Brainstorming an Everything's At-Will Tactical System

[Josh_Kablack]

Pulling this out of the WoF discussion:

What?

The goal is to design a game engine where all PC attacks (powers) are at-wills, but the round-to-round situation varies enough that most players will want to use different powers in a single fight, and in different fights they will want to vary their choices based on the round-by-round tactical situation rather than constructing scripted combos.

Why?

Because at-will abilities are really easy to keep track of resources for, and simulate a lot of fiction. And because people despise other resource management systems, yet don't want characters to just spam one or two moves repeatedly.

How?

Figuring some potential answers out is the purpose of this thread.

So far, the idea is to try to blend something like the attack power concept of 4th ed D&D with concepts from a 2d arcade fighting game (such as Street Fighter). So if a character performs "jump kick" they can hit an opponent for knockdown, but they become vulnerable to taking extra damage from "uppercut" and similar anti-air moves.

The most obvious obstacle to such a system is that we have the contradictory design goals of

• We want conditions to change round-by-round. Thereby encouraging the PCs to use different abilities based on such changes.
• We want to Keep It Simple, Stupid. Updating multiple statuses on multiple characters multiple times per round over multiple rounds of combat is obviously a multiplicative function, and having the potential for any one of those variables to be too large means we have the potential to have a system too large to keep track of.

So while things should change round-by-round, we want to try to keep a lid on the number of different statuses, the number of characters in a combat, the number of times during a round that statuses can update and maybe even how many rounds a combat should be.

*******

My *preliminary* thoughts on this are to use D&D/Final Fantasy style condition tags / status ailments, but keep things manageable by chunking it so that multiple conditions map to a set of at most 7 different triggering conditions for attacks. (like how in 4e Blind, Stunned, Dazed, and Prone all had "you grant Combat Advantage" as part of their effect). That gives us a hopefully manageable cap on the number of statuses to track. Then we ditch individual initiatives and go with "PC actions" and "Team Monster Actions" (resolved in seating order or something else hyper-simple), but we keep something like the 4e "save every round" duration - so after all of the PC actions, there's a specific "save phase" where the PCs save to end each condition currently on them; and after all of the Team Monster actions, there's a specific save phase where the monsters save to end each condition currently affecting them. And we put everything that's not "longer than fight" on that exact duration. Of course that sort of system gives us the quirk that you would now have a chance to save against your own "airborne" after performing a "jump kick" on your own turn, and wouldn't necessarily leave yourself open to an anti-air counter move. I'm not sure if I like that or not.

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But as that's just preliminary thinking I'm sure those have issues beyond the obvious ones. As there seemed to be enough interest in such a system in the WoF thread, I figured it was worth starting a separate discussion.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I can tell you right now that having reactive status effects like your Jump Kick move is a really bad idea. I mean, if an opponent pulls off a Tiger Uppercut then that makes Hurricane Kick the best option and makes you a fool for using any of your other 5-6 moves. But then after you use Hurricane Kick that makes Tiger Knee the best move to use. Then that makes Hadouken the best countermove, etc. IOW it reduces combat to deterministic inputs and outputs once someone throws the first punch.

[Psychic Robot]

something that would be cool is using minis with magnetic bases and having different magnetic colored chips to stick on the bases to track conditions.

overall you're going to want to have each move do about the same damage because otherwise people will just spam the high damage move in most cases (at least I think so). something that you could do:

Flying Kick: You leap into the air and make a melee attack against the target. If your attack hits, the target is knocked prone. However, if your attack misses, you are knocked prone instead.

Lunging Strike: You lunge for your target, making a melee attack. For this attack, your reach extends an additional five feet. Until the beginning of your next turn, you take a -2 penalty to AC because of your awkward footing.

Crushing Blow: You power through your target's defenses. You make a melee attack, ignoring any damage reduction the target possess when rolling for damage. However, the strain of your assault leaves your proportionally weakened: for each point of damage reduction you ignore, you take one damage.

idk if that's what you want

[fectin]

This works much better in a ccg or board game. It sounds a lot like Ophidean. Or danger patrol if you want simpler. Or dicewars if you want much simpler. That said:

I think the key is going to be making everything you want to do reactive instead of active. Look at the Knight's challenge mechanic as a basis: you set a state for the opponent, then the next turn, if [state]&&[conditional] you can do massive damage. To make that broadly applicable, generalize 'state' to e.g. [Blue, green, yellow, red] and keep the conditionals for all the abilities. Now you have (sort of) a reverse WoF, where your tactical options are different per opponent, and the conditionals still keep the setup portion. That also means that you need to work with your team. Varying initiative will keep the same team strategy from working every time.

[CCarter]

What?

The goal is to design a game engine where all PC attacks (powers) are at-wills, but the round-to-round situation varies enough that most players will want to use different powers in a single fight, and in different fights they will want to vary their choices based on the round-by-round tactical situation rather than constructing scripted combos.

Is there anything that can't be handled with a script, if its a sufficiently complex script? At least, unless the player has too little information initially to know what their opponents' counter will be?


EDIT: quote tags.

[Josh_Kablack]

I can tell you right now that having reactive status effects like your Jump Kick move is a really bad idea. I mean, if an opponent pulls off a Tiger Uppercut then that makes Hurricane Kick the best option and makes you a fool for using any of your other 5-6 moves. But then after you use Hurricane Kick that makes Tiger Knee the best move to use. Then that makes Hadouken the best countermove, etc. IOW it reduces combat to deterministic inputs and outputs once someone throws the first punch.

I don't think that such an assertion is necessarily true in a team-on-team fight, but concern about the potential of such a scenario has me thinking that using a timing where you save against the risks imposed by your moves at the end of your turn might not be a bad thing. Thematically: sometimes you land from the uppercut in time to block the hurricane kick. Mechanics wise: this introduces a random element to prevent combat from becoming purely deterministic (and also means we track fewer conditions).

something that would be cool is using minis with magnetic bases and having different magnetic colored chips to stick on the bases to track conditions.

If that works for you, great, but as I have played a bunch of 4e, I've got a setup with pins and different colored beads already

Is there anything that can't be handled with a script, if its a sufficiently complex script? At least, unless the player has too little information initially to know what their opponents' counter will be?

From a programming perspective, no. In another few centuries years we should have an exhaustive script for all possible chess games, and Go on an arbitrarily sized board should only take a few more centuries beyond that.

But I think you get that's not what I meant. I should rephrase it to "scripts should be non-trivial / non-obvious" or "we're gonna use hidden information to make scripting more than a turn in advance usually non-optimal" or something.

[Psychic Robot]

can we please not have this thread turn into a fucking spergfest

this concept interests me and I'd rather see concrete ideas laid down than lots of theorycrafting about scripting

[MfA]

CAN together with HP based condition tracks giving the opponent a CAN bonus provides a natural progression of attacks during a fight. I'm not sold on the name, but I like the principle.

So for instance early in the fight you concentrate on HP damage and perhaps terrain modification, in the middle of the fight attacks which have status effect riders at sufficient CAN would get used, in the last stage of the fight the SoDs come in. Against mooks you might skip one or more steps.

[CCarter]

From a programming perspective, no. In another few centuries years we should have an exhaustive script for all possible chess games, and Go on an arbitrarily sized board should only take a few more centuries beyond that.

I didn't think you meant something as complex as that, but let me rephrase that to 'I don't know what level of complexity you're aiming for.'

A system that has your average schlub thinking there are several options might quite obviously have a single optimum strategy (= is scripted) to the tactical geniuses like Lago or Frank.

These are probably some fairly obvious ones but as starting variables to see what powers work:
*Position, number of opponents in range. Powers that shove people around are perhaps harder to script since the terrain they interact with will differ from battle to battle.
*Current enemy hit points (accurate attacks vs. greater damage)
*random rolls you'd do anyway (initiative if round-by-round, or hit roll if you roll that before choosing what power to use, or an opponent die roll).

Round 1 will be different to other rounds if your enemy is flat-footed or somesuch (and since closing in is probably a factor for melee people) so will use a different power, but which power to choose is probably going to end up trivial.

[Username17]

In order to do the colored states thing and have it work, you'd need to have a quite complicated list of what color each state cycles to with each kind of push.Then you'd have a state push from the character's own actions in addition to a state push from each attack against them.

If sate pushes are in the form of "Goto: Blue" then you're just going to have parties repeating the same combo over and over again. If you only have 3 states, then at most one of the PCs is going to oscillate between two moves so that another PC can use hammerfall over and over again.

So you'd want a chart that looked like this:

Yellow	Red	Blue	Orange	Purple	Green
Blue	Orange	Purple	Green	Red	Yellow
Purple	Yellow	Orange	Green	Red	Blue

And then you'd have Left Pushes and Down Pushes. And it would all go round and round. Seems doable. But you are still running into the problem that a manageable list of at-will maneuvers is necessarily short.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Because at-will abilities are really easy to keep track of resources for, and simulate a lot of fiction. And because people despise other resource management systems, yet don't want characters to just spam one or two moves repeatedly.

I think it is important to note that during the desperate and apparently relentless quest to promote WoF certain posters have massively demonized various aspects of traditional RPG game play and resource systems a great deal more than is really warranted.

Lago endless goes on about "five moves of death" and "scripting" being bad, but frankly even a repetitive 5 move routine is pretty damn complex and pretty damn engaging compared to many of the RPG systems that are proven to be viable and popular.

Move spam is seriously not that big of an issue. And while we may want to take measures to reduce it let's not go getting carried away here. Sometimes move spam makes sense, some times it is in fact the best solution both for optimal game play and actual FUN game play. Sometimes your answer to every question for the next five minutes SHOULD be "I hit it with my spear". Superman NOT using his heat vision repeatedly on the Ice Beast is actually a BAD game outcome.

As to designing a pure at will status based system. I'm not sure if that's what I personally want right now, I'm doing my fairly traditional Energy and Stuff thing and it's been working pretty well for quiet some time now.

Edit: Take this for instance, prime example...

if an opponent pulls off a Tiger Uppercut then that makes Hurricane Kick the best option ... But then after you use Hurricane Kick that makes Tiger Knee the best move to use. Then that makes Hadouken the best countermove, etc. IOW it reduces combat to deterministic inputs and outputs once someone throws the first punch.

Lago just described a rather rich and complex combat from the perspective of RPG rules sets. And one almost exactly meeting the requirements of this thread. Throw in "and if the opponent is made of Ice you would use Fire Punch and Sonic Shatter Scream" and maybe some "and if it happens on a beach you would clearly use Sand Attack and Surf's Up at specific junctures!" and you have a genuinely excellent RPG.

But Lago thinks that is bad.

Take the time to go over it again. Lago thinks that a complex deterministic tactical system that takes a variety of inputs and produces a rich descriptive output is bad RPG rules.

Why? Fuck knows. I know I have my theories.

[mean_liar]

This is more-or-less the system I'm using for my heartbreaker.

The skeleton is here, and the relevant tab is "heroism - action":

http://meanliar.webs.com/rules%20-%20RP ... %20v4.xlsx

The idea is that any character's status in combat is broken down into a series of fundamentals (Priority, Mobility, Certainty, Intensity, Anticipation and Resilience) and each maneuver alters those fundamentals:

Priority determines speed of resolution, such that slower maneuvers execute first but can be interrupted at will by any higher-priority maneuver.

Mobility determines positioning, such that a maneuver with a high Mobility can cover the abstract combat space better and prevent slower, lower Mobility maneuvers from attacking unless they are already part of an engagement. The idea is to allow kiting as well as maneuvers that permit an attacker to control distance such that they can determine when to engage in melee.

Certainty is attack chance and Intensity is attack damage; Anticipation is defense chance and Resilience is resistance to damage. Attacks are resolved as Certainty v Anticipation, with damage being (Intensity - Resilience) + (attack roll net)/2.

It includes Defiance and Vitality as a two-track health mechanism, where Defiance is duck/dodge/weave as well as the drain mechanic for superpowers. Without Defiance you're fatigued. Vitality is vital essence, and without Vitality you're dying. Critical hits (bypass Defiance, go to Vitality) are an essential part of the system.

Players choose maneuvers in secret and then reveal them in reverse Priority order. Monsters as mobs would act in groups, each taking one of a few actions to reduce GM load, but named enemies are problematic... but based on my experience with SF:tSG, not too problematic.

The base amount for the various axes are derived first from level (Guise, specifically, the level associated with that particular Arena of action which is in this case Heroic combat), then by stats (+/-2 max, with a matrix showing how each fundamental is modified by a unique stat pair). Characters all have access to all Basic attacks, with Delivery Alternatives accounting for thrown and projectile weapons, Aborts to allow a low Priority character to change maneuvers to a higher-Priority reaction at the cost of Defiance, Stances which act like ToB stances (though their adjustments to maneuvers is less than a standard power), and Augments fueled by Defiance.

As characters level they gain additional powers within their primary Aspect (Power/Mobile/Cunning/etc), with a secondary Aspect gaining a few less powers, and then tertiary "whatever style" powers. Superpowers and combos are also gained, where powers can be combined (negative adjustments stack, positive adjustments give diminishing returns) at the cost of Defiance.

A lot of specifics are still up in the air.

I know I want Fatigued to be one penalty, Vitality @ <full another penalty. I'm pretty sure I want Defiance and Fatigue to be low-magnitude but I'm thinking I'll have to give that up to give enough space for the cascading penalties associated with injury to actually matter.

I'm thinking that the relative bonuses involved ought to be static, but I'm still toying with how much that ought to be. The overall system is based on 2d6 so that you can break the RNG relative to other characters, as every action adds your (level x 2) to the value. I want a Mook threshold at (level - X) where everything is critical, or some other function.


Finally, the system is effects-based. Invisibility is the Channeled Prepare maneuver with a high level effect, as it makes you harder to hit by increasing Anticipation. That'd be the same as entering a profound mental state, or whatever other kind of trapping you care to add. As there are obvious advantages to being invisible as opposed to merely hyper-aware I'm not sure how to cost out those advantages, as the game is built on the idea that it's level-based rather than point-based. There are hybridizations that could work so I'm not discouraged yet.

One method that comes up is in the Perk system. Perks are advantages that I didn't think were worth a whole power, but still seemed important enough to track. Perks are derived from testing yourself against Fate (ie, adventuring) as well as provided through your faction (the Rulership Arena that's unfinished). Perks that allow powers to provide extras (such as real invisibility rather than a hazy, defense-boosting aura) is one way to take care of that.

Another method is through the Origin/Manifestation system. This is the only real "class" in the game, as everything else is (I'm assuming) based on a primary/secondary/tertiary tiering, forcing folks into roles. Origin/Manifestation are basically parallel prestige classes that provide benefits as your level increases: you become more angelic/demonic/transcendent/etc, as well as manifesting a deeper connection to your earth power/martial arts/summoning.

[Kaelik]

FYI, when I initially pointed out this possible system, I was more referring to something like After Sundown, where everyone can use any of their abilities whenever (assume no PP for a moment) and they choose which one based on the situation.

Like the Fire Mage/Storm Lord/Conduit with Expert Spheres/ect of D&D.

Sometimes you want to Wall of Stone, sometimes you want to fireball, sometimes you want Black Tentacles, and you can do all of those at will, you just choose some over others based entirely on the situation, not on conditions that apply and make one of those better than the other.

[fectin]

So colors. How about something that looks like this instead (as a set of moves for classes/roles/whatever): assume all characters start green. Yeah, I know these aren't actually good, it was just a quick approximation

Fighter:
Ready: set yourself green or yellow.
Sword: If you are not blue, attack a green or yellow character. Medium damage! Set him yellow. Set you yellow.
Beat attack: Attack a green or yellow character. Medium damage! Set him red.
Power attack: if you are not red, attack a red character. Good damage! Set him yellow. Set you yellow.

Thief:
Withdraw: Set a character green. Move twice your reach directly away from the nearest enemy.
Fade: If you are not in melee with any enemy, set a green character blue.
Backstab: if you are green, make an attack on a blue or red character. Massive damage! Set him yellow. Set you yellow.
Regular stab: If you are not red, attack a character. Weak Damage! Set him yellow. Set you yellow.

[Username17]

FYI, when I initially pointed out this possible system, I was more referring to something like After Sundown, where everyone can use any of their abilities whenever (assume no PP for a moment) and they choose which one based on the situation.

Like the Fire Mage/Storm Lord/Conduit with Expert Spheres/ect of D&D.

Sometimes you want to Wall of Stone, sometimes you want to fireball, sometimes you want Black Tentacles, and you can do all of those at will, you just choose some over others based entirely on the situation, not on conditions that apply and make one of those better than the other.

I think it's important to note that the reason why movespam doesn't get extremely old for those characters in 3e D&D is because combat is extremely short. If the players were confronted with combats that lasted more than a couple rounds, the fact that you were dropping Fireballs every round would get really boring really fast.

In short: keeping an all at-will combat system requires the tactical inputs to be radically reshuffled every couple of decision points. In 3e this is achieved by having the MC draw up a whole new combat with all new participants and all new terrain every couple of rounds. This works, but people call it "rocket launcher tag" and they are right to do so.

If you want to take the rocket launcher tag out and keep the at-will ability activation in, you need to radically reshuffle tactical inputs inherently and continuously as part of a "normal" combat.

-Username17

[Ice9]

Lago endless goes on about "five moves of death" and "scripting" being bad, but frankly even a repetitive 5 move routine is pretty damn complex and pretty damn engaging compared to many of the RPG systems that are proven to be viable and popular.

This is true. I've played a fair amount of Champions, and while HERO supports a wide variety of resource mechanics, most Champions characters could be described as either "all at-will" or "power points", depending on how much END they had. Despite that, people tended to vary up their action and actual tactics did occur.

Also, I've noticed that most people will try to vary their actions. So you don't have to make using a variety of moves better, just not worse, and they'll do it. Sure, there's the odd person that will spam one move, but really, you can't stop that on a system level - they'll do it whether it's the best option or not, and whine if they can't.

[RadiantPhoenix]

So, basically, what it sounds like is, if you don't want stuff to get 'same-y', you need to change something significant often. 'Everything at will' means that you're not changing what the players can do, the limited number of potential players and MCs means that you're not changing who's making the decisions, and no rocket launcher tag means you're not changing what the players are fighting each round, unless it's a shapeshifter or something.

What are you going to change to keep things different?

Howsabout having something happen that resets the tactical landscape to something completely random? Essentially, winds of fate for the battlefield instead of the combatants.

[LR]

Howsabout having something happen that resets the tactical landscape to something completely random? Essentially, winds of fate for the battlefield instead of the combatants.

Really Abstract Locations?

[RadiantPhoenix]

I either forgot about that or didn't read it, I'll take a look.

[PhoneLobster]

Howsabout having something happen that resets the tactical landscape to something completely random? Essentially, winds of fate for the battlefield instead of the combatants.

There is absolutely no reason to go completely random. Why would you even think that is a good idea?

What are you going to change to keep things different?

This thread is about changing the states and status of characters engaged in combats.

You can also change the nature of opponents, grant new abilities with character advancement, varying equipment, varying locations, varying numbers of opponents, and varying layout of opponents.

Thats a lot of different ways to vary things already, and I know I've missed some options, combine them all and you will have a vast amount of potential variety.

The official WoF response to those sorts of axis of variations was "We won't be doing that it's too hard/complex and we want to have endless duplicate fight conditions over and over so we'll just be off writing our simple system with hundreds and hundreds of pallet swap powers per character archetype thanks". So really just spend your complexity and design time budget on some nice descriptive rules text about combat variables instead of an extra 200 pallet swaps per PC and you should have a system with plenty of room for satisfactory variation.

Now if the GM still sits down and says "And now I will use that to have endless duplicate fight conditions over and over" the only, small, variation will be from success/failure dice rolls and the effect that has on the states/status or positioning mash up. But seriously that is A)The GM's fault and B)Expected and desirable results for a good RPG system in a bad situation.

[Josh_Kablack]

can we please not have this thread turn into a fucking spergfest

I don't even know what that means, but probably not.

Coming at this from a slightly different angle, there are basically three types of fights that happen in tabletop RPGs.

1. Team PC vs horde o' Mooks
2. Team PC vs (roughly numerically even) Team Monster
3. Team PC vs single Boss Monster

Any any such system should be able to handle all of these cases.

For case 1, it's helpful for both balancing the fight and for minimizing the bookkeeping if the mooks are pretty fragile and the MC has few details to track. Handling this case is going to be a real concern for tracking conditions/colors. We may want to consider crazy stuff like having mooks go directly to KO instead of tracking lesser conditions; or having mooks retain all negative conditions for the duration of the fight; or having mooks entirely ignore conditions - but we're also going to want to watch out to avoid the crazy versimiltude issues of 4e minions.

For case 2, it's generally assumed that the opposition will use rules very similar to the PC rules. So we probably don't have to do anything special here.

For case 3, it's helpful for game balance if the Boss Monster is significantly tougher and/or more damaging than any individual PC. For this sort of fight, stacking negative conditions is likely to favor the PCs, and for such a case the boss monster needs a way to recover from such conditions better than the PCs can. This could be achieved via 4e's arbitrary save bonuses to solos, or via a more universal Combat Advantage Number-type system that incorporated level as the primary variable. Of course a "color push" sort of system where such a character only has one color at a time avoids the problem entirely.

[Draco_Argentum]

In chess and go every move modifies the available moves. Its uncommon for moves to be repeatable because the same board setup won't reoccur. They also both have rules for dealing with that if it does happen.

As an rpg analogue if move A sets up move B then move B should not set up move A.

[IGTN]

In chess and go every move modifies the available moves. Its uncommon for moves to be repeatable because the same board setup won't reoccur. They also both have rules for dealing with that if it does happen.

As an rpg analogue if move A sets up move B then move B should not set up move A.

Part of that, too, is that both games have entropy. In Chess, the number of pieces on the board only ever goes down. In Go, it trends upward.

You can break up five moves of doom, if necessary, by having the tactical situation available depend on your current hit points, for instance, and dramatically limit healing so that the total hit points of any given side will trend downward. So when you're at full health, you have different moves available than when you're at 50%, and at each you have different moves available depending on your enemy's hit points.

[quanta]

Part of that, too, is that both games have entropy. In Chess, the number of pieces on the board only ever goes down. In Go, it trends upward.

You can break up five moves of doom, if necessary, by having the tactical situation available depend on your current hit points, for instance, and dramatically limit healing so that the total hit points of any given side will trend downward. So when you're at full health, you have different moves available than when you're at 50%, and at each you have different moves available depending on your enemy's hit points.

This. Everything at-will might not be as easy to get working as "anything is usable or optimal given certain not to obvious or too opaque conditions."

Say as battle goes on, your character and the enemies pile up immediate fatigue, so blocking and countering becomes less effective. You can then use a certain level of complexity or hidden information (from the players point of view) to hide precisely where the transition occurs from trying to fatigue your enemies to going for the kill with moves that do more damage but are too easily countered when everyone is fresh.

Or you could have a c-c-c-c-combo meter that goes up as you chain a bunch of weak attacks. So your job is to set up your own combo and c-c-c-combo break your enemies.

Fighting games seem like a neat place to take inspiration from, but this sort of system would seem difficult to put new moves and abilities in without either not having much variety or causing tectonic shifts in optimal strategy when more stuff comes out.

[quanta]

Part of that, too, is that both games have entropy. In Chess, the number of pieces on the board only ever goes down. In Go, it trends upward.

You can break up five moves of doom, if necessary, by having the tactical situation available depend on your current hit points, for instance, and dramatically limit healing so that the total hit points of any given side will trend downward. So when you're at full health, you have different moves available than when you're at 50%, and at each you have different moves available depending on your enemy's hit points.

This. Everything at-will might not be as easy to get working as "anything is usable or optimal given certain not to obvious or too opaque conditions."

Say as battle goes on, your character and the enemies pile up immediate fatigue, so blocking and countering becomes less effective. You can then use a certain level of complexity or hidden information (from the players point of view) to hide precisely where the transition occurs from trying to fatigue your enemies to going for the kill with moves that do more damage but are too easily countered when everyone is fresh.

Or you could have a c-c-c-c-combo meter that goes up as you chain a bunch of weak attacks. So your job is to set up your own combo and c-c-c-combo break your enemies.

Fighting games seem like a neat place to take inspiration from, but this sort of system would seem difficult to put new moves and abilities in without either not having much variety or causing tectonic shifts in optimal strategy when more stuff comes out.