New Edition: Actions

[K]

1197840589[/unixtime]]

• People whose largest attack is a spell or other ranged attack.
  
  I don't want the game to turn into Dragonball, where while it is nominally possible to run over to your opponent and jab at them, what you actually do is just stand there going "AAAAAAAAAH!" until you can shoot your super ki blast.

You can do by controlling ranges on abilities, and by the fact that abilities are not going to punch through ranks of guys to get to the good guy.

Also, multi-round "prep and then blast" abilities have to go. Its just not fun on any level, except to replicate DBZ.

Ranged attacks also have to have an inverse damage curve(?) with their range, so that:

Fireball(3rd) does less damage than Scorcher(2nd), and both do less damage than Shocking Grasp.(1st)

Fireball is a higher level ability because it sets every square it touches on fire, while Scorch only sets guys on fire if they fail a save.

And if people say "I'm just an archer, and I don't want to do anything else", then they have to live with the fact that they can only do status effects on people and not big damage.

Legolas is an archer and he fights in melee with a big knife and kills elephants, so I don't think its too much of a hardship to let melee-guys take the big risks for the big payoffs.

1197840589[/unixtime]]

• Witty reparte during combat.

I don't want the game to turn into Arduin, where noone talks or does anything cool during combat because that all cuts into attack time in a very real way.

"Doing something cool" has to be an ability. If you want the Taunt ability, then you have a character that does witty reparte, because the last time I checked I couldn't think of a single movie where people seriously tried to attack someone AND say something cool at the same time.

1197840589[/unixtime]]

• Fiddliness.

I don't want this to turn into Squad Leader where I have lots of resource management to do on every infantryman.

-Username17

Every game I've played, people grab the figure they want, then count out the squares they can walk, then figure out what abilities they can use, then they do some combo of those.

How is this any more complicated than that?

I mean, Mooks will be low level guys with few options. How hard is that?

[RandomCasualty]

1197839873[/unixtime]]

3. Doing something with your move. People keep asking to be able to "do a big attack and not get a move", and thats because we know that there are a bunch of reasons to not move and they want to feel like they aren't wasting that action. In this system, your bigger powers eat into your move, so you do get something for your move, but in a level-appropriate way.

You're mixing up level appropriate and level diminishing.

Under your system, low level casters, the ones who cast magic missile and shit can move a lot and still cast, since 1st level spells are 1st level spells. As you gain levels, you become slower and slower as you get better spells. So when you're throwing a meteor swarm, you are now much slower since you're using 7th, 8th and 9th level spells instead of 1st through 3rd. So as you gain levels, you slow down.

I'm not sure why you'd want that honestly.

[K]

1197845893[/unixtime]]

1197839873[/unixtime]]

3. Doing something with your move. People keep asking to be able to "do a big attack and not get a move", and thats because we know that there are a bunch of reasons to not move and they want to feel like they aren't wasting that action. In this system, your bigger powers eat into your move, so you do get something for your move, but in a level-appropriate way.

You're mixing up level appropriate and level diminishing.

Under your system, low level casters, the ones who cast magic missile and shit can move a lot and still cast, since 1st level spells are 1st level spells. As you gain levels, you become slower and slower as you get better spells. So when you're throwing a meteor swarm, you are now much slower since you're using 7th, 8th and 9th level spells instead of 1st through 3rd. So as you gain levels, you slow down.

I'm not sure why you'd want that honestly.

Since we are getting rid of the "per day" system of power use, there has to be some other limiting factor or else everyone will always use their best power every round.

Not moving and using your best attack means that you risk being attacked and possibly mobbed.

If you were one guy fighting a Lich and two wraiths, the Lich will toss low damage ranged attacks at you and let the Wraiths close for high damage attacks. You can let the Wraiths close with you and pop off your best spell, or you can take your moves so that the wraiths can only use their medium damage attacks.

Each round you'll be moving around, trying to keep them from using their best attacks while trying to get off the best thing you've got with your available points. If you've got a melee range spell that really hurts Liches(maybe Lich to Dust), maybe you want to pop off a quick disabling spell for the Wraiths and close with the Lich so you can use it next round.

[Crissa]

I think in a way we need a built-up mechanic like Yugio has - I know, Duel Monsters is a suck-tastic game, but - where you have to pull out some number or preparation maneuvers before a bigger maneuver can be used.

And really, we need this not connected to successfully using the prep moves - that way lies bag of rats - but merely getting them on the floor.

If that means you have to hat-tilt, L-R-L-R start-select Moonwalk before your mega power comes out, I don't care. Hopefully it'll be less precise so you can 'use' your prep moves in normal tactics - but it would be nice if they were signature enough that you'd know - or your character would know - that the mega-move was coming online.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1197870903[/unixtime]]I think in a way we need a built-up mechanic like Yugio has - I know, Duel Monsters is a suck-tastic game, but - where you have to pull out some number or preparation maneuvers before a bigger maneuver can be used.

And really, we need this not connected to successfully using the prep moves - that way lies bag of rats - but merely getting them on the floor.

Yeah, I like the idea of prep moves, it's just rather hard to set them up in a way that works well.

[JonSetanta]

Some of us here actually want a bit of Dragonball

[CatharzGodfoot]

1197862083[/unixtime]]Since we are getting rid of the "per day" system of power use, there has to be some other limiting factor or else everyone will always use their best power every round.

Not moving and using your best attack means that you risk being attacked and possibly mobbed.

And this is different from 'move/attack or full attack' how?

I like the aesthetics of single attack/move action vs. area attack. In duels you're going to be attacking one person and moving around a lot, so that's fine. The possible exception would be things like 'suicide bomb', where the dwarf alchemist runs into the middle of the enemies and explodes.


Another couple of thoughts:
Attacks of opportunity are walls of fire. They're just fixed area effects which go off when you enter, and have some duration (probably until the warrior moves). If generating areas effects means using 'wall of blades', which hits everyone in reach and then hits everyone who enters reach before your next action, that's fine. It might even have the secondary effect of stopping movement if you hit.


There should be teamwork-based actions. That horde of kobolds doesn't make attacks individually, because they'd be pathetic. Instead they attack as a group, which is much more effective. Swarms already do this, but the idea is to allow swarm-like attacks while still allowing the components to be treated as individuals. Players can make shield walls too.


[Edit]
Also, what happened to airstrikes?
[/Edit]

[JonSetanta]

I just read back and noticed something K wrote a while ago...
DAMN IT! Got to the thread too late.
My guess for K's question was X-COM: Apocalypse for the action points game. Played that on a 486. Ah, the old days...
Loved how the floor panels blow out and fall with big explosions. That, and the blue guys with mushroom heads, and the little running things that go boom.
Anyway...

Avoid action points for turns. A gamer would be required to assign point values to new types of actions.
With the Move/Standard/Swift/Free/Non-action setup, it all falls into categories. Not many actions exist outside of those types.

[tzor]

1197916821[/unixtime]]Some of us here actually want a bit of Dragonball

That's the last thing I want. It's really great to see it all in real time but when I have to start resolving a few hundred of attacks in a given round most of which tend to be sucessfully blocked it would be most annoying.

And the "get a new haristyle" with each level is ... well I'm not going there.

But if you really want you can get the "no nose" feat.

[Koumei]

1197922663[/unixtime]]But if you really want you can get the "no nose" feat.

How would the characters smell?

[Jacob_Orlove]

1197941162[/unixtime]]How would the characters smell?

By not bathing? It's not like they buy soap in real life either.

[tzor]

1197941162[/unixtime]]

1197922663[/unixtime]]But if you really want you can get the "no nose" feat.

How would the characters smell?

They don't. That's the point. You would be immune to (for example) a Ghast's Stench as well as a Troglodyte's Stench. (Actually I had to look it up, Kuririn was the chracter in the series that had no nose. I forget the situations where that turned out to be an advantage.)

[Koumei]

Either you didn't go with the oldest joke in existence, or you chose to ignore it, which I really can't blame you for.

Jacob_Orlove answered correctly, and I also would have accepted "Terrible!"

[JonSetanta]

Tzor: the giant stinky guy with very base attacks, like "crotch fist". It was a tournament match in DB.
Krillin was reminded that he had no nose, and suddenly stopped imagining the stench enough to fight and win easily.

[Kaelik]

K. As for your super action point system/line of effect blocked by people.

It just doesn't work in three dimensions.

There is no "front rank" once someone flies 20ft up in the air. They also (in most games with flying) tend to immediately become invulnerable against most enemies primary attack forms. Someone is going to find a good way to make a powerful ranged attacker who can move in three dimensions.

Turn 1, I fly use fly spell and ascend 20ft.
Turn 2, I fire my highest level power at the optimal enemy every round.

You have three options as I see it:
1) Make a game where no one can fly.
2) Make a game where everyone can fly (This still screws up your front line idea, since all anyone has to do is move 5-10ft to target anyone they can't target right now.)
3) Design an entire set of ways to punish flyers:
a) Everyone (and I mean everyone) has a powerful ranged attack that they all aim at anyone they see flying, may or may not only work on flyers. (IE web has minor effects on groundies, but makes fliers fall down.)
b) Give every mage, and most monsters an attack or ability usage of Fuck With Flying Guy.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

You have three options as I see it:

It's not as drastic as that. You just need to scale defense to offense. That's what all the battlefield control spells are for. Fog spells, wall spells, summoning spells, etc. all are used to block line of effect.

Besides, flying is the least of your worries. What you really need to address is ethereal, incorporeal, and burrowing foes.

[Catharz]

Thinking about automatons has led me to think more about swarms.

A group of identical creatures large enough to count as the next level up should be able to use group mechanics. They'll get at least one 'group attack', which is a [group] level appropriate (usually area) attack. They are also treated as a group with regards to HP, attributes, and so forth. Enough identical groups to count as the next level up are treated as such and have improved group statistics.

The only issues I see are distribution of damage to individuals and mixed groups. Distribution of damage is pretty clear when the group is 'killed': every member dies. When the group is KO'ed, it seems as though some members should survive (the lone surviving spiderbot skitters off to show its master what happened), but how do you determine how many survived, and how damaged those individuals are? It's exactly the same deal for groups of groups.
Should mixed groups exist at all? Will they be reduced to the lowest common denominator?

[Crissa]

Also, there's no reason the Fighter can't have a larger bubble of influence because he can reach out with his swords and disrupt more penetrating effects.

Personally, I'd like that to work as a 'buff' to the person they're protecting, as well - which would mean that even if you come around from behind, you have a chance of tripping on the defense, as long as the line stays intact.

So there's a reason to have a distraction in front for the sneaker behind.

-Crissa