to a trip attempt. Improved Trip negates the combat advantage if you fail. Reach works like it does in 4e.
#5: THE RULE OF DIMINISHING RETURNS: Any time you repeat an attack on a target you've already tried to hit with that attack, they gain a +2 bonus to resist it. This is cumulative: if you attack someone 5 times with an attack you've hit them with once, they gain a +10 bonus to resist it. This applies to all attacks everywhere at all times. The reason? Fool me once, shame on me, fool me...you can't get fooled again. (again, all attacks would follow this mechanic). It goes away at the end of the encounter.
#6: THE RULE OF MULTIPLE OA's: Whenever you provoke OA's from multiple creatures for the same action all at once, they get to choose one person to make the OA. Generally, this will be the one that can bone you the hardest.

You want to trip someone? Quick, smooth, not a good idea to try more than once, and not on something that's got good reflexes, but perhaps against something clumsy. Maybe not even a good idea to try even once unless you've got some special training.

You happen to be tripped? Okay, kind of sucks. Roll away, or get up, or eat the -4 penalty and give your enemies some bonii. Might want to do different things depending on how crazy it is. If you think you can take a little damage, get up quick and dish it out.

You want to be good at tripping? Okay, now it's marginally more useful for you in more situations, and you risk less with it. Congrats, you're good at knocking people on their back, you spent some resources, you deserve to be. Of course, it's not your one trick. They can still get up and the more you do it the worse it is for you.

Worst-case scenario: you've been tripped by a rogue and his three rogue friends who surround you on all sides. Prone, they can sneak attack the beejeezus out of you. Let's say you go last in the turn. Oh noes, you are dead, maybe...if they hit you...you still have Mr. AC, after all, and Mr HP, and the sneak attack isn't as bad as it was in 3e. Maybe they hit you, maybe you survive. On your turn, you shift 5' so that only the two hench-rogues threaten you, and use a full-round action to stand up. Now, trippy mc trippsalot has given up his standard action to basically make you move away and spend a round, and he can't do it again quite as effectively unless your party nickname is Stumbles and you have the Reflex save of an elephant on roller skates.

That's pretty off-the-cuff and could use some WotC-style polish, but I'm not gettin' paid to do this.

 

[Bishmon]

It's interesting that you mention the commoner-vs-housecat argument. I'd call this part and parcel of the same thing that makes trip as an encounter unpalatable; we all know that if it comes down to it, we can kill a damn housecat and not risk dying in the process. This representation of ordinary people as not being able to do something that we know ordinary people can do rankles, and produces either handwaving or hilarious results ("Goblins are coming! Lock up the children, and release Flopsy and Muffins!") I'd argue that any game system that takes something that should be ordinary and within the capacity of an untrained human and turns it into a special, trained-only skill or gift risks running into this same phenomena.

Would you be okay if the 'real' trip was a per-encounter power, but there was a wildly ineffective option for characters to attempt a trip at will?

 

[hong]

This representation of ordinary people as not being able to do something that we know ordinary people can do rankles,

It does?

 

[robertliguori]

Would you be okay if the 'real' trip was a per-encounter power, but there was a wildly ineffective option for characters to attempt a trip at will?

For a given value of wildly-ineffective, yes indeed. Again, I'd like the untrained version to represent that the circumstances in which you want to do it are rare; simply making the opportunities in which you can do it rare strikes me as poor design.

So, multiple opposed rolls, opportunity attacks, penalties for poor training, yeah, stack those on. Then, allow ways to neutralize these penalties, culminating in the encounter-power, and set things so that when used in combination, the result is not game-breaking.

Also, a level 8 fighter should be able to attempt to trip level 1 foes repeatedly and succeed. The trip mechanics should represent that it's a bad idea against a foe who can use your non-optimal move against you, and should also represent that when the worst your opponent can do is hit you for d6-2 instead of d6-4 against your 80 hit points, you can kick his ass in an ineffectual manner if you so choose.

 

[Bishmon]

#1: Tripping is a standard action melee attack vs. Reflex. A succesfful attempt knocks the victim prone. A failed attempt gives them combat advantage against you on their next turn. The usual common sense rules apply to tripping, like, you can't trip something that is flying, and you can't trip a slug. If it's a corner case, use the Great Equalizer of a -4 penalty on the attack role (grapple, disarm, sunder, etc. all would basically follow this mechanic).
#2: While prone, you give those who threaten you combat advantage. You can fight from prone; the Great Equalizer (-4 penalty) applies to your attack rolls.
#3: You can stand up from prone as a full-round action to avoid provoking opportunity attacks from those who threaten you. You can also "roll away" by shifting. Or get up as a move action and take an OA, you maniac.
#4: Those proficient in tripping weapons add their proficiency bonus to a trip attempt. Improved Trip negates the combat advantage if you fail. Reach works like it does in 4e.
#5: THE RULE OF DIMINISHING RETURNS: Any time you repeat an attack on a target you've already tried to hit with that attack, they gain a +2 bonus to resist it. This is cumulative: if you attack someone 5 times with an attack you've hit them with once, they gain a +10 bonus to resist it. This applies to all attacks everywhere at all times. The reason? Fool me once, shame on me, fool me...you can't get fooled again. (again, all attacks would follow this mechanic). It goes away at the end of the encounter.
#6: THE RULE OF MULTIPLE OA's: Whenever you provoke OA's from multiple creatures for the same action all at once, they get to choose one person to make the OA. Generally, this will be the one that can bone you the hardest.

Sorry, not believable. No amount of time you take is going to leave you any less exposed to strikes when you try and stand up.

The defender is going to have to provoke opportunity attacks when he stands up. And that completely breaks your mechanic. Now you've got an at-will ability that is an easy attack roll away from leaving a defender prone, forcing him to spend some of his turn standing up and in doing so provoking opportunity attacks. Considering the attacker can do this every single turn, without even having any special training, it complete focks over the defender.

Oh, and the law of diminishing returns doesn't mitigate that, either, because I'm ignoring it. You see, that's not believable, either. It's ridiculous to think that there's one single way to trip someone, so that if you trip someone once, any further attempt is going to be hampered by the fact that the defender can now anticipate your one technique. Like I said, that's ridiculous. Being clinched and brought down by a quick trip isn't going to help defend against a hip toss, nor is it going to help defend against a quick shot and a single- or double-leg takedown.

And the rule of multiple OA's might be the least believable of the lot. Normally I could attack you for trying to stand up here, but now I can't because I've got an ally on the other side of you and we've chosen him to make the attack? Yeah, that's not arbitrary.

Sorry, but your mechanic has done nothing to improve the believability of D&D combat. All it's done is provide complex, unnecessary, and potentially abusive trip mechanics. Pretty much just like 3E. Which is why they've changed it.

 

[Dinkeldog]

First, the "regular poster" mode.

Do we know for sure that the ability to trip someone is strictly available through an encounter power? Is it possible with our incomplete understanding of the rules that tripping exists as a potential maneuver on a fairly regular basis, but some special privileged tripping maneuver can be attempted once an encounter?

Regardless, it quickly became obvious to even the most non-tactical members of the groups I've played with and DMed for that tripping was the gift that kept giving. It looks like it's still giving AoOs...err...OAs when the target attempts to stand up again, which means it's still going to be one of the most powerful moves that can be used. I'm okay with some limiting of the privileged form of the attack.

Now for the moderator mode. Please, can we drop the intensity of rhetoric a notch or two? Some posts are becoming a bit warmer than is preferable.