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<blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 5201800" data-attributes="member: 3586">Could you look to the link I post in my thread?The trouble with all of this is too much dialling down leads to a game where you stand in front of a big red button marked &quot;Swing Sword&quot;. No tactical positioning, no choice of action. Interesting variation comes from DM Fiat.Plenty of systems have this type of combat. AD&amp;D (1e) melee combat is very much like this - the fighter is so limited in action, and there's no movement once melee is entered into (save withdrawal, rarely a useful tactic). Of course, it's entirely as a reaction against this form of combat that D&amp;D has moved the way it has. The first big move was in Combat &amp; Tactics back in mid-2e days, where the idea of using miniatures on a grid was properly formalized. From there the 3e system embraced miniatures and combat positioning. 4e definitely hits a high-point for D&amp;D in terms of importance of the battlefield (with all the forced movement options). It's still a fair below the most detailed systems I've seen for such; consider games such as BattleTech!4e also is pretty high on the &quot;Conditions affecting combatants&quot; list. 1e was mostly &quot;I just deal damage&quot; with spells providing relief from the monotony (as much as you can ever call dealing damage monotonous! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) The joy of 4e is that it cuts down the lists of conditions to an easily memorizable list; it's a fair way away from the 3e list which seemed to be added to whenever a designer had an idea. 3e made things difficult with a lot of stacking and non-stacking bonuses and penalties everywhere. (Did I forget Bard Song again?) 4e is probably easier to track, but for some reasons the tracking seems more difficult and pervasive. (3E combat probably had more modifiers all-up, but as most just affected the PCs, it wasn't such a burden on the DM).Of course, the reasons we *have* conditions is so that every attack isn't just &quot;I hit for X damage&quot; again and again and again. Still, for some people this is too complicated.Cheers!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MerricB, post: 5201800, member: 3586"] Could you look to the link I post in my thread? The trouble with all of this is too much dialling down leads to a game where you stand in front of a big red button marked "Swing Sword". No tactical positioning, no choice of action. Interesting variation comes from DM Fiat. Plenty of systems have this type of combat. AD&D (1e) melee combat is very much like this - the fighter is so limited in action, and there's no movement once melee is entered into (save withdrawal, rarely a useful tactic). Of course, it's entirely as a reaction against this form of combat that D&D has moved the way it has. The first big move was in Combat & Tactics back in mid-2e days, where the idea of using miniatures on a grid was properly formalized. From there the 3e system embraced miniatures and combat positioning. 4e definitely hits a high-point for D&D in terms of importance of the battlefield (with all the forced movement options). It's still a fair below the most detailed systems I've seen for such; consider games such as BattleTech! 4e also is pretty high on the "Conditions affecting combatants" list. 1e was mostly "I just deal damage" with spells providing relief from the monotony (as much as you can ever call dealing damage monotonous! ;)) The joy of 4e is that it cuts down the lists of conditions to an easily memorizable list; it's a fair way away from the 3e list which seemed to be added to whenever a designer had an idea. 3e made things difficult with a lot of stacking and non-stacking bonuses and penalties everywhere. (Did I forget Bard Song again?) 4e is probably easier to track, but for some reasons the tracking seems more difficult and pervasive. (3E combat probably had more modifiers all-up, but as most just affected the PCs, it wasn't such a burden on the DM). Of course, the reasons we *have* conditions is so that every attack isn't just "I hit for X damage" again and again and again. Still, for some people this is too complicated. Cheers! [/QUOTE]

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