In-Combat Recharge

[Jacob_Orlove]

The danger in a complete charge-up system is that it assumes that everyone in combat was there from the beginning. If you want to have the Evil Necromancer show up after the players spend a few rounds chopping up his skeletons, the players will be up several mana points (or whatever) and can just wreck the wizard.

Essentially, reinforcements change from save-the-day heroes who turn the tide of the battle into a bunch of guys who were late to the party and now the food's all gone. That's lame.

If we want to see big moves saved for later in the fight, then I'd rather see a system that incentivizes doing so.

For example, more powerful attacks might be "wasted" on opponents who are still at full HP, but will inflict a whole bunch of wounds if you time it to when they've run out. If people have any kind of in-combat healing, it may also be worth saving a move that does enough damage to knock them down to 1/2 hp until they're actually at 1/2 their total hp, so that it puts them to 0 without giving them a chance to heal anything back up.

Or we can make moves depend more on positioning and situation. Sure, you could hit a couple of the undead with a positive energy burst right off, but if you wait until the rest of the party engages them and takes some hits, you can score some free healing off of the effect too.

[Manxome]

1204602410[/unixtime]]I select the 20 cards I want in my Warlock deck. I print them off and cut them out. I also print a Warlock character sheet, which includes the rules for my non-card powers.

Alternatively, I go into a store and buy a non-random Warlock deck of 60 cards, which comes with a Warlock character sheet. I select 20 cards from that.

If I want to play a Warlock/Assassin, I buy a Warlock deck and an Assassin deck, and pick 20 cards from them both. I use either the Warlock character sheet or the Assassin character sheet, depending on which set of non-card powers I want.

And then when they release the expansion set you can go out and buy another 60 cards for the Necromancer class and create a Warlock/Assassin/Necromancer. You can strategize about the best way to build your deck, and spend more money to increase the number of options available to you.

How has this not turned into a CCG? Granted, you've dropped the "we're going to squeeze more money out of you with randomness" gimmick, a move I thoroughly approve for all CCGs, but this still sounds like a CCG to me.

If you're printing your own cards (and probably even if you're not), you've substantially increased the minimum investment players need to make in order to try out the game. Not to mention that different players will use different standards when printing (different printers, types of paper, etc.), which will result in an inability to mix cards that are clearly distinguishable without seeing their fronts.

I'm not saying this is totally unworkable, but this is pretty much going to be the defining characteristic of the game if you go with it. It's way too much investment for a supporting feature.

[CatharzGodfoot]

1204611626[/unixtime]]
If you're printing your own cards (and probably even if you're not), you've substantially increased the minimum investment players need to make in order to try out the game.

If you thought "Oops, I left my dice at home" was bad...

[Draco_Argentum]

What about tying this into combatants getting defensive choices?

If the other guy can break up your chain by picking a defense that counters the move you were planning to make next it might help liven things up.

As for the reinforcements issue, what if you build combo points on a target and they only apply to that target? This would also help stop people from chaining the best three abilities together every time since their target could get dead. It also might reduce alphastriking since that would mean the party would rarely get to full combo points before the target died. This might make them choose separate targets.

[Username17]

On Card Based Systems: Probably the best way to do a card based system is to assign abilities to suits: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades. When you get dealt a hand of five cards, you can spend a Heart to use any of your Heart abilities, or a Spade to use any of your Spade abilities. This way you don't have to make lots of different cards and you don't have to design decks, and most importantly of all the players have actual choices when their hands run low.

You can add crazy by giving out Face abilities which can be used with a King, Queen, or Jack of any suit, and possibly even Ace abilities which can be used with an Ace of any suit but can only be thrown if the Ace in question is your last card.

---

Another way to keep people from spamming the same attack over and over again is to give out Conditions that last a long time and don't stack. Once you hit someone with the ability that slows them you want to move on to an ability that weakens them, and so on and so forth. However you're still going to be stuck using the biggest damaging attack you can once you've tagged boss man with all the conditions.

Having conditions pop off randomly is certainly a way to get people to spontaneously want to go back and use earlier abilities in different sequences during long combats. But the 4e system of popping off on a coin flip is way too frequent. Most conditions should just be looked at as one turn annoyances in such a set up, which puts us back to spamming Song of Stillness because root kiting is teh winzor.

-Username17

[Orion]

Well, aren't D&D fights way more complicated and dynamic than MMO ones? I'm pretty sure team monster ought to be able to have enough tactical depth to force players to adjust on the fly.

Suppose you are an Enchanter.

When you break into the Hall of the Goblin King, You see a bunch of goblins, a few elite guards, the court wizard, and the King. SO you say to yourself, okay, I'll pop off song of stillness to freeze the weaklings, then enfeeble the elites one by one, reneweing stillness when necessary, then dump all my dots on the king.

Yeah, cycling through stillness>enfeeble>stillness>enfeeble>stillness could get kind of boring. That's why the DM has a responsibility to make life interesting.

Maybe a pair of goblin rogues jumps out from behind the curtain, putting you in danger. Do you attack them, letting your debuffs slide? Or do you trust your friends ot protect you?

Maybe another squad of goblins comes in the door behind you. You can juggle them too, but that means you'll use song every round. What's more dangerous, letting the mobs de-still or letting the elites disenfeeble?

Maybe the Court Magician uses his Word of Freedom to release his men. Do you keep reapplying stillness and hope the Word fails? Summon Skeletons to harry the goblins? Cast Finger of Death on the court wizard?

Maybe the King summons his own skeletons, so you switch to Walls of Ice because it affects skeletons AND goblins.

D&D will never be as boring as an MMO because the PCs start with incomplete knowledge, the monsters can adapt their tactics to the PCs, and reinforcements, dynamic environments, etc., can complicate things.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

I like Shatner's ideas about a mana system mentioned earlier. I have a few ideas about such a system, though I'm not sure how useful they will be. Mostly I'm trying to think outside the box...

1) On Omega Strikes (finishing moves): Once a character has earned a certain number of mana points over the course of a battle to become fully charged, they get access to their Omega Strike. (note: you count how many mana points they have earned in total, not their current amount). An Omega Strike doesn't cost any mana out of your reserve, rather it fully charges your enemy's mana reserve a round (or 2 or 3) later.

This has a few effects:
-You will use your Omega Strike at the end of battle to use as a finishing move, so your opponent isn't alive to use his fully charged mana reserve.
-The enemy will try to keep that unit alive at all costs b/c it will have a fully charged mana reserve soon. (tactical urgency)
-Multiple Omega Strikes won't affect the mana reserve full recovery, so it becomes advantageous for multiple Pc's to all use their Omega Strikes in tandem on the same target(s).
--This helps turn the focus on teamwork and helping to ensure everyone works on getting their mana reserve full together.


2) In addition to there being a mana reserve system, there could also be a mana debt system extending in the opposite direction. For example, if you really needed to do a maneuver that requires 2 mana points, but you don't have any mana points because you just entered a battle you can go into mana debt.

First of all, your mana debt goes to -3 or more for your 2 point move. You can perform that maneuver this round. Next round you are fatigued (or some other condition) and cannot use any more mana maneuvers until you have a positive mana reserve. An additional rule might be that if your mana debt doesn't lessen each round you go to a worse stage on the condition track. So if you don't get any mana next round, you would become exhausted (or some other condition).

This rule could act as a foundation for a lot of things. For example, mana reserves and mana debt forces tactical choice based on opportunity costs and tactical need. Additionally, it could support the two opposing character power dynamics of the 'Charge Up' character and the 'Wind Down' character.


3) Some more nebulous ideas: Characters have mana regeneration at higher levels in addition to their mana granting attacks. You still want most of a characters mana to result from successful attacks, but mana regeneration ensures that higher level characters are always more ready and resilient than lower level characters. Or possibly higher level characters start off with a mana pool that has 1 or 2 mana points in it at the start of battle.

[Draco_Argentum]

Omega strikes sound like an interesting idea.

[Maxus]

Indeed they do.

Part of my fondness for the Progenitor of the Gith is that at character level 9th, you get a cool spell-like to use as a finishing move--Plane Shift.

It's rewarding when your character can tell a BBEG "Go. To. Hell." and have it literally happen if they fail their save.

[Username17]

The 4e concept of getting all durations on the same page is a good one, even if they didn't actually do that. The important thing is that keeping track of how long it has been since an effect was applied is annoying and I don't want to do it. So I propose the following conceits:

Upkeep: At the end of your turn there is upkeep. Effects which time out always end at this point.

Round: The effect automatically ends during upkeep. This is mostly for big penalties like stun. People shouldn't usually be forced to lose more than a single round of actions.

Random: During upkeep, roll a d6. The effect ends on a 6. This is often going to last an entire Encounter. You can seriously roll different colored d6s for every effect on you, which is much harder to do with d20s. This should be for effects like weakness or on fire that can be accepted lasting for an entire combat without making someone really frustrated.

Sunrise: The effect ends at sunrise.

Perpetual: The effect doesn't end on its own. This should be for ones which are essentially death effects like petrify or which are trivial to end like prone.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

How does sunrise work when there is no sunrise?

[JonSetanta]

Or a world that works on a non-24-hour-basis.

And wouldn't upkeep be at the beginning of your next turn rather than the end of the current turn?...


Edit: And one more.

There is indeed a difference between Eternal Perpetual and Dispellable Perpetual, almost like a kind of momentum; a target once changed in status will remain in that status VS. the target possesses some ability to restore its original condition in a matter of time.
Turning to stone or dying would count as EP, or to a lesser extent HP as well, while being knocked prone, falling asleep naturally, or even willing blindness (your eyes are closed. DUNDUNDUNNN!) are states that can and frequently do become removed by a being's own will.

[Draco_Argentum]

Actually a world with a different day length works just fine with sunrise duration. As long as the day is longer than the normal combats it serves its purpose of giving out spells that last multiple combats.

Perpetual effects just need the removal condition added to them if there isn't a normal action that allows you to remove them. As long as get up is an action we know how to remove prone. Things like petrification need to say dispell can remove it. Or there needs to be a spell that says it removes it eg flesh to stone.

[Manxome]

1204785705[/unixtime]]And wouldn't upkeep be at the beginning of your next turn rather than the end of the current turn?...

That distinction only matters if you're applying the status effect to yourself.

It might actually be useful to have effects that end after the current turn, so you can do combo attacks like "swift action to set my sword on fire" followed by "attack" followed by the fire effect ending. But you probably don't need to describe that as a status effect; this is a tabletop game, not a computer game, and players can cope with "adds bonus fire damage to an attack you make on the same turn" without recording it on their character sheet as a status effect.

Additionally, placing a random status effect on yourself and having it instantly end because you rolled a 6 is also going to suck. So maybe you want a "upkeep phase ignores status effects that you gained during your current turn" rule.

Though if we want to be consistent with the probable source for the idea, I believe Arkham Horror random effects end on a roll of 1, not on a roll of 6.

[JonSetanta]

A common statement for d20/D&D/WOTC publications listing effects that last 1 round are worded: ".. until the beginning of your next turn..."
That was my impression of how Upkeep would work, as a shortened reference to the whole event.
And the turn still occurs for a character even if they choose not to do anything, or quits combat, since it would have been their turn anyway. This prevents the loophole of "I never took my turn, so the effect lasts until I do!"

[CatharzGodfoot]

I like the idea of effects that last one minute. It's pointless for at-will buffs (might as well be perpetual), but makes a significant difference for limited-use and negative conditions.

So if you activate your limited-use electro-shield, you can count on it for that combat.

The 1/6 thing is good, though. With a minimum of 1 round of acting with the effect in place, it might be worth accepting that your super boost only lasts one round 16% of the time.

[Manxome]

If "stun" is going to be an effect with the "round" duration, then its effects will be much easier to describe if upkeep occurs at the end of your turn (i.e. I stun you with an attack, you can't do anything while you're stunned, you become unstunned at the end of your next turn).

Basically, if a status effect gets applied, it should actually do something before it expires (in the rare instance that you want a chance for it to do nothing, there should be a chance that it isn't applied at all, which saves me the trouble of writing it down). It's easier to make sure that statuses actually do something if upkeep occurs at the end of your turn than if it occurs at the beginning.

By the by, you shouldn't need them for combat abilities, but if you're going to use this scheme for durations, you may also want to formalize

Lunar: Lasts until the next new moon.

Annual: Lasts until midnight on the longest night of the year.

[Username17]

1204785705[/unixtime]]

And wouldn't upkeep be at the beginning of your next turn rather than the end of the current turn?...

That would be retarded. Let's say I hit a guy with a stun effect. Bam, he's stunned. Then his next turn comes around, and then his Upkeep happens? He unstuns before anything happens to him? What the hell, man? What the hell?

Heck, even in the case of a beneficial status effect there's no percentage in having Upkeep occur before your turn as opposed to after it. If you are concerned that your flame blade will turn off before you have a chance to use it because you end it at the end of your turn, that's still a problem because your next turn's attack still comes after an Upkeep either way. Your flame blade still has to be triggered as a Press before your strike or it won't work.

Upkeep triggering at the start of your turn facilitates single-round defensive conditions (like Invisible and Blinking). Upkeep triggering at the end of your turn facilitates single-round offensive conditions (like Fear and Stun). But as previously noted there is a lot more reason to define offensive abilities as conditions. Defensive abilities can be stances or otherwise fit into ability slots and don't usually need explicit durations at all.

In fact, giving defenses durations of any sort simply encourages the kind of five minute workday nuclear christmas tree that we explicitly don't want out of life.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1204783399[/unixtime]]
Sunrise: The effect ends at sunrise.

If you're going to have prepared casting, why not just set it such that your spells end when you prepare a new one in its slot?

Seems a lot easier than worrying about sunrise and such.

[Manxome]

1204831604[/unixtime]]If you're going to have prepared casting, why not just set it such that your spells end when you prepare a new one in its slot?

Seems a lot easier than worrying about sunrise and such.

If you're only going to have prepared casting, maybe. If you're ever going to have any day-long status effect that comes from any source at all except prepared spells (magic items, plot devices, at-will abilities, etc.) it rapidly ceases to be easier.

Also, if it lasts until you prepare a new ability in that slot, that suggests you could make it last forever on a target that you saw once and you never need to get line-of-effect again to renew the spell, which is pretty weird. If you can convince an NPC to never refill a spell slot after casting a buff on you, you have it forever, even if you're adventuring on the other side of the world and never meet that NPC again.

You also need to worry about what happens if someone dies, or loses the slot in which the ability was prepared. You could have all spells cast by a wizard unravel automatically upon his death, but you might not want to make that a universal rule.

[RandomCasualty]

1204832358[/unixtime]]

If you're only going to have prepared casting, maybe. If you're ever going to have any day-long status effect that comes from any source at all except prepared spells (magic items, plot devices, at-will abilities, etc.) it rapidly ceases to be easier.

Well you could just do the 4th edition thing where a complete rest (whcih recovers all your spells and such) restores those abilities. It also lets you tweak the length of a complete rest to whatever you think fits the campaign best.

Also, if it lasts until you prepare a new ability in that slot, that suggests you could make it last forever on a target that you saw once and you never need to get line-of-effect again to renew the spell, which is pretty weird. If you can convince an NPC to never refill a spell slot after casting a buff on you, you have it forever, even if you're adventuring on the other side of the world and never meet that NPC again.

Well yeah, but that's probably not going to happen. No NPC wants to permanently give up a spell slot. Unless of course, you're going to be paying him continuously. Also the spell can still get dispelled.

You also need to worry about what happens if someone dies, or loses the slot in which the ability was prepared. You could have all spells cast by a wizard unravel automatically upon his death, but you might not want to make that a universal rule.

Well all "daily" spells really should. Remember that this is just a specific duration category. Not everything has it. It's mostly for buff spells and maybe some summons or something.

[JonSetanta]

1204794939[/unixtime]]

That would be retarded. Let's say I hit a guy with a stun effect. Bam, he's stunned. Then his next turn comes around, and then his Upkeep happens? He unstuns before anything happens to him? What the hell, man? What the hell?

Dude that's the point of stun. To deny the target their actions on their own turn, as unfair as it is.
What good would stun be to just give a -2 AC or whatever for the aggressor's batch of attacks and then crap out so soon?
Stun lock would cease to exist, for better or for worse.

[Manxome]

1204833808[/unixtime]]

1204794939[/unixtime]]That would be retarded. Let's say I hit a guy with a stun effect. Bam, he's stunned. Then his next turn comes around, and then his Upkeep happens? He unstuns before anything happens to him? What the hell, man? What the hell?

Dude that's the point of stun. To deny the target their actions on their own turn, as unfair as it is.

I don't think you read that carefully.

If your upkeep occurs at the start of your turn, then by the time you get to the point in your turn when you can actually take actions, you're no longer stunned. That does indeed defeat the point of stun, which is the problem.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think the confusion is based on one person assuming effects time out during the caster's upkeep, and another person assuming effects time out on the target's upkeep.

[Draco_Argentum]

The answer being target's. That way you don't need to remember who gave you which token.

Basically, if a status effect gets applied, it should actually do something before it expires (in the rare instance that you want a chance for it to do nothing, there should be a chance that it isn't applied at all, which saves me the trouble of writing it down). It's easier to make sure that statuses actually do something if upkeep occurs at the end of your turn than if it occurs at the beginning.

Also this. Applying statuses and not having them do anything at all is pointless bookkeeping.