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1 year ago ::
Feb 02, 2012 - 9:27PM
#41
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Date Joined:
Apr 16, 2009
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My last 3.5E character was a barbarian, and literally did a lot of that two-trees-chopping-at-each-other style combat, neither moving until one of them falls over.
My first 4E character is a dancer. Most of his encounter, daily, and utility powers are at least partly about movement; so is one of his two at-will attack powers.
The thing is, there's a limit on how much movement makes sense within an attack power if you don't have multi-attacks. Tempest Dance, a spinning steel swath of destruction - making only one attack? (4E version: attack, shift, attack, shift, attack; three different targets required.)
So if you get rid of multi-attacks, you're also crimping other things a bit. Perhaps more than you intended.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 2:30AM
#42
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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No amount of fluff can change the way mechanics "feel".
Your own imagination reallly does have to fill in here.
There is only so many actual mechanics humans can be expected to manage reasonably without it becoming a work excercise flexible use of those mechanics so you have ongoing damage being bleeding in one case and ongoing damage being burning in another you have somebody using a skill check to stop the fire and a skill check to stop the bleeding...
Flavor text is how you picture the action If you intentionally fight it... shrug that is your choice.
On subject
A round is enough time its always assumed you are making multipe paries and thrust even if you roll only one telling attack.
If I make one roll and the damage can be split between enemies and or if the attack "sequence" when successful delivers damage to more than one enemy... it is different than making multiple rolls but perhaps its reasonable for the success of one action to be interdependent on the success of the others missing ones can throw off subsequent attacks you had planned.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 3:01AM
#43
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Date Joined:
Jul 10, 2003
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One of my biggest gripes in 3.X was the time allotted for your turn and why your level restricted how many times you could swing a sword. 6 seconds is a long time to get only 1 attack. In later levels it wasn't even worth rolling for the third attack because it required a 20 to succeed.
I think adjusting the amount of time your round takes will help with having a lot of time to do nothing in early levels and naturally limit the amount of multiple attacks you can make a round at higher levels. I always see very quick bursts of action during combat. I could quickly tie both of my shoes before you swing your sword at me under the current time structure.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 5:45PM
#44
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Multiple attacks against the same target with the same bonus are faster than AOE. If you have to attack 3 targets, it's 3 dice to attack, and 3 questions of "does x hit". And it's the prep of "red die is goblin #1", etc. Attacking the same target allows for all 3 dice to be rolled at once. The 3e solution of differing bonuses just adds more math and more time.
Of course, I'm a strong believer in static damage for everything but 1 attack per turn. The paladin mark is fast, easy, and balanced (though it doesn't scale well). The fighter mark takes longer, doesnt make the fighter
More flavorful, but slows the game down. I'd rather off turn actions were static damage.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 9:17PM
#45
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Date Joined:
May 15, 2008
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No amount of fluff can change the way mechanics "feel".
Your own imagination reallly does have to fill in here.
There is only so many actual mechanics humans can be expected to manage reasonably without it becoming a work excercise flexible use of those mechanics so you have ongoing damage being bleeding in one case and ongoing damage being burning in another you have somebody using a skill check to stop the fire and a skill check to stop the bleeding...
Imagination is all well and good, but that hardly changes the fact that different mechanics have different impacts, psychologically speaking. I'm hardly suggesting that mechanics need to simulate reality for the player to be able to understand what is going on, but that doesn't mean that a certain amount of mechanical variety doesn't enhance the experience.
Flavor text is how you picture the action If you intentionally fight it... shrug that is your choice.
Perhaps then we should just have one universal mechanic for everything, and we can have classes that are all identical and then we'll just use imagination and flavor text to set them apart from one another? You make it sound as though preferring some link between mechanics and flavor text is some sort of personal failing, which is frankly ludicrous. If we take your argument to its logical extension there isn't any need for a new edition of D&D we could all just go and play Risus* instead.
On subject
A round is enough time its always assumed you are making multipe paries and thrust even if you roll only one telling attack.
If I make one roll and the damage can be split between enemies and or if the attack "sequence" when successful delivers damage to more than one enemy... it is different than making multiple rolls but perhaps its reasonable for the success of one action to be interdependent on the success of the others missing ones can throw off subsequent attacks you had planned.
Sounds like an attempt to justify a bad mechanic (bad because it's swingy, fighters are supposed to be competent combatants and swingy dice give the feeling of luck/incompetence depending on how they swing, multiple attacks act as a sort of pseudo dice pool and smooth out those bumps). I'm tired of designing for balance first and then going back and trying to justify it afterwards, that's a wrong headed approach if ever I've heard one.
*A fine game, but not what I want out of D&D.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 10:01PM
#46
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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You make it sound as though preferring some link between mechanics and flavor text is some sort of personal failing, which is frankly ludicrous.
I think the word "feel" is over used and in addition to making me think of girls with flowers in there hair is a mask for something else usually a desire for something to be the way it used to be without actually examining or considering other posibilities. Other times it seems like its a desire for overly complex mechanics. and I love examining the link between mechanics and flavor... its seem to me you prefer it cast in stone.
If we take your argument to its logical extension there isn't any need for a new edition of D&D we could all just go and play Risus* instead.
Thats called blowing something to the extreme to mock it... and no its not logical just extreme.
Rissus is indeed interesting and yes not very D&D
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On subject
A round is enough time its always assumed you are making multipe paries and thrust even if you roll only one telling attack.
If I make one roll and the damage can be split between enemies and or if the attack "sequence" when successful delivers damage to more than one enemy... it is different than making multiple rolls but perhaps its reasonable for the success of one action to be interdependent on the success of the others missing ones can throw off subsequent attacks you had planned.
Sounds like an attempt to justify a bad mechanic (bad because it's swingy, fighters are supposed to be competent combatants and swingy dice give the feeling of luck/incompetence depending on how they swing, multiple attacks act as a sort of pseudo dice pool and smooth out those bumps).
That can be boring too typically when things are contingent you might justify each chained together success in to a big climactic one. And it reallly is a natural function of missing is that you are thrown off for a moment as there is usually a certain amount of assumptions when planning out a sequence 
For some folk swinginess contributes excitement its subject to taste, you are the one wanting a variety of mechanics no? perhaps more than one method ie one shows old boring bang bang, and the other does a bang bida boom...
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 10:56PM
#47
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Date Joined:
May 15, 2008
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I think the word "feel" is over used and in addition to making me think of girls with flowers in there hair is a mask for something else usually a desire for something to be the way it used to be without actually examining or considering other posibilities. Other times it seems like its a desire for overly complex features.
If you would rather attack the word choice than the argument that is of course your decison, but it's not a very productive one. Either you accept mechanics matter, or you don't. But since we're having this discussion then I can only imagine that you must feel they do. So rather than, all but directly, accusing me of having come to my current stand without due examination or without having considered (and consequently discarding) other solutions or suggesting that I have some bizarre desire for complexity (I don't, I do in fact like simplicity, but there is such a thing as over simplification and times when more texture is called for), perhaps you could skip all the ad hominem, as it serves nothing than to obscure the conversation, and just get to the meat of things.
Thats called blowing something to the extreme to mock it... and no its not logical just extreme.
Rissus is indeed interesting and yes not very D&D
And much of the time I would agree with you in regards to taking things to their logical extreme, however in this case it's neither illogical nor particular extreme. In fact there are several games that do just that, to which I pointed but one example. This was not mockery (that's what you did above) it's just pointing out where that line of thought takes us, and it takes us to a place not unlike Risus. If that's not good enough for you then perhaps imagination and flavor text alone aren't the end all and be all of of what is good and proper game design. I.E. mechanics matter, and simply tacking different flavor text on any old mechanic is not sufficient.
That can be boring too typically when things are contingent you might justify each chained together success in to a big climactic one. And it reallly is a natural function of missing is that you are thrown off for a moment as there is usually a certain amount of assumptions when planning out a sequence
For some folk swinginess contributes excitement its subject to taste, you are the one wanting a variety of mechanics no? perhaps more than one method ie one shows old boring bang bang, and the other does a bang bida boom...
As I said before that is just justification, the end result is that you have a mechanic that is churning out extreme results much more frequently, often extreme success, and often extreme failure. Multiple rolls adds more texture, it mitigates extreme results, you are not nearly so likely to have the case of all hits or all misses (though such is still possible). And for the record eye roll emoticons don't make your argument any stronger.
And yes I do desire some variety in mechanics between classes, making everyone use the same swingy mechanics (i.e. one attack per round) is not variety, and neither is the swingyness of attack contributing to variety, rather it actually creates very binary results which are simultaneously frustrating and boring to a lot of people, myself included.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 11:08PM
#48
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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And yes I do desire some variety in mechanics between classes, making everyone use the same swingy mechanics (i.e. one attack per round) is not variety,
I specifically said you could have some attack chains one way and others the other way? ... for those who like there boom booms... ( I actually dont prefer it myself I am I guess devils advocating for those who like save or die like swing)
and neither is the swingyness of attack contributing to variety
some attacks being sequences and some being series... makes for a variety it serves the some who like there swing others like there numbers pushed heavily to the middle. Those who like to roll hand fulls of dice will like the one way...
What do you think of the idea I heard floated around of having no to hit rolls? ie all attacks hit in the sense that they threaten your enemies nobodiy is incompetant
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1 year ago ::
Feb 03, 2012 - 11:25PM
#49
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I like multiple attacks as a consequence of rolling - you kill your opponent, you get to strike another within range, you kill him then strike again etc. As I aware XP for GP gained rather than monsters killed non-fighter classes don't feel disenfranchised by the party's Fighting Man clearing a room of kobolds single-handedly.
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