Help me actually understand Winds of Fate.

[mean_liar]

Trevor is a bad player. Or stupid. Designing specifically for Trevor - our archetypical lowest common denominator - is not something to strive for. It should be an incidental goal at best.

[Orion]

Frank, I'm a WoF defender, not a detractor, but there is one question raised by the critics that I'd really like to see you address. With the columns of similar powers, like Arrow, Boxing Glove Arrow, Shock Arrow, there does seem to be a paradox. How do you find the "sweet spot" where these powers are different enough to be interesting without making the character unable to reliably be able to attack someone, or entangle, or whatever the column's theme is.

I mean, if those powers are basically the same, why not fill the whole column with Boxing Glove and not have to learn as many different mechanics and print as many cards? If they're totally different, what's the point of grouping them in a column?

PL,

I understand what you were getting at re: Riot balance now, and you're quite right. I was confused because your reference to "trolling" the community made me think you were talking about patching, not the original design. Sadly, I don't know how they could possibly fix the tanky meta. Nerf survivability items, and I think champions just die too quickly for the game to be fun. Nerf tank damage/non-itemized damage, and creeps and towers become too hard to kill. So you'd probably have to tweak some items, some champ skills, and the stats for creeps all at once. Not sure it's doable.

Also, while I do agree that tank pants are too good right now, I am puzzled by your complaint that a tank built champ will win a mirror match against a dps build. Doesn't that have to be true for tank builds to be viable? When you have bigger engagements, everyone uses their damage items all the time, but only 1-2 people uses their survival items at once. So the tanker HAS to win 1v1s.

[Tony]

You know, if you make actually broad abilities, where the least broad ability is like fireball (small to moderate area fire damage, can destroy terrain, lots of targeting options), then 6 abilities to choose from each turn is actually far too many. 12 options is not equal to 12 abilities. Deep tactics, as Frank already pointed out, is where you take each option you have and compare its list of possible results to the list of possible results for each other option you have, and you choose the option that has the best list of possible results.

For example: if you have 6 single target abilities and 4 targets, and your only options are which ability and which target, then you already have 24 options that turn, not counting anything else you can do that turn. Because the number of options is well past the 12 options that are given as optimal for decision making a heuristic will be used by most players, such as "gank the healer" which means that the option which results in the healer being ganked the hardest will be selected without the player even being aware that one of his options could be "eliminate another target from the fight entirely". The heuristic may be literally anything of course, the point is that any heuristic you use will by definition eliminate some options from consideration, and sometimes one or more of the eliminated options will be the best option you had, and would have been more interesting because it wasn't chosen by a heuristic and was therefore more likely to be different from normal play.

Another thing that I really need to say is that watching someone apply a heuristic to tactics in a turn-based game is boring as fuck. Even if the heuristic was carefully crafted to take into account a huge number of variables, it's still a heuristic and it still plays itself and it still doesn't vary between similar situations unless the GM arbitrarily decides that he doesn't like the result of your heuristic and is going to force you to change it up. Yes, that is me equating the GM writing a different encounter that makes your favorite moves to spam useless to rolling the wrong result on Winds of Fate. Because it is exactly as arbitrary. The only difference is that with Winds of Fate it is more likely to be fair, you knew about it ahead of time so you could prepare yourself, and it doesn't rely on the GM being able to shoehorn some random encounter into the plot.

[Ice9]

You know, if you make actually broad abilities, where the least broad ability is like fireball (small to moderate area fire damage, can destroy terrain, lots of targeting options), then 6 abilities to choose from each turn is actually far too many.

I have to disagree with that. While in some hypothetical situation, they exact positioning of fireball might matter, in actual practice, the situation will be more like "Hit all foes + an ally, or hit these three foes, or hit this one foe". And that's a good day - it could very easily be "You can hit all the foes with no downside by positioning it in the center of them." A finite number of options, and often the best one is immediately apparent.

And while operating only on heuristics is dull, you can't eliminate them entirely. "Don't AoE your allies when it doesn't hit more foes" is a heuristic. "Don't debuff something you could have eliminated" is another. So are "don't buff the foes" and "don't attack your allies". Actually having each of your six options be worthy of consideration is a best case scenario that will not always apply.

So in practice, I would say that fireball being the least broad ability is more of a minimum than a maximum requirement for only having six moves available.

[wotmaniac]

Are you seriously proposing that players should pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

why not? that's really not such a bad thing.
However, as I read it, I think he's saying something more along the lines of a player is going to get better just over the natural course of playing via experience.

whether that happens as an active "thing", or as a more passive process, I think is largely inconsequential.

As you get better at the game, you will consider less standard plays and options. That's integral if you want any kind of real strategic depth.

Yes.
This is part of what I've been trying to get at for quite some time.
Thank you, Swordslinger.

To take this further, while WoF may provide for more "interesting" tactics, it sacrifices any real strategic depth -- which, I propose, is actually more shallow than the alternative.
Beyond that, I'm gonna have to 2nd pretty much everything that mean_liar had to say on that last page.

Yes, that is me equating the GM writing a different encounter that makes your favorite moves to spam useless to rolling the wrong result on Winds of Fate. Because it is exactly as arbitrary. The only difference is that with Winds of Fate it is more likely to be fair, you knew about it ahead of time so you could prepare yourself, and it doesn't rely on the GM being able to shoehorn some random encounter into the plot.

Okay, I've really gotta take issue with this assessment.
As I have always understood things, the GM writing encounters and creating scenarios that force the PCs to use a variety of different powers and tactics, pushing them out of their comfort zones, and weaving these things in to the story, was always a baseline expectation. What am I missing?

I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but .....

At what point did we lose our creativity? When did the creative centers of our brains just shut down? Seriously -- the brain (as well as each of its various sectors) is like a muscle ... if you don't use it, it will wither away and die. 10 years ago, I could run a 5-minute mile and bench-press almost 300 lbs. However, since then, my lifestyle has taken on a much more sedentary nature -- as such, I'd be hard-pressed to make even an 8-minute mile or press even half what I use to. But guess what? That's my own failing, and I'm not crying about it. I understand that if I want to reach that point again, then I'm gonna have to do all the hard work necessary to get there.
Which brings me to the next question: have we really become that lazy? Have we really become so self-entitled that we think that we shouldn't have to do any work? "Oh, it's too hard". Again, when did this happen? The irony is that some of us are actually putting more energy in to avoiding the "hard" work than would be involved in the actual work itself. Maybe it's just me, but I grew out of that by time I was, like, 15.
The only thing I can think of is that this is the results of the video game culture. We've been so conditioned to just letting the machine do all the work and thinking for us, that we've the ability to do it ourselves. The creative centers of our brains have withered; and now we're so set in our complacency that we're unapologetically letting Newtonian physics take over. We've allowed entropy to take its course, and can't be bothered to do anything about it.
I would go on about how this is but a symptom of larger societal problems, but that's another rant for another time.

[wotmaniac]

Yes, the MC did offer the variety of scenarios, but the point was when the scenarios were offered to people using the heuristic that Swordslinger or hogarth proposed then they performed suboptimally. Meaning that the heuristic sucked.

No, the heuristics application suck -- which is a player issue. Different scenarios require different processes of elimination.

This is still REALLY SHALLOW and only proves my point about your suboptimal heuristic.

Again, if the powers are all reasonably balanced then an AoE may not in fact be the best way to deal with an enemy force than a well-chosen single target spell. If the enemy loses their morale really quickly or has a mob with a troublesome power then an appropriate single-target spell is worth more. Spamming a level-balanced AoE at a group with a healer in it is a waste of time and resources. But you wouldn't have known that, because going 'Lots of enemies! AoE!' didn't even let you consider looking at your other spells.

Okay, it's clear to me that you must be misinterpreting what I'm trying to say -- let me try this a different way:
1st - I've only said that AoE is "an" obvious option, not "the" (see the difference?). A more discerning assessment of the situation may yet rule that out.
2nd - all this crap you're describing is all part of scenario assessment and situational awareness (never mind that you keep moving the goalposts). "Mob + healer/leader/(whatever)" is a different scenario than just "mob"; and, therefor, is gonna be handled differently -- i.e., you're gonna run your heuristics differently.
So, this particular criticism of heuristics is a complete strawman.

[...] maybe I want to take away their actions by impeding their movement; maybe I want to render their action(s) less effective by changing something about myself (e.g., positioning, defenses, perceptibility, etc.); maybe I want to give myself more actions; maybe I want to disrupt their plans by changing the nature of the scenario (which can be done a # of different ways, beyond what has already been described).

Yes and if you actually went through all of those options it would produce option paralysis if you had 12+ powers to sort through. The only way to avoid this grim scenario is to apply a heuristic but since both you, Swordslinger, and hogarth automatically went for 'lots of enemies=AoE'--which is a tactical oversimplification even for 16-bit video games--I am seriously doubting your ability to regularly apply the right one.

That's the thing -- I'm only sorting through a handful of options at a time. After first assessing the situation, I then select a tactic (such as from the examples above). Now I'm only choosing between powers that fit that bill. How is that shallow? -or- Where are you getting "12+ powers"? You're making 3 mistakes in your assumptions:
1) you're assuming proper scenario assessment isn't being done and/or specific differences between similar scenarios aren't being taken in to account.
2) you're assuming that those differences can't be incorporated in to my heuristics.
3) you're using the wrong example to argue the wrong point. the whole "mob=AoE" thing was simply an example that was originally used as 1 item in a whole list of examples of different types of scenarios; and the list was intended simply as an illustration of how different scenarios require different tactics -- the point being that general usefulness does not necessarily equate to specific usefulness.

No matter how much you say otherwise, you can't get rid of this issue by going 'learn 2 play noob'.

Okay, I'm gonna nit-pick a little here.
1st - I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at with this particular characterization -- the particular phraseology of "learn 2 play noob" has some implications with which I take issue. So, are you just being overly-reductionist, or are you really that lost on what I've talked about in this area? (that's an honest question -- your answer will dictate how I focus my continued response).
2nd - well, that depends on your answer ....

Uh, yeah, that's the fucking point. We don't actually want people to identify and use the best move whenever they want, because that either leads to overcomplication for the DM (YOU try regularly switching up combat parameters every round also getting people to identify that, good luck with that),

1) you should have just stopped at "identify an use the best move"; because A) this system is clearly conceived by an uber-control freak, and B) see #2:
2) "whenever they want" is a bit of a mis-characterization -- it's called scarcity of resources.
3) I have honestly not had the "overcomplication" issue since my very early days as a DM. I identified this as a failing on my part, put myself on a steep learning curve, and it quickly became a non-issue for me. So, yes -- I have seemingly had a good bit of luck with that (that's not to say that I don't have my own challenges - both on the micro and the macro - but I'm usually quite capable of addressing those issues as they arise).
And let me just say that I am not trying to be condescending with that -- I'm being sincere. Yes, I realize that GMing is a role that is not at all "noob-friendly" -- nor should it be. However, that being said, you don't have to be a rules master to do it. As long as you're familiar with the system enough to understand basic player expectations, then a GM has 4 basic core-competencies: understanding basic tactics and strategies (which are largely system-independent/-irrelevant), description/narration, story structure, and improvisation -- if you have a problem, it's probably gonna fall in to one of those areas.

or ability spam (wow, Wall of Fire is supereffective against the Frost Giants, same as the last three fucking rounds).

Like I've said before -- spamming a given power within a given encounter isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're getting so ZOMFG-bored inside of a single encounter, I think you might have some serious attention-span issues. Beyond a single encounter, there's other things going on that need to be addressed.
Furthermore, with the exception of BDFs (or characters that otherwise have "at-will" abilities), then this is simply not realistic, period.

Okay, let's go back to my warlock example -- I ditched that character because I decided it was boring to spam EB (and if the class itself could have afforded me the options to change that, I would have stuck it out). Besides that -- if I'm having fun with it, who the fuck cares if someone else is bored with it? It's not their character, and they need to get over themselves. (I'm sure that there's also something about player-group compatibility to be said; but if I have to give a step-by-step tutorial on how to develop your gaming group, then we need a different thread).

Leaving them to simply settle on whatever it is they've got (i.e., "fuck it -- I hit with power 'b'").

No they don't. Just because they don't have access to EMF Arrow this round doesn't mean that they don't have another choice that's superior. Lightning Arrow is still better against the Killer Space Robots than Boxing Glove Arrow, Glue Arrow, and Tear Gas Arrow. Not as good as EMF Arrow, but there's still a 'best' tactical decision to be made. Defaulting will only occur if there's NO arrow that's better than the other, but that's not true.

I don't see how this is necessarily the case. This example is only valid if you happen to be fighting Killer Space Robots and you have powers on each and every row of the matrix that happen to be appropriate for said Killer Space Robots. So, either every encounter is vs. similar opponents, or you're over-specialized -- either way, there's gonna be problems.

If Green Arrow didn't prepare EMF Arrow in a Vancian system, does that suddenly neuter him or does he go for the White Phosphorus arrow?

First -- I've denounced Vance at least 3 times now; so you must not be addressing me with that.
Second -- are those my only 2 choices? WoF or Vance? Is that seriously the only 2 "viable" ways to run a powers management system?
Third -- this would be the player's fault, not the system's fault. Besides, if White Phosphorus happens to be an appropriate and viable option for the given scenario at hand, then there's no problem; and, thus, I won't be concerned if I don't have EMF. If not, however, then I'm still screwed.

Stop being so myopic. It gives them more options over the course of combat. A 4x6 WoF Matrix gives them more powers to play with than a 1x6 Matrix and thus more options over the course of combat even though their individual # of options at any given round is fixed at 6.

It's an illusion because you have less options available at any given time; which, incidentally, also inhibits the ability to develop actual strategies. Now that's shallow.
Oh wait -- is this where you cry about 5MoD again? Well, since we've already established that no single set of 5MoD can possibly be viable for a variable range of encounter types, then this is garbage. Given that, I don't see 5MoD as being a real problem (unless there's something else that I'm still missing).

Do you mind telling me why rolling a die and pointing to a chart is that more complicated than writing in and erasing one or two powers on another chart every round or so?

I never said that it was .... I'm saying it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. I mean, seriously, if tracking this stuff is really that much of a chore (which it's not), then why not just do away with stuff like HP - or, hell, any "bookkeeping" for that matter -- ; 'cause ZOMFG, it's SO complicated.

[wotmaniac]

Okay, time for me to pull a Lago here and do a triple-post (it just makes it easiest to wade through these walls o' text -- trust me, I won't make this a common practice)

Why are heuristics bad again? I missed that. All I see is bad decision-making that is entirely correctable with mastery, and even then I'd question the assumption that heuristics = badwrongfun.

Because heuristics don't work like that. People apply the heuristics first and THEN go through their options, because the point of a heuristic is to eliminate tactical options. People don't evaluate all of their options and then apply the heuristic, because that's pointless.

Right. And the specific details of a given scenario are gonna determine how those tactics are eliminated. Yes, if every time you see a mob, you reflexively default to AoE, regardless of specific details, then that is indeed shallow. However, if in your assessment you determine that the mob has a leader that is pushing them and orchestrating their tactics/strategy, then your heuristics very well may lead you to taking out that leader first (and doing this will, of course, be it's own little sub-assessment). More details will further dictate this process.
How is this shallow? (well, other than your condescension towards the player)

As far as TTRPGs are concerned, there are only two situations in which heuristics give consistently 'correct' results.

[*] The game is really shallow. Either there aren't many options to choose from to begin with or any option is as good as another. Monsters are vanilla blobs of hit point and attacks with abilities that you can mostly ignore as long as you focus on the damage expression. See low-level 3E and 4E. A human with three At-Wills that are relatively equal can actually evaluate each of them fully.

The low-level game is supposed to be shallow (tactically speaking). Do we really need to discuss this?
And yes, 4e is shallow -- that's why I don't play it.

[*] The game has unbalanced power sets. See 3E D&D. 1st level spells are supposed to be worse than 5th level spells, so a heuristic that eliminates spells of levels 1-3 and just focuses on 4th and 5th level spells is going to give you consistently good results. This of course raises the question of why you even have those 15 other spell slots.

Alright, let me briefly explain how I've come to conceptualize this:
- your highest level powers (and any powers that you otherwise can only use once or twice a day) simply SCREAM "boss fight" (as in "save these powers for it"). using them otherwise is usually superfluous.
- your mid-level powers, based on number/frequency, are gonna be your typical "per encounter" powers. These are the powers that you can use reliably against the run-of-the-mill encounters.
- your lowest-level powers are gonna be the baseline of what is expected for you to have ongoing. if these are not active, you've placed yourself at a disadvantage.
Now, this is all relative. At very low levels, you're not gonna really have many (if any) "mid-level" powers; and your "low-level" powers are not gonna amount to much more than "I punch it". As you advance, these relative power levels shift.
Furthermore, most of your powers scale to the point of being quite useful for several levels. The point at which they stop scaling effectively is the point at which they drop to "mid-level" (or even "low-level") status. Part of developing mastery is learning to understand these power levels, and when each is appropriate.

We don't actually want people to do this, because it leads to ability spam. If you're using a heuristic that leads you to one good ability out of 15, then chances are that on the next round the heuristic will lead you to the same ability again. And again.

Only if the scenario remains static and you have no concept of strategic depth. (hint: both of those are bad; together, you've got something worse than some 4-bit atari bullshit)

The only way you could actually break out of this is if you dynamically changed the tactical situation every round (holy shottz! The Killer Space Robots are trying to vent steam this round, use a glue arrow!) which is way too much work for players and DMs.

Fucking lazy!!!
It really is hurting my brain watching you and Frank arguing for out-and-out laziness.
YES, the situation should be dynamic -- the Space Robots should be venting steam from time to time; they should be acting in such a way so as to counteract and undermine your current/obvious tactics. That's what it means to have an interesting encounter.
If you can't handle that as a GM, then you are on the wrong side of the screen. If that's too much for you to handle that as a player, then it's high-time for you to take the titty out of your mouth.

[Orion]

The thing is that from a player's perspective you might as WELL be using Winds of Fate. The DM probably designed the robots or the steam vents or whatever himself. The players have never seen them before. And although the steam venting process probably follows rules and schedules he wrote up ahead of time, the players will never see them and probably never figure them out.

So for the player, it really does come down to the DM saying "okay now the room is full of steam and you can only use area attacks" or "okay, the robot is overheating and is now vulnerable to fire" out of nowhere every now and then. If they then decide to Flamebolt the thing, it's no more or less random to them, then if they rolled flamebolt on their WoF for the turn, and THEN you said "uh... I guess the robots are... overheating, yeah!"

[mean_liar]

But why then in that case is any other player limited in their choices? The answer is some other arbitrary reason, until every character is laboring under some kind of ad hoc rationalization rather than anything attempting to provide a consistent narrative.

Its lazy game design supporting lazy GMing. It's a click-fest that occurs one round at a time.

[wotmaniac]

But why then in that case is any other player limited in their choices? The answer is some other arbitrary reason, until every character is laboring under some kind of ad hoc rationalization rather than anything attempting to provide a consistent narrative.

Its lazy game design supporting lazy GMing. It's a click-fest that occurs one round at a time.

well said.

It's like I said earlier -- in the case of the narrative, it's the tail wagging the dog. That just feels ..... wrong.

[Josh_Kablack]

Ok guys,

My original question has been quite thoroughly answered and then some.

I get that The Den is the place for lengthy flamewars about abstract game mechanics, I get that some of you hate the very idea with a jihadii-like passion and others adore it with messianic devotion, but this is well past ridiculous now.

If you don't like WoF, then don't use it in your games - really that's all you gotta do. And it shouldn't be at all difficult since only teensy-tiny parts of published RPGs use such mechanics. The players who will even notice that you banned the Bo9S crusader from your 3.x game is very likely zero.

If you love the idea of WoF then it's fucking time to put up - post your variant on IMOI, and defend it.

And for those of us on the fence about its potential - well, let's hear what's working and what's not from actual playtesting.

[Almaz]

Ok guys,

My original question has been quite thoroughly answered and then some.

I get that The Den is the place for lengthy flamewars about abstract game mechanics, I get that some of you hate the very idea with a jihadii-like passion and others adore it with messianic devotion, but this is well past ridiculous now.

If you don't like WoF, then don't use it in your games - real that's all you gotta do. And it shouldn't be at all difficult since only teensy-tiny parts of published RPGs use such mechanics. The players who will even notice that you banned the Bo9S crusader from your 3.x game is very likely zero.

If you love the idea of WoF then it's fucking time to put up - post your variant on IMOI, and defend it.

And for those of us on the fence about its potential - well, let's hear what's working and what's not from actual playtesting.

I would personally like it if all sides currently arguing retire from the field and write a complete game and then come back, but what are you gonna do.

( And no, lifting D&D (or another system) wholesale doesn't count. )

[Username17]

With the columns of similar powers, like Arrow, Boxing Glove Arrow, Shock Arrow, there does seem to be a paradox. How do you find the "sweet spot" where these powers are different enough to be interesting without making the character unable to reliably be able to attack someone, or entangle, or whatever the column's theme is.

I mean, if those powers are basically the same, why not fill the whole column with Boxing Glove and not have to learn as many different mechanics and print as many cards? If they're totally different, what's the point of grouping them in a column?

That is a paradox, and it's very much to the heart of difficulty of designing swordsman classes in any context. You have attacks that are basically "attack a dude with a sword" and they end up feeling super similar one to another unless you fiddle with it a lot. With the Boxing Glove, the Arrow Point, and the Shock Arrow there will be times when it doesn't much matter which are used - if you just want to shoot the forcefield generator machine it doesn't much matter whether you use Lethal damage, Normal damage, or Normal damage plus Stun. Those attacks are identical in that instance because the forcefield generator is just a puzzle key and it goes down when anyone hits it with any real attack.

But those three aren't generically identical, and aren't interchangeable in all instances. Sometimes you want to blow through a locked door, in which case boxing glove arrow or normal arrow would be good but shock arrow would not be (th door is not going to be stunned regardless). Sometimes you'll be wanting to knock out a human so shock arrow or boxing glove would work while normal arrow would have to be used on a different target (like sundering a gun or something). Sometimes your preferred target is a big robot and normal arrow or shock arrow would work ad boxing glove would not. The point is that while you always have a single target attack that you could use against a space beast if it came to that, on a round by round basis the specifics of your single target attack may cause it to become more or less useful in your present circumstances.

And that more or less useful thing is the real goal. The ideal is that each turn you're presented with a new set of options, and that you are able and encouraged to evaluate each of those options against your current situation and that the specifics of your options and your circumstances will lead you to different choices from turn to turn. Which is why I think the specifics of your "basic attack" option should also vary from turn to turn. To minimize the chances that the correct seeming choice for any battle is to spam the basic attack every round.

-Username17

[Username17]

For example: if you have 6 single target abilities and 4 targets, and your only options are which ability and which target, then you already have 24 options that turn, not counting anything else you can do that turn.

This is indeed how it going to look to a new player. And it's probably why Josh reported first turn option paralysis from a new player. But to a more advanced player, that's actually six options to evaluate. You look at attack A, and then consider who you'd attack with it. Then the "score" that option gets is based on who you'd attack with it.

When it comes around to your turn, you might choose the attack that the preferred target is most vulnerable seeming to, or you might select the attack that is best against an opponent that is for whatever reason a priority. But the attacks are going to be rated based on what you would do with them rather than on all the things you could do with them.

If you love the idea of WoF then it's fucking time to put up - post your variant on IMOI, and defend it.

Sorry, I'm tens of thousands of words into a different book right now. I only finish one game at a time, and the one screaming towards completion is the alt.shadowrun combat rules. Making a game using WoF is very likely to be next, but it'll be next. In the meantime I find genuine discussions about optimal option selectivity to be interesting and worth having for future reference.

I am totally done responding to PhoneLobster, hogarth, Mean_Liar, Wotmanic, or Swordsinger on this issue though. As you say, there's no point in arguing whether it's a good idea at all any more. If these people weren't convinced by actual psychological research that the large numbers of choices they demand are demotivating and the heuristics thy espouse sophomoric and suboptimal, they aren't going to be convinced by another hundred posts of abuse and rhetoric either.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

If you love the idea of WoF then it's fucking time to put up - post your variant on IMOI, and defend it.

Since you and DC have put something together for Millhouse Manastorm my quick thought is: self combos in WoF will piss me off. A lot of those abilities seemed to power up if your previous WoF result was a certain row. Dangling the carrot then snatching it away really plays up the out of control feel that riles people up.

A better option would be for cross character synergy if most of your moves synergised with at least some of your teammate's moves it'd probably feel a lot better.

[hogarth]

With the columns of similar powers, like Arrow, Boxing Glove Arrow, Shock Arrow, there does seem to be a paradox. How do you find the "sweet spot" where these powers are different enough to be interesting without making the character unable to reliably be able to attack someone, or entangle, or whatever the column's theme is.

I could not agree with this more. And that's what seems so strange about Winds of Fate to me; it's an awkward kludge to fix a relatively rare problem ("I have so many different awesome powers that I don't know what to do with them!") that doesn't fix the more common issue (and may even make it worse).

[mean_liar]

I am totally done responding to PhoneLobster, hogarth, Mean_Liar, Wotmanic, or Swordsinger on this issue though. As you say, there's no point in arguing whether it's a good idea at all any more. If these people weren't convinced by actual psychological research that the large numbers of choices they demand are demotivating and the heuristics thy espouse sophomoric and suboptimal, they aren't going to be convinced by another hundred posts of abuse and rhetoric either.

Considering that you haven't directly responded to anything I've said, this isn't that big of a jump for you.

Of course, your reliance on research is demonstrably incomplete and your number of options too low based on that research, but whatever. It's Frank! He's right!

[Josh_Kablack]

If you love the idea of WoF then it's fucking time to put up - post your variant on IMOI, and defend it.

Since you and DC have put something together for Millhouse Manastorm my quick thought is: self combos in WoF will piss me off. A lot of those abilities seemed to power up if your previous WoF result was a certain row. Dangling the carrot then snatching it away really plays up the out of control feel that riles people up.

A better option would be for cross character synergy if most of your moves synergised with at least some of your teammate's moves it'd probably feel a lot better.

FWIW:

There was also synergy with the other characters in this group.

On the setup side:

The Enchantress had swift action AoE fear ability - which caused foes to become Shaken (-2 to Saves)

On the payoff side:

And the Theif Acrobat had 2WF and better-than-tome Sneak Attack, which works against foes who were Frozen.

The frozen: immobilize effect also synergized with ranged attacks and the Knight's Challenge.

And while nobody in the party had anything that synergized with "On Fire" - it's just as valid to say that everyone in the party had attack which synergized with doing HP damage.

For what happened in play: there was only one self-combo pulled off during the session, (arcane flux to keep the grell frozen) and I think there was one and a half inter-character combos. There was a point where Milhouse got to take advantage of the Enchantress's save penalties, and if one if the missed frostbolts had hit it would have set up the Thief Acrobat for a full-attack with sneak attack.

[DragonChild]

Also worth noting that against the big enemy of the session, Millhouse froze him, and then the warforged bullrushed him into a dangerous zone, dealing 10d6 a round, and making him unable to break free. The party basically just ignored the thing, at that point.

I also probably made a mistake using a LOT of little monsters, encouraging AOE spamming.

[tussock]

the heuristics thy espouse sophomoric and suboptimal

The arguments against them are strawmen at best. Each step on a chunked set of choices is still a choice full of complexity and subtlety. ie: if there's a mass-healer keeping the mooks up, you don't go to your AoEs as a general heuristic choice any more than you go to one of them as a specific choice.

Yes, any chunked choice will have to make arbitrary combinations that eliminate certain distinctions, but those distinctions can themselves be a choice whenever that choice matters, by having multiple filters available at various levels, which comes with experience.

The most important distinction from the candybar study is that your choices aren't unique or original, you can solve them for general situations over time (thus, "I want a Snickers now, Oreos when it's hot"). 5MoD isn't a /shortcut/ of your decisions, it's a good generalised solution to them. Anyone who can pull a 5MoD out for 4e can do it just as well for an equally bland WoF game, only the order of the moves will be randomised for them.

They're still finished making choices if the combats aren't throwing critical variance at them. You plan to put that variance in the powers themselves (which will still be solvable with a huge matrix output), but it works fine in the monsters and terrain.

People might not find the best solution in a weird situation? So what? Thinking of something better you could have done next morning is good for the game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Perhaps other people's use of the word heuristics was poor one, but I'm just not seeing this as a real problem at the table. It's not hard to do some snap judgment decision making to narrow down the list. I do it all the time.

No one said that using a heuristic is necessary difficult. It's often not if you're familiar with the parameters and if you have an inflexible application scheme like the ones TTRPGs encounter you can apply them without much thought.

A good chess player will be able to see the move where he can trade his queen for a pawn to get a checkmate in four moves.

You didn't realize it, but this statement perfectly illustrates why heuristics are bad for a complicated game.

Chess, despite what people will tell you, is not a tactically complicated game. Yes, it rewards a degree of mathhammering and foresight well beyond the ken of humans, but the parameters of the game are inflexible. That's why people have been able to throw out convincing Chess AIs for over 25 years but no one can make a fucking Yu-Gi-Oh AI that can play convincingly.

D&D is way more tactically flexible than Chess. Sure, it's more forgiving to beginners because it doesn't reward internal foresight (that is, trying to predict what the troll will do three moves from now) anywhere near as much as Checkers or Chess, but those games don't have anywhere near as many unknowns as D&D. A pawn never transforms into the never-before-seen Cannoneer Piece which can capture pieces without moving; that kind of thing happens all of the time in D&D. D&D has so many unknowns in fact that it's neither fun nor even optimal to have more than two or three degrees of foresight. If the game is designed correctly then the kind of heuristics that Chess thrives on will consistently fail when applied to D&D--at least if the game is designed with the correct amount of balance and depth.

You can't apply heuristics to unknowns, not with any degree of intelligence anyway. Going back to the healer example, what if the AoE damage also disrupted the mezzer's spellcasting? What if the healer is being passively buffed by a tank that will block the worst of single-target spells but not AoE damage? What if your AoE has a high accuracy rate but your anti-healer move has a low accuracy rate? The important thing to keep in mind, too, that the combination of a known and an unknown or even two knowns can produce an unknown, especially with the RNG.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The arguments against them are strawmen at best. Each step on a chunked set of choices is still a choice full of complexity and subtlety. ie: if there's a mass-healer keeping the mooks up, you don't go to your AoEs as a general heuristic choice any more than you go to one of them as a specific choice.

Heuristics are necessary to some extent because if you go down the possible nested decision points a player can undergo you can get about 100 even with a shallow game like 4E fairly easily. The point is that you want to stop people from using heuristics at a point in a decision process where it makes outputs too repetitive or unintelligent. Because of how D&D is constructed we generally consider people applying it to the power-selection phase of the decision tree to not be a good point, because that's where D&D gets its largest amount of variety. No one really cares if you target goblins C and D with an attack as opposed to goblins A and B since the outcome isn't going to be much different either way due to how D&D defines combat victory conditions. No one is really going to fault you for not even considering the 'retreat with tail between your leg' option if you're winning even though it can be a valid choice.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you love the idea of WoF then it's fucking time to put up - post your variant on IMOI, and defend it.

I would personally like it if all sides currently arguing retire from the field and write a complete game and then come back, but what are you gonna do.

I don't mean to blow up on you guys, but this is a dumb statement and I am tired of hearing it repeated over and over.

If you don't want people to apply WoF to a pre-existing system, you are basically asking people to:

A) Come up with a campaign setting that will define the variation of powers, since powers and tactics in Harry Potter are very different from the ones in Three Musketeers.

B) Come up with a combat engine along with a resolution mechanic.

C) Come up with a power segregation system of some sort--may be a class system, may be not.

D) Come up with an actual power system.

WoF is a subsystem of a subsystem of a subsystem. It is completely goddamn unreasonable for you or anyone to ask for anything more than a kitbash or theorycraft. By the time I had a WoF system I would pretty much have a complete game already. Aside from being unreasonable it's also naive. Yes, empiricism is a very strong method of proof, but completely dismissing extrapolation, math-hammering, inductive evidence is just ignorant. Ideally a master chef should taste his own dishes and serve it to several people before passing out recipes but that doesn't necessarily mean that a brand-new recipe he came up with for a book is going to be bad or even likely to be bad.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, the heuristics application suck -- which is a player issue. Different scenarios require different processes of elimination.

For the last goddamn time, people don't evaluate the situations and THEN eliminate options. They eliminate options and THEN evaluate the options they have leftover. Yes, you can eliminate options further once you have things down to a manageable size, but until things are at a manageable size people naively apply them. If the game strongly sorts powers like in 3E or 4E D&D then the naive elimination process can still yield correct results, but that's a sideffect of bad design.

2nd - all this crap you're describing is all part of scenario assessment and situational awareness (never mind that you keep moving the goalposts). "Mob + healer/leader/(whatever)" is a different scenario than just "mob"; and, therefor, is gonna be handled differently -- i.e., you're gonna run your heuristics differently.
So, this particular criticism of heuristics is a complete strawman.

You are aware that this is a heuristic conflict, right? Meaning that unless you evaluate both powers you're probably going to eliminate the wrong one. Shooting the medic first might be the best tactic because they heal the group for 5, have 15 hit points, and you do 8 damage in the AoE but 12 damage targeted. But the AoE might also target an elemental weakness and be super-effective against the group, making it still the best choice all along. Or the AoE might not target an elemental weakness but it has a 50% chance of disrupting the mezzer's action, who may have a spell that will screw you over really bad. You don't know and you won't know unless you evaluate both powers... and if you have a large enough and a diverse enough set, then that leads to option paralysis.

Heuristics only reliably work for games that are tactically simple. This is why computers are awesome at Chess but they suck ass at Yu-Gi-Oh!

I don't see how this is necessarily the case. This example is only valid if you happen to be fighting Killer Space Robots and you have powers on each and every row of the matrix that happen to be appropriate for said Killer Space Robots. So, either every encounter is vs. similar opponents, or you're over-specialized -- either way, there's gonna be problems.

You don't need to have your powers be that far and above away the others in order to have an optimal choice. Even if you don't have an OMG Super Effective Option, it's very likely that you'll have an option that's better than the others. Lightning Arrows against Killer Space Robots aren't super-effective the way EMF Arrows are, but they're still better than Explosive and Freeze Arrows. Freeze Arrows against the Cat People aren't super-effective the way Flame Arrows and Tear Gas Arrows are, but they're still better than Lightning Arrows. Etc..

Furthermore, most of your powers scale to the point of being quite useful for several levels. The point at which they stop scaling effectively is the point at which they drop to "mid-level" (or even "low-level") status. Part of developing mastery is learning to understand these power levels, and when each is appropriate.

Yes and this is VERY BORING. Your heuristic sorts so well that there's little reason to deviate from it, which leads to movespam or 5MoD. No one busts out the low-level or high-level powers in the middle of a fight they identify as level-appropriate filler combat. No one ever cleverly uses an unusual mid or low-level power that happens to be supereffective in the first round of boss combat, because their heuristic only lets them look at high-level powers. This is strictly inside-the-box thinking.

Your little list works exactly like how 4E D&D does its powers. I'm surprised that you denigrated that game, since game's power system seems right up your apply.

Besides that -- if I'm having fun with it, who the fuck cares if someone else is bored with it?

Because you're sharing screentime with other people. If your gameplay isn't interesting to the other players, why are you even there? Why don't you just go write some fanfiction or play a single-player game? You'd have the same amount of fun and everyone else wouldn't have to waste time with your uninteresting turns.

Only if the scenario remains static and you have no concept of strategic depth. (hint: both of those are bad; together, you've got something worse than some 4-bit atari bullshit)

YES, the situation should be dynamic -- the Space Robots should be venting steam from time to time; they should be acting in such a way so as to counteract and undermine your current/obvious tactics. That's what it means to have an interesting encounter.

That's vastly underestimating the amount of work it takes to add enough dynamism to the situation to shake people out of preferred tactics. I mean, throwing in a surprise drow party isn't going to shake the wizard out of spamming fireball. Neither is springing a surprise fog trap. You might as well be telling the DM to design their own monsters every combat tailor-made to shake PCs out of the routine. It's possible, but it takes a lot of work and I don't appreciate you reflexively going 'you're just being lazy', especially since I sincerely doubt that you'd be able to hold yourself up to this standard.

This is just an empty, ignorant statement that ignores the reality of how combat is run.

[MGuy]

What existing system are you trying to apply WoF to? I certainly don't think it would fit into DnD without heavily modifying the system such that its basically a new game anyway. In either case I don't think coming up with those things is asking much if you're going to lay a resource management system down then dismiss any concerns that deal with its implementation (as Frank has decided to do).