Balancing Blaster Wizards (Design Philosophy)

[gbaji]

It really depends what you think the purpose of ranged attacks is. For most players I've seen it's either a thematic choice for their character, or a defense mechanism. Does it still work as a defense mechanism? Only if they are fighting foes much weaker then them, or they have an ally willing to go into melee. Does it work thematically? Absolutely!

The purpose of ranged attacks is to have the ability to do damage to people at range, hopefully in situations where they cannot damage you back. That's literally the entire point of ranged attacks. A mechanism that removes the ability to do damage to someone at range unless you also have someone in melee (so someone on your "side" must be in risk of taking damage for you to do damage), completely nullifies that purpose.

As I said above, neither of these things happen for reasons that aren't really too important here.

I think that if you are proposing a rule that prevents ranged attackers from actually doing damage at range, clarifying what conditions cause that restriction on ranged damage would seem to be extremely important. So far, all you've stated as the condition is "not be in melee with someone else". So I'm somewhat forced to assume this is what you are proposing here.

If there are other conditions (must have a tower shield or hide behind cover, can't advance while defending against missile attacks, can only defend/block/whatever X number of attacks per round, etc), it may change my assessment. But how you have described it more or less flies in the face of why folks use ranged attacks in the first place.

A fighter in 5e can load and fire a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while moving 30 feet, opening a door, and possibly even casting a spell. In fantasy games with flying, fire breathing lizards and wish granting rings, I personally feel that trying to appeal to reality is rather silly. To me, it makes perfect sense that an archer can be skilled enough to shoot safely into melee. Especially when they are already superhuman in so many other ways.

I'm not questioning the ability of archers to fire into melee. Although, if we're on the subject, if they have "superhuman" abilities, then applying a modest to-hit adjustment to allow their superior abilities to actually matter should not be an issue. Can "non-superheroic" people in this game also fire into melee with no problems? A 10 year old kid who's never picked up a bow can fire into a melee scrum and only hit the folks he's trying to hit, and will never accidentally hit a friend? We're talking base rules here. I'd rather have rules that make sense for the "normal folks", but then have the same rules allow for extremely skilled people to do things outside that norm.

Anyway. I'm not really questioning that. I'm questioning the "archers can't do damage to targets unless that target is also engaged in melee with someone else" bit.

Why? How does it make the game more fun? How does it allow a character that wants to play Robin Hood better? I'm really curious here, because to me, I don't see any good reason for it, other than to make characters waste feats on removing that penalty, at which point it's just a pointless feat tax that everyone hates.

Because Robin Hood has a high enough archery skill that he can eliminate the risk of hitting a friend when firing into melee. Or he's taken a feat which allows him to do this. Either of which makes him actually "special", instead of "just like everone else in this game world". If everyone has the same "special" and "superhuman" abilities, then no one does. There's a lot of value in the PCs actually feeling like their chacters are special, or have abilitiies/skills/whatever that allow them to do things that not everyone else can do. Even among different classes or skill focuses, having the highly skilled archer in the party able to fire into melee safely (for whatever game rule reasons), but if the party tank picks up a bow, he can probably hit things, but firing into melee is a risk. This gives the archer character a reward for focusing on archery.

Sure. It's your game, so do what you want with it. I'm just suggesting that giving stuff like this to "everyone" isn't always going to have the positive outcome you may want. Or it could? Dunno.

I think you're missing that neatest interaction here. Ranged characters can't block out melee characters unless they have an allied melee character engaged with them. That means that if they are using range against a melee opponent, and that opponent can down the melee character, than that opponent is safe from the ranged characters. This makes it so that there is never a situation where one side of a battle is completely unable to react to their opponents, and only has the option of eating damage. There is always something a character can do to make the situation better for them.

Except that unless I'm just totally misunderstanding you here, I'm not sure how this is "neat" for the archer character. He's basically being prevented from doing things like attacking melee folks at range before they can close that range (so what? He just stands there with his bow doing nothing while the enemy walks up and attacks him?). If he's got a friend fighting an enemy, and his friend goes down, he can no longer attack? You've certainly got a "side" that is unable to react to opponents here. And how about an encounter where there's a melee scrum in one location, and maybe additional bad guys up on a hilldside, or wall or whatever? Normal tactics is to have the archery folks take out (or at least pin down) that part of the enemy forces, while the melee folks fight their way through. Your rules (at least as they've been explained to me) seem to remove that as a tactical option.


Again. The "normal" use of archery is to attack unengaged people at range. The hoped for result is that you can eliminate some of them *before* they get into melee range and start doing damage to your side. And there are a whole host of tactics available to take advantage of this fact.


I'm also going to second much of what Dasick said. Everything else being equal, melee damage is higher than archery damage (often much higher). Yes. Lightly armored opponents are vulnerable to archery. But they're also super vulnerable to melee damage too (leather armor doesn't do much to a sword or axe or mace either). But when we get to more heavily armored opponents, arrows fall short while melee damage still works. Shields become the key determinant in both cases, but the force of a melee attack is much greater than the impact force of an arrow (but in theory arrows are harder to block unless you are using a really big shield).

At Agincourt, the victory is often attributed to the English Longbow (and rightly so). But it wasn't actually the damage done by the arrows. Those bowmen did very little against the French heavy foot on the field. All it did was force them to march across the field, with their visors down (so limited ability to get fresh air) and shields raised. And when they could not actually break thorugh the English lines they were stuck there, holding that position, while the arrows rained down on them. Again, not killing very many of them, but forcing them into a tight formation in the hot, humid, muddy (cause of foolishly failed previous cavalry charges) conditions. The archers literally ran out of arrows. Then picked up hand axes and charged down the hillside and just started chopping the exhausted (and too tightly packed) French soldiers. And it was a massacre from that point on.

The point is that the archers backup weapons (hand axes) were able to kill the heavily armored men at arms, while the arrows just bounced off their helmets and shoulderpads and shields. To be fair, by the time they got attacked this way, they were too tired to defend themselves against melee attacks, but that's part of the point. Melee attacks do so much damage, that you can't just count on your armor causing them to glance away like you can against all but really lucky arrow hits (and to be fair in the other direction, this was at a time period when the pendulum of "armor versus missile" was slanted towards "armor").

And yes. We could argue that this fits with your model. But it's not that the arrows could not hit, but that they could not penetrate and do damage. If the French foot had been wearing light armor, they would have been ripped apart by the same set of archers. So whether a person at range is "safe" from missile fire is not at all a function of whether they are engaged in melee, but whether the armor they are wearing is sufficient to resist the damage being done. And yeah, this gets us into questions about the game system and whether it makes a distinction between "hit but not damaged" versus "all hits are hits that do damage". And yes, also back to the function of shields, and how different sheiles work for different things (especially missile versus melee).

[Dasick]

The point is that the archers backup weapons (hand axes) were able to kill the heavily armored men at arms, while the arrows just bounced off their helmets and shoulderpads and shields. To be fair, by the time they got attacked this way, they were too tired to defend themselves against melee attacks, but that's part of the point. Melee attacks do so much damage, that you can't just count on your armor causing them to glance away like you can against all but really lucky arrow hits (and to be fair in the other direction, this was at a time period when the pendulum of "armor versus missile" was slanted towards "armor").

Its worth pointing out that the arrows don't just "bounce off". They transfer the kinetic energy, often with enough force to break an arrow.

Warbow arrows for a 100+ pound bow are no joke. They are chunky boys. Even if it doesn't penetrate the armour, being hit with one sucks majorly. It can even break bones through armour, or cause concussions. There are battlefield remains of people with broken necks, through their armour is intact (although its more likely this was done with an axe or a hammer). I imagine even blocking a shot like that with a shield is going to make your arm very sore.

Hand axes also don't pierce armour generally speaking, but yeah, you just deliver enough kinetic force to break bones and smash skulls through the armour, or knock someone down to get trampled or get a thin dagger slipped through the cracks or a helmet taken off.

[gbaji]

Its worth pointing out that the arrows don't just "bounce off". They transfer the kinetic energy, often with enough force to break an arrow.

Depends on the style of armor. Later plate designs were specifically shaped to maximize the odds of deflecting arrows. That's why you see pointy breastplates, and not round, but sharply angled pieces on the head, shoulders, arms, legs, hips, etc. Every surface is designed so that an arrow hitting it is almost never going to hit a straight flat surface.

And in the scenario I was speaking to, we're also talking about indirect fire, so really the only vulnerability was gaps between the helm and shoulders, and maybe lower down along the back of the legs. Which was why they were holding their shields over their heads (which, combined with the press of bodies, just maximized the amount of heat trapped around them). Ironically, the exhaustion effect might have actually been less if they'd been suffering more direct fire from a closer range. Would have probably lost more from the actual arrow fire though, so hard to say. Of course, we'd have to speculate completely different field positions for the various troops involved, different marching orders, etc, so the whole thing kinda goes out the window as an example at that point.

Warbow arrows for a 100+ pound bow are no joke. They are chunky boys. Even if it doesn't penetrate the armour, being hit with one sucks majorly. It can even break bones through armour, or cause concussions. There are battlefield remains of people with broken necks, through their armour is intact (although its more likely this was done with an axe or a hammer). I imagine even blocking a shot like that with a shield is going to make your arm very sore.

Hand axes also don't pierce armour generally speaking, but yeah, you just deliver enough kinetic force to break bones and smash skulls through the armour, or knock someone down to get trampled or get a thin dagger slipped through the cracks or a helmet taken off.

Yeah. It's a physics issue. Even with direct fire, it's still velocity times mass. And arrows don't have much mass. That's not to say they can't penetrate some armor completely, and really bruise you up even if they don't (and there's always that chance of hitting a weak point). But everything else being equal, if I was wearing heavy armor with good coverage and had to pick between standing still and letting an arrow hit me versus standing still and letting someone hit me with a sword, or hammer, or axe? I'll take the arrow every single time. There's a massive (pardon the pun) difference between what you are actually being hit with. Again, this is armor type specific. But I'm actually struggling to think of any time period or type of armor that is less capable of reducing injury from an arrow than it is from a directly swung melee weapon.

And yeah. This gets more complex when we factor in shields. If we assume someone actively defending themselves, then different armor/shield combos can skew the results. I can think of a fair number of cases (light/medium armor and small to medium shield typically), where I'd much rather take a melee attack and block it with the shield than stand there hoping my shield will block an incoming arrow (which is very likely to perforate me if it doesn't hit the shield instead).

But that kinda gets to my earlier point about melee engagement versus not. If I was wearing light armor and a medium shield, and there's a horde of archers "over there" who are going to loose volley after volley at me and my company, our best option is to fast march and engage in melee with an enemy force. Standing there just taking it is a bad idea. And typically, once engaged, the archers will stop firing because they may hit their own people. That's how "real world battlefield tactics" would work. But this is exactly the opposite of the "can only fire effectively at targets engaged in melee" concept. With that rule, you are better off holding position, since if you engage, you'll come under not only the melee attacks of the enemy force but also start taking archery fire. Which, again, seems completely backwards to me. You should be "taking archery fire" the entire time you *aren't* engaged, and not taking archery fire when you are.

Again. Unless I'm missing some key element to this rule.

[Slipjig]

The main thing that strikes me is that ranged combat is only superior if you have a front line or distance advantage.

Part of this also depends on the sverity of the aforementioned penalties for firing into melee. It's absolutely realistic that it would be harder to hit your target AND you would have a real chance of hitting your allies.
However, realistic isn't always fun, and if most rounds of combat involve the majority of enemies being in melee with the frontliners, that's going to be frustrating for archers and some casters. You might want to create a "Precise Shot" feat that reduces the penalty and eliminates the possibility of hitting an ally.

If your ranged characters are annoyed by enemies who take cover, well... yes, an opponent who only has only 10% of themselves exposed is tough to hit. Frontal assaults on targets in cover are very much a losing proposition, the ranged characters may need to change tactics (or at least relocate to a spot with a better angle). On the flip side, if you are the GM, give the players some opportunities to take cover, too. And the squares where the players take cover should be seeded with traps no more than 25% of the time.

[Jakinbandw]

1: This is a classic example of the "but dragons" fallacy. I only bring it up because a few months ago we had a thread where people were claiming to have never seen it used in this manner.
2: I think it is more realistic and mathematically elegant to simply have a highly skilled guy have a higher accuracy modifier rather than ignoring penalties.
3: My system isn't D&D, and it assumes PCs are human rather than the quasi superheroes you get in modern D&D.

Ranged weapons can shoot at anyone from anywhere. Melee weapons are limited to people right next to you.

Barring some other factor, ranged is just better, which makes the melee characters feel bad.

Thus, everyone will be playing ranged characters, which is less fun because it is more homogenous and tactical position becomes an afterthought.

Ever play XCom? Even with all ranged, characters, positioning is never just an afterthought.

The issue with giving bigger bonuses is that it then makes archers even better then melee characters when they aren't shooting into melee. I don't know what type of games you're running, but in my experience, if fight generally start in a close enough range that melee characters are useful then archers will spend most fights without opponents that aren't in melee.

And sure, when someone is talking about a wizard throwing magic fireballs around all the time, I assume that means that characters in your game can do things that normal people can't. Maybe I just haven't been initiated into the real world mage guild, but being able to cast magic seems pretty superhuman to me.

At the end of the day though, you have a problem: Your game isn't fun to some of your players. You can either figure out how to fix that problem, or you can ignore it and blame the players. One will make your game more enjoyable, and one won't. You have to choose what is more important to you: a game that is fun and engaging to play, or proper exact modeling of the world to your preferences.

The purpose of ranged attacks is to have the ability to do damage to people at range, hopefully in situations where they cannot damage you back. That's literally the entire point of ranged attacks. A mechanism that removes the ability to do damage to someone at range unless you also have someone in melee (so someone on your "side" must be in risk of taking damage for you to do damage), completely nullifies that purpose.

I disagree that ranged combat only has a purpose if it allows you the ability to kill those helpless to fight back. I totally get that. I play XCom, and my favorite strategy is squadsight snipers and invisible scouts. The thing is, while it's fun for a while, it can kill all tension in a game. I've played and optimized Godbound, and that game is a far lower level of power than what I'm aiming to hit with my own system. As an example: In my recent high level playtest, I had a PC sit on the sun and throw bolts of plasma at the final boss that was located deep underground, burning through the dungeon above to strike them. The player wasn't bothered that they just didn't automatically win the fight, and that the melee fighter had to keep it distracted for the tactic to work. And because they were so far away, they could focus on their offence in place of their defense.

I also want to clarify that I wasn't saying to use my system exactly. I was pointing out that sometimes you can get good results by throwing out the obvious options, and instead implementing something outside the box.

I think that if you are proposing a rule that prevents ranged attackers from actually doing damage at range, clarifying what conditions cause that restriction on ranged damage would seem to be extremely important. So far, all you've stated as the condition is "not be in melee with someone else". So I'm somewhat forced to assume this is what you are proposing here.

If there are other conditions (must have a tower shield or hide behind cover, can't advance while defending against missile attacks, can only defend/block/whatever X number of attacks per round, etc), it may change my assessment. But how you have described it more or less flies in the face of why folks use ranged attacks in the first place.

Okay then, clarifications: Melee range means within a specific distance where a characters bubble of reality warping belief has effect. This is generally a single move action away, so in dnd terms, in melee means having an opponent within 30'. It also requires that the character be able to freely move out of the way. Thus armies consisting of thousands of characters can't evade as their movement speed as a group is too slow to move them out of the line of attack. It requires that the character to be high enough level to not be one shot by the attack. For two soldiers shooting at each other, this means that around 20% of the time, one will just die without any option to evade, even at long ranges. It requires a character to be within their favored Terrain, and to actually have a favored terrain (not something everyone has). Note that there are six times of favored terrain with them being such things as 'Lots of cover,' 'Wide open to allow easy dodging,' and similar.

I'm not questioning the ability of archers to fire into melee. Although, if we're on the subject, if they have "superhuman" abilities, then applying a modest to-hit adjustment to allow their superior abilities to actually matter should not be an issue. Can "non-superheroic" people in this game also fire into melee with no problems? A 10 year old kid who's never picked up a bow can fire into a melee scrum and only hit the folks he's trying to hit, and will never accidentally hit a friend? We're talking base rules here. I'd rather have rules that make sense for the "normal folks", but then have the same rules allow for extremely skilled people to do things outside that norm.

The base rules make no distinction for that. It is such a fringe edge case that I'm not concerned by it. I honestly can't think of the last time I've seen a 10 yo kid make an attack with a bow in any game I've played or heard about. I could add such a rule easily enough, but it feels... actively harmful? It's another rule that a GM and players need to learn, for a situation that doesn't come up.

For the record, let's say a kid does try to help the PCs in combat. He would be rolling a 2d10, keeping the lowest result, and discarding any result higher than a 5. Meanwhile the level 1 PCs would be rolling 2d10+1 keeping the highest result (at a minimum), and most threats they would be facing would be rolling 3d10+2 and keeping the highest result. These are opposed rolls, so the kid would have maybe a 1% chance of making a successful attack. The kid is already pointless in combat, why add another mechanic to make them more useless? Sure it could be realistic, but I don't feel the cognitive load is worth it.

Because Robin Hood has a high enough archery skill that he can eliminate the risk of hitting a friend when firing into melee. Or he's taken a feat which allows him to do this. Either of which makes him actually "special", instead of "just like everone else in this game world". If everyone has the same "special" and "superhuman" abilities, then no one does. There's a lot of value in the PCs actually feeling like their chacters are special, or have abilitiies/skills/whatever that allow them to do things that not everyone else can do. Even among different classes or skill focuses, having the highly skilled archer in the party able to fire into melee safely (for whatever game rule reasons), but if the party tank picks up a bow, he can probably hit things, but firing into melee is a risk. This gives the archer character a reward for focusing on archery.

Sure. It's your game, so do what you want with it. I'm just suggesting that giving stuff like this to "everyone" isn't always going to have the positive outcome you may want. Or it could? Dunno.

Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Removing a penalty on an attack, or just allowing firing into melee to be viable at all (talking about systems where you have to randomly determine the target as part of the attack)? I feel they are boring in comparison. I'd rather use my feat space to give players things, rather that just have them reach baseline competence for play. And for GMs building opponents, this means they can actually just grab a dragon and place them in front of the party, without having to worry about giving the dragon a feat allowing them to use their flame breath in melee.

Except that unless I'm just totally misunderstanding you here, I'm not sure how this is "neat" for the archer character. He's basically being prevented from doing things like attacking melee folks at range before they can close that range (so what? He just stands there with his bow doing nothing while the enemy walks up and attacks him?). If he's got a friend fighting an enemy, and his friend goes down, he can no longer attack? You've certainly got a "side" that is unable to react to opponents here. And how about an encounter where there's a melee scrum in one location, and maybe additional bad guys up on a hilldside, or wall or whatever? Normal tactics is to have the archery folks take out (or at least pin down) that part of the enemy forces, while the melee folks fight their way through. Your rules (at least as they've been explained to me) seem to remove that as a tactical option.


Again. The "normal" use of archery is to attack unengaged people at range. The hoped for result is that you can eliminate some of them *before* they get into melee range and start doing damage to your side. And there are a whole host of tactics available to take advantage of this fact.

In my experience, most players enjoy an interesting fight where there is a chance of winning and losing (at least the ones I play with). They also enjoy the aesthetics of the character archetype they wish to play, and want them to be effective in combat. The advanced form of archery is Scry and Fry from 3.x dnd and pathfinder. It works really well, but when I ran a game where play like that was an option, it quickly became boring and frustrating for my players. It's like turning on godmode in skyrim, fun for a short time, and then boring.

I'm also going to second much of what Dasick said. Everything else being equal, melee damage is higher than archery damage (often much higher). Yes. Lightly armored opponents are vulnerable to archery. But they're also super vulnerable to melee damage too (leather armor doesn't do much to a sword or axe or mace either). But when we get to more heavily armored opponents, arrows fall short while melee damage still works. Shields become the key determinant in both cases, but the force of a melee attack is much greater than the impact force of an arrow (but in theory arrows are harder to block unless you are using a really big shield).

And yes. We could argue that this fits with your model. But it's not that the arrows could not hit, but that they could not penetrate and do damage. If the French foot had been wearing light armor, they would have been ripped apart by the same set of archers. So whether a person at range is "safe" from missile fire is not at all a function of whether they are engaged in melee, but whether the armor they are wearing is sufficient to resist the damage being done. And yeah, this gets us into questions about the game system and whether it makes a distinction between "hit but not damaged" versus "all hits are hits that do damage". And yes, also back to the function of shields, and how different sheiles work for different things (especially missile versus melee).

Honestly, damage is only one way to win a battle in my system. The most common option is breaking the opponent's form, making them unable to effectively defend themselves. Sound like exactly what happened here. So while melee attacks tend higher on damage, allowing them to apply conditions on hit easier, ranged weapons aren't at too much of a disadvantage, because either option is about as good at breaking an opponent's form. They also tend to have an easier time with battlefield control, for reasons I'm not going to get into, other than to say, the fact that they are out of melee range makes it safer for them to ignore their defense, which makes it easier for them to place debuffs.

[gbaji]

Part of this also depends on the sverity of the aforementioned penalties for firing into melee. It's absolutely realistic that it would be harder to hit your target AND you would have a real chance of hitting your allies.
However, realistic isn't always fun, and if most rounds of combat involve the majority of enemies being in melee with the frontliners, that's going to be frustrating for archers and some casters. You might want to create a "Precise Shot" feat that reduces the penalty and eliminates the possibility of hitting an ally.

I think a lot of that can be mitagated as a GM by creating more dynamic combat encounters. Have opponents approach from multiple directions, or be positioned on different levels, or have some enemy combatants take cover and fire at the PCs instead of marching in a line/horde directly into melee every single time. This is difficult to do if every fight is in a dungeon delve type situation, with 10' wide hallways and flat empty 10' tall rooms of various sizes so they all fit on a simple graph paper map. When you start varying the terrain, creating vertical encounters (and no, I don't mean flying creatures, although that's possible too), and having opponents who move around and use the environment as well, you find that there is more potential for different combat tactics than the stock "put our fighters up front while the ranged folks stand in the back and fire through them at the same enemies".

A relatively basic example of this: Party travels down a tunnel entrance and comes into a chamber. It's roughly bean shaped, with a roundish end just to the left, and a longer roundish end to the right. To the right is a group of enemies who have heard them and are gathering weapons to come fight them. Past them to the right is short tunnel leading to another small chamber with more enemies who will enter in a couple rounds. To the left on the opposite wall is another tunnel that leads deeper into the tunnel complex. There's an enemy priest there with a couple of big nasty zombies. He's going to spend the next round or so buffing them and then send them in, while he runs off to raise the alarm. A bit further to the left of that tunnel, there is a sloping ledge that runs along the back wall, traveling upwards from left to right to a gallery that runs 15' wide or so along the opposite side of the chamber they enter. Up there are a number of smaller enemies who will line up attack any unengaged party members with javelins and slings (they're somewhat low tech enemies here).

Note what this does. The party has to deal with the immediate threat, which is positioned off to the right in the form of armed opponents. That's where their melee folks will have to go. There is a little bit of a bottleneck here (the "bean shape" of the room narrows a bit to the right). The rest of the party, if they just stand around will be subject to attack from the gallery on the opposite side of the chamber. They can run up the sloped ledge to get to them, but only one at a time (it's a narrow ledge). Alternatively, they can counter fire with their own archers back (which is what they actually did when I ran this. quite successfully, given they had two elves with good archery skills). So the main fight focuses to the right, but there's some missile weapon exchange to the leftish. Sufficient reserves come from farther to the right to keep the focus there, but then these two zombies show up, which have to be dealt with. If they leave just spell casters and archers there, they may have some issues (hey. No free ride here, right?). Which, as it happened when played out was frankly hillarious, since in this game system, arrows do like minimal damage to zombies, so these two poor elves, holding up the rear and wiping the floor with the wimpy folks and their thrown weapons, suddenly find themselves face to face with a couple seriously buffed up zombies.

In my game, we run combat scenarios like that all the time. Very very rarely is it as simple as "group of opponents attack from a single direction, just in melee, and you can just line up and fight them". I mean, it does happen. But not very often.

If your ranged characters are annoyed by enemies who take cover, well... yes, an opponent who only has only 10% of themselves exposed is tough to hit. Frontal assaults on targets in cover are very much a losing proposition, the ranged characters may need to change tactics (or at least relocate to a spot with a better angle). On the flip side, if you are the GM, give the players some opportunities to take cover, too. And the squares where the players take cover should be seeded with traps no more than 25% of the time.

Yup. Allow for and use cover. Don't have fights occur in featureless rooms. Put stairs on one side leading to a balcony and put opponents up there. Have them walk into a courtyard and find that there are folks up on the walls, and in towers who are now firing down at the party from various directions, while the party also has to fight there way to <whatever>. And yeah. Let them fire back (with cover effects of course). Make the floor uneven. Put slopes in, that have to be clambored up (or around). Put in pillars and ceiling supports that may provide cover as well.

And yeah. If you want to be really evil, have the bad guys trap the obvious cover locations in the room. Sheesh!

[sithlordnergal]

So, I feel like we should know just how much of a penalty someone has for firing into melee. You mentioned earlier it causes you to miss around 1/3rd of the time. That is, quite frankly, way too harsh of a penalty. Would you expect a person in melee to miss 1/3rd of the time?

And being able to fight "at range" is not a balancing factor. Its a non-issue unless all of your combat encounters start at a range where it takes a few rounds for the melee people to get into melee combat.

3.5 had a firing into melee mechanic. It was a -4 penalty. That penalty was virtually non-existent because of how many bonuses you can stack to your attack in that game. Plus it had Precise Shot which removed all penalties to firing into melee that you could get at levels 1 or 3, depending on your class and race.

You might want to look into lowering the penalty, or removing it entirely. If you still want there to be some kind of penalty, go the 5e route and have it be something the player can control. A character within 5 feet of an enemy has disadvantage on ranged attacks, but that character can normally move 5ft away from an enemy, even if they provoke an attack of opportunity.

The penalty is placed squarely in the player's hands. They get to decide if they want to take the penalty or not, which is a lot more reasonable to a player.

[gbaji]

I disagree that ranged combat only has a purpose if it allows you the ability to kill those helpless to fight back.

Didn't say "helpless to fight back". I said "hopefully in situations where they can't damage you back". I'm not descrbing some insane scenario here. Just "I'm have a bow, and there's an enemy 100' away, so I get to shoot at him until he either takes cover, or move close enough to attack me in melee". That's it. You use ranged combat when things are... at range.

Okay then, clarifications: Melee range means within a specific distance where a characters bubble of reality warping belief has effect. This is generally a single move action away, so in dnd terms, in melee means having an opponent within 30'.

That's not remotely what I would consider "melee range" (not sure what sort of consensus there would be on this). To me, "melee range" means "within range to attack with melee", not "within range to move to someone and *then* attack in melee". What this means for an archer is that folks who are standing right next to someone else at the moment they fire, are "at risk" of being hit. Someone standing 30' away at that moment? Not so much. Assuming this game system uses a standard "take turns, make a move and an attack each round" (or something similar), then if, after moving, the melee character is 30' away from someone to the left, and 30' away from someone to the right, and 5' away from someone in front of them, they are only "in melee range" with the one person in front of them, and not the other two. I'm not sure why archery would work differently against those two people, and yet not another person 35' away instead. From the point of view of the archer, all of them (except the guy right next to the other party member) are well well well outside of the "could hit your friend instead" distance.

They're also presumably out of actual ability to be hit with melee weapons (without taking another move action next round). Unless your game system also allows for PCs to strike everyone within 30' of them without actually tracking where they are at any given moment or something (which I'm not discounting btw, given your descriptions so far).

It also requires that the character be able to freely move out of the way. Thus armies consisting of thousands of characters can't evade as their movement speed as a group is too slow to move them out of the line of attack. It requires that the character to be high enough level to not be one shot by the attack. For two soldiers shooting at each other, this means that around 20% of the time, one will just die without any option to evade, even at long ranges. It requires a character to be within their favored Terrain, and to actually have a favored terrain (not something everyone has). Note that there are six times of favored terrain with them being such things as 'Lots of cover,' 'Wide open to allow easy dodging,' and similar.

Ok. That's a lot more restrictions than just "in melee range". Not sure I'd go with all of those choices, but it's your game, so whatever. If it works, it works. I would not at all consider what you are playing even a remote attempt at anything close to a "realistic combat simulation" though, so...

The base rules make no distinction for that. It is such a fringe edge case that I'm not concerned by it. I honestly can't think of the last time I've seen a 10 yo kid make an attack with a bow in any game I've played or heard about. I could add such a rule easily enough, but it feels... actively harmful? It's another rule that a GM and players need to learn, for a situation that doesn't come up.

Forget 10 year old. It's just an example. Someone who isn't specifically skilled. Just a random person. Whatever.

For the record, let's say a kid does try to help the PCs in combat. He would be rolling a 2d10, keeping the lowest result, and discarding any result higher than a 5. Meanwhile the level 1 PCs would be rolling 2d10+1 keeping the highest result (at a minimum), and most threats they would be facing would be rolling 3d10+2 and keeping the highest result. These are opposed rolls, so the kid would have maybe a 1% chance of making a successful attack. The kid is already pointless in combat, why add another mechanic to make them more useless? Sure it could be realistic, but I don't feel the cognitive load is worth it.

Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Going to repeat my earlier assessment that this system is in no way attempting to simulate anything like actual combat. Which is fine, of course. But maybe not the best example to use when trying to talk in general about how to handle ranged combat in a game system. I mean. You've got feats that allow people to fire swords out of their bows? Hit everyone in an area? Fire bows from infinite range?

I'm going to repeat my "extremely videogamy" observation from earlier and just leave it at that. Perfectly valid for a game btw. And sure, in a game like this, worrying about firing into melee is a bit silly (you've literally got people sitting on suns and firing down at other folks through the planets crust or something, so... yeah). But anything not in that sort of theme/powerlevel isn't going to benefit much from rules suggestions based on this sort of game IMO, and I think in a lot of game systems and settings many players and GMs are going to actually care about at least some level of realism, even in an other wise fantasy setting.

[Kane0]

Out of curiosity, you say "at least" equal.

That's interesting to me, as it implies that it is ok if the fireball guy is better than the archer, but not if the archer is better than the fireball guy. Why is that?

Because I don't know the intricacies of your system, there's leeway in either direction.

If you want to just play a supernatural blaster you can do that, but it isn't really a wizard anymore; more Cyclops than Doctor Strange.

Are you saying that as a player, or as a dev? You don't get to determine another player's fantasy. 'Pyromancer' is not particularly uncommon a trope. 'Wizard' might be carrying more baggage for you than the player in question, where you are thinking all the utility is an important aspect and they don't.

At that point though, you are basically spending the same resources and have more or less the same effectiveness as a mundane archer.

There are ways to bypass the firing into melee penalties, but they are a fairly heavy character investment as without them ranged characters are flat out superior to melee characters.

Ah, right. So is the mage investing equal or more, to be less or more effective? What happens if they don't (or can't) put in that heavy character investment? From a player-facing perspective, are those penalties adding to the enjoyment of the game, or are they purely there for dev-facing game balance reasons?

[Talakeal]

So, I feel like we should know just how much of a penalty someone has for firing into melee. You mentioned earlier it causes you to miss around 1/3rd of the time. That is, quite frankly, way too harsh of a penalty. Would you expect a person in melee to miss 1/3rd of the time?

3.5 had a firing into melee mechanic. It was a -4 penalty. That penalty was virtually non-existent because of how many bonuses you can stack to your attack in that game. Plus it had Precise Shot which removed all penalties to firing into melee that you could get at levels 1 or 3, depending on your class and race.

You might want to look into lowering the penalty, or removing it entirely. If you still want there to be some kind of penalty, go the 5e route and have it be something the player can control. A character within 5 feet of an enemy has disadvantage on ranged attacks, but that character can normally move 5ft away from an enemy, even if they provoke an attack of opportunity.

The penalty is placed squarely in the player's hands. They get to decide if they want to take the penalty or not, which is a lot more reasonable to a player.

The penalty is -4 (which on average, is also the same as disadvantage in 5E). It is not a 1/3rd miss chance, although I could see it reducing overall accuracy by 1/3 in some situations. You are probably thinking about Quertus' statement upthread that a player should succeed 2/3 of the time.

Seems kinda moot to be talking about balance when their characters are so far from being optimized

The real question is *why* they're so poorly optimized.

If they're just troll characters to troll you or goof around, it's one thing. You can't expect a system to be "balanced" if people deliberately make poor choices.

If they're troll characters because they didn't know how to build better, it's a different issue

Good question.

I am not sure if they are deliberately trolling, or they are just too proud to admit they need help with their characters and would rather look malicious than incompetent.


I know Bob originally said he wanted to play a wild mage to get everyone else's goat, but didn't realize that he is more competitive than we are and that his wild surges would actually come back and bite him in the butt.

At the end of the day though, you have a problem: Your game isn't fun to some of your players. You can either figure out how to fix that problem, or you can ignore it and blame the players. One will make your game more enjoyable, and one won't. You have to choose what is more important to you: a game that is fun and engaging to play, or proper exact modeling of the world to your preferences.

This is a pretty big false dilemma.

No game is 100% enjoyable to 100% of the people 100% of the time.

I don't think it is even theoretically possible to make such a game, as many things players want are in direct conflict, and delayed gratification is almost always more rewarding.

For the record, every game I have ever played has some prohibition or penalty for shooting into melee, and most of these are massively popular multi-million dollar games in spite of it.

3.5 had a firing into melee mechanic. It was a -4 penalty. That penalty was virtually non-existent because of how many bonuses you can stack to your attack in that game. Plus it had Precise Shot which removed all penalties to firing into melee that you could get at levels 1 or 3, depending on your class and race.

You might want to look into lowering the penalty, or removing it entirely. If you still want there to be some kind of penalty, go the 5e route and have it be something the player can control. A character within 5 feet of an enemy has disadvantage on ranged attacks, but that character can normally move 5ft away from an enemy, even if they provoke an attack of opportunity.

Oh, there are plenty of ways to negate the penalty or even turn it into a net bonus if you want to play risky. Worst case scenario, just get a bayonet or sawed off barrel and join in on the melee without penalty!

Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Removing a penalty on an attack, or just allowing firing into melee to be viable at all (talking about systems where you have to randomly determine the target as part of the attack)? I feel they are boring in comparison. I'd rather use my feat space to give players things, rather that just have them reach baseline competence for play. And for GMs building opponents, this means they can actually just grab a dragon and place them in front of the party, without having to worry about giving the dragon a feat allowing them to use their flame breath in melee.

I would be interested to hear what your definition of a "feat tax" is.

I personally vastly prefer feats that make you better at something rather than giving you new abilities, and most everything in my game can be attempted by anyone.

Because I don't know the intricacies of your system, there's leeway in either direction.

Ok.

I am probably just being too literal; but when you say "atleast as good" that implies to me that a wizard can be as good or better than an archer, but never worse.

I am shooting for "roughly as good" with neither one being a clear winner.

Are you saying that as a player, or as a dev? You don't get to determine another player's fantasy. 'Pyromancer' is not particularly uncommon a trope. 'Wizard' might be carrying more baggage for you than the player in question, where you are thinking all the utility is an important aspect and they don't.

As a developer.

If you have only a single supernatural power, you aren't a wizard in this setting.

Pyromancer is indeed an awesome concept. Bob played one in my last campaign, it was amazing. But pyromancers are a type of wizard, they aren't just someone who casts the same spell over and over game.

What happens if they don't (or can't) put in that heavy character investment?

Then you take a -4 penalty for shooting into close combat.

Ah, right. So is the mage investing equal or more, to be less or more effective?

Are we talking about a mage or a guy with an innate ability to cast magic missile?

In both cases, the answer is "roughly the same" although I suppose I could go into a deep dive of all the minute differences.

From a player-facing perspective, are those penalties adding to the enjoyment of the game, or are they purely there for dev-facing game balance reasons?

In my experience, imbalanced options make everyone feel bad.

It feels unfair when the enemies use them against you.
You're allies feel like dead weight when they don't use them.
You get jealous of your allies when they do use them.

[sithlordnergal]

The penalty is -4 (which on average, is also the same as disadvantage in 5E). It is not a 1/3rd miss chance, although I could see it reducing overall accuracy by 1/3 in some situations. You are probably thinking about Quertus' statement upthread that a player should succeed 2/3 of the time.

Oh, there are plenty of ways to negate the penalty or even turn it into a net bonus if you want to play risky. Worst case scenario, just get a bayonet or sawed off barrel and join in on the melee without penalty!

Ah, yeah I probably did see his comment then and mistake it for yours somehow. That said, what are the ways to remove those penalties? What are the ways a spellcaster can remove those penalties? How many of those ways are directly in 100% control of the caster, and are not reliant on allies or npcs? And how easy are they to pull off? And "Swapping to melee", like using a bayonet, does not count.

As I mentioned, 3.5 also has a -4 penalty...but you can completely remove at at level 1 or level 3, for good. That's a super simple way to get around that penalty. 5e has it so the person making the attack can choose if they want the penalty for attacking while in melee or not, they just have to risk an opportunity attack.

If the methods required are tricky/difficult to pull off, then they're effectively worthless and can't actually be considered ways to get around the penalty. If they require another player to do something on their turn to let you get around it, then its better then the difficult version...but not by much.

[Jakinbandw]

Going to repeat my earlier assessment that this system is in no way attempting to simulate anything like actual combat. Which is fine, of course. But maybe not the best example to use when trying to talk in general about how to handle ranged combat in a game system. I mean. You've got feats that allow people to fire swords out of their bows? Hit everyone in an area? Fire bows from infinite range?

I'm going to repeat my "extremely videogamy" observation from earlier and just leave it at that. Perfectly valid for a game btw. And sure, in a game like this, worrying about firing into melee is a bit silly (you've literally got people sitting on suns and firing down at other folks through the planets crust or something, so... yeah). But anything not in that sort of theme/powerlevel isn't going to benefit much from rules suggestions based on this sort of game IMO, and I think in a lot of game systems and settings many players and GMs are going to actually care about at least some level of realism, even in an other wise fantasy setting.

Two things:

1) I disagree with the 'videogamy' description. I have yet to see a video game that goes as hard as my game does, and many games of the biggest names in gamming (CoD for example) try to make things feel realistic. Even something like Elden Ring doesn't go as hard on what characters can do. If you do know a video game that allows for the level of power that I'm trying to accomplish, please let me know.

I am specifically aiming for Anime style fights, with things like Dead Fantasy being a key referance point for low level play.

2) As I said, I was giving an example of how not doing the obvious thing can lead to really fun gameplay. I wasn't trying to suggest the Tal copy me one for one. I'm a great fan of examining expectations, and trying experimental things. To me, mechanics need to be fun first, and after that is achieved, lore and explanations can be made to allow them to work. While you an Tal both find it unrealistic that a character at a far enough distance could dodge a ranged projectile, for a couple other posters, they find it more realistic. In my experience, having something feel realistic in ttrpgs is all about justifications and explanations, rather than about the core rules themselves.

If you have only a single supernatural power, you aren't a wizard in this setting.

So there would be room for fighters with supernatural abilities?

I would be interested to hear what your definition of a "feat tax" is.

A feat tax is when I have to spend a character building resource to reach an expected level of competence. If I have a +6 to hit at range as an archer, but 90% of rounds in battles I only have a +2 because of penalties, then to have access to the bonus listed on my character sheet, I need to spend a resource I could be using the expand my options, just to be able to roll what I have listed on my character sheet.

It also applies when the developer does balance passes making certain assumptions. If the numbers are balanced around me picking certain options, then I don't really have a choice. I can either pick those options and be operating as expected, or not pick those options and become increasingly useless. A good example of this is the Wrath of the Righteous pathfinder videogame (it's just pathfinder 1e in videogame form). It's got nearly limitless options, but the foes are balanced that unless you turn down the difficulty, you can reach a point where you can't even hope to finish the game, because you took the wrong options instead of the right ones.

I personally vastly prefer feats that make you better at something rather than giving you new abilities, and most everything in my game can be attempted by anyone.

Can anyone attempt to cast magic spells or just magic users?

I guess I'm just not a fan of the numbers race. I prefer wide design over tall design. https://youtu.be/BoGrTWEt7y8

[stoutstien]

I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.

[Talakeal]

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?

If the methods required are tricky/difficult to pull off, then they're effectively worthless and can't actually be considered ways to get around the penalty.

That's an odd philosophy.

Why shouldn't players who take the time to get good at the game / characters who devote resources to something see the benefit?

So there would be room for fighters with supernatural abilities?

Oh absolutely.

I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.

Can anyone attempt to cast magic spells or just magic users?

To walk back my statement at bit, anyone in my system can attempt anything that a RL human could, potentially, do.

Supernatural powers or abilities requiring body parts humans don't have are more limited.

That being said, anyone can develop supernatural powers, and wizards can attempt to cast any spell without needing to learn it first.

I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free-floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.

My system is a lot more straightforward than D&D.

Most abilities are just bigger numbers; if I want to be a good swordsman, I put more points into swordsmanship.

I guess that makes everything a feat tax? I don't know.

[stoutstien]

My system is a lot more straightforward than D&D.

Most abilities are just bigger numbers; if I want to be a good swordsman, I put more points into swordsmanship.

I guess that makes everything a feat tax? I don't know.

It's a question of variance. If you *need" the number to remain relevant compared to having the numbers is *nice* will have completely different feels. You also have to factor in if bigger numbers have a linear cost/return compared to weighted values.

[tyckspoon]

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?

Player has dumb opinions and can be ignored, and your player group in general is kind of bad at.. um, everything. (I am guessing this is related to the behavior you've described where their default 'strategy', such as it is, is to try to have tankier characters stand in front and the ranged characters stand behind them while making no effort to either locate or create a situation where this actually works, so of course the player blames you for 'tanking doesn't work' because they made absolutely no effort to stop the enemy from implementing the highly complex 'walk around them' strategy.)

Charitably, your player has an overly-simplistic concept of what a Tank is, probably just 'can absorb a lot of damage.' But that's just being tough. Tanking is -preventing the rest of your party from suffering damage.- If they don't have any abilities that allow them to do that - area control, some way to compel enemies to focus on them, redirecting hits on their party to themselves, whatever (I assume your system provides some way they could do at least one or several of these things) they aren't a tank.
Uncharitably, your player made build or play errors that don't allow them to function as a tank, and because they are entirely incapable of self reflection and acknowledging that they could be wrong, then it must be your fault that the world doesn't work the way they want it to.

(This is, ideally, a problem that class-based games address - if you want to tank, you take the designated tank class, and the package of abilities provided there ensures you have what you need to do so effectively. When you go point based/build-your-own you are much more reliant on your players having the mechanical knowledge needed to find and take the abilities that let them do what they want correctly instead.. and since they refuse to take advice or even apparently let you review their sheets to figure out what they actually can do so you can adjust your encounter design accordingly, there isn't a whole heck of a lot that you can do about this.)

[NichG]

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?

The concept of a tank doesn't really work organically, it usually needs something supernatural to support it or specific combinations of terrain and objective. So a dedicated tank is not really viable realistically - instead one might choose to e.g. turtle in a fortification to preserve the threat of being able to go from defense to attack if you aren't dealt with. But defense without the potential to cause more harm if ignored doesn't work.

Some games use aggro mechanics for this, some games might have powers that let you share your HP pool or maintain a shield, others might let you jump in and take attacks for someone else, others might have models of suppression - 'tanking' with a rain of bullets.

So the question comes down to whether you want 'tanking' to be a viable role in your system. It's not the case that it has to be!

But if not, the system should also not try to suggest that archetype is intended either.

[gbaji]

Two things:

1) I disagree with the 'videogamy' description. I have yet to see a video game that goes as hard as my game does, and many games of the biggest names in gamming (CoD for example) try to make things feel realistic. Even something like Elden Ring doesn't go as hard on what characters can do. If you do know a video game that allows for the level of power that I'm trying to accomplish, please let me know.

I am specifically aiming for Anime style fights, with things like Dead Fantasy being a key referance point for low level play.

That's pretty much how I define 'videogamey'. If the combat sequences look like I'm watching people play Mario Smash Bros? It's videogamey. Big flashy attacks, powerups, things exploding out of nothing, extra stuff appearing and doing "things" on the battle field? All videogamey to me. If the combat is more about positioning of PCS and opponents, using terrain to advantage, and more subtle application of combat choices (so using an ability that allows you to tumble past an opponent to get into a better position is "normal". One that allows you to sprout firey wings that incenerates all enemies within 200' is "videogamey").

And yeah, pretty much anything that looks like a sequence in an anime? videogamey.

Again. Nothing wrong with that if that's what you and your players enjoy. Just saying that when I say "videogamey', what you are describing is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about.

I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

I don't think having a game system that applies penalties to specific and consistent (and frankly logical) combat situations, but then allows a character who focuses on that sort of situation to take a feat to remove the penalty is a "feat tax". If all attacks were ranged attacks, and everyone had to "fire into melee" all the time, then yeah, it's just a feat to avoid an arbitrary negative. But in this case? I don't think it applies. Being able to use full skill against targets standing out in the open, but having minuses for cover or for crowded conditions (other people in the way), is "normal". Requiring a feat to avoid those penalities is also perfectly acceptable.

If you don't have things like this in a game, then players have no reason to actually bother with things like positioning, tactics, terrain, etc. So yeah. It's not a bug, it's a feature IMO.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.

And this is another aspect of this. If there are different feats, some of which make people more capable in melee combat, and some which make them more capable in ranged, or spell casting, or whatever, then that gives characters variation, and makes them "special" in whatever they've chosen to focus on. That should be the case. My archer should be better at hitting things than some other random character the same level who just picks up a bow for the first time. And yeah, this can be difficult in level based games, where there is an expectation and "range" of AC/DC vesus skill from a balance perspective. And I can see how this can be difficult for game designers to manage (some feats become too powerful and have to be tuned down, while others are relatively worthless).

But yeah. That's still another conversation.

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?

Its a problem with a player who has played too much MMORPGs and thinks that's how a TTRPG should work.

In a lot of those games, "tanks" are given special powers that allow them to force opponents to engage them in melee combat and ignore everyone else. There's a whole lot of complex reasoning for this (a heck of a lot of which has to do with limited clipping rules/calculations for a lot of older games). So there's an expectation that the NPCs should behave the same way in a TTRPPG.

This is really a player education moment IMO. You let the player know how the "rules of the world" work, and that if the PCs can run around NPCs to attack the vulnerable spellcasters, then so can the NPCs. Heck. Make a point of putting them into that exact situation. Have a single really powerful melee guy standing up front. Then have some wimpy spellcasters standing a bit behyind, using magic to buff/heal the melee guy. But put this in a 30' wide room, with plenty of space for the party to just run around. Watch as the party does the "normal" thing of haivng one person engage the big melee guy while everyone else moves around or uses ranged stuff to attack the weaker casters.

Try to highlight to the player *why* these tactics exist, and that... yeah... the NPCs get to use them too. Then maybe ask the player "Wouldn't the NPCs have done better if they'd put the melee guy in a 5' wide doorway instead of a 30' wide room?". Get them to actually think about this stuff, and why you do specific things in combat the way you do them. And then maybe it'll occur to him that if he really wants to "tank", he has to also think about positioning and not just "I'm a tank, why isn't everyone running over and attacking me instead of the robe wearers?".

[sithlordnergal]

That's an odd philosophy.

Why shouldn't players who take the time to get good at the game / characters who devote resources to something see the benefit?

So I think you misunderstand. I'm not talking about systems mastery when I say "tricky/difficult", I mean "If the steps required to bypass the -4 penalty to ranged attacks requires a bunch of setup, and everything to go exactly as planned, then that method is too difficult to realistically use".

As an extreme example, lets say in order to avoid the -4 penalty the target needs to be Restrained, you have to be behind them, and you have to fire from Stealth to catch them off guard. That method would not be very good because it would be difficult to just have all those conditions met at one time, unless you specifically dedicated a full turn to set it all up. And even then, there's no guarantee that your target would remain restrained or that you'll remain hidden until your next turn comes around to get your shots off.


As for the design philosophy, it actually comes from a fallacy where programmers will occasionally make some ability for a game that is better than normal, but requires an extremely high level of skill/precision to use, and just expect players to use the new ability because its better.

[Witty Username]

So, my opinion changes depending on the paradigm.
If mages and martials have similar resources in terms of at will, and per day. Then they should roughly match in things they are expected to participate in.
If mages use primarily a limited per day resource, and martials are primarily at will abilities, the mage should trend stronger on a per action basis. While the appeal of martials should be values that are per action lower but more consistent.

It sounds like from the players complaints, that either, martial at will damage is overtuned (eh, unlikely) or spells don't have the expected Impact for their investment (if a martial can out damage a spell in a similar time frame, very likely this is the case).

As for the design philosophy, it actually comes from a fallacy where programmers will occasionally make some ability for a game that is better than normal, but requires an extremely high level of skill/precision to use, and just expect players to use the new ability because its better.

That isn't so much a fallacy as much as an appeal to a particular type of player, some players like to expend effort to get more value, or more accurately the feeling of compelling choice, options that are less intuitive or require greater skill to use effectively tend to appeal to this kind of player.
Some just want to pick up the game and have fun, experience the story, etc. Which these kind of features are not the intended audience for.

[Telok]

Ok Tak, so I've actually read the system before (although not deeply) and just downloaded it again. I'll start making characters from a novice (to the system) point of view and, after a couple, you tell me anything I'm massively misunderstanding or missing or such. Meanwhile try to get a look at Bob's character, give a bit of semi-numeric description, and then I'll try to build something like it and we'll see what you say.

That might ought give a better readout than just a bunch of D&D based guesstimates.

[Talakeal]

Ok Tak, so I've actually read the system before (although not deeply) and just downloaded it again. I'll start making characters from a novice (to the system) point of view and, after a couple, you tell me anything I'm massively misunderstanding or missing or such. Meanwhile try to get a look at Bob's character, give a bit of semi-numeric description, and then I'll try to build something like it and we'll see what you say.

That might ought give a better readout than just a bunch of D&D based guesstimates.

Wow. Thanks for doing that! I would love to see what you come up with!

I have Bob's character sheet on my right now. I will have the other three tomorrow if you want to see them.

Spoiler: Flossie

Show

Attributes:
5 Agility
5 Charisma
5 Dexterity
5 Endurance
7 Intelligence
5 Perception
4 Strength
10 Willpower

Skills:
Resolve (Major)
Science (Major)
Wyrd (Major)
Academics
Acrobatics
Athletics
Business
Fortitude
Gaming
Insight
Reason

Traits:
Deformity (Shifting Hair Color)
Dweomer Mastery (Empower)
Enlightened 10 (Minor)
Meditation IV
Meek
Poltergeist
Priest (Dionysus)
Relic (Symbiotic Staff of Power - Entropy Bolt)
Vice (Gambling)

Equipment:
Armored Clothing +1
Boots +1
Cauldron +1
Gaming Pieces +1
Grimoire +1
Seer's Crystals +1
Various potions and periapts

So, my opinion changes depending on the paradigm.
If mages and martials have similar resources in terms of at will, and per day. Then they should roughly match in things they are expected to participate in.
If mages use primarily a limited per day resource, and martials are primarily at will abilities, the mage should trend stronger on a per action basis. While the appeal of martials should be values that are per action lower but more consistent.

It sounds like from the players complaints, that either, martial at will damage is over-tuned (eh, unlikely) or spells don't have the expected Impact for their investment (if a martial can out damage a spell in a similar time frame, very likely this is the case).

My philosophy is that spells don't need to be innately stronger than martial abilities as you can always use the right spell for the job, guaranteeing that they will have more of an effect.

My player is mad because he is using the wrong spell for the job (in the case, one that needs a roll to hit when he is firing over the shoulder of his massive buddy into a melee in a tightly confined dungeon corridor).

[Telok]

Haven't finished the whole read through yet to start characters. System seems well balanced, better than DtD40k7e.

Mmo style tank is totally doable, charisma, one primary charisma skill, minor artifact. Might actually better than mmo style.

Also may have found a mana battery exploit. Ally is a fated chatacter and thus gets full character build right? Does that include ability to take things like the nexus place ownership. Because every pc starts with a home/house you take two allies & soulmate trait all three of you. Allies stay home on defense & crafting, sink points into nexus. PC uses soulmate to siphon mana for casting while allies trade off meditating to regain ftom the nexus. Does that work?

[Talakeal]

Haven't finished the whole read through yet to start characters. System seems well balanced, better than DtD40k7e.

Mmo style tank is totally doable, charisma, one primary charisma skill, minor artifact. Might actually better than mmo style.

Their big complaints is that taunting suffers huge penalties if the enemy can't reach you or is harmed by attacking you; whereas in an MMO the mobs will just stack ontop of you in infinite numbers and then kill themselves in your AOE aura / damage shield.

Also may have found a mana battery exploit. Ally is a fated chatacter and thus gets full character build right? Does that include ability to take things like the nexus place ownership. Because every pc starts with a home/house you take two allies & soulmate trait all three of you. Allies stay home on defense & crafting, sink points into nexus. PC uses soulmate to siphon mana for casting while allies trade off meditating to regain from the nexus. Does that work?

It does, yeah.

I have never quite been happy with Nexus and am looking to rework it before release.

Allys are always a bit of a thorny situation; I would just keep in mind that the GM should RP them as having thoughts and desires of their own, and also count them as members of the team when calculating the difficulty of missions.

[Telok]

Their big complaints is that taunting suffers huge penalties if the enemy can't reach you or is harmed by attacking you; whereas in an MMO the mobs will just stack ontop of you in infinite numbers and then kill themselves in your AOE aura / damage shield.

It does, yeah.

I have never quite been happy with Nexus and am looking to rework it before release.

Allys are always a bit of a thorny situation; I would just keep in mind that the GM should RP them as having thoughts and desires of their own, and also count them as members of the team when calculating the difficulty of missions.

Well in table top the npcs run as people who can be faked out, which is another charisma based skill anyways. In a mmo they're code that can see pc stats. So all the pc in your game has to do is appear hittable/reachable until they're locked down. And... I don't see anything restricting wing clipper (I was wrong on cheapness though, that's still doable on starting char though?) to melee weapons?

Nexus is fine probably. Points are limited, needs meditation, takes another item to 'acorn of far whatev' access it. It's the combo with taking an ally at near the cost of that remote access item, who lives there, provides move immedate mana, and offloads the cost of stuff like 'unmappable locale' plus does crafting while not particularly actively participating in the mission.

Yeah, ally/leadership has potential issues. I don't think your players will ever touch allies though? It probably sings to them of "dependent weak npc for the gm to kill and laugh at me". In DtD40k7e I solved it for myself in that there's 5 ranks, so rank 1 is a 1st level char available 20% of a mission or 1/5 missions (gains xp at 1/2 pc rate onscreen & 1/5 pc rate offscreen). As rank increases either level of the ally or availability of the ally increases. A rank 5 ally would be a 5th level character with 20% availability or a 1st level ally always available. Biggest thing is I'll ask who/what the player want the ally to be and then I as gm create it. I still give the player what they asked for. I just explain ahead of time the ally is their own person who is a friend with their own life and, importantly, links to the setting like being part or organizations and having enemies/hunted (a specific disadv in the game).

It's a mixed blessing really. Last ally they had was a member of the Cocain Wizards Guild. So there we a couple times they left him behind because he was higher than a kite and a coked up caster is a bad thing with the 40k Warp in play. On the other hand one time he showed up with a bear. A blue, six legged, cyborg chainsword legs, armored, drug sniffing bear. It immedately became the partys' mascot.

[Jakinbandw]

So I somehow missed a link to the system in Tal's signature, so I'm reading through it now. I'll update this post as I go, but first things first:

Talakeal - Can you Please add an outline to to your pdf? Without it moving around is going to be much slower than it has to be, and I'm seeing nearly 600 pages to search for information through.

[Talakeal]

Well in table top the npcs run as people who can be faked out, which is another charisma based skill anyways. In a mmo they're code that can see pc stats. So all the pc in your game has to do is appear hittable/reachable until they're locked down. And... I don't see anything restricting wing clipper (I was wrong on cheapness though, that's still doable on starting char though?) to melee weapons?

Wing-Clipper is absolutely not limited to melee weapons. Creating one use arrows of wing-clipper is a great way to deal with highly mobile monsters.

Nexus is fine probably. Points are limited, needs meditation, takes another item to 'acorn of far whatev' access it. It's the combo with taking an ally at near the cost of that remote access item, who lives there, provides move immedate mana, and offloads the cost of stuff like 'unmappable locale' plus does crafting while not particularly actively participating in the mission.

The problem with a nexus is that it really isn't interesting. Right now its more or less an alternate way to buy mana.

I would much prefer if it were something that replenished mana steadily over the course of the mission, but I have no idea how to square the rules and the fiction in that regard.

Yeah, ally/leadership has potential issues. I don't think your players will ever touch allies though? It probably sings to them of "dependent weak npc for the gm to kill and laugh at me". In DtD40k7e I solved it for myself in that there's 5 ranks, so rank 1 is a 1st level char available 20% of a mission or 1/5 missions (gains xp at 1/2 pc rate onscreen & 1/5 pc rate offscreen). As rank increases either level of the ally or availability of the ally increases. A rank 5 ally would be a 5th level character with 20% availability or a 1st level ally always available. Biggest thing is I'll ask who/what the player want the ally to be and then I as gm create it. I still give the player what they asked for. I just explain ahead of time the ally is their own person who is a friend with their own life and, importantly, links to the setting like being part or organizations and having enemies/hunted (a specific disadv in the game).

I need to look at ally. Right now its just too broad and open to DM interpretation. Thanks for the ideas!

So I somehow missed a link to the system in Tal's signature, so I'm reading through it now. I'll update this post as I go, but first things first:

Talakeal - Can you Please add an outline to to your pdf? Without it moving around is going to be much slower than it has to be, and I'm seeing nearly 600 pages to search for information through.

Sure. I would love to.

To be clear though, what exactly do you mean by an outline?

A more detailed table of contents? Hyperlinks?

[Jakinbandw]

Sure. I would love to.

To be clear though, what exactly do you mean by an outline?

A more detailed table of contents? Hyperlinks?

I should have said bookmarks, but I was busy trying to find things. Here is an example of what I'd really like:

[Talakeal]

I should have said bookmarks, but I was busy trying to find things. Here is an example of what I'd really like:

Shouldn't be a problem, although I recreate the .pdf fairly frequently so I need to figure out a way to save it between versions.

[Telok]

Shouldn't be a problem, although I recreate the .pdf fairly frequently so I need to figure out a way to save it between versions.

Bookmarks persist, at least in all the pdf software I've seen. If you're exporting out a Word/OpenOffice doc I'm not sure but wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a way.

Edit: still reading... went "ewww" at a beastiary entry, it was the nymph... do your players ever make use of cooperative casting?...monsters don't have derives stats listed, yeah its another line and if you don't need it its ok for your use... defenitely needs a "mini books" version with items, monsters, spells, setting split out... glyph is spell grenades? or quick & dirty potions?... got spare colons in the feats of strength table...