The Gaming Den

If you're just doing it so you can claim you have 22 different options when 10 of them are the same thing, that's just plain stupid. Whether some are slightly inferior to each other or they're all the same, writing melee basic attack 10 times with different names is a terrible idea for bad game designers. You're much better off using a single melee basic attack mechanic and letting people flavor it how they want to.

The point is that the powers are not basically all of the same or barely indistinguishable from each other. In power schemes in which the best powers are dead-obvious like 4E or Book of Nine Swords, yeah, you won't have much option paralysis because no one is ever going to pick anything but Blade Cascade, but in a fair scheme you're faced with two problems if you don't want to use WoF:

1) Do the 3E wizard D&D thing and give people access to 30+ powers at once. This creates option paralysis and people fall into the pattern of 'spam charm spells' anyway because Complacent Gaming Syndrome is a very real thing.

2) Let people select from a very limited list, like 6-12 powers. This leads to Five Moves of Doom where nearly every combat ends up in the exact same combination and becomes really boring. You can see this frickin' happen in 4E, where even classes with a genuinely diverse power set like wizards still have a decision tree you legibly can put on a Post-It Note.


The thing that MfA and you are fantasizing about where people have 10 distinct powers that do different things and you reward people for picking the 'right' power never really works. Even in Mutants and Masterminds d20, which opens the floodgates to do anything you want with any power as long as you spent a Hero Point often has players spamming their same powers despite the game going out of its way to offer alternate situations in the solution books. Seriously, just read the goddamn logs for the Crucible City MUX and that stupid Heroes MUX pastiche that used that system. Players stuck to patterns and often didn't go for 'just as planned!' bait that seemed obvious to outsiders. Why is that?

1) It's often not as obvious as you think it would be for people to pick that 'just as planned' power. For example, should you hit the fire elemental with an Empowered Iceball, a Plane Shift, or a Wall of Stone? Depending on how you construct the game, they all might be equally useful even though a layperson would say 'go for the Iceball!'. Without such obvious decision points, the average person is going to default to what they feel most comfortable with, which invariably leads to ability spam.

2) Even if you do have a This Power Works Best situation, a lot of people aren't going to take it anyway. Either because of cautiousness, paranoia, roleplaying reasons, or they're just not that bright. They will of course stick to what they're comfortable with, which invariable leads to ability spam.

3) Those 'OMG that was just a PERFECT use of that power!' situations happen in comics and cartoons because, get this: the writers get a lot longer than 5 minutes to come up with something and even have considerable power to manipulate events into a 'just as planned' situation. The 'Iron Man modulates his laser to hit a ghost' tactic might seem obvious to you because you crafted the adventure, but it might not to the people actually playing it--at least not within a reasonable time frame. If someone is on a time crunch they will tend to default to what they feel most familiar with, which leads to ability spam.

Swordslinger wrote: WoF is a losers design philosophy. It's saying "I can't balance the game and its choices, so I'm just going to limit your choices via random roll, so you don't spam the uber move I created every turn."

WoF is the exact opposite of that. Because WoF allows players to have a higher number of abilities without it being unmanageable, the game designer has to work harder to have a balanced set. Well, I mean for the standard 'matrix' WoF system anyway; the shitty WoF ones like the 4E monster manual and Crusader ones you only have to write as many 'good' powers as with spell charges.

For example, take the 4E Cleric. The 4E Cleric has a huge number of worthless or counterintuitive powers, yet (as least the Wis-primary variant) consistently ranks top-tier as a leader because they can only use a tiny proportion of the powers printed. If the 4E Cleric was switched to a sensible WoF schematic it'd suddenly rank down there with Assassin and Shaman because of all of those turkey abilities.

It's why Book of Nine Swords managed to be a power-up for sword-based characters despite 80% of the maneuvers being utter shit that's inferior to Barbarian Rage + Full Attack.

I am with sword on exactly one point. I can't fathom how you're going to construct this system with a decent number of classes and abilities (enough to fill up every level) along with having magic items and the like without having "Basic attack" written in so many words a few hundred times. I really, really have to know more about the system to make a judgment but the way I imagine it all the simplifying that using this WoF system might grant is going to force you to make other mechanics more complex to keep the system as a whole interesting at all. Again, I'd have to see it before I know how I'd feel.

hogarth wrote: ...and now we circle back to the comment I keep making: Improving the set of available maneuvers would be way, way more valuable in terms of adding variety than adding more randomness (which adds very little and could even subtract from overall enjoyment).

No, it doesn't add variety, even if you make the powers equally palatable.

A) Yes, from campaign-to-campaign it'll add variety, but it won't add variety from scene-to-scene (see 4th Edition D&D characters) because they only get to choose a small number of finite powers anyway.

B) If you allow characters to switch out powers frequently and/or have a huge list to choose from at once, it leads to option paralysis. Which of course leads to people sticking to the same small set of moves, because that's how people deal with option paralysis.

MGuy wrote: I am with sword on exactly one point. I can't fathom how you're going to construct this system with a decent number of classes and abilities (enough to fill up every level) along with having magic items and the like without having "Basic attack" written in so many words a few hundred times. I really, really have to know more about the system to make a judgment but the way I imagine it all the simplifying that using this WoF system might grant is going to force you to make other mechanics more complex to keep the system as a whole interesting at all. Again, I'd have to see it before I know how I'd feel.

3rd Edition D&D's magic system, once you factor in a couple of sourcebooks, rises to the challenge fairly well. Even after you do factor out the majority of vanilla damage spells and strictly non-combat spells.

But you are right about one thing; since it generates a big list of possible results, it is definitely a lot more work than writing 4E's power system. Like 4E was able to get away with having 3-4 distinct encounter powers per level, a decent WoF system will seriously need 5-6 to start with. Meaning that a classplosion with WoF is going to be very hard to do and that you might need to do some power incest to get things down to a reasonable size. And of course it means that Vanilla Action Heroes are going to have to be banned after a certain point in the game, but those leeching assholes need to be banned anyway.

That is the thing. I'd imagine that the complexity of the game would have to be on more of a MtG scale. Not saying that MtG is over complicated but because you're dealing with an rpg instead of just pvp card game things will get extra sticky I'd imagine.

If you're willing to write Magic and Trap Card abilities into the matrix along with meta-abilities it could cut down on the "Different Name Same Power" problem. Meta-abilities being things like "Reroll your Matrix dice" or "Hit the opponent and choose what his next Matrix roll will be." They could be added to every classes ability list too.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: The thing that MfA and you are fantasizing about where people have 10 distinct powers that do different things and you reward people for picking the 'right' power never really works. Even in Mutants and Masterminds d20, which opens the floodgates to do anything you want with any power as long as you spent a Hero Point often has players spamming their same powers despite the game going out of its way to offer alternate situations in the solution books. Seriously, just read the goddamn logs for the Crucible City MUX and that stupid Heroes MUX pastiche that used that system. Players stuck to patterns and often didn't go for 'just as planned!' bait that seemed obvious to outsiders. Why is that?

But some PCs want an obvious choice. If you have a PC whose happy with just doing a basic mediocre attack action every combat and doing damage without much thought, That's fine. Some people want simple characters that do simple things. You shouldn't press them to play someone complicated. Occasionally you want to give them areas where their main attack is suboptimal and they want to use something else, but not always.

Rules are there to balance different character concepts and playstyles, not force them on people. The rules are there to offer me useful and balanced options, not to force me into making various choices.

Swordslinger wrote:But some PCs want an obvious choice. If you have a PC whose happy with just doing a basic mediocre attack action every combat and doing damage without much thought, That's fine. Some people want simple characters that do simple things. You shouldn't press them to play someone complicated. Occasionally you want to give them areas where their main attack is suboptimal and they want to use something else, but not always.

Rules are there to balance different character concepts and playstyles, not force them on people. The rules are there to offer me useful and balanced options, not to force me into making various choices.

I've yet to see a WoF system that put the Attack directive on the wheel. You'll probably want to use your Holy Sword or Yin-Yang Magic abilities instead, but Attack is always available.

Swordslinger wrote:But some PCs want an obvious choice. If you have a PC whose happy with just doing a basic mediocre attack action every combat and doing damage without much thought, That's fine. Some people want simple characters that do simple things. You shouldn't press them to play someone complicated.

I am not really a fan of WoF, but that is exactly what it is supposed to solve: Give players less options to choose from, and make those distinct enough so they do not have to worry about numbers and calculations. I'm not a fan of not getting to choose what power to use when, but getting to choose from Power Slam (knockdown everyone smaller than you in melee range), Lunge (move, then do a single attack) and Skirmish (attack, then move backward) is easy. And it is much easier than choosing between disarm, knockdown and trip, or between fireball, flame strike and burning hands. Having to do calculations on similar effects is hard and boring. Having to choose between attacking the boss, wiping out some grunts and staging a fighting withdrawal is easy and interesting. And WoF can be arranged to give you exactly the same options as a traditional system, yet never give you similar options on any given turn.

Of course, is someone isn't even interested in having to choose between fireballing a bunch of mooks and fire darting the Ogre Mage you are fucked. But the same is true for any system.

Murtak wrote: I am not really a fan of WoF, but that is exactly what it is supposed to solve: Give players less options to choose from, and make those distinct enough so they do not have to worry about numbers and calculations.

Less options? Every sample Winds of Fate table I've seen Frank post has had at least 16 or 18 entries in it. Most games I've seen have something like 4 to 6 different options at most that your character might reasonably choose from in combat; that would be one or two rows (out of 4 or 6 or whatever) in a Winds of Fate table, from the sound of it.

hogarth wrote:

Murtak wrote: I am not really a fan of WoF, but that is exactly what it is supposed to solve: Give players less options to choose from, and make those distinct enough so they do not have to worry about numbers and calculations.

Less options? Every sample Winds of Fate table I've seen Frank post has had at least 16 or 18 entries in it. Most games I've seen have something like 4 to 6 different options at most that your character might reasonably choose from in combat; that would be one or two rows (out of 4 or 6 or whatever) in a Winds of Fate table, from the sound of it.

Yes. The same dozen or more entries that your character has in most other systems. But unlike in those systems you only have to choose between half a dozen actions on any given turn. You or me or most Denners can par down twenty choices down to two potentially worthwhile moves in a couple of seconds - if we have played the game for long enough. But we play a lot of games, we are interested in mechanics and we may have an aptitude for it. Those with less interest, aptitude or just experience may take minutes to do the same, if they manage to at all.

But trim out two thirds of the options right from the start and even a novice should be able to trim down his six moves down to two or so. And he can then spend a minute to think it over or even ask the table. "Should I use Whirlwind on the mooks or Unbalancing Strike on the boss?" is tolerable. Asking the table to sort through half a dozen moves is not. And at the very least WoF will cut the decision time by two thirds. Well, that and it will ensure you don't use the same move every round.

Murtak wrote:

hogarth wrote:Most games I've seen have something like 4 to 6 different options at most that your character might reasonably choose from in combat; that would be one or two rows (out of 4 or 6 or whatever) in a Winds of Fate table, from the sound of it.

Yes. The same dozen or more entries that your character has in most other systems. But unlike in those systems you only have to choose between half a dozen actions on any given turn.

I can think of exactly one kind of character in one game that would have a dozen meaningful options in combat (not just 12 minor variations on "sword attack" or extreme niche abilities like Sunder in 3E D&D, e.g.) -- a high-level spellcaster in D&D. As I said, 4 to 6 options total is more like it for every other game I can think of.

Mid-level Warblade, say level 8ish or so:

Disarm, Trip, Bullrush, Charge from the basic ruleset. Power Attack or something from feats. Probably more like two. Some strike for additional damage, a defensive maneuver, some kind of full attack special, perhaps a healing strike, some disabling strike. Plus the action you get to refresh your maneuvers. Readying an action. Full attack, regular attack + move.
Thats 15 already, just going from memory. You will probably get soem sort of ability from class levels, or maybe you picked up a bow or throwing weapon or a ranged maneuver. Add single tactical feat, voila, 20 options.

Even if you disregard the basics, a dozen options is easy for anyone but straight barbarians. Even fighters can easily have that many options.

In any level based system, if you add even a single option per level, you hit option paralysis by level 8 at the latest unless you also have some system for taking options away. That's just math.

The fact that RIFTS characters and spellcasters Runequest and martial artists in HERO have more than 7 options coming out of the starting gate isn't even a necessary data point. The inevitability of option paralysis if the game doesn't take steps to address the problem is a priori true.

-Username17

Murtak wrote:Mid-level Warblade, say level 8ish or so:

Disarm, Trip, Bullrush, Charge from the basic ruleset. Power Attack or something from feats. Probably more like two. Some strike for additional damage, a defensive maneuver, some kind of full attack special, perhaps a healing strike, some disabling strike. Plus the action you get to refresh your maneuvers. Readying an action. Full attack, regular attack + move.
Thats 15 already, just going from memory. You will probably get soem sort of ability from class levels, or maybe you picked up a bow or throwing weapon or a ranged maneuver. Add single tactical feat, voila, 20 options.

Obviously we disagree on what a "minor variation" is. I'd consider Power Attack, Charge, "full attack" and "some strike for additional damage" to be minor variations on "hit with sword", and possibly "a defensive maneuver" and "some disabling strike" as well. Regular movement, readying an action and refreshing maneuvers aren't Winds of Fate-worthy powers at all, in my opinion.

On the other hand, Disarm and Bullrush are distinctive maneuvers, but I'm not sure they belong in a Winds of Fate matrix; if I finally end up in a (rare) situation where Disarm or Bullrush is a good idea, but I can't do it because the dice forbid me to do so, that's bullshit.

hogarth wrote: Obviously we disagree on what a "minor variation" is. I'd consider Power Attack, Charge, "full attack" and "some strike for additional damage" to be minor variations on "hit with sword", and possibly "a defensive maneuver" and "some disabling strike" as well. Regular movement, readying an action and refreshing maneuvers aren't Winds of Fate-worthy powers at all, in my opinion.

On the other hand, Disarm and Bullrush are distinctive maneuvers, but I'm not sure they belong in a Winds of Fate matrix; if I finally end up in a (rare) situation where Disarm or Bullrush is a good idea, but I can't do it because the dice forbid me to do so, that's bullshit.

You and Swordy appear to be saying the same thing:

• Attack + X is not different enough from Attack + Y to warrant using WoF to differentiate between them.
• Having more abilities without WoF causes option paralysis.
• Conclusion: you need to get rid of the ability to take the Attack + Y option.

Do you not see how fucking terrible your position is? In the guise of decrying rider effects on attacks for not bringing "enough" variety, you are reducing the variety of sword wielding characters even more. Fuck that.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: You and Swordy appear to be saying the same thing:

• Attack + X is not different enough from Attack + Y to warrant using WoF to differentiate between them.
• Having more abilities without WoF causes option paralysis.
• Conclusion: you need to get rid of the ability to take the Attack + Y option.

Do you not see how fucking terrible your position is? In the guise of decrying rider effects on attacks for not bringing "enough" variety, you are reducing the variety of sword wielding characters even more. Fuck that.

-Username17

Do you not see how fucking terrible the "choice" between "full attack", "Power Attack" and "some strike for additional damage" is? What the hell, you can throw in a couple of 95% non-choices like Disarm and Bullrush in there, too. If those are the choices, it makes no goddamn difference whether you use Winds of Fate or not.

If I understand Frank correctly he is saying that WoF can actually afford to have moves like "regular attack + disarm" because the roll will keep you from spamming it if it happens to be strictly better than the regular attack in the current situation. Without limiting the use of the move, be it through WoF, cooldown timers or whatever, you would end up using nothing but this one move for an entire fight. This is why you don't see it in DnD. The designers correctly saw it as too powerful, and hence it takes a hefty feat investment to just tag on a disarm or trip to a regular attack.

And conversely, DnD-style rider effects are not terribly exciting. Hence, if you port them straight to a WoF system you either end up choosing between extremely similar moves or with extremely specialized moves which will be worthless in the vast majority of encounters.

Murtak wrote:If I understand Frank correctly he is saying that WoF can actually afford to have moves like "regular attack + disarm" because the roll will keep you from spamming it if it happens to be strictly better than the regular attack in the current situation.

This is essentially the 4E situation, where you have 9 "different" strikes with slightly different effects that you're supposed to care about. I consider the implementation in 4E to be a failure because, unless you're playing in a video game-style Death Factory with random lava pits and chopping machines, the players couldn't give a rat's ass about all the sliding and pushing side effects; they'll just pick the move that does the most damage 85% of the time.

Since you just dismiss any examples without apparently even bothering to think about them I will speak in general statements:
If you always have all of your moves available, there is a place for very specialized moves, as you always have other moves to fall back on. There is no room however for moves which end up totally dominating encounters, unless those encounters are exceedingly rare, since both spamming a single move and totally dominating encounters are usually considered bad for the game.

A WoF-like mechanic however has no room for specialized moves, as they clog up valuable chart space. It does have room for moves which totally dominate an encounter, because you can not plan for this move and you will not be able to spam it. Having a super move is acceptable if you only do it once or twice.

There are other, more subtle differences too. For example DnD-style mechanics lend themselves to action modularity, that is giving you options what to with a part of your turn and letting you build your turn from smaller pieces. The move action and attack options are prime examples. This sort of thing undermines the basic premise of WoF though. So for better or worse, a WoF roll will pretty much generate your entire turn, all you do is choose targets and roll the dice.

The bottom line is this: "An action" or "a move" are by necessity very different things when you compare DnD style actions to a WoF system, even if they cover the same genre.

Okay, this sort of thing is why I have had trouble grokking WoF in the past.


But aren't there a couple of different ways to do WoF.

There's the "roll a die to choose your move" Which seems to reduce in-game player agency to near zero, but some variants where multiple colored dice are rolled or cards are drawn are probably workable

There's the "roll a die to see if your move recharges" like 4e monsters. Which seems like it bogs down a lot when multiple powers are involved

There's the "roll a die to find the row you can pick your move from" Which has a lot of fans on this board, but seems like it's a royal pain to actually write powers for and requires players to know what all 18-9 million of their starting abilities do, even if they are only choosing from 4-6 of them each round.

Then there's also "your die roll must be at least this high to choose this move" option. This could theoretically be kept to a small enough ability set where higher rolls unlocked conditionally better abilities, but you wouldn't always want to use the highest rolled.

I suppose it's also possible to combine "at least this high" with "find the row" where stuff like "move" and "basic attack" is at "0 or higher" of each row


******************

Now, joining the digression.

Specifically thinking about option paralysis in a system I play a lot of currently

martial artists in HERO

Without buying a single martial arts maneuver, every character in HERO has the default moveset of

Half Move +
Full Move
+ Basic Strike
+ Disarm
+ Grab
Move By (includes multiple move bys)
Move Through
Grab By
+ Block
+ Dodge
+Haymaker
Recover

So before you buy maneuvers or powers there are 12 options, some of which can be paired on a single phase. That is sufficient to befuddle newer players and yet doesn't cover all of the game space that experienced players want, so the optional moveset adds additional moves
Cover
Dive for Cover
Pulling a Punch
Roll With a Punch
Sweep

( and that's not counting the ones I forgot about and had to look up in the book - but at least these aren't applicable to everyone
Basic: Brace, Set Optional: Blazing Away, Club Weapon, Hipshot, Hurry, Rapid Fire, Snapshot, Surpression Fire)

and of the optional moves, 2 are purely reactive, but if your game uses them, then characters are entering with a minimum of 15 options.

And that's 15 without picking up a weapon, nor an offensive power nor any martial arts maneuvers.

And that's not counting alternate movement modes (like Flight, Clinging or Tunneling) nor non-combat utility powers like Shapeshift.

So while some powers and martial maneuvers are just upgrades of default maneuvers (you will likely not use basic strike if you have an Energy Blast, you will never use basic Dodge if you have martial dodge), a starting Champions character is gonna be entering the game with somewhere in the neighborhood of two dozen options to choose from each phase.

However some of those are outright trivial to eliminate from a player's decision tree "no enemies are within a half move, so I can eliminate all attacks that don't have either Range or a Full Move element", and others are going to be highly prioritized during chargen. Not only does picking superpowers mean the player will be more likely to want to use those superpowers but, there're likely mechanical incentives to do so. A character who buys multiple skill levels with their martial art is strongly incentivized to use only attacks within that martial art and forgo using the default moves; a low-Str character is probably going to avoid performing Grabs, A flying energy blaster is going to want to avoid HTH combat and stay at range as much as possible.

I haven't seen that induce outright decision paralysis, but it does induce noteable option slowdown, so that's likely more than you want players to have to decide

I think I'm pretty much done talking to Hogarth on this issue, since his argument seems to be "Nuh-Uh!" with no backing theory or examples. But I thought I'd hop in on this one:

Murtak wrote: A WoF-like mechanic however has no room for specialized moves, as they clog up valuable chart space. It does have room for moves which totally dominate an encounter, because you can not plan for this move and you will not be able to spam it. Having a super move is acceptable if you only do it once or twice.

Actually, specialized moves can fit in just fine in a WoF scenario. They can be specialized and super even. As long as Green Arrow has access to standbys like Explosive Arrow, Shock Arrow, and Bola Arrow during a turn, the rest of the options can (and probably should) be crazy out-there stuff like Fire Extinguisher Arrow or Herbicide Arrow.

The inclusion of fringe arrows like Radio Transmitter Arrow or Bug Repellent Arrow would really slow things down in a "you can do anything you want whenever" system because the full list would get really fucking long. Long ability lists cause action paralysis, especially for new players. And when one of those things came up, the novelty of it would wear pretty thin because the player would end up using Radio Transmitter Arrow every single round for the entire fight versus the robots.

But in a WoF system, it's not a problem. You roll a die and you have some normal shit like Flash Arrow, Punching Fist Arrow and Glue Arrow, and then you have a short list of weird stuff that you probably won't use in any particular fight - like Dog Whistle Arrow and Ghost Buster Arrow. And in the extremely likely event that this particular fight is not against specters or german shepherds, you use one of the "normal ones". And you'd pick between Punch, Flash, and Glue based on the tactical situation. If you were against enemies with a bunch of guard dogs, you'd fire the Dog Whistle Arrow and have a cool moment in the sun when all the dogs flipped out, but next turn you'd probably roll something else and because you were not up against a bunch of robots or evil space plants you'd be back to using the "normal" stuff like Shock Arrows or Smoke Arrows.

Getting that kind of functionality out of Green Arrow in a non-WoF system is painful. First of all, the player looks at a list with two dozen options or more on it. Secondly, when the combat music starts he stares at the options before him for a long ass time and then either loses his patience and says "Fuck it. Explosion Arrow again." or he keeps looking until he finds the Fire Extinguisher Arrow and then blows away the whole encounter with the lava men. We know this is what happens, because that is how D&D Wizards actually work.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I think I'm pretty much done talking to Hogarth on this issue, since his argument seems to be "Nuh-Uh!" with no backing theory or examples.

Lolwut. I've discussed plenty of examples of power sets where Winds of Fate wouldn't seem to work (e.g. the discussion we just had about the 3E Warblade and 4E "attack + special" moves). I'd be delighted to give examples of power sets where I thought they would work, but I can't think of any.

FrankTrollman wrote:If you were against enemies with a bunch of guard dogs, you'd fire the Dog Whistle Arrow and have a cool moment in the sun when all the dogs flipped out, but next turn you'd probably roll something else and because you were not up against a bunch of robots or evil space plants you'd be back to using the "normal" stuff like Shock Arrows or Smoke Arrows.

But how do you know that you'll roll up the Dog Whistle arrow the one time out of dozens of encounters that you actually meet a pack of dogs? If you don't get to use it on the one occasion that it would actually be useful, then that's bullshit.

Josh_Kablack wrote:There's the "roll a die to see if your move recharges" like 4e monsters. Which seems like it bogs down a lot when multiple powers are involved.

Yup. And keep in mind that monsters that have more than 1 or 2 rechargeable powers are usually solos, because 4E monster encounters can, not including minions, have from 3-10 monsters in it. You can see the evolution in the monster manuals; non-elite/solos have been getting fewer rechargeable moves. I can tell you right now that that method is a pain in the ass, probably even more than cooldowns.

Josh wrote:There's the "roll a die to find the row you can pick your move from" Which has a lot of fans on this board, but seems like it's a royal pain to actually write powers for and requires players to know what all 18-9 million of their starting abilities do, even if they are only choosing from 4-6 of them each round.

Yup. Which is why the matrix should start out at a reasonable level (6-8 powers out of the gate, which is about what a 3E spellcaster or a 4E character gets) and then gradually mushrooming. Of course other systems have about the same problem; have you tried creating a paragon-tier 4E character or a level 9 3E cleric lately? For a level 16 character that's easily about 15 powers you have to sort through and learn what they do and it can seriously get as high as 25 powers.

It will be more work for players between game sessions, but personally I'd rather spend an hour extra on chargen during my offtime than 30-45 extra minutes deciding shit during a game session.

Then there's also "your die roll must be at least this high to choose this move" option. This could theoretically be kept to a small enough ability set where higher rolls unlocked conditionally better abilities, but you wouldn't always want to use the highest rolled.

I'm not a fan of it. Not because it isn't mathematically fair (because it is) but because players get really weepy and small in the pants during a bad run; people are just much more likely to notice a bad run and whine about it than appreciate a good run. I'm sure we've all gamed with some asshole who missed 4 d20 rolls in a row and then started a bitchfit about how everything is against them and they're not having fun and blah-de-blah.

I figure I should be a bit more explicit in the Green Arrow example. Green Arrow has about two dozen arrows that he uses. I think we can ignore one-off plot device arrows like the phantom zone projector arrow and the improvised bottle of bleach arrow. We're also going to ignore the specifically joke arrows like the bubblegum arrow and the antler arrow. Each row needs to have a single-target arrow, an anti-group arrow, and a debuff arrow for use on bosses. It can (and should) also have a number of specialty arrows.

Roll	Stuff
1	"Normal Arrow"	Grenade Arrow	Acid Arrow	Cable Arrow	Buzzsaw Arrow
2	"Normal Arrow"	Tear Gas Arrow	Net Arrow	Siren Arrow	Nth Metal Arrow
3	Boxing Arrow	Grenade Arrow	Bola Arrow	Flare Arrow	Cryonic Arrow
4	Boxing Arrow	Glue Arrow	Flash Arrow	Fire Extinguisher Arrow	Greek Fire Arrow
5	Shock Arrow	Glue Arrow	Smoke Arrow	Magnetic Arrow	Boomerang Arrow
6	Shock Arrow	Tear Gas Arrow	Suction Cup Arrow	Fan Arrow	Blackout Arrow

So yeah, Green Arrow is going to fall back to his standbys of lethal, less lethal and nonlethal attack arrows a lot of the time, but he always has an area denial option and a debuff option. And he has special options that can be used once a battle or so when they happen to come up. So when the ghost is going all boogey boogey he can pull out an Nth Metal Arrow and ruin its day. Because yes, Green Arrow seriously has a special Ghost Touch Arrow. Deal with it.

Hogarth wrote:But how do you know that you'll roll up the Dog Whistle arrow the one time out of dozens of encounters that you actually meet a pack of dogs? If you don't get to use it on the one occasion that it would actually be useful, then that's bullshit.

Dude, are you five? If you cast command undead and the wraith makes its saving throw do you throw a temper tantrum? What about when the wraith sticks to medium range and you end up having to take it out with damage anyway? When you're playing Arkham Horrow and you get the Warding Statue, do you flip the board over if you end up sealing gates and never Sometimes your special weird shit techniques don't work or won't be tactically useful despite the fact that it is something that could potentially dominate the encounter.

If the fan arrow doesn't come up during the fight with Scarecrow, it's because you were using other stuff until the fight ended. It's not a tragedy, since you were actually doing stuff the whole time.

-Username17