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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 5814625" data-attributes="member: 1465">This is something that never crossed my mind until this thread below <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/318059-heart-matter.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/318059-heart-matter.html</a>Normally when we talk about modularity for combat rules, the purpose is to cater different groups/DM: those we always want it rules-light, and those who always want it rules-heavy. But how about using both?Would you like to have more than one way to skin a dragon? I mean, more than one ruleset for running combats (also against foes other than dragons) in the same campaign or adventure, i.e. a light ruleset for lesser combats and a heavy ruleset for more important fights?Would you be interested in two combat ruleset that would allow you to even switch between the two during the same encounter?Starting from my post in the thread above (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/318059-heart-matter.html#post5812527" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/318059-heart-matter.html#post5812527</a>), I have started wondering if there would be a smooth way to make the two coexist:- an AD&D-inspired ruleset where combat is broken down into long periods ("turns"), each of which is only summarized in terms of results, after the players declare what they generally want to do (including which spells to use), no battlemat is needed because movement and positions are not tracked carefully, and some dice is rolled to evaluate the outcome (damage taken, special injuries/conditions gained, number of foes eliminated)- a 3ed/4ed-inspired ruleset using short periods ("rounds") and very detailed, with full use of distances and positioning, everybody personally declaring and handling each action one by oneWith a good design, a turn could be made quite well equivalent to N rounds in terms of outcome and probability.----I am wondering whether such a setup could help me solve a typical problem I see with adventure structure: most of the adventures are designed to have an escalation of difficulties in the encounters, e.g. you are assaulting the dragon's lair, but first you fight some easy minions, then better minions, then the dragon's personal guards or second-in-command, and finally the BBEG. If you want the BBEG to be really better than his own minions, there are three cases:a) early combats are trivial (bad), last combat is challenging (good)b) early combats are challenging (good), last combat is impossible (bad)c) early combats are challenging (good), last combat is challenging (good), because the PCs gain XP and level up between the early and last combatsCase c) is assumed in many printed adventures, but carries a consequence that I do not like: that the PCs must level up at a rate that is too fast for my tastes, sometimes repeatedly during the same dungeon crawl which takes place maybe in 1-2 days only (yikes!).So maybe it would not be too bad to go back to case a), if trivial fights can be made very fast (a few minutes) to run using a turn-based combat ruleset, where you still have to make some tactical choice but coarse-grained instead of fine-grained. All that matters is maybe to know the significant bits of the outcome: perhaps after the first lesser encounter the Rogue is poisoned and the Cleric lost his weapon, during the second lesser encounter the Fighter's had to soak a lot more damage and needs healing while the Wizard had to blow one of his best spells, and so on...</blockquote>

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