interesting tactical decision-making for "regular" combatants

[Lmns Crn]

So, I liked D&D 4E. This is not a popular decision, and even WotC backpedaled hard away from a lot of 4E's design choices, but I thought a lot of them were, for lack of a better word, refreshing. Mainly, I want to use this thread to talk about a design choice I have mixed feelings about, and more generally, about the issue it attempts to address.

I've heard it called "linear warriors, quadratic wizards," and it is sometimes but not always considered a problem, I guess. But in addition to weird power-scaling levels, there's the linked problem of tactical options on your turn. Traditionally, spellcasters have an array of limited-use actions to choose from, and non-casters have a much smaller selection of unlimited-use actions. This makes a combat turn feel very different to the player, depending on what kind of character they have. I always felt it made warrior-types fairly boring, as the main tactical question frequently boils down to "since it's a given that I'm going to do a basic sword swing, what do I swing at and where do I stand?" Sure, there are often some niche tricks, depending on the system. Sometimes, you take a small step toward the limited-use spellcaster model (a la barbarian rage, x/day), and sometimes you get unlimited-use actions with a tradeoff of some sort (subtract x accuracy to add x damage, etc.) The second sort of option, unless implemented really well, often makes a false choice; when you do the math, it frequently turns out that one option or the other is a superior option in most situations.

4E handled this issue by treating every class (at the start, at least) under the same model, with a small number of unlimited-use abilities, and many options from which a small number of once-per-fight and once-per-day abilities were chosen. This solves the "what do I do on my turn? oh yeah, I hit things, because I only ever hit things" issue pretty well, giving all classes a comparable number of options for what to do on a given combat turn, but there are a lot of ways that this is not that satisfying. It's easier to explain why, in the fiction of the game, the wizard can only cast the best spell once per day, than it is to explain why the fighter can only perform the most powerful attack once per day.

Maybe more complained about (and more of a bother to me, as well) is that putting swordplay and magic on the same tiered "x uses of y-level powers per time period z" system makes magic feel more mundane and limited. (Granted, this is also in part due to 4E splitting combat-intended magic and non-combat, "ritual" magic into two separate systems.) You get to a place where it feels every class is the same kind of combat class, with different "attack animations." This is where I feel like many of the pejorative "4E = World of Warcraft" comparisons come from. (Well, this, and the terrible art direction of the sourcebooks, but whatev.)

I liked a lot about what 4E did in the broad strokes, but ended up disliking a lot of the small details. I really liked that you could play any class and always feel like you had meaningful tactical choices on any given turn (but I didn't like that tactical choices in combat was increasingly becoming all you really had to work with in the game). I didn't like that every class working on the same basic system made classes feel "samey-samey," and really took a lot of the interest out spellcasting (but I liked the effect this had on multiclassing: there really wasn't a "wrong" way to build a multiclassed character anymore).

So I guess the real thing on my mind is this: how do you handle non-magic characters and magic characters in game mechanics, so that each type feels both tactically interesting and distinct from the other? I think the 4E thing was a bold move that ultimately failed, so how can it be done better?

[Llum]

In LotFP, non-Fighter/Dwarf/Elf classes can only Attack. These three classes have other options:

Press: This is a fierce attack made at the expense of defense. +2 to hit, –4 AC penalty.

Defensive Fighting: This is a more conservative attack, emphasizing defense more than offense. +2 AC bonus, –4 to hit.

Also, anyone can not-Attack to Parry for +2AC until their next turn, this is +4 for Fighters/Dwarf/Elf

[Xathan]

So I guess the real thing on my mind is this: how do you handle non-magic characters and magic characters in game mechanics, so that each type feels both tactically interesting and distinct from the other?

I think the biggest problem is realism. Fighters, Barbarians, Rogues...all the martial classes, really, are limited because they are designed to be realistic-ish. They can only run, jump, etc about as well as a highly skilled real world athlete.

I think the way to balance it is to make all martial classes into quasi-superheroes, a-la Tome of Battle, a vastly under appreciated gem of 3.5. Give them crazy, cool abilities that bring them up to the level of casters, but do it in a way where they are mechanically distinct. The problem with the way 4e handled it is that every class felt, ultimately, the same. Once you played one class of a particular role, you knew how to play all the classes of that role, and while there were some variations, they were minor.

[Steerpike]

I think your analysis is correct, Xathan. I do think there's a few alternatives to making the martial classes superheroic.

One might be to alter high-level magic - make it more dangerous, ritualistic, and slow, while also making it less battle-oriented. Another might be to give martial classes stronghold-building and follower-based options, to make them more like warlords or rulers. And another, of course, is just to cap levels at a certain point.

In terms of giving people interesting choices, I feel a big part falls on the DM to make battlefields and monsters and combat setups generally interesting. Terrain, weird dungeon features, unusual enemies etc all generate tactical choices.

I think one problem that 3.X and perhaps to a lesser extent 4th helped perpetuate was a kind of hyper-specialization in fighters and other martial classes that also decreases tactical choice. When you really only use one weapon, your tactical choices are somewhat restricted. But when you're carrying a polearm, a sword, a club, some javelins, a crossbow, a bag of caltrops, and an acid flask, and they're all viable damage-dealers and useful tools depending on the situation, you have a good array of tactical choices and can actually employ judgment. Ironically the extra character-creation options those editions afford can limit tactical choices.

[Xathan]

I think your analysis is correct, Xathan. I do think there's a few alternatives to making the martial classes superheroic.

One might be to alter high-level magic - make it more dangerous, ritualistic, and slow, while also making it less battle-oriented. Another might be to give martial classes stronghold-building and follower-based options, to make them more like warlords or rulers. And another, of course, is just to cap levels at a certain point.

Thanks! And man, giving martial classes stronghold-building and follower-based options would be awesome - I would probably play so many more martial classes than I do. On the flip side, it would make them a nightmare for DMs that casters could never hope to be. Still, I love that idea.

I think one problem that 3.X and perhaps to a lesser extent 4th helped perpetuate was a kind of hyper-specialization in fighters and other martial classes that also decreases tactical choice. When you really only use one weapon, your tactical choices are somewhat restricted. But when you're carrying a polearm, a sword, a club, some javelins, a crossbow, a bag of caltrops, and an acid flask, and they're all viable damage-dealers and useful tools depending on the situation, you have a good array of tactical choices and can actually employ judgment. Ironically the extra character-creation options those editions afford can limit tactical choices.

This is a really good point here - making martial classes much more flexible and able to use a variety of weapons would help fix that problem, and would making a wider variety of utility gear available to them so they have options. An acid flask, for example - at level 20, is pretty much worthless. There should be options for it so that martial classes would be able to use cool tools like that into the higher levels.

I really think you hit on an important point here - The biggest difference between martial and magic classes isn't how much damage they can put out - although there is a gap there - but how much more flexible magic is. Giving martial classes flexibility is more important for fixing the linear/quadratic problem, I think, that actually making martial classes straight up stronger.

[Steerpike]

On the flip side, it would make them a nightmare for DMs that casters could never hope to be.

In some ways I think they'd actually make things easy for the DM. Being the ruler of a stronghold leads to a lot of opportunities for conflict just in and of itself. But I take your point that it could be a headache to keep track of.

[Lmns Crn]

Y'all have interesting insights.

For what it's worth (and this is addressing an entirely different issue than the one I had in mind when I wrote my original post, but whatever), I have some notes somewhere about a system where character progression was less about increasing power than about a change in scope. Warriors would become generals, social characters would become nobles and rulers, and mages would become gods. So there was this built-in idea that no matter how you specialized (magic, diplomacy, fighting, whatever), your progression involved delegating, getting a longer reach while becoming less hands-on and relying on people more like your younger, less veteran self. There were reasons I liked it, but it's clearly not appropriate for every type of game.

One might be to alter high-level magic - make it more dangerous, ritualistic, and slow, while also making it less battle-oriented. Another might be to give martial classes stronghold-building and follower-based options, to make them more like warlords or rulers. And another, of course, is just to cap levels at a certain point.

I really like the sound of option A, here-- have for a while-- but I wonder if it doesn't require a radical change of scope for a game, away from what D&D seems to assume. If Fighters are for fighting and Wizards are for ~*~other~*~, you can't run a game that's 95% combat encounters in a string.

Which is fine for our purposes, I think, as we've been hacking things forever around here, but I wonder how it will fare in the mainstream?

[Hibou]

Okay, so keep in mind a lot of what I'm about to say is garnered almost entirely from scholagladiatoria's videos on YouTube, but the guy does seem to know his stuff. Check him out. I've actually been taking what I've liked and very slowly working on my own system. Anyway:

So I guess the real thing on my mind is this: how do you handle non-magic characters and magic characters in game mechanics, so that each type feels both tactically interesting and distinct from the other?

I think the biggest problem is realism. Fighters, Barbarians, Rogues...all the martial classes, really, are limited because they are designed to be realistic-ish. They can only run, jump, etc about as well as a highly skilled real world athlete.

I think the way to balance it is to make all martial classes into quasi-superheroes, a-la Tome of Battle, a vastly under appreciated gem of 3.5. Give them crazy, cool abilities that bring them up to the level of casters, but do it in a way where they are mechanically distinct. The problem with the way 4e handled it is that every class felt, ultimately, the same. Once you played one class of a particular role, you knew how to play all the classes of that role, and while there were some variations, they were minor.

The problem is that on many levels they really aren't all that realistic. Later on in this thread, making martial classes more flexible is discussed (Steerpike really hits the nail on the head in particular). This is one of the fundamentals that should have already been the case. You can't do anything as a martial character when you have to focus on one or two weapons, when in reality they should at minimum be put into weapon groups that all get the same bonuses. Even then though, it's just impractical to assume that any given warrior who is proficient at any sort of hand-to-hand combat won't be able to use more than one weapon type pretty well - or that they'll be handicapped in any way if they have to resort to say, a spear instead of a sword.

One of the things scholagladiatoria's stuff says (can't remember the specific video or I'd link it) is that someone who's spent a lot of time practicing melee combat with a spear is going to have a solid enough concept of how to use that weapon, that it'll translate well to other polearms and long weapons such as a quarterstaff - they might be made of different materials with different primary functions, but at the end of the day they're both long, sturdy shafts of tree that can be used to jab too. Additionally, they'll have trained with and against various other weapon types enough to again have a decent idea of how to wield it effectively, to the point where only a true master of a particular type would have a huge edge on them one-on-one.

There are a lot of other issues (e.g. armor not being as effective as it should be) that contribute to martial classes getting the short straw, but I don't want to derail the thread too much. I agree that flexibility is a key first step for them, but I think that with Tome of Battle additions, you get balance while adding the risk that your system seems a little too off-the-walls/wuxia/whatever for your setting. If you're going for that then obviously my concern here is not important.

Changing the way higher-level magic works is probably the best (and maybe most interesting) way to go, not only for the supposed balance reasons themselves, but also because done right it could really help increase the weight each casting carries on the entire campaign. I'd like to hear other opinions on this, but I'm wondering how much the average player would even care if you cut 6th-, 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-level spells out of the standard spell rotation (players can't learn them naturally or memorize them from spellbooks), but leave the spell slots. This still gives a huge number of spells to use and modify with metamagic (which should probably be something every caster then gets some free copies of), and the others could be done through ritual, artifact, scroll-only, sacrifice, etc.

[Steerpike]

I really like the sound of option A, here-- have for a while-- but I wonder if it doesn't require a radical change of scope for a game, away from what D&D seems to assume. If Fighters are for fighting and Wizards are for ~*~other~*~, you can't run a game that's 95% combat encounters in a string.

I think it requires a radical change away from the scope of D&D for the last 20-25 years, but not from the game's original and more fundamental conception. It's much more in line with old-school D&D, where your experience was based primarily on treasure, fights were to be avoided when possible, the chance of dying was significantly higher, encounters weren't designed with balance in mind, and the main "point" of the game wasn't combat per se. In older editions the goal was generally to survive first, get rich second, and perhaps defeat the monsters a distant third, if feasible.

As for mainstream appeal, I don't really know, but the OSR is definitely a thing, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess seems to be doing OK. 5th edition definitely has on eye cocked at OD&D and AD&D, so the people at Wizards have probably grokked that the "string of fights" approach wasn't working for a lot of players. Storygames and the like also seem to recognize that a lot of players aren't really into roleplaying-as-tactical-wargaming.

[Xathan]

On the flip side, it would make them a nightmare for DMs that casters could never hope to be.

In some ways I think they'd actually make things easy for the DM. Being the ruler of a stronghold leads to a lot of opportunities for conflict just in and of itself. But I take your point that it could be a headache to keep track of.

Oh, absolutely! From a story perspective, they're great for the DM. It's the exact mechanics I could see being a headache - keeping track and all that, like you said. Also, I'm realizing my concerns were less about from a DM perspective, but rather from a design perspective - a stronghold, being a static location, would be difficult to assign exactly how to balance compared to high level spells, you know?

Also, something I do want to point out - I feel like casters should be able to access strongholds too, since the mage tower and all that are staples of the fantasy genre. However, I feel that martial classes, if one were to go that route, would need to have ways to make this easier baked directly into the class, whereas wizards and such would have to go about it with just lots of gold and charisma, so it's still a more martial class thing.

Y'all have interesting insights.

Thanks!

For what it's worth (and this is addressing an entirely different issue than the one I had in mind when I wrote my original post, but whatever), I have some notes somewhere about a system where character progression was less about increasing power than about a change in scope. Warriors would become generals, social characters would become nobles and rulers, and mages would become gods. So there was this built-in idea that no matter how you specialized (magic, diplomacy, fighting, whatever), your progression involved delegating, getting a longer reach while becoming less hands-on and relying on people more like your younger, less veteran self. There were reasons I liked it, but it's clearly not appropriate for every type of game.

I'd love to see those notes, by the way. That sounds really interesting, because it means the characters just don't evolve, but they evolve in an entirely different way that would allow the game to keep going to max level (once you hit the max, it would be smooth to transition into someone who was being delegated to, along the game to be played over generations.)

One might be to alter high-level magic - make it more dangerous, ritualistic, and slow, while also making it less battle-oriented. Another might be to give martial classes stronghold-building and follower-based options, to make them more like warlords or rulers. And another, of course, is just to cap levels at a certain point.

I really like the sound of option A, here-- have for a while-- but I wonder if it doesn't require a radical change of scope for a game, away from what D&D seems to assume. If Fighters are for fighting and Wizards are for ~*~other~*~, you can't run a game that's 95% combat encounters in a string.

One way to allow combat encounters to be a major part still (if you were to want that) would to give Wizards limits within combat. If the Wizard does dangerous rituals that basically act as self buffs, and then have access to a small list of spells, then I could see the end result as Wizards working as well as fighters in combat, but no longer vastly outclassing them while in it AND being much weaker if caught unawares or before they've been able to buff themselves, so it's still not overpowering that they are mostly focused around the -other-. Basically, they could work kinda like wizards do in the Dresden Universe - Harry is still dangerous to dudes with guns or swords, but they're also a danger to him, especially if he hasn't had time to prepare much for it and doesn't have his magic items.

Okay, so keep in mind a lot of what I'm about to say is garnered almost entirely from scholagladiatoria's videos on YouTube, but the guy does seem to know his stuff. Check him out. I've actually been taking what I've liked and very slowly working on my own system. Anyway:

So I guess the real thing on my mind is this: how do you handle non-magic characters and magic characters in game mechanics, so that each type feels both tactically interesting and distinct from the other?

I think the biggest problem is realism. Fighters, Barbarians, Rogues...all the martial classes, really, are limited because they are designed to be realistic-ish. They can only run, jump, etc about as well as a highly skilled real world athlete.

I think the way to balance it is to make all martial classes into quasi-superheroes, a-la Tome of Battle, a vastly under appreciated gem of 3.5. Give them crazy, cool abilities that bring them up to the level of casters, but do it in a way where they are mechanically distinct. The problem with the way 4e handled it is that every class felt, ultimately, the same. Once you played one class of a particular role, you knew how to play all the classes of that role, and while there were some variations, they were minor.

The problem is that on many levels they really aren't all that realistic. Later on in this thread, making martial classes more flexible is discussed (Steerpike really hits the nail on the head in particular). This is one of the fundamentals that should have already been the case. You can't do anything as a martial character when you have to focus on one or two weapons, when in reality they should at minimum be put into weapon groups that all get the same bonuses. Even then though, it's just impractical to assume that any given warrior who is proficient at any sort of hand-to-hand combat won't be able to use more than one weapon type pretty well - or that they'll be handicapped in any way if they have to resort to say, a spear instead of a sword.

You're right about them not actually being realistic - more that they are acting under archaic ideas of realism. Replacing abilities that focus on a particular weapon to instead focus on a group of weapons would definitely be a step in the right direction in terms of fixing feats like weapon focus and specialization and all that. (in fact, fixing feats is a whole other discussion that I'm probably going to make). I still feel that martial classes should have the option to focus on a particular type of weapon over all others (it's enough of a trope in fantasy) but doing so should either be A) over and above the weapon group feats or B) tied into a particular class or classes so other classes don't have to pick with being good with a particular weapon group or amazing with a particular weapon, since most people would choose the latter since it would have to be demonstrably stronger.

There are a lot of other issues (e.g. armor not being as effective as it should be) that contribute to martial classes getting the short straw, but I don't want to derail the thread too much. I agree that flexibility is a key first step for them, but I think that with Tome of Battle additions, you get balance while adding the risk that your system seems a little too off-the-walls/wuxia/whatever for your setting. If you're going for that then obviously my concern here is not important.

I totally see your point there, and much as I love Tome of Battle I can see how it wouldn't work for some settings. However, there are non wuxia options for making martial classes much more badass that wouldn't veer into the Wuxia / off-the-walls territory. Things like martial classes also being super good at identifying where people are from based on their stances and such would help with identification, giving them a wider variety of skills because in most fantasy fighter types do seem to be highly skilled, being able to cross apply their mastery of their own physicality into impressive displays that provide bonuses to skill checks or boost troop morale, making mechanics reflect how inherently more relate-able a guy who is just hard working and well trained would be to someone who has mastery over the forces of creation would be for the common man, or even just giving them action-movie-hero levels of durability and planning would all give them utility that would help catch them up to magic-users in terms of utility.

Changing the way higher-level magic works is probably the best (and maybe most interesting) way to go, not only for the supposed balance reasons themselves, but also because done right it could really help increase the weight each casting carries on the entire campaign. I'd like to hear other opinions on this, but I'm wondering how much the average player would even care if you cut 6th-, 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-level spells out of the standard spell rotation (players can't learn them naturally or memorize them from spellbooks), but leave the spell slots. This still gives a huge number of spells to use and modify with metamagic (which should probably be something every caster then gets some free copies of), and the others could be done through ritual, artifact, scroll-only, sacrifice, etc.

We discussed this over IRC, and while I'm not a huge fan of nerfing casters to put them on par with fighters, I do really like this. Most (although not all) of the ridiculousness that casters get in terms of utility definitely does come in for level 6+ spells, and making them mostly either gone or turn them into expensive rituals would be a nice fix. However, it would still be a lot of work, because many metamagic feats are either overly specialized, and the whole system kinda needs an overhaul for many classes.

Also, I'd suggest stopping spell progression at level 7 as opposed to level 6 if we're looking at Pathfinder. The 6 spell-level classes are some of the best balanced classes in the system, providing a great combination of power and utility without quite crossing any lines, so I feel like they, at least, should keep their level 6 spells because they just need the least modifications of other classes. (in my perfect world, if I was reworking Pathfinder, the 6 spell-level classes would provide the baseline that other classes should be balanced around, and all other classes would be either brought up or down to their level.)

I really like the sound of option A, here-- have for a while-- but I wonder if it doesn't require a radical change of scope for a game, away from what D&D seems to assume. If Fighters are for fighting and Wizards are for ~*~other~*~, you can't run a game that's 95% combat encounters in a string.

I think it requires a radical change away from the scope of D&D for the last 20-25 years, but not from the game's original and more fundamental conception. It's much more in line with old-school D&D, where your experience was based primarily on treasure, fights were to be avoided when possible, the chance of dying was significantly higher, encounters weren't designed with balance in mind, and the main "point" of the game wasn't combat per se. In older editions the goal was generally to survive first, get rich second, and perhaps defeat the monsters a distant third, if feasible.

I think making the game's focus around survival would only work now if that's what you were designing the setting around. If you were making a setting that draws heavily from Dark Souls and other games like that, making survival you're #1 priority would be fantastic, and give the game an action-survival-horror feel that would be really cool for that, but I think trying to push the rest of DND back to that would really have a super niche appeal.

As for mainstream appeal, I don't really know, but the OSR is definitely a thing, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess seems to be doing OK. 5th edition definitely has on eye cocked at OD&D and AD&D, so the people at Wizards have probably grokked that the "string of fights" approach wasn't working for a lot of players. Storygames and the like also seem to recognize that a lot of players aren't really into roleplaying-as-tactical-wargaming.

From what I've seen of the OSR crowd, though, they're not super worried about "linear fighters, quadratic wizards," and in some cases it's actually deliberately designed for as part of that old school feel. Then again, I could be wrong, just felt the need to point that out.

[Steerpike]

I think making the game's focus around survival would only work now if that's what you were designing the setting around. If you were making a setting that draws heavily from Dark Souls and other games like that, making survival you're #1 priority would be fantastic, and give the game an action-survival-horror feel that would be really cool for that, but I think trying to push the rest of DND back to that would really have a super niche appeal.

This might be true, but I'm not entirely convinced that something that skews away from a strict combat focus wouldn't be "mainstream." I like your Dark Souls comparison - Dark Souls has a very old school D&D vibe in many ways - but I wonder if it actually speaks in support of the viability of a style of play closer to 70s/80s D&D: those are very popular and well-received games that have won great critical acclaim and awards.

From what I've seen of the OSR crowd, though, they're not super worried about "linear fighters, quadratic wizards," and in some cases it's actually deliberately designed for as part of that old school feel. Then again, I could be wrong, just felt the need to point that out.

I'd agree they're not super worried. On the other hand, there are assumptions about old school play that are factored into this. For example, just surviving as a wizard is very difficult in older editions, when you have very, very few hit points, so there may be a sense that having a high-level magic-user is a kind of achievement. For another, those games aren't generally as combat focused as they are adventuring/exploration/survival focused in a more general sense. Finall, you do also see mehanics in some of those games that reflect an idea of magic as risky and dangerous. Take for example the Summon spell in LotFP (begins on page 134 of the book, 138 of the PDF).

Even more core though, I think, is that the whole notion of balance and character parity and what constitutes an "appropriate" challenge is approached in an entirely different way in early editions.

None of this is to say that the old editions are perfect or anything, of course, nor to lament the newer editions, which I've played and enjoyed extensively.