Reviving TNE

[Username17]

Right. This is indeed pretty similar to FUDGE/FATE, but it does away with the boxes entirely - there's just the modifiers because the boxes don't seem to be needed.

-Username17

[rapa-nui]

You're right about that. As long as you are getting hit, and your penalties are building up, eventually the accruing minuses will mean you get hit lethally, no boxes necessary.

I think it's worth making up some plausible numbers (the ones in your example seem fine) and putting it into the wiki. In my experience, it works very well.

[angelfromanotherpin]

300, Vietnam War, Viking invaders trashing Europe, Roman legionaires trashing Europe, ancient Chinese (and modern) militaries, technologically superior Israeli army vs. Palestinian insurgents, and so on.
Not always beefier, but more of and more aggressive.

As far as I know, only the American victory over Japan with the nukes showed how the few can conquer the many, and that was a short-lived strategy once Russians got their own.

You do know that many of your own examples actually contain wonderful instances of the few conquering the many, right? In particular, the Roman legions were usually outnumbered 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in Gaul and Britain.

And what are you smoking that you think the Japanese outnumbered the Americans in WWII?

[Username17]

You're right about that. As long as you are getting hit, and your penalties are building up, eventually the accruing minuses will mean you get hit lethally, no boxes necessary.

I think it's worth making up some plausible numbers (the ones in your example seem fine) and putting it into the wiki. In my experience, it works very well.

OK, Here we go.

-Username17

[Koumei]

In particular, the Roman legions were usually outnumbered 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in Gaul and Britain.

Impossible. My resources* show that legions of Romans were in fact defeated by only a small handful of Gauls at a time.

*Asterix

[Username17]

In particular, the Roman legions were usually outnumbered 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in Gaul and Britain.

Impossible. My resources* show that legions of Romans were in fact defeated by only a small handful of Gauls at a time.

*Asterix

Heh. That's a French reimagining of the scenarios.

As a rule, Roman battles went more like This

Commanders
Gaius Suetonius Paulinus / Boudica †
Strength
Reported as 10,000 / Reported as 230,000
Casualties and losses
Reported as 400 / Reported as almost 80,000

-Username17

[virgil]

So are we going with the 3d6 model for damage?

What situations will modify attack bonuses and what situations will modify damage bonuses?

[Username17]

So are we going with the 3d6 model for damage?

I like it for many reasons. But I hold out the possibility of having some attacks that are specifically chaotic and roll a d20 instead. As it has the same average and a different curve, that would be entirely workable as a power.

What situations will modify attack bonuses and what situations will modify damage bonuses?

In general, positional advantage and the like should modify attack rolls, while damage effects and personal conditions should usually modify damage rolls. Structurally when you get a bonus to hit you are more likely to win, but no more likely to win next turn. While getting a damage bonus increases your chance of actually dropping an enemy.

In a battle against similarly powerful enemies, a bonus to hit makes things less random, and a bonus to damage makes things more random, and both make you more likely to win.

-Username17

[virgil]

As disparate levels of fighting prowess is seen as improved chances in hitting (and winning, for that matter). So I guess damage shouldn't scale with level, but attack bonus should, as would AC.

However, I like the idea of brutes becoming the mooks of tomorrow, and I'd like to maintain versimilitude and avoid actually creating a mook template like they did with 4E. So can we assume the possibility of some kind of Power Attack, where you take a penalty in exchange for an increase to damage? I can't put my finger on why I want this, but I think it would be better if the penalty was to AC rather than attack; perhaps because that way the mooks/imps will actually pose some kind of offensive threat when you choose to sweep through them? It's also a way to avoid the "total power attack and hope for a natural 20!" scenario (from either side), though that can still be a problem if you have equal-level minions who are going to die in one-hit anyway. Maybe a penalty to both AC & Attack (lower your effective level in exchange for greater damage)?

A problem is that if there's a non-mook in the fray, you can just attack him without using a Power Attack and almost totally ignore the mooks because of their constant whiffing.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

However, I like the idea of brutes becoming the mooks of tomorrow...

This is accomplished with CAN. If you are significantly higher in level than your opponent, they are a mook/minion, and you can one-shot them.

[Username17]

As disparate levels of fighting prowess is seen as improved chances in hitting (and winning, for that matter). So I guess damage shouldn't scale with level, but attack bonus should, as would AC.

Actually I was thinking that Level should scale damage output, but not to-hit chances.

However, I like the idea of brutes becoming the mooks of tomorrow, and I'd like to maintain versimilitude and avoid actually creating a mook template like they did with 4E.

And this is why. If to-hits stay on roughly the same schedule, then whether a monster is exploding on every hit or takes multiple attacks with a shrug it's still competing at the same level.

-Username17

[virgil]

If such is the case, then are bonuses to AC/Attack going to be virtually nonexistant once they've been set in stone? Because of the inherent bonuses to damage merely from leveling, I would think attacks are always level-appropriate.

I would think that coming up with a sufficiently large variety of attacks/defenses that you can have at least a dozen distinct high-level characters would be difficult unless you have new options arise at a fairly slow pace; assuming that we're still shooting for a range of 30 levels. There's still the decision on how many different recharge rates we want as options.

[Shatner]

I'm excited about the developments in TNE but I'm having a hard time keeping the current combat and skill system straight. Could I humbly ask for a few examples of combat and skills in use? Specifically, I'd like to see what numbers are meant to scale as you level, how CAN values change over the course of a combat, how common skill-challenges would be resolved (unlocking a locked door, climbing a slippery surface, lying to a guard, figuring out what the arcane scribbles on an alter means) and how typical combat events are handled (hitting someone with a sword when they are defending, hitting someone with a sword when they aren't defending, pinning someone down, resisting a magical compulsion, disarming a enemy).

With a few examples of what the current design is, it'd make all the discussion make a lot more sense to me and (perhaps) a few others. Thanks.

[Username17]

If such is the case, then are bonuses to AC/Attack going to be virtually nonexistant once they've been set in stone? Because of the inherent bonuses to damage merely from leveling, I would think attacks are always level-appropriate.

There's plenty room for weak accurate attacks, inaccurate and devastating attacks, conditions which increase accuracy, tactical situations where you hit more readily, and so on and so forth. The thing that shouldn't exist is Weapon Focus. An ability where you just "in general" hit more often pushes you towards the edge of the RNG and makes the game stop working.

I would think that coming up with a sufficiently large variety of attacks/defenses that you can have at least a dozen distinct high-level characters would be difficult unless you have new options arise at a fairly slow pace; assuming that we're still shooting for a range of 30 levels. There's still the decision on how many different recharge rates we want as options

I'm... not sure honestly. 4e's problem isn't that you have 4 abilities to choose from, but that your 4 abilities aren't meaningfully different. Certainly you get like 4 powers in Final Fantasy Tactics, and that's fine. A situation where you upgrade abilities rather than continually getting new ones is actually quite workable. I could even see a situation in which players didn't inherently gain damage bonuses for being higher level, but instead used abilities which had higher damage values and traded up (although obviously I'm not married to that, because I like the idea of using signature moves level to level).

One thing I definitely found with my experiments in SAME Disgaea was that having only 2 at-will abilities is not near enough. You get into a position where ability A is better than ability B and then you go A! A! A! A!... It gets boring.

In general, I think that players should have more at-will powers and less use-limited powers. In short, that 4e has it exactly backwards. A use-limited power is used rarely by definition, so it should probably be recognizable. Like a signature move for each character. Voltron has the Sword, and when you swap that out for a wide variety of different limited-use powers it ends up being comedy like Megas XLR. On the flip side, a power usable at-will is going to get pretty boring if there isn't something to break up the monotony.

But how many at-wills and use limiteds? Not sure. But there should definitely be a relative lot of at-wills over use-limited at all levels.

-Username17

[virgil]

A 3.5 wizard is nothing but use-limited (barring equipment), but he gets such a plethora of use-limited powers that he's basically an at-will user that has trouble repeating the same move. He went from 3/rest to 57/rest, though one could argue that it was closer to 17/rest & up to 50 buffs.

The warlock, barring the weakness of any individual ability, seemed to get by with (2+half level) at-wills; so I would think that to be a good guideline for how many attack options one should have if there's nothing but at-wills.

And what is limited-use? Obviously the encounter and daily ones are, but what about the various forms of If/Then attacks?

• Combo: Must have used a particular attack last round.
  Situational: Target must meet a certain condition (flanked, bloodied, etc).
  Kamehameha: Spent X number of actions prepping the attack, may or may not be required to immediately release once the requisite actions have been spent.
  Pavlov's Snacks: As seen in an older thread, hitting with an attack not only has its normal effect, but grants the attacker a point of 'mana' which opens up the option for the use of other attacks, some of the more powerful moves either not granting mana after hitting or actually costing mana to use (or both for the Omega Strike).

Just as a random brainstorm and modification from an old idea I mentioned awhile back. The basic idea was making combos more complex than 1-2-3-..., and having combos work as a tree. As a way to ensure that the basic attacks are more numerous than the advanced ones, you could have the combo list look almost like a pyramid. You have a decent number of Tier 1 attacks that don't require anything, then have a slightly smaller list of Tier 2s where each one can be used so long as one of two Tier 1s were used previously (and so on...).

For example...
Tier 1: Magic Missile, Ray of Enfeeblement, Grease, Silent Image
Tier 2: Wither (weakens victim of MM or RoE), Glitterdust (erupts from G or SI)

Obviously we would use different spells/effects, but that's the basic idea, and it likely shouldn't get any deeper than Tier 4. We could expand/contract the number of connected abilities with each combo power in a Tier.

[Username17]

Apparently, 14 is the maximum length of a series that people can remember the contents of without being wrong more than half the time.

So when we ask what a character does, the reply should max out at 14 things.

-Username17

[virgil]

Should we include universal activities in that list of 14 things, such as grappling, simple weapon attacks, bull rushes, etc?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Should we include universal activities in that list of 14 things, such as grappling, simple weapon attacks, bull rushes, etc?

Nah. Separate lists are remembered separately; as long as the person compartmentalizes 'My character's special attacks', 'general combat actions', and 'special move actions' separately the concatenated list can be significantly larger.


I'd try to go with membership not greater than seven if memory is the issue. 'The average person can remember every element' might be a better breakpoint than 'the average person can remember half of them'.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Well, people won't always be trying to remember all of their attacks at once. It'll be more like "hmm, what are my ranged attack options here? Oh, A, B, C, or D" or "What do have that's accurate, even if the damage is low? Well, A, D, F, and G."

Since they don't have to list off all 14 at once, just the ones that are appropriate for their given situation, 14 seems fine. You wouldn't want to go higher, and could very well go lower, but it won't mean people are forgetting half of their moves every round.

[Draco_Argentum]

Thats only if people index by all those qualities. It also only functions if someone attempts to recall the subset. If I ask player A what player B's character can do expect them to have less effective indexing and be unable to remember it all. That would hurt the cooperative story.

I could even see a situation in which players didn't inherently gain damage bonuses for being higher level, but instead used abilities which had higher damage values and traded up

I don't like this so much. It tends towards fake new abilities that are just the old ones with larger numbers. Thats ass in 4e and is going to stay ass in TNE. It also means people need to remember what abilities the rest of the players swapped out last level.

[Username17]

I don't like this so much. It tends towards fake new abilities that are just the old ones with larger numbers. Thats ass in 4e and is going to stay ass in TNE. It also means people need to remember what abilities the rest of the players swapped out last level.

That's good point. Abilities should be handed out and replaced at a rate that the other players can bother remembering that you did that.

One thing is that the other players don't need to remember what exactly all of your powers do. If the elementalist can raise sulfurous clouds (area attack vs. Fortitude) and create fiery explosions (area attack vs. Tenacity), the other players don't need to precisely remember that to have those things not be a surprise. The elementalist makes big red clouds of damage. The fact that one is optimized against the grass people and another is optimized against the sprites is something for the elementalist's player to keep in mind, the rest of the players probably just have to remember that those attacks are going to come in big circles on the battle mat.

---

But regardless, characters are going to want to improve more times than players are going to want to keep track of abilities. So you're going to be stuck having players trade in abilities for other, better abilities.

I don't currently see any way around that.

-Username17

[Orion]

Frank -- Can't the abilities just scale to level? Or is tat no longer desireable for some reason?

[Username17]

Frank -- Can't the abilities just scale to level? Or is tat no longer desireable for some reason?

Oh they can, but that can't be the exclusive method of advancement. One doesn't want to get into the situation of 4e where characters do the same thing over and over again at all levels with slightly different numbers.

The 4e thing where every single level grants a real change in your abilities is a good one. The problem they have is that getting to level 13 and changing out an attack that gives an ally a one turn +2 AC bonus for an attack that does an extra 9 damage and gives an ally 10 temporary hit points isn't a super big deal when it's use limited in either case.

Characters should have their abilities change every level. Otherwise there's no reason to go up levels. And characters should care about the changes to their abilities, otherwise there's no reason to have the changes.

-Username17

[virgil]

What about starting with a smallish number of abilities that scale, and gaining new ones (that also scale, and likely have aspects that require a higher level) as you rise in level?

[Draco_Argentum]

At some point gaining new abilities each level will result in the players simply having too many abilities. This would put a limit on the maximum level the system can support properly. Thats not necessarily a problem, its not like its a competition to have the mostest levels of any game evar! But it probably restricts us to ten levels. I'm personally fine with that as the maximum level.