Routine vs Reacting, fast/slow actions

[OgreBattle]

Been thinking about how most D&D attacks happen instantly, so player characters tend to use their best move first. In many video games (Monster Hunter, FFXiV, Castlevania, etc.) a big powerful action has some build up for players to react to, but those are real time games. Abstracting it to turn based isn't hard.

Most tabletop games I've seen with "speedy vs slow" actions though, they make the slow action 'normal' and speedy action 'lighter', so you feel like you're giving up something for speed. I'd rather have "Standard vs slow action", where the slower initiative pass feels like you're focusing power for a big thing.

Now how to get different initiatives of actions down cleanly...

I figure a system where actions are already in phases, say movement -> standard action, can have the slow action be declared in movement phase.

The old D&D way is declare actions then roll intiiative, I can see that modified so only slow actions declare before rolling initiative, 'normal' actions are decided when their turn comes up.

[OgreBattle]

A somewhat related action economy idea...

Been playing a lot of FFXiV. Warriors have a standard attack that has a 2 second or so cooldown, a player is expected to 'weave' another ability on a separate cooldown timer in between. Those weave abilities tend to be on 15+ second timers.

So a usual pattern is
Attack
- relevant ability
Attack
- relevant ability
etc.

I think that's a good basis on how to do Swift / Minor actions in D&D type tabletop RPG's.


Sp distinct swift actions like...
- Rider: use swift action to combo after a standard action
- Stance: gain a buff until beginning of next turn
- Standalone: do a ki blast knockdown then use your standard action to stomp them

These swift actions can be powerful short or long rest abilities, so swift doesn't mean 'weaker'.

A FFXiV Dark Knight in D&D would look like...

Standard Attacks, when they land they restore Ki points (Let's say 3 total)
- Draining Sword
- Ranged darkness hadouken

Swift Ki Actions
- Darkness lashing from blade
- Dark shield for self or ally
- AoE shadow swords bursting from ground around Dark Knight

Swift Encounter Actions
- Darkness barrier for party
- Stronger draining sword lash
- Placing persistent damage salted earth AoE

It's functionally not that different from having stronger Encounter standard actions, but I like how this feels. It's like standard actions are the bass beat and swift are the notes.

Going back to the original premise of "slow actions", perhaps spellcasting requires a "buff" that carries over from the previous turn, so it's at least a two step to do a big spell.

[Foxwarrior]

This is roughly a thing I was thinking of for my next RPG actually. Having some things you do with instant gratification and others you do with long term payoff is appealing from a strategic perspective. So I was going to skip initiative, just have a players turn and an enemies turn, where the players go first.

But on a turn the order would be: Resolve Slow Special Actions that this side started on their previous turn; everyone on this side does a Main Action; everyone on this side does a Special Action. Then Special Actions would either be Slow, or do things that mostly have long term payoff like terrain modification, while Main Actions would be immediate things like shooting someone, potentially disrupting their concentration on the Slow thing they were doing.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Shadow of the Demon Lord does something similar. There's a Fast pass and a Slow pass, and players go first in both, so the actual structure is Player Fast -> NPC Fast -> Player Slow -> NPC Slow. The default tradeoff is that going Fast costs your Move action.

[OgreBattle]

Shadow of the Demon Lord does something similar. There's a Fast pass and a Slow pass, and players go first in both, so the actual structure is Player Fast -> NPC Fast -> Player Slow -> NPC Slow. The default tradeoff is that going Fast costs your Move action.

Yeah that's the game that got my noggin joggin on this, though in their case it's "give up a standard action for a weaker action", I want to make it feel like "Instead of a normal attack I do a fawcon paaanch"

More thoughts on building up big attacks, anticipation, use of limited resources...

Creating & Escaping Dilemmas

So in real world military tactics they talk about creating dilemmas for targets such as "spray their position with machine gun fire, throw a grenade at them, if they stay the grenade gets them if they leap out then the machinegun gets them if they withdraw you now have a better position"

I don't have a grenade pic on hand so here's enfilade fire to pin some dudes, a similar dilemma:


That sort of thing is tricky to balance as the extremes are "Yeah I take puny hitpoint damage and walk forward killing things without thinking" and "rocket launcher tag"

So a standard action can be "covering fire", a slow action can be "toss grenade". The opposing forces are then in a dilemma, and then they use their special class/character powers to get out of their jam.

[00dani]

The board game Spirit Island comes to mind. Every power card is either "fast" or "slow", with all fast powers taking effect before the invaders act and all slow powers taking effect afterwards. The specific order of same-speed powers being resolved is up to the players, since it's completely cooperative and so it's to everyone's advantage to sort powers into an optimal order.

Rather than having a "standard" action speed and a slower/faster alternative, I wouldn't really consider either speed in this game the default? There seems to be a pretty even mix of slow and fast powers in the deck, and in normal play everyone draws random power cards, so on average you'll end up with similar amounts of each.

As you might expect, fast powers are usually weaker in effect, since acting before the invaders is a big advantage. However, there are also powers that can make any slow power fast, and some spirits are especially good with fast powers (like the lightning spirit) or with slow powers (like the ocean spirit, who's slower than slow and is only fully effective every other turn). There's a lot of interesting complexity to it. I like it a lot.

[Stubbazubba]

The whole point of having actions with an extended activation time is to complicate the enemy's tactics. At best, it's good counterplay. Basically that means one of two things: it's an instantaneous thing that you can repeat, that the enemy just learns to avoid (probably a standard action), or the enemy must have the ability to change their tactics before it goes off (i.e. the enemy gets to take actions between the declaration and the activation).

If you have individual turns and a set initiative order that doesn't change round-to-round, then I think Foxwarrior has the right way to do it: normal attacks are like normal, whereas "slow" attacks are announced on your turn and then completed on your next turn. That gives everyone else the opportunity to respond to it in between without creating a whole new phase of combat for it and requiring "slow" actions to be declared before the round begins. Alternatively, for continuing effects, it's like how continuous AOE spells already work: activated on your turn, any creature that begins their turn w/in the the AOE or enters the AOE takes the effect.

If you have phase-based combat, then you can do it the same way, where you declare a long action this round and it is active/goes off during the next round, or you can add a phase .5 where slow actions must be announced prior to any other phases.

[merxa]

Action points can do this as well,. having some actions cost more points than you get a round.

[Foxwarrior]

3.5e D&D has "1 round action" spells.

Action points can be tricky, because small adjustments to how many action points a character gets can make their previously super slow moves suddenly instantaneous.

[OgreBattle]

Yeah, declaring your falcon punch at the end of your current turn is a great simple solution.

On action points.... I like the Riddle of Steel system where you do two passes before action points refresh, but it's meant for 1 on 1 dueling and overheats at anything else. A mob of 20 slimes or berserkers would also need to interact with that system and may get too fiddly.


--

Been thinking about how to do this "one does suppression fire, the teammate uses it to move to a better angle of fire or engage in close quarters"



In standard D&D and Warhams a player moves & shoots/assaults, then it's the other's turn. An idea that comes to mind is...

"Buddy system" where characters that have trained and trust each other can partner up and act on the same turn. So for a dungeon crawler a Warrior & Wizard buddy has the wizard colorspray the orcs then the warrior charges. The orcs, if rabble instead of organized, act individually instead of in pairs.

Another option is... attacking or putting a foe under a unit's threat zone causes a penalty (movement, attacking other targets), like Bloodbowl and D&D4e. So a high initiative character can engage or shoot someone for an ally to safely disengage or flank or so on.

[OgreBattle]

Read a nice exercise on fencing that mentions "4 tactical roles" of sword fighting from the French fencing book "L'Espirit de L'Epee"
The two axis of tactical melee actions are...

Who is moving into attack distance and 'opening' the exchange:
Opener<--->Closer

Who is initiating the attack:
Attacker<---->Defender

So the 4 'tactical roles' that result (thinking of role names)...

Hold ground & react to foe: Zoner, Center
Hold ground & initiate engagement: Trapper

Advance and initiate engagement: Blitzer
Advance and react to foe: Blocker, Interceptor