The Gaming Den

nockermensch wrote:The word you want for a passive defense that's kind of dodge/evasion is "slipperyness".

This makes it sound like I raise this by covering myself in oil like a male stripper.

Pariah Dog wrote:

nockermensch wrote:The word you want for a passive defense that's kind of dodge/evasion is "slipperyness" (sic).

This makes it sound like I raise this by covering myself in oil like a male stripper.

High slipperiness also makes you more chaotic (unless you're good aligned or aquatic) but such is life.

"Touch Defense that isn't Dodge" is really Deflection, as exemplified by the fact that the primary thing that adds to it without adding a Dodge bonus is a Deflection bonus, and the fact that we accept that "dodging" and "armor" add to the same thing just proves there is a certain amount of arbitrariness in the terms anyways. In any case, the terms aren't that important, and I think talking about monsters is more important.

So in any case, let's go back to the 5th level monsters, and talk about what defenses they might be able to target (including secondary attacks).

Monster	Armor Class	Fort	Will	Perceive	Touch	Grasp	Elemental
Black Pudding	X	X				X
Burning Dead	X						X
Doppelganger	X			X
Dullahan	X		X
Elemental, Air, Large	X					X
Elemental, Earth, Large	X
Elemental, Fire, Large	X						X
Elemental, Water, Large	X	X				X
Great Eagle	X					X
Land Shark	X					X
Manticore	X
Marrash	X	X
Medusa	X	X	X
Roper	X	X				X
Rusalka	X		X	X
Shadow Fiend	X			X
Spider Fiend	X	X				X
Swordwraith	X		X
Troll	X
Wood Golem	X

It occurred to me that I didn't really select anything to do Touch attacks specifically, and that's because I could really go either way on a lot of creatures. I think a Touch Attack is a power-up that makes you relatively better against heavy armor wielders, but I don't actually care if Ropers are targeting Touch or regular AC, and same for Fire Elementals or Black Puddings or whatever.

-Username17

First, on substance. I really don't see the thematic difference between Bill, who has high Elemental defense and is therefore resistance to fire (and presumably lightning and cold), and Zeke, who has high Fortitude defense and is therefore resistant to being poisoned, melted with acid... drowned? crushed? or turned to stone.

Now, if Bill is a gargoyle he is totally immune to stoning while Zeke the frostling is strong specifically to cold, but does that mean Bill is acid resistant while Zeke is fire resistant?

Second, on names. If active/passive names for defenses are a problem, just use the name of the attack as the name of the defense.

So instead of AC (touch,grasp) your defense is Strike (Touch,Grab) Defense.

Will is "Dominate Defense", Perceive is "Trick Defense".

Arguing against myself: The advantage of using different names is that it makes it easier to parse text - I guarantee people would get "+2 to strike defense" and "+2 to strike" confused with high frequency.

Certainly a lot could be done by just folding the elemental resistance into Fortitude, and getting rid of the Reflex Save entirely. Then you give some classes like the Rogue an Evasion ability that lets them make a skill check to evade certain kinds of attacks that would otherwise allow a Fortitude save for half damage.

Shocker Lizard blasts can just go against the same toughness measure as Cobra venom.

-Username17

Looking at that list, I like that there are almost an even number of Will and Perception threats. I've considered this split before, and I always felt like the Perception defense/save wouldn't be as important as Will, and wouldn't be prioritized by players. So, that's good.

On the same note, that seems like the exact reason not to fold elemental damage into Fort. I mean, I get the thematic reason for it (you're toughing things out). Apart from Grasp (and AC, obviously), Fort is the largest thing on that list. I guess folding Elemental in only adds two more things, but we don't want Fort becoming an omni-defense.

How prevalent are you expecting Elemental to be at various levels? I guess I was a bit surprised to only see two entries on the list. Maybe it's not as common a threat as I was thinking, and it should just be Fort...

Or make some Reflex things a Perception save.

You can't just look at the distribution of defenses to see how important they are.

Being confused or trapped in an illusion by the Rusalka is presumably a proportionally-worse outcome than being punched in the dick by a fire elemental.

I don't think physical attacks should involve perception saves, because then you generate nonsense results like laser pylons being vulnerable to lightning bolts because they have no senses and thus never see them coming.

FrankTrollman wrote:Dodge and Reflex are both bad names for passive defenses because they are things that structurally have to be done by things like third story windows that are difficult to hit but are not actually moving
[...]
some of the things that structurally should have good defenses in such fields might be literally immobile.

I think I'm missing something in the whole "movement-related defenses are bad" discussion, because I'm not seeing a problem here. I'm assuming you're not removing damage resistance/vulnerability/immunity mechanics, since it would be hard to represent e.g. cold-immune and fire-vulnerable ice golems otherwise, and as DrPraetor noted you probably don't want to tie "is immune to petrification" to "is immune to all elemental damage," so is there a particular reason not to stick with a paradigm where objects have poor defenses but material-dependent resistances?

I mean, throwing an alchemist's fire flask or a fireball in 3e requires an attack roll to go through a small opening and then a Ref save to avoid damage, and a third-story window is great against the former because it's small and far away and terrible against the latter precisely because it can't move. Whether the window is destroyed depends on not whether it can dodge, but whether it's made of wood and glass (weak to fire, low hardness) or stone and iron (not weak to fire, high hardness). And that attack-followed-Ref-save setup is no more complex than an attack roll followed by a Fort save for a poisoned arrow or the like.

Replacing both resistances and Ref saves with an Elemental save simplifies things a bit, but then you have red dragons and ice golems being equally resistant/vulnerable to cold and fire, and you're probably going to want to give them situational Elemental save bonuses and penalties by damage type to be thematic, at which point you're right back to the resistances/vulnerabilities complexity.

Emerald wrote: I think I'm missing something in the whole "movement-related defenses are bad" discussion, because I'm not seeing a problem here.

I mean, throwing an alchemist's fire flask or a fireball in 3e requires an attack roll to go through a small opening

Sure. Now imagine the defense that the attack roll targeted was called "Dodge." Why the fuck would a small opening have a high dodge rating? It doesn't move. It's not even an entity, it's a fucking opening in a wall. Dodge is just a bad term to use for the number that attack rolls need to hit, because a lot of things are going to be hard to hit that do not in any meaningful sense of the term "Dodge."

RobbyPants wrote:How prevalent are you expecting Elemental to be at various levels? I guess I was a bit surprised to only see two entries on the list. Maybe it's not as common a threat as I was thinking, and it should just be Fort...

In general, the only things that use evocation-like effects that force 3e style Reflex saves are Wizards and Dragons. There are a few other creatures, but it's mostly a boss monster trick. At 2nd level you got Mephits and Fire Fiends. And maybe Imps, but honestly probably not. At 4th level you got Flame Lions, maybe? Elemental blast damage really doesn't show up much except on Dragons and Wizards.

I'm not sure Warlocks need there to be an entire extra defense whose sole purposes is to determine how resistant monsters and characters are to the main attacks of the Warlock.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:How prevalent are you expecting Elemental to be at various levels? I guess I was a bit surprised to only see two entries on the list. Maybe it's not as common a threat as I was thinking, and it should just be Fort...

In general, the only things that use evocation-like effects that force 3e style Reflex saves are Wizards and Dragons. There are a few other creatures, but it's mostly a boss monster trick. At 2nd level you got Mephits and Fire Fiends. And maybe Imps, but honestly probably not. At 4th level you got Flame Lions, maybe? Elemental blast damage really doesn't show up much except on Dragons and Wizards.

I'm not sure Warlocks need there to be an entire extra defense whose sole purposes is to determine how resistant monsters and characters are to the main attacks of the Warlock.

Yeah, I think I'd be fine rolling Elemental into Fort. Whether it's intended or not, this gets us down to four defenses (save for the AC defenses), that somewhat nicely match to four ability scores. Sure, you could argue that the Grab one could be Strength/Might as well as Dexterity/Agility, but they otherwise match quite nicely.

An advantage of Warlock characters and Controller monsters is that they have several different defenses they can target. Heroes have several different attacks, but probably they mostly target AC (or some variant). Warlocks could probably select invocations that target every defense there is.

So to an extent the power level of a Warlock's attacks don't have to be that impressive. They can use Dark Grasp on a Rusalka or Terror on a Land Shark. A Warlock player who has read the monster manual should be able to target a weak defense most of the time.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

Emerald wrote: I think I'm missing something in the whole "movement-related defenses are bad" discussion, because I'm not seeing a problem here.

I mean, throwing an alchemist's fire flask or a fireball in 3e requires an attack roll to go through a small opening

Sure. Now imagine the defense that the attack roll targeted was called "Dodge." Why the fuck would a small opening have a high dodge rating? It doesn't move. It's not even an entity, it's a fucking opening in a wall. Dodge is just a bad term to use for the number that attack rolls need to hit, because a lot of things are going to be hard to hit that do not in any meaningful sense of the term "Dodge."

I thought the debate was whether to have a saving throw called Reflex/Dodge/Avoid/etc. or to have a generic Resist-Elemental-Stuff-Without-Moving save, not whether AC should be called Dodge/Avoid/etc., since AC and Elemental (but not Dodge) are columns in the sample monster attacks table. If it's about calling AC "Dodge," yeah, I agree that's dumb.

There's more than one debate running in parallel - about what the defenses should be, and what they should be named.

There's no debate: there should be a defense that you use when someone tries to stab you, and this defense is still relevant to immobile enemies. Whether being tough and immobile makes you hard to stab or gives you hardness and reduces the stab damage can be punted for later, but we certainly don't want to name this defense in a way that excludes being hard to hit because you have a deflection field.

Dodge is bad because small holes don't dodge; armor class is even worse, though, because small holes certainly aren't wearing armor!

The passive form for not-being-hit is "Miss", but "Miss Defense" is nails on the chalkboard every time I write it. I don't like elusive as a name; it's a clumsy, ugly name. On the other hand, I'm browsing thesaurus entries and I don't see a better option.

Instead of defenses, they could be called Chances:
+1 Miss Chance per level
+1 Discern Chance per level
+1 Endure Chance per level
+1 Defy Chance per level
don't scan too badly?

Endure is less than ideal, since it would generalize to mental attacks as well. http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/endure?s=t ... withstand?
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/perceive?s=t - I like "discern" since it can mean either noticing something or seeing through a deception.
I kind of like "Defy" as what happens when you make a will save, but it's a bit... value laden? "Persevere" might be better?

I went with Miss defense for now, but I'm not thrilled with it, and I'm even less thrilled with my anti Grapple Defense:

Armor: Miss + Armor modifier
Miss: Agility
Reflex: Agility
Mind: Willpower
Perception: Intelligence
Fortitude: Strength
Freedom: Larger of Agility and Strength.

Why not roll grapple into Fortitude and Reflex (whichever is larger)? Stationary things can't avoid a grapple but if it can resist a grapple Fortitude would have all the relevant bonuses and if it can (or wants to) dodge, having it be based off of Reflex has all the relevant Agility you need.

As far as the nomenclature for renaming AC or Dodge, Personally, Dodge or Reflex works fine for me because people who play these games get used to the nomenclature and will understand what the words mean through practice even if it doesn't mesh well intuitively at the get go. Gun to my head though I'd name the defense Target, as in Target Defense or Target Score or whatever.

So this is a game where plate armor and being agile both raise your armor class right?

OgreBattle wrote:So this is a game where plate armor and being agile both raise your armor class right?

Presumably, yes.

-Username17

In the interest of moving things along, I'm going to edit up some stat blocks. Some notes:
To hit one of these monsters, the players will be rolling 3D6+Attack and trying to equal-or-exceed Defense. So a Defense of 11 means a +0 player would have a 50/50 chance of hitting.
To damage one of these monsters, the players will be rolling 3D6+Damage and trying to equal-or-exceed Toughness.
If you are +0 to +2 of this, you inflict 1 box. This is expected to be an average damage roll for a hit by team monster.
If you are +3 to +6 of this, you inflict 3 boxes.
If you are +6 to +9 of this, you inflict 6 boxes. This is expected to be an average damage roll for a hit by team player.
If you are +10 of this, you inflict 10 boxes which drops the target.
If you are +13 of this or more, you inflict 10 boxes+ which drops the target and incapacitates them for the balance of combat even if they get healed.
Rules for bleeding out and coup de grace and such are TBD.

That is,
[*] the Defense values on the monsters are ~10 points higher than the Attack values at the same player level (give or take). So players hit about half the time.
[*] the Toughness values on the monsters are mostly the expected Damage values at the same player level. +4 degrees of success is enough to drop the monster in one blow, which happens on 1/6 of expected-strength attacks against level appropriate, average toughness opposition.

Certain attacks go straight to toughness, either without rolling to hit at all or with some rider (like poison from a poison stinger.)


The names of the defenses are:
Defense (Touch/Grapple/Ranged), Toughness, Resist, Sense

The names of the attacks are:
Attack (Touch/Grapple/Ranged), Harm, Dominate, Deceive

I'm using four stats of Dexterity (Defense and Ranged-Attack), Strength (non-Ranged-Attack and Grapple Defense), Charisma (Dominate/Resist), and Intellect (Sense/Deceive.)
These have sub-attributes of -
Strength: Might and Athleticism (but I really don't expect to use these much)
Dexterity: Grace and Reaction?? (or we could just give initiative bonuses to some monsters rather than dinking with their dex)
Charisma: Charm and Will
Intellect: Awareness and Lore (this is the one I actually expect to use.)
Animals, for example, have high Awareness statistics but low Lore. My convention is that the high number is specified for the sub-attribute.
On reflection, I decided that I'd be handing out so many sense bonuses to mindless creatures that the sub-attributes will be easier to scan and explain. I'm not wedded to any of this, by the way.

Note that not all monsters are playable but all monsters are potentially on your team for an extended period so they all need PC level equivalents, even if they have more points in kits and backgrounds than a level-equivalent PC would be allowed. You need some way of resolving what happens when people ride unicorns or grow black puddings in vats or whatever.

Brute, Controller, Harrier, Lurker, and Ravager

Black Pudding
Lurker 5
Kits and Backgrounds: Slime, Dark Dweller, Large, ...
Average Statistics: Str 24, Dex 10, Cha 0, Int 0 [Awareness 14].
Defense: 20 [+5 Class, +5 Dex, +5 Amorphous (not vs. Bludgeoning attacks)] / 15 Touch / 20 Grapple / 20 Ranged.
Toughness: 20 [+3 Class, +12 Str], +Inf vs. Acid
Resist: 8 [+3 Class] (mindless)
Sense: 17 [+5 Class, +7 Int]
Attack: Slam +10 [+7 Strength, +3 Class] / +7, Additional +7 {ACID}.
Special Attack: Stream of Goo +5 [+0 Dex, +5 Class] / +7, Additional +7 {ACID}, on >1 degree of success to-hit, also Entangle.
Special Actions: Random (Slime), Acidic Touch (Slime).
Special Qualities: Mindless (Slime); No Facing (Slime); Acid Immunity (Slime); Lifesense (Dark Dweller); Non-hostile to Inanimates, Plants and Slimes (special).
Initiative: +0
Milieu: Black puddings are mobile, and carnivorous, blobs of acid. Although lacking in intelligence, their behavior is to seek out dark places, and to emerge to engulf and digest living prey which comes within range of their lifesense. Black Puddings are fast as well as large and strong, but if prey exits the range of their senses they will not pursue. Black Puddings reproduce sexually (two puddings combine and three emerge) and can sense their own kind over longer distances; they are mobile and aggressive when moving towards mates. They can't "team up" with other monsters, but they won't attack inanimate beings (or plants, or other slimes) and animate monters in the same encounter can be assumed to be aware of the location of the black pudding and to use the hidden black pudding as exploitable terrain.
Acidic Touch: Each time the Black Pudding hits with an attack, additional Harm (Acid) damage is inflicted (per Strength bonus.) This damage is also inflicted each round that the Black Pudding successfully grapples an opponent, and each round that an opponent strikes the Pudding with unarmed attacks or natural weapons. No opponent suffers this damage more than once per round, for whatever reason(s).
Slime: Each round, draw a card or roll a die to pick from one of the following six Slime maneuvers. Black Puddings are mindless entities but if additional random abilities are gained, the Slime kit gives +1 hand size and the following six maneuvers are included in the deck:
1: Slime Trail. The slime fills the current hex with caustic slime, as well as any hexes it enters this turn, including the hex of any opponent it attacks if it takes a charge action (note to DM: have the slime take a charge action even if threatened.)
2: Glop, glop, glop. Caustic ooze splatters everywhere. The slime makes a bonus Slam attack this round identical to a normal Slam attack. The pudding will ordinarily strike two targets if possible.
3: Engulf. In place of a normal slam attack, the slime can grapple without provoking an attack of opportunity.
4: Stream of Goo. A stream of black goo arcs up to 20m to strike a target (see special attack entry). Although no longer animate, this acidic slime is also sticky: if the stream hits by +3 or more, the target is also entangled.
5: Ooze Regeneration. The Slime heals three boxes of damage.
6: Acid Wave. Area-effect version of the Slime's normal slam attack, extended for two hexes in each direction from the Slime.
Note: Strong against Monk, Psion and Assassin? I think we're good in being either acid-aura or immune to their tricks. The black pudding is supposed to be strong against the Berserker, though? Do Berserkers like to grapple?

Burning Dead
Ravager 5
Kits and Backgrounds: Undead, Inanimate, Sworn-to-Fire, Swordsmanship, Allegiance: Evil, ...
Average Statistics: Str 14, Dex 12, Cha 1 [Will 14], Int 12.
Defense:
Toughness: , +10 vs Fire, +10 vs Dark, +10 vs Pierce
Resist:
Sense:
Attack:
Special Attack: Gaze of Flaming Death, +5 vs. Toughness {FIRE}
Special Actions: none
Special Qualities: Smoke Cloud (Sworn-to-Fire), Flaming Weapons (Sworn-to-Fire), ...
Initiative

Milieu: The burning dead are skeletal beings wreathed in smoke and flame. Those who die by fire sometimes return as Burning Dead spontaneously (especially if betrayed by loved ones or similar) but most of these beings are created, on purpose, by practitioners of vile magic. Although they neither spread disease nor need to feed on the living, Burning Dead are one of the most dangerous undead because they are patient, intelligent and utterly malevolent. Being intelligent, they will ally with other beings such as bandits or marauding monsters in order to cause maximum harm to the living, but seem incapable of maintaining even the pretense of concern for their co-conspirators. A type of revenant, Burning Dead remember their lives dimly, but are generally unconcerned except to extract horrible vengeance if they were betrayed in life, or to destroy their creator as soon as they are free from control. Burning Dead may also become or be introduced as sympathetic characters through the usual dramatic conceits - an emotional conversion on encountering a loved one, an epiphany on encountering an act of self-sacrifice or moral courage, and etc.. In this case, Allegiance: Evil is lost (see the entry on Allegiance: Evil for details.)
Standard Equipment: Burning Dead are assumed to wield cruelly curved, black swords, which are evil, to wear blackened full chain armor with an open helm, and to carry steel kite shields. These modifiers are included in the stat block above - other equipment may be substituted if appropriate. The flame aura is a feature of the Burning Dead and should be applied to any weapon - (mundane) wooden weapons will be consumed and should not generally be used.
Fencing, Level 5: Gives improved disarm, improved parry, improved feint, mark of Z, and riposte. If equipped with a weapon unsuitable for this fighting style, another fighting style kit should be substituted.
Other customization notes: Burning dead are fully intelligent, and elite monsters of this type may be given PC classes, special equipment, and the like.
Gaze of Flaming Death: Each round, in addition to other actions, the Burning Dead delivers a gaze attack. The terrifying gaze of the Burning Dead is lethal: it hits automatically and deals Harm (Fire) damage directly against Toughness. If the Burning Dead has been attacked since its last action, this gaze attack must be against one of the opponents who attacked the Burning Dead, but inflicts +3 damage.
Note: The Burning Dead is good against Berserkers, Heroes, Rangers and Warlocks. So it's good against melee opponents who aren't Paladins, and it's resistant to arrows and to darkfire blasts? Being in full chain I suppose it could be fairly slow?

Doppelganger
Lurker 5
Kits and Backgrounds:

Before I start on this - the Doppelganger presumably uses the stealth rules against the party to swap places with one of the player characters?
They're intelligent and cooperate with demon viziers and other senior members of Team Monster, is that right?
These rules go in the section I've been calling Milieu and they need to be at least sketched out before you can write anything meaningful about this monster.
Can it copy stats from player characters in any meaningful way?

Dullahan
Level 5 Ravager
Kits and Backgrounds: Skilled Cavalry, Shadow Magic, Life and Unlife, Allegiance: Chaos, ...
Special Actions: Delay (Shadow Magic)

Shadow Magic: A Dullahan uses the following Shadow Magic spells. Shadow Magic requires a delay round in which other spells cannot be cast, and no other delay actions can be taken, but otherwise the Dullahan can act normally. Thus, effectively, the Dullahan can cast every other round in addition to other actions. Darkness (2), Shadow Sword (3), Shadow Step - Mounted (3)

I'm thinking that Assassins will like Shadow Magic because on round 1 they delay their assassin move, and on round 2 they take their assassin move *and delay their shadow magic* at the same time

You can remix your defense-naming problems by naming the defenses after the problems they solve.

Affliction (poison, disease, paralysis; things you resist by being healthy or a robot)
Lies (illusions; things you resist with perceptiveness or a no-nonsense personality)
Doubt (fear and mind control; things you resist with bravery or self-assuredness)
Entanglement (grappling, frisky plants; things you resist by being slippery or strong)
Clouds (fireball, ice storms, breathe weapons; things you resist by by dodging or toughness)

DrPraetor wrote:the Defense values on the monsters are ~10 points higher than the Attack values at the same player level (give or take). So players hit about half the time.

Targeting 50% accuracy is the most common, but I'd recommend 75%. Since nothing really happens on a miss, you can have more action per unit of play time with a higher hit rate.

Specialists should hit at rates 75%+ against less specialized targets, while regular, even leveled characters should hit at 50% or less.. That way when someone is using their highest hitting ability (assuming equal effectiveness of attack and defense options) against someone's highest defense they hit at 50% or less. That way you encourage people to diversify since against even matches they can't guarantee a high success rate without targeting a weakness or maneuver themselves to get some sort of advantage.

I'd be more in favor of higher hit rates for the sake of making combat faster. A 5 monster pack vs a 4 man party you're going to be looking at about 4 misses a round whenever you can't target the monster's weakpoint or worse yet streaks of bad luck. (Had a creature with a 50% miss chance once that was the last thing standing and after 3 rounds of the coin landing heads for everyone that ganged up on it the DM finally said fuck it, stop rolling 50% miss chance because this is taking forever.)

Since this is a design experiment starting with the monster manual, should we also start with an expectation of how long a combat should last?

If I had to choose a sweet spot for a "typical" combat duration, I'd pick something like 3 rounds. That's it, I'd like that the initiative count passed by each actor about three times. It's alright if a decisive success early on brings the number of rounds down to 2 or even 1 (checklist: does the game have reasonable morale breaking rules?), but if even a typical combat is expected to last 4 or more rounds, I'd consider the game needlessly grindy.

I'm cool with a "Boss Fight" lasting like 5 or 6 rounds, but these should be kind of rare.