Non-d20 D&D project

[Manxome]

1192388452[/unixtime]]Long-lasting buffs are combat abilities, because they're essentially passive bonuses, like Weapon Specialization. No-one is spending their action in combat going "Weapon Specialization... activate!" If you do more damage, I don't care if it's because you pray to your sword every morning or because you instinctively strike for weak points.

But apparently you do care whether I can survive extra enemy damage because I have exceptional resilience or because I carry a medical kit, which strikes me as incongruous.

1192388452[/unixtime]]Healing is not incapable of influencing the plot. Restoring a giant's sight, lifting a plague from a community, or curing the slow poisoning of a noble, are all perfectly acceptable healing-related activities which definitely have plot-impact.

Healing functions like the always-applicable but less-effective version of every other non-combat ability. If you can't disarm the trap, you walk through it, and the healer takes some of the sting out of it; if you can't divine and avoid the ambush, you walk into it, but it doesn't hurt as bad if you have a healer; and so on. Healing is also boring, but some people just want to be pointed at problems.

Healing as a general concept, perhaps. Healing as you have been suggesting it should work cannot do any of those things (except the ambush, I guess), because they require healing injuries either not caused by combat or not caused recently.

On a side note, offering people boring options that are debatably better than the interesting options is probably a bad idea, and if you're a PC in a typical RPG, reliability is inherently valuable.

1192388452[/unixtime]]The distinction really is which abilities are useful in a combat timeframe, and which aren't. It's that simple.

What is the value of that distinction? A ten-hour ritual that gives you laser eyebeams for the rest of your life isn't useful in a combat timeframe, but that's just flavor for "I can shoot laser eyebeams," which is useful in a combat timeframe. That distinction causes mechanically equivalent effects to be classified differently based on flavor.

Your suggested version of healing is mechanically equivalent to "I project a magical aura that causes nearby allies to ignore the first X damage they take in each battle" except for a few technicalities. That aura is obviously a combat ability. Why is it that the bandaging version isn't?


I realize I've been arguing a point that is probably minor in comparison to the thread's theoretical topic for some time now. If you want me to drop it, I will.

[angelfromanotherpin]

But apparently you do care whether I can survive extra enemy damage because I have exceptional resilience or because I carry a medical kit, which strikes me as incongruous.

With non-combat healing, the healing isn't available during the fight. So it matters how many hit points you have right now, because you don't get more until after this fight. This is actually how D&D works right now, because in-combat healing actions are too small relative to damaging actions to be effective until Heal is available, and by then most of your enemies aren't killing you with damage anyway. The noncombat healing model reduces the effect of attrition, it doesn't let you spend in-combat actions to act as extra hit points for your friends (an act even more boring than out-of combat healing).

Healing as a general concept, perhaps. Healing as you have been suggesting it should work cannot do any of those things (except the ambush, I guess), because they require healing injuries either not caused by combat or not caused recently.

Okay, that would be healing presented as one option I'm considering. Read broadly enough it's not even that restrictive, since as long as the healing comes after the combat, it doesn't matter how long after the combat. So if you hadn't cured that giant since last combat, he's a viable target. The more important hole of 'can the PCs kick around their own Summon Monster I to refresh healing, and if not, why not?' has been raised already.

On a side note, offering people boring options that are debatably better than the interesting options is probably a bad idea, and if you're a PC in a typical RPG, reliability is inherently valuable.

Some people want boring. Some people will choose a four-healer party and basically not care about attrition damage. They'll miss out on benefits only available through other skills, and their non-combat encounters will not have a lot of options or thought involved, but they will go into every encounter at full hp, and some people want that instead of, y'know, the other thing.

On the topic of reliability, every Rogue is essentially gambling that this adventure isn't a trapless Undead/Construct hoedown. From the other angle, every party without a Rogue is gambling that they won't wander into Grimtooth territory. If the characters walk into a preconstructed module, it's actually a gamble. If the characters are walking into a scenario designed for them, their GM is bad at his job if he doesn't include at least some cool shit that each character can do.

One of the things that should come free with each limited applicability power is the requirement that a certain proportion of encounters include a use for it. When a player rolls a Paladin, he's telling the GM: 'I want to play a holy warrior who utterly wails on demons, vile sorcerers and black knights; bring those guys on.' Not including at least some of them is cheating the player. The same for Rogues v Traps, Rangers v their choice, and so on.

That's getting into what I want from Adventures.

What is the value of that distinction? A ten-hour ritual that gives you laser eyebeams for the rest of your life isn't useful in a combat timeframe, but that's just flavor for "I can shoot laser eyebeams," which is useful in a combat timeframe. That distinction causes mechanically equivalent effects to be classified differently based on flavor.

Are those eyebeams used with combat actions? Then it's a combat ability. The ten-hour ritual is a special effect of your levelling up and getting that combat ability. The noncombat version would be like a Disintegrate that took ten rounds to cast. You could sculpt with it, tunnel with it, destroy a dam with it; but when the broadswords start swinging, you don't bother with it, except under circumstances limited enough for me not to care.

I am agreeing with you that a long-term buff is a Combat ability. The buff is effectively always on, just like Weapon Specialization is always on. It's not relevant to healing, because healing is not a long-term buff, except in ways that can be mimicked by other non-combat abilities.

Your suggested version of healing is mechanically equivalent to "I project a magical aura that causes nearby allies to ignore the first X damage they take in each battle" except for a few technicalities. That aura is obviously a combat ability. Why is it that the bandaging version isn't?

Did you miss the part where I said after each combat encounter? It's not ignoring the first X taken, it's recovering the last X taken. There really is a difference.

If I have 10 hit points, and am protected by a 10-point aura, and am hit for 15 damage, I'm still up. On the other hand, if instead of that aura, I will heal up to 10 damage after the fight, that 15-point hit takes me out, and even if I'm not technically dead, I don't get to participate in the rest of the fight. Even if the healer can get me standing up from -5, it's not worth his next 10 combat actions to get the effect off, the fight's over by then.

I don't mind this debate taking up more room in the thread, but I think we may have reached an impasse of communication. If you're making a valid argument, I'm not getting it; and if I'm making a valid argument, you're not getting it. I propose you give it one more shot to convince me, and if I still don't get it, we'll agree to disagree and move on. Acceptable?

[Manxome]

1192422544[/unixtime]]I don't mind this debate taking up more room in the thread, but I think we may have reached an impasse of communication. If you're making a valid argument, I'm not getting it; and if I'm making a valid argument, you're not getting it. I propose you give it one more shot to convince me, and if I still don't get it, we'll agree to disagree and move on. Acceptable?

As you wish.

1192422544[/unixtime]]Did you miss the part where I said after each combat encounter? It's not ignoring the first X taken, it's recovering the last X taken. There really is a difference.

No, I didn't miss that, but that's seriously not important to the overall concept. That means that healing everyone for X after the battle (up to pre-battle levels at max) is equivalent to giving everyone the ability to ignore the first X damage every battle and lowering everyone's base health by X. In order to exactly match, you'd also need some weird rule where the effect is negated if the guy providing it isn't still standing at the end of the battle. Maybe you'd also need some loopholes where you can flip off the designer and get infinite healing. Whatever.

That certainly goes to show that your suggested healing power is complicated, but I don't see how that difference makes it a non-combat power. If I can build something equivalent to your healing power out of damage negation and max health adjustments--which I hope we can agree are combat powers--then how is the resulting combination not a combat power?

I'm not saying there isn't an important tactical difference between preventing and healing damage; there totally is. But both of those are obviously combat abilities, and the fact that you're not fighting right at the moment when you use the power doesn't change the fact that the reason you care is that you're going to be fighting later, and using the power translates directly and quantifiably into more power when the fighting resumes.


You're arguing that replenishing health lost in combats is a non-combat ability because its function is to take the sting out of fights you couldn't avoid with other non-combat skills. You know what else takes the sting out of combats you don't manage to avoid? Being better at combat.

Your version of healing specifically helps you more when you get into more combats, but so what? You could create a special attack that increases in power every time you use it during an adventure, and that also helps you more when you get into more combats. Or you could have a vampiric attack that heals you as you deal damage. Or something that lets you grab the bodies/souls of fallen enemies and turn them into minions/weapons/buffs/brownie points. Or a million other things that couldn't possibly be anything but combat powers and still serve exactly the same strategic purpose.

The point of my examples with buffs and rituals is that anything that explicitly affects your combat proficiency can be flavored either to be a combat action or not. You've granted that long-lasting buffs are combat abilities even if they need to be used before combat, but unless I'm missing something, that admission means your definition that a combat power must be usable in a combat timeframe has been blown out of the water.


Replenishing HPs between combats means you have more HP in the next combat. If you're granting that having more HP in the first fight is a combat power, how the heck is having more HP in the second fight not a combat power? You're still getting more HP! HP is a combat stat, not a plot device!

[PhoneLobster]

You're still getting more HP! HP is a combat stat, not a plot device!

I'm going to step in out of nowhere and say that maybe it (or whether you have it at full) is a plot device.

If you have any arbitrary amount of time or plot based means of healing (or not) outside of combat then out of combat healing has the same value as an ability that says.

"And the GM has to let us rest more, sometimes".

And not having it is the same as having a deficiency which says...

"And sometimes the GM throws another combat at us before we got to rest enough, if he feels like it"

We are talking about an ability that can be replicated or not, or negated, or not, based on the passing of subjective informal plot based junk like out of combat time.

Which is to say it is an ability of little to no value.

So little a value that though it is certainly "Non Combat" in that light it is still not sufficiently notable that I would feel comfortable letting people trade it against things of comparable usefulness to sneaking or socializing.

Replenishing HPs between combats means you have more HP in the next combat.

Only if your combat exit events/out of combat time are so ludicrously formalized that the GM can't and won't drop another combat on you before whatever arbitrary flavour based time that is required for the healing to apply.

I suspect there is nothing to stop the GM throwing a combat at you before that OR from waiting until you heal even more by "normal" means.

Really out of combat healing is worth no more than your character having a small reusuable IOU note from your GM.

[Username17]

I think you might want to have a split between lethal and non-lethal damage and hand out piles of both all the time. Non-lethal damage heals completely out of combat and people can heal it with magic in the middle of combat. Lethal damage works like Vile Damage in that you have to go back to an arbitrary hospital point where you can heal up.

That way you can grind people down between and even during combats and stil have White Mage as a valid character concept. What ratio you hand out lethal vs. non-lethal damage is of course entirely up to you, but I would point out that a similar rubric for handing out the effects of curse attacks like petrification could be quite functional.

Hell, the temporary damage from any attack form could simply accumulate together, while the semi-permanent affliction points accumulated in separate tallies (yet still all reduce your temporary damage track by their very existence).

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Manxome:
Yeah, I'm not getting it. We seem to be back to 'it has an effect on combat, so it's a combat power.' The guy who disarms traps is sending you into the next battle with more hit points than otherwise. The guy who convinces ogres to fight with you is sending you into the next battle with more power than otherwise. Let's put it to bed.

I still welcome your input on any other subject, though.

Phonelobster:
Any GM can be a dick and not let you use your powers. It's possible to negate the function of any ability with poor design or malicious play. The point is that healing lets you accomplish more between downtimes, thus requiring fewer downtimes, thus putting off the effects of whatever time pressure the adventure has you under.

Frank:
Interesting, and I'll look at it.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Okay, next verse...

What I Want: Adventures

This is a trickier one, because my thoughts are not nearly so organized going in as with the first one. There's basically two parts here. The first is about broad design, and is basically a checklist or set of guidelines. The second is about specific design, and might actually be system-related.

Necessary Elements of an Adventure

Plot
An adventure needs to be about something. It needs to deal with that thing, and then it needs to end. That something could be simple (like a mine full of kobolds, or complex (like a massive pan-humanoid mining-operation conspiracy). The point is keeping focus.

Drive
Drive comes in two forms. Players and their characters being invested in the adventure's outcome, and some sort of time limit. Player investment is difficult to instill externally, and the easiest way to work that is ask the players to come up with why their characters care. Time limits involve more customization based on PC capability.

For example, if the time limit in the dungeon of Mount Anaias is a limited food supply, so the PCs literally have until they starve to death to deal with whatever the problem is, if one PC can just conjure enough food indefinitely, that's a failed time limit. Similarly, if the time limit in the Ravenloft trap is the attrition from weathering the hostile inhabitants, and the party is a four-healer attrition-ignoring machine, that's a failed time limit.

Character motivation helps to keep focus. Time limits keep the action rolling, so the players have a reason not to sleep after each encounter or take 20 on every Search check.

Star Power
The other aspect of customizing an adventure to the characters I already mentioned upthread. Making sure players get what they want at least some of the time. So if there's a trapsmith, there damn well better be at least a few traps. If your ranger hates magical beasts, make sure to throw him a few magical beasts to hate on.

Consistency
If there's someone else who could do this job, why aren't they doing it? Does the big bad's plan make sense? If not, is he insane or otherwise incompetent? This is a stage where you check for verisimilitude.

Balance
Keeping the fight fair is important. My thoughts on this are mostly in the next section.

Freedom
Railroading sucks. This is not the same as focus, where the play-group as a whole agrees to keep their attention on a chosen arena. There needs to be room for weird cracktarded PC plans of action, because win or lose, that's where all the best stories come from. So there needs to be enough flexibility in the scenario for a variety of alternate tacks to be valid.

Other?
I may be missing something here. Thoughts?


Balancing an Adventure

Is it even remotely possible to set up a Rune-style point-buy scenario system in a game which doesn't adhere to Rune's cheerful railroading approach? Or is eyeballing it the best that can be done?

Either way, there are definitely more balanced and less balanced adventures, as the bemusement regarding the Red Hand of Doom shows. It's an art to set up so many encounters of varying difficulty, so much reasonable downtime, so much in-adventure acquirable resources, and having the players come out of it feeling like John McClane: bloodied and battered, yet victorious. That's my ideal endpoint for an adventure. If that art can be codified into reasonable numbers, or just polished up from the primitive guidelines of Challenge Ratings and suggested per-day encounters, I don't know; but it's worth examining.

[PhoneLobster]

Any GM can be a dick and not let you use your powers.

Yes.

But if the power itself is essentially little more than a note to the GM telling them to be slightly more or slightly less of a dick to you, well...

I'm not saying you can't have powers like that, I'm saying its a plot device ability and doesn't trade off well vs combat stuff or even against "real" out of combat stuff. You should trade it off against other IOU plot junk like "I own a car".

I mean really, if the players DON'T take out of combat healing are you seriously going to make them enter more fights with less hit points or are you going to flex the plot to pick up the slack? Or will THEY put pressure on the plot to pick up the slack?

If you don't objectively punish them for the lack of the ability (and have the formalized rules required to do so fairly) the ability is relatively low value. It also gives pretty low screen time even when used.

thus putting off the effects of whatever time pressure the adventure has you under.

Seriously. Thats a meaningless ability. You might as well have an ability that says "And the GM gives me +10% to all quest time limits and deadlines!".

Try offering that ability and see who cares or how much it contributes to the game.

[angelfromanotherpin]

But if the power itself is essentially little more than a note to the GM telling them to be slightly more or slightly less of a dick to you, well...

I'm not saying you can't have powers like that, I'm saying its a plot device ability and doesn't trade off well vs combat stuff or even against "real" out of combat stuff. You should trade it off against other IOU plot junk like "I own a car".

I'm not sure what the point of your post is. You're not going to convince me to ditch healing from the game. I want it to feel like D&D, and healing powers are inextricably part of that.

I mean really, if the players DON'T take out of combat healing are you seriously going to make them enter more fights with less hit points or are you going to flex the plot to pick up the slack? Or will THEY put pressure on the plot to pick up the slack?

Yes, if a party doesn't have a healer, they will heal less between fights. The slack will be taken up by whatever power the player who didn't take healing took instead. Maybe it will be as useful, maybe it won't. That's the point of choices.

You might as well have an ability that says "And the GM gives me +10% to all quest time limits and deadlines!" Try offering that ability and see who cares or how much it contributes to the game.

Yes. Healing is dull. I've admitted as much previously. Most of the time the only choice a healer will get is which healing effect they drop on someone. Sometimes you'll get to lift a blight from a sacred tree or whatnot and look cool, but it still doesn't take much thought. Boring is a valid life-choice, because some people don't have the ability or inclination to engage in machiavellian politics or elaborate engineering.

Even if it only existed to extend deadlines, which it doesn't, it is still more fun to glow with holy light and have your friends be grateful you exist because you make their numbers go up than it is to have the enemy be inexplicably slightly slower for some reason. There might not be a difference in the final analysis, but there's a definite difference in immediate play experience.

[Voss]

1192495781[/unixtime]]

I mean really, if the players DON'T take out of combat healing are you seriously going to make them enter more fights with less hit points or are you going to flex the plot to pick up the slack? Or will THEY put pressure on the plot to pick up the slack?

Yes, if a party doesn't have a healer, they will heal less between fights. The slack will be taken up by whatever power the player who didn't take healing took instead. Maybe it will be as useful, maybe it won't. That's the point of choices.

It doesn't really work like that in practice though, in any game. If the party doesn't have a healer (or some method of healing), then the slack comes entirely from the GM throwing monsters that have increasingly smaller chance of damaging or killing them. No ability can really 'make up' for a fighter that will drop the next time something hits him. (other than a blatant neener-neener, you can't hit me, ever, ability). And if the entire party is beat up, you either have to take it easy of them or kill them off. There isn't much of a middle ground.

Its one of them concessions you have to make to the genre. It pretty much requires an unrealistic damage model with an unrealistic healing model. The alternative is putting the adventure on hold after every fight while everyone recuperates in a hospital for several months.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Progressively weaker monsters is not the only possible balancing factor here.

Remember, in D&D, pretty much any first level character with a Healer's Kit can manage a DC 15 check when taking 10. That means the other characters can recover 4 hp/day, which will put people back on their feet in anywhere from 1-4 days. If you're fine with something similar happening after every few fights (eg: you're a stealth party, and get into 1-2 combat-fights per adventure), then you don't need a healer.

Obviously, your mechanics might work differently. But it's easy to say that characters can just heal up to full with 1-2 days of bed rest and good medical care. Then you can let healing speed that up to 15 minutes or whatever.

Edit: just noticed that it might not be clear that the 4 hp/day was still for first level characters. The full formula is 4 hp per character level per day.

[PhoneLobster]

I'm not sure what the point of your post is. You're not going to convince me to ditch healing from the game. I want it to feel like D&D, and healing powers are inextricably part of that.

I rather explicitly didn't suggest you ditch them. I suggested that you give out non combat healing on the same level as the tavern wenches and stupid noble titles. Basically for free and never ever in exchange for real crunchy abilities.

Because, among other things...

Boring is a valid life-choice, because some people don't have the ability or inclination to engage in machiavellian politics or elaborate engineering.

That statement is not true. Boring is NOT a valid choice for one of the lead characters in an RPG.

So its OK if you can do healing, its even OK for healing to be boring (though it had better be quick, and hell, wouldn't it be better if it WERE interesting...) But if it is boring then you had better not ever have to trade it off against interesting stuff.

So its OK to trade boring (and fast) healing against boring (and fast) elaborate engineering. Because frankly I'm pretty confident you aren't introducing a complex and engaging architectural mini game.

But it is NOT OK to trade off boring (and fast) healing for interesting and important stuff like having a role in a large social phase of the game.

You should be able to be the amazing social man AND a healer, and maybe a swording specialist as well.

[angelfromanotherpin]

It doesn't really work like that in practice though, in any game. If the party doesn't have a healer (or some method of healing), then the slack comes entirely from the GM throwing monsters that have increasingly smaller chance of damaging or killing them. No ability can really 'make up' for a fighter that will drop the next time something hits him. (other than a blatant neener-neener, you can't hit me, ever, ability).

A warrior who's injured has to be more careful than usual. Whether the degree of careful is 'keeping his back to a wall' or 'archery from cover' or even 'watch the baggage' depends on the degree of injury. Yes, that means contributing less. Yes, that means that other players have to pick up the slack and the encounter is more difficult. That is the point of attrition. Which is fine, as long as the basic fight's goal is not 'keep from dying,' but rather 'keep the attrition as low as possible, maybe while protecting innocents or something.' Boss-level fights are going to be the spice, not the meat.

Besides, right now in D&D, all Fighters play the 'drop the next time something hits them' game, because that something is a Will-based SoD that doesn't care how uninjured he is. Those, at least, will not exist in this game.

And if the entire party is beat up, you either have to take it easy of them or kill them off. There isn't much of a middle ground.

It's less about my taking it easy on them, and more about them taking it easy on themselves. When party resources are low, they take a downtime. That's not different from D&D now.

Its one of them concessions you have to make to the genre. It pretty much requires an unrealistic damage model with an unrealistic healing model. The alternative is putting the adventure on hold after every fight while everyone recuperates in a hospital for several months.

Whoah, whoah, who was talking about realism? That's kind of a new concept for this thread, which is about creating a D&D-like game. Of course the party can get back in fighting shape by taking a day off, and full power by taking a second day off, healer or not. That's the genre.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Jacob-Orlove:
Yes, that's more-or-less the downtime model.

PhoneLobster:
Okay, I think we're having two different arguments.

1) I think that healing as described is a valid way to contribute to a group's success, and you think it's essentially useless flavor-text. That's a broad divide, and I'm nowhere near being convinced of your position.

2) Boring vs Interesting. Look, some people don't show up to the game wanting to flex their thinking. They just want to hang out with their buddies, blow off a little steam and maybe tickle their imagination; those people play berserker/healer style, because it's the role with the least thought involved. On the other hand, maybe someone really likes tactical thinking, but doesn't really engage when the miniatures aren't in use; that one's a battlefield control/healer. Maybe someone just wants to kick things around in combat, but loves the challenges inherent to intelligence gathering and analysis; that one's a berserker/diviner. Finally, there are people who love to be totally engaged all the time; they pick powers which let them be engaged all the time.

It's all about the ability to tailor your powers to your interests. Berserkers and Healers are both dull roles, but that's the point of them: to let people who don't really engage still contribute without demanding much from them. Now, if I accepted your premise that healing was an illusory contribution in the first place, then whether it was boring or not would be a non-issue. Right now, that it's boring is actually a feature.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Stepping away from the surprisingly contentious subject of healing, I'm struggling a little with the surprisingly difficult subject of Strength.

So, there's a power called Strength. There really should be a follow-up power called Great Strength, to represent being half-ogre or having a strength belt, or whatever. The downside is that if Great Strength exists then I have to deal with another accumulated bonus.

So, how important is the distinction between the brawny that we expect our warriors to be and the warrior who is also a strength-maxed half-orc or has a belt of giant strength? Should Strength just be a single ability, and it's just assumed that at higher levels you have a magic item or have realized your Storm Giant blood? Or is it fun to have the Berserker take Strength twice and the Fighter Strength once and put the other power into Combat Expertise or whatever?

This doesn't just apply to strength, there's a lot of stuff that could reasonably have one or two levels (like Armor Proficiency).

[ckafrica]

I guess it depends if you are making strength equal more damage or more to hit or both. I'm not a fan of strength = to hit and so having the stat increase twice would extenuate that issue for me. Another mechanism where by something else cool came out of being super strong -- knockback or daze or something like that -- would be a better call in my book

[Jacob_Orlove]

1192553777[/unixtime]] Another mechanism where by something else cool came out of being super strong -- knockback or daze or something like that -- would be a better call in my book

If you're doing that, you could just call it "power" and let wizards use it on their attacks too.

[angelfromanotherpin]

That's a very good suggestion - adding more strength-flavored effects without touching the basic numerical difference. So maybe Heavy Armor isn't more numerically protective than Medium Armor, but instead insulates you from fringe effects? I'm definitely going to explore that idea.

Any others?

[Voss]

Well, one question that comes to mind... if an ability is level-appropriate forever, how is Enhanced [Ability] level-appropriate? It either has to do something else (in which case, it isn't really enhancing that ability), or it raises the original ability above level-appropriate.

Your boring vs. interesting dichotomy is... weird. For some reason, you equate boring with a lack of thought. You also assume berserking or healing have no depth to them. Both are flawed assumptions. They might be true for *you*, but other people might find them interesting, fulfilling and full of tactical depth. Unless, of course, you build them into the system as something only sucky people do, so they have a one dimensional mechanic that isn't fun for anyone.

I'd also suggest that bored people are just going to find something else to do, and not play. Not wanting to 'flex their thinking' isn't a sign of boring, its a sign that they enjoy a particular style of play. Berserking in particular isn't a dull role- most of the tactics involved in the game revolve solely around combat, so a dedicated combat specialist often has the most fun. In my experience it keeps the game moving and dynamic. The berserkers often drag the game forward and get the other players involved when they're drifting off because the GM is indulging in masturbating to one of his pet fantasies that the players have no interest in.


As for the realistic healing, that seemed to be the alternative left if you have a group without any healing abilities. Now, you can handwave it and say their reasonably healed in a day and fully healed in two, but you have to expect that the players are going to want to rest that 2 days after every single combat. They aren't going to want the handicap of going into any fight while wounded. And forcing them into fights (now matter how you do it) is going to seem like punishment.

They are also going to realize that maximizing defensive and healing abilities is the main survival strategy for the ruleset. Everything else is going to take a back seat.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1192560385[/unixtime]]Well, one question that comes to mind... if an ability is level-appropriate forever, how is Enhanced [Ability] level-appropriate? It either has to do something else (in which case, it isn't really enhancing that ability), or it raises the original ability above level-appropriate.

I think there's an acceptable range of power within a particular level. A warrior can start life with a Strength of 16 or 20, and there's definitely a difference of ability there, but it's not the end of game balance, particularly if the warrior got to choose between 20, or 16 and something else.

Your boring vs. interesting dichotomy is... weird. For some reason, you equate boring with a lack of thought. You also assume berserking or healing have no depth to them. Both are flawed assumptions.

Berserking and healing as they exist in the D&D paradigm both involve a pretty fair minimum of decision-making and imagination required. It doesn't mean they can't be either effective or fun.

I'd also suggest that bored people are just going to find something else to do, and not play. Not wanting to 'flex their thinking' isn't a sign of boring, its a sign that they enjoy a particular style of play. Berserking in particular isn't a dull role- most of the tactics involved in the game revolve solely around combat, so a dedicated combat specialist often has the most fun. In my experience it keeps the game moving and dynamic.

When I say berserker, I don't mean 'dedicated combat specialist' – there are none in this game – I mean someone whose combat options are optimized for charging the nearest thing or group of things, and clobbering away until something loses; basically a Frank & K Barbarian. Some people actually like that kind of play, because they enjoy contributing in combat, and are bored not by combat itself, but rather by having to worry about deployment, engaging/disengaging tactics, terrain management, etc. If they don't enjoy combat at all, indeed they shouldn't be playing this game.

Now, you can handwave it and say their reasonably healed in a day and fully healed in two, but you have to expect that the players are going to want to rest that 2 days after every single combat. They aren't going to want the handicap of going into any fight while wounded. And forcing them into fights (now matter how you do it) is going to seem like punishment.

Healing Powers as I envision them don't necessarily mean going into every fight fully healed, only less injured. In that way, They're very similar to the ability to find and disarm traps. Both help to mitigate long-term attrition and extend the amount players can accomplish before they're so depleted they have to take a downtime. Which they don't want to do, because their mission is time-sensitive. Now, of course everyone wants to go into every fight (or every combat round) fully healed, but they're on a life-and-death adventure, which means sometimes there are hard choices.

They are also going to realize that maximizing defensive and healing abilities is the main survival strategy for the ruleset. Everything else is going to take a back seat.

I'm not sure I understand why this is so. Could you explain, please?

[the_taken]

If you don't lose, and your opponents lose, you win.

[CalibronXXX]

Truly mind blowing.

Ahem, if your party consists of defensive/healing specialists you'll always be in top form for your combats, so if you win a fight you'll probably win all similar upcoming fights as well.

"If you don't lose, and your opponents lose, you win."
~The_Taken

Unless you're happy with the paradigm of offensive specialists destroying their opponents before they get to act then they will accrue damage and get closer and closer to destruction as the day goes on; defensive/healing specialists do not have this problem.

[Manxome]

PCs are expected to go through a lot of fights, and generally expected to win (or at least survive) every single one of them. That means you don't just need to be good, you need to be extraordinarily reliable. The margin of error allowed will depend on your recovery abilities (if everyone walks around with scrolls of resurrection, you don't need to avoid individual death, just a TPK), but whatever the minimum threshold is, you need to meet it in every battle. You (as a party) pretty much need to be able to survive and recover from any single attack that could possibly affect you.

If the reasonable limit on how strong an opponent you can fight is how strong an opponent you can reliably beat, rather than how strong an opponent you can probably beat, then defense is really important. Being able to usually drop an opponent in 3 attacks instead of 4 is a great way to increase the number of foes you can kill with >50% success, but if there's any significant randomness in the damage you take per round, it probably doesn't do much to increase the number of foes you can kill with >90% success or >99% success. For that, you need to guard against your worst-case scenario, which generally means defensive abilities.

Obviously, not all RPGs work on the same assumptions. In some games, PCs are expected to drop like flies. But if you're supposed to take a single PC through a 3-month campaign, the odds of him dying in any particular battle need to be astonishingly low most of the time.

[angelfromanotherpin]

If you don't lose, and your opponents lose, you win.

Well, sure, but what's the plan for making them lose?


Calibron, that's not constructive.

[CalibronXXX]

Things I say rarely are.

Specializing doesn't completely bar you from taking other kinds of abilities, so using your less impressive, but guaranteed to be level appropriate, offense you kill your enemies while most of their attack modes are thwarted by your overabundant defenses and what attacks do breach your defenses are healed at the end of combat.

Every "power" you gain is going to be of level appropriate power, no more or less, so why take more than one or two offensive powers? Having them synergize will make them more than level appropriate, and having them not synergize will make taking more than one or two redundant. So why not fill your repertoire with powers that stop enemies from killing you during combat and stop you from suffering from attrition outside of combat?

Assuming that you actually make each offensive power level appropriate in and of itself, and knowing you can't trade combat abilities for non-combat abilities, you're going to have to chose between having a bunch offensive abilities that just give you different ways of doing the same thing, or defensive and healing abilities that make you not die; and that's no choice at all.