Help me actually understand Winds of Fate.

[hogarth]

How are defensive moves done? Are they part of the WoF or are they separate?

Depends on what you mean by defensive moves. Depending on your definition of defensive, 4E and Bo9S actually handles them quite well even disregarding the action-breaking boost/counter moves. Give us some examples, please?

He means, do they take up space in the same Winds of Fate matrix as offensive moves.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank, look at your Green Arrow example.

I don't know about Frank's system, but I know that for my own system:

1) People shouldn't be allowed to stock up on duplicate powers maybe more than once or twice. It's also why I am vehemently against search or WoF-roll manipulation.

2) Green Arrow is a low-level character. It's not a big deal for him to have arrows that are rather similar in effect, because he's meant to be played at a beginner level. Then again, I don't think that low-level characters should have a WoF matrix that big anyway for several reasons. But that's another story.

3) It illustrates the importance of having enough writers who are creative in coming up with powers. The system isn't going to work if the choices Green Arrow is a mid-level character and has to pick from Normal / Armor Piercing / Ricochet / Boxing / Big-Ass / Poisoned Arrow. This is actually my biggest misgiving with the system; I don't think that any current writing staff is up to the challenge.

[Lago PARANOIA]

He means, do they take up space in the same Winds of Fate matrix as offensive moves.

Again, that depends on what you mean by defensive moves. A move that is 'Standard Action: [1W] + Strength if you hit and regardless you gain a +4 to AC until you attack' can fit on it just fine, but 'Move Action: Gain a +4 to AC until you attack' is trickier.

[Username17]

Frank, look at your Green Arrow example. Let's say I'm a player and most rounds I want GA to do not-particularly-lethal damage to my opponent. In a non-Winds of Fate system, I default to Boxing Glove every round, with Siren Arrow and Shock Arrow thrown in at the appropriate situation (e.g Siren is area effect, Shock vs. metallic targets). In your system, I default to Siren Arrow on a 2, Boxing Glove on a 3-4, Shock Arrow on a 5-6, and on a 1 I'm screwed (maybe I punch the guy or try to drop rocks on him or something). It's still defaulting, just to a random damage type instead.

No. That's exactly what not defaulting looks like. If you're evaluating your tactical options and doing a different thing on different turns, that is in no way similar to Defaulting. And since it isn't in a predefined order it isn't scripting either.

If it was determined enough, it could potentially be Top Decking, but since you seriously had at least one circumstance where you weren't sure what you would do and would have to more carefully evaluate the tactical situation, it isn't even that.

So your contrived example actually shows exactly why WoF is good. It breaks up the bullshit of Defaulting and Scripting and people still manage to avoid Top Decking, Optional Paralysis, or Decision Irrelevance.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Hogarth "defaulting" is a random thing Frank just made up in a subsidiary thread to support his WoF material in the face of the basic criticism that you can't actually make a basic role playing game out of it because it punishes things exactly like your "non-fatal green arrow usage" scenario.

Don't expect to convince him the term he just made up to pretend that his WoF system has some sort of scienceyness behind it is one that in anyway ever means anything bad for WoF under any interpretation imaginable.

[hogarth]

Frank, look at your Green Arrow example. Let's say I'm a player and most rounds I want GA to do not-particularly-lethal damage to my opponent. In a non-Winds of Fate system, I default to Boxing Glove every round, with Siren Arrow and Shock Arrow thrown in at the appropriate situation (e.g Siren is area effect, Shock vs. metallic targets). In your system, I default to Siren Arrow on a 2, Boxing Glove on a 3-4, Shock Arrow on a 5-6, and on a 1 I'm screwed (maybe I punch the guy or try to drop rocks on him or something). It's still defaulting, just to a random damage type instead.

No. That's exactly what not defaulting looks like. If you're evaluating your tactical options and doing a different thing on different turns, that is in no way similar to Defaulting.

"Boxing Glove equivalent every round" is not evaluating your tactical options any more than "Boxing Glove every round" is. And only 4E developers think "2 [W] + Cha radiant damage" is different from "2 [W] + Cha lightning damage".

Don't expect to convince him the term he just made up to pretend that his WoF system has some sort of scienceyness behind it is one that in anyway ever means anything bad for WoF under any interpretation imaginable.

I know, but it's always entertaining to see Frank get into his "Don't you get it? I'm increasing your chocolate ration from 30 grammes to 25 grammes!" mode.

[Lago PARANOIA]

"Boxing Glove equivalent every round" is not evaluating your tactical options any more than "Boxing Glove every round" is. And only 4E developers think "2 [W] + Cha radiant damage" is different from "2 [W] + Cha lightning damage".

The part that you're missing is that during those other rounds the person got to look at a set of other situational options. Maybe he would've found something he would've liked in those other 5-15 options.

WoF isn't really going to stop someone who insists on spamming the options in Column A. It can break people out of accidentally or lazily spamming Boxing Arrow by making spam difficult, but if someone is truly so unimaginative or stubborn that they refuse to use anything but what's closest to their preferred tactic regardless of tactical situation or how easy it is to break out of their pattern then you can't really do much.

There's nothing you can really do for the Rat Flail players. There's never anything you can do.

[hogarth]

"Boxing Glove equivalent every round" is not evaluating your tactical options any more than "Boxing Glove every round" is. And only 4E developers think "2 [W] + Cha radiant damage" is different from "2 [W] + Cha lightning damage".

The part that you're missing is that during those other rounds the person got to look at a set of other situational options. Maybe he would've found something he would've liked in those other 5-15 options.

But if you're the type of player who always uses the same Five Moves of Doom, Winds of Fate won't change anything for the better.

I think you're still missing the point somewhat. 85% of the time, "vanilla damage" or "area damage" or "entangle" is what the 5MoD player wants to do, and it's totally goddamn obvious which to choose, Winds of Fate or no Winds of Fate -- there's no paralysis, unless you're the moron type of player that PL mentions who can't even keep his top 3 favourite powers straight. That's your Three Moves of Doom, even if you fancy it up with "lightning damage" or "shift one square" or whatever. The only difference in Frank's GA example is that 1/6 of the time you can't do what you want and you have to improvise; I can deal with that, although I don't think it's an improvement.

The other 15% of the time, you want to dig into those weirder options because you're fighting a ghost or trying to put out a fire or something. Under Frank's GA example, you're basically fucked because 5/6 of the time you don't get your Fire Extinguisher or Nth Metal arrow; there's no tactical choices involved again under Winds of Fate. I guess you could argue that GA's player could suffer option paralysis trying to match up "fire" and "fire extinguisher" or "ghost" and "anti-ghost arrow", but again you're in PL's "moron player" category.

So in the first case, Winds of Fate is no better tactically (possibly worse, because you aren't allowed to match up "Shock Arrow" with "robot" unless you roll well). In the second case, Winds of Fate is much worse (there's a tactical choice, but you're not allowed to choose it most of the time).

[Lago PARANOIA]

But if you're the type of player who always uses the same Five Moves of Doom, Winds of Fate won't change anything for the better.

People don't just use Five Moves of Doom because they want to. It's a response, logical or not, to a bad system. There are several reasons why they'd want to:

1) It's actually the most powerful way to arrange your moves. In 3E and 4E D&D this is due to the way the combat system works. It's in your best interest to kill enemies as quickly as possible and you have a list of moves with escalating power level that don't immediately obsolete the old ones. So the most optimal array is something like Daily Powers You Have Rationed in order of most powerful to least powerful (which will usually be highest level to lowest level) --> Encounter Powers from most to least powerful (same deal) --> At-Wills. 90% of the time doing your move order in any other way is gimping your character. So obviously min-maxers or people who play to win, once they figure out that this is the way to go, are going to stick with it.

2) It's a response to people being overwhelmed with choice. It's just plain easier to acquaint yourself with three strategies than ten. If someone can get by with three strategies then they will. Once people get into a comfort zone it's really hard to shake them out of it; a lot of people at this point go 'then make powers more diverse/do more at once', totally missing the point that this will just reinforce the problem. Not everyone sticks to a comfort zone because they're lazy. Some people are just new to the wacky world of TTRPG combat, some people just have bad tactical sense and would seriously be better off learning three of them well then ten mediocrely, some people are playing the latest class hot off of the presses and haven't had time to familiarize themselves with the moves.

3) People are just lazy. Look around on these boards, man. There are several people, including in this thread, who seriously go 'why SHOULDN'T I just be allowe to spam the same move over and over'. They don't fall into categories 1 and 2, because they KNOW the rules enough so that they don't have to resort to this behavior if the game was balanced properly. They're just lazy fucks who would rather bore other people with their refusal to do anything but hit the 'spam fireball' then change up their tactics.

If you make it difficult to do ability spam or FMoD then it'll stop min-maxers, the overwhelmed, and the lazy. It won't really stop people who resort to FMoD because, say, they think Hyper Combo Finishes from Marvel vs. Squaresoft is the sweetest thing ever and they HAVE to replicate it. But you can't help those people anyway.

I think you're still missing the point somewhat. 85% of the time, "vanilla damage" or "area damage" or "entangle" is what the 5MoD player wants to do,

Whoa whoa whoa. Entangle and area damage are tactics that can have very different game effects. I mean, shit, Stone to Mud + Dispel Magic, Evard's Black Tentacles, Bigby's Crushing Grasp, Permanent Image, and Solid Fog are all 'entangle' spells and they play quite differently from one another. Area damage can be even more diverse than even that. Even if someone wants to basically go 'I want to take down this cluster of mummies' they have a pretty diverse set of options to choose from. It's a fucking shame if the only thing that ever comes to mind is 'fireball' and you want your system to actually discourage that.

There's really nothing you can do with vanilla damage to spice it up, but you know what? Vanilla damage shouldn't even be in the damn game in more than a perfunctory manner. 4E D&D has drilled that into our heads mercilessly.

Under Frank's GA example, you're basically fucked because 5/6 of the time you don't get your Fire Extinguisher or Nth Metal arrow

So in the first case, Winds of Fate is no better tactically (possibly worse, because you aren't allowed to match up "Shock Arrow" with "robot" unless you roll well)

What people are missing is that we don't actually want people to spam Shock Arrow 4 times after they figure out it's the best effect. People exploiting a weakness with a specific manuever is only interesting once or twice--after that you might as well just tape down the 'OMG Hidden Weakness Exploitation!' button and go play Super Smash Bros.. Captain Atom taking on Superman with red sun radiation is interesting for the first couple of times but when his buddies change the settings on their Atomizers to Red Sun Radiation for the rest of the adventure it becomes lame if that's the extent of their 'exploit Superman's weakness' thinking.

What we actually want people to do is go: hmm, a ghost, but I don't have Command Undead up this round. I do have Sunburst, Minor Shadow Evocation, Flame Seed, and Visions of Avarice. How am I going to come up with a Scooby Doo plan with THIS stuff. Because spamming Command Undead or Ghostbusting Arrow isn't clever after the first couple of times. Using Fire Extinguisher Arrow to unexpectedly accomplish something useful is.

[hogarth]

People don't just use Five Moves of Doom because they want to. It's a response, logical or not, to a bad system. There are several reasons why they'd want to:

1) It's actually the most powerful way to arrange your moves.
2) It's a response to people being overwhelmed with choice.
3) People are just lazy.

Agreed.

If you make it difficult to do ability spam or FMoD then it'll stop min-maxers, the overwhelmed, and the lazy.

Sure, but in Frank's GA example, "Boxing Glove arrow" to "Boxing Glove arrow-equivalent" is still ability spam and 5MoD-like. So no progress there.

I think you're still missing the point somewhat. 85% of the time, "vanilla damage" or "area damage" or "entangle" is what the 5MoD player wants to do,

Whoa whoa whoa. Entangle and area damage are tactics that can have very different game effects.

Sure, but in Frank's example there's never any choice between Entangle 1 and Entangle 2, so they might as well be the same ability ("Entangle of Wonder") with a random effect.

What people are missing is that we don't actually want people to spam Shock Arrow 4 times after they figure out it's the best effect. People exploiting a weakness with a specific manuever is only interesting once or twice--after that you might as well just tape down the 'OMG Hidden Weakness Exploitation!' button and go play Super Smash Bros.. Captain Atom taking on Superman with red sun radiation is interesting for the first couple of times but when his buddies change the settings on their Atomizers to Red Sun Radiation for the rest of the adventure it becomes lame if that's the extent of their 'exploit Superman's weakness' thinking.

But Winds of Fate doesn't prevent that; at best it delays it. You might get your Superman K.O. ability on round 1 or you might get it on round 50, but presumably you still have it. So instead of playing your "I win" card on round 1, you go off to play Super Smash Bros. and tell the GM "Call me when I get my 'I win' card". So not much progress there, either.

[wotmaniac]

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49999

Warning: Long and boring and argumentative.

Thanks. That was actually quite entertaining. Oh, and sorry for the lag -- just got off of work.

Having read all that, I must say that I'm not quite sure that I was swayed much. Everything still seems to boil down to personal preference on how resource management is implemented.

If effective resource management isn't your shtick (whether it's because you can't grasp it, or don't have the discipline, or just don't care to be bothered by it, or whatever), then you probably need a system that holds your hand.
However, if resource management is your forte, then you just might need a more flexible system.

Me, I prefer personal autonomy and freedom of choice.

[Username17]

No. The "personal preference canard was a load of shit at the time and it's a load of shit now. If your resource management system ends up wth people spamming Psychic Crush over and over again, then tacking your resource management system is objectively a waste of time. Fiddling with numbers and making little marks on your character sheet is a pain in the ass, and the only reason to do it is if it actually gets you something. What you get from resource management is diversity of action.

If you don't want diversity of action, the correct choice is to drop the resource management altogether, not to use a shitty resource management system that does not provide diversity of action.

-Username17

[MGuy]

@ the "defensive move" I mean Counters, deciding to not do anything but increase your defense, healing, defensive buffing (such as fire resistance/immunity etc), and other abilities like that. Are those on the matrix or separate.

@ Frank's last comment: That "IF" is a pretty damning qualifier that can be applied to really "any" resource system, even WoF. I think that you're taking in the implementation more than the actual system itself and stating it as if both are the same. If you make it so that the system as a whole forces more tactical decision making than "Spam Psychic Crush" which I reasonably believe you can do with Spell Points if the implementation is right, then there is nothing wrong.

[Orion]

Point of Order: "Five Moves of Doom" means something very specific. It doesn't mean there are only five moves that you use, it means you always use those five moves in the same order. WoF definitionally defeats five moves of doom, even if people only ever use the "1s" column.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Sure, but in Frank's example there's never any choice between Entangle 1 and Entangle 2, so they might as well be the same ability ("Entangle of Wonder") with a random effect.

No. It's not the same. Because Wall of Stone and Solid Fog are two different 'entangle' effects, having it be random when the power goes off makes it effectively unusuable. You don't use Wall of Stone the same way you use Solid Fog. Two Entangle of Wonders are impossible to use intelligently, but Entangle A and Entangle B being Wall of Stone and Solid Fog, despite being mathematically equivalent, are totally useable.

If you meant Entangle of Wonder as in it picked off of a list of Entangle effects before you picked the power and communicated it to you, there's precisely nothing wrong with that. It's way too complicated for a table-based WoF system but mathematically it works out the same as putting your hand into a deck, shuffling it, and drawing a card of each red (single-target), blue (defensive), yellow (area), and green (entangle) cards. I'm not a fan of that method because as Koumei mentioned cards are a hassle and people lose them, but the idea is sound.

But Winds of Fate doesn't prevent that; at best it delays it. You might get your Superman K.O. ability on round 1 or you might get it on round 50, but presumably you still have it. So instead of playing your "I win" card on round 1, you go off to play Super Smash Bros. and tell the GM "Call me when I get my 'I win' card". So not much progress there, either.

The point is that on the rounds in which you don't get the Super-Effective arrow you're still using it to hurt the enemy/improve your position/debuff the enemy/etc.. Even if you never get your arrow Just Perfect For The Situation, it's still possible to defeat the ghost. If you designed the same so that only one effect can win the encounter, then you fucked up majorly in the same way that they fucked up the Rakasha monster.

It's like getting a critical hit. A critical hit turn make a decent challenge into a cakewalk and a difficult one into something manageable. But you don't NEED to get a critical hit ever in order to win.

If you make it so that the system as a whole forces more tactical decision making than "Spam Psychic Crush" which I reasonably believe you can do with Spell Points if the implementation is right, then there is nothing wrong.

The thing that MfA and you are fantasizing about where people have 10 distinct powers that do different things and you reward people for picking the 'right' power never really works. Even in Mutants and Masterminds d20, which opens the floodgates to do anything you want with any power as long as you spent a Hero Point often has players spamming their same powers despite the game going out of its way to offer alternate situations in the solution books. Seriously, just read the goddamn logs for the Crucible City MUX and that stupid Heroes MUX pastiche that used that system. Players stuck to patterns and often didn't go for 'just as planned!' bait that seemed obvious to outsiders. Why is that?

1) It's often not as obvious as you think it would be for people to pick that 'just as planned' power. For example, should you hit the fire elemental with an Empowered Iceball, a Plane Shift, or a Wall of Stone? Depending on how you construct the game, they all might be equally useful even though a layperson would say 'go for the Iceball!'. Without such obvious decision points, the average person is going to default to what they feel most comfortable with, which invariably leads to ability spam. (Ed: This especially becomes a problem if you actually went ahead and made a small set of powers diverse, because it incentivizes people to stick to one power even more. There are a lot of occasions in which sunbeam won't do donkey dick and are forced to diversify, but it's very hard to come up with occasions that makes summon monster or mass curse more harmful than using another power). This is exactly what happened with Psions; they chose a small list of generically useful powers, some buffs and edge-case effects, then went to town. The only way you can avert this is by splitting up all versatile powers into individual spells, but then that either makes characters boring and one-note or it introduces option paralysis... which leads to people spamming the same one power anyway. Sigh.

2) Even if you do have a This Power Works Best situation, a lot of people aren't going to take it anyway. Either because of cautiousness, paranoia, roleplaying reasons, or they're just not that bright. They will of course stick to what they're comfortable with, which invariable leads to ability spam.

3) Those 'OMG that was just a PERFECT use of that power!' situations happen in comics and cartoons because, get this: the writers get a lot longer than 5 minutes to come up with something and even have considerable power to manipulate events into a 'just as planned' situation. The 'Iron Man modulates his laser to hit a ghost' tactic might seem obvious to you because you crafted the adventure, but it might not to the people actually playing it--at least not within a reasonable time frame. If someone is on a time crunch they will tend to default to what they feel most familiar with, which leads to ability spam.

As I told hogarth earlier, 10 cyborgs from nowhere has to be as generically as interesting of an encounter as Livewire and Parasite team up. But those critters can't be written in advance for your group.

[hogarth]

Sure, but in Frank's example there's never any choice between Entangle 1 and Entangle 2, so they might as well be the same ability ("Entangle of Wonder") with a random effect.

No. It's not the same. Because Wall of Stone and Solid Fog are two different 'entangle' effects, having it be random when the power goes off makes it effectively unusuable. You don't use Wall of Stone the same way you use Solid Fog. Two Entangle of Wonders are impossible to use intelligently, but Entangle A and Entangle B being Wall of Stone and Solid Fog, despite being mathematically equivalent, are totally useable.

Why are you talking about a different example than I am? I'm specifically talking about Frank's Green Arrow example -- if he wants to capture some dude without hurting him, he has a bunch of different powers that essentially do the same thing and there's no thought process involved in choosing between them.

[Lago PARANOIA]

NM, I'll let Frank answer it.

[MGuy]

All of this would be completely cleared up if we could see the final (or first draft) of the entire thing. We can hypothesize and theorize but the longer this conversation goes on the more "ifs" we're going to have to use.

On another note how are basic maneuvers like Bull Rushing, Basic attack, Trip, Grapple, AoOs, etc going to be modeled. I will admit that if I can't grab someone with my hands whenever I want (supposing I'm close enough) might tick me off.

[Lago PARANOIA]

All of this would be completely cleared up if we could see the final (or first draft) of the entire thing. We can hypothesize and theorize but the longer this conversation goes on the more "ifs" we're going to have to use.

We can't have a final draft because we frickin' don't have a D&D system to use it with. We can give examples and adaptations (I showed you one earlier in this very thread even), but a final or even a first draft ain't happening unless we construct a class system complete with powers from scratch first.

[Ganbare Gincun]

All of this would be completely cleared up if we could see the final (or first draft) of the entire thing. We can hypothesize and theorize but the longer this conversation goes on the more "ifs" we're going to have to use.

We can't have a final draft because we frickin' don't have a D&D system to use it with. We can give examples and adaptations (I showed you one earlier in this very thread even), but a final or even a first draft ain't happening unless we construct a class system complete with powers from scratch first.

Frank was working on a Barbarian as a sample class, wasn't he?

[MGuy]

All of this would be completely cleared up if we could see the final (or first draft) of the entire thing. We can hypothesize and theorize but the longer this conversation goes on the more "ifs" we're going to have to use.

We can't have a final draft because we frickin' don't have a D&D system to use it with. We can give examples and adaptations (I showed you one earlier in this very thread even), but a final or even a first draft ain't happening unless we construct a class system complete with powers from scratch first.

I can understand that, but the point remains that that would be necessary in order to have a more concrete discussion. WIthout a standard people can say "if " this and "if" that. Its easy to pick on the Vanician system because we have DnD right there its harder to critique this one because there's no solid example.

[Username17]

Why are you talking about a different example than I am? I'm specifically talking about Frank's Green Arrow example -- if he wants to capture some dude without hurting him, he has a bunch of different powers that essentially do the same thing and there's no thought process involved in choosing between them.

If the goal of the scenario is to capture a single individual without killing him, then you can probably rule out using any lethal attacks. Not necessarily of course, since there may well be inanimate objects, pets, or destructible defenses that would be advantageous to attack with an attack that does lethal damage. But sure, we'll just give you that lethal attacks can be ruled out because of the goal of the scenario.

But all that means is that every turn Green Arrow is going to want to use a normal damage attack, a debuff, or a dispel. Which of those would be best to use would depend on the situation and how his attacks, debuffs, and dispels matched up against his opponent and the ongoing effects on the battlefield. To make a really informed tactical decision, Green Arrow's player is going to have to consider every single available normal attack, debuff, and dispel every turn.

And that's exactly where WoF comes in so very handy. Green Arrow's player is handed a short list of maneuvers that could include any of Normal Attacks, Lethal Attacks, Debuffs, and Dispels each round. And because it is a short list for the round, the player is able to actually consider each one. And then whether he ends up using a Boxing Glove or a Net or a Flare is actually contingent on the player's assessment of the current tactical situation.

Because I'll give you a hint: if Green Arrow's player was given all two dozen arrows to select from every round, the player would still only give serious consideration to a handful of them when deciding his action for the turn. And round to round, the small handful that was being considered probably wouldn't change much. The WoF gives the player basically the same amount of real freedom that they would have if they were given a daunting all-encompassing list. But it also allows the rounds to play out differently from each other by feeding the player that amount of freedom in a different sphere each round.

The ability to choose a move that you haven't considered or looked at before it comes time to choose your move is not really an ability at all. Even if you were to "choose" it, you'd just be acting randomly.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

We may not have a specific sample and that makes many criticisms hard, but a lot of the basic mechanism is fairly clear and we can already start putting together a list of potential player choices we know are effected by WoF.

Here are a few.

I definitely want to use a specific power that my character DOES have, right now - Not in WoF

I definitely want to use a specific power that my character DOES have as a general signature or finishing move - Not in WoF

I encounter a Fire Pokemon, I clearly use my water moves, they are super effective - Not in WoF, you randomly use water, or plant, or fire, or maybe a move action or something

Using available terrain for a non-standard attack - not in WoF, and certainly not on que even if you DO have a "use available terrain" option in your complex chart somewhere.

"Hahaha Villian, you live by the sword you die by the... " - er... exploding acorn attack? But only after I perform a defensive move action this turn, exploding acorn won't be coming up until next turn anyway, thanks WoF...

"We Need to take this one alive!" - I guess I'll use my... mega death certain kill technique? Thanks WoF.

"The princess is in danger, we must end this combat THIS TURN at any cost!" - Everyone rolls mobility, defense and lower impact or inappropriately matched attacks this turn, thanks WoF.

"The place is falling apart around us as we fight! Quick, fall back and skirmish your way out with your fallback skirmish moves!" - Good luck rolling up your fall back skirmish moves when you actually need to, thanks WoF.

"I take the magic staff dropped right now in combat, and use it right now in combat to perform that mega death ray we just saw" - This is a hard one, WoF might let you swap out a funky new power in combat, however we DO know that actually then using that same power in the same combat... well, do you feel lucky?

etc...

[tussock]

We may not have a specific sample and that makes many criticisms hard, but a lot of the basic mechanism is fairly clear and we can already start putting together a list of potential player choices we know are effected by WoF.

Here are a few.

I definitely want to use a specific power that my character DOES have, right now - Not in WoF, because that's the entire point of WoF, to stop you having exactly what you want, so that you can't use optimal strategies.

I encounter a Fire Pokemon, I clearly use my water moves, they are super effective - Maybe in WoF, as you'd have a water column for a Pokemon game, but whenever the game constrains your choices like that you're just getting random effects.

Using available terrain for a non-standard attack - Maybe in WoF, if the terrain effectively provides a modifier to certain column tags. So with concealment, you get +2 when using any "stealth" column powers. The Rogue has three stealth columns, so it doesn't even constrain his choices.

"Hahaha Villian, you live by the sword you die by the..." - you cannot finish that sentence with WoF until the encounter happens, that's the *point* of WoF.

"We Need to take this one alive!" - I guess I *won't* use my mega death certain kill technique. What else is on this row anyway? Fuck! This character sucks for capcha challenges. Thanks WoF, for giving someone else some spotlight time.

"The princess is in danger, we must end this combat THIS TURN at any cost!" - but with WoF you can't make that decision, because sometimes fate says you guard the princess, sometimes you stunlock the threat, sometimes you negotiate, and that's not entirely your choice ahead of time. Designed to prevent optimal play.

"The place is falling apart around us as we fight! Quick, fall back and skirmish your way out with your fallback skirmish moves!" - Thank Christ we made that a column, rather than a row, eh. WoF just says your withdrawal is often quite messy, and almost never optimal.

"I take the magic staff dropped right now in combat, and use it right now in combat to perform that mega death ray we just saw" - D&D has gone out of it's way over the years to prevent you doing that. Command words and secret buttons and it's the 6th level spell to find out what they are sort of problems.

So, yes, in many ways, but that's mostly the point. Anti-5MoD is anti-optimal: you don't get to do the best thing whenever you want to, so that you don't always do the best thing and make it boring.


Large situational mods to select powers and challenges that mitigate the 5MoD in different ways makes WoF much less useful, but you have to build those things too. Like Undead who can't be sneak attacked, the Rogue's problem there being that he has no other function in combat situations to fall back on, not even a weak one.

[hogarth]

Because I'll give you a hint: if Green Arrow's player was given all two dozen arrows to select from every round, the player would still only give serious consideration to a handful of them when deciding his action for the turn. And round to round, the small handful that was being considered probably wouldn't change much.

That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm 100% in agreement. I'm just adding the addendum that your Green Arrow example doesn't change that; it just shuffles around the effects of those handful of arrows (not-very-lethal damage, lethal damage, entangle, etc.) a bit. From a player perspective, if I want to entangle Clock King, I don't care if I do it with a cable arrow or a net arrow or a glue arrow. Well, that's not quite true -- I might care in the sense that one does a shitty job compared to the other.