3.8th Edition: Iterative Attacks

[MGuy]

Dump'em or keep'em is the basic question I'm asking. As it stands I'm not sure which I should go with. I haven't had many problems with iterative attacks but I have seen that a number of systems limit the number of attacks made per turn. My overall question is whether it is better to keep the set up made by 3.x or to somehow adjust how attacks work.

[RandomCasualty2]

Honestly I like the ToB style maneuvers over the iterative attacks. In all my 3.5 games, people rarely use iteratives.

[Thymos]

Dump them. They make the optimal choice for Combat dudes to just sit there and roll dice. This is boring.

Ramp up Melee dudes damage or give them 2 attacks on a standard attack, but by all means Melee dudes should not have their optimal choice in every situation be a full attack.

[RobbyPants]

They do slow the game down a bit. Really, unless you're adding something special to each attack about the only things iteratives are good for are:

1) Hitting one guy a bunch of times, or

2) Hitting several guys once.

The former can be fixed by simply increasing damage or other effects on a single attack (such as with ToB maneuvers). The 2nd is only effective against multiple weak guys who will drop in one hit, and could possibly be handled by some form of Cleave handed out for free. Perhaps you get a free number of Cleave attacks equal to the number of iteratives you'd normally get.

[Username17]

Handing out extra attacks is a clear and effective way to let people have their damage ramp up over time. 3e's innovation of attack penalties for later attacks was a bad plan - should have kept the AD&D system where your additional attacks are always at full attack bonus.

However, there is another obvious method for giving people damage that keeps up with the needs of large high level damage requirements: damage multiples. Believe it or not, I think 4e was on the right track where they handed out special attacks that could do more damage or give you multiple attacks and whatever else. Like most things about 4e, the mathematical implementation is embarrassing and the actual packages available are boring as fuck. But there's no reason that has to be the case.

For starters, multiple attacks should by no means be associated with DPS builds. Multiple attacks are less likely to flunk out and can hit multiple enemies. Their clear tactical role is crowd control and agro-management. Single, large attacks are where it should be at for dragon slaying.

The 4e authors just never really figured out that in a world without explicit agro mechanics for mobs that the skirmisher is the tank and the knight is the DPS.

-Username17

[Caedrus]

Honestly I like the ToB style maneuvers over the iterative attacks. In all my 3.5 games, people rarely use iteratives.

Note that there are extra attacks in the ToB system.

A few questions come up when you want to remove iterative attacks altogether. For instance, what becomes TWF's new schtick?

[ubernoob]

I think it'd be sweet if TWF just gave you an extra chance. You roll two dice to hit and if either hits, you hit with one of your weapons. Generally speaking, it's easier to hit somebody at all if you have two weapons, but it's a lot harder to hit somebody with both weapons in the timespan it takes to hit with one big weapon.

[Psychic Robot]

I'll have to second what Frank said. Instead of iterative attacks, fix weapon sizing and then add on [W]s to attacks. You'll still want to slow the progression of HP, though.

[souran]

I think it'd be sweet if TWF just gave you an extra chance. You roll two dice to hit and if either hits, you hit with one of your weapons. Generally speaking, it's easier to hit somebody at all if you have two weapons, but it's a lot harder to hit somebody with both weapons in the timespan it takes to hit with one big weapon.

I would dispute this statement. Go outside, find 2 3-4 foot sticks and try swinging them both simultaneously. Honestly, even ambidexterous people have a hard time trying to control both arms as the dominant arm simultaneously.

However, the idea is good it create 3 clear paradigms

Weapon alone or with shield/defensive item: max defense
2 weapons: max hit probability
two handed weapon: max damage potential.

There are people who would play all three paradigms.

[ubernoob]

I think it'd be sweet if TWF just gave you an extra chance. You roll two dice to hit and if either hits, you hit with one of your weapons. Generally speaking, it's easier to hit somebody at all if you have two weapons, but it's a lot harder to hit somebody with both weapons in the timespan it takes to hit with one big weapon.

I would dispute this statement. Go outside, find 2 3-4 foot sticks and try swinging them both simultaneously. Honestly, even ambidexterous people have a hard time trying to control both arms as the dominant arm simultaneously.

I was totally thinking of smaller blades. Daggers and such. I'm not that strong, so tend to stay away from heavier blades period.

[Manxome]

If you want to use iterative attacks or damage multipliers, you should keep in mind that going from 1x to 2x is (proportionately) really freaking huge, and balance appropriately. In 3e, it's dulled significantly by charging you a bigger action cost and penalizing the second attack, but it's still a pretty obvious breakpoint.

Basically, don't double the multiplier in a single level (with no trade-off) unless you actually want people to double their damage output every level.

[MGuy]

It seems pretty unanimous that everyone thinks its better to drop iterative attacks. In that case I think I'll go with the doubling damage idea. So at levels 6/11/16 the pc can opt to take a -5/-10/15 to attack to double/triple/quadruple the damage. I think I'll allow TWFs to have extra attacks (that's how its done in every other system) with a penalty on all attacks made that round. That penalty will stack with the option to increase the damage of singular attacks.

[NativeJovian]

Attaching a penalty to that seems like a bad idea, MGuy. You want the fighter to be able to continue contributing at each level, right? But with that scheme, they have to choose between being useless by missing constantly or being useless by doing crap damage. By giving PCs x2/x3/x4 damage in place of iterative attacks, you're just making it so that they're doing level-appropriate damage. Or closer to it, anyway. You could accomplish the same thing by allowing iterative attacks to be made at full attack bonus, but that would involve more rolling.

If you really want to cut down on rolling, you could also have TWF handled by rolling one attack roll, apply a penalty for TWF, and then apply both weapons' damage if it's a hit.

The question I see coming up is, if you're multiplying damage instead of doing iterative attacks, do crits multiply on TOP of that, or just add linearly on top of that? IE, if you're attacking with a 1d8 longsword at 3x damage (for three iterative attacks), and you crit, do you multiply that by 2 (as per normal crit rules) for a total of 6d8 damage? Or do you add another d8 (ie the difference between a 1d8 regular hit and a 2d8 critical hit) for a total of 4d8? How about damage modifiers? If your normal single attack is 1d8+4, is your full attack 3d8+12 (because the entire thing is x3) or 3d8+4 (because you're only multiplying DICE, not the whole value)?

[Manxome]

So at levels 6/11/16 the pc can opt to take a -5/-10/15 to attack to double/triple/quadruple the damage.

Those are probably bad numbers. First, it's very hard to stay on the RNG when you're throwing around -15 modifiers. Second, some of those options (mainly the 4x) are always worse damage/round unless you negate some of the penalty by being off the RNG in one direction or the other. I believe you'd essentially always want to attack at 2x, unless you were very close to one end of the RNG or the other.

If you want any realistic chance of your rules being even vaguely balanced, you need to sit down and do a bunch of math to figure out how large an effect they're actually going to have. Probably a bunch of simulated test runs, too.

[Psychic Robot]

Dumb question: how much work are you going to put into fixing the RNG? Because if you dump iterative attacks but stack on bonus damage, you're going to need to give players a penalty to their attack rolls so high levels aren't autohit.

[MGuy]

@NativeJ: I don't care overmuch about a little more rolling. I think TWF should always be 2 different rolls. Higher chance to hit/lower damage and all.

@Manxome: I'm not so sure. There are a number of ways to get a bonus here and there to make a person hit even at a penalty.

@PR: I'm willing and working on doing a lot of work. I'm probably going to throw out the old AC system and get something maybe closer to Iron Heroes or maybe Fantasy Craft's.

[Psychic Robot]

What is FC's AC system?

[MGuy]

10+base defense bonus + Dex

[CatharzGodfoot]

Two weapon fighting is all about being able to keep something sharp pointed at your opponents eyes while you stab her in the kidney. You don't attack with two weapons at once, you feint and parry with both weapons and attack with one. It's a lot harder to parry and attack at the same time with a two-handed weapon, and a lot harder to feint with a shield.

Or if not, at least that sounds good. Right?

[RobbyPants]

Two weapon fighting is all about being able to keep something sharp pointed at your opponents eyes while you stab her in the kidney. You don't attack with two weapons at once, you feint and parry with both weapons and attack with one. It's a lot harder to parry and attack at the same time with a two-handed weapon, and a lot harder to feint with a shield.

Or if not, at least that sounds good. Right?

That's kind of how I would have implemented it.

Either something like a swift action feint, or allow a touch attack with weapon A to allow the next attack with weapon B to treat the opponent as flanked.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Iterative attacks are REALLY useful if you still want characters to use up lower-level manuevers at higher levels.

I mean, how many times have you heard it proposed that 3rd Edition spellcasters should get an 'iterative attack' where they can cast an additional spell for levels lower than them for free?

Or using 4E for example, when you get to 'paragon' tier instead of replacing lower-level manuevers you can once a round use a lower-level one stacked on top of a higher-level one when you make an attack. This would also mean that people would need new At-Wills for each tier. And the system probably wouldn't end up working anyway since it doesn't really get rid of the Five Moves of Doom problem that hurts 4E's system more than anything.

I know there's a lot of problems implementing that idea but iterative attacks do have concrete sets of advantages--as long as you're not using them as damage multipliers.

[Caedrus]

Two weapon fighting is all about being able to keep something sharp pointed at your opponents eyes while you stab her in the kidney. You don't attack with two weapons at once, you feint and parry with both weapons and attack with one. It's a lot harder to parry and attack at the same time with a two-handed weapon, and a lot harder to feint with a shield.

Or if not, at least that sounds good. Right?

That's all well and good, but how do you turn that into an appropriate mechanical schtick?

[Username17]

That's all well and good, but how do you turn that into an appropriate mechanical schtick?

Well, for starters you probably want to have some kind of zone of control system. 3e D&D uses a square "threatened area" where you have an opportunity to do extra damage to people who move around in that area. 2E AD&D let each character engage one enemy and pin them down. You're going to want to do some kind of hybrid.

The obvious basic mechanic for two weapon fighting under the circumstances is allowing you to "engage" multiple enemies at once. In essence, drawing fire from multiple enemies. Meanwhile the guy with the sword and shield can seriously have more defense against his chosen target and do more damage. His job is to be a less attractive target for the guy he is attacking, while the skirmishing swashbuckler's job is to draw fire and keep the sword and boarder from getting swarmed.

Depending on the relative resilience of characters and the dice mechanics being used and such, the relative effects of being engaged and abandoning the guy who had engaged you to try to get the jump on someone else would of course have to change. But it seems eminently doable, especially if you're abandoning the battlemat such that you're going to need abstract enemy engagement anyway.

-Username17

[MGuy]

I've never played 2E could you expand upon that idea a bit? How exactly did being pinned down work? Was it that an enemy couldn't change targets or that doing so had consequences?

[Username17]

I've never played 2E could you expand upon that idea a bit? How exactly did being pinned down work? Was it that an enemy couldn't change targets or that doing so had consequences?

OK, in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons there were outside inches, and inside inches. Inside Inches were three times as fine as outside inches. So as you can imagine, combat was pretty abstract, and your position on the board was mostly relative. 2e, with its emphasis on running around outside or even in the Desert pretty much ditched the battle map entirely. One of the few really good articles on Wizards is about this exact subject (the final paragraph is an obligatory ad for 4th edition, but the rest of the article is factually true).

In 2e AD&D's largely mini-less play system (I knew hardly anyone who used minis for 2e AD&D except in the odd legacy dungeon crawl - and even then usually not), characters were narratively either "in combat" with an opponent or they were not. If you were "in combat" with someone and you tried to go attack anyone else, you got hit by an attack of opportunity from everyone you were "in combat" with. Since an attack was a really big deal in that edition, that pretty much meant that people did not leave combat until one side or the other had fallen or surrendered.

-Username17