A new way to handle actions (3.X-compatable)

[ubernoob]

So you're adding a fuckton of accounting to movement (seriously, fractional costs are stupid) in order to what... give low level people two attacks on a full attack? Yeah, this system is even stupider than I said it was.

[Judging__Eagle]

I have a similar system that I'm going to be using for FAR.

At least in the sense that actions costs "time", and rolling your dice pool in something takes up as much "time" as you are spending dice.

but..... that ended up being sort of dumb, and overly complicated.

spending points every round is not a good idea; giving people X number of actions to perform is much better. Seriously.... 3 basic options, with 9 sub categories is better for mental chunking than a laundry list of 10 things you can do. The work on AWoD's species, ability and other break-downs resulted in players being able to remember more content than a "straight" list would allow. Chunking is known to work, does work, and will continue to work. Either chunk data, or expect no one to ever care about your information.

Also, weapon speed "rules" are full of such stupid bullshit that it's obvious that the idiots that designed them have no fucking clue how a punch is thrown or a sword is swung.

In kendo, the accepted attacking rate for a non-katana, such as an arming or 'broad' sword, is about 2 swings a second, a katana is expected to be a standard of 3 times (stronger people will obviously swing faster and harder than these numbers though). In striking schools a fist is expected to strike just over 1/second; same with a knife.

Notice a pattern? The shorter weapons don't move as fast; and no one expects them to move as fast as a longer weapon. Just looking at you know reality, it's obvious that most weapon speed systems are complete and utter shit.

Longer weapon swing faster and more often due to things like levers, double levers, and lever length. That's the key part, length. A longer weapon will have faster recovery speed than a shorter weapon. Weight has very little to do with this, but apparently ideas like leverage and torque seem to beyond the grasp of people who designed the original D&D weapon speed rules. One would think that people who are math geeks would know physics, but apparently they don't; and the weapon speed rules that they wrote were an affront to fighting as much as they are an affront to physics.

Really, weapon speed rules are so fucking wrong it's hilarious. Not just from a point of view of over complexity; but from a point of view that they don't even represent the reality that they are attempting to do; show that there's more of a difference between weapons than just size of damage dice.

Even then, size of damage dice needs to be done away with. If a paring knife or a gladius is shoved into your chest, the scope of the injury is really the same. You've got an aspirating torso wound; that's really, really, bad juju. Only a massive weapon that uses both arms, like a baseball bat; or a pike, will potentially deal more damage.

Weapons should seriously just do the same damage, with two-handed weapons dealing double.

Saying that a knife is "faster" than a broadsword, or a katana is like saying that pistols have longer range than rifles, because they're smaller and the bullets they fire weigh less; or that a breech-loading shotgun will fire faster than a belt fed chaingun, since the chaingun has to spin it's barrel up to firing speed first, while the breechloader is loaded from the back of the barrel before firing.

Statements so ridiculously stupid that they insult everyone's intelligence.

The ideal way to represent weapons is to talk about their sizes, lengths of reach, and their operating radii. Not their "speed".

Remember, daggers weren't the weapon of choice, swords were. Swords are very fast and can snap an arm or a knee faster than you can blink an eye. A knife was... seriously a murdering tool for when an opponent is already downed.

[Bihlbo]

seriously, fractional costs are stupid

I assume you're referring to movement costs, and if so I agree. I rather hate the solution I came up with and I'd love to hear a better idea.

[Bihlbo]

@Judging__Eagle:

I don't know what it is about you GD regulars and ad hominem attacks, but it's nearly always a huge waste of time. The original designers of D&D weren't "stupid" because they wanted to give you one attack every 6 seconds. They were trying to move from a wargaming strategy game to a strategy game involving individual heroes, and it's a totally understandable development. Realism wasn't even in the room, let alone not being a goal.

While I totally agree with your arguments about physics, I don't think that has anything to do with a reason for having weapon speed rules, even if it makes our internal scientist cry. And while weapon speed rules not only don't work at all, but kind of hurt the game when applied in the way they've been used in the past (to your iterative attack bonuses), obviously I'm using "weapon speed" for something else here. That something else is flexibility, for the most part, because faster attacks allow more options for additional actions. It also allows faster attacks the option to be made more often in a round (rather than at a higer bonus, as with normal weapon speed rules).

So while I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm not sure how your points apply to this directly. And besides, even if I'm misunderstanding and it does apply, do you have any suggestions?

[Judging__Eagle]

there is no personal attack, I'm attacking the idea in and of itself, and why that idea is stupid. the fact that the people who made those mistakes should know better is a fault of the designer, the same way

using radius of reach, not weapon "speed", will give more accurate results as to "options"; a knife stab/swipe is about as fast as a sword swing/thrust.

Using "range" numbers of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 (a la Dominions 3) or range designations such as Contact, Swing, and Thrust; and assigning them to weapons; where a weapon user can get struck while moving from one weapon range to an other; but cannot be struck while within a weapon range unless their attacker has a similar range. Is a potential method.

The "flexibility" and "tactical" options being whether a creature risks passing through an other creatures "thrust" or "swing" weapon ranges to use their "contact" attack.

[ubernoob]

seriously, fractional costs are stupid

I assume you're referring to movement costs, and if so I agree. I rather hate the solution I came up with and I'd love to hear a better idea.

Like this:
You get three actions a round:
Swift
Move
Standard

Move+Standard can be combined to use a Full Attack or whatever. If you want to move and attack a bunch of people at the same time, take whirlwind.

Note how there is zero accounting? None at all. Your 'fix' is being applied to something that is *not a problem* in any way. You are 100% applying change for change.

[BearsAreBrown]

Like this:
You get three actions a round:
Swift
Move
Standard

Move+Standard can be combined to use a Full Attack or whatever. If you want to move and attack a bunch of people at the same time, take whirlwind.

Maybe if you want more flexibility you could allow for a single square of movement to be made as a nonaction if the creature doesn't move that round?

[ubernoob]

Like this:
You get three actions a round:
Swift
Move
Standard

Move+Standard can be combined to use a Full Attack or whatever. If you want to move and attack a bunch of people at the same time, take whirlwind.

Maybe if you want more flexibility you could allow for a single square of movement to be made as a nonaction if the creature doesn't move that round?

That sounds like an excellent idea. Good thinking.

[JonSetanta]

You get three actions a round:
Swift
Move
Standard

Great originality! Unique idea!

[For Valor]

What if you want to take, say, a swift action on an opponent's turn?

[Bihlbo]

Move+Standard can be combined to use a Full Attack or whatever. If you want to move and attack a bunch of people at the same time, take whirlwind.

Note how there is zero accounting? None at all. Your 'fix' is being applied to something that is *not a problem* in any way. You are 100% applying change for change.

Har har. First of all, this is not in any way an attempt to fix action problems, but an attempt to fix other problems that result from this action system.

Secondly, I humbly do not understand why my idea is more accounting than D&D's standard action system. Honestly, it seems like the same accounting to me, but maybe because I don't understand what you mean by accounting. Could you please explain?

[For Valor]

By accounting, he means you have like 8-12 points to deal with, and you need to subtract costs from each of them (meaning you need to know the costs). Because of these numbers, you can move, attack, move, or attack twice and move a little, and all sorts of different things. That's accounting.

The problem with accounting is that: a) It's annoying. This kind of subtraction steps just barely over the fine line between "deep" and "bothersome", and b) It slows down gameplay. Players will be trying to make the best of their attacks and movements and spells and whatever, so they'll take extra time with it. Combats in D&D generally take a long time as it is--making them last longer is just a bitch.

[Juton]

I know (most) gamers can handle this level of complexity, and can do so without bogging things down to much. Starfleet Battles and Battletech have a lot more math than this going on, but an experienced player will spend vastly more time deciding where to move and rolling dice than having to deal with math.

I think it needs to be playtested, not just to see if players can hack it but to see if it really adds that much to the experience.

[Judging__Eagle]

I know (most) gamers can handle this level of complexity, and can do so without bogging things down to much. Starfleet Battles and Battletech have a lot more math than this going on, but an experienced player will spend vastly more time deciding where to move and rolling dice than having to deal with math.

I think it needs to be playtested, not just to see if players can hack it but to see if it really adds that much to the experience.

QFT

I've had to playtest several dice resolution mechanics for FAR already. You're math can be really mentally easy, but it has to be logistically easy as well.

Just because an other Denner approves of your material doesn't mean it will survive playtest with actual human beings.

We Denners are a coarse, cynical, rogue, lot. Known for our skills in basic arithmetic; vicious understanding of higher order probability calculation; basic, advanced and esoteric science, mythology, literature and global history; higher order educational and learning techniques; and the ability to disregard the common commercial co-operative storytelling game when it is a bucket of shit in a thimble sized package.

We'll make fun of you on the internet, and then give you a better game system and setting than the one you shelled out 60$ for. This is because we're unconscionable cynical bastards, but we're not malicious lying assholes. We'll bite and kick you for being stupid, but we won't shit on you and tell you "Pathfinder is the spiritual evolution of 3.X D&D!"; where "shit" represents the Pathfinderfailure series of rulebooks and content.

[For Valor]

I fail to see what that post communciated across...

[ubernoob]

I fail to see what that post communciated across...

It's Juding Eagle.

[Kaelik]

JE only has one kind of post. A post that brags about how great he is while simultaneously talking about how the Den is awesome while simultaneously making no fucking sense.

Just ignore it and it goes away.

On a more serious note.

"Accounting" doesn't actually refer to math most of the time it is used. The problem with accounting is that you have to keep track of a lot of stuff.

The amount of accounting you have to do is the number of choices you have to make times the complexity of each choice. So your system adds a whole bunch of choices, increases the complexity of each choice, and doesn't actually give anything worth the effort, since the things it adds to the game can be counted on one hand that has had three fingers chopped off.

Yes, there is the bullshit 4e kind of accounting where everyone keeps giving everyone else +1 bonuses to random things that only apply under a gibbous moon, but if you add that, the Den will actually dick punch you through the internet, so that's not what we are talking about right now.

[Josh_Kablack]

10? Jebus.. That's a lot to keep track of. How about 5?

Though as I said I haven't tested this, I have gone through a few mock rounds of combat, and 10 isn't much to keep track of once you go through about 3 rounds and get used to it..

Try those mock rounds of combat with 5 other people at the table. Bonus points if they are either new to your DMming or anything at all like my usual game groups.

If it goes smoothly without unreasonable combat resolution slowdown (and use a stopwatch to track this) then feel free to Ignore the peanut gallery here.

But personally, I'd bet on it adding a lot of slowdown to turn-taking.

[JonSetanta]

Kaelik, you wasted 5 seconds of my time making me read that shitpost. I want my time back.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik, you wasted 5 seconds of my time making me read that shitpost. I want my time back.

It's more productive then 90% of the posts in this thread and it even answers the OPs question that he specifically asked.

Get back to me when you've read the whole thing, it takes longer than five seconds.

[Zinegata]

Kicking this back into actual discussion as opposed to pointless flaming...

Juton is correct. There are quite a few games that do actually break down actions to little increments, and it works. Players don't suddenly fall into a coma just because they have to spend 10 AP, as opposed to having a Move, Standard, and Swift Action.

I would note however, that many games typically don't go for 10 AP (or MP - movement points), because having 10 points to account for does slow down play. Most wargames typically limit their AP to around 6 points, with only a few "fast" creatures going up to 10.

I would also strongly encourage simplifying the movement rates - i.e. Humans move at 2 squares per AP.

[Bihlbo]

We'll make fun of you on the internet, and then give you a better game system and setting than the one you shelled out 60$ for.

While I have seen plenty examples of the former, I've not seen any examples of the latter. Tome, while it may be mechanically better, is less usable than what money can buy, and I wouldn't call that better. If something besides Tome is on your mind, I'd love to learn about it.

Kaelik, you wasted 5 seconds of my time making me read that shitpost. I want my time back.

It's more productive then 90% of the posts in this thread and it even answers the OPs question that he specifically asked.

I agree. Sigma is being a douche.

[Bihlbo]

I would note however, that many games typically don't go for 10 AP (or MP - movement points), because having 10 points to account for does slow down play. Most wargames typically limit their AP to around 6 points, with only a few "fast" creatures going up to 10.

I would also strongly encourage simplifying the movement rates - i.e. Humans move at 2 squares per AP.

Good suggestion, I'll look into 6 points and see how I like it. The only thing that worries me about lowering the points is that it makes adjustments to point costs or available points far more efficatious, which could limit available bonuses and benefits across the board. Instead of it being hard to get a -4 cost reduction to an action (which likely comes from 4 sources) it would be hard to get a -2 or -3 reduction, limiting the sources of benefits. Which could be a non-issue if there's a strict restriction on the type of bonuses that can affect actions.

[ubernoob]

Were you not around when tome of battle came out? Initiative shuffling is a thousand different types of stupid. Changing your initiative order for more real actions is stupid and you should feel stupid for wanting it.

[Ice9]

Currently, this system incentivizes standing still and having a slugfest. One thing 4E got right - if you want people to move around in combat, you should not be able to trade the move action for anything that isn't movement. Because if you can trade movement for more attacks, people will do so, and movement will not happen.

Now if you want more standing still and less maneuvering, then there's no problem in that regard.