Incompatible Design Goals

[Tenrin]

How about an inverse-drain system. As your HP or whatever go down, your 'Tension Gauge' goes up, unlocking your super moves. Think anime. You can go full tilt with it and have Friendship Speeches and relevant flashbacks up the tension gauge too. It's dramatic, but very story-game-y as opposed to tactical, and I'm not sure how long the novelty would last. Just an idea.

[RandomCasualty2]

How about an inverse-drain system. As your HP or whatever go down, your 'Tension Gauge' goes up, unlocking your super moves. Think anime. You can go full tilt with it and have Friendship Speeches and relevant flashbacks up the tension gauge too. It's dramatic, but very story-game-y as opposed to tactical, and I'm not sure how long the novelty would last. Just an idea.

The problem I'd imagine is that it'd lead to a very swingy sort of system. Because the goal would be to basically focus fire down your enemies and kill them rapidly before they can unlock their super moves. That's arguably kinda bad for PCs.

Really you're probably better off with some kind of charge up system. Basically something like a light attack gives you a +2 to hit against that creature for the rest of the battle (say max +4), and using your big attack later with the bonuses is more advantageous to busting it out early and possibly having it fail.

[RobbyPants]

I'm curious: do you have any other ideas for providing awesome moves and discouraging spamming, without putting them on strict intervals?

It's a structural solution bigger than combat.

Non-basic Maneuvers require Fatigue to use. Fatigue is similar to SDC (from Palladium) or Stun (from Shadowrun); it's a nonlethal measure of how winded you are. It doubles as fuel for Maneuvers as well as a tier of Hit Points.

I suppose there are other ways, too.

One could be a sort of diminishing returns system, although I think those types work better on computers than TT games. So, you could have an increased cost for using a non-basic maneuver two rounds back to back, or perhaps the equivalent of a decreased caster level. This would mechanically encourage you to mix up your tactics without out right forcing it. Still, the bookkeeping could be a pain.

Another option could be some sort of combo system, which makes you unlock better moves. I think the idea sounds kind of interesting, but it could be tough to pull off without becoming repetitive in its own right. So, an example could be a monk making a basic attack, followed by setting his fists on fire and attacking again, followed by shooting a fireball. Alternately, he could enter a defensive stance after an attack, block and catch an attack, and then throw his enemy.

Perhaps combos are the only way to get to your good moves. Perhaps combos are the most efficient way to get to your good moves, allowing good moves without the setup, but at a price.

[Zinegata]

That's the Japanese hentai version!

...and that's Koumei. Say 'hi', Koumei. She's awesome.

Hi Koumei!

And... Koumei is a she?

[Username17]

Overall, WoF is a pretty crude solution to add illusion of depth, but really, in a good game, you shouldn't really need that. Take a balanced game like Starcraft, and people use different units and strategies because they have advantage against what their opponent is currently doing. The real answer to making a good game isn't to just prevent people from spamming one move, but rather to make it so that spamming that one move won't be a very good strategy.

The problem is that making a game like that requires a lot of thought and is unfortunately not very compatible with the idea of adding new abilities, because they can disrupt balance, so you'd generally end up with archetypes with renamed abilities. So you'd have something like brute, finesse fighter, wizard and cleric. And you'd just call a giant beetle a brute, a skeleton a finesse fighter and a mind flayer would be a wizard.

I wish you were kidding, but since you've been claiming this for literally years, you obviously are not.

Star Craft is actually a horrible example, for a number of reasons. Not the least because while you are basically required to combine multiple different units (which would translate into using multiple different maneuvers I guess?), each strategy pretty much uses the same units each time. And certainly has the same "build order." Meaning that the "variety" in Starcraft really just corresponds to build variety. You can have different Terran strategies translates into being able to make different kinds of Fighters, but then they execute the same maneuvers in the same order each time - basically they play exactly like 4e Fighters.

If you wanted to make a game where you could use any of your abilities in any order, and the best list of abilities to use and the best order to use them varied tremendously, it wouldn't just be extremely complicated to design, it would also be a nightmare to play. You'd have to have enough variables going on to make using a different ability each round something that you'd actually want to do - something that would at the very least require a comparison chart of the ability type you used last turn with the ability they used last turn - which would itself look like a fucking Rolemaster chart. Or more likely series of charts, since different players would hopefully have different abilities.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg of total intractability. Consider our extremely simple sample WoF Hero for the moment. He has 21 different combat abilities. Can you imagine someone actually being asked to evaluate which of twenty fucking one abilities is the best one to use in a particular evolved situation where specifically a different one is the best one to use each round? Holy shit, that would take forever. Firstly, because a list of 21 is seriously longer than anyone can remember. It would be worse than waiting for a Beguiler to cast a spell. A Beguiler only has 14 spells, and some of them (like Comprehend Languages) can be completely discounted as combat actions. Doubling the options wouldn't be twice as bad, it would be way worse than that. Since we're now talking about a list so long that people would have to reread not only the names but also the effects themselves. Every turn. Just to evaluate which moves they "should" be using.

What you describe could only be called a nightmare. You're fucking asking people to take a chess move with 5 other people taking a chess move in between. Each person's actions would drag on with paralyzing indecision for fucking forever.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

You can have different Terran strategies translates into being able to make different kinds of Fighters, but then they execute the same maneuvers in the same order each time - basically they play exactly like 4e Fighters.

Actually, no.

Professional Starcraft "build orders" are actually start-to-finish strategies. With multiple branches and decision trees along the way. The timing of executing various actions actually vary wildly. Some builds skip over many unit types entirely as well.

For instance the two main current professional terran builds revolve around the Bio Build (Marines + Medics + Science vessels), the Mech Terran build (Vultures + Tanks + Goliaths), and rush builds (Build a barracks near the enemy base, and keep sending Marines)

And each wouldn't execute the same order at the same time. Bio is generally an early attack build that seeks to check the opponent's expansion. Mech is a slow, deliberate, build that tries to wipe out the enemy main base mid-game.

And there are like, dozen of variants in between.

However...

If you wanted to make a game where you could use any of your abilities in any order, and the best list of abilities to use and the best order to use them varied tremendously, it wouldn't just be extremely complicated to design, it would also be a nightmare to play.

Yes, professional Starcraft is a fucking nightmare to play in. And I wouldn't really recommend something that insanely complex for a tabletop RPG - the best frigging builds in that game took a whole fucking decade to emerge... and by a country that turned the game into a national sport.

[Zinegata]

x2 Post

[RandomCasualty2]

Star Craft is actually a horrible example, for a number of reasons. Not the least because while you are basically required to combine multiple different units (which would translate into using multiple different maneuvers I guess?), each strategy pretty much uses the same units each time. And certainly has the same "build order." Meaning that the "variety" in Starcraft really just corresponds to build variety. You can have different Terran strategies translates into being able to make different kinds of Fighters, but then they execute the same maneuvers in the same order each time - basically they play exactly like 4e Fighters.

Well, yes. but I was referring more towards what units to build as being your maneuver, as opposed to the units themselves. In effect you have multiple choices in your role as commander. The idea that basically the decision to make tanks isn't always going to be a correct one depending on both your opponent's race, as well as what your opponent is currently doing strategically.

And that's sort of the thing we want to capture in an RPG. We want the fact that you're fighting a wizard to mean something by default, but we also want people to respond to stuff that wizard does. That is if the wizard is going stoneskin + fireball, you want to respond with something different than if he went fly + lightning bolt.

You want your game to involve counters and reactions, not simply "Choose the best general purpose move out of these 3 or 6 or 25 possible actions." If the enemy can do something that forces you to change strategies, that's a good thing.

If you wanted to make a game where you could use any of your abilities in any order, and the best list of abilities to use and the best order to use them varied tremendously, it wouldn't just be extremely complicated to design, it would also be a nightmare to play.

Depends on how it was designed. I mean any strategically deep game is going to be somewhat complex to find the perfect move. After all, that's what strategic depth means. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be hard to learn.

What you describe could only be called a nightmare. You're fucking asking people to take a chess move with 5 other people taking a chess move in between. Each person's actions would drag on with paralyzing indecision for fucking forever.

Well, hopefully it'd look more like a game of speed chess rather than a long drawn out chess game. Introducing a limit of like 2 minutes thinking time or something may also be called for as well. Just because the game is complex enough that you could think for a long long time, it doesn't mean you have to let people take all that time. In fact, you should be rushing them to make decisions.

I use Starcraft as an example because it's fast paced, despite having a lot of strategy to it. A decent move now is better than a great move 5 minutes later. And that's what an RPG should emphasize. It shouldn't be expected necessarily that your PCs will always make the right choice, but they get a strategic edge in that they control only one piece, and the DM controls many, so due to splitting his attention, the DM is much more likely to make tactical errors.

The first thing I would say would be important is giving everyone a wide array of powers. In 4E, terms you'd get defender powers, striker powers, controller powers and leader powers. For every single character. Which of these roles (or combination thereof) that you want to take is up to you. And the game should emphasize using different roles in different cases on different foes.

But seriously, nobody is expecting the PCs to play perfect anyway... so the whole "maybe they sit there and spend hours trying to find the perfect strategy" is a moot point.

I mean you can just as easily say that silent image shouldn't exist since someone can spend hours trying to think up the perfect illusion.

[Crissa]

I think the sample WoF fighter has too many non-static options. If I can't predict ahead of time if I want A B or C, it's going to take up more turn time. I'd rather the WoF only cycling one or two maneuver sets. A, B or C_WoF; not A, B_WoF, C_WoF, or D_WoF. That's too many to be considering during 'my turn'.

-Crissa

[Zinegata]

RC2->

That's still... rather terribly complex. But yeah, meaningful differences would be nice.

[Username17]

I think the sample WoF fighter has too many non-static options. If I can't predict ahead of time if I want A B or C, it's going to take up more turn time. I'd rather the WoF only cycling one or two maneuver sets. A, B or C_WoF; not A, B_WoF, C_WoF, or D_WoF. That's too many to be considering during 'my turn'.

-Crissa

This makes no sense to me. The sample had 5 abilities to select from each turn. I have every faith in peoples' ability to choose from one of 5 different options in a timely manner. Especially if they generate the list at the end of last turn instead of the beginning of this turn.

Heck, you could set someone's attack of opportunity profile to their WoF roll to change things up a bit and have that WoF roll start mattering immediately.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Frank, you have five options that need to be weighed each turn. I'm just suggesting that is going to lengthen a player's decision time per turn, and not in a way I would enjoy.

-Crissa

[Username17]

Frank, you have five options that need to be weighed each turn. I'm just suggesting that is going to lengthen a player's decision time per turn, and not in a way I would enjoy.

-Crissa

What the fuck?

You wouldn't enjoy the game because it was lengthened by people making a choice between five different options each turn? Seriously, what the fuck? Are you seriously telling me that the game should be more like AD&D, where the Fighter says "I waste it with my crossbow!" every. Single. Round?

If that's actually what you are saying, I can safely say that I don't feel that I have to worry about designing for you.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Frank has obviously never played with people with Analysis Paralysis.

[mean_liar]

There's a certain degree of unfortunate, additional analysis required by the WoF-determines-multiple-options system (I'm going to shorthand that to a WoF "hand")... but that's going to happen whenever you add options.

It's a weighted choice against the single WoF SuperMove thing we were looking at earlier. It's additional choices, but it's also different choices every round. So it provides more options but because those options change each round you're continually re-evaluating based on your current, changing WoF hand rather than a set of maneuvers. You're going to be checking your roll against the hand you've set aside for a result of 6 ("ok, rolled a six, I use this 6-deep pile of cards to choose actions from this round") and reviewing that hand based on the situation.

Access to everything at once creates a situation where you know you have X and Y and Z and in this situation you want Y. Maybe there are circumstances that make Z slightly more optimal, but that's a judgment call. With the WoF hand, you could end up without Y, but instead get A,B,C,Z, each with their own tradeoffs. With the optimal choice removed you're injecting more analysis into the turn's decision time cycle as the 2nd-tier abilities are weighed against each other.

A savvy player will be familiar with everything his WoF could possibly offer and will make decisions quickly regardless of the WoF hand dealt. I do not think that will hold robustly for an average player.

However, it's still a tradeoff and not necessarily bad. I like the multiple WoF options better than the one for some reasons and dislike it for others. Personally and intuitively I feel the WoF "hand" system, despite being neat-o, would be worse for game play than having a big pool of maneuvers, one of which is randomly designated Super for a round.

[violence in the media]

Really you're probably better off with some kind of charge up system. Basically something like a light attack gives you a +2 to hit against that creature for the rest of the battle (say max +4), and using your big attack later with the bonuses is more advantageous to busting it out early and possibly having it fail.

What if Super Moves carried a basic, inherent penalty to attack and save DCs, as well as a frequency timer? The damage and effects would still be full-power to entice opening gambit attacks, but if it missed you wouldn't be able to use it again for some number of rounds, even if favorable conditions cropped up.

With that, you'd put riders on your other attacks that added bonuses to hit, save DCs, or durations that were wiped clean by using a certain class of attack.

So, using Frank's example Hero:

Heart Seeker has an inherent -10 penalty to attack and save DC, but it inflicts +6d6 damage, exhaustion, stuns for 1 round, and provokes a Fort save vs. death. It also has some useage interval.

Beat Down carries a -6 penalty to attack and save DC, but inflicts +3d6 damage, provokes a Reflex save vs. knockdown, and grants an additional normal attack if the opponent is prone. Has a useage interval as well.

Using either of those two attacks will wipe out any bonuses accrued on the target. Moving further down the list:

Clothesline carries a -2 penalty to attack and save DC, inflicts [yourstrengthmodifier] damage and provokes a Reflex save vs. knockdown.

Precise strike has a +2 bonus to hit, inflicts +1d6 damage, and puts a stackable +2 bonus (with some maximum) to hit tag on the opponent. Distracting Blow functions similarly but without the bonus damage and puts on a Save DC bonus tag.

Basic attacks are just that.

So, playing the Hero "A" (with an identical Hero buddy "B" on the same team for illustrative purposes), I could open with Heart Seeker or Beat Down if I chose to and be confident that, if I hit, it would take my opponent out of the fight or make it almost trivially easy for one of my allies to do so.

However, it might make more sense for "A" to open with a Precise Strike, then have "B" land a Distracting Blow (which benefits from, but doesn't use up, the Precise bonus), and then "A" Clotheslines the opponent (again benefitting from the Precise and Distracting bonuses) so that "B" walks into using a Beat Down or Heartseeker attack against a prone opponent (+4 to hit) with a +2 bonus to hit and Save DC tags that has also already taken 2 hits worth of damage.

You could go wild with this in other ways too. Immolation can only work on a target that is currently on fire. Psychic MindFuck requires the target be fascinated first. Astral Instability might not do anything initially, but inflicts massive damage and saves versus death anytime the target shifts dimensions in some way (Blink, Dimension Door, Teleport, Materializing, Rope Trick, Shadow Step, etc.), allowing you to now use those "utility" powers offensively or limiting the opponent's options.

Needs more work, and I don't know if you'd use this with WoF, or if it would wind up being too complicated despite our best efforts, but it moves away from the common D&D idea of "I have an attack and it always functions at my maximum ability." This way, you can use Super Moves largely when you want to, just they probably won't work until you've satisfied some preconditions.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Frank has obviously never played with people with Analysis Paralysis.

How is that possible? Every D&D player I have played it has this every round. Every. Single. One.

[RandomCasualty2]

What if Super Moves carried a basic, inherent penalty to attack and save DCs, as well as a frequency timer? The damage and effects would still be full-power to entice opening gambit attacks, but if it missed you wouldn't be able to use it again for some number of rounds, even if favorable conditions cropped up.

Yeah, you definitely probably want to put super moves on a cooldown. I personally like the encounter power concept of 4E, because it's easy enough to track and understand, and you don't have to worry about tracking how many rounds have to go by. And really, you should have enough total moves that you can get by a 5 round combat without repeating any.

After that, it's generally a matter of figuring out the best time to initiate your super moves. If you're using WoF and you do penalties, you may not have to have a cooldown timer at all, given that you're rolling randomly anyway. So spamming a maneuver with a big penalty probably isn't going to be a big deal.

Also keep in mind that you probably want to encourage people to use the rider effect to build up powers this way, so that should be mathematically superior than just the all out gambit attack, unless your foe has really bad defenses. Going Reflex attack gambit on a gelatinous cube should be totally doable, but not so much on an elf.

You could go wild with this in other ways too. Immolation can only work on a target that is currently on fire. Psychic MindFuck requires the target be fascinated first. Astral Instability might not do anything initially, but inflicts massive damage and saves versus death anytime the target shifts dimensions in some way (Blink, Dimension Door, Teleport, Materializing, Rope Trick, Shadow Step, etc.), allowing you to now use those "utility" powers offensively or limiting the opponent's options.

Yeah, you pretty much want stuff like this where you have to set up the power. The only thing you have to be careful with is that you don't want the team getting specialized to do one thing, so my best suggestion is to have most of your big combos be situational in that you run into creatures that can beat your schtick. Creatures immune to mind-affecting stuff, creatures immune to fire, etc.

Otherwise you end up with effectively specialized parties of "I'm the dude that stuns the guy so then character B can throw on his stun prereq uber shot."

And you don't want that.

But you definitely want lots of variety. I like the idea in 4E of having multiple defenses, but unlike 4E, every character should attack every defense. The only difference is the effect. A psion can actually damage people with his will attacks, where as a warrior may just debuff them through intimidation or get them to waste attacks. So you may wonder whether it's better to say, attack the creature's strong defense with a good attack, or instead use say your distracting attack on its weaker defense.

Needs more work, and I don't know if you'd use this with WoF, or if it would wind up being too complicated despite our best efforts, but it moves away from the common D&D idea of "I have an attack and it always functions at my maximum ability." This way, you can use Super Moves largely when you want to, just they probably won't work until you've satisfied some preconditions.

Yeah, basically it's nice to allow people to use their moves whenever, just get them to hold them off due to mathematical incentives.

[Zinegata]

Frank has obviously never played with people with Analysis Paralysis.

How is that possible? Every D&D player I have played it has this every round. Every. Single. One.

Because Frank is complaining about people who paralyze choosing between five moves.

I've seen people who paralyze who have to choose between two.

[RandomCasualty2]

Because Frank is complaining about people who paralyze choosing between five moves.

I've seen people who paralyze who have to choose between two.

Really nothing you can do with those guys aside from not playing a system with tactical combat and just having "I win combat" rolls for everyone instead.

It's funny because I had a player like this who said how boring and dumbed down 4E was compared to 3.5, yet when we tried 4E he took forever to figure out what to do.

[Zinegata]

Because Frank is complaining about people who paralyze choosing between five moves.

I've seen people who paralyze who have to choose between two.

Really nothing you can do with those guys aside from not playing a system with tactical combat and just having "I win combat" rolls for everyone instead.

Or you can just sigh and go "Make a bloody move already".

It works. Sometimes.

[RandomCasualty2]

Or you can just sigh and go "Make a bloody move already".

It works. Sometimes.

Yeah haha. Well I mean rushing people isn't a bad idea. I've used stop watches and stuff before, but ultimately people who suffer from this decision freeze condition are going to be slow in general with any tactical system. They basically actually want to be playing the "I full attack" system every round. That's hard for people who like tactical systems to understand, but some people actually enjoy that kind of mindless gameplay...

I mean MMORPGs rely almost exclusively on that type of easily amused player.

[Zinegata]

They basically actually want to be playing the "I full attack" system every round.

Not always. Some guys I know just try to over-analyze every move and hence go into Analysis Paralysis. Even when playing Monopoly before rolling the dice.

[RandomCasualty2]

Not always. Some guys I know just try to over-analyze every move and hence go into Analysis Paralysis. Even when playing Monopoly before rolling the dice.

Monopoly? Wow... that's a really severe case of analysis paralysis.

[Zinegata]

Monopoly? Wow... that's a really severe case of analysis paralysis.

Yes. Frank has not seen the horrors I have.