{"id":13217,"date":"2008-06-23T16:35:14","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T23:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/06\/23\/the-blessing-and-bane-of-generic-combat-systems.html"},"modified":"2008-06-23T16:35:14","modified_gmt":"2008-06-23T23:35:14","slug":"the_blessing_and_bane_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/23\/the_blessing_and_bane_of.html","title":{"rendered":"The blessing and bane of generic combat systems"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

In reading through the bi-modal reviews of D&D 4e on Amazon, it’s clear that there’s one fundamental element that is provoking a large degree of contention.<\/p>\n

In the interest of game balance between the classes, and simplifying things, WotC has redesigned the combat system so that everything — melee, missile, and spells — are essentially “powers” with different ranges. There’s a common mechanic (roll D20 plus modifiers vs. a resisting value, which might be AD or one of the “save” attributes) for everything, and the results are generally speaking XdY + Z damage of a particular type.<\/p>\n

So that sounds pretty straightforward, right, and even desireable — you can easily balance various powers\/attacks between the classes, and not have to treat spells as something fundamentally different from swords. A Magic Missile can be handled by the mechanic as a Spear.<\/p>\n

Some people thing this is spiffy-doodle, and they have good cause for it. Looking at a host of both tabletop games (GURPS come to mind) and online games (I’ll include CoX here), it’s clear that this approach makes things both a lot simpler to play and to run and to design around. A fundamentally sound system makes for a stronger game.<\/p>\n

But some folks object to this very thing, and they have a good cause, too. A system where a Magic Missile and a Fire Spear and a Lightning Bolt and a Crossbow all basically do the same thing, just with (meaningless?) special effects makes things more like … well, a video game, and loses a lot of the interesting flavor that makes D&D fun.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen this before in different systems. Back in the Dark Ages, when I was running a supers game using Mayfair’s DC Heroes system, I admired the integration and scalability of the system — but it bugged the heck out of me that, really truly, there was no difference between someone attacking an opponent with a fire blast, an ice blast, an electrical blast, a force blast, a psychic blast, etc. <\/p>\n

The question then becomes whether there is, in fact, a difference in those different damage types. In, for example, CoX, the difference come into play in two ways: pretty special effects (ooooh … aaaaah …) and differences in how defenders actually react to things — some folks resist fire better than cold, or energy better than lethal damage, etc. Most power groups do different sorts of side effects, too — psychic reducing damage, electricity reducing endurance, cold causing slowing, etc.<\/p>\n

It’s not clear to me, as yet, the extent to which D&D does this. How many different critters resist different damage types differently. Are there, or should there, be side effects of different attack types? As a magic-user I could see that damage was described in different types, but I don’t recall much specifically done with those types. (My Ray of Cold did do a Slow, but my Magic Missile and various Fire attacks didn’t seem to have any secondary effects.)<\/p>\n

If the attack type doesn’t make any real difference (or only in rare cases) except for folks drawing pictures of the combat, then I agree that they system has been over-simplified. If I simply haven’t seen it yet (altogether possible — two encounters in a sample scenario with pregen characters is hardly a fair assessment), then I withhold judgment.<\/p>\n

(I’ll note, though, that even online games aren’t immune to this sort of criticism. CoX has been going through some “normalizing” of powers at different levels — e.g., so that different types of scrappers get roughly the same sort of power\/damage throughput at different levels, and some folks still object because their favorite set isn’t as cool or distinct any more.)<\/p>\n

So I’m not sure how fair a criticism it is — it certainly has the potential to be a problem, but it should be possible to streamline and rationalize the conflict\/damage system without adding a lot of specialized cruft and “exceptions” that overly slow things down. A happy balance between flavor and function.<\/p>\n

I look forward to finding out more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In reading through the bi-modal reviews of D&D 4e on Amazon, it’s clear that there’s one fundamental element that is provoking a large degree of contention. In the interest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13220,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/22\/dungeons_dragons_4th_edit.html","url_meta":{"origin":13217,"position":0},"title":"Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 22-Jun-08 10:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Doyce ran Kate, Margie, Katherine (!), Jackie and me through a few encounters in a beginning \"intro\" scenario using the D&D 4e rules. Thoughts: It's basically still D&D. Yeah,...","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/d20-dnd.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":41139,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/17\/there-are-no-bad-character-classes-just-bad-oh-never-mind.html","url_meta":{"origin":13217,"position":1},"title":"There are no bad character classes, just bad … oh, never mind","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-Feb-14 5:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot of these are, from what I can tell, needing to add pizzazz to modules \/ settings by adding character class variant, combined with D&D's commercial crunchiness. So you can't have some druid spells that are extensible to arctic settings -- you have to have a completely unique Arctic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131821,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/18\/an-embarrassment-of-super-powered-riches.html","url_meta":{"origin":13217,"position":2},"title":"An embarrassment of super-powered riches","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Oct-16 8:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"So +Kay Hill commented last night some worry about the Berlantiverse CW shows going overboard with \"duplicate\" heroes. Consider:Arrow has had multiple archers on it at various times, good guys and bad guys; at this point, I think they are at one of each, currently.Flash has always teed up Barry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/The-Flash-Header5B15D.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/The-Flash-Header5B15D.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/The-Flash-Header5B15D.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":131957,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/07\/by-the-hoary-hosts-of-hoggoth.html","url_meta":{"origin":13217,"position":3},"title":"By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 7-Nov-16 6:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This article reminds me of one of the weaknesses (from a canon perspective) of the Doctor Strange movie. Back from his origins all the way through now, Strange casts verbal spells, invoking various powers in the multiverse -- the Flames of Faltine, the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak, etc.The new movie?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41012,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/06\/on-damage-on-a-miss.html","url_meta":{"origin":13217,"position":4},"title":"On Damage on a Miss","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Feb-14 1:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It shows how out of touch I've been from the D&D world that I didn't realize this was a Thing until I ran across an article about it (or about some foofaraw about it) yesterday.Rob Donoghue, not surprisingly, does a great job looking at how DoaM is fantastic, awful, weird,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10302,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/21\/i_attack_the_darkness.html","url_meta":{"origin":13217,"position":5},"title":"“I attack the Darkness!”","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-Feb-07 3:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If you've never heard the \"I cast ... MAGIC MISSILE!\" D&D skit, it's now available online with, um, animated characters. (I'm not sure the computer animation actually adds to the...","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}