BAB v. AC: Is it a war we need?

[Manxome]

I think that going from "this foe is beyond any of you" to "this monster is 100% invulnerable to all of your attacks" is a bit of a leap. And even if it was invulnerable, that doesn't necessarily have to be represented by a level difference; it could have been a puzzle monster that required a special damage type, for example.

But what kind of power scale do we actually want? It's sounding like we may want a non-transitive one (mass of low-level beats group of mid-level beats single high level beats mass of low-level).

Pushing people off the RNG is indeed one way to accomplish that, though not the only way. And pushing people completely off the RNG means there is a point at which adding more power or more numbers to one side or the other literally does not matter. At all. And that means that the instant at which you become powerful enough to beat X level 1 foes (for some X) you also become powerful enough to beat 1000000X level 1 foes. That's becoming less of a power curve and more of a a one-dimensional "rock beats scissors" contest. It's not an easily adjustable point of balance. Maybe desirable in some cases, but my guess would be you want something a little richer for an RPG.

The non-transitivity only actually requires that levels and numbers combine in some non-interchangable fashion. There is no single number of level 1s that is equivalent to a level 2; having X level 1s will be better than a single level 2 in some cases and worse in others.

One way to accomplish that would be with AoE. If the level 10 hero only hits one character at a time, you could match him with, say, 5 level 5 guys or 20 level 1 guys (which would also match each other). But the level 10 hero is throwing around attacks that can hit 20 opponents at once for 1/5 the damage of his single-target attack. This doesn't matter when he's fighting 5 level 5 opponents, but it means that he can kill the 20 level 1 guys in 1/4 of the time, so you actually need, say, 60 level 1 guys to take him on. So 40@level 1 beats 6@level 5 beats 1@level 10 beats 40@level 1.

This has the secondary effect of making large-scale combat deadly, because the total damage inflicted by all combatants per round of combat goes up faster-than-linearly with the size of the combat. If all of the combatants were PCs, I'd say that degree of deadliness is probably bad, but if we're assuming that there's only a handful of characters we actually care about (regardless of the combat scale), it's probably a good thing, because it means the total number of die rolls to resolve the combat grows more slowly with the combat size.

Another option is to have some kind of limit (possibly a soft limit) on the number of combatants who can effectively attack a single target. You can only get so many people with swords within range of one target at one time; even with ranged weapons, getting large enough forces means some attackers need to fire from worse positions (farther away, more bodies in between you and the target, etc.). When a hundred level 1 fighters attack a level 10 hero, they actually have to come at him a few at a time, and the hero is actually fighting, say, 20 groups of 5, one group at a time. When those same hundred level 1 fighters attack 5 level 5 heroes, more of them can actually attack at once, so even if those 5 level 5s collectively have the same damage and HP as the one level 10 hero, they'll do worse in this fight, because they're (collectively) taking ~5 times the damage per round.

In order for this to scale reasonably, though, you probably want to finesse the mechanics in such a way that the massive group of low-level fighters doesn't get a giant boost in effectiveness just by picking up bows instead of swords (assuming that bows and swords are supposed to be balanced in "normal" combat). That could be done by giving archers more penalties for firing past each other or something like that, or maybe by ensuring that high-level heroes all get special abilities that help them resist mass-low-level-projectile-attacks.

This approach also means that putting a single high-level hero at the front of your army doesn't actually help as much against an enemy army, because the opponents that would otherwise need to wait their turn to make an effective attack against the hero can fill their idle time by attacking the rest of the army he's leading. It's still better than not having a hero, of course, but the size of the enemy army you can handle won't be the size your army could handle plus the size that the hero could handle.

Either of those sound appealing to anyone?

[Orion]

Frank, you mean something like this:

1203589302[/unixtime]]

Low beats mid beats high beats low

In this version, the most efficient tactic is to overwhelm someone with superior numbers and almost equal quality.

So you send demons after the heroes, and elite priests after the demons, and ogres after the priests, and crossbowmen after the ogres.

In this version, the army is the default tactic because it's the most efficient. Unlike in the other, where ramping up the tech tree is the major goal, here you don't build high-level units until you need them. Crossbowmen are THE answer until your opponent busts out a Hero who is IMMUNE to crossbowmen. Then, and only then, do you upgrade to knights, wraiths, or dragonriders, whatever is necessary to take the hero down.

-- this system justifies armies handily, and allows for the hero killing an army as a strategic victory
-- lots of interesting strategy, as one tries to keep your lowbies away form the enemies high-level guys, and the heroes try to avoid the demi-heroes.

Incidentally, there are at *least* two more ways of working around this problem entirely. The first is to get rid of the assumption that heroes can be exchanged for soldiers and vice versa. There are any number of ways to negate that.

A: Inelastic Supply -- There are a small number of level 10 guys in the world, at any given time all of them are claimed or determined to be neutral. You can make a schoool and start pumping out level 5 wizards, but only 1% of the populace is smart enough to learn magic. The rest are never ever going to be a heroic threat, so there's nothing lost by turning them into level 1 pikemen.

B: Different Resources -- low-level soldiers cost gold (and maybe population); Heroes cost favors, reputation, titles, and artifacts. There's no amount of gold that will buy you another hero, so there's no reason not to spend it on mercs.

C: Freebies -- outright "buying" (actual gold may or may not be involved) heroes might be incredibly expensive. You're much better off dealing with heroes who are predisposed to be friendly to you. The most efficient way to collect level 10 swordmasters might actually be to collect level 1 conscripts and wait for them to level-up. Only a tiny fraction ever will, but if they're cheap enough it still might be more efficient than buying level 10s directly. As a side-effect, you get a bunch of level one guys you don't actually care about.

[Username17]

I mean, logically, if the Balrog was unbeatable why wasn't it taking entire cities instead of waiting for some guys to rile up the orcs?

Because of the seal of Morgoth that kept them under the earth?

Hell, why wasn't Gandalf fighting whole armies by himself?

Because of the limited intervention clause that was imposed on the Istari by God?

The setting actually does stop and ask those exact questions, and it gives answers. And while I get that you don't find them satisfactory, those are the answers that the setting provides. And if you personally refuse to accept those answers, then you aren't using the setting as source material.

---

What I don't get, what I really really don't understand is why you think that you have to shoehorn all the settings which obviously don't fit your latest concept into the concept anyways. There are lots of settings that would work fine the way you're positing things to work. I'll give you some for free:

• Master of the Five Elements
  
• The Fifth Quarter
  
• The Scorpion King
  
• Three Hearts and Three Lions
  
• Rousalka
  
• Lady Knight
  
• Game of Thrones

All of these have characters whole live their entire lives on a human-level skill base. If you're an archer character, you probably have an archery skill as big as anyone else in the game. Skill caps are not much larger than starting character caps (and may be the same). Heroes have a "Battle Reserve" where they can expend points to keep from getting hurt. Other than that the battles are pretty lethal. Thus player characters are willing to fight small numbers of enemies pretty fearlessly and even wade into battle against long odds with a smile on their face, but if battle drags on, or more mooks keep coming in, the PCs had best pull a tactical retreat or allow themselves to be captured. It's very cinematic, can be very cool, and is supported by a lot of potential source material.

But the source material that it is specifically not fucking supported by is the stuff you and I originally called up. That's not how Wheel of Time Works. Rand blows up armies of Trollocs and goes all giant size to fight Voltron Combat that no one else can participate in because they aren't Ultraman Awesome like he is. The Witch King can't be killed or even meaningfully damaged by any man or anyone without a powerful magic sword.

If you want to draw a line in the sand and say that you don't want to do Lord of the Rings or the Mahabharata or the Wheel of Time or any of the other Epics, and you want to do Game of Thrones style sword and sorcery intrigue, I can support that. I understand where you are coming from.

But don't pretend to be doing something you aren't doing. If you get rid of the World Threats < Heroes < Armies < World Threats paradigm, then you aren't covering legends or stories which are based on that paradigm.

-Username17

[Orion]

Alternately, from the perspective of heroes (and kings would be heroes in this model) grunts may no longer actually be *characters* at all.

They may be equipment and special abilities.

For instance, even if grunts can't hurt heroes, they can still influence the battles between heroes.

Smaug atacked an army and died. But he didn't die to the army; he died to Bard, a leveled character with an artifact weapon. But he probably could have killed Bard in single combat. It's only because Bard was able to use the army as cover, a distraction, etc, that he was able to kill Smaug.

If you and I are both level 10 wizards, I'm much better off having an army even though it can't hurt you. I can disguise myself as one of my soldiers to move unobserved. I can send my soldiers to bring me spell componenets and magicitems. I can send them to burn down your family's house, luring you out to where I can get you. I can have them guard my stuff from random thieves, and warn me if you try to burn down *my* family's house.

It's also conceivably possible that I have goals that an army can accomplish that I can't -- goals like imposing law and order over a large area. In this case, heroes and armies are playingseparate minigames, although there's always the risk that a hero will wipe my army out.

In fact, large groups of lowbies can be considered special-purpose magic items. Under "equipment" the wizard player writes "crystal ball" and the paladin player writes "squad of halfling scouts" -- both characters have expensive, fragile possessions that are powerful sources of information. Similarly, when we want to haul the giant gold statue back to base, the wizard busts out the "wand of levitation" and the Marshall busts out the "squad of grunts"

This mostly applies to noncombat utility, but could conceivably be expanded to combat. First of all, a level 1 comoner is way cheaper than an animated tower shield, even if it *is* a one-shot item. but we could go further with this. We could have castes like "bard" or "king" that are level-apprpriate *through minions* So the King is level 10, but he's not a level 10 Malefactor; he's a level 10 King, able to fight a malefactor not because he's individually hardcore but because he can Inspire his level one grunts so hardcore that they can fight a level 10 Malefactor.

In fact, we could even abstract grunts for high-level play to the point that they are *literally* just equipment.

So we have the ability

Hellfire
CHA to hit, CON to damage
AoE Fire targeting Fort
Requires wand

and

Elven War Cry
CHA to hit, INT to damage
AoE Piercing targeting Fort
Requires 10 guys with bows

[Manxome]

Having grunts represented as items or abilities would be a really appealing option, unless we actually want PCs to sometimes adventure at the power level where individual grunts are meaningful.

If the rules system was only going to support epic, it'd be great.

But if we want to support play both at level 1 and at a level where other level 1 characters are the grunts, then treating level 1 characters as items can at best be an optional mode you use at really big scales, and it seems like a particularly hard mode to gracefully transition in and out of.

[K]

1203631618[/unixtime]]

I mean, logically, if the Balrog was unbeatable why wasn't it taking entire cities instead of waiting for some guys to rile up the orcs?

Because of the seal of Morgoth that kept them under the earth?

You'll have to give me a page number on that because as far as I can remember the Balrog hid underground after Morgoth was defeated. There wasn't any seal of anything (and no amount of internet research mentions a seal). Like the dragons who were also Morgoth's creations, they could have just come to the party at at any time. They just didn't.

1203631618[/unixtime]]

Hell, why wasn't Gandalf fighting whole armies by himself?

Because of the limited intervention clause that was imposed on the Istari by God?

You mean the intervention clause that Saruman broke that had no effect whatsoever because its was the Valar's suggestion and not a divine mandate by Eru Ilúvatar who is the God-figure of Tolkien's creation myth? The one that didn't stop Gandalf from leading armies and fighting Balrogs?

That one?

See my above point concerning "contradictions."

-----------------------

This leads me to my final point before I consider this a fairly pointless argument, which is:

Epic doesn't have to be high level.

Seriously. You can plane hop and be 3rd level. You need a Gate or two which is just like knowing which roads lead to the local convenience store.

You can have epic battles with armies from five races fighting dark lords and be 3rd level. All you need is a mechanic that says that heroes die last when leading armies because they stick in the middle and let the peons take the arrows.

You can blow up castles and kill dark lords who might be gods that threaten the whole setting and be 3rd level. You just need a plot device artifact.

What you do need levels for is a rough estimation of power so that you can have 1st level apprentices that shoot Magic Missiles and 5th level full Wizards that cast Fireballs and 17th level Archmages that open Gates to volcanos and melt cities.

City melting does not equal "immune to being daggered by jealous apprentices when you are in your bathrobe." It just doesn't, and there is no systemic reasons why it has to. It doesn't offend internal consistency or source material or mechanical considerations.

--------------

In fact, large groups of lowbies can be considered special-purpose magic items. Under "equipment" the wizard player writes "crystal ball" and the paladin player writes "squad of halfling scouts" -- both characters have expensive, fragile possessions that are powerful sources of information. Similarly, when we want to haul the giant gold statue back to base, the wizard busts out the "wand of levitation" and the Marshall busts out the "squad of grunts"

I've actually been going in just that direction.

"No magic" or "low magic" settings have people filling item slots with Lord abilities (my version of the Marshall, but you get actual troops) or other skills from other classes, while "medium and high magic" settings fill those slots with magic items and magical transformations ("I bathed in a Nymph Pool and now I can fasciante people with my beauty.") or monster abilities (I'm a medusa so two slots are filled with Serpent Hair and Stoning Gaze).

[JonSetanta]

1203651589[/unixtime]]
Seriously. You can plane hop and be 3rd level. You need a Gate or two which is just like knowing which roads lead to the local convenience store.

True that.
Last game session, a player told me that my extraplaner (Fey/Devil) character couldn't be in the setting.
The reason: planar transportation isn't available at level 2.
I laughed and said planar travel is a plot device.
The DM just grinned.

[Username17]

I would argue that it is in fact up to the power discrepancy in question as to whether a newb in a fantasy world can successfully defeat a more powerful individual by ambushing them in the bath tub. But above and beyond that, I'm not at all convinced that the things you claim to want to happen wouldn't be better filled by having AC/BAB variations.

Consider the two options before us: Level Based to-hit mods and Bonus Hit Points.

Let's start with your baby: the Bonus Hit Points. It's basically the model shown in swashbucklers. You get a "Battle Reserve" that goes up as you go up in level. Attacks against you deplete the reserve before they are allowed to actually "hit" you. What this means in practice is that there is a period of any battle where you can be quite fearless because you'll have the option of running away next turn and won't have taken any actual damage at that point. A swashbuckler stabs a number of guards without taking a single hit, but if they keep coming he'll have to run. Being in combat depletes his reserve, so despite the fact that he downs each mook with flair and panache he will eventually get gutted if the enemies keep coming. When two swashbucklers fight they go up and down stairs hacking away at each other's battle reserve until some gets defeated and run through. Essentially it virtually perfectly models stories like The Three Musketeers or The Scorpion King or The Court Jester.

And yet, what happens when some mooks ambush you in the shower? Not much actually. The villains rush the bath tub and the hero's eyes get all wide and then he jumps out of the water just as it fills up with spears and runs around naked, dodging and weaving until he gets his loin cloth and sword. In short: he loses some battle reserve at the beginning of the encounter, but it's not really a big deal - he can run away or fight back after the initial tense situation. And again, this is exactly what happens in Swashbuckling Movies and Stories when the hero gets attacked in the bath tub. It's a frustrating opening to combat when Jackie Chan loses some battle reserve from the unprovoked assault on his nudity, but once regular initiative starts he's not in an especially bad position any more - he hasn't taken any real damage.

---

On the flip side: Defense Bonuses. This is for stuff we classify as "epics". Including the Lord of the Rings, damnit. But regardless, in this scenario you get a bonus to your defenses as you go up (AC and DR for example). This means that when you hack your way through a bunch of weak enemies you take less damage than they do. You still get tagged occasionally, it's just infrequent and the damage you take is real but largely inconsequential on a blow by blow basis. This is what happens when Bishma or Alexander fights his way through an enemy squad. Small wounds all over the victorious champion and him panting in the pile of corpses.

The thing where this gets interesting as regards your desires is that if one of these heroes gets attacked in the bathtub he fights at a disadvantage - and a numeric disadvantage literally evens the odds. The hero doesn't automatically wake up at the last minute because he doesn't have a battle reserve, he just has high defenses. If you hit him with a big hammer while he is in bed you will actually hit him and cause real damage. Maybe even death.

---

Those are the two models of heroic awesomeness. And they both work for their genres. But the genres you are suggesting for the system you are advocating don't match its actual strengths. If you were seriously coming to the table and saying "Fuck Tolkien! I want to play Dumas!" then I would totally get where you are coming from as regards upping the reserve rather than handing out defenses. But since you seem to genuinely want Aragorn and Rand, who operate on an entirely different basis, I am left scratching my head.

Rand gets knicks and scratches in battle and blasts through enemies that no one else can even attack because he has very high defenses. He doesn't have Red Sonja's battle reserve, he just doesn't have a lot to fear from a Trolloc's sword.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1203700728[/unixtime]]But since you seem to genuinely want Aragorn and Rand, who operate on an entirely different basis, I am left scratching my head.

I think Aragorn was probably on the battle reserve system. He was pretty bad ass but he didn't just run around like he was immortal. Aragorn needs armies and stuff.

I dont' really even count Gandalf in LotR because he wasnt' a PC. He was some uber NPC that travels with the PCs to bail them out of any big trouble they may run into and otherwise to provide advice, but that's really it. But in an actual game in an LotR style setting, a PC isn't playing Gandalf. the PCs are Legolas, Boromir, Gimli and Aragorn. And pretty much all of them are on the battle reserve system. LotR really isn't a high level setting.

[JonSetanta]

Or you mean... Gandalf the DMPC, come out of the shining heavens to wank in your face with what little magic he stoops so low to your level to even dabble with.
Let's see: Pyrotechnics, Expeditious Retreat, Mount, maybe Invisibility or a secrete Teleport from time to time, and a few other minor ones.

For a Wizard, that's a pretty lame display of arcane might.

[Captain_Bleach]

Sigma, when you say "Pyrotechnics," do we mean light flickers, conflagration of Hell, or somewhere in between?

[CatharzGodfoot]

1203739580[/unixtime]]Sigma, when you say "Pyrotechnics," do we mean light flickers, conflagration of Hell, or somewhere in between?

I think he means the spell.

[Username17]

1203730560[/unixtime]]
I think Aragorn was probably on the battle reserve system. He was pretty bad ass but he didn't just run around like he was immortal. Aragorn needs armies and stuff.

This is actually exactly the reason that I don't think he is on the battle reserve system. He is on the Defenses system and happens to be substantially, but not impossibly, higher level than the orcs he is fighting.

This means that he blows through orcs expeditiously, and that an individual orc attack is unlikely to hurt him at all, and probably won't hurt him much if it connects. But the first attack and the twentieth attack are both threats (albeit minor ones individually. This means that Aragorn would prefer to attack from the darkness, or keep ablative mooks around to keep from being surrounded and so on and so forth - every attack the orcs get is a real (if small) threat.

Were he a battle reserve character, he would fight like a Musketeer: run directly into the group of enemies swinging a sword and dancing around; and then when the reserve ran low running away. Aragorn doesn't do that because the nineteenth attack is not magically in Straw vs. Camel territory. Aragorn does not do that: he fights tactically from the beginning and he grinds on battles until the end.

The Scorpion King charges a hallway full of guards, fights his way through, and when another hallway full of guards shows up he leaps out of the window to get away. That's because he has a battle reserve. Aragorn gets himself to a position of tactical superiority like a doorway where the enemies can only come one at a time and have to run up stairs to do it. Then he starts hacking until they are done with or he loses. That's because Aragorn has no battle reserve but has high defenses.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1203761241[/unixtime]]

This is actually exactly the reason that I don't think he is on the battle reserve system. He is on the Defenses system and happens to be substantially, but not impossibly, higher level than the orcs he is fighting.

This means that he blows through orcs expeditiously, and that an individual orc attack is unlikely to hurt him at all, and probably won't hurt him much if it connects. But the first attack and the twentieth attack are both threats (albeit minor ones individually. This means that Aragorn would prefer to attack from the darkness, or keep ablative mooks around to keep from being surrounded and so on and so forth - every attack the orcs get is a real (if small) threat.

Well, it's hard to say with Aragorn, because he seriously never actually gets hit or hurt. Which sounds more like a battle reserve than a high defense. So he may just have a really high battle reserve.

I always tend to look at it in terms of who takes the hits. If you're running around like Spider man, where you actually end up getting caught in explosions, thrown against stone walls and the like. Then you're on the defense system. When you're basically a human who just manages not to get hit, you're on the battle reserve system.

I don't think there's really much doubt that if Aragorn got stabbed in the chest, he would die. Aragorn doesn't really soak damage, he avoids attacks. He needs armies to help draw the fire, otherwise his battle reserve would get expended really quickly by being overwhelmed by large numbers.

When Boromir gets hit by that first arrow, he was basically done. I mean sure, he cinematically fought on for awhile but at that point we knew he was going down, because his battle reserve was spent.

Though it does seem a lot of the monsters are on the defense system. The Nazgul and probably cave trolls/ents are definitely on the defense system. They seriously just run in there and soak shit most of the time, because they can't be hurt. You can shoot a cave troll a bunch of times in the head and it doesn't die.

[CatharzGodfoot]

RC: people on the 'reserve' system can interface with heavily armored guys via the two-roll system where there is 'to hit' and 'soak' which can be boosted independently. Aragorn has a high dodge, and so takes very little damage until he gets hit. Gimli has a high armor class, and so is constantly taking small amounts of damage.

You can also let people independently boost their Reserve and Armor, but that's a bit less simple to balance.

[Crissa]

Game of Thrones: Hero characters can lead armies, fight armies, but they don't, by themselves, defeat armies. Not even a single dragon defeats an army, it also needs an army.

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

1203744013[/unixtime]]

1203739580[/unixtime]]Sigma, when you say "Pyrotechnics," do we mean light flickers, conflagration of Hell, or somewhere in between?

I think he means the spell.

Yep. He used magic in the goblin mountains of The Hobbit story line that probably inspired the D&D version.

HOWEVER for a Wizard (or character) of his level, there were better options availible... judging from his capabilities shown later in the series.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

RC: Wait, What? People who get hit by effects and attacks are on a system that emphasises defense, and people who don't are on a Reserve system?

Isn't a reserve system a system where you have so many hitpoints you can automatically heal yourself every day because you're so badass? Cuz that's what my copy of Unearthed Arcana calls Reserve points.

Now, I'm willing to accept that maybe you're talking about something totally different with the same name, but if you ARE talking about a reserve system that resembles UAs, then your distinctions here are so backwards that I would believe that you just might be smoking crack. Because you're saying that Spider Man, who regularly gets beat up, caught in explosions and whatnot and quickly springs back, is on a system with high defense. Meanwhile you're saying that Aragorn, who never really gets injured during the War of the Ring, is on a system that gives you free healing.

And if you can't see why that's fundamentally backwards, I don't really think there's anything to say further.

-Desdan

[Username17]

We aren't talking about anything which remotely resembles UA Reserve Points. It's more like Mech Warrior's Edge or FUDGE's Fate points. The Battle Reserve is a well that you draw upon to prevent bad things from happening to you.

So people who never get hit round after round yet still decide for some reason to occasionally surrender when a bunch of enemies pull weapons on them are on the Battle Reserve system. Batman has a Battle Reserve. When he runs out of his Reserve he's just a guy, so he'll run away from combat or surrender despite the fact that he has so far been able to take out large numbers of identical enemies with identical weapons - he had Battle Reserve left back then so he was definitely not going to "get hit."

On the other hand, people who get hit infrequently and take little damage when it happens simply have very high Defenses. Rambo has high Defenses. He doesn't have a Battle Reserve.

-Username17

[K]

Cinematically, I don't see any different between the reserve or the Defenses system.

Under both you lose HPs. You can describe this as "minor wounds that we don't talk about" or "clear misses" or even "major wounds that haven't yet interfered with your fighting ability". Mechanically, it all works the same in that eventually you run out of "some stuff" and then you die, and the only difference is how you run out of that stuff.

From a storytelling perspective, they don't have to talk about minor wounds that don't affect the narrative and so they either don't or they don't get wounds. We just know know in most stories. Even in a swashbuckler tale we don't know if someone has a pulled muscle or a bruise on his shoulder that hurts like a mother. As long as you can still fight its not a wound that the narrative needs to address. So Boromir takes an arrow and we need to hear about it because while he can fight he's also dying, but Frodo can scrape his knee and the story can be silent.

That being said, there is still no reason to have defenses increase with level when it involves complicated analysis of probabilities like "will this +1 half the number of hits I take from that monster or just reduce hits by 5%" when you can just a have a linear HP system and Defenses system.

----------------

Here is the system I think can work in a very simple and flavorful way.

Character:
-AC is based on what your armor is plus your Dex.

-You get a flat 10 HPs a level, and you can take a number of Wounds equal to half you level +1 before you die.

-HPs heal with tens of minutes of rest, and heal faster with medical attention. Cinematically they are actual painful wounds, but they are the ones that stop bleeding and stop hurting over time and don't really need medical attention.

Hitting: Roll a d20, and you hit.
-Attacks that require a hit do full damage for your level, and area attacks don't require a hit but only do half damage for your level.

-You get a number of d6s to add to damage up to a fixed level (max six dice).

-Heavier armor reduces your to hit.(this means that if fighting armies is on your agenda, heavy armor is best because it protects you well and doesn't fvck up your AoEs, but if fighting single dragons you might want lighter armor to maximze your damage).


Critting and Wounds
-When you damage someone, rolling a 6 on a d6 is a crit.

-The more sixes you get, the bigger the Wound(s).

-A one crit Wound is something like "Wounded arm, can't use weapon until fully healed" to a two crit like "Damaged arm, can't hold weapons until healed magically" to a three crit "Arm chopped off".

-Hitting people when they have no HPs means you do a number of Wounds equal to your damage dice and you can pick your choice of Wound. We call this a Coup De Grace.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Alright, good. I was wondering for a moment. So how does Edge/Fate work?

[Manxome]

I must also disagree, Frank; the mechanical and cinematic distinctions you're describing don't correlate.

d'Artagnan recklessly charges a crowd of enemies and fights them off, then runs away when another group of enemies shows up.

Aragorn gathers allies, gets into a good tactical position, and stands his ground, fighting enemies at an advantage.

The difference isn't that d'Artagnan has a battle reserve and every hit is a potential threat to Aragorn. Even on a battle reserve system, anything that forces you to spend battle reserve is getting you closer to death, and therefore it still makes great tactical sense to fight from a position where you won't have to spend it.

Rather, the difference is that circumstance modifiers matter to Aragorn more than d'Artagnan. d'Artagnan doesn't wait in a bottleneck because it wouldn't help; there would be no appreciable change to the chances of being "hit" (i.e. being forced to spend battle reserve). If there was, it would be just as much in his interest to use tactics as it is in Aragorn's. d'Artagnan actually lives in a universe where being exposed or surrounded just doesn't matter, tactically speaking.

One way to game mechanically represent that is for flanking to provide +1 attack bonus and for Aragorn to have an AC of 18 and d'Artagnan to have an AC of 8; that will make the +1 much more important when fighting Aragorn than d'Artagnan, and you can give d'Artagnan a lot more HP to compensate.

But you don't have to do it that way. Aragorn and d'Artagnan are in different settings; the effects of flanking don't need to be mechanically the same for both of them. Flanking might just be inherently more useful in Aragorn's setting than in d'Artagnan's (and it could affect damage just as easily as accuracy). Or maybe Aragorn has a front AC of 18 and a side/rear AC of 10 and d'Artagnan has an AC of 15 all around.

How much emphasis to put on defense vs. HP is orthogonal to how much emphasis you want to put on tactics and positional advantage. Defense vs. HP is more of a "how much randomness do you want?" issue.

[Username17]

d'Artagnan actually lives in a universe where being exposed or surrounded just doesn't matter, tactically speaking.

That's because d'Artagnan lives in a world where things work the way K is describing where all characters are kind of close to one another on the attack/defense matrix and circumstance modifiers aren't super important as a +1 or +2 one way or another is often lost in the mists of the fickleness of luck. Aragorn lives in a world where he has big defense bonuses and he has already pushed his weaker enemies near the edge of the Random Number Generator. When he gets a +1 or +2 he pushes people along the edge cases where those bonuses make a big difference.

That is mechanically how that works.

-Username17

[K]

1203813633[/unixtime]]

d'Artagnan actually lives in a universe where being exposed or surrounded just doesn't matter, tactically speaking.

That's because d'Artagnan lives in a world where things work the way K is describing where all characters are kind of close to one another on the attack/defense matrix and circumstance modifiers aren't super important as a +1 or +2 one way or another is often lost in the mists of the fickleness of luck. Aragorn lives in a world where he has big defense bonuses and he has already pushed his weaker enemies near the edge of the Random Number Generator. When he gets a +1 or +2 he pushes people along the edge cases where those bonuses make a big difference.

That is mechanically how that works.

-Username17

I honestly don't think there is a point where anyone expects Aragorn to fight his way through even a few dozen orcs. Sure, he might be at the front of an army, or be with his friends and be dispersing a single squad, or even holding off an army for a while when he's on a bridge, but there really is no point where anyone is wailing on even a moderately large group.

Everything Aragorn does is with his friends, in a chokepoint of some kind, taking his enemies a few at a time.

The reason being caught in mines of Moria are such a big deal is because an army of orcs is a TOTAL LOSS. The only reason they aren't taken is because the Balrog comes and scares away the orcs and the only reason readers don't scream "deus ex machina" is because the Balrog seems worse than an orc army.

From a narrative standpoint, we don't even know if Aragorn can even beat five or six orcs who surround him. Its never happened, so he might just be a guy who happened to be wearing objectively good armor and only got honestly attacked a dozen times in the whole series and he was lucky enough to not get hit.

Ps. You misquoted someone as me.

[Manxome]

1203813633[/unixtime]]That's because d'Artagnan lives in a world where things work the way K is describing where all characters are kind of close to one another on the attack/defense matrix and circumstance modifiers aren't super important as a +1 or +2 one way or another is often lost in the mists of the fickleness of luck. Aragorn lives in a world where he has big defense bonuses and he has already pushed his weaker enemies near the edge of the Random Number Generator. When he gets a +1 or +2 he pushes people along the edge cases where those bonuses make a big difference.

That is mechanically how that works.

As I explicitly said in the post you quoted, that is indeed one way mechanically that it can work, but there are many other mechanical ways that effect can be achieved, and that one in particular isn't even the original distinction you cited (unless I have utterly misunderstood your explanation of battle reserves and how every hit is threatening for Aragorn and not for d'Artagnan).