Having an extra attack.

[Username17]

What if you got your next iterative attack when your last attack was positive, instead of when your next attack would be positive?

It would change the damage paradigm all around, but I'm finding that I want to do that anyway. My main thought behind this is that at low levels people don't even care about full attacks, and often end up moving around "because they may as well" - while higher level warriors get rooted to the ground.

So I'm looking at attacks that look like this:

+0
+1/-4
+2/-3
+3/-2
+4/-1
+5/+0
+6/+1/-4
+7/+2/-3
+8/+3/-2
+9/+4/-1
+10/+5/+0
+11/+6/+1/-4
+12/+7/+2/-3
+13/+8/+3/-2
+14/+9/+4/-1
+15/+10/+5/+0
+16/+11/+6/+1/-4
+17/+12/+7/+2/-3
+18/+13/+8/+3/-2
+19/+14/+9/+4/-1
+20/+15/+10/+5/+0
+21/+16/+11/+6/+1
etc.

Then abilities can improve your later attacks in order to improve reliability at high levels, or allow you to move to varying degrees and still full attack to give higher level warrior types a feel of greater flexibility.

I really hate the sharp decrease in mobility experienced by 6th level warriors, and I would like to see the trend go the other way.

-Username17

[Thoth_Amon]

Than you need to allow a standard attack to be the # full attacks minus 1 minus any additional attacks provided from Flurry, haste, and other actions that provide bonus attacks.

Than your sixth level fighter could attack +6 +1 and move. Once you say moving costs you 1 attack + extra attacks when taking the full round action you will allow high level combatants to be more mobile.

This of course has major issues like when charging etc.

TA

[Username17]

I was thinking more along the lines of higher class features and abilities that operate like Pounce. Ie.: Allow you to take a specific move action and still full attack.

Such as an ability that allowed you to take a single Jump move in addition to your Full Attack, or allowed you to Full Attack and still sheathe a weapon - that sort of thing.

The Pounce Ability hasn't seemed to ruin the game - except of course if you use the "surprise round" rules - and I want to make more of the game work like that rather than less.

-Username17

[Username17]

:Bump:

Also a thought: since we've been looking into the role a warrior character should have, what if mobility was it? Right now, everyone is mobile at low levels, and spellcasters retain mobility for the rest of their lives and warriors don't.

If instead most high level spells took the whole round to cast, and warrior classes introduced more mobility into full attacks, I think it would end up feeling more like most people want it to - wizards hobbling along and warriors racing through enemies at blinding speed.

-Username17

[canamrock]

Yeah, that does sound a lot more 'accurate' for what the typical notion of what these character types look at.

Depending on how many classes you're dividing the core group into, I'd suggest just making it a 5th or 6th level ability that allows a fighter to get more attacks for its standard action. Either that, or have an easier-to-get feat called "Harrying Strike" or something that allows two attacks as a standard action, both at a -3 to strike. IHS might be -2 for the two-strike mode, and it also gives a tri-strike mode that gives -3 to all strikes. Those could make for good 5th & 10th (or 6th & 11th) level feats.

[User3]

Why not just say that a full attack gives you an extra full BAB attack, and interative attacks are the norm.

Its not like the -10 attack or the -15 attack ever hits anyway except on helpless enemys.

[Username17]

Honestly, I'm not convinced that the extra attacks coming in at penalties was a good idea. Fighters used to get all their attacks at the same attack bonus, and the game didn't come crashing down or anything.

It's not like high level Fighters are really desperately searching for something to hold them back, why not give them all their attacks at the same bonus?

Or half their attacks at the big bonus and half their attacks at -5 (with a feat to make it -2), like monstrous attacks?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1077320885[/unixtime]]I was thinking more along the lines of higher class features and abilities that operate like Pounce. Ie.: Allow you to take a specific move action and still full attack.

I dont' really like pounce at all, because it turns the game into a pure offensive game. It becomes almost impossible to defend someone specific (like your wizard) when someone can move and full attack at the same time, making the meat shield wall virtually useless unless you've got like 6 of them. It also makes feats like spring attack total garbage (and SA wasn't very good to begin with)

I don't really think abilities like pounce should exist. If you want to allow fighters more attacks when charging, that's ok, but it should still be at some cost so it still isn't as good as a straight full attack. Otherwise there's really no reason you wouldn't do it, because you're getting all your charge based benefits on 4 attacks instead of one.

And you must ditch most of the charge abilities in this case, because spirited charge and especially the cavalier stuff is crazy broke if you can attack multiple times off a charge.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I don't like pounce, but for a completely different reason - all the charge multipliers out there. Assuming charges actually work under whatever houserules you use, pounce is a huge multiplier. It becomes close to routine for a mid/high level paladin to do 1000 point charges. Since IMO the charge multipliers are mostly to make up for the loss of full attack actions, IMO not a good idea.

Allowing full attacks w/ non-charge movement is not that big a deal IMO, and has some cool consequences. It lets monks actually use all that cool speed. Some things to think about -

Sneak attacks. Allowing move+full attack makes SA much easier to max.

Ranged attacks. It should balance out, but I wouldn't want this to make archers even better at taunting melee types. It also makes Shot on the Run useless.

[canamrock]

Maybe it's just me, but I always thought that 'move, strike, and move' shouldn't be impossible to do without a feat. At worst, it ought to just have some kind of penalty, maybe.

I think that rather than using a mechanic such as pounce, there should always be iterative attacks at higher levels. A standard action's worth of hits may all be penalized greatly, and a full action's worth are penalized much less. Personally, I'd rather go with 'split' attacks like you'd get in Exalted, where each is penalized equally, instead of the cascading penalties in 3E, where the last iterative attacks rarely matter anyways.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I would rather have a single attack, but add damage to the attacks as you go up in level. But I can't figure out a way to make it work.

Ideally, I'd like all levels to be like 1st level - a 20th level fighter should have a chance to one-shot a 20th level fighter (if using a powerful weapon, etc.). I think iterative attacks are the wrong way to go mechanically, they lead to a lot of dice rolling, calcuations, remembering that True Strike only works on the First Attack, and so on.

But again, I'm not smart enough to make it work.

[Username17]

But again, I'm not smart enough to make it work.

You'd have to jettison the "Hit Point" system, since the whole point of "Hit Points" is so that higher level characters take more wounds before going down.

You could do something akin to Shadowrun, where your opponent makes a "Damage resistance check" on a D20 with a DC based on the "damage" of the incoming attack. Success and you take no damage. Failing by more would make you take more damage, and failing by enough would take you right out of the fight.

Then everyone could have the same number of hit points, like 10, or 20, and being higher level would give you bonuses to-hit, damage, and damage soak. So a 20th level Fighter would be operating on a similar level to another 20th level Fighter as a 1st level was to another 1st level.

And all attacks would be handled on two d20s, one to-hit roll and one damage soak roll, and you'd never ever have to roll another d12 + d8 + d4 combo on an attack ever again.

That would work, although it would alienate all the people who really like to roll piles of heterogenous polygonal dice.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1091488038[/unixtime]]
Ideally, I'd like all levels to be like 1st level - a 20th level fighter should have a chance to one-shot a 20th level fighter (if using a powerful weapon, etc.).

I really disagree with that premise. When you get higher in levels battle should naturally be longer, not shorter. Epic heroes aren't supposed to be taken down in one shot. And it's really a character killer. It's one thing to have your favorite character die in battle, it's entirely another thing to have him die without even putting up a decent fight.

It's fun to trade blows and last a while, it also gives you more combat options. Why disarm, sunder or trip when you can kill anything in one shot? Those options only start to become feasable when you can burn an action or two and not worry about being killed in the mean time.

The one shot kill paradigm is the worst one from a tactical point of view, because there's never a reason to do anything but a straight out attack.

One shot kills work for modern games like shadowrun, but when you're talking about a game of heroic fantasy, I just don't see them as being fun at all.

[canamrock]

The more a person needs to make one roll to survive, the riskier combat becomes for the PC's. Longer combats where attacks are less threatening per hit make combats safer for PCs when the players pay attention.

[Username17]

The more a person needs to make one roll to survive, the riskier combat becomes for the PC's.

This is a common misconception. Actually, it's the less actions it takes to make the difference between life and death, the riskier it is for PCs. The number of rolls required is completely irrelevent.

If the number of actions it takes to kill your character is large, then you may have the ability to run away when things start going badly. If it takes only one action to kill your character, then there's nothing you can do between when things start going poorly and when you are out of the combat.

The number of physical die rolls required here is not meaningful, since there's nothing you can do about it between the die rolls. Rolling twelve dice in a row is just like rolling one die in the end - it's still going to produce some random result that you have no control over. More dice means a steeper bell curve, and more possible results, but a collection of numbers which add up to a 5% chance on multiple dice is exactly the same as rolling a single d20 and looking for a single number.

---

Now, that's not to say that everyone wants to have many actions between when things start going badly and when their characters go down. Certainly, D&D actually features quite the opposite. Damage scales much faster than hit points, and Mass Save or Die spells eventually become the norm. If people like that sort of thing, and obviously many people do, then simplifying it so that people needed less die rolls to get similar one-round beat-downs would be in everyone's advantage, right?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1091547409[/unixtime]]If people like that sort of thing, and obviously many people do, then simplifying it so that people needed less die rolls to get similar one-round beat-downs would be in everyone's advantage, right?

I'm not sure people actually do like that thing. Sure, they get all excited when they can kill something in one shot, but when they themselves get killed in the first round of combat, they're sitting there saying "this blows." Or even when their friend the wizard ends a combat in one action with a save or die and they're left doing nothing but carrying the treasure.

Personally I find one action kills to be very unsatisfying. It's fine to kill off a minion like that, but when heroes and BBEGs die in one shot, I feel cheated. Those should be long epic battles, as opposed to sniper strikes.

[Username17]

Those should be long epic battles, as opposed to sniper strikes.

If that's the way you feel, then you should apply the damage system I was talking about anyway - and make sure that you apply it to death magic as well. If you are expected to fail saves, and failing by more causes increasing levels of effect, then people can cast death magic on each other and still have long epic battles at the same time.

If you set it up so that high level people are going to have to be hit several times before they go down, then you've got your long duration slug fests. If you set it so that people go down in more like one to three hits, you've got your samurai movies, your westerns, and such.

The two-tiers of combat resolution is, however, retarded. There's no reason to even have hit points if death magic works another way. And the way Death Magic works is, at its essence, a better and more easily tweakable way of doing things (heck, the same system could support higher or lower lethality games by simply adding a straight genre modifier to damage DCs).

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Well, I'd be interested in seeing how your system would work exactly, because right now I'm having trouble understanding it.

[Username17]

1091719067[/unixtime]]Well, I'd be interested in seeing how your system would work exactly, because right now I'm having trouble understanding it.

OK, you have a to-hit bonus, and a Damage DC for your attack. The guy you are attacking has a Defense DC and a resistance bonus against your attack.

You roll a d20, and add your to-hit bonus. If you meet or beat their Defense DC you hit. Then your opponent rolls a d20, and adds their resistance bonus. If they meet or beat the Damage DC they shrug off your attack with no effect.

The scaling comes in where the more you beat their defense DC, the more your damage goes up (say, for every 2 full points you hit by, the damage DC goes up by one); and the more they fail their resistance check, the more damage they take (say, for every two points they miss the resistance DC by, they take a larger effect, failing by more than 18 takes them right out of the combat).

And different attack forms simply target different stuff and have different DCs. Say, an arrow would need to hit by matching the opponent's AC, and would be resisted by your opponents Hit Point resistance bonus. While a Charm spell would need to hit the target's magic resistance and be resisted by the opponent's Willpower resistance bonus.

Failing a resistance check against an arrow by 19+ means that you take an incapacitating wound, failing a resistance check against a Charm by 19+ turns you into a total thrall.

Simple, quick to resolve, and easy to balance and tweak. And since everything is working on the same system, you no longer end up asking yourself at 23rd level why you even have hit points, or anything dumb like that.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

So would that system entail the complete abolishment of hit points in general or would lesser failures, like say a failure on your damage resistance by 3, entail simple dice damage?

And if not damage, then what kind of effects would minor failures do to you?

[Username17]

So would that system entail the complete abolishment of hit points in general or would lesser failures, like say a failure on your damage resistance by 3, entail simple dice damage?

Neither. Everyone would have the same number of hit points, and a lesser failure on a damaging attack would cause the loss of a set number of them. So failing by 3 means the same when you are a Dragon as it does if you are an ant - but since your damage resistance bonuses are so much bigger when you are a dragon, you need much larger attacks to make you fail by three.

The entire concept of "damage dice" would be removed, although you could still be damaged. Lesser effects from a Charm might be penalties to Willpower and Sense Motive, rather than damage in the literal sense.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Hmm... I suppose it could work, but it would be very tricky to do right, mainly because you've got only a 20 point margin between invulnerable and automatically killed. And especially given the fact that the damage roll varies more based on the attack roll results, that's going to be very difficult to balance correctly to the point where you can hurt a dragon but not one shot kill it, because one shot kills aren't fun in "boss battles", and they just aren't fun at all when a PC gets hit with one.

The one good thing about the current hit point system is that it gives a useful baseline as far as how many hits it will take to kill someone, and it generally ensures that someone is going to survive a few hits at higher levels, and that's ideal in a system where the PCs are risking their lives frequently every session, because the more randomness, the greater a chance for a TPK.

Obviously though I'd have to see the numbers to see exactly how it would work out, but thus far it seems like it would produce much more erratic results than the current system.

[Username17]

Hmm... I suppose it could work, but it would be very tricky to do right, mainly because you've got only a 20 point margin between invulnerable and automatically killed.

Only after the to-hit roll bonus, so actually the margin is larger than that - potentially as high as 29 points. Regardless, I don't see that as a flaw, I see it as an advantage. Today's Big Bad comes in groups tomorrow and hordes next Thursday - that's how D&D is supposed to work, right? So if you need a good hit and a crappy soak roll to even hurt the bad guy (that is, he's good enough to make for an epic battle), it's not supposed to be very many levels before that bad guy goes down reliably in one punch. Right?

And especially given the fact that the damage roll varies more based on the attack roll results, that's going to be very difficult to balance correctly to the point where you can hurt a dragon but not one shot kill it, because one shot kills aren't fun in "boss battles", and they just aren't fun at all when a PC gets hit with one.

No, actually this makes it easier to make Epicly Long Battle happen, if that's what you want. Simply set the resistance bonus higher than the damage out-put before to-hit bonuses. Suddenly, only the good to-hit rolls have a chance of even hurting the dragon, and even then they can't do more than moderate wounds that are going to have to acumulate before the dragon goes down.

Obviously though I'd have to see the numbers to see exactly how it would work out, but thus far it seems like it would produce much more erratic results than the current system.

OK, let's assume that people's To-hit bonuses are roughly the same as their enemy's Defense bonus, and let's also assume that their Damage bonus is roughly the same as their opponent's Resistance bonus. So the thing that is going to affect the lethality here is the Base DC (for example, the Base DC of AC or Saving Throws in D&D is currently 10).

For starters, let's start with the idea that the basic Defense DC is still 10, so the attacks in this ideal circumstance have a 55% chance of striking. Each hit has a 2/11 chance of being +1 damage, a 2/11 chance of being +2 damage, a 2/11 chance of being +3 damage, a 2/11 chance of being +4 damage, a 1 in 11 chance of being +5 damage, and a 2/11 chance of being even-on.

So if the basic damage DC is 10, then a hit is going to inflict some damage 56.36% of the time, and it's going to instantly drop the guy never.

If the basic damage DC is 15 (or it is 10 and the attack happens to have five more points of damage bonus than the defender has resistance bonus), then a hit is going to inflict some damage 84% of the time, and instantly drop the guy one hit out of every 220.

If the basic damage DC is 20 (or it is 10 and the attack happens to have ten more points of damage bonus than the defender has resistance bonus), then a hit is going to inflict some damage 99.1% of the time, and drop the foe 16.36% of the time.

If the basic damage DC is 5 (or it is 10 and the attack happens to have five less points of damage bonus than the defender has resistance bonus), then an instant-drop is impossible and a hit will only score damage at all 31.36% of the time.

If the basic damage DC is 0 (or it is 10 and the attack happens to have ten less points of damage bonus than the defender has resistance bonus), then an instant-drop is impossible and a hit will only score damage at all 7.3% of the time.

----

That being laid down, let's consider the extremely simple situation of a climactic fight with a Golem. It's really easy to hit (your blow strikes true on a 5+), but it's also really tough (its resistance bonus is equal to the base Damage DC of your attack). In order for you to have a chance of hurting it, you'll have to hit by at least 4, just to pump your damage high enough to hurt it, and you can't possibly inflict more than a level 3 wound - so it's going to take a lot of chipping away at it to bring it down.

Each attack has a ten and a half percent chance of inflicting any damage at all. Each hit has a 13.13% chance of inflicting damage. Does that sound epic enough for you? Consider also that in this system, people are being killed at roughly the same rate at all levels by damage. That is to say, that the problem in D&D where the size of the margin between concious and dead shrinks rapidly as characters progress in level is gone. Further, the massive damage threshold at which characters are instantly slain scales automatically to character toughness.

All in all, this suggestion seems a lot less erratic than the current system, especially against magical spell effects.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah, I actually do like that system after hearing out the details, I may try something like that in an upcoming campaign and see how it works out.

[MrWaeseL]

I'd be interested to see what you come up with.