[3.Whatever] Improving Aid Another?

[radthemad4]

Aid Another seems kind of pathetic in both combat and skill use. For one thing, it's always a +2 regardless of how awesome the person aiding is in whatever way they're trying to help.

Any ideas for improving it?

[erik]

Group roll: take the highest result and add +2 for each extra participant that beat DC 10

[Josh_Kablack]

Make the combat usage something less than a standard action. As a move action it would be a situational tactical consideration. As a swift action it would be the go-to fallback until characters leveled into better swift action spells or abilities, and the major consideration would not be whether to use it, but which benefit to confer and upon which ally.

[brized]

Rolling for use in combat may not be worth the real-world time cost, so with it just being a +2 bonus I'd make it auto-succeed.

And even as a swift action it would still require positioning to be in melee range of the same target as your ally. It would encourage dog piling more in melee, but melee sucks to begin with.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think in one of Mearls' books (Experimental Might?) you could raise the TN to increase the granted bonus.

[erik]

A note.

In my earlier suggestion I was referring to skill use only. For combat, do we really need Aid Another? I would be content for it not to exist as a combat option. I mean yes, there are times that I have resorted to using it, but only because it was a shitty situation where only one character had a chance of mattering so might as well help them. If I am doing Aid Another in combat it's not like I feel good about my contribution. I literally could have been replaced by a commoner.

Combat already should have a more vibrant and useful option: take your own damn attack action.

[OgreBattle]

A note.

In my earlier suggestion I was referring to skill use only. For combat, do we really need Aid Another?

There's enough people interested in warlord/white raven style "point at people and other people hit them" actions for those classes to exist, might as well bake that sort of thing into the core combat rules.

[radthemad4]

Group roll: take the highest result and add +2 for each extra participant that beat DC 10

I think in one of Mearls' books (Experimental Might?) you could raise the TN to increase the granted bonus.

Combining these two ideas could work pretty well I think. That way, Tony Stark working with Bruce Banner and Reed Richards would get a higher result than any of them working with two average college freshmen.

I think I see erik's point in that you can already do assists in combat, e.g. get someone flat footed so the rogue can sneak attack, bullrush someone to push them next to an ally who can full attack them, etc. but I can still see some circumstances where teamwork can be fun. e.g. if you have multiple strong party members, they could team up to lift a huge opponent (possibly even get some help from a telekinesis using mage) and throw it at something else.

[tussock]

Aid another is something you get as a swift action by succeeding with an attack (or having your target fail a save, or hit them with a no-save, or do your bardic stuff, whatever, you get the idea).

You can give an ally +2 morale to AC or a save, or give an enemy -2 morale to AC or a save, or ... that should probably be it so the stacking doesn't get stupid.

Advantages: you get to roll, you get to assist, it easy to remember.
Disadvantages: holy crap look at all those +2's. Attacking a solo monster just got easier, maybe give them all +2 AC to compensate.


With skills? Just roll your own check. Maybe a stealthy guy could assist the party in being stealthy with a +2 morale bonus, for team checks where everyone has to pass, but skill challenges (Alice failed the stealth check! Bruce distracts the guards! Cindy makes animal noises! Dave works on his disguise!) actually work there, so meh.

[ishy]

The current goal of aid another in combat is to give mooks some relevance. If you're facing the horde of goblins, they can use aid another so they have a chance of getting that attack in / that critical grapple etc
It should be easy to do, fast and simple, because that is the way you want to use it.

Classes based upon buffing others should have their own class features to do so. You want these to have some more weight. Because these classes should still feel involved in the actual conflict.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Aid Another seems kind of pathetic in both combat and skill use. For one thing, it's always a +2 regardless of how awesome the person aiding is in whatever way they're trying to help.

If someone with a +5 adds +2 to someone else with +5, and someone with +25 adds +4 to someone else with +25, you've technically broken the exponential advancement curve.

[PhoneLobster]

Coming close to finishing my draft of a Saga edition review may be corrupting my opinion on this.

But after seeing Saga edition absolutely fucking obsess over variant aid another actions and bonuses... and seeing what that looks like, page after page, ability after ability again and again...

...aid another can go die in a hole.

[Wulfbanes]

I think the whole point of Aid Another in Star Wars Saga is to be able to play against a large group of enemies, and pretend like they're meaningful, because the GM using turn after turn of autofire or fishing for crits is just excessively lethal.