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    Default Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    I was thinking specifically of how a lot of strategy games have a triangle of infantry-cavalry-archers, where infantry armed with polearms beat cavalry, cavalry beat archers, and archers beat infantry. However, this can also be applied to the warrior-thief-mage trio, where the warrior's armor protects them from the thief's blows, the thief is able to get the jump on the mage and take them out before they can cast a spell, and the mage's spells can blast a warrior before they get close.

    It kind of surprises me we don't really see more of this in D&D, considering it started as a modified wargame where you control a single soldier instead of whole armies. I'd like to see a lot more stuff like this. I think it works best when it's an emergent property of the mechanics, rather than specifically giving bonuses or penalties to certain characters. For example, cavalry are typically an emergent counter to archers simply because their faster speed lets them get into melee range to butcher the archers, especially when the archers are mechanically represented as glass cannons. But often pikemen have to be given special bonuses that specifically target cavalry instead of it being emergent based on more general traits that they have.

    I was thinking about this specifically in the context of D&D 5e, possibly for a homebrew project, but as I was reading through the TV Tropes page on this subject I saw this blurb:
    Quote Originally Posted by TV Tropes
    Nonmagical combat in 3rd Edition has a subtle version of this. Most Uberchargers (characters who rely on massive speed and damage) lose to Lockdown tactics (combining long-reach weapons with Counter Attacks that halt movement), which in turn has little defense against ranged combat. Other combat styles have less consistent properties, but are generally weaker.
    My knowledge of 3e is fairly sparse, but I'm intrigued that there seems to have been shades of this rock-paper-scissors arrangement, and specifically one that matched pretty well with the infantry-cavalry-archer triangle. 5e seems like it has some of the pieces to recreate this, but a lot of it is locked behind feats (PAM and Sentinel for the Lockdown characters, GWM and maybe Mounted Combatant for advantage for the Ubercharger, and so on).

    I think I mostly just want to explore this topic and see how it might be handled in other systems and what sorts of tweaks one could make to D&D 5e to make this a bigger part of the game. And again, I'm more interested in when these tactical counters arise as emergent aspects of the rules; X doesn't get a bonus against Y specifically, it's just that X gets a bonus that happens to make them particularly effective against Y. For some good examples of what I'm talking about, you can look at the Slayer class (forum thread, homebrew doc) that I wrote up a while back (still WIP); the Demon Slayer gets zero bonuses against demons or fiends, the Dragon Slayer gets zero bonuses against dragons, and the Goblin Slayer gets zero bonuses against goblins (the Witch Slayer is admitted a bit more targeted specifically to spellcasters). But look at the bonuses they do get, and why those bonuses might make them more effective at fighting their chosen prey. (You can probably skip reading the base class and go straight to the subclasses if you just want to see how they counter those types of enemies.)

    I'm not saying it has to be just like that, but that's one example where the character being good at fighting a specific type of monster is more of an emergent property of the bonuses they get, instead of getting a bonus specifically against that monster. Charging into a line of pikes is still a bad idea even if you're on foot, it just so happens that it does a particularly good job of countering cavalry whose whole strategy is to run up to enemies really fast and stomp them.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    This is also relevant in every almost every Pokemon game to some degree. Runescape did this fairly well with archer's leather armor providing reliable magic defense, but not as much defense otherwise. Meanwhile a melee character's armor put all their magic (offense or defense) in the negative. Mages just had no real armor of any sort.Many other games have attempted it with varying levels of success.

    I don't dislike this idea necessarily, rather don't really see how it could work. The concern is where spell casters (mages) in general have some way to deal with just about every possible scenario. They just get access to far too many resources for there to really be a consistent way to counter them.

    We do have a few examples of a typical martial class being able to close in on the mage or even steal a mage's spell, but none of this is broad or consistent enough. Of course, while I have been playing TTRPGs for nearly a decade, I haven't played many different ones, so I wouldn't be able to provide a great variety of input either way. I'm interested in other, more experienced, well-read individuals' opinions on the matter.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    You can have this emerge from:
    "Light" fighter makes multiple attacks and their dodging works as well against spells as against blows
    "Heavies" have damage reducing armour that makes the multiple attacks much less effective, but armour protects poorly against magic. Their big attacks can cripple the squishy light when they connect
    Mages defend using defensive spells. A spell will stop a given number of attacks, no matter how much damage they do, so they're quite good against the big attacks of the heavy but quickly worn away by the light
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?

    And the PCs blur these lines too. Cleric was one of the first spanners in the Fighter/Mage/Thief works, but it's only gotten worse since then - Druids, Rangers, Bards/Red Mages, Monks, Artificers etc have all served to muddy the waters on the player side too. You have classes that can close the distance quickly and fight from range, or ranged classes that can defend themselves against chargers with ease. RPS just doesn't cut it for modern D&D, and the prior editions had even more convoluted tactical permutations.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less.
    I was thinking this as well for an entirely different reason. Unless, there's a lot of PvP type stuff going or you strictly use class based opposition for the PCs, this design isn't particularly relevant.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Greywander View Post
    It kind of surprises me we don't really see more of this in D&D, considering it started as a modified wargame where you control a single soldier instead of whole armies. I'd like to see a lot more stuff like this. I think it works best when it's an emergent property of the mechanics, rather than specifically giving bonuses or penalties to certain characters. For example, cavalry are typically an emergent counter to archers simply because their faster speed lets them get into melee range to butcher the archers, especially when the archers are mechanically represented as glass cannons. But often pikemen have to be given special bonuses that specifically target cavalry instead of it being emergent based on more general traits that they have.
    That is relatively simple to answer :

    The more your combat has rock-paper-scissors elements, the more the important action becomes about deciding combat pairings. Which means, you need really robust movement rules, you need a battelmap and most of the stuff both sides do suring combat is moving around and denying enemy movement, competing for advanatages positions.

    In a wargame that works well. For a tabletop-rpg it is a significantly less good fit.

    Another problem would be that if enemy groups are not internally balanced, you will always have certain PC types that are utterly useless in the encounter and others that are the star of the show. That is not ideal either.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Modern wargames have moved away from rock-paper-scissors design and mostly utilise the tank design triangle. The tank design triangle is that a tank can have mobility, armor or firepower in a zero sum environment. If you want to increase mobility you have sacrifice firepower and/or armor. Modern wargames are more about how do you bring your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    The greatest problem with this RPS idea is that, for the progenitor of pike-horse-bow, it... does not work like that. At all.

    Spoiler: How it does work
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    All of the infantry, ranged and cavalry can have equal armor, and did have equal armor historically. Whether or not a particular individual had full plate was the question of whether or not he could afford it, not some restriction on archers not being able to function in full plate. At worst, archers opted to go without visors, but so did infantry.



    Which means that defensively, they are all equal, unless we're concerned with early and high medieval periods, where archers can't use shields as well as other two. But even then, they can still opt to use them. The mostly didn't do so because they didn't need the shields.

    The thing is, archers and infantry are deployed together. First two to four ranks of a shield wall are melee troops, the rest are archers, and archers can then fire between the heads of their friends and be covered from return fire by the meat and shield wall in front of them. This was a formation so effective, it was used at least from early medieval all the way to late, where it was replaced with other formation models that still combined melee infantry, archers and gunners.

    This combined arms infantry block is almost impervious to frontal cavalry charge - the very heaviest cavalry will probably break it, but suffer horrendous losses, anything less will get torn to pieces. The role of cavalry is therefore twofold: 1) look for infantry that is badly equipped, out of formation and/or has low morale and frontal charge them to rout them, or 2) wait until the enemy infantry is engaged and then charge their flanks or rear. The third role is an emergent one from the enemy having their own cavalry - find said cavalry and kill it.

    The only time you see archers operate separately from melee troops is when they have constructed some sort of fortification that will make it difficult to get to them (e.g. flanking archers at Agincourt and Crecy), because that small advantage is all they need. These archers are, after all, armored as heavily as anyone else, and sword is as good as a pollaxe when you are fighting three on one.

    So, cavalry beats everyone, but only barely and often with losses that are too bad, and archer+infantry block wins in theory if their nerve and equipment is good enough and they don't get flanked.


    So, if you want to have a game that has some sort of verisimilitude, you either have to assign arbitrary bonuses, or set up mechanics very specifically (and risk them falling apart). The tank triangle is a tad better, but you need to make it into a mobility-power-defense-cost-training time pentagon. You can have a soldier that has great attack power, excellent defense and good mobility, but the costs for his training and time required will be horrendous - because we're talking about European knights, or Mongol Keshiks at that point.

    What all of this means is that, if you're running a game that tries to be somewhat realistic, you need to forget about RPS units, and start to think about RPS tactics and strategies. If your enemy rolls up and starts to capture your cities, you can try attacking their foraging parties, but it will leave you open because your troops are now dispersed, but if you have strong enough castles that may not be a problem because you have a month until you need to relieve that siege, and can make that month suck for the besiegers by starving them.

    DnD is pretty good at doing this with caster-like classes (Tome of Battle is technically not casters, but...), you select your spells and can never have all of them ready, and if you do (sorcerers), there is some other drawback to it. If you are geared to fight things immune to fire, you can be badly surprised if one of them summons something that is immune to ice, if you have setup your spells to counter magical defenses, you will be far less effective against brute force opponents.

    Where frustration happens is with builds that can't change their tactics well enough. If you have someone optimized to do bucketloads of fire damage and are confronted with a fire elemental, you may be out of options and resort to being far less effective. This is both a bug and a feature, a bug because it can be intensely frustrating, a feature because it makes the build you use matter more. Well, in theory. That also means you tend to see this less in DnD (outside of fairly highly optimized builds) because it requires your players to actively make a heavily specialized build for it to be apparent.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    ^ Adding to Martin's great post, D&D introduces further wrinkles:

    "constructed some sort of fortification" - the beauty of magic is that most parties can easily do this without needing to prepare the battlefield in advance the way those medieval archers would have had to. Even very rudimentary battlefield control like grease, entangle and web count as "fortifications" to protect a party's ranged - which means they need a frontline of infantry a lot less. Buffs like Levitate or Mirror Image also count as "fortifications" in this context. The options grow exponentially as the characters level up, and that's when they don't simply conjure "infantry" (summons/pets) out of thin air.

    "heavily specialized builds" - you really don't see these often in D&D since there's very little reward for doing so. You'd have to really go out of your way to be a "fire mage" or "healer" who can do nothing at all else - and why would you? Even if your backstory or something says you have an affinity for fire, in game terms that doesn't make non-fire spells any harder for you to learn, nor ineffective. You might get a feature of some kind that says you can do more with a specific kind of spell, but very few of those force you to be weaker with the others. Similarly, even the healbot-iest cleric to ever healbot knows his entire spell list and can whip out a spiritual weapon etc with at most a day's notice. And their power is even higher in previous editions.


    In short - this paradigm doesn't work in D&D for a lot of reasons, and trying to reintroduce it would likely entail changing too much about the classes and system for it to be worthwhile.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    The one thing to note between fictional and non-fictional examples is the inclusion of magic and how the entire system and expectations must be changed to accommodate.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Points on RPS games.

    1. Consider the frequency at which the RPS decision is made - the more frequent, the better. Being a "rock" and entering a "paper" dungeon is an un-fun experience. Taking "rocks" to a "paper" encounter isn't great either, and will shift the focus of the game to "figure out what kind of encounter it is, when possible". Making a "rock" move that loses to a "paper" move is no big deal, you can adjust your strategy next turn.
    2. For RPS to work, the choices must be simultaneous. Most RPGs work sequentially.
    3. You can have the basic idea of simultaneous, blind choices with different payoff matrices. That's what Burning Wheel and related games do.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    This is also something that D&D has tried a few times - and generally given up on.

    AD&D (1st Ed) psionic combat was basically this, though a bit more complex. It was also a problem because if you didn't have all the powers,, it became a case of "do I have the right ones for this fight or not?" and there was nothing the player could do about it.

    BEMCI gold-box Immortal rules power combat was exactly this. OK it wasn't one of the main reasons why Wrath of the Immortals totally re-wrote the Immortal rules, but it's not exactly fun to play when you consider the rest of D&D as a comparison so it is not surprising it is one of the things that got ditched.

    Rock/Paper/Scissors is generally too simplified to be a fun decision tool in a game - there's too few options for players (not characters) to try to get sneaky or even just be innovative - you are better off choosing by rolling a dice!
    And if characters do not automatically have all three options available it's that horrible case - a "you lose if you try this" feature - a.k.a. a good reason to play a different game.
    Last edited by Khedrac; 2022-09-08 at 10:21 AM.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    Where frustration happens is with builds that can't change their tactics well enough. If you have someone optimized to do bucketloads of fire damage and are confronted with a fire elemental, you may be out of options and resort to being far less effective. This is both a bug and a feature, a bug because it can be intensely frustrating, a feature because it makes the build you use matter more. Well, in theory. That also means you tend to see this less in DnD (outside of fairly highly optimized builds) because it requires your players to actively make a heavily specialized build for it to be apparent.
    I’ve never understood why some people respond to this with trying to make everyone frustrated, by thinking that “having options” is somehow the problem that needs to be solved.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    I have made a Rock-Paper-Scissors style TTPRG.

    Characters have approaches that interact Rock-Paper-Scissors style with other characters or the GM's Failure Complications.

    If you have higher stats in these approaches you can win less favourable match ups although it's always got some risk. The game is about the conflict between being yourself, doing what you're good at and being secretive and closed, not letting anybody in. Its also about becoming a powerful wizard centring from this conflict.

    I think the game does a good job of balancing the power of using your best stats and the temptation of acting randomly by the advancement mini-game. You gain traits and specialities by using skills and stats in enough different ways and you kind of want them to be on a mix of high and low stats and skills to keep them working optimally. Knowing you genuinely does make it easier to fight you.

    I'd a rules light but strong game where there's no randomness in the game and no metacurrencies beyond marking experience boxes. It's all on you.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    In a wargame, each side usually has a lot of pieces of the board, like 10 or 20 or more. Things like range and movement speed and morale are important. And either side is supposed to have a reasonable shot at winning, albeit with losses.

    In an RPG each player gets one piece, there's only like 4 players, and the DM probably isn't controlling 20 orcs either. Morale ge really isn't modeled at all, and the general trend towards activated player special abilities generally makes maneuver less important. Most importantly, the players are supposed to win, the monsters are just there to provide an enjoyable obstacle, meaning one that every player can contribute to overcoming.

    These are not design considerations that favor RPS style balancing. If I'm playing an archer, I probably don't want every fight to consist of like 2 dudes I totally body, 2 dudes I'm indifferent against, and 2 dudes who absolutely wreck me given half a chance, because I'm gonna end up getting wrecked sooner rather than later. I want to be effective against, and durable against, most threats on the board, because that gives me the freedom to use my fun special abilities.

    I think the modern tendency in RPGs away from harsh penalties for things like shooting a ranged weapon while threatened make it abundantly clear that nobody wants RPS balancing, precisely because it shuts down characters. It's right up there with throwing a beholder into every encounter, so that there's a counter to the wizard - the whole point of playing a wizard is you want to wizard things, not contend with intelligently employed anti-wizard assets all the time.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?

    And the PCs blur these lines too. Cleric was one of the first spanners in the Fighter/Mage/Thief works, but it's only gotten worse since then - Druids, Rangers, Bards/Red Mages, Monks, Artificers etc have all served to muddy the waters on the player side too. You have classes that can close the distance quickly and fight from range, or ranged classes that can defend themselves against chargers with ease. RPS just doesn't cut it for modern D&D, and the prior editions had even more convoluted tactical permutations.
    Quote Originally Posted by animorte View Post
    I was thinking this as well for an entirely different reason. Unless, there's a lot of PvP type stuff going or you strictly use class based opposition for the PCs, this design isn't particularly relevant.
    Yeah. RPS is basically entirely a "PvP" or "Wargame" model. Or at least one where every creature fits nicely into one of the boxes.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Khedrac View Post
    Rock/Paper/Scissors is generally too simplified to be a fun decision tool in a game - there's too few options for players (not characters) to try to get sneaky or even just be innovative - you are better off choosing by rolling a dice!
    Not actually true.

    Random choice is a Nash Equilibrium in RPS, but it is not necessarily optimal strategy - a NE just means that "neither player can do better unless one player changes their strategy." The problem is that humans are very poor randomizers, which is why there are countless bots that will destroy a human in RPS.

    So if one side is using true random strategy, it's true that the best you can do is random (actually, it doesn't matter at that point). But if another player has a bias to play the thing that beat them last time (they lose to paper playing rock, they're more likely to then play paper), you can exploit this and get an advantage. It's fairly easy to even think of how to mechanize this to take the GM out of it - some kind of randomization that would pick strategy for NPCs, where the NPC had certain strategies available for them. "Oh, golems play rock half the time, so when fighting them you should use paper more" at a trivial level, or "golems always play what would have won their last round" or so on and so forth.

    Quote Originally Posted by Khedrac View Post
    And if characters do not automatically have all three options available it's that horrible case - a "you lose if you try this" feature - a.k.a. a good reason to play a different game.
    Yes, that's a terrible design, but not quite as bad as it first seems. If someone doesn't have rock, you know scissors is always safe, but they'd also know this and so they'd play scissors a lot to counter that. Which is fine if "don't lose" is the goal. But if you want to win, you'd probably want to throw in some rock, which would be vulnerable to them playing paper.... I'd have to work out the exact strategy, but I think that the non-rock player would be at a disadvantage but not necessarily an automatic loss, presuming that "not losing" isn't sufficient.

    Actually, thinking about it slightly more, it might not even be that - optimal strategy might just end up being a coin flip between the options you do have - the player that has rock would never want to play paper, since the best that they could do is tie.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    I’ve never understood why some people respond to this with trying to make everyone frustrated, by thinking that “having options” is somehow the problem that needs to be solved.
    Having options isn't the problem. Having the frequency of making choices be so low as to lock you into a choice long after it's obvious that it's a poor choice is the problem. At the extreme level, it's one round of RPS that just takes months to play out.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Yeah. RPS is basically entirely a "PvP" or "Wargame" model. Or at least one where every creature fits nicely into one of the boxes.
    I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.

    So it would look more like "defend/attack/feint" as the RPS elements.

    A lot of play by post games did similar. At a basic level, each character could have ratings in each of those maneuvers (or whatever you chose). When there's an exchange between characters, each one picks a maneuver secretly and both are revealed - the winner gets an effect equivalent to their rating.

    This also creates some more interest, as the big bruiser that does attack will need to be defended against (assuming defend beats attack)... but.... since they KNOW this they also would want to do some feinting on occasion to beat the obvious counter to their strong move.
    Last edited by kyoryu; 2022-09-08 at 11:32 AM.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    I’ve never understood why some people respond to this with trying to make everyone frustrated, by thinking that “having options” is somehow the problem that needs to be solved.
    Well mostly its the D&D hyper focus here combined with WotC's unyeilding insistance that "Thog 8-int 8-cha 8-wis", whose only abilities are hit-with-stick & bag-of-hp, is supposed to be an equally useful & relevant PC in a level 20 magic users & auto-yes skill rogue game. Once you accept it isn't an issue in most other games and start ignoring WotC's cranial-rectal inversion game design habit you can design so nobody accidentally ends up as a incompetent lump of hit points.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.

    So it would look more like "defend/attack/feint" as the RPS elements.

    A lot of play by post games did similar. At a basic level, each character could have ratings in each of those maneuvers (or whatever you chose). When there's an exchange between characters, each one picks a maneuver secretly and both are revealed - the winner gets an effect equivalent to their rating.

    This also creates some more interest, as the big bruiser that does attack will need to be defended against (assuming defend beats attack)... but.... since they KNOW this they also would want to do some feinting on occasion to beat the obvious counter to their strong move.
    At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.
    Last edited by PhoenixPhyre; 2022-09-08 at 11:47 AM.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.
    It all depends on the overall design of the game, though. If there's less fiddly modifiers to worry about, and specific spacing is less of a concern, then it may not impact speed too much, especially if you reduce the average number of turns to complete combat.

    I'd have to see how it actually played out. But, if you were to do such a thing, I think that's how it'd have to be handled. (Again, note that Burning Wheel does something similar, so clearly it can work)
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.
    So like D&D then? Because it really starts sucking up time at about 10 participants in a combat. This is, of course, assuming the participants get meaningful reactions.

    You see it if you take a party of 4 vs a boss with 3 legendaries and 3 mooks. Four player turns can trigger up to 7 reacting rolls from the monsters, then the monsters can trigger 4 reactions with rolls plus any free/non- action reactions from the PCs which can also involve rolls. And of course some of the reactions can call for further rolls like saves or checks.

    Heck, a system with a single opposed attack a turn and nothing like lucky hasted battlemasters & counterspell chains could be significantly faster.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    It's probably more useful to think about ways to drive nontransitivity in games in general, rather than specifically copying RPS. That is to say, the situation where strategy A beating strategy B and B beating C does not imply that A beats C.

    There's a general shape of games of skill, where at first nontransitivity between strategies increases with skill as people understand the possibilities better, up to a turning point at which the nontransitivity of strategies decreases until there is ultimately one dominant strategy.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?
    This can be a problem or a feature.
    If you want to design a dragon that is equally dangerous for all the classes, that's fine. It doesn't matter whether the party are all theives or if they're a mix. And I'd call that a strength because a dragon is always dangerous to all parties.

    The idea that other monsters are more or less skewed toward the center or the different corners of the RPS triangle is part of the diversity. The GM needs to consider that their mage BBG is going to be very tough work for the party of all fighters and maybe they get great value from recruiting a thief for this mission.

    Other classes not occupying a corner also doesn't have to be a problem. If one player's druid character turns into a bear and fights like a fighter, or stays human and fights like a mage, that's fine, as long as the game design understands that that flexibility should be coming at a cost and the GM understands that they need to take that into account when planning encounters

    If you like this R-P-S interplay, you could even build in several. Ranged-heavy-light. Religious-Arcane-Psionic Wolf-eagle-rat earth-wind-fire-water


    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.
    Even if the targets all have different ACs, unless you're making all your attacks on the one target, you have to individually roll.
    Even if you're attacking the same target, unless there's no chance you're going to want to switch targets after killing (or putting an effect on) target 1 you're going to roll them individually.
    So this is less of a change than you might think
    Last edited by Duff; 2022-09-08 at 07:13 PM.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Everyone should definitely check out Mouseguard/Torchbearer's conflict system (it might be the same in Burning Wheel, I haven't read that though).

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Rock Paper Scissors won't work in D&D because Rock players will complain about Paper, Paper players will complain about Scissors, and Scissors players will complain about Rock. RPS accepts being strong in one area and weak in another area as balance. Those who don't like RPS want balance to mean everyone is equivalent. You can have your specialization where you're the Best at this Thing, but no one is helpless at another character's Thing he's Best at. For example, a major issue in 3E was people complaining about having a poor Will save. In 5E it's Wisdom save. Spells attacking that cause someone to Lose A Turn, effectively. People do not want to lose turns. They're fine with such spells existing, mostly, but refuse to accept anyone being weak against it. Let Enchanter be the Best at Lose A Turn spells, but no one may almost always Lose A Turn because of it. It's why people are always encouraged to take Resilient (WI) feat.

    To clarify, D&D is certainly capable of having RPS rules and many players will likely enjoy it and be happy. The issue is there are enough players who won't like it and complain about it, it leaves doubt D&D did the right thing.

    As a matter of personal opinion, I don't think I have a personal opinion on the matter. I'm more caring about the final result of the rules whatever they are rather than the philosophy of which version of balance is better. I don't worship balance. As an example I utterly reject the Tier System of 3E as a guidance for anything about 3E D&D. It was and only will ever be one person's personal opinion, not gospel.
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Wow, that's quite a bit of discussion. I won't reply to everyone individually, or else this post will turn into a 60 page thesis, but I'll try to cherrypick quote that highlight the main points being discussed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?
    The only reason you would need to slot players or monsters into categories is to give one category or character a bonus or penalty against another category. Which I suppose is functional (Age of Empires does this, e.g. with spears doing bonus damage to cavalry), but it's kind of boring. So instead of putting characters into limited categories, I think it makes more sense to give them sets of abilities. One ability makes you good at one thing, and another ability is able to counter it, though not necessarily directly. For example, the ability to fly is a huge benefit when all your enemies are melee attackers, but a ranged attacker more or less negates that benefit entirely, and not because ranged attacks have any special interaction with flying creatures (though in some systems they do).

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Another problem would be that if enemy groups are not internally balanced, you will always have certain PC types that are utterly useless in the encounter and others that are the star of the show. That is not ideal either.
    This can work, but it will require player buy-in (like many things in a TTRPG). If the players go into the game expecting to be useful in every encounter, then of course they're going to be dissatisfied when an enemy counters their abilities. But if they understand and accept that sometimes an enemy will counter them, then they'll be able to enjoy the thrill when they counter the enemies, and be content to let another player shine when the enemy counters them. Not only that, but it can be seen as a challenge to try to find unconventional ways to still contribute to combat when an enemy counters you, particularly strategies involving teamwork.

    So I think it could be a lot of fun, but it isn't for everyone. Some people would love it, some people would hate it, but above all they'd have to know that this is what they're getting into beforehand.

    It's also worth pointing that players can change strategies. In a lot of strategy games, an archer will continue shooting their bow, even in melee, but in an RPG you can drop the bow and pull out a sword. You might not have as many bonuses when using a sword, but it's still better than using your bow in melee.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    Modern wargames have moved away from rock-paper-scissors design and mostly utilise the tank design triangle. The tank design triangle is that a tank can have mobility, armor or firepower in a zero sum environment. If you want to increase mobility you have sacrifice firepower and/or armor. Modern wargames are more about how do you bring your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses.
    Yeah, this is a good idea. You can use this in conjunction with other forms of RPS mechanics, so you don't need to limit yourself to just this. D&D nominally does this, but I think the problem is that it isn't balanced. 5e is a bit notorious for combat devolving into rocket tag, were damage output is king. But if you can perfect the balance this can offer a simple and intuitive way to customize a character in a meaningful way.

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    The greatest problem with this RPS idea is that, for the progenitor of pike-horse-bow, it... does not work like that. At all.
    ??? You literally proved my point?

    The point of using mixed armies like that is because different units have different strengths and weaknesses. By having all three of pikes, horses, and bows, you're able to cover the weaknesses of your other units and counter anything your enemy has. So it's not so much about who has which units, but rather the deployment of those units. If the pikes let the enemy cavalry get behind them and wipe out the archers, then you've made a huge blunder. You had the counter to those cavalry, but you put them in the wrong place.

    And yes, the counters aren't always clear cut. A heavily armored knight can take on just about anything, but you won't have a whole lot of knights, and you won't want to risk them by throwing them at a line of pikes if a better option is available. Infantry have to orient their defense in a specific direction, whether that's pikes, shields, or both, so you if you can attack them from a different angle you can grind them into dust. And cavalry are great at attacking from unexpected angles. Archers can wear heavy armor and carry a sword, which can make them formidable in melee, but not as much as someone carrying a polearm. Anything smaller than a greatsword is a backup weapon, not a primary weapon, and the lack of reach will put them at a big disadvantage. Full plate would mitigate a lot of that disadvantage, but you'll find it gets pretty expensive to gear up all your archers in plate.

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    "heavily specialized builds" - you really don't see these often in D&D since there's very little reward for doing so.
    It depends what you mean by a "heavily specialized build". A longbow fighter built around maximizing their ranged damage is heavily specialized, but damage is broadly applicable. A sorcerer who only takes fire spells is also heavily specialized, but in a different way.

    Also, the math of the d20 mechanic means that it's actually more effective to stack your bonuses on one type of roll. For example, if an enemy hits you on an 11 that's a 50% chance to be hit. If you gain +1 AC then now they only hit on a 12 or better, which is a 45% chance to hit. That's a 10% reduction in the number of hits taken. But if an enemy needs a 19 to hit you (10% chance), and you gain +1 AC, now they can only hit on a 20 (5% chance). That's a 50% reduction in the number of hits taken, from the same +1 bonus. The same math applies to anything that uses a d20 roll. For example, you're better off maximizing one or two saving throws instead of trying to balance them all. So the math behind the d20 roll really does reward specilization.

    Quote Originally Posted by animorte View Post
    The one thing to note between fictional and non-fictional examples is the inclusion of magic and how the entire system and expectations must be changed to accommodate.
    True, but this is overstated sometimes. If all your mages can do is shoot magical bolts, then they're just fancy archers. A lot of what magic does is introduce a method by which more modern forms of combat can be realized in a medieval setting. For example, Fireballs as artillery. In such cases, the tactics used might more closely resemble those used in a real life modern setting. Things don't really go off the rails until you start adding things that even we can't do yet with modern technology, such as invisibility, teleportation, or summoning.

    In some settings, magic might also be rare, but powerful. You might be able to count all the wizards in existence on one hand. In such a case, magical beings are more mythical, and it isn't really pragmatic to build your military with fighting those beings in mind. When the time does come that a military force has to fight one, then it's going to look like, I don't know, Armageddon, or Godzilla, or Independence Day, or something. We have lots and lots of movies about some sort of monster or natural disaster threatening the world and the military throwing all their might at it and barely making a dent. And usually the solution ends up being a hastily assembled specialized task force that takes a much more calculated and precise strategy instead of brute force.

    In settings where magic is both common and powerful, then yeah, it's going to result in a lot of fundamental changes to things in that setting. And a lot of D&D settings are this.

    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    Most importantly, the players are supposed to win, the monsters are just there to provide an enjoyable obstacle, meaning one that every player can contribute to overcoming.
    This sounds like a Combat as Sport mentality. Personally, I prefer Combat as War, which might explain a lot about where I'm coming from in this thread. Combat should be deadly, and you should want to avoid it when possible. When it isn't possible to avoid, you should stack every available advantage you can to insure the fight is unfair in your favor. It should be understood that an encounter might not be balanced according to your level; if you go to the ancient dragon's lair at 1st level, there's still going to be an ancient dragon there. It's the players' responsibility to decide when to fight and when to run; the DM doesn't need to save them if they pick an unwinnable fight. But by the same token, if the players are creative they can find a way to down a superior foe, e.g. using explosives to collapse a large rock onto the ancient dragon's head.

    So I think whether you want Combat as Sport or Combat as War will make a big difference. If the wizard prepares nothing but fire spells and runs into a fire elemental, the Combat as Sport player will say, "That's unfair, you knew all my spells do fire damage," while the Combat as War player will say, "Dang, I prepared the wrong spells today. Let's retreat for now so I can prepare new spells." One isn't necessarily more correct, it's just a matter of what the player is expecting out of the game.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.
    This exactly. You can have a number of different tactics you could use (not all of them, but more than a few), but these are mutually exclusive with one another so you have to commit to just one. Sometimes this is because of the action economy, e.g. the wizard can cast Fireball or Hypnotic Pattern, but not both on the same turn. Sometimes the tactics themselves requiring doing mutually exclusive things, e.g. the paladin can stand next to their allies to buff them with their auras, or they can engage the boss in a Compelled Duel and keep them away from the rest of their party. If the situation changes, you can change tactics on the fly. For example, the GWM barbarian can pull out a longbow if you get jumped by flying enemies. He won't be great with a longbow, but it's certainly better than standing there impotently holding his greataxe.



    One thing I think D&D 5e does pretty well is the relationship between ranged attacks and movement speed. A faster move speed gives a natural benefit against ranged attackers, while a slower move speed suffers a natural penalty. But a slow character doesn't just instantly die when facing an archer. Imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks while a hostile creature is within 5 feet further reinforces this relationship, meaning that getting into melee doesn't just mean that you're able to start attacking the archer, but just existing at melee range with the enemy archer causes them a huge penalty. Thus, getting into melee range of an enemy archer faster becomes much more valuable.

    One thing I will say is that high HP values do make it a bit too easy to just walk up to an archer and bonk them, so archer supremacy over melee is only really a thing at low levels. You really need something like flight to elevate a ranged player/monster to a true melee counter, or maybe a strong control ability that makes it much more difficult to approach you. And there's basically no relationship between infantry/polearms and cavalry.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by Greywander View Post
    The only reason you would need to slot players or monsters into categories is to give one category or character a bonus or penalty against another category. Which I suppose is functional (Age of Empires does this, e.g. with spears doing bonus damage to cavalry), but it's kind of boring. So instead of putting characters into limited categories, I think it makes more sense to give them sets of abilities. One ability makes you good at one thing, and another ability is able to counter it, though not necessarily directly. For example, the ability to fly is a huge benefit when all your enemies are melee attackers, but a ranged attacker more or less negates that benefit entirely, and not because ranged attacks have any special interaction with flying creatures (though in some systems they do).
    The point though is that in the pursuit of those categories you remove very iconic things from the game on both sides. For example, saying that you can't fly and be good at ranged or melee means no druids, no vampires, no dragons... It's fine for a different game but not D&D.

    Quote Originally Posted by Greywander View Post
    It depends what you mean by a "heavily specialized build". A longbow fighter built around maximizing their ranged damage is heavily specialized, but damage is broadly applicable. A sorcerer who only takes fire spells is also heavily specialized, but in a different way.
    Fire sorcerer is much closer to what I was talking about than longbow fighter. A longbow fighter is not heavily specialized; in situations where the bow is not useful, they can grab a scimitar and shield just fine and still be above baseline effectiveness. Extra Attack, Action Surge, their proficiencies and Dex all still apply.

    Quote Originally Posted by Greywander View Post
    Also, the math of the d20 mechanic means that it's actually more effective to stack your bonuses on one type of roll. For example, if an enemy hits you on an 11 that's a 50% chance to be hit. If you gain +1 AC then now they only hit on a 12 or better, which is a 45% chance to hit. That's a 10% reduction in the number of hits taken. But if an enemy needs a 19 to hit you (10% chance), and you gain +1 AC, now they can only hit on a 20 (5% chance). That's a 50% reduction in the number of hits taken, from the same +1 bonus. The same math applies to anything that uses a d20 roll. For example, you're better off maximizing one or two saving throws instead of trying to balance them all. So the math behind the d20 roll really does reward specilization.
    That kind of specialization is dependent on the availability of said bonuses. Sure in 3.5 there's a smorgasbord you can stack onto one check, but not so much in 5e.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    If you want to do rock-paper-scissors-like dynamics, you have to understand what makes rock-paper-scissors work. In this case, even the Wikipedia article for the game goes a long way, explaining its relevant qualities and how it's possible to use skill to gain an edge over a human opponent (etc.)

    The key trait of RPS that you likely desire to preserve is the lack of a dominant strategy. For this to happen, the following condition has to be satisfied: even when you know what your opponent is trying to do and all their options for doing it, there is no one thing you could do that would be better than all others. This leads to "I know you know I know" information metagame, where the degree of second-guessing yourself and your opponent becomes relevant.

    From existing games, Pokemon provides both a good example and bad examples; good in the sense that it shows how to translate principled of RPS into a more compex turn-based game with lots of different dynamics, bad in the sense that individual Pokemon show how you can screw the dynamic up with overly centralizing player options. Going through, say, Smogon metagame and forums will tell you a lot about what works and what doesn't for implementing the desired dynamic.

    On the tabletop, I echo Kyoryu in that the proper placement for the RPS dynamic is on the level of moves, not character builds. More technically, each throw-equivalent should happen on per-turn basis. Each character should have a number of choices to select from, with the final choice of throw being made when the character enters a contest with another.

    Mechanically, some of the easiest ways to do this include playing an actual round of RPS between players of the contesting characters (such as a player and the game master), or dealing cards from hand and revealing them at the same time. You can do this with dice, but to avoid everything becoming just a random roll-off, I suggest using a pick from intransitive dice.

    The important thing is that even in a turn-based game, the player who choosed last shouldn't know what moves those before them have made, as that trivializes the game for them, being equivalent of a robot using a high-speed camera to see what throw a human is making, then choosing the winning throw faster than the human can react. For a game master, this means there has to be a commitment to secrecy and willingness to accept they don't know what the players will being doing before they do it.

    Another thing is that the game master of all people can't be the kind of person who always plays rock, because rock is the best. They have to be willing to mix and match what non-player characters do and can do, otherwise the game is trivialized. The players being that sort of persons is slightly less of a problem, but a problem nonetheless. The players have to understand that they have to switch what they are doing from moment to moment, or they will just lose.

    ---

    EDIT: "The players are supposed to win" is a really poor counter-argument for implementing RPS dynamics. Reason being, it is very easy to deliberately play poorly and let players win most of the time. The (only) real problem with that is that it messes with player understanding of how the game works, versus how the opposing player works. As in, if the game master always throws rock, players will start to complain "paper is OP, plz nerf".
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2022-09-10 at 08:18 AM.

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    For 5E, the core problem is simple: it's not the design goal. 5E is specifically designed to be simple; whereas emergent RPS requires lots of complexity and choices.
    It's not surprising you don't see much tactics in 5e; as not everyone wants a highly tactical and complex wargame.

    There's also a big decision problem: RPS depends on both sides making decisions. But the DM has a lot more decisions to make, unless monsters have somehow automated attack routines; it's also harder to setup good systems that have information hidden from the DM, and hidden information is often a key part of RPS systems.

    The nature of upgrade systems also presents a challenge; it's hard to have upgrades uniformly affect all parts of a character. There also inherently tends to be choice in builds; that is, people choose how to build their characters. Thus, even if the system is carefully balanced and designed so that flexibility is more optimal; some players will simply choose to build a character that does one thing very well. If one player simply built to always do rock, then there isn't a lot of choice, rock either works or it doesn't. 3e has a fair bit of this; in that some stronger builds are often based on picking one thing and doing it very effectively. counter-counter-measures exist. So instead of trying to do every type of thing, you take abilities that counter your counters, so you can stick to your core strategy. Ofc 3e also has the problem that some abilities are so broad that it's not so much rock/paper/scissors as rock/paper/scissors/nuclear bomb.


    Thinking of how others game handle this; some videogames occur to me, which presents the challenge that what works well in a videogame is quite different from what works well in a TTRPG. In part simply due to how many dice/rolls and units are involved.

    The dominions series has lots of complexity and various interactions that lead to certain units being good/bad against others; and it could be adapted into an rpg, though I'm not sure those interactions would work well there, as part of the complexity comes from having so many units to choose from. There's also the inherent warfare choices of how much to commit to each theater/where and when. Whereas in an RPG it's typically more 'this is the battle'.

    Poker Quest RPG (a small indie videogame) has a number of emergent counters, though they do tend to fall into certain clusters. The basics of the game is it's you vs 1 monster at a time; and it uses a deck of playing cards with no duplicates. Each round the deck is shuffled and the players gets some cards, and the monster gets a mix of face up and face down cards. Each monster has a variety of attacks/abilities it may use (in a deterministic order) based on what cards it gets, note that the amount of cards 'spent' on an ability can be anything from 0 up. Some monster abilities require specific comboes the monster is unlikely to get, but are powerful when they do (eg requires a full house, or a black jack), against such monsters expensive abilities that let you manipulate their hand are quite effective. There are other monsters who have lots of hidden cards, or who have abilities that are'nt that dependent on the particular cards, against whom hand manipulation is less effective. Damage block abilities are strong vs monsters that are predictable, but less so against some others. Ofc a good portion of the strategy in the game is choosing the path to take, so that you fight monsters that your char does better against, as well as factoring in the many tradeoffs along each path. Something which doesn't tend to translate to TTRPGs where the set of foes to face is usually much more set.

    Combat as war doesn't mesh well with RPS gameplay; because the core rule of combat as war is that you don't fight RPS fights, you only fight when you're going to win, if at all possible.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    I also heavily disagree that "the players should always win" is a necessary design goal in RPGs.

    The only issue is if "losing" and "death" are synonymous, it probably needs to be (effectively) true. The answer is, of course, don't make "losing" and "death" synonymous.
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