D&D 5E Will there be such a game as D&D Next?

[AbdulAlhazred]

The super quick fight does exist at my table in RCD&D. If there's a "speed bump" encounter where the goal is some level of attrition and to provide a little progress, we don't use minis and it's pretty easy for people to figure out what they want to do. We use group initiative, declare actions at the beginning of the round, and insist that people don't have a lot of time to think things through. A person is usually ready with both to-hit and damage dice when we get to them, they roll, declare results, and we're onto the next person. I often roll a handful of different color dice for the monsters at the same time and can adjudicate things fast. I won't say we have 5-minute combats, but 10-20 minutes happens.

For pacing, I try to have a mix of short speed bumps, long climactic set pieces, and occasional more-involved encounters in the middle to round things out. Short ones are 10-20 minutes, medium ones 45-60 minutes, and set-pieces are the focus of an evening.

For fights to be fast people need to drop. For easy fights, enemies with low hp are great for this. Fights against harder foes are trickier. In those cases, i think both sides bing able to ish out heavy damage works well. I dont want two sides whittling away at each other one lugubrious round after the next. I want people to drop. Ups the speed, raises the stakes and (for me) makes it more exciting. But again, i come at cinematic from a very non-D&D approach.

Well, if the marshal may get something like the following, it may go a long way to cover those cases.

Inspirational Frenzy: 1 minute actvation, Range 30 feet, Target all sentient allies [Mind-affecting, Language];
All listeners receive temporary hit points equal to their Con score with a miniimum of 10 points gained. The hit points will last one hour or until the next battle is complete whichever is less.

That substitutes for a bunch of healing. It may not bring someone back to consciousness, but it prevents them from entering that state in the first place when they normally would. And as for healing between fights, if the individuals took less than the temporary hp damage, it's as if they're untouched.

Now it is true that the character couldn't use this during a fight, but he may have something like the following:

Rally: Standard action actvation, Range 30 feet, Target all sentient allies [Mind-affecting, Language];
All listeners receive temporary hit points equal to the Martial level of the character and develop unshakable morele. Use of the ability reduces the Marshal's hp the same amount granted. This can leave the marshal unconscious at the end of the round. The hit points will last 5 minutes or until the next battle is complete whichever is less.

Thee abilities will only shine if hit points and damage are reduced to pre-3e inflation levels, of course.

I think the reason this wasn't the path taken in 4e for instance was the feeling that without equivalent capabilities, at least WRT hit points, that some leaders would be "second stringers" and you would be right back to the 'needz hit point battery' cleric-mandatory party. Again, in a game that is fairly cinematic and thus basically super heroic ideas like a battle captain screaming at you as you lie bleeding on the ground and inspiring you to get up, wipe the blood out of your face, and get back in there are neither far-fetched nor inappropriate. IMHO 5e should simply acknowledge that some archetypes, like that one, are not going to be desirable to some players/groups and thus [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] for instance perhaps, can leave out that class or use it without its healing powers.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I dunno, seems to work for Halo. Though I expect a similar engine for D&D would be well below the modern paradigm of rules-fiddliness.

Halo is an endless stream of minions. In D&D that would get old pretty fast IMO. It really isn't a good example, they aren't even close to the same sort of game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

well, miniature tactics are not of much interest to me, so we have a style difference here. I really think this is a preference issue. You certainly have a valid point of view, but my experience is completely different from yours, as are my conclusions. Personally I am fine with a light system, with no minies, that allow the GM to ajudicate special maneuvers or actions with bonuses or special conditions as needed. Again thoughit is the stuff around the combat that I find most interesting anyways. I honestly found 3E and 4E length combats dull (and I didnt find the aedu power structure added much excitement or texture for me). This is just preference of course.

In terms of character skill it still matters though. In my game characters abilities are all skills and keyed to dice pools. If you are good at light melee, that matters a lot in close combat. The skill categories are siloed so you can take points in combat and still take points in knowledges or physical skills (and you can burn a whole category for extra points,so you can customize the guy who has no combat skill if you want).

I'm kind of thinking there is just VERY little real combat in your games. I mean, mine are like the log flume thing I posted earlier, just crazy running around stuff, and fighting may or may not even be the main point. I will throw in a knock-out-drag-down knuckbuster now and then, but most of the game consists of running around setting things up, diving into places where the PCs goals are things like stealing an item, getting out of a cursed fortress, climbing a mountain, or whatever. So it will usually be fairly action focused with maybe some "finding the lost tomb" kind of puzzles and etc kind of stuff (sometimes we have sessions with no combat). The point is the PCs need to be able to win through with superior skill and ability, and there needs to be some tactical thinking involved to make it a challenge (you can lose and die if you can't figure out to focus fire or the wizard doesn't hold back the bad guys for a round, etc).

I guess the question might be is if in the sort of game you're talking about it isn't perfectly OK to have 4e type characters, they can do the mainly non-combat type of stuff that is focused on, and if there IS a fight presumably you want a set piece. The rest of the time a quick SC can work fine for "we try to get past the guards quickly before they can raise an alarm".

Oh, I dunno. The lack of a really effective quick combat system is my biggest issue with 4e. Its lack is also a big part of why I keep a shelf full of AD&D and retro-clones.

I can absolutely understand people who have a problem with 4e's long default combats. My ideal would be for a seamless switch between short combats and longer, tactically deep ones. The latter is important to me, but it'd be nice to have the former for when it makes more sense in the fiction.

It's the same reason I have an issue with assumed numbers of fights per day - it constrains the stories I want to explore.

-O

I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to resolve things quickly. In all fairness though 4e has skill challenges and often if a fight really IS super trivial then it isn't necessary to set it all up. I mean when 3 kobolds jumped the party once did I set it up with minis? No, I just told the character that one kobold was in front grabbing his horse's bridle and one was next to his horse sticking him with a spear, and the third one was up on a rock slinging at him (and the other 2 PCs showed up a minute later and charged, and the fight ended).

 

[Ratskinner]

Halo is an endless stream of minions. In D&D that would get old pretty fast IMO. It really isn't a good example, they aren't even close to the same sort of game.

err....not quite, maybe if you're fighting nothing but grunts...

I'd say there's plenty of Halo fights in D&D, like say a <insert humanoid species> nest in just about every D&D campaign ever... in any case, the thing that would make it boring in D&D is the tremendous amount of unnecessary mechanical overhead. Certainly you could make a dungeon-cleaning work with a more boardgame-like approach....maybe like Zombies!!!

The real problem is that its one kind of fight, and that rules making a fight against such things more fun are opposed to rules that make the big bossfight more fun. They're just opposite ends of the cloud/spectrum thing which is the realm of D&D-ish combats.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I guess the question might be is if in the sort of game you're talking about it isn't perfectly OK to have 4e type characters, they can do the mainly non-combat type of stuff that is focused on, and if there IS a fight presumably you want a set piece. The rest of the time a quick SC can work fine for "we try to get past the guards quickly before they can raise an alarm".



).

i am not sure I understand the question.

 

[bogmad]

I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to resolve things quickly. In all fairness though 4e has skill challenges and often if a fight really IS super trivial then it isn't necessary to set it all up. I mean when 3 kobolds jumped the party once did I set it up with minis? No, I just told the character that one kobold was in front grabbing his horse's bridle and one was next to his horse sticking him with a spear, and the third one was up on a rock slinging at him (and the other 2 PCs showed up a minute later and charged, and the fight ended).

Thing is, I don't think Skill Challenges were very satisfying for ... well most people. A way to resolve quick fights without having to use a completely different mechanic than a regular fight is desirable for some, especially those who like to throw words like "immersion" around when detailing their playstyle.

 

[pemerton]

The lack of a really effective quick combat system is my biggest issue with 4e.

The way to do that in 4E would be to develop a system where in the trivial fights they end as soon as the PCs have clearly won.

Something more abstract would be good. Eg spend a healing surge and an action point to deal with an appropriately defined amount of XPs worth of enemies.

 

[Obryn]

Thing is, I don't think Skill Challenges were very satisfying for ... well most people. A way to resolve quick fights without having to use a completely different mechanic than a regular fight is desirable for some, especially those who like to throw words like "immersion" around when detailing their playstyle.

Skill challenges are burdened down by their very poor presentation (and math and ... well, most everything) in the DMG1. WotC finally figured out the DCs, the structure, and the proper way of making them not suck.

Nowadays, I find them to be an extremely valuable item in my DM toolkit - great for in-combat, out-of-combat, and improvisation of either.

-O

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Skill Challenges just aren't that combat-ty. It just wouldn't feel right.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thing is, I don't think Skill Challenges were very satisfying for ... well most people. A way to resolve quick fights without having to use a completely different mechanic than a regular fight is desirable for some, especially those who like to throw words like "immersion" around when detailing their playstyle.

I'm not sure how much different it is. Remember, we're talking about fights trivial enough that people are balking at spending 30 minutes resolving them, so its not like a lot is supposed to happen. [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] described his ideal as '5 minutes', and frankly if it isn't as abstract as an SC it isn't going to end in 5 minutes. There's a difference between abstract and meta-game too. EVERYTHING is abstract, all of D&D is an abstraction, you don't describe the physics of swinging a sword and do calculations to determine how many lb-ft of leverage you got on the orc and calculate the yield strength of semi-rotted pig leather with a burlap backing. You roll a d20 and see if you hit. Is it really that radical a solution for these quick fights to say that each character in turn does something (uses a power, tries some stunt, etc) and the DM supplies a DC and if they hit the DC its a success and if they don't its a failure, etc. Honestly the SC format works QUITE WELL for a fight and is not all that divergent from combat mechanics (sure, it abstracts away some things like damage, but obviously more effective attacks can have lower DCs, you can use the 'advantages' from the RC, or even grant multiple successes if a PC is willing to burn a whole slew of resources in one shot). Again, you obviously aren't using this for big fights, but I THINK it would mesh fairly smoothly into the existing combat system without seeming like it produced totally different types of results.

Its a bit fuzzy and DM dependent, but I think that's fine for parts of the story you don't want to focus on too much. Chances are the encounter exists for what, attrition, exposition, mood/pacing, or narrative. Attrition works with a "1 or 2 HS lost per fail". Exposition doesn't really care about resolution, but success may be the key to the reveal. Mood and pacing are a lot like exposition, you may want some minor tension, skirmishes with guards can fail and lead to consequences, just having guards says "this is a guarded place", etc. Narrative of course can be moved forwards quickly when you can abstract over certain things or moving along at a "10,000 ft level" which you may want to do now and then.