Would you use different combat rules in the same adventure?

[hayek]

I can see changing specifics of rules between different campaigns so that each have a different feel or whatnot but in the same session? Why?

i'm surprised at some of the other justifications, including the OP talking about helping alleviate the need to level up between fights. No offense to the other justifications, of course! to each their own and all

For me there's one and only one reason to have 'light rules' and 'heavy rules' in the same adventure session - the pacing of a good story. it's feels much better to have some less significant battles lead up to a more involved one. With more detail and time spent on the "big battle" it will feel more significant - as it should, since it's the big finish! Really, the fact that this hasn't existed before in d&d, which is about telling stories at the heart of it, is just amazing... not to knock on the designers over the years or anything, but really - how can you not make a ruleset that contributes to a feeling of escalation of intensity that builds to a climactic ending...

hmmm... that sounded weirdly sexual there at the end, but hopefully you get my meaning...

 

[Ratskinner]

Sounds neato, but it depends

I voted yes, but it really would depend on the implementation. I mean, I'm not sure you can actually do that switching, without recalculating a lot of the stats. I'd hate to ask the players to keep two sets of identical character sheets just in case. Especially if saying "we'll use the tactical combat mod" at the beginning of the campaign changes your character development and advancement choices...if so, then change my answer to "no".

On the other hand, I like the idea of "zooming in" to combat. There's a game that I sadly never go to run called "The Shadow of Yesterday" (IIRC) that had a nifty thing called "Bringing down the pain." Whenever a player failed a roll for something in the broader narrative, they could "Bring down the pain" which kicked the game into a round-like detailed mode where players could bring in all sorts of little fiddly bits that got ignored in the first roll.

It looked pretty neat, but I never got to see it in practice. The DnD equivalent would be something like:

Player1: I try to break into the palace
DM: Make a thievery check
Player1: (rolls) Oops! 5.
DM: You were caught as you
Player1 (intterrupting): I'm bringing down the pain..
...then go into a typical DnD style castle break-in with move silently and climbing checks and magic items and...all that jazz.