The Gaming Den

Draco_Argentum wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:If you have some other unstated demand that players have to necessarily be able to always use any of their powers at a moment's notice, then I don't see how any resource management scheme would make you happy.

I'm going to make that almost stated demand for me. The only exception should be moves that activate after some other move is used. Essentially I don't think a well written WoF system would be as enjoyable as a well written Chess Masters system.

In Chess, a Pawn can only use its double move once per game, and only on its first move. Not only is that a form of resource management, it's one in which you very specifically can't use your abilities whenever you want.

So I don't know where you are going with that. You have a maximum of 8 charges of "double move" and you can only ever use it once on each Pawn. That's a form of charge casting, which is explicitly one of the resource management systems that you have been opposed to.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:That isn't the resource management system at all though. That's the damage system. You still need a resource management system of some kind. Those counters are going to need to make checks to see if they are available or have a limited number of uses or have to recharge or something, and so is the firebreath.

They could all be at-will and they would still consume resources, actions, a rapidly replenished resource ... but a resource nonetheless.

MfA wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:That isn't the resource management system at all though. That's the damage system. You still need a resource management system of some kind. Those counters are going to need to make checks to see if they are available or have a limited number of uses or have to recharge or something, and so is the firebreath.

They could all be at-will and they would still consume resources, actions, a rapidly replenished resource ... but a resource nonetheless.

That's retarded.

There's a dragon. He uses fire breath. There is the wizard, he counters with Ice Shield. Something has to be different next turn or the game will never ever ever move forward.

-Username17

Dragon bites or claws. Wizard's ice shield has the potential to fail against the dragon's breath.

FrankTrollman wrote:That's retarded.

There's a dragon. He uses fire breath. There is the wizard, he counters with Ice Shield. Something has to be different next turn or the game will never ever ever move forward.

Not all counters have to be reactive, they can also be anticipatory ... in fact the latter are more interesting (also it is generally what we have in D&D). So what would happen is that the dragon would engage in melee such that using actions to prepare for his firebreath are not a win/win and then use his fire breath again (or not if everyone just keeps preparing for it, although melee'ing them down gets rather easy that way).

Psychic Robot wrote:Dragon bites or claws. Wizard's ice shield has the potential to fail against the dragon's breath.

But then you're just getting back to Frank's problem where the game is just every creature using their best attack every round, and there's really no room for choice at all, and you won't get any variety that way. It's like 4E where you just take the attack you've got that deals the most average damage and you go with it.

That's generally the problem with at-will abilities. You need a strong counter system to make people consider using different stuff, and you need a very deep and complex game to make that choice of abilities remotely difficult.

Personally I still think a set of relative sliders is the way to go.

There is a simple option which adds a lot of tactical elements to the game: hidden declarations of orders.

Of course, you cannot have players and GM write down all their moves in advance. But it is possible to have a limited number of special options per character (eg 4 for each) which have to be pre-declared, eg by laying down a playing card. All other actions are declared normally, in the initiative order.

Such declarations would be especially useful for counters. A player has four counters, you must guess which one he declared that turn (they would have to be rather widely useful, of course).

In addition, each player should have a limited number of special attacks They could be regained by short rest, lets say 2 rounds of doing nothing, or in other ways.

They should NOT be much better than his at will attack, but should provide special options. Eg they could be area attacks for a character type without area attacks, or cause bonus damage against damaged opponents. If you still intend to use Combat Advantage, they could be eg double the Combat Advantage number, or provide some other bonus against opponents with high penalty.

baduin wrote:There is a simple option which adds a lot of tactical elements to the game: hidden declarations of orders.

That's not particularly tactical, that's just a guessing game.

The only time it might matter is if there was some way you could figure out what defense someone declared by their other actions.

MfA wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:That's retarded.

There's a dragon. He uses fire breath. There is the wizard, he counters with Ice Shield. Something has to be different next turn or the game will never ever ever move forward.

Not all counters have to be reactive, they can also be anticipatory ... in fact the latter are more interesting (also it is generally what we have in D&D). So what would happen is that the dragon would engage in melee such that using actions to prepare for his firebreath are not a win/win and then use his fire breath again (or not if everyone just keeps preparing for it, although melee'ing them down gets rather easy that way).

Round 1:
- Dragon breathes.
-- Wizard counters with ice shield.
- Wizard preps ice shield.

Round 2:
- Dragon goes into melee.
-- Wizard dies.


Hm. That didn't really seem to work that well.

Different tactic.

Round 1:
- Dragon breathes.
-- Wizard counters with ice shield.
- Wizard preps Bigby's Get Up Off Me.

Round 2:
- Dragon breathes.
-- Wizard dies.

Hm. Didn't work again, and this is starting to seem like RPS.

One last try.

Round 1:
- Dragon breathes.
-- Wizard counters with ice shield.
- Wizard uses Dragon Slave.
-- Dragon dies.

Gah.

Round 1:
- Dragon breathes.
-- Wizard dies.

Fuck!

Okay, lets presume for a moment the wizard dies from any uncountered attack ... now lets assume a WoF game without counters. Dragon breathes or charges, wizard dies. Should I spread this out over a huge post to make it look like a better argument too?

BTW, what is the common opinion on the CAN system from TNE at the moment? A failed experiment?

It does prevent unloading your most powerful creature affecting spells, but I didn't see any suggestions in the TNE threads on how to prevent starting off with powerful environment altering effects (you can just not put them in of course, but that's boring).

Ha! The "wizard dies" bit was hyperbole. The point is that resource management is still important if you don't want the game to play like RPS. I think having to spend actions on counters makes it feel more RPS-like, but ...

Round 1: Dragon rolls a 6. Wizard rolls a 4 (high enough for ice shield).
Dragon gets initiative and breathes FIRE (6).
Wizard counters with ice shield(4).
Wizard blasts with Lightning Bolt (3).
Dragon counters with Shiny Scales (3).

Round 2: Dragon rolls a 3. Wizard rolls a 2.
Dragon moves in and use Great Gnashing Teeth (2).
Wizard counters with Shield (2).
Wizard uses Magic Missile (1).

Round 3: Dragon rolls a 1. Wizard rolls a 6.
Dragon uses Sharp Claws.
The Winds of Fate favor the Wizard: C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
Wizard uses Bender's Baleful Bending (5).
Wizard uses OJ's SUV of Efficient Egress (6).

I don't know, man.

MfA wrote:Okay, lets presume for a moment the wizard dies from any uncountered attack ... now lets assume a WoF game without counters. Dragon breathes or charges, wizard dies. Should I spread this out over a huge post to make it look like a better argument too?

The point is that unless there's some reason that people have to change their actions, they won't change them. They'll pick their best action and grind it until they win or lose.

As RC said, a setup in which you don't know what your enemy is defended against is just a guessing game and not really tactical at all. If you do know what defense the enemy has up then you'll just use whatever attack you have that's best against it. Over and over again. Without a mandate for change, THERE IS NO CHANGE.

I'm a wizard, and I pick a defensive stance. Assuming a reasonably transparent system, I can see that the most deadly attack that the dragon has is blocked by Ice Shield. So I have to leave that on all the time. The Dragon can see that I've got that, so he uses his next most powerful attack, which is the bite. So he sits there and bite grinds. And bite grinds. And keeps on grinding the bite, until eventually one of us wins.

No resource management means that the game blows. No matter how "complex" the interactions of the counter system are, the fact remains that the game simply goes to steady state and then grinds. Every time.

-Username17

I didn't suggest there would be no resource management, I was just backing up Taken that counters would ensure that the dragon wouldn't just keep out of range till he could reuse his breath attack and that there would still be a reason to use it anyway.

There is a reason why I keep saying Fire Shield. I'm referring to the D&D spell which isn't as easy to reason about as a single round duration absolute counter (the resource investment, the action, gets spread out over multiple rounds and the counter isn't absolute). I'm not really interested in games which just chose to avoid everything which is too hard to easily fit into game theory based balancing ... I think that way of design leads to 4e type blandness.

I'm more interested in something which could be fit as a 3e house rule into the Tome in fact ... although it isn't exactly up my ally is there any completely worked out version of Winds of Fate for 3e? (It sounds like it's been discussed before, but google is no help.)

Also, any thoughts about the CAN system? Completely abandoned it?

MfA wrote:I didn't suggest there would be no resource management, I was just backing up Taken that counters would ensure that the dragon wouldn't just keep out of range till he could reuse his breath attack and that there would still be a reason to use it anyway.

I know what you're saying, and I'm calling bullshit.

Counters do not cause characters to change their maneuvers from turn to turn - resource management systems do. Counters, like any set of defenses, may change what attacks you use against a particular enemy, but they won't change what you use from one turn to the next against that enemy.

In Taken's example, the Dragon shouldn't have used firebreath. But in the absence of a resource management system nothing has changed next round.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

MfA wrote:I didn't suggest there would be no resource management, I was just backing up Taken that counters would ensure that the dragon wouldn't just keep out of range till he could reuse his breath attack and that there would still be a reason to use it anyway.

I know what you're saying, and I'm calling bullshit.

On what exactly? The dragon would keep out of range till he could reuse his breath attack? Even though that attack pattern would guarantee counters being up to as great an extent as possible? (After flying away for 5 rounds his flame breath would truly be entirely useless.)

Counters, like any set of defenses, may change what attacks you use against a particular enemy, but they won't change what you use from one turn to the next against that enemy.

(Emphasis mine.) The only way these statement can be true is if the active counters/defences don't change between turns, otherwise they contradict.

In Taken's example, the Dragon shouldn't have used firebreath. But in the absence of a resource management system nothing has changed next round.

"I didn't suggest there would be no resource management".

PS. ignoring the semantic bullshit for a moment, everyone just wants to forget TNE ever existed now or what?

I don't think there were significant objections to CAN other than that it implied removal of HP. It encourages the set of behaviors that this thread assumes should be encouraged, but it is not a resource management system or any other system that determines what attacks are available, and therefore not what this thread is about.

zeruslord wrote:I don't think there were significant objections to CAN other than that it implied removal of HP. It encourages the set of behaviors that this thread assumes should be encouraged, but it is not a resource management system or any other system that determines what attacks are available, and therefore not what this thread is about.

Precisely.

MfA wrote:On what exactly? The dragon would keep out of range till he could reuse his breath attack? Even though that attack pattern would guarantee counters being up to as great an extent as possible? (After flying away for 5 rounds his flame breath would truly be entirely useless.)

Goooblega!


That's assuming a fixed turn cooldown time. Which is a resource management system. And the resource management system is the source of all the variance in maneuver use in that case.

Ice Shield's existence either makes Firebreath less than the best move or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then the Dragon will use Firebreath every round barring the intervention of a resource management system. If it does, then the Wizard will keep it on and the Dragon will use his next best attack every round barring the intervention of a resource management system.

Whether you have "Stances" that you set up ahead of time that change what the best maneuver available to the enemy is or whether you have "Counters" that you activate in response to people using maneuvers that change what the best one would be is a complete fucking nonsequitur. In the absence of resource management protocols restricting choice of attacks and defenses, it just boils down to a "best" chain of attacks and defenses that you repeat until someone wins. Press the A button! Press it HARD!

Stances and Counters are all fine and dandy, but they are not relevant to a discussion about resource management protocols. At all. It's like interjecting discussions about hit points vs. damage conditions. It's important to the game mechanics, but it's not relevant to a discussion about resource management.

Resource Management is the system by which the game cajoles everyone to use different abilities every round. Whether those abilities are attacks, counteractions, stances, paradigm shifts, or whatever - there has to be a reason that people won't just pick the same selection every round or they will. And that is what is being discussed.

-Username17

zeruslord wrote:I don't think there were significant objections to CAN other than that it implied removal of HP. It encourages the set of behaviors that this thread assumes should be encouraged, but it is not a resource management system or any other system that determines what attacks are available, and therefore not what this thread is about.

The difference between what attacks are available and what attacks can be used on an opponent is rather arbitrary ...

Wounds can just count up and provide a bonus to what enemies CAN do to you.

Since building up CAN is something that you have to do before you can blow enemies up when they are as powerful as you are

It provides resource management variety without getting into complex systems like token management or timers.

As Frank said then in a different context where he wasn't just posting funny pictures to win internet arguments ... this actually comes back to resource management CAN makes the game more playable with charge casting ... just like WoF makes the game more playable with at will casting. Looking at resource management system without the context necessary to see if they are playable or not is a bit ... stupid.

FrankTrollman wrote:In Taken's example, the Dragon shouldn't have used firebreath. But in the absence of a resource management system nothing has changed next round.

Pretty much all the sugestions here run into problems very similar to "nothing has changed next round". With the WoF there is no round-to-round effects inherent in the system, only individual powers may have round-to-round efftects.

To create a tactical system you need ongoing effects. Otherwise everything comes down to "What is the optimal action this round?". Whether the ongoing effects are depleted resources, increased knowledge, powers that last for several rounds, or changes to the battlefield, the combat will only be tactically interesting if powers change the ongoing tactical situation, and those changes to the tactical situation have a major impact on which powers are worthwhile using.

WoF is not a mechanism that addresses this. It increases the variability of combat, which may be good in its own way, by adding a short term random factor to the tactical situation each round.

FrankTrollman wrote:That's assuming a fixed turn cooldown time. Which is a resource management system. And the resource management system is the source of all the variance in maneuver use in that case.

Well that and the choices of the players and the DM who are not perfectly rational actors with perfect information applying a game theoretical solution to the situation. Without knowledge of hitpoints, saves, immunities etc etc. the optimality of either using a single target melee attack or an AoE breath attack is pure guesswork ... rationality is also a rather large assumption (too easy, don't go there).

Lets look at the variance though with the default resource management system and see if counters really make no difference ... without counters, strafing run after strafing run as you said in your first post, only a single attack used. With counters, strafing run to start, melee after that, breath attack when it's up again unless the wizard spend time making everyone defacto immune. No difference in variance indeed.

Stuff like counters and CAN are relevant to resource management systems because they fix problems which occur with those systems. "This actually comes back to resource management" was a true statement then, and it's true now.

Lets look at the variance though with the default resource management system and see if counters really make no difference

First of all, you really are using "counters" to mean "defenses." A counter is something you do to counter someone else's move. It's not something you to to prevent someone else from doing a move in the future. That would be a different kind of defense entirely.

But regardless, the strafing run is simply based on being able to do more damage in a round of blowing smoke than the opponents can do in a round of returning fire at a flying dragon. If that scenario provides a more favorable ratio than standing there slugging it out, then the dragon would be well advised to do strafing run after strafing run regardless of how many turns of cool down it takes to get the firebreath back on line.

Whether or not there are choice-based defenses as part of the equation means exactly fuck all because the choice of whether to strafe or not to strafe is based entirely around the total ratio of firebreath vs. defenses against party's ranged attacks vs. defenses as contrasted with slogging it out draconic teeth vs. defenses against party melee combat vs. defenses. Whether those defenses could have been something else either when the players last leveled their characters or at the beginning of the round when they set their priority sliders does not change the ratios of attack to attack as compared to how the defenses are actually configured.

Unless you are positing a resource management schedule for the defenses, the amount of hotswappability in the player's defenses doesn't actually change the rubric at all.

If you are using resource management schemes to force players to switch up their defensive bonuses, then this is similar to one of the "soft" offensive fate wind setups where you have no control over which of your abilities is at a relative advantage each round.

-Username17

I don't think MfA is articulating this very well, but I believe his point is that persistent effects are resources.

One of the things discussed a long time ago in relation to the CAN system was people using moves that were good at accumulating tier 1/2 effects to reduce the target's defenses and then finishing off with a move that's more likely to trigger a tier 4 (combat-ending) effect. The attacker's choice of move changes over the course of the battle, because his early attacks are accumulating resources (in this case, negative effects on the target) that make his final move possible or more effective.

In the fire shield example, if the wizard can use his action this round to put up a fire shield that nullifies the dragon's breath attack for the rest of the fight, then it is quite possible that he will use that on the first round and then do something else the second round--that's a change in tactics, because there's a resource difference in the second round (the fire shield is already in place). Whether the fire shield is worth using will depend on the relative decrease in the dragon's effectiveness compared to the additional damage the dragon will be able to do because the wizard didn't spend that action killing it sooner. And one can imagine a situation in which the wizard has a large collection of abilities that can alter the future flow of battle in a variety of ways and deciding which ones to use could be a very complicated decision.

These are examples of what I call "inverted resources," because they control what can be done to the person who has them (or how effectively something can be done), rather than what the person who has them can do. And they're rather simple examples. But they are resources, and they can motivate players to use different actions on different rounds.

The problem with persistent positive effects is that, in an asymmetric battle where one side knows the time and the other one doesn't know that there's a battle until it starts (i.e., an ambush), the ambushing side gets an inherent resource advantage; the more your resource management system allows charging (whether literally charging your laser, or just layering buff spells), the bigger the advantage.

If you can spend combat actions to make yourself more powerful that combat, then if you have foreknowledge you can spend noncombat actions to do the same thing, and then you're back to people pulling out superweapons on round 1.

In the absence of resource management protocols restricting choice of attacks and defenses, it just boils down to a "best" chain of attacks and defenses that you repeat until someone wins. Press the A button! Press it HARD!

Fine, if you reduce everything to a worst case scenario, this is what you get. But you know what? The same fucking thing applies to WoF! It's just playing DDR - you do a bunch of different moves, but at no point is there any more actual choice or tactics than pressing the A button.

I have seen nothing that makes Wind of Fate more than an aesthetics management system. It doesn't generate any actual gameplay beyond what "everything at-will, no god-moves" gives you, it just makes the names of the moves more varied, which maybe makes a recap of the battle more interesting to read. If your move interaction is so limited that people would just spam the same move - then the system sucks, and WoF is just obfuscating that fact for new players.

Now you can put randomness in a resource management system, and it does prevent canned combinations, but it isn't a resources management system in itself, it's just seasoning for one. So for instance, you could have all moves be per encounter, but instead of 1/encounter, you get 1d3-1 uses. The randomness is the seasoning, not the meal itself. (And yes, I know that specific system has issues - it was just an example, ok?)