A Demon Haunted World

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:10 pm

Pariah Dog wrote:I'd be more in favor of higher hit rates for the sake of making combat faster. A 5 monster pack vs a 4 man party you're going to be looking at about 4 misses a round whenever you can't target the monster's weakpoint or worse yet streaks of bad luck. (Had a creature with a 50% miss chance once that was the last thing standing and after 3 rounds of the coin landing heads for everyone that ganged up on it the DM finally said fuck it, stop rolling 50% miss chance because this is taking forever.)

A 4 man party should be using their best abilities and they should be targeting the weaknesses of their opponents which, as I suggested, should have a higher success rate per attack. If your players refuse to engage with the system to try and get a higher success rate on their actions then a failure ridden grindy combat should be what they get.

jt · Post by jt » Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:54 am

I suggested a higher hit chance because it means stuff is actually happening on more turns. That's satisfied whether that's from core mechanics that center at a higher percent, core mechanics at 50% plus class bonuses that always somehow add up to that higher percent, a system of targeting weaknesses that somehow always add up to that higher percent, or some other scheme.

nockermensch wrote:Since this is a design experiment starting with the monster manual, should we also start with an expectation of how long a combat should last?

That's a great idea.

Along with that, I'd recommend asking -
- How long does a player turn take? (In real world clock time.)
- How long does a monster turn take?
- How many players are in the standard party?
- How many monsters are there in a standard battle?
- How long should a typical combat last?

D&D turns take about 90-120 seconds, and DM's turns are roughly half as long. For a 4v4 battle, that's 10.5 minutes per round. So if you want to fit a battle into a half hour, that only gives you three rounds.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue May 01, 2018 2:55 pm

nockermensch wrote:Since this is a design experiment starting with the monster manual, should we also start with an expectation of how long a combat should last?

If I had to choose a sweet spot for a "typical" combat duration, I'd pick something like 3 rounds. That's it, I'd like that the initiative count passed by each actor about three times. It's alright if a decisive success early on brings the number of rounds down to 2 or even 1 (checklist: does the game have reasonable morale breaking rules?), but if even a typical combat is expected to last 4 or more rounds, I'd consider the game needlessly grindy.

I'm cool with a "Boss Fight" lasting like 5 or 6 rounds, but these should be kind of rare.

My knee-jerk reaction would be 3-5 rounds. If the system included a reasonable morale system and incentives for surrender rather than always fighting to the death, that could help. You could have a fight that becomes somewhat of a foregone conclusion within three rounds, that ends in a surrender without slogging it out for two or three more rounds to kill everyone.

Also, a better system for disengaging and chasing would make it easier to handle retreats. 3E tends to have fights drag out because no one wants to get killed on an AoO once the fight goes south and just keeps fighting. When people do run, it tends to be a function of just checking the speeds of both sides, and if the runner is faster, checking the range of attacks. It almost never seems worth the actions to run, outside of teleportation or convoluted DM fiat GTFO escapes.

infected slut princess · Tue May 01, 2018 4:24 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
nockermensch wrote:Since this is a design experiment starting with the monster manual, should we also start with an expectation of how long a combat should last?

If I had to choose a sweet spot for a "typical" combat duration, I'd pick something like 3 rounds. That's it, I'd like that the initiative count passed by each actor about three times. It's alright if a decisive success early on brings the number of rounds down to 2 or even 1 (checklist: does the game have reasonable morale breaking rules?), but if even a typical combat is expected to last 4 or more rounds, I'd consider the game needlessly grindy.

I'm cool with a "Boss Fight" lasting like 5 or 6 rounds, but these should be kind of rare.
My knee-jerk reaction would be 3-5 rounds. If the system included a reasonable morale system and incentives for surrender rather than always fighting to the death, that could help.

Too long. Should be 1-3 rounds. For special boss fights or complex set pieces 3-5 rounds might be ok. If you have four guys on each side, three rounds is 24 characters/enemies taking turns. That's a lot of real life table time. As much as people complain about "rocket launcher tag", it's actually a practical and fun way to go.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue May 01, 2018 4:50 pm

infected slut princess wrote:As much as people complain about "rocket launcher tag", it's actually a practical and fun way to go.

Somewhat. I see a fair bit of pushback against rocket launcher tag, and I can empathize with their issues. For DMs, they feel like their effort to provide a scenario is wasted; four hours designing the monster and its tactics, only to see it die in ten minutes. For players, it's super easy for them to have a round not doing anything (missed attack, suffer a one round delay from an attack, etc) and therefore they were useless for a literal majority of the encounter.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Tue May 01, 2018 6:59 pm

Sometimes a fight should be short and sometimes it should be long(er). The main deal is that if your attacks are working, the fight should generally be short, but if you're spending a lot of actions on buffing/recovery the fight going long (and grinding out a victory) is good. Having different types of fights (100% aggro, 85% defensive) is good - it means that options matter. If both sides go full aggro, you want it to end quickly - ~3 rounds. But if you've created defensive actions that are meaningful (ie, worth more than just piling on the attacks) you'll actually have created a resource mini-game that makes sense.

In 3.x, using your best attack is almost always the best option with the only caveat that if you expect to have another encounter immediately saving heavy firepower is incentivized. I've seen wizards needing a natural 20 and still attacking for 1d4 because dealing ANY damage is better than a TPK.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 01, 2018 8:05 pm

I'm not really bothered by how many times you go around the table. A typical game of Uno has people taking upwards of 10 turns and it still goes fast, while a game of Warhammer is just 4-6 turns and takes an equal number of hours. There is definitely some friction in splitting actions down. Every time you pass the story stick that's time that the action isn't progressing. But there's also time to think on other peoples' turns, and if individual turns are "big" enough, players end up spending a lot of time thinking on their turns, which is bullshit. Clearly there's a sweet spot to be had there, but equally clearly it will vary from person to person and group to group what that sweet spot actually is.

The most compelling argument for the number of turns is the issue of characters "never doing anything." That's frustrating on both ends of the DM screen. Turns should be numerous enough that players get a chance to contribute during the battle.

The flip side of that is that if you're going to have 3+ turns for each player, those turns have to be fast. The big thing I'd want done is to get rid of mid-action action declarations. Like sequential iterative attacks and quickened spells. That shit slows shit down without any obvious benefit.

-Username17

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Tue May 01, 2018 11:01 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The big thing I'd want done is to get rid of mid-action action declarations. Like sequential iterative attacks and quickened spells. That shit slows shit down without any obvious benefit.

While casting an arbitrary second spell or taking arbitrarily many attacks is slow, they're not always bad. Tome of Battle boosts and the various swift-action spells that buff your next action are pretty fast to resolve; that kind of one-two punch setup tends to be thought of as one unit when planning out your turn, and trying to achieve the same result by buffing yourself one round and attacking the next is more complicated and leaves you with a round of effectively doing nothing.

Same thing with Rapid Shot, Snap Kick, and other "hit this guy, then smack him again if he doesn't go down, otherwise hit someone else" abilities. Two attacks with the same attack and damage numbers is a sweet spot where you don't have everything riding on a single die roll but it's not too hard to figure out what you want to do either.

So as long as you're careful about what kinds of mid-action buffs you can use and how many attacks you can make, I'd say there's probably more benefit to keeping them in than taking them out.

jt · Post by jt » Wed May 02, 2018 12:06 am

So I recently timed some actual groups with a stop watch.

D&D 5E takes roughly 50 seconds per attack action, 40 seconds per other action, 4 seconds per player switch. The DM is about twice as fast at actions.

So an opportunity attack actually takes a whole minute, due to the two player switches. And a mass save spell takes an extra four seconds per player.

These numbers are very rough (small sample sizes, averaged in my head), though the variance wasn't actually all that high. I was surprised just how much extra time a simple move action took. I was also surprised how a relatively in the ball group like Critical Role still got confused about turn order in the face of an opportunity attack.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed May 02, 2018 4:12 am

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm not really bothered by how many times you go around the table. A typical game of Uno has people taking upwards of 10 turns and it still goes fast, while a game of Warhammer is just 4-6 turns and takes an equal number of hours. There is definitely some friction in splitting actions down. Every time you pass the story stick that's time that the action isn't progressing. But there's also time to think on other peoples' turns, and if individual turns are "big" enough, players end up spending a lot of time thinking on their turns, which is bullshit. Clearly there's a sweet spot to be had there, but equally clearly it will vary from person to person and group to group what that sweet spot actually is.

The most compelling argument for the number of turns is the issue of characters "never doing anything." That's frustrating on both ends of the DM screen. Turns should be numerous enough that players get a chance to contribute during the battle.

The flip side of that is that if you're going to have 3+ turns for each player, those turns have to be fast. The big thing I'd want done is to get rid of mid-action action declarations. Like sequential iterative attacks and quickened spells. That shit slows shit down without any obvious benefit.

-Username17

Did you get your assymetric threat game mechanics to a playable state? I remember it was something like people choose what they're doing then they do a single roll or opposed roll to resolve. How much tabletop time does that take up and how many rounds does it usually take to finish an encounter in your system?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed May 02, 2018 4:12 am

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm not really bothered by how many times you go around the table. A typical game of Uno has people taking upwards of 10 turns and it still goes fast, while a game of Warhammer is just 4-6 turns and takes an equal number of hours. There is definitely some friction in splitting actions down. Every time you pass the story stick that's time that the action isn't progressing. But there's also time to think on other peoples' turns, and if individual turns are "big" enough, players end up spending a lot of time thinking on their turns, which is bullshit. Clearly there's a sweet spot to be had there, but equally clearly it will vary from person to person and group to group what that sweet spot actually is.

The most compelling argument for the number of turns is the issue of characters "never doing anything." That's frustrating on both ends of the DM screen. Turns should be numerous enough that players get a chance to contribute during the battle.

The flip side of that is that if you're going to have 3+ turns for each player, those turns have to be fast. The big thing I'd want done is to get rid of mid-action action declarations. Like sequential iterative attacks and quickened spells. That shit slows shit down without any obvious benefit.

-Username17

Did you get your assymetric threat game mechanics to a playable state? I remember it was something like people choose what they're doing then they do a single roll or opposed roll to resolve. How much tabletop time does that take up and how many rounds does it usually take to finish an encounter in your system?

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed May 02, 2018 4:44 am

FrankTrollman wrote: The flip side of that is that if you're going to have 3+ turns for each player, those turns have to be fast. The big thing I'd want done is to get rid of mid-action action declarations. Like sequential iterative attacks and quickened spells. That shit slows shit down without any obvious benefit.

How do we handle Charizard?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed May 02, 2018 8:11 am

jt wrote:So I recently timed some actual groups with a stop watch.

D&D 5E takes roughly 50 seconds per attack action, 40 seconds per other action, 4 seconds per player switch. The DM is about twice as fast at actions.

So an opportunity attack actually takes a whole minute, due to the two player switches. And a mass save spell takes an extra four seconds per player.

These numbers are very rough (small sample sizes, averaged in my head), though the variance wasn't actually all that high. I was surprised just how much extra time a simple move action took. I was also surprised how a relatively in the ball group like Critical Role still got confused about turn order in the face of an opportunity attack.

That sounds about right to me. It means that giving someone a bonus attack like TWF or Rapid Fire almost doubles the length of their turns and that interrupt actions increase the length of turns by more than double (because you switch out and then back in to your turn). Such things can still be worthwhile if they do cool things, but the cost in table time is considerable. Building it into peoples' normal action routine is probably a terrible thing that you should not do.

Your actual target is probably 20-30 minutes for a normal combat, and your two big constraints on that is that handing the story stick has a real time cost but also that if a player doesn't feel like they contributed during a 20-30 minute combat that's the equivalent of them going off and watching a rerun of He-Man on DVD.

If you figure a minute for each person's turn (which is probably a floor given sufficiently simple action choices and resolutions), that could get you 3-5 turn combats as a totally plausible target.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed May 02, 2018 8:38 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:How do we handle Charizard?

Wat?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed May 02, 2018 8:54 am

My understanding is that you handle Charizard with Azumarill. Between Fairy and Water it has a number of ways of handling Charizard while it tries to Dragon Dance itself into a proper sweeper.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed May 02, 2018 12:19 pm

Fairy is only going to help you if Charizard Mega-Evolves into the form that is Fire/Dragon. Even then you just gain immunity to Dragon attacks with Water giving Resistance to Fire - your Fairy and Water attacks will both hit neutral against it. For landing Super Effective hits you want good old Rock, nothing beats that, or Earth. Or Dragon, but obviously bringing a Dragon to a Dragon fight is risky business.

If Charizard isn't Mega-Evolving (or chooses the other form), Fairy is helping you even less and you want your more traditional Water (because Fire), Electric (because Flying) or Rock (because both).

But even with all of that... I'm not sure where it fits in to this discussion on turn length. Is "Charizard" a stand-in for "The 3E idea of a Cleric who casts five spells then runs in and fights better than a fighter (even though they're probably better off just casting SoL spells)"? That's the closest I can think of, and I don't really think of Charizard as the iconic "multiple rounds of set-up" pokemon.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed May 02, 2018 1:26 pm

It still rustles my jimmies that Charizard isn’t a dragon type.

I’m guessing capn was being stupid of one flavor or another. Either conflating codzilla w charizard (and missing that that is a diff problem) or just being goofy.

Now something that complicates and slows turns regardless of system would be monster summoning/minions. While I give benefit of the doubt often to a fault - even I’m not charitable enough to grant that that is what capn was asking about.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri May 04, 2018 12:02 am

Sorry, I could have sworn we used "Charizard" as a shorthand for summons, which are usually one of the big causes of mid turn extra action declarations.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Fri May 04, 2018 1:23 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Sorry, I could have sworn we used "Charizard" as a shorthand for summons, which are usually one of the big causes of mid turn extra action declarations.

That would be the more generic "pokemons" term to refer to minion specialists.

jt · Post by jt » Fri May 04, 2018 2:32 am

You can handle minion specialists by starting them off with just one summon at a time, Pokemon style, and spend their entire turn directing the summon. One way to make that interesting is having a small pool of different summons at 1/day each, so you're using a different Pokemon each fight.

And then when your characters are big enough to have their own holdings and armies, the summoner can have actual mass summoning rituals that are on par with the troops the fighter can recruit from their kingdom.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri May 04, 2018 5:19 am

So how would you handle a spell like animate object to animate 5 swords. As it is each sword attacks or defends individually.

It's not really a war scale spell, there's also character concepts based around telekinesis of multiple smaller-than-man-sized objects that are around the power level of "magic sword guy with one sword"

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Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Fri May 04, 2018 7:17 am

Don't give out attacks for each individual sword. Maybe instead do something like increase the damage dealt the higher your attack roll goes over their AC.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 04, 2018 7:25 am

The key point as far as Pokemasters go is that DM actions generally take half as long as player actions. That is to say, if you are acting for a Summoner and a Minion, and those characters are both simpler than the Berserker in terms of options and bonuses and shit, it actually takes the exact same amount of table time to resolve both those actions as it does to resolve one action from a character who is unitary but more complex. The Necromancer who shoots a shadow bolt and also has a skeleton warrior doesn't take more table time than the Elementalist who has four different blasts to choose from.

OB wrote:So how would you handle a spell like animate object to animate 5 swords.

That's the difficult zone. Summoning one Skeleton isn't a problem because it doesn't particularly dilate time. Summoning five hundred Skeletons isn't a problem because it just adds some Shock and Skirmish value to your army. But summoning five Skeletons is a big problem because that's:

In the range of actions that Necromancers should be able to do and needs to be supported.
Is of sufficiently high numbers that it will obviously slow down play to run them individually.
Is too small a number to be reasonably aggregated into a swarm unit.

Certainly a possibility is to simply accept that there is a level range where combats are slower affairs with more stuff going on, bookended by smaller engagements on the one side and more abstracted engagements on the other. Another possibility is to have other time saving mechanisms like team morale kick in for those medium-size engagements to try to get the time back in other ways.

-Username17

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri May 04, 2018 9:31 am

You can also just have the five skeletons operate in a very constrained fashion. For example, suppose that a necromancer could do any of the following as a standard action:

Cast Withering Curse, afflicting the target with a debuff and doing 1d8 physical damage per adjacent skeleton.
Cast Waves of Horror, causing enemies to flee in terror from the necromancer and all of their skeletons.
Cast Shadow Bolt, which does a necrotic damage in an AoE, hurting the living and healing the undead.
Cast Animate Dead, turning a corpse into a skeleton if the necromancer isn't already at their limit.
Have ONE individual skeleton take a move and take a standard action, or do a full attack sequence.
Have ONE skeleton start doing a simple noncombat task, like "hold this sack and follow me".
Have ALL the skeletons move a distance up to their speed, even to different places. Can't all attack.

Yes, that would still be a bit slower than a Berserker's turn. But it wouldn't be six times slower, and most of the slow-down would be limited to a single turn - the one where the necromancer does the initial positioning for their skeletons. This is particularly true if you got rid of opportunity attacks.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri May 04, 2018 1:31 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:But summoning five Skeletons is a big problem because that's:

In the range of actions that Necromancers should be able to do and needs to be supported.

Is of sufficiently high numbers that it will obviously slow down play to run them individually.

Is too small a number to be reasonably aggregated into a swarm unit.

This isn't as robust as what Grek suggested, but what if we place an inherent limitation on summoners that they can only give and maintain one command per turn, whether it's given to one or many minions. So, you could just tell all five to attack the ogre, and possibly even have rules for making a single attack with all five of them combined. You would have to stipulate what could and couldn't be commanded. Stuff like "attack the creature in front of you" is perfectly valid, logically, but would still potentially result in five separate attack rolls, so we'd like to avoid that. I'm not sure if this can be done without looking like obvious "game-based" limitations in the fantasy world.

Another idea is that there are two types of summons: level-appropriate summons that must be controlled on an action-per-action basis, so you only ever direct one at a time, and minions. The minions are always much weaker than you and your opposition, and must always be dealt with using swarm/mob mechanics. Thus, there would be no middle ground where you'd be controlling five distinct monsters on the board. For better or for worse, this means your level one necromancer gets a human skeleton or a pack of zombie rats, and your level seven necromancer gets a giant skeleton or a group of human skeletons (which could shoot bows in an AoE volley). I don't know how satisfying this would feel at the table.