Alternative Attack routines

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RandomCasualty
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Alternative Attack routines

Post by RandomCasualty »

Attack Routines right now are a total mess. You've got classed characters that use iterative attacks, monsters that have number of attacks based on number of limbs/strikers and so forth.

What if we dumped all that and replaced it with a simple system.

Standard Attack:Standard action attacks would remain unchanged. You get one attack with a weapon of your choice at normal BaB. I was also thinking allowing a standard attack to be a full attack, but at an additional -5 penalty.

Full Attacks:When using a full attack, you get several choices. Note that this is regardless of your BaB. You do not get extra attacks from using multiple weapons, secondary natural attacks, or having 10 tentacles.

You can take a single attack at a +5 bonus
You can take two attacks at +0/+0.
You can take three attacks at +0/-5/-5.
You can take four attacks at -5/-5/-10/-10
Or you can take five attacks, all at -10.

Multiple weapons or strikers: when using more than one weapon or if you've got claws or tentacles or whatnot. You can choose to incorporate them into your attack routine. For every extra weapon you incorporate beyond the first, you get a cumulative +2 bonus to all your attacks. Note that you must choose a routine with enough attacks to incorporate all your weapons and at least one of your attacks must use that weapon. So a guy using two shortswords can take two attacks at +2/+2, instead of +0/+0. A bear, with its claw/claw/bite routine, could use a three attack routine at +4/-1/-1.

So can this work, or is there some horrible flaw I'm missing?
AlphaNerd
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by AlphaNerd »

Well, I like it. I'm not sure this is the exact way I'd implement it, but I like that full attack always gives multiple attacks. I'd probably be happy if it gave a fixed number of attacks...

Does this mean that if you have more than 5 natural attacks, you get no benefit?

You can take a single attack at a +5 bonus
You can take two attacks at +0/+0.
You can take three attacks at +0/-5/-5.
You can take four attacks at -5/-5/-10/-10
Or you can take five attacks, all at -10.


Frankly, I'd be happy if you limited this to 3 attacks. After that, you should be using power attack to increase your damage (ok, that bones ranged attackers), and I don't really have fun when other people spend 5 minutes deciding what their dice mean. Because they're rolling around 30 dice.
RandomCasualty
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by RandomCasualty »

AlphaNerd at [unixtime wrote:1179424502[/unixtime]]
Does this mean that if you have more than 5 natural attacks, you get no benefit?

Yeah pretty much. That's really the only true flaw in the system. But then again 5 alternate attacks should generally be enough for almost everything. Yeah the octopus and hydra gets kind of shafted, eh, whatever.

I was thinking of possibly having some other rule to handle stuff like that, though I haven't written it yet.


Frankly, I'd be happy if you limited this to 3 attacks. After that, you should be using power attack to increase your damage (ok, that bones ranged attackers), and I don't really have fun when other people spend 5 minutes deciding what their dice mean. Because they're rolling around 30 dice.


Well on a practical matter you're probably going to want to limit yourself to only a few attacks, since otherwise you're taking a bunch of attacks that will likely miss. Conceptually it's designed such that high attack bonus character can chew through weak AC foes a bit easier, while you've got to cut back a bit to hit heavily armored things.

Though really, I'm hoping someone can check the math, since there's a lot of things to consider, factoring in power attack and similar things.
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the_taken
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by the_taken »

Hmmm, in this system, a character wielding two swords in armor spikes is viable. Nice.

So how do characters go about getting more attacks after they load up three weapons? It seems pretty lame to force a character to always grow arms, or have two weapons + armor spikes + a horned helm + boot blades.
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RandomCasualty
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by RandomCasualty »

Well no, you can take more than one attack, regardless of how many weapons you've got. Adding more weapons just gives you a +2 to your attacks per weapon you add to your routine. Note that you must use a routine that has a number of attacks at least equal to the number of weapons you are using to get full benefit.

So a guy with a greatsword can choose the three attack routine, attacking at +0/-5/-5, alternately, a guy with two shortswords and armor spikes could choose that routine, but because he's got 2 extra weapons he gets a +2 twice (+4) to all his attacks, assuming he makes at least one attack with each weapon.

So he gets +4/-1/-1 for his attack routine. It definitely benefits multi-weapon wielders more to go for larger numbers of attacks but this is intentional, since they're going to be probably losing out on 1.5x strength modifier and power attack bonuses on that attack, but in return they get a benefit to their attack rolls.

Now note that you actually have to use the given weapon in your routine, not just carry it, to get the bonus. So if you choose to go three attacks with a greatsword and armor spikes to collect the +2 bonus, at least one of your attacks has to be with the armor spikes, whcih will be significantly weaker than greatsword attacks.
Catharz
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by Catharz »

Not that this has anything to do with the basic idea, but armor spikes should be grapple-only weapons.
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the_taken
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by the_taken »

Let me rephrase my question. How is a humanoid PC supposed to get the mythical +10 to attack rolls for having a high number of attacks?
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CalibronXXX
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by CalibronXXX »

the_taken at [unixtime wrote:1179455289[/unixtime]]Let me rephrase my question. How is a humanoid PC supposed to get the mythical +10 to attack rolls for having a high number of weapons?

Fixed. And I want to know this too, why should the walking armament automatically be more capable than the equally skilled guy with the greatsword?
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Cielingcat
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by Cielingcat »

The benefits of a walking armament should be versatility in weapon choice, not better attacks.
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by CalibronXXX »

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1179490914[/unixtime]]The benefits of a walking armament should be versatility in weapon choice, not better attacks.

I agree, but under this system the guy with two short swords, armor spikes, and boot blades gets an additional +8 to his attack rolls, while the guy with the Greatsword gets nothing.
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by Shatner »

No, the guy with two short swords, armor spikes, and boot blades gets +3/+3/-2/-2 to his attacks. The more weapons he adds the more attacks he HAS to make meaning the larger the penalty he gets overall. Plus, its unlikely a character's armor spikes or bootblades are going to be all that powerful. Seriously, your swords might have +3 or more in enchantments layered on them but no one is going to have flaming, keen bootblades. It just isn't practical with weapon enchantments being so expensive.

That being said, if the walking armament decided to attack twice with his worthwhile weapons (getting one stab per sword) then he'd attack with +2/+2 (in addition to his BAB). This is an example of the system above not working because its strictly better to always attack with two important weapons and two meaningless weapons simply to bolster the attack bonus conferred to the important weapons (a +2 vs a +3 on your first two attacks). And more attacks means you might accidentally poke someone with your unenchanted armor spikes for a pittance of damage.

I like the concept but it needs re-balancing. Make the bonus per weapon only +1 or make the penalty per additional attack higher (-6/-12).


My bad. I misread the way bonuses accumulate. The four weapon attacker only gets a +6 to his attacks meaning his two weapon - two attack bonus is +2/+2 and his four weapon - four attack bonus is +1/+1/-4/-4. That is no longer strictly better and I rescind my previous objections. I like how your forcing an opponent to dilute their attack options when adding additional weapons. Its good because it forces people to actually pay for the extra-weapon bonus they're getting instead of taking the extraneous armor spike route.

Still, I can't help but think that the math works out in favor of more attacks with more weapons. If nothing else, a monk with an amulet of might fists essentually has any number of identically enchanted weapons so it is always better to claim your attacking with N different "weapons" (feet, elbows, whatever) than any number less than N, where N is the number of attacks being made.
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by AlphaNerd »

Still, I can't help but think that the math works out in favor of more attacks with more weapons. If nothing else, a monk with an amulet of might fists essentually has any number of identically enchanted weapons so it is always better to claim your attacking with N different "weapons" (feet, elbows, whatever) than any number less than N, where N is the number of attacks being made.


Regarding the monk, the Dungeonomicon makes it really clear -- monks get one (iterative, meaningless in this context) slam attack.

As for number of attacks, I'm guessing that it varies a lot with armor class. Of course, since AC scales randomly, it's hard to compare. I was looking at the list, and color me confused. The progression from +0/-5/-5 should go to -5/-5/-5/-5, but it doesn't. All the rest split one attack into two, for a -5 penalty to each, but this one doesn't.

Oh, and I'm guessing that more attacks > power attack damage. But that might not be bad. Gives more options against foes without having to do random calculations.

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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by RandomCasualty »

Calibron at [unixtime wrote:1179494500[/unixtime]]
I agree, but under this system the guy with two short swords, armor spikes, and boot blades gets an additional +8 to his attack rolls, while the guy with the Greatsword gets nothing.


Well, keep in mind that when you take four attacks with your greatsword you're getting four greatsword attacks (Double PA, 1.5x str, magic bonuses from greatsword).When you use your shortswords and armor spikes, you're not getting any of those, not to mention your boots and spikes probably aren't even enchanted.


As for number of attacks, I'm guessing that it varies a lot with armor class. Of course, since AC scales randomly, it's hard to compare. I was looking at the list, and color me confused. The progression from +0/-5/-5 should go to -5/-5/-5/-5, but it doesn't. All the rest split one attack into two, for a -5 penalty to each, but this one doesn't.


Yeah, I sort of made up the progressions without any real system and did them sort of arbitrarily. One of the other reasons I posted it is because I feel the progressions themselves may need some tweaking.

One possible change I considered (whcih would be simpler) would just be that every extra attack confers a -5 penalty, and a full attack grants a +5 by default.

So it's be
+5
+0/+0
-5/-5/-5
-10/-10/-10/-10
-15/-15/-15/-15/-15

And so forth. Though at the time that seemed like a steep penalty to put on people taking multiple attacks.
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by ckafrica »

Well it seems to me that if you let the progression continue it prevents all but the most powerful characters from doing absolutely crazy numbers of attacks and even then only against pions; but that is really the only time I want them doing it anyway.
If you change the progression to -4 you get this for multi weapon/limb creatures
atks 1wpn 2wpn 3wpn 4wpn 5wpn 6wpn 7wpn 8wpn
1 4
2 0 2
3 -4 -2 0
4 -8 -6 -4 -2
5 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4
6 -16 -14 -12 -10 -8 -6
7 -20 -18 -16 -14 -12 -10 -8
8 -24 -22 -20 -18 -16 -14 -12 -10

If you assume that most multi limbed creatures are tough as balls with kill attack bonuses they can soak the penalty to use all their attacks. Now the question still falls at weather for PCs the difference between 1 and 2 weapons will become to great an advantage in play
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RandomCasualty
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by RandomCasualty »

ckafrica at [unixtime wrote:1179927871[/unixtime]]
If you assume that most multi limbed creatures are tough as balls with kill attack bonuses they can soak the penalty to use all their attacks. Now the question still falls at weather for PCs the difference between 1 and 2 weapons will become to great an advantage in play


Thus far based on my simulations, two weapon fighters tend not to do as much average damage as two handed wielders, or at the very least in a negligible amount.

The fact is that two weapon fighters still have the big advantage of not having to enchant two weapons, and they're getting 1.5x strength mod on every swing, where as TWFers are getting normal strength on one attack and half strength on all their secondary attacks.

Thus far it doesn't seem like using a bunch of weapons is as big an advantage as it seems.
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by ckafrica »

What about the whole light weapon thing for this system? Do you penalize people who want to use to bigger weapons or figure paired longswords is acceptable?
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Re: Alternative Attack routines

Post by RandomCasualty »

ckafrica at [unixtime wrote:1180449799[/unixtime]]What about the whole light weapon thing for this system? Do you penalize people who want to use to bigger weapons or figure paired longswords is acceptable?


Well I haven't really decided yet. I mean as far as handling two weapon fighting, you can do all sorts of things, like I was thinking require people to get a feat to get the bonus or what not.

Really at this point I'm just worried about basic balance comparisons. Whether this system is going to make characters better or worse and so forth.
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