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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other 3.x, PF1: Dynamic combat - more brainstorming!



Altair_the_Vexed
2018-09-23, 05:42 AM
I'm still trying to make combat in 3.x games more mobile, allowing fights to range over the scenery like we see in movies - as lots of people seem to want.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFqCSbV-Ag

I'm starting a new thread to avoid necromancy rules - the old thread is over here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?566041-Brainstorming-Split-initiatives-Shorter-rounds-dynamic-combat)

I tried out a shorter round - one action per round - and it quickly turned into arguing over what actions could be combined: can I step out of cover and attack? can I charge? Can I interrupt someone else's charge?
All in all it was too complex to smoothly integrate with existing rules, so we abandoned it. I really want a simple set of changes that are easy to apply, not a whole new combat system!

So I decided to try to lay out what I want to achieve, then see what changes might bring that about.

Goals:

Mobility in combat
Dynamic actions - not just exchanging hits


Solutions?

Mobility - what stops people moving around during combat? I think it's the threat of Attacks of Opportunity. So if we take away the AoO threat for movement, we allow characters to move more openly. What consequences will that have? I'll summarise the obvious ones I can think of, but please let me know what I've missed.
Dynamic action -what stops people knocking over tables, jumping onto the bar, swinging from chandeliers? There are no rules for these actions. What stop you from grappling? The rules are notoriously complex. What stops you from tripping, disarming, or shoving your opponent? Unless you have a feat, these actions have an AoO penalty - you risk being hit before you get to try it. I'll address all of this with some simplified combat manoeuvre rules.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-09-23, 05:43 AM
Removing AoOs for Movement

Moving through or out of a threatened space doesn't provoke an AoO - unless the threatening opponent has invested in a feat.

Mobility - modify the feat so it now grants +2 AC bonus until your next turn if you move more than 5ft. It's a sort of lesser Wind Stance, instead of being a big AC bonus, but only for AoOs.
Combat Reflexes - modify the feat so it now grants an AoO against opponents moving through your threatened space.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-09-23, 05:51 AM
Dynamic combat - moves and manoeuvres

Swinging on a chandelier is Acrobatics, so it's slower than normal movement. Jumping on the bar to fight is pointless in RAW. Knocking over a table is a wasted action - or is it?


Swinging from the rigging, jumping off a wall onto a passing guard - in my games, I've called it a charge attack, required the necessary skill check, and let it happen. While we're on the subject...
Charge - you can take a move action (including movement) before you start a charge. This lets you burst through a door, move round a corner, or whatever before charging.
Fighting on the bar top, table top, etc: fix this by making the positional bonuses more significant - higher ground grants just +1 to melee, which is forgettable. Let's call it a much more desirable +2.
Knocking over a table - why do that? Because you gain cover, that's +4 to AC. When you're fighting defensively, that's very useful.
But - and this is important - why fight defensively at all? It's far more efficient in d20 games to attack hard, kill the target, and replenish lost resources afterwards.
I'll think about whether I can create a simple fix to encourage thoughtful fighting later, but for now, I'll leave it there.



Here's where I proposed a bunch of changes to combat manoeuvres for Pathfinder, back in 2013. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?284254-PF-s-Combat-Manoeuvres-redux)
We've played with these rules since then, and they work reasonably well.

Summary:

There's no AoO for an attempted combat manoeuvre - a failed manoeuvre provokes an AoO, unless you have the Improved <Manoeuvre> feat.
Improved <Manoeuvre Name> feats grant +4 instead of Pathfinder's +2.
You can -and are encouraged to - make up combat manoeuvres. We use the same bonuses to resolve them - roll you CMA vs the target's CMD. You impose penalties on the target in the order of -4 or so.
Change "CMB" to "CMA" - Combat Manoeuvre Attack. It's more distinctive to say!

Cosi
2018-09-23, 09:34 AM
Wouldn't an obvious solution be to have some scenery for the fight to move through? Have trees, or carts, or runic circles, or pillars, or whatever that people get bonuses for being on, or next too, or behind. Then people will have natural incentives to move around the battlefield, because there will be actual terrain for them to move through or into.

Goaty14
2018-09-23, 09:57 PM
Wouldn't an obvious solution be to have some scenery for the fight to move through? Have trees, or carts, or runic circles, or pillars, or whatever that people get bonuses for being on, or next too, or behind. Then people will have natural incentives to move around the battlefield, because there will be actual terrain for them to move through or into.

Good point, except I think the OP *does* have a point about the AoO risk -- I'm not dashing away to half cover if it gives my opponent an extra attack!

Some suggestions:
-Full Attack = Standard Action
-"Running Away" combat option. Think of it as a "reverse charge" -- +2 AC, -2 to-hit, and then some other bonuses via feats, like forcing your enemy to follow you, extra bonuses to combat expertise, etc.

gooddragon1
2018-09-23, 11:49 PM
Terrain needs to matter more then. If you know the ground beneath you is going to erupt as it turns increasingly red you'll want to move. Perhaps you'll want to move in such a way as to punish an opponent who will chase you at any cost. Or perhaps the terrain gives you an increase to armor class or a penalty to your opponents armor class or both of you suffer a penalty but it affects them more than you even though its the same numerical value just because of the way you are fighting. Otherwise yeah, it's probably going to go down like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFQ7iGnYpNE

1:00 to 1:38

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-09-24, 05:48 AM
Wouldn't an obvious solution be to have some scenery for the fight to move through? Have trees, or carts, or runic circles, or pillars, or whatever that people get bonuses for being on, or next too, or behind. Then people will have natural incentives to move around the battlefield, because there will be actual terrain for them to move through or into.

This stuff would be great, but there's little mechanical advantage to doing any of that in the RAW. If you mean increase the advantages / disadvantages for such terrain, then yes, that's exactly what I've been toying with.

My main problem with such terrain bonuses is that they're often insignificant compared to the urgent need to take down the bad guy. Spending an action to get a +2 bonus generally isn't as optimal as using that action to deal damage.

Anyway, I was thinking about how to make defensive tactics work, and I came up with something...

Combat Manoeuvre: Tiring Tactics
By ducking and weaving, interposing minor obstacles and a series of flourishes, you try to tire your opponent while keeping yourself safe. You may substitute a Bluff check in place of the CMA check, in which case the DC is the target's CMD. You must be able to move freely to use this manoeuvre.
On a successful CMA check, your opponent takes 1d3 non-lethal damage, or becomes fatigued (your choice). The fatigued condition lasts for 1d4 round, plus 1 round for every 5 by which you beat your opponent's CMD. Repeated uses of this manoeuvre do not make an opponent exhausted, but an opponent fatigued by another source may be made exhausted by this manoeuvre.

Goaty14
2018-09-24, 09:29 AM
This stuff would be great, but there's little mechanical advantage to doing any of that in the RAW. If you mean increase the advantages / disadvantages for such terrain, then yes, that's exactly what I've been toying with.

My main problem with such terrain bonuses is that they're often insignificant compared to the urgent need to take down the bad guy. Spending an action to get a +2 bonus generally isn't as optimal as using that action to deal damage.

Then you scale/improve the abilities to make it more advantageous to do wacky things involving the terrain than to straight up fight the enemy. Stuff like "you could full attack the enemy this round... or you could climb into the rafters this round, and drop-kick him next round, allowing for a full attack and x2.5 damage"

Oh, and then you make sure that the abilities are largely available only when the DM says so. If the end result is that the player rogue makes a character that specializes in climbing into the rafters and drop-kicking his enemies (and knows what he's doing, not the newbie who's like "lol, dr0pkickz"), then you've failed.

Just to Browse
2018-09-24, 11:35 AM
I don't have experience with the current ruleset you're using or anything close to it, but I wanted to throw in my personal experience encouraging combat maneuvers. I think one of the biggest detriments to combat maneuvers is the psychological barrier to trying them.

If a player is only passingly familiar with the game rules, you start off learning two new derived stats: CMA and CMD. Then if you want to grapple people, you have to read the full page of grapple rules. If you want to knock someone off a cliff, you have to read the half-page of bull rush rules. If you want to knock them down, you have to read the Trip rules and the Overrun rules and decide which is better. This gets compounded by the fact that combat maneuvers are by and large a trap option, usually requiring multiple feats and specialized equipment. So in a game where the objective is to have a good time, it's way easier to commit one maneuver to memory or just make boring attack rolls all the time.

I think your solution makes combat maneuvers less of a trap option, which is an important part of the fix. But grapple is still full of weird idiosyncrasies that you have to memorize, like the DC to escape a rope being 20 + CMA and movement giving a bonus escape attempt under certain conditions. Disarm still cares about +/- 10 bonuses while Bull Rush cares about +/- 5 bonuses. Trip has a clause about extra legs, but no other maneuver associated with stability does. And while this stuff might add some interesting detail to the game, it also adds a ton of extra text that discourages anyone from reading it.

I think the Legend RPG (may it rest in peace) solves this pretty well. Essentially every maneuver is based on an attack roll, and forces a level-appropriate Reflex or Fortitude Save with the exact same DC in addition to damage. The effects aren't based on the check (bull rush just cares about your movement speed, for example). I believe there is only 1 feat that improves combat maneuvers, and it gives a +2 bonus to 3 different maneuvers instead of a +4 to one maneuver. The end result is that trip / push / disarm / grapple attacks are all strictly better than normal attacks. Both weapons and people are falling down constantly in low-level fights.

I will say that Attacks of Opportunity have historically played an important role for "tanks" in my D&D sessions. Being able to lock down 1 or 2 targets makes it hard for enemies to beeline for squishy mages. But maybe that's a necessary tradeoff?

Nifft
2018-09-24, 12:36 PM
Have you looked at 4e and the inclusion of tactical forced movement effects?

How about wargames and their tactical movement rules?


One more thing to look at is Exalted 3e, which distinguishes between attacks that kill vs. attacks that increase your advantage. The adaptation to D&D 3.x would be to add non-attack actions which increase your advantage, or which negate your opponent's advantage -- specifically actions around mobility and using the terrain to your benefit. You'd want some kind of tally of who has how much advantage over whom, and what the advantaged party gains over the disadvantaged.

Cosi
2018-09-24, 04:21 PM
Good point, except I think the OP *does* have a point about the AoO risk -- I'm not dashing away to half cover if it gives my opponent an extra attack!

I would think that part of encouraging more mobile combat would be increasing the value of zone control and lockdown effects, of which AoOs are a large part. A game where everyone just automatically repositions to whichever spot is most favorable isn't really more interesting than one where people don't reposition, it just has more pushing figures around. For combat to be truly dynamic, there need to be mechanics that both reward both moving and standing still. Which can be a delicate balance to strike, but that's true of most interesting design problems.


This stuff would be great, but there's little mechanical advantage to doing any of that in the RAW. If you mean increase the advantages / disadvantages for such terrain, then yes, that's exactly what I've been toying with.

That's very much what I mean.


My main problem with such terrain bonuses is that they're often insignificant compared to the urgent need to take down the bad guy. Spending an action to get a +2 bonus generally isn't as optimal as using that action to deal damage.

Sure. But that doesn't mean that they can't be significant. Hell, a lot of the best Wizard spells (BFC) are basically "create a zone of X terrain". So clearly there's some terrain that could matter.

gooddragon1
2018-09-24, 07:39 PM
A nice bonus that always scales well (and is used in games like dawn of war 1 and 2) is cover. Specifically a % miss chance on attacks. Advantageous use of spontaneous opportunities in combat through movement could be beneficial.

Thundersteel
2018-09-24, 09:51 PM
Oh man, do I ever have feelings about this.

The biggest problem with DND's combat system re: cinematic combat is it's highly simulationist attitude towards time and space. The structure of DND combat round is akin to Final Fantasy Tactics; combatants have a static position, and then they move to another static position, from which they deliver attacks with very fixed ranges. All of this happens within a 6-second block of time, which directly segues into the next block of time.

If you look at Wuxia RPG's, wherein dynamic combat is paramount - Legends of the Wulin, Qin, Silk Steam and Steel - they tend to have a lot more wiggle room with time and space to allow for a dynamic environment in which combatants are constantly moving and action is happening simultaneously.

The space in which a fight occurs is often broken into qualitative zones (ie, "On the roof", "in the street", "behind the barricade"), rather than a 2-dimensional grid. Movement then becomes less an issue of spending a resource (the number of feet you can move each round) and falls more into a skill check category; ie, your archer wants to scale the side of a building to have a better firing point, and thus needs to make a DC 15 acrobatics/athletics check to do so.

Making time more fluid helps as well. Think of each round not as a sequential link in a chain of 6-second intervals, but the next time something major happens in a fight. In real combat, there's quite a bit of dead time; swordsmen circle one another, grapplers jockey for position, gunmen take cover to reload. Allow this dead time to segue you to the next key moment in the conflict. Perhaps in the first round of a sword fight you were backing up a stair case while trading parries and thrusts; by round two, you are both standing the railing of a balcony like an Errol Flynn movie.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-09-30, 05:50 AM
Oh man, do I ever have feelings about this.

The biggest problem with DND's combat system re: cinematic combat is it's highly simulationist attitude towards time and space. The structure of DND combat round is akin to Final Fantasy Tactics; combatants have a static position, and then they move to another static position, from which they deliver attacks with very fixed ranges. All of this happens within a 6-second block of time, which directly segues into the next block of time.

If you look at Wuxia RPG's, wherein dynamic combat is paramount - Legends of the Wulin, Qin, Silk Steam and Steel - they tend to have a lot more wiggle room with time and space to allow for a dynamic environment in which combatants are constantly moving and action is happening simultaneously.

The space in which a fight occurs is often broken into qualitative zones (ie, "On the roof", "in the street", "behind the barricade"), rather than a 2-dimensional grid. Movement then becomes less an issue of spending a resource (the number of feet you can move each round) and falls more into a skill check category; ie, your archer wants to scale the side of a building to have a better firing point, and thus needs to make a DC 15 acrobatics/athletics check to do so.

Making time more fluid helps as well. Think of each round not as a sequential link in a chain of 6-second intervals, but the next time something major happens in a fight. In real combat, there's quite a bit of dead time; swordsmen circle one another, grapplers jockey for position, gunmen take cover to reload. Allow this dead time to segue you to the next key moment in the conflict. Perhaps in the first round of a sword fight you were backing up a stair case while trading parries and thrusts; by round two, you are both standing the railing of a balcony like an Errol Flynn movie.

I appreciate the input Thundersteel, but what you're suggesting is such a fundamental overhaul of the d20 combat mechanics that I can't embrace it.

It's true that the 6 second combat round, with its "take your multi-action turn" is at the heart of the lack of fluidity in the d20 game. I tried to address that in the first post, and the links to other threads where I tried out deep fundamental fixes. Unfortunately, anything involving changes that deep is going to require a full combat system re-build. If I were looking to make a combat mechanic for a new system, then yes, all those points you've made are valid and important - but I'm trying to change the minimum amount of things in an existing highly popular game, so as to retain as much compatibility as possible.

All that said - my latest iteration does include a rule that somewhat breaks into the 6-second multi-action uninterrupted turn: replacing AoO for movement with a conditional interruption mechanic. Here's how that stands at the moment, pending more play-testing:

Interrupting Intercepting moving opponents
If during the 5 initiative steps preceding your turn, an opponent moves through the space around you that is within your movement rate, or within your ranged attack range, you may choose to act against them on your turn, including any movement necessary to intercept them. This is called an interrupting intercepting attack. The results of your action against the moving opponent are applied before they complete their action.

What does this rule replace?
This replaces AoO for most moving opponents. You must take your turn to act against moving targets. It partially replaces readying of an action, as you may circumstantially get the benefits of a readied action without declaring it.

What DOESN'T this rule replace?
Creatures moving into or through your space still provoke an AoO.

I'm going to see how this goes in practice with a few runs through at my table - then I'll come back and report. If anyone else feels like doing the same, I'd be grateful!