The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote: Even though the best choice is still deterministic, it becomes sufficiently complicated that it is no longer obvious - at which point player skill actually matters.

It doesn't really. You can't predict your party's or your own actions, not even in a "they'll attempt to do X" way. It's like playing chess where the pieces teleport randomly every turn. The future is so random that thinking ahead of where your king will be doesn't matter since he could be anywhere.

To take your earlier hypothetical game-playing program, all I need to do is slap on a greedy algorithm (since I can't know my future actions anyways, it's perfect for this) to rank my options at any given turn. Any deviations will likely be lost in the action shuffle (even if X is better than Y, I'm unlikely to have X) and planning is shot in the foot even if I'm there, the program will likely last longer without much issues. Now, not only can I go grab some snacks at Seven Eleven, I can also go watch a movie.

There's also the implementation problems. Either actions are all different and everyone plays the amazing schizo fighters shooting magic missile or omnislashing based off a die roll, or they're similar groups. Does it really matter I'm casting Fireball vs Flame Strike if the main difference is that one is slightly better than the other? 4th edition D&D won't get better if you roll for 3 powers from your level appropriate list since the powers are going to be more or less the same.

FrankTrollman wrote:Even though the best choice is still deterministic, it becomes sufficiently complicated that it is no longer obvious - at which point player skill actually matters.

But its still obvious on your turn so its still not skilled. It just means that you have to wait for your turn to know which of your available abilities comboes best with the status effect your friend dropped onto the enemy. Its a little better, there is the case statement afterall, but its hardly a revelation in gaming awesomeness.

I still think letting each side interfere with the other's plans is the best move. As long as its complicated to choose between using a combo breaker or setting up your own combo. Dynamic play would be required when you're reacting to the opponent's choice to go for a combo or break yours.


PS the Dr. Aco tag is the funniest thing I've seen all day.

Draco wrote:But its still obvious on your turn so its still not skilled. It just means that you have to wait for your turn to know which of your available abilities comboes best with the status effect your friend dropped onto the enemy.

Not exclusively, no. You also evaluate what status effects from what are available to you that are most useful given the various possible options your future team members may have.

Its a little better, there is the case statement afterall, but its hardly a revelation in gaming awesomeness.

Right. While I think resource management systems can potentially ruin things by being too complicated, resource management schemes can't make things a whole lot better. I think we'll agree that 3e D&D had some rather bad resource schemes in it, but that didn't stop the game from being fun.

The resource management scheme ideally should put people on the kind of adventuring day that you want them to have in the stories. Also it should be varied enough to not be monotonous. Finally, it should be simple enough to use while drunk. If a resource management scheme does those three things, it is "good." After all, the vast majority of the tactics of the game should be power interactions and positioning, not resource management.

-Username17

Not exclusively, no. You also evaluate what status effects from what are available to you that are most useful given the various possible options your future team members may have.

But given that those possible options could be any power they know, there's not a lot of planning you can do there.

Let's say you get Entangle, Cloud of Phlogistin, and Lightning Arrow as your moves on a given round. If your teammates get long range attacks, Entangle would be good. If your teammates get fire attacks, Cloud of Phlogistin would be good. Otherwise, Lightning Arrow is the most effective. But you have no idea whether your teammates will get the right kind of attacks or not, so there's not really any planning involved - just pick the power that's best at the moment.

Now if the randomness was done even a bit in advance, you could actually make plans, and the randomness could prevent canned tactics. Like if you rolled at the beginning of combat, or even once every few rounds, you would be able to base your decisions off what your teammates have.


I'm still not sold that "more varied = more tactical" - it gives the appearance of tactics, but not the actual substance. And for appearance, we have flavor text. I'm serious - what benefit does purely random ability access have over random ability description? As in:

Fire Burst
[Mechanics]
Effect (d6):
1 - A ball of fire, which is thrown from the hand and explodes on impact.
2 - A blazing sword, which you charge and swing in an arc.
3 - An imp is summoned and creates a circle of hellfire.
4 - Transmutes the ground to oil, then you throw a lit torch onto it.
5 - An alchemical construct runs up to the target and explodes.
6 - You transmute your mouth into that of a dragon and breathe fire.

It's more like someone walks in with the ability to shoot fire. And then they roll a die:

1. Firebolt
2. Fire Cone
3. Fire Burst
4. Fire Ball
5. Fire Wall
6. Ignite

And then if you roll high, you still have he option of using the lower level abilities. There are reasons why you might want to use a long distance single-target firebolt isnstead of surrounding yourself with a very short ranged burst of fire. Similarly there are reasons you might want to put up a persistent wall of flames rather than causing one enemy to ignite into flames in a never-miss fashion.

-Username17

But if there are times were Fire Wall is better to use than Ignite, why do we need a random roll to enforce it? The only case Winds of Fate adds is "Fire Wall would be more useful than Fireburst but I rolled a 3, so I'll cast Fireburst I guess."

If Fireburst and Fire Wall have different niches, then the PCs will use them when appropriate. With Winds of Fate, they'll use them when appropriate or the next best thing if they can't and just suck more. Sure you have to think what is the next best thing, but it's likely going to blindly obvious what that is.

I don't think which resource management system you use really matters if the combat system is exciting and gives the PCs meaningful choices. I don't like Winds of Fate because it randomly restricts player actions and forethought and doesn't much. You can also run into charge system-like issues where you sit and wait till everyone gets high rolls at once and then kick down the door.

Why not make the WoF roll only on the first round and then cycle through the numbers as combat progresses?

For example:
Round 1: Rolled a 4 for WoF.
Round 2: WoF goes up to 5.
Round 3: WoF goes up to 6.
Round 4: WoF wraps around to 1.
Round 5: ... and so on ...


This way you get the variability that people like Frank want, and you also allow for planning ahead to the next round or two. You would be able to realize that you can use your Big Bang Attack on round three, and you could plan your tactics accordingly. And since each party member's Ultimate may come on different rounds from yours, there's intraparty tactical choice about how to set up each one. Additionally, the potential order of Ultimates would vary from combat to combat.

Isn't that what we want?


Edit: You could even add a reroll once you go cycle all the way through to your initial number.

So to continue our earlier example:

Round 5: WoF goes up to 2
Round 6: WoF goes up to 3.
Round 7: WoF goes up to 4, but that's where we started, so we roll again ... and get a 1.
Round 8: WoF goes up to 2.
Round 9: etc.

Or the reroll could happen when you would do the wrap around from Round 4.

But if there are times were Fire Wall is better to use than Ignite, why do we need a random roll to enforce it?

There are times that a dragon would rather bite than breathe fire. Why have any resource management scheme?

A: as a handicap to prevent people from becoming complacent or overly reliant upon spamming the same technique over and over again.

All I'm saying, all I've been saying for this entire thread - is that a resource management scheme which is essentially random is superior to one that utilizes a time counter. Not just because there's less turn to turn accounting, but because it breaks up cyclical tactics.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: All I'm saying, all I've been saying for this entire thread - is that a resource management scheme which is essentially random is superior to one that utilizes a time counter. Not just because there's less turn to turn accounting, but because it breaks up cyclical tactics.

I disagree. Take the base cases of both systems. One is the cyclical tactics one where 1->2->3->4 is always the best choice. The random one is you roll a d4 and do that. Random does allow for different patterns, but there is no real player choice either way so you can still go get a sandwich and have it not matter. That's the true problem.

The issue I have with Winds of Fate is that it's harder to add meaningful player choice (i.e. choosing between options that are actually noteworthy) due to it reducing the ability to plan ahead. Now if it was something like Deck of Fate where you make a "deck" of moves and have hands so you can plan ahead and work with people, that's okay.

Planning ahead is bad for the game.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Planning ahead is bad for the game.

Sometimes.

It's bad to be able to plan ahead before the combat even starts, such that you know "Ok, our whole tactic is going to be that we set up the rogue for sneak attacks while the fighter tanks and the wizard throws out fireballs."

That kind of planning is bad, because it's not adaptive, and your strategy is effectively hard coded into the system. It's the main problem with 4E's roles, in that you pretty much know what you're supposed to do before the combat ever starts, and that applies to each and every combat.

However, once combat starts, you need to be able to create coherent battle plans if you want any tactics at all. But those plans don't always necessarily have to be easy to achieve. The key is creating not only moves, but also countermoves. In chess, there are a variety of things that you may go into the game trying to achieve, yet you may not achieve them if your opponent makes skilled counters to what you're doing.

If you want a tactical set up, that's really what it has to be about.

Now if you don't care so much about the game being tactical and are more interested in focusing on other elements, then you could consider abolishing planning altogether. Because without some planning ahead, you'll never be able to establish any kind of deep tactical game.

FrankTrollman wrote:Planning ahead is bad for the game.

-Username17

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Here's an idea for the die rolls for random available moves: Multiple move sets. When combat starts, you roll a dN for each move set you have. The result represents the move level you can perform in each move set, and you keep the die from the roll as a counter. Every time you use a move from a move set, you have the counter lower by 1, unless you use the bottom level move, which gives you a re-roll for the move set in addition to whatever combat effect it has.
This means that you're more likely to have a wicked move, but if you don't you can use a weak move to try and gather energy.

Example: Nuhwig the Necromancer has four move sets. Red Fire Magic, Blue Water Marital-arts, Green Earth Shields and Black Magic Rituals.
When combat starts, he rolls four d6s (red, blue, green, black) to determine what moves he has available.

Red Fire Magic
1: Fire Bolt
2: Fire Breath
3: Fire Barrier
3: Fire Ball
5: Fire Blast
6: Ignite

Blue Water Martial-arts
1: Splash Palm
2: Rain Fist
3: Wave Kick
4: Fountain Blast
5: Tsunami Crash
6: Hurricane Surf

Green Earth Shields
1: Mud Slap
2: Marble Abs
3: Granite Skin
4: Rock Bubble
5: Stone Wall
6: Avalanche Roll

Black Magic Rituals
1: Summon Skeleton
2: Vampire's Kiss
3: Fear Aura
4: Sap Wave
5: Drain Field
6: Gorgon Stare

Frank: Why *don't* we do away with the to-hit rolls?

Objectors:

I'm pretty sure we can make this work in a way which preserves teamwork. First, put in some synergies between low-level moves that are almost always available. Then, when you're going to have synergy between a high and a low-level move, make it so the high-level one is used first. That way, instead of hail mary situations where my level one Entangle is useful only because we then pray for your level-6 Fireball, successful comboes actually *increase* reliability. If Sleeper Hold (a martial arts attack that puts the target to sleep) is level 5 and Dream Eater (big psychic damage to sleeping target) is level 1, than when my monk rolls five, instead of just doing a pile of damage, I'm doing one good attack and setting up my friend to be useful regardless of what he rolls.

You need enough planning ahead that every decision does not take up an excessive amount of time - 'I know what I'm going to do next turn.'

You need enough planning ahead so players can feel some level verisimilitude to their setting - 'I want to pick up that rock and throw it.'

-Crissa

Frank: Why *don't* we do away with the to-hit rolls?

You could certainly do that. For example, in most card games there is no die-rolling element. When you play an attack card, you pretty much just cause whatever effect the card causes unless your enemy counters it with another card (and even that can be considered to be an effective and successful use of the card if you think of the enemy counter cards as ablative shields).

Having a deterministic attack system in which whatever attack you used had knowable effects would be possible. As would a system where you rolled only for the degree of the effect and all attacks "hit." I could see a system by which people had various defense options and their parries got eroded as people continued to fence with them until eventually someone got stabbed.

The to-hit roll is not a sacred cow by any means. You just have to make sure that if you go to an "always hit" system that you don't end up like nWoD where autoattacking is completely interchangeable and no tactics make any difference and everyone is replaceable by a small group of children because damage per second doesn't even scale that much by turning into a giant wolf monster.

-Username17

Crissa wrote:You need enough planning ahead that every decision does not take up an excessive amount of time - 'I know what I'm going to do next turn.'

You need enough planning ahead so players can feel some level verisimilitude to their setting - 'I want to pick up that rock and throw it.'

-Crissa

Hopefully you can pick up a rock and throw it on a roll of 1.

Planning ahead is bad for the game.

Planning, on one scale or another, is the game. What other "game" are you talking about? Rolling dice? That's not a game.

Now I admit, I take a somewhat hard stance - things without meaningful decision making aren't games. The card "game" War, for example, I would call a time-killing activity rather than an actual game. While planning your tactics a week in advance of the actual battle may not be desirable, planning your tactics at least a few rounds ahead is necessary, or you may as well be playing War.

Ice9 wrote:

Planning ahead is bad for the game.

Planning, on one scale or another, is the game. What other "game" are you talking about? Rolling dice? That's not a game.

Now I admit, I take a somewhat hard stance - things without meaningful decision making aren't games. The card "game" War, for example, I would call a time-killing activity rather than an actual game. While planning your tactics a week in advance of the actual battle may not be desirable, planning your tactics at least a few rounds ahead is necessary, or you may as well be playing War.

So from your standpoint, a card game where you draw a new hand every turn is not a game?

-Username17

The main advantage to random ability systems is that they reduce the impact of poorly balanced abilities and lack of counters.

You can for instance have a very powerful card in Magic, yet that card doesn't always destroy the game because it may never be drawn in any particular game. So even if a card is an instant win, there's no guarantee you'll ever see it. Card combos are further reduced in this manner. Further, the randomness forces players into more situations and thus increases the strategic depth of the game.

However, random systems are going to lose a lot of strategic depth too. It's why Magic is never going to be as deep a game as chess. Often times it's possible to replace strategic depth with psychological and mathematical depth, like in poker, but this type of design doesn't work well for RPGs, because the DM knows everything and is not trying to win the game by beating the PCs.

The problem with discarding your hand at the end of each turn is that you essentially change the setup to a basic ability heirarchy, where you pick the best ability out of the 4 to use each turn. It cuts down on combos for sure, but it's not tactical at all, and you end up with a system similar to 4E, where it probably doesn't matter what you use, since you're just relying on getting lucky to land any of your combos.

If you want a deep tactical game, it has to involve counters and there has to be a lot of abilities that take characters out of their element. For instance, some monsters may be immune to magical attack spells, and the wizard has to use buffs on his party members. Basically every monster has to have puzzle elements to it and enemy groups should be mixed, not composed of one single monster that everyone knows.

But be aware that as you raise the strategy, the simulation aspects of the game are going to take a hit, because the world is probably going to make a lot less sense and you'll run into a lot more questions like "why haven't shadows taken over the world?" because you'll be dealing with a great deal of puzzle monsters.

Ice9 wrote: Planning, on one scale or another, is the game.

Well this is half right. Making meaningful decisions is the game. War truly isn't a game because there are no decisions to be made. In fact if decisions are planned in advance such that there are no changes to your tactics during a battle, then it's not a game either, because you aren't making any meaningful decisions.

Planning has to factor in your decisions, but all your decisions can't be planned ahead of time. It's like chess where you can plan out a great attack strategy, but then your opponent makes a move to screw the whole thing up and you have to go plan something new. That's really what a good game needs.

FrankTrollman wrote:Planning ahead is bad for the game.

You have completely and totally lost me. It sounds like you really want a game in which people just do whatever the hell they feel like without any regard for...anything. As soon as you get an objective, like rescue the princess, you start making plans to achieve that goal. You're describing Twisp and Catsby the rpg, where every scene is a non sequitur.

Boolean wrote:Objectors:

I'm pretty sure we can make this work in a way which preserves teamwork. First, put in some synergies between low-level moves that are almost always available. Then, when you're going to have synergy between a high and a low-level move, make it so the high-level one is used first. That way, instead of hail mary situations where my level one Entangle is useful only because we then pray for your level-6 Fireball, successful comboes actually *increase* reliability. If Sleeper Hold (a martial arts attack that puts the target to sleep) is level 5 and Dream Eater (big psychic damage to sleeping target) is level 1, than when my monk rolls five, instead of just doing a pile of damage, I'm doing one good attack and setting up my friend to be useful regardless of what he rolls.

Doing that completely goes against the idea of Winds of Fate. The idea is that everyone does a different action each turn and no one knows what is going to happen. If a level one attack is totally awesome or becomes totally awesome after a certain event, everyone chooses that attack and everyone knows what is going to happen.

The only reason to go with Winds of Fate is to have people switch from being Clark Kent and Superman every round. If you give people awesome powers when they are in level one Clark Kent mode, you have completely screwed everything up. The whole idea was for people to be slave to a roll of the dice each turn.

Now I think that is pants-on-head retarded and I wouldn't play a game with that concept. If, however, you do like the concept you should stick with it.

Frank *never* said that short-term plans weren't allowed; he explicitly said that players can and should work together. What needs to be avoided is, planning out the fight before it happens, or planning out the entire fight in round one.

It's totally fine to have a one-two punch in the game, where I douse the enemy in oil and then you light them on fire. It's *not* fine for that to happen every fight.

We could avoid that in a number of ways. We could put in enough fire- or oil- resistant enemies that it only happens sometimes. We could let the oil move miss, forcing the fire guy to choose a new tactic. We could let the enemy *counter* the oil move, which does the same thing.

Or, we could make the oil move only sometimes be available.

Boolean wrote:Frank *never* said that short-term plans weren't allowed;

FrankTrollman wrote:Planning ahead is bad for the game.

Boolean wrote: It's totally fine to have a one-two punch in the game, where I douse the enemy in oil and then you light them on fire. It's *not* fine for that to happen every fight.

We could avoid that in a number of ways. We could put in enough fire- or oil- resistant enemies that it only happens sometimes. We could let the oil move miss, forcing the fire guy to choose a new tactic. We could let the enemy *counter* the oil move, which does the same thing.

Or, we could make the oil move only sometimes be available.

It is totally fine that one-two punches are in games. I would say that it is great that one-two punches are in games because they encourage teamwork. But in the system suggested a one two punch only happens about 9 percent of the time. Nobody takes oil spray because enemies only occasionally get lit on fire afterwards. Most of the time they just stand there and make blackface jokes.

I don't know why you are even arguing this. Frank has come right out and said that plans are bad for the game. It is apparently bad for Colossus to throw Wolverine in order to do the Fastball Special Attack. And if that is your goal, having Wolverine randomly turn into Jubilee is a fine system.

Having team tactics fail because of enemy features or terrain is good. It really does make the game more strategic. But if the system actively discourages team tactics then team tactics won't happen at all. And if you start writing in combos that happen even if you roll low there is no point in the Winds of Fate system. If dream eater is awesome sauce, I am just going to spam that. I don't care if I rolled high enough for ice beam and the Winds of Fate might as well not even be there.

Boolean wrote:We could avoid that in a number of ways. We could put in enough fire- or oil- resistant enemies that it only happens sometimes. We could let the oil move miss, forcing the fire guy to choose a new tactic. We could let the enemy *counter* the oil move, which does the same thing.

Or, we could make the oil move only sometimes be available.

So, which is the more interesting option?

The option where you always use the oil move if the WoF roll is high enough or the option where you are forced to use it depending on context (a context of which you generally only have partial knowledge, ie. you didn't necessarily spot his ring of energy resistance).

shau wrote:And if you start writing in combos that happen even if you roll low there is no point in the Winds of Fate system. If dream eater is awesome sauce, I am just going to spam that. I don't care if I rolled high enough for ice beam and the Winds of Fate might as well not even be there.

It's Hyper Ice Beam. Hyper means better. That's why it's level 5.

And what happens when the low-level Dream Eater (level 1) combo is not set up, say because your team mate was not able to get into position to use his Dream Seasoning move? Further, what if Hyper Ice Beam were to make further uses of Dream Eater on the target more potent?

MfA --

We could have both-- combos that are always available, sometimes appropriate *and* combos that are always appropriate, sometimes available.

Shau --

Your 9 percent number is bullshit. You assumed a 1/6 chance of getting each move. That's not how it works.

Imagine that Oil is a level 5 move, and Fire is a level 2 move.

Assuming that Oil/Fire is the best tactic and will be used whenever possible, it goes like this:

33% X 83% = a 28% chance of the oil/fire going off in any given fight. That's often enough to make the combo a recognizable signature move for that pair, but not make things boring. Now remember, that's the probability from before the fight starts. If I roll oil, and am deciding between my oil move and my normal sword stab, I'm looking at an 83% combo rate if I choose to use oil. That's totally worth it.

Then, add three more comboes, something like a 2 and 5, a 4 and 4, and a 3 and 6, I don't know. At that point, the odds of getting *a* combo off during the fight are very good, but you don't know ahead of time which one it is.