"The win condition of the Fighter is to reach b2b contact"

[OgreBattle]

Reading Howard stories, Conan (who is definitely more than a D&D fighter, just sayin), kills giants and wizards that have outreaching moves, in one blow once he gets into cutty range. Sometimes he throws his sword, sometimes he throws a chair, but most of the death defiance is getting into range in the first place.

So lets take grid based D&D type games, how do you go about designing a game where melee is mega deadly for those not hyper specialized in it, while avoiding kiting?

I figure an 'inevitability, just a matter of time' to reach melee vs getting killed while out of range is one approach. Drastically reducing accuracy of ranged attacks further than Conan can throw a stool.

[deaddmwalking]

So the character concept of 'archer' and the character concept of 'great-club wielding brute' are both things that you want in D&D because those are both things that players want in D&D.

There's an old computer game (1984) called 'Ancient Art of War' that tried to let you battle against famous historical generals (including Sun Tzu). In that game, they had three unit types; barbarians, archers and knights (and a unit could be mixed). They had a sort of 'rock-scissors-paper' thing. Archers wanted to stand far away and shoot. Knights advance slowly, so archers were really good against knights. Barbarians advance quickly and are dodgy, so they can avoid arrows and get into melee range and kill archers. Both knights and barbarians want to get into melee, but knights with their heavier armor slaughter barbarians. That right there creates a rough balance - no unit is automatically better, but if you know the composition of the enemy, you certainly would prefer to create an advantageous match-up.

If archers 'suck' against all opponents, you aren't going to have many archers, even though a lot of players like the concept. Giving people really inaccurate attacks is frustrating, but doesn't necessarily eliminate kiting - if every attack I make at range has a 1% chance of hitting, but every attack you make at range has a 0% chance of hitting, even if it takes hundreds of rounds the obvious strategy is to keep kiting (until I get bored and suicide myself or quit the game).

It's generally a better approach to give characters abilities that make SOME of them better against those types of attack - or make numerous abilities available that reduce an opponent's effectiveness some of the time. Things like 'deflect arrows' or letting people sacrifice an Attack of Opportunity to use a shield to completely negate a ranged attack potentially allow a melee focused character to make kiting generally ineffective. The archer character can accept that some characters have a counter to his attack without completely making him irrelevant.

From a D&D perspective, a major issue is that characters don't get enough abilities. Choosing an 'anti-ranged attacker ability' means not choosing a 'make me more effective at melee ability', so it's often a good idea to build defensive abilities into the class.

In terms of making ranged attacks less effective, some potential defensive abilities include:
Automatically 'reflecting' a certain number of ranged attacks per round
Having a chance to 'reflect' a certain number of ranged attacks per round
Automatically blocking/dodging a certain number of ranged attacks per round
Having a chance to block/dodge a certain number of ranged attacks per round
Concealment/Invisibility that make you difficult/impossible to target with ranged weapons
Being able to heal hit point damage (healing surge, regeneration) that approximates ranged damage (assuming melee damage is greater)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Perhaps I don't fully understand the question, but what recourse are ranged characters supposed to have against melee characters beyond running away from them and/or immobilizing them? Isn't that what kiting is? Or are we only using the derogatory form of kiting here?

[Grek]

My understanding of the idea is that Ogre is interested in a combat model where melee combatants automatically defeat non-melee combatant that they successfully close with and where such combats are resolved by having Ranged Guy declare ranged attacks on an advancing Melee Guy, who in turn announces various attempts to evade, counter or weather said attacks. If Ranged Guy hits Melee Guy with something they can't stop, Ranged Guy wins, otherwise Melee Guy wins. Presumably if Ranged Guy runs away instead of attacking, we break out the chase rules instead of the charge rules.

[Whatever]

"people can die in one hit" tends to play poorly at the table, where there's no narrative protection for the protagonists.

if you want to avoid kiting, then it seems like you need a big focus on battlefield control effects. The Wizard has to stand still the whole fight, but she can throw down walls of stone and solid fog to keep the Fighter from getting close. Not sure what you do for archers, or what happens when someone gets on a horse.

[pragma]

Alternatively, you could impose a "move OR shoot" rule for ranged characters. That could be implemented in a variety of ways, including a big penalty for shooting on the run.

[PhoneLobster]

What if the fighter is fighting a fighter.

[Foxwarrior]

Then they just parry each others' blows indefinitely until an ally arrives to backstab one of them.

[Harshax]

You can have as many turtles all the way down as you’re willing to write rules for.

When I was reading Torchbearer and Burning Wheel, I was enamored by the idea of rock-paper-scissors on multiple scales. I found this article which, if I remember correctly, attempts to boil down unit deployments on the same scale:

https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/a ... -scissors/

I’ve seen suggestions earlier about middle-attacks and not moving and I think that’s kind of where you need to go if you want certain combat decisions to favor the guy with the biggest stick. Like, unless you have logic diagrams for mindless-average monsters that rely on closing on the nearest combatant or fleeing on failed morale checks, you’re setting yourself up for bad rules.

But, if players had one action, aligned thematically with rock, paper or scissors, you’d at least have the frame work for seeing how those strengths and weaknesses play out immediately.

If an Archer can shoot, move and then move and the Fighter’s move and move and close actions don’t equate to at least a reaction by the fighter when the archer switches up by doing a move first, then kiting never becomes not a thing. And honestly, why should it? Kiting is a thing that’s existed since one guy through a rock at another guy.

Making rules to break kiting specifically is not very satisfying. Games like Mechwarrior granted specific bonuses for not moving, such as using terrain to reduce cool downs. Or, stability modifiers for melee attacks. Or, in games like Car Wars, stability modifiers for any attacks if you didn’t move.

[OgreBattle]

What if the fighter is fighting a fighter.

If I reaaaally want to make that into a time consuming "player decisions decide the outcomre more than most raw stats" then something like En Garde/Ronin which I've talked about in some other threads if you search those names.

If I want the game to resolve quickly then it's the usual stats + dice outcomes. I don't mean it to be a literal "auto win", but that a melee specialist getting into melee range of a less specialized character should end the fight faster in terms of how great their melee skill and gear and stats gap is.

Alternatively, you could impose a "move OR shoot" rule for ranged characters. That could be implemented in a variety of ways, including a big penalty for shooting on the run.

Watching some "it's not LARP it's HEMA" 5v5 or so, the guys with the bows only got in 'blindspot' hits when they had a melee dude threatening a melee dude. Otherwise they had their shield up, or could stay at a certain distance where an arrow could be dodged. Realism is not a good thing to claim, but I use it as an example of the gameplay it creates.

So archery is for ambushes, 'sneak' flank attacks with allied teamwork, but fares poorly against a guy who can dedicate their focus to closing in on you. Then if there's a level/power disparity archery clears mooks running right at you but leaves the equal-power orc unit leader to probably reach the archer if there's no dedicated melee guy to intercept him.

Something I actually want to avoid is 'I am a bow guy I shoot arrows in melee and never touch melee weapons"
Like the most famous "dedicated archery dude" in western war history is the longbow guy, and a buckler + sword was standard gear.


In my vision, the D&D's "Bow guy shoots arrows that hurt like sword blows" is covered by blaster wizards, or a fantasy alchemy contraption like what Warhammer empire engineers run around with. I play more tabletop miniatures skirmish than RPG's nowadays, where the elf archer lord either needs support to stay out of melee or still has a deathly runed sword for melee.

[PhoneLobster]

If I reaaaally want to make that into a time consuming "player decisions decide the outcomre more than most raw stats" then something like En Garde/Ronin which I've talked about in some other threads if you search those names.

If I want the game to resolve quickly then it's the usual stats + dice outcomes. I don't mean it to be a literal "auto win", but that a melee specialist getting into melee range of a less specialized character should end the fight faster in terms of how great their melee skill and gear and stats gap is.

Wow.

Someone else name dropped rock paper scissors. That brings to mind a way to indirectly interact with this vague effervescent thought bubble.

Do players actually want these "decisions" to matter that much? Are they even "decisions"? Who is really making the "decision" here?
OK so melee wins close ranged, ranged wins... if melee is slow? Starts a long way away? Whatever. And maybe it's actually "I don't mean wins I mean kinda wins sorta maybe definitely". Whatever.

Point is 1) That isn't a player decision. It isn't even an objective balanced context. It's a context of an encounter decided and defined most likely in its entirety by GM whim. Which is also why rock paper scissors is also largely a fail method for RPGs certainly when repeatedly included in some delusion of it bringing a form of objective "balance".

And then 2) The archer/wizard/anyone-but-the-fighter player doesn't actually want to be auto lose (or kinda maybe sorta auto lose) just because close range happened at them through no choice of their own.

Players are kinda OK with auto lose circumstances they (personally and freely) opt into. They are less OK with ones forced upon them by broad class archetypes and GM decided encounter contexts.

And by less OK I mean god damned pissed off.

Especially if the GM is also the game designer that also designed those weaknesses and tied them to the rest of the character archetype they otherwise wanted.

It's basically you building a remote detonated bomb into their preferred character and then detonating it whenever you feel like it. And you did it all right to their face.

Having an archetype like "Fighter" have more different options to how they can do well in an arbitrary context is fine. But the wizards and archers also kinda need at least a few options so they can also do well or at least counter in that context too. They don't have to take them, but the option has to have been there and been viable to take for them to freely turn it down.

If you just up and tell the wizards and archers "Nope you started in the troll closet today so you die because there IS no winning for your like at close range" that is different to "because you didn't invest in that option you could have which would have got you out of this/let you still win anyway".

Of course. Your proposal is a shifting and vague effervescent thought bubble, so this doesn't directly apply to you.

But at least it's you know. Something of any actual content to say.

In the mean time on the "simple answers to simple questions front" what happens when a fighter fights a fighter... mumble mumble name drop mumble nothing much I guess?

[OgreBattle]

Here’s the thread where I try to hash out a dice pool combat system that feels enough like fencing:
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=57606& ... c&start=25

Ah forgot that a good explaination ofhow battletech makes longer ranges weapons more costly to use is there too.

Yeah man a wandering thought bubble is what this thread is, if I really have something set and playable I’ll post it in that channel nobody responds in

On “move or shoot” to different degrees, I figure if holding or going after something is heavily emphasized then it works out well. Warhammer is objectives based most of te time

[MGuy]

Depending on what your goal actually is you can make a rule that makes it happen. I'm not sure what the hesitation here is. If what you want is for melee specced guys to obliterate anyone who's not also specced similarly as soon as they get into stab range you can just 'do' that. I would assume that you know that too considering you put hyper specialization on the table. All you'd have to do is make hyper spec mean that there are things in that specialization that make them better than other people at whatever the thing is.

DnD already has a number of things that put a ranged combatant at disadvantage when advanced upon and numerous options available to melee people who need to close distance (at least if you look through enough material). What do you feel is missing exactly?

[OgreBattle]

Mguy, what I already want is bloodbowl+ killteam - clutter, I repeat stuff from there over and over so a part of this thread is seeing if a new idea pops up. This discussion has reminded me that those games are based around seizing objectives and not only killing. I’ve played games where my mega shooty orks kite and kill but I lost on objectives held.

I don’t know much about burning wheel so now I’ll go ask about it.

You can have as many turtles all the way down as you’re willing to write rules for.

When I was reading Torchbearer and Burning Wheel, I was enamored by the idea of rock-paper-scissors on multiple scales. I found this article which, if I remember correctly, attempts to boil down unit deployments on the same scale:

https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/a ... -scissors/

I’ve seen suggestions earlier about middle-attacks and not moving and I think that’s kind of where you need to go if you want certain combat decisions to favor the guy with the biggest stick. Like, unless you have logic diagrams for mindless-average monsters that rely on closing on the nearest combatant or fleeing on failed morale checks, you’re setting yourself up for bad rules.

But, if players had one action, aligned thematically with rock, paper or scissors, you’d at least have the frame work for seeing how those strengths and weaknesses play out immediately.

If an Archer can shoot, move and then move and the Fighter’s move and move and close actions don’t equate to at least a reaction by the fighter when the archer switches up by doing a move first, then kiting never becomes not a thing. And honestly, why should it? Kiting is a thing that’s existed since one guy through a rock at another guy.

Making rules to break kiting specifically is not very satisfying. Games like Mechwarrior granted specific bonuses for not moving, such as using terrain to reduce cool downs. Or, stability modifiers for melee attacks. Or, in games like Car Wars, stability modifiers for any attacks if you didn’t move.

The historic martial arts instructor Michael Hundt has advice for rock throwing https://www.wiktenauer.com/wiki/Michael_Hundt
But with a rapier in the other hand, so the rocks are to harass them into closing in where you can stab them without any rock wounds.

Does burning wheel do much with party members acting to support each other? What I’ve seen of it was focused on 1 on 1 dueling.

[Grek]

I feel like this general sort of system would also have value if you were designing something like Black Forest, where the protagonists are assumed to be much smaller and weaker than their opponents, such that getting grabbed and stuffed into a sack to be later eaten by ogres is supposed to be a much more common combat outcome than simply being run through with a sword. As such, the combat narrative is less about an accounting of blows traded and more about whether the protagonist can figure out a way to exploit a monster weakness or environmental feature before they run out of ways to dodge out of melee range.

[PhoneLobster]

Yeah man a wandering thought bubble is what this thread is, if I really have something set and playable I’ll post it in that channel nobody responds in

Perhaps you don't understand why your original response wowed me so much. Well. Of course you didn't.

Lets try it again slowly.

"The win condition of the fighter is to reach base to base contact"

OK. Presenting a concept. Fine. What is the first god damn question that might have an interesting answer here to flesh this idea out?

"What happens when a fighter fights a fighter?"

Seems simple enough "Close + Fighter +Archer = Fighter Win, Far + Fighter +Archer = Archer win, so ?+ Fighter + Fighter = ? win"

And your answer is "Maybe fencing?". And initially "Or maybe just TTRPG rules in general".

Do you not understand the concept of the non-sequitur. The irrelevant answer. The thing that doesn't address the actual question.

Fighter +Fighter at ? distance, who wins and why in close fighter trumps all thought concept universe?

Meaningful and interesting answers would have been "Its a draw!" or "Nothing happens without reinforcements" or "they waste time and mutually retreat" or "the first to make contact wins so they circle and dodge a lot first" or a dozen other elaborations on the high concept.

"There would be rules resolution, possibly about fencing" is not a relevant fucking answer. It tells me nothing about outcomes. It does not elaborate on the high concept.

You don't have the first damn answer about the first damn question about your high concept. You haven't put thought into it. When given an opportunity you apparently don't want to put thought into it. You basically just responded by saying "? En guarde ?"

[Omegonthesane]

that's a lot of words for "I didn't read past the title and insist on taking the initial premise 100% literally instead of as a summary of interactions between fighters and non-fighters"

Like, literally the very first post talked about making a system where melee combat was megadeadly for non specialists, instead of a system consisting of literally, explicitly, not just as a consequence of the numbers, base contact causing the fighter to win.

"There would be rules resolution, possibly about fencing" is not a relevant fucking answer. It tells me nothing about outcomes. It does not elaborate on the high concept.

This in particular is just genuinely false. Even your vague characterisation of the answer tells us that, at the high concept level, Fighter VS Fighter is not decided as quickly as Fighter VS Archer. That is an elaboration on the high concept.

[PhoneLobster]

Even your vague characterisation of the answer tells us that, at the high concept level, Fighter VS Fighter is not decided as quickly as Fighter VS Archer. That is an elaboration on the high concept.

If you are saying that about my shorter more succinct (it also left out the bit of his answer that inexplicably just tagged back on the bit about fighters winning at close range to archers) version of his answer you are especially wrong.

It and he made no statement about fighter v fighter OUTCOMES (a thing you can do without absolutes) only about irrelevant mechanical methodology. You are being excessively generous and imagining things he didn't say, and then also inserting words into my mouth too.

At best you can attempt to pretend he very very indirectly through total omission implied that fighter v fighter is "the normal" or "status quo" outcome, but if so he said that so incredibly indirectly and badly he deserves a metaphorical slap in the face.

Because you don't say "Oh the result would be an even match like it would be without this concept" by saying "maybe I would use admittedly over elaborate fencing rules or simple normal rules also remember that fighters win vs archers".

That, that is how fucking idiots answer questions.

Oh. And since half of your whole thing seems to be a shockingly crude pretense that I somehow don't understand the idea isn't definitely in practice absolute... maybe you should read my posts with one tenth the incredible generosity you grant his. Or just read them at all.

And maybe it's actually "I don't mean wins I mean kinda wins sorta maybe definitely". Whatever.

[Zaranthan]

Don't waste your brainpower, Omegon. PL will never accept any answer to any TTRPG question that isn't "punt the whole idea and play Mouse Trap instead."

[PhoneLobster]

And yet currently response to what happens when a fighter fights a fighter remains "fighting mechanics".

But no. Apparently I'm the one with the problem here.

This is the first. Most basic question anyone could ask about this idea. It isn't hard to answer. And that's about the stupidest way you could answer it.

Unless I don't know your answer couldn't even decide which mechan... oh... oh... ooooh dear...

[czernebog]

Does burning wheel do much with party members acting to support each other? What I’ve seen of it was focused on 1 on 1 dueling.

Burning Wheel has a few different combat resolution systems. The two that you probably care about are:

• Fight: a very detailed combat resolution system that is mostly presented from the perspective of a 1v1 duel, although there are guidelines for how to handle groups of PCs or enemies. These rules are asymmetrical (depending on whether the group is a group of mooks or a group of PCs). When it comes to PCs ganging up on someone, you can basically try to handle a single superior opponent by using the standard helping rules to bolster dice pools, or overwhelm by taking far more actions than an opponent can hope to parry.
• Range & Cover: a different set of rules (which work similarly to, but quite distinctly from, the Fight rules) for use when an encounter is a chase or a skirmish over varying distances. They are also largely written from the perspective of 1v1 fights, with the suggestion that the PCs break up into teams of two or three characters for large-scale skirmishes (with each team acting as a unit to perform one tactical maneuver per turn, which may end up resolving into one or more attacks from each team member if the maneuver was executed particularly well).

Burning Wheel is so damn complicated and unappealing to my local gaming group that I haven't been able to try running even a simple one-on-one fight with either of these rulesets. With that in mind:

When using the Fight rules, a character can be armed with a ranged weapon like a crossbow. There are notions of weapon range and distance between combatants (although they are more narrative than what you get in grid-based D&D). When a "melee" Fight begins, combatants determine initial distance and initiative. Under these rules, Conan with a dagger is tremendously advantaged when within arm's reach of an archer, and he could very likely end things right there.

At longer ranges, it is important that Range & Cover and Fight are two distinct minigames. Range & Cover explicitly ends once characters are within melee range of each other (and Fight kicks in, if no one surrenders). This probably yields a more narratively interesting way to close distance than what you might get with an impatient or naive player in a grid-based D&D-style game (take double move or run actions until you're adjacent to your opponent, eating arrows along the way). Mechanically, trying to close distance with the Range & Cover rules is more complicated than taking double move or run actions. It assumes that both parties are trying to outmaneuver each other, and there's a closed set of maneuvers that can be taken, such as Charge (close distance), Maintain (doesn't change distance), and Sneak Out (increase distance).

If you actually want to use D&D to simulate Conan, he'd use cover to his advantage and try to sneak up on his target. Range & Cover appears designed to model exactly this sort of thing. If you try to apply the full suite of D&D RAW that you'd need to get a similar result (fully statted terrain, cover, concealment, Spot size and range modifiers, tables from various terrain traversal skills like Climb and Jump, etc.), you might wind up with more of a mess than if you just used Range & Cover. In this case, the main problem with the Burning Wheel minigame may be that it puts so much complexity up front, which makes it harder to ignore rules selectively (so there's less flipping pages to determine if you can actually charge up a fifteen degree incline that is covered with underbrush) or mind-caulk things when you want the flow of a battle to go more smoothly because the wizard's player is falling asleep in their chair.

So lets take grid based D&D type games, how do you go about designing a game where melee is mega deadly for those not hyper specialized in it, while avoiding kiting?

You might be okay with doubling down on the grid-based combat thing because you already have a hundred square feet of terrain stacked up in drawers, or you might feel that more abstract notions of positioning and movement are okay. Do you have a preference?

What are you trying to achieve by limiting kiting as a tactic? My best guess is that you'd prefer it if players weren't mechanically incentivized to kite ogres to death, because that leads to pointlessly long and boring encounters.

deaddmwalking already gave some good suggestions about what to bolt onto a D&D chasis.

It's interesting to speculate about a game like D&D which has feats or class abilities that key off of combatants' positions, to encourage them to out-maneuver each other instead of just trying to wear down each others' HP. Add a sprinkling of special movement abilities that force archers to risk burning some sort of non-HP resource in order to stay at range, combat stances that give melee fighters a chance to close distance without getting completely pincushioned, and specialized short-range combat moves that only melee-specialized fighters can get. This could wind up looking like Disgaea. It could wind up looking like 4e.

Given your goals as stated, you might be able to get away with a simple fatigue/exhaustion mechanic. Firing a bow while running away costs more fatigue than just running, so eventually archers will tire out and get beaten to death by melee fighters.

To get more specific than that, it's necessary to articulate your goals a little more thoroughly. Instead of making archers less accurate, you could make DR more common (UA armor-as-DR rules, grant melee fighters DR through class abilities or feats, amp up the barbarian's natural DR) and also grant melee specialists DR bypass because of they are so incredibly stronghueg. In a 1v1, your luchador has a chance to tank arrows until he catches up with that archer and turn him into a pretzel. Mechanically, this doesn't help your luchador against 50 peasants with longbows, but maybe that's what you want.

[MGuy]

Don't waste your brainpower, Omegon. PL will never accept any answer to any TTRPG question that isn't "punt the whole idea and play Mouse Trap instead."

PL did not do this. PL's problem is he has an extra hard time coming up with ways to engage people that aren't off putting to the people he's trying to engage with. His replies aren't like shads where they are all secretly him shilling one specific ruleset.

This discussion has reminded me that those games are based around seizing objectives and not only killing. I’ve played games where my mega shooty orks kite and kill but I lost on objectives held.

I was getting the feeling that you were leaning toward wargame or something similar by some your use of words like unit and references to war tactics. I try to clear some of that from my mind and I've been trying to hone in on meeting people's expectations. In a game of D+D you're likely not going to have access to as many simultaneous choices in units and tactics as you're going to in wargames. You have your character and your turn to decide what you're going to do.

As far as getting people to act in a way where they are maximizing their strengths and working as a team I think that you'll find there's lots of work already done for you there. When 4e was made there was clearly thought about the idea that players should be pushed(locked into) acting in accordance to their role in battle and building team strategies around that. Problem for 4e was both in execution and (I think) that when you found a good team strategy you end up doing the same thing over and over again. Though the latter problem isn't one that's specific to 4e, I just think it was exacerbated in it.

I've been trying to imagineer ways to make combat more tactical on the part of the players and make it so that the round to round choices are engaging. Part of that is going to be on how I do the writeups for abilities, part of it is going to be encounter design, part of it is going to be how much environment will matter. I want combats to be a thing people want to pay attention to round by round and I want to make the choices easy enough to understand that players can pick up on best practices while not being too similar in every fight.

I once again find myself agreeing with something Grek said here. Setting up a system that forces player to engage with the details of the particular situation they are in (IE the environment) makes for more memorable encounters and potential for players to create their own fun out of the game.

[OgreBattle]

At longer ranges, it is important that Range & Cover and Fight are two distinct minigames. Range & Cover explicitly ends once characters are within melee range of each other (and Fight kicks in, if no one surrenders). This probably yields a more narratively interesting way to close distance than what you might get with an impatient or naive player in a grid-based D&D-style game (take double move or run actions until you're adjacent to your opponent, eating arrows along the way). Mechanically, trying to close distance with the Range & Cover rules is more complicated than taking double move or run actions. It assumes that both parties are trying to outmaneuver each other, and there's a closed set of maneuvers that can be taken, such as Charge (close distance), Maintain (doesn't change distance), and Sneak Out (increase distance).
...
If you actually want to use D&D to simulate Conan...
It's interesting to speculate about a game like D&D which has feats or class abilities that key off of combatants' positions, to encourage them to out-maneuver each other instead of just trying to wear down each others' HP. Add a sprinkling of special movement abilities that force archers to risk burning some sort of non-HP resource in order to stay at range, combat stances that give melee fighters a chance to close distance without getting completely pincushioned, and specialized short-range combat moves that only melee-specialized fighters can get. This could wind up looking like Disgaea. It could wind up looking like 4e.

My current approach is what Bloodbowl/Dreadball/other not-Bloodbowl focuses on, core movement rules that can deliver satisfying blocking and blitzing and evading for a relatively short amount of text.

I've been trying to imagineer ways to make combat more tactical on the part of the players and make it so that the round to round choices are engaging. Part of that is going to be on how I do the writeups for abilities, part of it is going to be encounter design, part of it is going to be how much environment will matter. I want combats to be a thing people want to pay attention to round by round and I want to make the choices easy enough to understand that players can pick up on best practices while not being too similar in every fight.

I once again find myself agreeing with something Grek said here. Setting up a system that forces player to engage with the details of the particular situation they are in (IE the environment) makes for more memorable encounters and potential for players to create their own fun out of the game.

Yeah, the "kite an ogre in an open field" example is what I don't want. I think the scenario, goals of parties involved is a big part in avoiding that kind of situation. I mention wargames a lot because it's Kill Team objective grabbing, hidden objectives, each side having different objectives that made the game interesting. Humorously most tabletop role playing games I've sat for imagination time were 'kill em all' as the win condition.

Looking at how Games Workshop wrote Lord of the Rings tabletop scenarios, Frodo is the 'ball' you deliver to the endzone, and the mighty warriors are his blockers.

[PhoneLobster]

Yeah, the "kite an ogre in an open field" example is what I don't want. I think the scenario, goals of parties involved is a big part in avoiding that kind of situation. I mention wargames a lot because it's Kill Team objective grabbing, hidden objectives, each side having different objectives that made the game interesting. Humorously most tabletop role playing games I've sat for imagination time were 'kill em all' as the win condition.

Looking at how Games Workshop wrote Lord of the Rings tabletop scenarios, Frodo is the 'ball' you deliver to the endzone, and the mighty warriors are his blockers.

Is the Ogre a fighter now? If it isn't what is it? Do you realize the various implications, just, at all.

And since you can't stay on track for more than maybe a paragraph, instead tell us in any detail at all exactly how you are going to seemlessly and without harming suspension of disbelief turn the majority of your TTRPG combat encounters into highly abstracted wargame scenarios with objectives like King of the Hill, Capture the flag, Control Points and Pass the Parcel. Should be good for a laugh.

Though come to think of it. Maybe you shouldn't be trying to craft your RPG rules into a blood bowl knock off (and also a fencing simulator and also lord of the rings and also Conan wins on contact and also archers are only "annoying" and also...). Maybe you should be trying to craft your blood bowl knock off into an RPG campaign.

Just run an RPG story around a bunch of bloodbowl knock off players that mostly play bloodbowl games. Myself and plenty of others have got a lot of mileage out of campaigns with players being a team of gladiators fighting in novelty arena sports events most of the time. Go scratch that itch with your campaign design. Only provide the game design to match it, don't imagine some of these... disparate... ideas are going to translate well to your campaigns in general.

[deaddmwalking]

Yeah, the "kite an ogre in an open field" example is what I don't want. I think the scenario, goals of parties involved is a big part in avoiding that kind of situation. I mention wargames a lot because it's Kill Team objective grabbing, hidden objectives, each side having different objectives that made the game interesting. Humorously most tabletop role playing games I've sat for imagination time were 'kill em all' as the win condition.

Minus a time factor, kiting a brutally effective melee opponent is what every semi-intelligent creature will do. Getting into toe-to-toe melee with an enemy that will wreck your shit is absolutely what they won't want to do. Your ruleset cannot simultaneously demand that people act moronically and punish them for it. There can be win conditions that involve avoiding the encounter, in which case shooting and drawing attention are more likely to cause problems than 'sneaking' (assuming you have rules for that), but killing your opponents is almost always a win condition.

If you have to get past the Ogre, killing the ogre is an effective way of getting past the Ogre. Arguably, it is more effective than sneaking because you don't have to worry about running into the ogre again while you're retreating, or the ogre following you and attacking from behind. Destroying your foe is a win state because there aren't very many ways that can continue to be a problem unless you will need something from that encounter that can only be provided willingly (like information). However, unless the players knew that this ogre has the combination lock to the BBEG's sock drawer, they don't need to worry about that. If they kill the BBEG, they can also spend unlimited amounts of time destroying/disabling the lock.

Anything you do that makes the ogre (or the fighter) more likely to win in melee ALSO ENCOURAGES PEOPLE TO AOVID MELEE. You can try to apply some kludges like awarding XP by how close the PC comes to a TPK, but that's also likely to end up creating a TPK sooner rather than later. From the PCs perspective, survival is the minimum standard for a win-condition - holding territory or accomplishing objectives comes second to that.