Hot answers tagged combat
56
I'll deal with your first example first: standing on a table in that situation is not particularly an advantage. It's also, therefore, very unlikely behaviour for a martial artist. (Not counting Feng Shui players). Standing slightly up from your opponent, on the other hand, is an advantage for many of the reasons below. It brings your kicks to better ...
44
Combat needs to move. It's the most detail packed in the least in-game time most systems have to offer. And yet it's also (usually) supposed to feel fast-paced and action packed.
So yes, it's perfectly acceptable to hurry players along to the point of skipping a turn. It's even a rule in some systems. Here's an example from the Star Wars RPG (although I ...
31
I grapple with this question all the time. I'm not sure this is the best answer, but I try to start by having the enemy negotiate with them.
Early in a campaign, I'll have the enemy surrender on reasonable terms. The trick is to implant the idea that negotiating doesn't lead to a worse outcome, and that the "bad guys" may want something the PCs are ...
26
Pros:
no arguments about where something is
no confusion based on differing visions of the world
if you use 3d terrain and so forth, it can be very evocative
easier/quicker to do crunchy strategy
Cons:
time consuming to set 'em up
can definitely hamper player creativity -- "if it's not on the map it doesn't exist"
same goes for GM creativity
26
Lead by showing. Have the enemies talk during fights, shouting threats or bantering. Make sure that this is relevant to what's going on (or about to happen) and not just throw-away one-liners: have the enemies snarl angrily and promise painful death to the PC who wounded them, declare revenge for their fallen comrades, shout quick instructions or ...
26
My view has always been that if they need to pause to ask you a rules question, for a better description, etc, then it's fair to let them slow the combat down to get answers to those things. But if they're just sitting there waging an internal struggle (or even just arguing with other party members) about whether they should smack the monster with their +5 ...
26
According to The ever useful d20PFSRD:
In a round of combat, you can do either :
1 Full-round action OR
1 Standard action plus 1 Move action (in any order) OR
2 Move actions (effectively trading your Standard action for a Move action)
Plus a combination of :
1 Swift or Immediate Action AND
Any number of Free Actions
A few special cases
The 5 ft. ...
26
In general, you have a number of options - some need more preplanning however.
Doctor, It Hurts When I Do That
If characters are frequently getting caught in situations where they don't have anything to do, they are not playing the long game very smart. They should consider these times in builds, when purchasing magic items, etc. "Oh I'm a melee guy if ...
25
See DFRPG:
p.200 for Attacks
p.207 for Maneuvers
Whenever you attack someone, you choose the appropriate Skill to roll - Fists for punches, Weapons for knives/swords, Guns for guns, etc.. Roll 4dF (the 4 Fudge dice) and add the result of the roll, which will be between -4 and +4 to the Skill you chose.
The defender gets to make a defense roll with an ...
23
A "Death Spiral" is something that can happen in games where your combat skill is affected by your health (or similar attribute). If you take a hit, your combat skill decreases slightly (making it harder for you to hit the opponent and/or easier for the opponent to hit you).
While there is a certain realism to this, it can often quickly lead to the "death ...
23
Sometimes combat is just long and boring. Try a more exciting game system, or house-rule the more long and annoying parts. Some game systems are tuned towards long combat rounds and grind. There's some system specific tips out there for speeding combats, see Speeding Up Combat for 3.5 as an example. Time limits etc., not going to list them all here as ...
22
The most common way this is done is as a "switch" on the entire campaign: the campaign's "you know your HP point total" switch is set to "no". Jason White's answer already covers the reason for such a blanket campaign feature well. This is almost always done at the campaign-wide level to make players more careful with the lives of their PCs. That isn't to ...
20
You can also make them smarter and more resourceful. Two levels ago, say five kobolds were a challenge. Now, consider:
Five kobolds who have hired an ogre to protect them against the recent plague of adventurers
Five kobolds who have raised a bear from a cub and trained it to help them
Five kobolds who have scavenged a wand or two
Five kobolds who have ...
20
An unconsciousDDI character cannot take actions. So they could not voluntarily take their second wind. If the character is also Dying, a 20 on the death save will allow them to spend a healing surge.
However, if an unconscious character is the target of an effect such as Healing WordDDI then they can spend the healing surge.
Also, an adjacent character ...
19
First thing to remember is the definition of terrain in a combat/encounter framework:
Terrain is anything that is not a character or monster combatant.
Terrain is not just the ground the PCs are standing on. It is the furniture, atmosphere, weather, walls, ceiling, non-combatant plants and creatures, dead-bodies (real dead, not undead), fire, water, ...
18
The Pathfinder game I'm scheduled to join in a few weeks has one of these. I've reproduced it below. (©2010 Vivian Abraham)
Hit Points, Conditions, and Healing
Conditions, or what happens when you are knocked below zero hit points
Hit points represent your character's ability to avoid lethal damage. When you reach zero hit points or go negative, you gain ...
18
What you are looking for is squad or platoon level movement and formations. US Army FM 3-21.8 has a lot on this subject, especially chapter 3. It specifically talks about creating a cigar-shaped perimeter when not on the move.
Also research immediate action (IA) drills, about tactical response to certain situations.
In one long AD&D 2e campaign, one ...
18
There are two real world reasons I can see:
To strike something above you, you have gravity working against you.
To strike something below, you have gravity working with you.
Your balance is better when leaning forward than when leaning back.
When striking something above you, chances are you'll lean back and
vice versa.
As for inclusion in a game ...
16
If combat is a more minor element of your adventures then using narrative combat can keep the game flowing in the same manner as other types of encounters rather than switching to a separate type of "mini game". If combat is the major element of your game the greater tactical options of using miniatures can be more enjoyable to a lot of players.
It really ...
16
I tend to look at the resolution to this problem more from a stand-point of visualization than system. In a slightly off-color blog post last year I called it, 'Premature Imagination.' The key point of that entry was to say that a major failing in approach that can lead to increasing dissatisfaction with, and growing focus on, the problem of whiff & ping ...
16
BRP is "deadly" mostly because the damage capacity is relatively low (Size+Con)/2, averaging 11 points, and damages are a significant portion of that. Weapons range from 1d4 (dagger) through 2d8 (Greatsword) damage, before accounting for damage by location limits and impaling... and head hits can only take 1/3 the total. Quite simply put, a single hit in the ...
15
Use the personality of the opposition. The easiest way to adjust difficulty is to either focus fire on a single PC or spread the damage out. Particularly in the heroic tier, few PCs can stand up against concentrated fire; this is particularly true if the enemy coordinates, delays their actions, and all go immediately after the leader has gone. Conversely, ...
15
Fundamentally, this is a relic of MM1 monster design. Monsters in MM1 followed the naturalistic 3.5 style "they should have damage equal to their equipment." Creating the absolutely worthless Orc Beserker with a boring power called "Greataxe" that completely ignores the damage requirements (introduced in MM3) of its level and tends to splatter low-level ...
15
RAW, as you point out, the sniper isn't getting the sneak attack (you're not missing some other rule). Why? No good reason other than that "the rules say so," so I would invoke GM privilege - as in Pathfinder they say clearly "the GM is the law over and above the written rules" - and make it so they get their sneak attack. Because it makes sense from a ...
15
The Riddle of Steel was designed by Jake Norwood, who practices historical European combat styles, studied and taught at the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA), and is a founder of the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) Alliance. He designed TRoS to have an authentic feel similar to fights from his practical experience, with the same kind ...
15
I had this problem at first too. Here are some good uses of minions.
Archers. Long range archers. This was the first effective use of minions I found. Make it so that rushing over to kill the minions is a time investment. Better yet, keep the minions separate from each other so that each individual minion is a time investment.
Terrain. This is a ...
15
From Pathfinder Core Rulebook, p136 (emphasis mine):
Weapon Focus (Combat): Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for the purposes of this feat.
1) Rays (not other ranged spells, just rays) count as ranged weapons for the purposes of feats like Weapon Focus and for the ...
15
These are on two different scales. Generally it does not matter where a Player Character is on board a ship in ship to ship combat. Treat each ship as a figure until they are at boarding action, then the exact location matter and change scale. That is, for ship to ship combats have a Sea Map with Ships on it. Once the ships are in contact, change to two ship ...
15
As a general rule, "An opportunity attack is a melee basic attack" (Compendium glossary), so this doesn't come up much.
However, there are special cases: Ninth Legion Student [Lesser Style] lets you use Direct the Strike (ranged 5) "in place of a melee basic attack when making an opportunity attack."
Now, both the Glossary entry for Ranged Attack and the ...
15
Yes, why not!
All Fate games are storytelling games, so all that you can or cannot do depends on whether you can form a coherent story around it that is consistent with what has come before. If you can form a plausible story around shaming a hitman enough to stop trying to kill you, I'd say you can do it.
The hard part is getting there in the first place.
...
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