The Gaming Den

Here's a perplexing condundrum.

I'm generally dissatisfied with melee combat. It puts an individual at risk and in most RPGs the possibilities for escaping melee far outnumber the options for keeping a target in reach.
Aside from teleporting, lockdowns, juggle, or slaughtering the enemy so fast that they don't know what hit them, 3.5 especially suffers from this.

So, to increase effectiveness and appeal of melee combat in a d20 variant (if it is still d20 by the time I'm done with it.. I'll think up some basics while I'm out in Virginia with family for a week) I propose a small incentive for such a subpar form of combat.


All melee attacks receive a +4 bonus to hit.

Seriously, that's all.
I'd call it a "Melee Bonus" but keeping it untyped works fine too.

It works better with 4e's version of proficiencies wherein not knowing a weapon grants +0 to attack, and being trained in one gives a character a positive value.

The Melee Bonus reflects an ease in which one swings dangerous objects at other, breakable objects, be they moving or immobile. Ranged attacks require much more precision, as bows, guns, or spells; I can't believe they have both been regarded as equals in combat since the amount of time required to not just become feasable with ranged weapons but combat-ready is much, much longer than with a sword, fist, or club.

I have many ideas for how melee-focused warrior archetypes can bring the fight to many different encounters, but for now I'd like to see your own take on the situation rather than the usual "Fighters suck" routine we all know and... love.

sigma999 wrote: I have many ideas for how melee-focused warrior archetypes can bring the fight to many different encounters, but for now I'd like to see your own take on the situation rather than the usual "Fighters suck" routine we all know and... love.

Actually, we hate the "Fighters suck" routine. That's the whole point.

That said, I'd personally favor a damage bonus for melee characters over a to-hit bonus. Not sure why, it just feels right.

Hitting stuff isn't, and has never been the problem. Its doing something useful instead of, or while, you're whittling down the pile of hit points.

You're also making the 'casters are better warriors than warriors' problem worse. That extra +4 helps them far more than it helps the warriors, so they're even farther ahead of the curve.

Voss is right.

Look, complex problems like Fighter suckage in 3e don't often have straight-forward playable solutions. To fix them, you have to sit down, do some work, test it, and be willing to change mechanics in the middle of a session if they aren't working right.

That said, I'm not sure there's really a problem in terms of keeping people in melee range. I recall playing low-to-mid level fighters in 3e and having melee be decent. I mean, a Rogue generally has to do melee to get the most out of sneak attacking, and no one complains about rogues not getting enough chance to use their pile o' d6s.

Abilities.

Abilities.

Abilities.

Not straight numbers and fuck the math.

Granting abilities based on difference in class-based BaB between targets might work.

Low-level D&D melee works just fine, for the most part. It's only when the PCs get flight or hippogriff mounts or whatever that it becomes bad.

Even mid-level melee ca work, because it's unlikely that everyone will gain uber-mobility at the same level.

And I agree with J_E: unique abilities are needed.

Maybe one could be similar to the 4e fighter's mark: once you've engaged in melee with someone, they have a hard time breaking off (provoke an AoO, move at half speed, whatever). Just a thought.

I never liked playing fighters because they were never interesting. I swing a sword. And that's it. I want be able to hack off limbs, cripple foes by slashing their legs, daze them with stunning strikes to the head with a gargantuan hammer that I shouldn't be able to use at my character size, or suplex Purple Worms.

I never play fighters because 75% of all the monsters in the MM have ridiculous and inane bonuses to grapple checks, so combat usually looks like this:

-I run up towards the monster, provoking an AoO because it has 10-foot fvcking reach.
-It hits me, uses improved grab (which it WILL WIN), and swallows me next round.
-Meanwhile, I'm helpless sitting in its stomach because I don't want to cart a magical dagger around with my burly hammermasher fighter, so I can't cut my way out.
-The rest of the party stays out of its reach and sprays down a hail of arrows and spells to easily take it down.
-They cut my acid-eaten, crushed body out and heal me back up to do it again next fight.

Granted, this happens significantly less against some of the more common foes like goblins and the like, but dammit, I want to feel useful when fighting the giant monster. Rogues and monks can tumble their asses off, so why can't a fighter have combat positioning to at least TRY to avoid those attacks?

Close Quarters Fighting helps with this problem, even with Improved Grab, but yes, melee fighters need more abilities.

In some sense, the 4E people had the right idea - each class should have attack powers, movement powers, condition generating powers, etc. . .

They just shouldn't all suck.

This ties in with an older discussion about ranged attacks.

One of the points made in that discussion is that the D&D paradigm of 'ranged attacks come in huge numbers and do less damage' is utter bullshit. So for one, an advantage of melee combat should be the option of more attacks (if you hand out multiple attacks). Another option is the 'engaged' status. When you attack someone in melee, you're effectively 'flanking' them, which acts as a debuff. Ranged attacks don't carry the engagement debuff. Melee attacks could also be more accurate, as you posited.

would getting rid of the 5 foot step help? I mean it does eliminate part of the difficulty of melee trumping ranged. You have a bow, I charge you, you step back and shoot me in the face. If disengaging melee was difficult than it would be worth more to be engaged in it.

Stuff I agree with:

1) Just swinging a sword is dull. Abilities are the solution.
2) 5ft step/shifting is a problem. I might have an idea for that one.
3) Warriors' real suckage begins at the point when the fantasy game becomes 'full' fantasy. As Talisman said, it's:

- When everyone's flying and the warriors can't; or they can, but combat in flight is too hard.
- When missile combat with all kinds of crazy magical shit on the bows and ammunition becomes nearly as effective per shot as melee and therefore MORE effective because you don't actually have to stand right next to the monster and get killed in the face until you die from it.
- When spells start to get really, really good compared to absolutely anything else you might ever do.

All of these latter problems are easy to delay by simply pushing the magical power curve down but that won't fix anything because you'll still get to the warrior suckage point eventually. Besides, we don't in any way want to go down the 4E fallacy of making everyone else suck too just to keep the fighter types playing the same game.

Addresing sigma's basic problem first - the fact that ranged stuff works better than melee - you've got very limited options to sort it out. You can give melee types some proper high-fantasy zany abilities that keep them always in the fight, or you can make ranged combat (including spells) less good, or some combination of the two. The latter would be my choice.

I'm wondering to myself now whether we might not be able to learn anything from real-world combat. No, I'm not proposing some kind of simulation of "the real thing" nor even that it should be more "realistic", I'm just considering the notion that there might be something we can learn from how this stuff works in real life that'll give us some idea on how to apply a fix.[1]

Here's what I'm thinking. In mediaeval battles between armies, ranged combat is king when you can see the other guy and have a clear shot. The reason for that however is that if you and a few hundred buddies are shooting twelve arrows a minute into massed ranks on the other side of the field, it doesn't matter whether every shot hits (it won't) or whether every shot is effective when it does hit (it won't be), but you're going to usefully hit enough people enough of the time to make this a completely worthwhile thing to be doing.

Similarly, if you're standing within 60 yards of me whilst I have my bow and you haven't spotted me, I am going to hit you and if I'm being a bit absent-minded that day and picked up a sharp rather than a blunt, I may well kill you.

However, neither of these situations appertain to *most* D&D combat.

When it comes to using a bow against an aware target at the sort of distances at which D&D encounters commonly take place, it's a complete lottery. It is almost laughably easy to dodge an arrow unless it comes at you from so close by that you're effectively in melee anyway. I have seriously knocked actual arrows shot from actual warbows straight out of the air and had people do the same to me... and my longbow can put an armour-piercing bodkin straight through the side of a car.

If your target is aware of you, ready to dodge and with no distractions, I don't care if you're Robin Hood or Howard Hill, you are not going to hit that person effectively other than through sheer luck, particularly if they're armoured. Two people having a "fight" with bows, even in an environment with no cover, is an exercise in comedic futility - you seriously won't hit anything until one of you is laughing too hard to dodge.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:When you attack someone in melee, you're effectively 'flanking' them, which acts as a debuff. Ranged attacks don't carry the engagement debuff. Melee attacks could also be more accurate, as you posited.

I see where you're coming from, but I'd do it the other way around. Melee attacks being more accurate still isn't enough of an incentive not to kite an enemy - it just makes kiting take a bit longer. Sigma's problem doesn't get addressed because you STILL don't get hit if you're not in melee so there needs to be more of an incentive to close, and for your party members to help and encourage you to do it.

So, a concrete proposal: instead of making it difficult to use ranged attacks against an opponent in melee - which is total bullshit unless they're grappling - make hitting an aware opponent with a ranged weapon really fucking difficult unless they're also in melee.[2]

That way, there's a bloody good reason to have someone in melee and keep them there, although it doesn't help with actually achieving that. In general, I feel that situational bonuses (or the situational removal of penalties) are a Good Thing if they encourage the different party members to do their different schticks in a cooperative way.

You could even posit an extra status - "harried" - where an opponent in melee is taking fire from a ranged attacker, giving a melee combatant additional bonuses to hit (although actually you'd want a dodge penalty to the harried creature's AC) and thus covering off the suggestion of making melee attacks more accurate at the same time.

Before they were handed a gazillion other ways on a plate to get sneak attack bonuses, Rogues had a vested interest in teaming up with the fighters and I don't see why that situation couldn't be extended to ranged attacks. I likewise don't see why the situation couldn't be made to apply to sneak attacks again either.

Ranged touch spells could work the same way; if the opponent is aware and able to dodge the incoming laser death beams you could make it really *tough* to hit them, but if they're in melee combat with another character it gets a lot easier, plus you're dividing their attention away from defending themselves properly in battle.

If the wizard *needs* you in there distracting the beastie before he's got a better than even chance of hitting the thing with his spells, that's a fantastic reason to mix it up. If the rogue can only get one sneak attack in the whole fight unless you're smacking the monster upside the head, he's going to really want you to do it. If 80% of the ranger's arrows get chomped in mid-air unless you're kicking the monster in the nuts at the same time, that's a total win for both of you.

As the rules stand, they inadvertently piss all over the fighter's thing by saying "don't go into melee, meat-head, 'cos I might hit YOU instead and you don't want that". Far better that they should say "sorry to always have to ask you to do this, but we really need you in there kicking ass if we're to have the slightest chance of hurting this thing". That way, everyone gets to feel big in the pants.

Keeping an opponent at range will still be an option, sure, but it'd be seriously sub-optimal.

ckafrica wrote:would getting rid of the 5 foot step help? I mean it does eliminate part of the difficulty of melee trumping ranged. You have a bow, I charge you, you step back and shoot me in the face. If disengaging melee was difficult than it would be worth more to be engaged in it.

You could do that, certainly, but I'd say... it's probably not the best way of dealing with it. I like non-provoking movement in combat and I think it's a useful tactical option. I suggest that the solution is to make MORE use of shifting/5ft steps.

Here's how I'm thinking that might work. Every class gets a certain amount of squares they can shift without provoking attacks of opportunity. The default for most classes is "one square". Perhaps it could scale with level. Melee monsters have the same thing. Now your warrior types have the number of squares they can shift scale a bit faster than everyone else, and as a class feature they can shift as an immediate or even free action when an opponent they threaten shifts away. That scales with level too.

It could probably be done more simply than that, but however the mechanics work, the point is not to take movement options away from everyone else, but to make the fighter better at them. There were a number of powers in Tome of Battle that were based around warriors being able to chase for free, being able to close with their opponent without provoking due to reach, or even interrupt movement on a successful attack. I absolutely believe that's the way to go with it, but instead of limiting such things to encounter powers, warrior classes should be able to do them every single round, and do them better than anyone else.

You'd need to give some brute monsters similar abilities so as not to turn it completely one-sided. Rules to make ranged attacks more useful when combined with melee attacks, as above, would dovetail nicely with this to provide incentives for a good balance of different attacks within the party. Yes, spellcasters caught in melee would be utterly hosed, but I for one believe that's how it should be

Also, ditch SoD's - or make their success dependent on the opponent already having taken a kicking - and unilateral SoS's, give warriors some equivalent to the power of flight as a class feature, grant a few more situational bonuses to aid cooperation (warrior gets free extra attack when rogue sneak-attacks, warrior can pull off combat moves that grant ranged attackers a free shot, etc.) and we might be getting there.

Thoughts?

[1]I do know a lot about how combat with swords and armour and bows works because I do it all the damn time. I was at the Battle of Tewkesbury event this weekend as a participant. I've dressed in platemail and swung heavy swords, flails, maces and quarterstaffs at other guys dressed the same. I've shot at people with a longbow at distances ranging from 15ft to 300ft. I've been doing the above most weekends of every summer for thirteen years. Yeah this is the Internet and anyone can say this shit so feel free to call me on it or ignore me or whatever, but that's where I'm coming from.

[2]Yeah, I know it's much harder to reconcile that with larger, less agile beasties but, you know, fuck it. Missile weapons should do them less damage anyway; anyone who's ever gone hunting big animals with a bow will know what I'm talking about here. You certainly can kill a deer with a single shot, but if it catches sight or smell of you before you hit it, the chances are that you won't. And you'd have to be exceptionally bloody lucky to kill a horse without an arrow designed for the purpose, a really heavy bow and a clear flat shot from the front. On the other hand, big creatures already tend to have a pile more hit points anyway. Meh.

[3]It's probably worth making it absolutely clear at this point that I have never shot a horse, but I have demonstrated "horse arrows". They are seriously fucking evil-looking things but they won't go through armour of any description.

Amra wrote:[1]I do know a lot about how combat with swords and armour and bows works because I do it all the damn time. I was at the Battle of Tewkesbury event this weekend as a participant. I've dressed in platemail and swung heavy swords, flails, maces and quarterstaffs at other guys dressed the same. I've shot at people with a longbow at distances ranging from 15ft to 300ft. I've been doing the above most weekends of every summer for thirteen years. Yeah this is the Internet and anyone can say this shit so feel free to call me on it or ignore me or whatever, but that's where I'm coming from.

Link.

I think that the Races of War Fighter manages to not suck at his job in a standard Wizard, Cleric, Rogue party.

Why not use that?

Some good ideas there, Amra.

Amra wrote:Also, ditch SoD's - or make their success dependent on the opponent already having taken a kicking

Maybe steal the "bloodied" concept from 4e (one of the actual decent things that system has produced)? A friend of mine loves to play the necromancer, which is made of SoD's - but, due to houserule wackiness, they rarely work on BBEGs. Maybe SoDs only work to their full extent oin a bloodied foe - otherwise, they do some lesser damage or impose a lesser condition.

Amra wrote:(warrior gets free extra attack when rogue sneak-attacks,

Opportunist. I always thought that should be a fighter power anyway.

Amra wrote:Here's how I'm thinking that might work. Every class gets a certain amount of squares they can shift without provoking attacks of opportunity. The default for most classes is "one square". Perhaps it could scale with level. Melee monsters have the same thing. Now your warrior types have the number of squares they can shift scale a bit faster than everyone else, and as a class feature they can shift as an immediate or even free action when an opponent they threaten shifts away. That scales with level too.

It occurs to me if the warrior's shift did provoke attacks of opportunity when used as an interrupt (or something similar), then the warrior may also be able to save the wizard by engaging the monster, so that then the monster can't safely follow the wizard when he shifts away. Which seems like it might be a good thing, as it gives a legitimate reason for the melee types to fight each other, rather than blowing past each other to hit the casters.

Manxome wrote: It occurs to me if the warrior's shift did provoke attacks of opportunity when used as an interrupt (or something similar), then the warrior may also be able to save the wizard by engaging the monster, so that then the monster can't safely follow the wizard when he shifts away. Which seems like it might be a good thing, as it gives a legitimate reason for the melee types to fight each other, rather than blowing past each other to hit the casters.

Alternatively, whether the shift provokes an AoO could be situational. Like if the shifting character holds whatever version of Combat Advantage over their melee opponent, they can move away without provoking. This way, tactical benefits/options can be created where attacking your opponent may be less useful to you than just knocking them off-balance so you can deal with the soft but very dangerous non-melee targets, or just the opposite: You may want to focus on keeping your opponent off-balance so they can't get to your buddies who are bringing down a rain of fire.

I like that, but there's no reason why we shouldn't go even further and have the fighter's super-shifting abilities give him the option of provoking an attack of opportunity as he performs his free movement, particularly if he has other abilities that are keyed off AoO's targeted at him or just wants to draw fire.

You see, I like the idea of a fighter, for instance, being able to play the role of "Defender" if he wants to, but he should in no way be boxed into that role. He should be a "Striker" if that's the way he needs to be for this fight, or a "Controller" (to a degree) if required, and he should absolutely be able to do *all* of these things well eventually, regardless of what order he chooses to acquire them. And if you plan it right, you could achieve all of these things with the same set of abilities in different combinations.

Rather than the pitiable abilities in 4e, a hardcore fighter should be able to set things up so that you bloody well don't just walk past him and suffer a single AoO or take a few poxy points of damage for choosing to try and shatter the glass cannons instead. Ignoring a trained warrior who is ready and able to intercept you should be tantamount to suicide.

Likewise, a fighter who is able to get in there and draw fire whilst simultaneously setting the enemies up to get splatted by the Rogue, the Ranger and the Wizard is just... well, it's fucking awesome, is what it is. It makes those stories possible.

"They'll take you guys apart if we all close with 'em, so I'm gonna charge in, set 'em up and lock 'em down. I'll buy you the chance you need if it kills me - I just hope you're as good with that bow as you think you are... Right, Zafir the Quick is in position in the tree with his daggers ready so I'd better get moving before they spot him. Wish me luck, boys; I'm going in."

And that could really mean something rather than just being a cue for the Wizard to say "Yeah, whatever, just don't forget to hit the deck when you see the green flash."

One thing on the Shift-AoO/Edge thing: since (in the Tomes at least) both warriors may have The Edge over the other through different means, perhaps it should be:

Shift Away: You may shift out of melee. You may optionally avoid provoking Attacks of Opportunity against any opponents who you have The Edge over.

Follow Shifting: Any opponent who you have The Edge over who shifts away may be followed as a Free Action.

Both of these fall under combat options, obviously.

NoDot wrote:Follow Shifting: Any opponent who you have The Edge over who shifts away may be followed as a Free Action.

Sounds OK, although maybe that should be "...may be followed as a free action for a number of squares equal to your shifting movement you have left available to you in that round."

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