WoTC Rodney: Economy of actions

[Wolfwood2]

As 3rd evolved, we saw big changes in how the "follower herder" class, the Druid, changed. IIRC, the initial rule was that the Druid could have up to twice her hit dice in animal followers. Then, Masters of the Wild introduced errata that said the Druid should limit herself to one or two animals. Finally, we saw the 3.5 system of a single animal companion. I wouldn't be surprised if the system continued to evolve in 4th edition.

Actually, I'd say "finally" for the druid in third edition was the PHBII option for druids. The animal companion option was dropped entirely and shapeshifting altered to give some very specific bonuses rather than 'anything with the animal type'.

 

[DM_Blake]

2. Groups that have decided they want multiple characters controlled by players have already accepted the divide. So give them tools to embrace it. For example, specifically reject the idea that a cohort bought by a feat is controlled by the player of the character that spent the feat. You buy a cohort for your character, which any warm body at the table can then play (including you), as necessary. Same with summoned creatures, hirelings, whatever. Heck, it need not even be the same player handling them from one scene to the next. While you are at it, throw a few neutral NPCs or even foes into the players' laps. After all, the point is to keep the players engaged.

Something you said here is an idea I have toyed with, and so far all my players think it's really fun.

While you are at it, throw a few neutral NPCs or even foes into the players' laps.

I have had fights where my 4 or 5 players encounterd 3 dozen orcs (for example). Rather than have all my players sit there and watch me move orcs around the battlmat and wait for me to roll dozens and dozens of dice (attacks, damages, spot checks, etc.), I have assigned certain individual orcs or small groups of orcs to each player.

Usually, I make sure the assignments, at least initially, are set up so that the player handling the orcs is not expected to attack himself - if he is on the right side of the party formation, I let him handle a few orcs on the left side.

On the orcs turn, I tell the players to simultaneously move their orcs and make attack rolls. I usually don't tell them the attack modifiers - it's not hard for me to know the orc is +2, so when a player says this orc rolled a 15 against Joe, and Joe says his AC is 18, I can say the orc missed.

I trust the players to make smart decisions for their orcs. They don't deliberately move to provoke AoOs unless there is a good reason to do so.

I lay out ground rules at the start of the encounter: "Joe, your orcs have bows and are instructed to snipe spellcasters first, or anyone sneaking around trying to outflank the orcs in the melee second" and "Fred, your orcs are the brute squad. Their mission is to find the toughest looking foe and engage him and take him out, without sacrificing themselves to do it. These two have polearms and will use them to trip, these two have 2h axes and will use them to hack".

I've never had anyone take advantage of it by setting up their orcs to die horribly. I've never had any problems with it at all.

The players have lots of fun trying to wipe out their buddies. It's bragging rites. "Ha ha, Joe, my orc wasted you!". Lots of fun for everyone. After the fight, everyone has laughs about the funny things they did to each other.

And no, it's not always just orcs.

From the sound of it, with 4e having many more monsters per encounter, this might be possible to do more often.

I bring this up because while it doesn't address the econoby of actions issue where one side of the battle has more actions than another side, it definitely makes sure the players number of actions is quite high. A guy moving a druid and 2 animals has 3x the actions of someone moving a fighter. But they both have 4 orcs, then the difference is 7 to 5. Not even 2x the actions anymore.

 

[RigaMortus2]

The issue I have with this type of approach is that it is so bla.

Depends on how you DM it. When I did this, I still had them in init (at the end of init by default) so after the PCs went, I described what happened with each side skirmish. It was all flavor text, but we did't just "by pass" them.

What did the hireling do last battle. Hold off an enemy. The battle before that. Hold off an enemy etc., etc., etc.

But that is basically what they do anyway. Sure, they can stand next to you and someone can make attacks rolls and such, but when it comes down to it, they are "holding off the enemy". Actually, they can be whatever you want. They can be pushing the enemy back, they can be expending the enemies resources, hiting the enemy, making the enemy withdraw, they could fall in battle themselves. Does it really matter if there is a d20 roll before you describe the flavor text and end result?

Not only is there no flavor there, there is very little in the way of results (outside of hireling falls, hireling flees, or NPC falls, or NPC flees, or a tie). There's no reason for the players to cheer the hireling ever.

Again, flavor is up to how the DM describes what the NPCs are doing in their little side skirmish. If an NPC falls, the PCs can move over to them and heal him and get them back up and into combat. If you made rolls individually for the NPCs, just how it is now in 3E, you have the same "fall or flee" result, except you make a die roll before hand (and actually, I am still suggesting there is some sort of die roll, just not the traditional attack roll).

The reason to have additional allies like hirelings and such is to add to the overall game, not to run a bunch of stuff off stage. Players acquire them to be part of the group. At least IMO.

I tend to not run large scale battles for the same reason.

If you had the choice between (a) not running large scale battles because it is too time consuming to make individual rolls for each NPC and (b) running large scale battles w/o having to make all those roles, why wouldn't you pick b?

Once in a blue moon when the situation dictates it, but not often. Who cares about a bunch of NPCs fighting off stage? One might as well not even have the NPC in the group if there is no chance for the entire table to cheer when the NPC hireling gets lucky and chops off the head off his enemy once in a while.

I'm not saying the NPC can't lop someone's head off on occassion. There would have to be some sort of rules for it, but something quicker than attack roll vs defense. This would fall under the "npc falls" option you echoed above.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I disagree, mostly because the idea of having an effective sidekick who can hold his own is a really cool idea. As a DM, it allows me to add a lot of richness to the world, to give the party a "near-premenant" NPC, and it allows the PC who has such a guy along to add dimension to his character's relationship to the world (are they a hired mercenary? are they your backup singer? are they your lover?).

Well, I like having such characters, too. However, I just don't think such characters should be tied to player mechanics, or should be controlled by the players. I like the "revolving door of NPCs" approach, in which the PCs may always have NPCs following them around, but with a different set of NPCs for each adventure. Also, I think linking NPCs to feats and class abilities can be more restrictive than helpful. However, I can see why you might disagree.

Not bad, though I think the "use a minor action to use a power" means that, again, a character with a companion will have more actions per round than a character without one, since they're basically spending a minor action to gain a "standard" action from a limited selection. And this doesn't really solve the problem of cohorts ("getting rid of them" isn't an ideal option for me).

I don't see how this is true... As I intended it, a character will use a minor action to get a minor action level of effect. It should have the same opportunity cost as any other minor action. The person with a Companion should simply have more options than one without (which I think is appropriate).

Also, getting rid of Cohorts is a solution to the problem, it just isn't one you like. I like it, but I don't think I can convince you to agree with me, so I will let it drop.

 

[pemerton]

Ritual minions shouldn't require any action on the part of the master to control, save perhaps a minor action to direct them in combat. This could be balanced because you have to pay for this in the cost of the ritual, take the risk that the creature may break free and eat you if you don't overcome its will during the summoning process, and also the fact that the creature won't likely be too happy to be enslaved by magic, and may later seek vengeance. Sure, go ahead and summon that Pit Fiend. Just be prepared for the terrible revenge it will certainly seek after its term of service is up, and that's if you manage to subjugate it in the first place.

This approach is not free of potential problems. For example, in my experience when the Demon turns it is often closer to the front line Fighters than it is to its Summoner, which can result in them being cut down as they try to protect the Summoner from (what has now become) one of the more dangerous foes on the battlefield.

I don't necessarily subscribe to the general proposition that "mechanical benefits" cannot be balance with "roleplaying penalties", in part because the division between "mechanics" and "roleplaying" is often not all that clear. But in this particular case I think there is a danger that the costs of the mechanical benefits may be displaced onto other player's characters.

They also run the risk of disrupting the campaign in general, which is also highly undesirable in most cases.

 

[Kaisoku]

Number of Actions in combat is something that I've been thinking over since Mutants and Masterminds d20, where a lot of combat effects (stuns, poisons, etc) were riders on attack actions and had stacking levels of effect.

Iterative attacks would ruin such a system because you could then break balance by getting full effects that weren't normally intended to be felt until up to 3 rounds later sometimes.

The fix to this (multiple attacks per round in a single attack action system), was to make the extra attacks do "more damage" on that one attack roll, with no added rider effects.


This brings us closer to the pre-3e combat concept where attacks in a round of combat were less about a single swing that either hits or misses, and more like a general melee with many swipes and swings (or possibilities of them) and the damage done is your total threat to the targets life.
This also went hand in hand with how hitpoints were supposed to be more abstract.


So TWF would give extra damage dice, but still only one attack roll. Having a cohort would give extra damage dice, with your one attack roll.
There were rules for "area attacks" as well, splitting damage dice around to the number of targets you were attacking basically... but all based on one attack roll still, just against multiple target Defenses in this case.
It's much easier to roll an extra 1d6 (or in some cases just adding +X typed damage) along with your damage dice than to have to roll extra attack rolls. And since you aren't rolling extra attack rolls for the NPC, the damage can be left lower.. it's sort of a mix between average damage (a lower level cohort would miss more and thus get less damage over time), and combat coordination (he uses your attacks to line up his, so misses will still happen if you miss). Yes it's a bit gamist, but it doesn't hurt my simulationist side too much (no more than making hitpoints abstract).

This doesn't help with mixed combat styles though. As in, a Wizard casting a spell while his summoned creatures do their thing. It doesn't make as much sense to "just add damage", especially if the caster isn't even doing a damage spell or anything that requires an attack roll. Then again, if the wizard didn't do an attack roll, then it's not adding much to add it back in (economy of time, still only one roll based on attack per round).

The other thing to consider is that when you start getting into large groups of creatures (like a druid's menagerie), it'd be near impossible to direct them all for different tasks in a 6 second round of time AND do something yourself to boot.
In these situations, it almost makes more sense to treat them as one entity. Like a giant swarm that covers an area... hell, you could almost make them "area effects". They either try attacking everyone around them, or one target simultaneously, but ultimately act like "added damage" to whatever actions the character is attempting this round.

As long as other characters are using up their Feats, Encounter and Daily choices for things that also add more damage (or the equivalent), then the person with more creatures isn't skyrocketing ahead.


The fact that all these things also add extra hitpoint pools (and thus added defense in a way), makes balance a bit tougher. Overall, a full blown NPC can be a VERY powerful addition to a class. It's like getting extra damage, defense, and utility all in one shot. The cohort can do damage, provide combat options (give up that extra damage to block or do some kind of combat action like a trip, still based on your attack roll of course), and soak up damage and get in the way (in the case of a disposable summons or a defender style mercenary/cohort).

For this complete package of benefits, it's definately more than just a single feat (TWF for added damage), or even at the cost of using a daily power. I'd have to know more about the progression of gaining abilities (at-will, encounter, daily, feats, etc) and what can be gained from them to fully figure out an adequate cost for these things.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To keep the action economy intact, we could steal something from WoW. At least I think it is in WoW (Boring Story Short: Tried the game, didn't like the repetitiveness, stopped before anything interesting could get me sucked in, just as I hoped )
As far as I have heard, at a certain level, since a certain supplement/patch/update/expansion, characters get access to mounts.

So, maybe there should just be a "Followers, Organizations and Nations" sourcebook by WotC that contains material for adding cohorts/followers to characters.

It would be a group decision then to add cohorts to the game. And if they are added, everyone gets them, so there is no problem on the player vs player action economy issue, and the DM can adjust his adventures accordingly.

(From the title of the book: Obviously, I would expect more then just a few rules for cohorts in such a book. I would like a book on building or becoming part of organisations, cults and nations for a game. I liked the general idea of affiliations as presented in the PHB II, but they came a little "to olate" and weren't really utilized much in the adventures...)

 

[Fenes]

I handle the followers, summoned creatures etc. like this:

The GM runs them. Period. The PC can give orders (which costs actions past "attack" and such), but the GM handles them.

To lighten the load, followers often deal with minions in my battles, or are otherwise occupied (guarding/unlocking a door, etc.) while the PCs act against the main threats.

 

[Wolfwood2]

I handle the followers, summoned creatures etc. like this:

The GM runs them. Period. The PC can give orders (which costs actions past "attack" and such), but the GM handles them.

Isn't that kind of like playing poker with yourself? I guess opinions differ, but I find running both sides of a battle to be kind of boring.

 

[Wormwood]

Isn't that kind of like playing poker with yourself? I guess opinions differ, but I find running both sides of a battle to be kind of boring.

If you think running both sides is boring, wait until you try watching someone run both sides.