Health with multiple methods to reduce

[hyzmarca]

So am I the only one who thinks not having everyones abilities always stack linearly towards victory might be a good thing? It makes focus firing less rewarding and allows more diversity in tactical options.

No. You're not.

I certainly agree. And I'm pretty sure that most of the people in this thread agree.

[Username17]

Essentially, the argument has been made that if two or more people are moving toward the same victory condition (specifically 'murdered') ought they not move along the same track.

Even that argument is incredibly weak. Let's consider the state where your only goal is the murderation of your opponent. So basically we're playing Soul Calibur in table top format. But even then there's murdering your opponent by stabbing them in the belly and there's murdering your opponent by pushing them off a cliff.

Why would winning the positional contest and shoving your opponent off the cliff move along the same track as stabbing them until they bleed out? Seriously, what's the argument for that?

The problem here is that the unificationists haven't given a single argument for why we should accept their conclusions. And their unspoken premises appear to be puzzling and daft. The reason why PL skips to his conclusions and refuses to even state his premises is because the required premises are even less compelling sounding than the conclusions.

-Username17

[spongeknight]

Wow, people have really started to jump on the utterly bizarre "unification of mechanics is something that is not good, prove why you want it!" argument. Like, what the fuck? In almost all cases you want things to work the way other shit does in your system. Like, obviously. But I guess I have to show a bunch of kindergartners why it's a good thing.

So let's take an example of a system where people said "unifying things is a sucker's bet" and went with that concept in the design stage. Here's your character's abilities:

Power Word: Kill- If your opponent has less than 50 hit points, he dies immediately.

Sword Stab- You deal 1d8+1 damage to an opponent if you hit.

Dominate Monster- If your DM thinks it should work, this power allows you to control a monster.

Hero's Resolve- You may end the encounter, if you successfully beat the DM in a game of poker.

Death Mastery- Secretly place a pog on the battlefield. If no one notices for ten seconds, you may then take control of a dead player's character as a zombie for the rest of the game.

High Flying- You may kill any opponent your character can see.

Higher Flying- As High Flying, except they get a will save to resist and may make an immediate counter attack against you before the effect is resolved.

Sword Stab- You kill all enemies in melee range.

Sword Stab- As long as an action is realistic for a real life swordsman, you may take that action. Consult your DM for what realistic actions for swordsman are.

Master Air- You can manipulate air. There are no more rules text for this ability.

and so on. Do you get the point? Unifying abilities is and has always been a desirable thing in games! You don't pull out a fucking jenga set to play the stealth minigame, you use the fucking skill system. You don't haggle with NPCs using magical teaparty to determine the value of items, you use the fucking skill system. You don't try to explain to the DM how your character took ballet for three years so he should be able to balance on a rope while fighting, you use the motherfucking skill system.

So, have I cleared up why the goal of mechanical unification is obviously a good thing, or are there still retards here who can't figure that shit out on their own?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Why would winning the positional contest and shoving your opponent off the cliff move along the same track as stabbing them until they bleed out? Seriously, what's the argument for that?

\ Track	Stab to death		Push off cliff
Progress \	Name	Effect on other track	Name	Effect on other track
1	Woozy from blood loss	Penalty to resist being pushed	Teetering on the edge	Penalty to defense because of less room to maneuver
2	Unconscious	No ability to resist being thrown over the edge	Fallen	massive damage. Probably dead.

[Kaelik]

Wow, people have really started to jump on the utterly bizarre "unification of mechanics is something that is not good, prove why you want it!" argument. Like, what the fuck? In almost all cases you want things to work the way other shit does in your system. Like, obviously. But I guess I have to show a bunch of kindergartners why it's a good thing.

Sponge, pls don't do this. Completely failing to understand the conversation that is going on and making up stupid shit is PL's thing.

No one is arguing that unification is per se bad. We are arguing that unified mechanics are neither per se good or per se bad, and have to be justified or opposed based on their effects on the game. Yes, having a completely different resolution system for every effect would be bad, because players can only remember so many, and eventually you run into ones that have nothing to do with your numbers because you can't come up with that many good ones.

But guess what, Saves already exist in the game. There are already numbers on your character sheet that address how you make saving throws. Nothing you are advocating is going to take saving throws out of the game. It therefore follows, that you "unification" is not even going to reduce the number of resolution mechanics that players are going to have to remember.

So you have to justify it on some other grounds. Do that. You haven't done it yet.

[Username17]

and so on. Do you get the point?

Not the point you were probably trying to make. You presented a list of some workable mechanics and some bad and unworkable mechanics. Obviously your game would be better if everything used workable mechanics, but you presented no evidence at all that everything using the same workable mechanic would be good. And you opened yourself up to the obvious criticism that if you unified everything to using one of the non-functional mechanics you described, the game would go from "having some broken bits" to "being completely unplayable."

By including both functional and non-functional mechanics in your giant list, you own-goaled yourself pretty hard. And you still haven't provided any evidence at all that unifying mechanics is a general good. You kind of presented evidence that it's possible to have too many non-unified mechanics (although you undermined that pretty hard by including both functional and non-functional mechanics in your list, causing the results of unification in your example to be ambiguous), but you've absolutely failed to present any evidence that unifying mechanics is always good.

I mean, I could present the trivial counter-example of a rules-lite game like Bear World where the only mechanic in the entire game is to roll 2 six sided dice and then have the MC narrate whatever the fuck they want regardless of what the dice say. I take it as given that having more non-unified mechanics than that would be good.

What's "obvious" and doesn't need defending is the idea that there exists a game mechanical sweet spot of complexity where adding more mechanics or taking mechanics away would both make the core system worse. But you can't possibly expect everyone to fall in line with the claim that we are on one side or the other of the Laffer Curve for any particular game (let alone "all games" as PL seems to be claiming) without presenting some kind of evidence or argument.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

Pushing someone off a cliff ought to interact with the hit point system, at least to determine if they survive, and thus, potentially whether they can return to the fight. But I'm sure there are lots of other ways to end a fight that don't involve reducing health. Since I brought in the example of a fight ending mechanical trap that didn't synergize with hit point damage I'm aware that this isn't strictly a 'casters versus mundanes' issue.

In general, if you were designing a system from the ground up and you had a hit point system, it'd make sense to ask if an attack could interact with that system. It's okay that there are potentially lots of situations where the answer is no. But if the answer is yes, by all means, reduce complexity and make it work with the hit point system. Lots of Save-or-Die effects could be made to interact with hit points in a non-immersion breaking way. There are other things that won't be as obvious. But any 'death spiral' system that includes progressive penalties for hit point damage automatically makes hit point damage synergize with other attacks.

If someone is fully concentrating on keeping their feet in a fight, maybe they're more vulnerable to suggestion . If someone is half dead, maybe it's easier to rip their soul from their body. And if they're staggering at the edge of the cliff, maybe they're easier to push off.

To the OP, limiting spells like 'Finger of Death' is a minor improvement at best because other spells like 'dominate' are going to continue to exist. Making folks who take sufficient hit point damage more vulnerable to all spells (reduced saves) does more to increase cooperation, but usually hurts mundane characters more (since they are more likely to take hit point damage). Ultimately this type of balancing act is going to depend on preference. You can certainly make incremental improvements until it doesn't bother you, but mostly that will be reducing the extremes without resolving the underlying cause - and doing that would really mean nobody gets meaningful abilities at all.

[hyzmarca]

Personally, I wouldn't be opposed to getting rid of the hitpoint system and making being stabbed a save-or-die thing.

[Chamomile]

Are we seriously having an argument about whether it's better to have a system whose rules are easily remembered versus one where its rules are easily forgotten?

[Kaelik]

Are we seriously having an argument about whether it's better to have a system whose rules are easily remembered versus one where its rules are easily forgotten?

No, obviously not. Is anyone seriously contending that they currently can't remember how save or die spells work, and they could only remember if the spells had some kind of much more complex stacking with HP damage threshhold/penalties effect?

[PhoneLobster]

Are we seriously having an argument about whether it's better to have a system whose rules are easily remembered versus one where its rules are easily forgotten?

On the one hand don't worry, it's actually only a diversionary argument to distract you from the fact that they weren't getting any traction and already lost the thread when they tried unsuccessfully to pull "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and "bears are totes legit balance points" and failed to mount a defense of either.

On the other hand, worry, because having adopted this... spectacularly stupid... position in brief convenience and desperation now it will become a cannon Frankism that he and his less intelligent acolytes will now parrot verbatim for years while taking even stupider positions of desperate convenience to defend it.

On the other other hand, don't worry, it's not getting enough traction to satisfy them, expect a new desperate diversionary position any second.

[MGuy]

PL, this is not a 'new' concept. This kind of specific 'Prove your worth' attack on the implementation of an idea has been done before. I know that I felt the same when Frank was railing on about his terrible ideas for having Diplomacy rolled before characters even meaningfully interacted with each other, when I pushed for him to give any reason at all as to why a shop owner's attitude should rolled randomly so he has a chance to be randomly hostile to players for no reason, when Lago and Frank were on about WoF this and WoF that and "people can't handle having options!" thing. All those ideas they talked up and insisted were good and right and true and just but when pushed to show that it was 'better' than other options or (especially the case of WoF) that it could even be done in a way that would be in any way desirable, they fell short. So, it's not a new thing and you should know that much.

In the case, even the very last time the idea of putting everything on an HP track was met with opposition it (and you) faced the same 'put up or shut up' response to which you responded by showing your work (at which point critics simply did not read what you did with it). So I don't know why you believe 'this' particular thing is new but I assure you it is not. If someone presents an idea that's been done bad before but they are 'sure' can work it isn't really a big leap to expect them to clearly explain how.

The problem I have with how Frank approached it is what he used to get there. Presenting the idea that you can just 'not fight' in opposition to sponge wanting combat options to be more unified was and still is truly baffling. I am equally confused as to why wanting such a thing has to be justified because this isn't the first time something like this has even been brought up or talked about at length. When Frank was talking up the CAN system of his, putting everything on the same track so that they could have synergy, and he benefits of that, were spoken of there. So the benefits are well documented on these boards. Save or Dies and why people don't like/want them have been talked about at length, over many threads.

Of course I think sponge could've done a better job of defending his talking points. Hell if I were him I would've just taken what deaddm posted because it is a good, coherent, presentation of what the hell he's talking about without all the kneejerk reactive rage.

[Kaelik]

So the benefits are well documented on these boards. Save or Dies and why people don't like/want them have been talked about at length, over many threads.

Silva talks about how great BearWorld is all the time. Talking about how much you hate or like something is not meaningful in and of itself. Show me a coherent criticism of save or dies and I'll show you a good BearWorld hack.

[Username17]

Every so often I actually read one of MGuy's posts. My goodness that guy is a dishonest asshole. But he does bring up a good point: when I talked about the importance of a reaction roll for making D&D style diplomancy function, people did tell me to make an argument for it rather than accepting it on faith. Because it's a non-obvious position, and people were and are right to demand people to make positive arguments for statements that are in the slightest bit contentious.

Now as it happens, I did make a positive argument for that position. I made it repeatedly, and MGuy put his fingers in his ears and shouted "La La La I can't hear you!" rather than engaging with it. Because as has been noted, MGuy is a dishonest asshole. Here's the short version:

• Premise One: When a player wants their character to perform an action that is remotely within their capabilities, that action should have a chance of success.
• Premise Two: Taking actions of some kind with the intent of turning an upcoming encounter from one that starts with arrows fired to one that starts with people talking words at each other is something that is remotely within the capabilities of pretty much every character you're likely to play in any game system. I mean, for fuck's sake that is a thing that I do literally every day of my life.
• Premise Three: If you don't have a die roll to determine whether you get any talky bits before the combat music starts, no action you to take to try to get the talky bits to happen can have a chance of success. By definition, because there's nothing left to chance in that step of the narrative.
• Conclusion: You should have a modifiable die roll to determine whether you get to do the talky stuff.

Now, maybe you disagree with one of the premises. Perhaps you're a fiatist and believe that actions player characters take should not have a chance of success. That the MC should simply determine whether your actions succeed or fail based on how cool the story would be if they worked or not. Or whatever. But that's an argument people demanded that I made, and despite MGuy's ear plugging thread shitting, I did make it.

Seriously, if you have a contentious position, it's not actually weird for people to ask you to make a positive argument for your position. Refusing to do so doesn't mean you win the internet, it means everyone can see you're an asshole.

Speaking of assholery, what the fuck is up with PL and the constant jabs at bears? I mean, in the real world (and by extension the vast majority of fictional idioms), a bear is one of the toughest challenges there is. The bear and the tiger are the most powerful predators to walk the Earth, and besting one of those things is actually a really big deal. Takeru Kobayashi is the top of the world in his sport, and when he challenged a bear, he did not win. Because bears are in fact hard mode. One of the hardest challenges that exists.

Now, there are fictional characters who are much more powerful than a bear. A bear is not a fair challenge for Superman. But a bear is a reasonable challenge for somebody. It's a reasonable challenge for many somebodies. In fact, the vast majority of people in the vast majority of settings are going to be pretty significantly challenged by a bear. What the hell is PL even talking about by shouting that there is something obviously laughably wrong with discussing a bear as a challenge in a hypothetical RPG? I know PL has gotten a lot less lucid over the years, but I can't even fucking parse what he's gibbering about here. Bears are real things that are really dangerous and lots of fantasy heroes have had to fight one at some point, and winning is a pretty big deal.


According to PL there is something obviously illegitimate about discussing this encounter, but I have no idea what that something might be.

-Username17

[MGuy]

Oh boy, it seems I touched Frank's no no Diplomacy parts and he's just gonna call me dishonest. That's cool or whatever. If anyone actually reads through the thread they would note that yea, I think people with abilities should get to do stuff to change predetermined outcomes but when it comes to noting that part about 'doing stuff' Frank seems to skip right over that and insist that the only way to allow people the chance to do stuff is by making a roll before they get to do stuff. Any challenge to that is obviously me being dishonest and not saying that I don't really like as a game mechanic that comes up each and every time a character comes into existence.

Whatever, this isn't a thread about Franks (still not existent) terribad diplomacy mechanics. As for the bearworld comparison (which oddly enough is just what PL is talking about being parroted over and over) it's not the same. While yes, bearworld is brought up a lot, it is mainly brought up by one (at best 2) people, it is talked down each and every time it is brought up and it is generally accepted by most of the denizens to just be a long term silva shilling project. Not liking Save or Dies (or at least how they work as is) has been brought up multiple times by many many different posters and I don't remember a thread talking about Condition Tracks, CAN, alternate SoD conditions being drowned out by pictures of bears.

SoDs and, really, RLT in general has a long history of not being liked. Whether its because people think they are boring, anticlimatic, doesn't have synergy with anything else (even other SoDs), doesn't require a lot of strategy, etc most people don't like them. In this thread sponge said he doesn't like the lack of synergy and that he'd like murder spells to interact with the HP system. Before this thread I wouldn't think that, 'that' would be a controversial idea.

[deaddmwalking]

There is nothing wrong with a bear as a challenge, or even a Tarrasque. But if the opponent can be defeated by flying + arrows, it's not a 'balance point' - after that I'm not sure why anyone (especially PhoneLobster) cares about them. While they totally could be an encounter, any specific encounter is only tangential to putting SoD and hit point damage on synergistic tracks.

Regarding Save-or-Die, I admit that I'm not a fan. On the PC side, we know that iterative probability means that even unlikely fails will eventually happen. Dying is awfully inconvenient for building momentum in an adventure. I believe that there should be consequences for failure, but usually 'encountering' an opponent isn't a 'failure'. Opening up a door and walking into a Bodak without foreshadowing can cause a PC to die in an unsatisfying way.

From a PC perspective, I'm not really a fan. In the event that there is a tactically interesting 'set piece' encounter, a 'best - case scenario' has the opponent fail before any other actions occur. While that may be optimal from a character perspective, it is unfulfilling from a player perspective. It's also possible that it does nothing, which from a player perspective is frustrating. If you are any of the other 3-5 players at the table, it also necessarily means that the success of the tactic leaves you with nothing to contribute. The game is by its nature cooperative, so my enjoyment is enhanced when everyone feels that they made a useful contribution.

There's also an element of subjective fairness. In general we dislike the idea of a dirt farmer killing a great wyrm because of a triple 20 rule resulting in auto-death. When you outclass your opponent by a certain margin, it feels cheap to overcome an opponent in that manner. I think there is a place for them, but only in exceptional circumstances.

[momothefiddler]

I mean, in the real world (and by extension the vast majority of fictional idioms), a bear is one of the toughest challenges there is. The bear and the tiger are the most powerful predators to walk the Earth, and besting one of those things is actually a really big deal. Takeru Kobayashi is the top of the world in his sport, and when he challenged a bear, he did not win. Because bears are in fact hard mode. One of the hardest challenges that exists.

There is literally no thread shitty enough that it does not become worthwhile once it turns into bears. I can't believe this.

[Kaelik]

As for the bearworld comparison it's not the same. While yes, bearworld is brought up a lot, it is mainly brought up by one (at best 2) people, it is talked down each and every time it is brought up and it is generally accepted by most of the denizens to just be a long term silva shilling project. Not liking Save or Dies (or at least how they work as is) has been brought up multiple times by many many different posters and I don't remember a thread talking about Condition Tracks, CAN, alternate SoD conditions being drowned out by pictures of bears.

1) So if we got bombed by a bunch of bear worlders at once suddenly bear world would stop sucking?

2) So if we ignored those threads or argued in them instead of posting bear memes, then bear world would stop sucking?

No you idiot, the point is that silva doesn't have any sensible arguments for his shitty position. And neither do you.

SoDs and, really, RLT in general has a long history of not being liked. Whether its because people think they are boring, anticlimatic, doesn't have synergy with anything else (even other SoDs), doesn't require a lot of strategy, etc most people don't like them.

Your claim that "most people don't like them" is both meaningless and wrong. In practice, most people find games without save or dies to be boring pieces of shit. The fact that they complain about save or dies doesn't actually mean they are correct in figuring out what they don't like. Most people also complain about flask rogues and uberchargers and cleric archers, and basically anything with level appropriate abilities past level 8. Probably because what they actually don't like is playing games past level 8. Which is why they mostly don't do it, and when they do, they play it like it is level 7 forever. You even seem to actually fucking recognize that your own criticisms don't apply to save or dies, they apply to "RLT" the fabled enemy of good RPGs that is somehow present in all good RPGs, since never has a good RPG been made that didn't have it. Almost like people are wrong when they think they don't like it.

Your claim that casting the same spell and rolling damage is somehow more strategic is fucking nonsense. Rolling to hit and damage isn't strategic either. Resolution mechanics aren't inherently strategic. In fact, in practice in 3e, save or dies are more strategic, since they actually require you to consider immunities.

Anticlimaxes always come down to people being shitty fuck DMs who are mad about player success.

"Synergy" is of course, not an inherent good, and several people in this thread have said why it might not be a good thing. And of course, truthfully, rogues and uberchargers and cleric archers don't really synergize with each other, or any other HP damage dealers, they do in fact synergize with a whole bunch of spells that don't fucking do HP damage though.

In this thread sponge said he doesn't like the lack of synergy and that he'd like murder spells to interact with the HP system. Before this thread I wouldn't think that, 'that' would be a controversial idea.

Then you clearly haven't ever read any thread about the subject, because this shit comes up, and it is always controversial. Always. We shit talk Pathfinder for fucking with save or dies, we shit talk people who bring up this exact issue all the time too.

[PhoneLobster]

But if the opponent can be defeated by flying + arrows, it's not a 'balance point' - after that I'm not sure why anyone (especially PhoneLobster) cares about them.

You seem to have succinctly re-iterated the point I've been making about bears not being an acceptable balance point while seemingly wondering why I keep making it.

[deaddmwalking]

I re-read the thread.

Frank suggests that since casting levitate on yourself won't deal hit point damage to the opponents in any meaningful sense (though if spongeknights suggestion that HP also reflect morale then casting a spell could certainly erode the opponents willingness to fight) then there's no point in looking at what spells might benefit from being placed on a hit point track. This is a little silly, at least, because spongeknight didn't claim that you had to do this with everything. PL pointed out that dismissing the idea of consolidating tracks because buffing yourself doesn't damage the opposition is silly (correctly). He then went on to say that a threat that you can eliminate simply by levitating yourself isn't really a threat worth considering in major detail.

That derail was pushed by Virgil who insisted that you will fight bears. Spongeknight granted that but pointed out it didn't outright render his suggestion pointless.

So, we're back to some spells potentially interacting with the hit point system/condition systems to create synergy between characters. This is not a bad thing.

Some spells include 'rider effects'. For example, a 'cold' spell might also 'slow' an opponent. Allowing the spell to make fighting the opponent in melee easier (stun/slow etc) even on a successful save can work. It's a lot of work though to consider every spell that already exists and decide if it can be put on a HP track and whether rider effects that help synergy can be added... But if you're starting from scratch, I think this is a laudable design goal. You have players working together to play the game - it's good if the rules support working together in the fight.

[MGuy]

1) So if we got bombed by a bunch of bear worlders at once suddenly bear world would stop sucking?

2) So if we ignored those threads or argued in them instead of posting bear memes, then bear world would stop sucking?

No you idiot, the point is that silva doesn't have any sensible arguments for his shitty position. And neither do you.

Well I never said he did. My point was that the context is different. You speak as if they are the same thing (or even similar) but they aren't. A bunch of 4vengers raided the forums before and that didn't make the game itself better and there are still threads about how it is bad. I can find no such thread praising SoDs. I can find threads that attack different ways to change or get rid of SoDs but not a thread on why they are good. While I can find plenty of threads, here, about alternates, people being dissatisfied with the results of SoDs/RLT and the like.

If a bunch of bearworld is good threads were started by different people including people who have been here a long time and those threads didn't have so many disagreeable things in them I'd be willing to give the game more thought. The fact is though that isn't the case. There haven't been years of bearworld threads made by different people that have gone on largely unchallenged.

As for uberchargers and other 100 to 0 damage builds, I feel they are equally bad. The ridiculous stacking of parts into a very select few builds that can even play part of the game I think is a problem in DnD but that isn't the problem being discussed. I also think that warriors and the like should get more options, especially as levels rise, that are deeper than just staying static and firing arrow after arrow each round. I'm not sure why you're coming at me assuming I'm even going to attempt to make these cases. I mean, I'm open to having that discussion about fundamentally changing the combat system in DnD because it is a subject I've been giving a lot of thought over the past year (as I like strategy games in general) but that isn't what this is about. It's about sponge's idea to change the way instant death effects work.

The case of PF or really any other badly implemented system being tried and failing before, well failures are going to happen. If what you're wanting is for sponge to make something like a proof of concept then yea, ok. I agree, I'd like to 'see' what he comes up with but 4E failing and PF not really trying to succeed is not an argument 'against' what he wants. 4E seems like they had good ideas that they scrapped. PF I don't believe was ever intended to step away from 3rd in any significant way so while they fucked around with SoDs they didn't get rid of them and they made new ones. All they did was walk backward if not just run in place as far as that goes. So I will go back to asserting that the idea of shaping up the game to be 'not RLT' is not really controversial here. There may be disagreements about 'how' it should be done and to what degree (threads about how long combat should last exist) but the 'idea' of not having RLT be the standard is certainly not a thing I've seen forcefully rejected here (this thread itself being that exception).

[hyzmarca]

Here's my issue. Pounding on a Final Fantasy boss is, in fact, boring. That's why Vanish+Doom was so popular.

Solutions that result in more Final Fantasy Pounding are bad for a tabletop game. They just bog things down. Thus the idea that you must sword a guy before casting Power Word Kill doesn't really accomplish anything but making combat slower. Making combat slower is probably not on the list of things that you want to accomplish.

Killing a guy gives more of a buzz than just stabbing him does. I'm not sure if there are any scientific studies to this effect due to the ethical issues involved, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

And it's certainly true in games.


Thus making it harder for individual characters to kill people won't actually create better synergy. What it's likely to do is promote people defaulting to more powerful abilities and resting more often. The five mute workday becomes the 2.5 minute workday.

Ultimately, the point of a game is to have fun. Having fun is a fancy way of saying releasing chemicals that target the cocaine rat centers of your brain. Hence, more rapid gratification is better.

The simplest way to do that is to sell actual cocaine to your players. Include a free sample with the rulebook and then sell them more when they run out.

This is, unfortunately, illegal. Thus we must default to more abstract methods, such as having each player kill a different enemy, instead of having them all team up on one big enemy.

[PhoneLobster]

Here's my issue.

Did you not even read the first page of the thread and the stuff about bloodied mechanics and extending combat time?

While it's more interesting to talk about actual implications of the proposed mechanics rather than you know, bullshit about bears and "are better rules really better the gaming den is no longer sure!", there isn't anything about integrating SoD's with HP tracks that has to make the resulting mechanic make it harder to end combats quickly. It's really only a very specific sub set of a sub set of an implementation of integrating SoDs with HP tracks that generates "everyone must be this bloodied to ride the death roller coaster" blow outs in combat time.

As for wanting players not to gang up on the big enemy... that's not precisely well supported by the lack of synergy between HP damage and SoDs. If you actually want to genuinely prevent focus fire tactics you are going to need to do something a damn sight more than "status quo HP damage and SoDs", what with, you know, focus fire still being a gigantic issue with common systems that use those mechanics. I'd point out something like my damage cap mechanic is pretty much the only actual way of preventing focus fire, but we don't need the additional distraction.

[Kaelik]

I can find no such thread praising SoDs. I can find threads that attack different ways to change or get rid of SoDs but not a thread on why they are good. While I can find plenty of threads, here, about alternates, people being dissatisfied with the results of SoDs/RLT and the like.

I can't see any threads cheering about the status quo, only lots of people who get upset whenever you try to change the status quo, therefore, no one at all likes the status quo!

So I will go back to asserting that the idea of shaping up the game to be 'not RLT' is not really controversial here. There may be disagreements about 'how' it should be done and to what degree (threads about how long combat should last exist) but the 'idea' of not having RLT be the standard is certainly not a thing I've seen forcefully rejected here (this thread itself being that exception).

This thread and literally every other thread in which it has ever been brought up being the exception.

[K]

I don't really want to get shit from this shitstorm thread on me, but the OP really made me think of Numenera's system.

I'm drinking wine right now, so please forgive my tone.