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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 6:11AM
#1
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Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2009
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I wanted to start a discussion on what players feel is needed to make D&D tactical for them. I saw this come up in this discussion on 13th Age vs DNDNext. I wanted to list out what the players want, and hopefully be able to satisfy the requests with elegant solutions that could perhaps even fit in as core rules if they follow intuitively and have that good quality we would want in a tactical game of "easy to learn[and understand], difficult to master" Please add what you feel is missing. This is the list that was suggested and my comments on them
Square Movement & Distances
Area Templates
Flanking
Cover
Squares Movement and Distances: what precisely do we want rules for? As written we have rules for how many squares you can move, and how far any attack can reach. Area Templates: I am assuming this means line, cone, sphere, cylinder, etc? What more do we want for this? I believe this was explained in the How to Playp24Flanking: A simple enough fix to add (either just as we would expect from 3.x/4) or allow a player to attack at disadvantage to begin flanking an enemy (regardless of the outcome of their attack) until the end of their next turn.Cover: Also was covered in How to Play p11. What else were we looking for here?
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 6:33AM
#2
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Date Joined:
Oct 17, 2007
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Thanks for the thread.
On top of my mind:
- Distances: it would be very handy for all distances to be espressed both in metrics AND squares, to make grid use easier
- Movement: we need Opportunity Attacks of some kind, or constraint when engaged (defining an engaged/in melee state would be required too).
- Disengaging: rules for moving our of melee reach without incurring in OA (move action to 'shift' 1 square, skill check....)
- Threatening areas/intercept: we need a way to establish when and how a character becomes subject to OA
- Difficult terrain/obstacles: rules for how they affect movement
- Area templates: may be fine as they are
- Flanking: can be handled like in 4E, or just consider that you get flancking as soon an ally is engaged to the enemy, providing you are not engaged yourself with someone else.
- Cover: we would need rules to assess cover and cocealment on the grid (line of signt/line of effect)
- Friendly fire: rules to assess if and how that may happen
- Forced movement: types and rules for how it affects characters/enemies subject to it
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 6:55AM
#3
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Rules that explain if we count diagonal movement as 2 squares every other square, or just one square.
Balanced rules that explain how to balance vancian casters with at-will fighters (one of the main contentions the 4E crowd has). This could be done in the tactical module as most 4E players will include it.
Rules on flight.
Rules on how to interpret the TotM combat powers into Tactical Combat (TC).
Rules on how to interpret area effects (whether it be cardboard cutouts that you overlay on the board, or like 3.xE did with visual representations). So we don't have to pull out our geometry books to figure things out.
Rules on half square effects. Burning hands affects 5 squares and two half squares when not used at an angle.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 7:33AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2009
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Cobbling from the above posts: These of course are just my suggestions
Distances: I would suggest "paces" as its archaic and fitting for dnd, is approximately 5ft (the roman pace) and thus is 1 square
Opportunity Attacks (OAs): Require a feat/monster feature for it, and it's a reaction that flat out does damage. (Ideally we don't want to add extra attack/damage rolls since that slows down play) It can be used when a creature adjacent to you moves without "disengaging"
Movement/Disengaging: A character who chooses to disengage will avoid the threat of an OA but be at disadvantage for any rolls this turn.
Threatening areas/intercept: A character is subject to an OA when they move while in reach of an enemy capable of OAs. Since OA is a reaction it's only once per turn per creature (and only if they have the feat)
Difficult terrain/obstacles: difficult terrain is in How to Play p 6. Obstacles I think we'll need more detail on.
Flanking: "can be handled like in 4E, or just consider that you get flancking as soon an ally is engaged to the enemy, providing you are not engaged yourself with someone else" combat is pretty crazy I'd leave out that complexity.
Cover: I'd go with center to center = no cover, center to one corner is partial cover, and if thats not possible its full cover. You may not pass through a square containing a creature or obstacle for this (allies are still blocking you)
Friendly fire: if you attack through a square with an ally and miss it hits the ally for half damage, this does not work on enemies since a miss is bad luck, not good luck. It may seem overly simple, but I don't think shooting past through ally's area is very tactical. You should probably move so this isn't a concern. The same is true if you're shooting at an enemy with your ally on the other side.
Forced movement: assume forced movement "sliding" is any direction unless it says otherwise, i.e. slide away, slide closer, or slide. I am not sure what you mean by how it affects monsters/players beyond repositioning them.
Diagonal movement is one square as per 4e
Balanced rules that explain how to balance vancian casters with at-will fighters (one of the main contentions the 4E crowd has). This could be done in the tactical module as most 4E players will include it. I am assuming they are balanced, as is I believe the design goal. I can't see how a module would create balance if the classes don't already
Flight- do you mean 3d combat like two super heroes flying around or just how people fly- since I think that is going to be just a fly speed which tells you how far you can fly while flying (like the rats climb speed int he playtest)
Interpret the TotM combat powers into Tactical Combat (TC) I don't follow what you mean by this
Area effects- So we don't have to pull out our geometry books to figure things out. So the 3.5 pictures that show what an area of effect looks like on the map?
Half square effects. Half effects are cannonically ingored to my knowledge since we round down on everything.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 7:34AM
#5
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I can add one thing I certainly don't want to see: rules for facing.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 7:50AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Oct 17, 2007
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Cobbling from the above posts: These of course are just my suggestions
Distances: I would suggest "paces" as its archaic and fitting for dnd, is approximately 5ft (the roman pace) and thus is 1 square
Sounds good and neat.
Opportunity Attacks (OAs): Require a feat/monster feature for it, and it's a reaction that flat out does damage. (Ideally we don't want to add extra attack/damage rolls since that slows down play) It can be used when a creature adjacent to you moves without "disengaging"
I wouldn't require e feat for this, as it may become a feat tax. Ok for the flat damage but I would still require an attack (or a saving throw from the disengaging enemy), so that payers may decide to take their chance.
Movement/Disengaging: A character who chooses to disengage will avoid the threat of an OA but be at disadvantage for any rolls this turn.
You mean when his turn comes? I'm not too keen of tracking stuff across turns if we can help that.
Flanking: "can be handled like in 4E, or just consider that you get flancking as soon an ally is engaged to the enemy, providing you are not engaged yourself with someone else" combat is pretty crazy I'd leave out that complexity.
Good point. Agree.
Cover: I'd go with center to center = no cover, center to one corner is partial cover, and if thats not possible its full cover. You may not pass through a square containing a creature or obstacle for this (allies are still blocking you)
Yep, keep it simple.
Friendly fire: if you attack through a square with an ally and miss it hits the ally for half damage, this does not work on enemies since a miss is bad luck, not good luck. It may seem overly simple, but I don't think shooting past through ally's area is very tactical. You should probably move so this isn't a concern. The same is true if you're shooting at an enemy with your ally on the other side.
Feels a bit punishing for ranged attacks. Perhaps friendly fire may happen just on a roll of 1.
Forced movement: assume forced movement "sliding" is any direction unless it says otherwise, i.e. slide away, slide closer, or slide. I am not sure what you mean by how it affects monsters/players beyond repositioning them.
Cases like what happens if you push someone beyond a cliff? What happens when forced movement happens across enemies threatening zones?
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 7:51AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2009
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I can add one thing I certainly don't want to see: rules for facing.
This actually is a great example of something that should show up as a module. (I don't want it either) Where as many other things I think should be apart of the core rules and not require a module.
Or there needs to be a good guide for how to proceed when you don't have rules for things - the improv contested rolls i'm using, but it'd be nice to know how much I should shove a guy if I'm not doing damage, or should he take damage from that etc
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 7:59AM
#8
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Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2009
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Movement/Disengaging: A character who chooses to disengage will avoid the threat of an OA but be at disadvantage for any rolls this turn.
You mean when his turn comes? I'm not too keen of tracking stuff across turns if we can help that.
this would be during the turn of the character who is disengaging (since they're moving now they must be acting now) and would not affect people who are forced to move
Friendly fire: if you attack through a square with an ally and miss it hits the ally for half damage, this does not work on enemies since a miss is bad luck, not good luck. It may seem overly simple, but I don't think shooting past through ally's area is very tactical. You should probably move so this isn't a concern. The same is true if you're shooting at an enemy with your ally on the other side.
Feels a bit punishing for ranged attacks. Perhaps friendly fire may happen just on a roll of 1.
perhaps if they roll a 5 or less, to me its bad planning to attack through your ally and should increase your risk- its also only half damage so its not like you're critting them
Forced movement: Pushing them off a cliff is encouragable- but same of them to you. Allow a saving throw to let them grab on like this:
The cliff is there for a reason right? Forced movement can't trigger an OA since the OA is goign to say "as a reaction... when an enemy moves (not slides)" while forced movement will hopefully use the word "slide"
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 8:09AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2009
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Opportunity Attacks (OAs): Require a feat/monster feature for it, and it's a reaction that flat out does damage. (Ideally we don't want to add extra attack/damage rolls since that slows down play) It can be used when a creature adjacent to you moves without "disengaging"
I wouldn't require e feat for this, as it may become a feat tax. Ok for the flat damage but I would still require an attack (or a saving throw from the disengaging enemy), so that payers may decide to take their chance.
The reason I'd make it a feat is because not everyone does them or wants to be bothered with them. And having reactions as feats seems like a fun way to let anyone take them, but others may take other feats. If everyone has them then it bogs play with a "may I" concept I have always disliked. When not everyone has it, but enough do you can be on guard, but never be 100% sure you needed to disengage. I'm ok with a saving throw roll if damage is flat, I just want to limit the time OAs take to deal with- and players must regardless choose to use it- just like the knight's abiltiy
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11 months ago ::
Jul 11, 2012 - 8:09AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Oct 17, 2007
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this would be during the turn of the character who is disengaging (since they're moving now they must be acting now) and would not affect people who are forced to move
I see a problem with this. If you disengage at the end of your turn, so likely after having attacked (imgine the case of a rogue) that bears no ill effect to you. Unless we say that disengaing requires a check (for each engaging enemy).
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