4E: Tactics pt. 1

After the game on Saturday, it gave me a good look at tactics in the game, and the key shift from thinking about your choices in build and moving towards looking at your choices in play.

Damage In, Damage Out

The core abstract strategy of just about all hitpoint based combat games is minimizing damage in, and maximizing damage out. This is best done by eliminating sources of damage (opponents) as quickly as possible.

It’s always better to have one foe completely down than to half damage 3 others, since one foe down means it’s not going to be dishing damage the next round. Because of this, you want to concentrate attacks to lay out the foes who dish the most damage first.

Prioritize Targets

In 4E, this is mostly going to be strikers and artillery monsters you want to go after first. This is because they usually can’t take a lot of hits and generally dish out a lot of damage. Artillery may not dish out a lot of damage in comparison, but they often have the ability to choose between 2 or 3 viable targets and can choose to go for the weakest, which makes them dangerous for that. (I watched over the course of a couple of encounters as the ranged guys just kept racking up damage because no one put them down).

Ah, but what about minions? You can pop minions in one hit, but they do very little damage and never pull out really nasty encounter or recharge abilities. Generally, unless you have some fat area attack power, or need one out of the way for maneuvering, or have nothing else to do, they’re actually low on the list of priority targets. Of course, generally minions have some kind of synergy with strikers and other monsters, giving bonuses to hit, extra damage, etc. and then it might be worthwhile if you can drop the synergy in a round or two.

Wait for it…

Probably the biggest change from earlier editions of D&D is how much round to round combat relies on teamwork. I watched players fire off lots of encounter or daily powers, without even lining up for combat advantage first, or waiting for the Warlord to buff their attacks. This is what you don’t want to do.

Get every damn bonus you can, then use your encounter/daily powers, especially if they can be lost from a missed attack. You’re going to want to delay for certain characters in order to maximize your advantage. If you’re playing a support character, like the Cleric or Warlord, spend time buffing other folks attacks, and if you’re going to attack, spend it on minions or foes you can meaningfully hurt and put down.

Hardcore 3E players wonder what’s the value of knocking folks prone if it doesn’t score opportunity attacks? It’s because it gives an advantage to your allies to hit the target until it stands up.

Environment!

If it can be used to hurt the enemy, do it! Some things in an encounter are clearly there for combat purposes- a pit with spikes in it is both a threat to you and your opponents if you can push, pull or slide them into it. Some things require a little creativity- “I throw the hot pot of stew into it’s eyes when it gets close!”, “I push the library shelf over onto him!” etc.

Because these are likely to be limited, one time damage expressions in the scene, you can get more damage than you’re likely to get from your normal attacks, and can probably target something other than AC to hit.

That’s easy enough. Then comes really tricky stuff. Like what happens when one PC grapples a foe, shoves his head underwater? What happens when the party wizard then casts Freezing Ray on the foe? Maybe it just does damage, maybe the GM rewards you with an extra effect. Mechanics and fictional positioning can work hadn in hand.

Conserving Power Use

First, don’t save your Encounter powers if you’ve got a good chance of hitting (combat advantage, buffs from Cleric or Warlord, etc.) The sooner the target is down, that’s that much less damage you’re eating every round. If you slap it with a condition while you’re at it, maybe it doesn’t hit as often, or maybe someone else can hit it easier, or maybe it’s taking damage.

If you have to choose between an environmental damage effect (shoving someone in a pit) or doing an encounter power, go for the environmental effect first- not only because the encounter power is portable, while the environmental effect is tied to a situation and location on the map, but also because it gives you a head’s up on how hard you can expect that effect to hit and you can plan accordingly.

The tricky thing is figuring out when and where to use Daily powers. Some give effects that last the whole encounter, and you probably want to use those early in order to get the benefit throughout the entire encounter. But here’s something else- don’t expect a single hit from a daily to lay down anyone who you especially need to go- if it’s worth a daily, it’s probably worth having 3 or more team members beating it down as well. (It’s probably also worth having flanking and buffs, as mentioned before…) I watched a few players pull out the daily in one on one fights, which really didn’t do much except leave a lot of foes half dead, instead of fully dead.

This is the obvious stuff that struck me running the game. Maybe with some more play experience, I’ll have modifications to this, but it seems to be basic tactics for this game.

4E Skills - porting over indie skills

Edited to add:Keith Baker’s thoughts on Skill Challenges

So looking at the 4E skill system, I think it’s very good, despite the likely errata error which makes the outcome of most contests a bucket of FAIL. I think though, what’s missing, is advice on -when- to use any given thing.

Say Yes AKA the Freebie

“You enter the room and see a teleportation circle on the floor”

Tabletop roleplaying has a bad history with this one, both in published adventures and actual play. It can never be repeated enough times- unless conflict, failure, or spending time on a given thing would be fun, skip it- say yes, put it in the players’ faces, and keep it moving.

You know how in a movie there’s a montage of the hero climbing a mountain, crossing the desert, and cuting through a jungle in 10 seconds? That’s because it’s neat, but not the focus of the movie. If something isn’t the focus of your game, don’t waste time with it, and don’t leave the door open for players to spend 40 minutes checking for traps, haggling over apples, or trying to figure out what to do next.

Basic Interaction Required

This isn’t listed, but it’s a classic of old school and traditional play.

“There are runes on the floor”
“I look closer”
“It’s a teleportation ring”

This doesn’t require a check, it just requires that the players interact with the fiction. It rewards paying attention, curiosity, poking things with sticks, and even creativity. It’s a good way to draw players into the fiction, but if you over do it, they end up checking every nook and cranny, afriad they are missing something.

Passive Skill Checks

“The runes are common, the craftsmanship is not. The edges are perfectly smooth, it would take a master stonecutter three lifetimes to do it… and inhuman patience.”

This is sort of like a conditional Say Yes or Gimme- you give information to players who have invested into certain skills While D&D is mostly focused on who ambushes who for this, I use it mostly to add in flourishes, extra clues, but nothing crucial.

I like to make it a chance for each player to shine in their niche- the warrior knows the approaching company of soldiers to be veterans by the way they hold their spears, the ranger can see that this region is plagued by periodic droughts, the wizard recognizes a specific flourish of handwriting that only comes from the Southern College of Arnna.

Single Skill Checks

I generally use these rarely. They only get used when both success or failure would be interesting, equally, and YET it’s not worth making into a full scene (and an extended conflict).

Extended Contests

So here’s what’s tricky about Extended Contests. It’s all about fictional positioning.

Instead of making choices based on clearly defined mechanical options, players have to make choices and input on fiction, which is something traditional games are kind of widgy on.

Like, if we have the chase through the market and the player says, “I jump over the apple cart”, who gets to say if the apple cart is there? Does the GM have to introduce it to be used? Does the player suggest it and the GM yay/nays it? Beyond that, when do the dice get rolled? Is it an Athletics check? Or do we simply narrate it and then the player tries to do something else and uses some kind of Local Knowledge check to lose the chasers?

Savvy GMs with experience know you can totally change the outcome of a scene by selectively choosing when and which things to roll for and which ones not to- either weighting things on the character’s strong or weak skills.

It’s this general sort of widginess that makes one group have a great time with extended contests- creative, tactical choices, and another group it’s boring- just playing craps with narration and no real control over success or failure.

Difficulty and Outcome

Finally, how do you weight skill checks? Should you decide based on how hard it would be “realistically”? Do you weight it based on plot convenience? Do you make it easier for good narration? How do you decide how much outcome there is? Again, this can scale from realistically to cinematically to your own whimsy.

This becomes another issue when it comes to the GM as the sole determining person- players either pick up on your preferences and learn to meet it, flail blindly, or even resent it because their conception of how difficulty and outcome should be rated is different (”But realistically…”).

Gamebeam

Gamebeam is the blog where misterbanx and I review, rant, and rave about videogames.

I haven’t taken the time to play games in a couple months now, so mostly I’m reviewing old stuff until I get some time to kick back and get into them again. Misterbanx, on the other hand, is coming at it from the stance of someone who not only plays lots of games, but also has been a programmer for games for a long time.

After I get some time to get back into videogames, I might start putting up some posts about design ideas tabletop gamers could learn from the console industry.

Rule Zero

Over on Story-Games, the “controversy” over Rule Zero rears it’s ugly head again. Of course, like most design/theory/game controversies, it doesn’t really exist when you add context.

Rule Zero, as most folks know it, is “If you don’t like the rules don’t use them.” (implied, and sometimes also stated, “and change them”)

In one sense, this is the strength of roleplaying games, the Lumpley-Care principle at it’s finest- if the group has consensus about how the game should go, that’s how it goes. And certainly, many groups have used it that way and had buttloads of fun.

That of course, also assumes a group that communicates well and has a working social contract.

If you add another rule, common that goes with Rule Zero, which is “The GM is the authority”(implied, assumed, and rarely stated, “over the group“), then Rule Zero quickly slides into dangerous territory. After all, the “you” in “If you don’t like the rules, don’t use them” is no longer applied to the group as a whole, but specifically the authority figure to judge.

The final breakdown comes if this choosing to use or not use the rules by a single person isn’t communicated. (Rolls dice behind screen) “Oops, you missed the check! Too bad!”. Now, effectively, one person is the authority of when rules get applied, if any at all. Other players can never be sure if they’re actually getting full input into the game.

When you also add a bunch of advice suggesting that play is about one person dictating the direction of play, without communicating it (Illusionism), and in order to control that direction you selectively use or not use rules, you’ve now built a poor house for either collective storytelling or even really playing -a game- beyond Simon Says or Mother May I.

And many if not most games that suggest Illusionism highly stress not “over doing it”, not as in, not controlling the game, but more importantly, not doing it in a way that shows the players that their input is not really applied. (of course, if it is good and fun for everyone, why are you hiding it? Why would they be upset? Hmm.)

And then there’s the final bit of real world context that puts this all together. Though individual traditional games may differ on whether they simply have Rule 0, GM as Authority, or Illusionism in the actual rule books- these three have become the default understanding of roleplaying for most people. One usually implies the other three.

The belief that Rule Zero gets to exist cut off from the rest of the game text or from the rest of gamer culture, is naive or disingenous.

For game designers rule zero technically exists at all times- you can’t “make sure” anyone is playing the game the way you wrote/intended. But more importantly, if you explicitly write it, you need to consider what it means for gamer culture at large in that triangle of Fudging, Illusionism and Rule Zero, and that if you don’t want the other two, you’re going to have to go WAY out of your way explaining that and probably end up with dozens of emails of folks asking questions about why things aren’t working when they’re doing something weird with your rules you never wrote.

For gamers, Rule Zero is the source of the Gamer Hurdle. The default for roleplaying culture (which exists in no other gaming hobby), that the written rules are not necessarily a good indicator of how the game is actually played. Which also means, that saying “I’m playing Game X” doesn’t always indicate -what actual game we’re playing- and what kind of experience you can expect from it, and makes it harder for all of us to find games and groups of people who want the same experience.

For new folks who’ve never roleplayed before, while the idea that they don’t actually need to follow the rules is novel- telling them “not to use it” without any advice on what the effects in play would be, or how to fill the gaps provided, means you’ve just said, “If you don’t like the way the game works, design it yourself, have fun!”

In other words, Rule Zero generally does zero for anyone.

Nyambe thread… countdown…

There is a thread on rpg.net about Nyambe, which is filled with half clues vs. cluelessness, but nothing head-explodey… yet. Read at your own risk.

On one hand, I have to respect that it’s one of the few settings based in Africa, period. And possibly the only setting not based as “a place where europeans go for adventure!”. On the other hand, I feel like I’m not sure who the target audience is with it.

As far as gamers (or the many people raised in a culture with little actual history of Africa), there’s not a lot of real info- some neat mythology, some neat classes, but little in the way of laying out social structures, which a bunch of folks probably need to make it less “Africa the Magical” and more “Africa where my hero comes from”.

A couple of friends also pointed out that the artwork ranges from solid to problematic, and that it’s really interesting how the more “evil” demihuman types fufill the darker, more traditionally african appearance while the nicer ones move away from that.

Of course, it’s not like we’ve -ever- seen rpg material that is less than 5 stars before right? Actually, I think the thread probably will eventually lead into something more telling about gamer culture and it’s issues with cultural appropriation rather than about the product itself…