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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Chimera

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    Default Re: What Mechanical Effects Cause Action Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Duff View Post
    As others have alluded to but not outright said
    "What do you see as the actual problem?"

    Is it "A single powerful monster goes down too fast"
    "When the powerful party takes on a village of goblins they die the death of a thousand cuts"
    "As a GM i get bored as the whole party pound on my big monster and I just write down ever smaller numbers until it's my turn again"
    "My players get bored when it's not their turn and the monster stands there doing nothing"
    Yeah, I'm not entirely clear what response OP was attempting to get. I'm assuming not just a definition of action economy.

    My best guess is 'why is action economy such a hot topic on discussion boards and what action economy issues instigate such teeth-gnashing?' To which I'd say your scenarios are a big factor. Also several D&D-specific issues like:
    "my 3e divine-metamagic-plus-nightsticks CoDzilla build effectively has 3-30 combat buffs cast before the scenario even starts,"
    "my 5 polearm master build always has a use of their main action, bonus action, and often reaction actions each round, while your barbarian usually just has something in their main action,"
    "My ranged build always has an action which changes hp of the opposition while your melee-only build spends many rounds running up to thing or not even being able to reach them,"
    "because of the 5/15-minute workday, my full-caster can fill all 6 rounds of combat we expect to have each day with a (or even more than one) high-powered spell response while your martial character has a slow-and-steady action output that would overtake the caster in effectiveness in a long, drawn-out slog of a day scenario that we don't actually end up doing."
    And so forth.

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Telok's Avatar

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    Default Re: What Mechanical Effects Cause Action Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    C) Cumulative actions. You can ‘bank” effort in one turn and then complete the action in the next turn providing conditions are met. This breaks the use it or lose it artifice, but comes with the cost of bookkeeping.
    Add "aiming actions" & "wind up for a power hit" to this. I think the Warhammer games do the former and the haymaker move in Champions is the latter.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Stonehead's Avatar

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    Default Re: What Mechanical Effects Cause Action Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    You're taliking about concentrating defense (hit points) and offfense (damage outpu) in one enemy instead of 5.

    Here are some upsides:

    AoE protection:
    5 creatures take potentially 5* as much damage from an AoE.

    Damage degradation protection:
    5 creatures rapidly do less damage as they die, 20% less per death. 1 creature does full damage until it dies. That's significantly more damage, if death of the 1 occurs at the same time as death of the 5th.
    Interestingly, the two kind of cancel out. With an AoE attack, if you deal 20% of the enemy team's health, you end up with 5 enemies at 80% health, not 4 enemies at 100% health.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Tanarii's Avatar

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    Default Re: What Mechanical Effects Cause Action Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Stonehead View Post
    Interestingly, the two kind of cancel out. With an AoE attack, if you deal 20% of the enemy team's health, you end up with 5 enemies at 80% health, not 4 enemies at 100% health.
    The comparison should be 5 enemies at 16% of total hps left each vs 1 enemy at 96% of total hps for an AoE. Which makes picking off the enemies with single target damage at 16% of total damage required much easier to knock out 20% of their outgoing damage much easier, instead of needing to do 96% to reduce it all the way to 0. On top of the fact that the single AoE did 20% of total damage required instead of only 4%.

    Simple example would be 5* 100hp instead of 1*500 hp, with a 20pt AoE. That leaves you with 5*80hp vs 1*480hp.

    (Hit points don't actually scale that way of course, since they're counterbalanced by other action economy factors.)

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Stonehead's Avatar

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    Default Re: What Mechanical Effects Cause Action Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    The comparison should be 5 enemies at 16% of total hps left each vs 1 enemy at 96% of total hps for an AoE. Which makes picking off the enemies with single target damage at 16% of total damage required much easier to knock out 20% of their outgoing damage much easier, instead of needing to do 96% to reduce it all the way to 0. On top of the fact that the single AoE did 20% of total damage required instead of only 4%.

    Simple example would be 5* 100hp instead of 1*500 hp, with a 20pt AoE. That leaves you with 5*80hp vs 1*480hp.

    (Hit points don't actually scale that way of course, since they're counterbalanced by other action economy factors.)
    No yeah, I just mean that you can't both deal your aoe damage to all the enemies, and reduce their action economy by taking some of them out early. I guess in practice you'd probably take out the wizard before you take out the fighter but still, I thought it was kind of interesting.

    Also, if we're comparing fighting 1 enemy to fighting 5, I think creatures typically have a single-target attack that deals more damage than their AoE, although, admittedly not typically five times stronger.

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