Discussion: Making Combat Fun Again

Sooooo, I have heard from a number of people that the encounters under this combat system tend to be either too easy (Especially with a full party) or too hard (Although unconsciousness is rare, and death is unheard of. )

Now, maybe the system is partially to blame; good monsters are much harder to build than player characters. But that's not the salient point here. I'm no developer and I'm going to leave the development to them.

I am wondering what you think players and game masters can do to hit that magic number of not too challenging without being too easy.

I do have an opinion; however, it is mostly untested, and so I'm going to listen to other opinions of more experienced people first.

I would argue that if no one was knocked out, it probably wasn't "too hard". It might be frustrating, obnoxious, or tedious but not hard.

On the GM side of things, you gotta be willing to mess with the players. Find ways to shake things up mid battle and keep it fresh. Use detailed descriptions for the flavor of the battle and encourage players to do the same. I also think blitzes work a little better than marathons. The player side of things is very much a math/system issue. Damage dealers are a little too capable of making a static build. Various forms of support have a fair bit higher amount of situational awareness required. This might be a Skype vs tabletop issue since the addition of movement means you always have a variable outside of your character to pay attention to.

I find it not all that hard to KO the PCs, just keeping them KOed is the hard part. Also this system seems to have traps that can really anger a GM for how a monster can be shut down badly... To the point that a GM might feel the need to use "rocks fall" level of danger from what I've seen go down. Sure I've also seen fun fights too made with this system... But those are hard and I think can only be built by munchkin GMs it feels like.

Xel and Zamuel raise some good points, which tie into the point I'm going to make. I am not exempt from the corrections I suggest here. (I'd like to think I'm doing better, but hard to say.)

On Avoiding Cakewalks

These happen, frankly, because there is little or no chance of failure. It seems too easy because it is too easy. Here is how I suggest guarding from this:

To the Gamemaster: Aim for the players.

I get it; sometimes you get caught unprepared and you have to produce something immediately (Usually out of the Monster Compendium, for me at least.) This means your monster is likely designed to try and "work anywhere"; it doesn't. Monsters should be made just for that party.

For instance: QuietKal's build in My Little Warehouse revolves around using Crazy Concoction and Demonscale to use beneficial save-ends effects. I know this now, and will counter with my own save-ends effects. Not necessarily even strong ones; just Daze, Vulnerability, or Ongoing Damage in small doses will put some heat in it, something for him to watch out for.

To The Players: Take some risks.

It's easier than you might think to make a "perfect" build, that doesn't have any particular shortcoming or unacceptable weakness. Don't do it. Try something that might backfire once in a while, like Dark Bargain or Berserker's Rage. My next build (if Deonte approves) involves All Or Nothing, Redirect Focus, Chain of the Drunken Master, and a 10 Pip Thunderstorm. This is probably a bit extreme, but it's an extreme sort of character.

On Avoiding Unfairness

A battle (or anything else, really) feels unfair when someone feels like they got the short end of the stick, and can't do anything about it. A small, irritating thing that can't be stopped or worked around can make a battle unfair - even if it's still pretty easy. And yet a legitimately dangerous battle can feel edgy and fun - because the player is trying, and succeeding, but only just; they can in fact do something to steer the battle, even if it's hard.

To the Gamemaster: Provide or insure a way around it.

I mentioned Kal's Anti Save-Ends build earlier? He also has Mind Over Matter, in case the negatives stack up too high. Now, Dazed means that it'll take a couple rounds to happen; that's okay. (Probably.) Now, something like Stun, Pip stealing, or (Celestia forbid!) Domination would leave him utterly helpless; that would be unfair. Because he can't do anything about it. And so I'm going to try and avoid those, or at least make them "end of turn" instead of save ends.

To the Players: Have a back-up plan.

Don't rely solely on one combo or strategy. Most combos don't use all eight talents and all of your gold; and most talents are useful in multiple scenarios. Think about when your build is utterly disastrous, and build for that scenario too. Panic Attack (My character in My Little Inferno) uses All Or Nothing, Berserker's Rage, and Iron Shield to make himself a raging juggernaut. But, he's only got 1 hp at the end of round 2. To compensate, he has a number of talents that recover HP or grant Temporary HP; which also makes him more useful over all to his allies when brute force isn't sufficient - or even when it is.

Crystalite wrote:I get it; sometimes you get caught unprepared and you have to produce something immediately (Usually out of the Monster Compendium, for me at least.) This means your monster is likely designed to try and "work anywhere"; it doesn't. Monsters should be made just for that party.

Or at least adjust instead of using dry. There may need to be a GM supplement mentioning various checks and balances in combat.

To The Players: Take some risks.

It's easier than you might think to make a "perfect" build, that doesn't have any particular shortcoming or unacceptable weakness. Don't do it. Try something that might backfire once in a while, like Dark Bargain or Berserker's Rage.

This is a sorta difficult thing to suggest.  Some people are simply more focused towards squeezing out performance and this comes off as making a character weak on purpose.  I think the more constructive suggestion is that they should try different roles.  Instead of being damage all the time, try support or debuffing.  It alters the feel of things even if you're still pushing to find the best result.

To the Gamemaster: Provide or insure a way around it.

I mentioned Kal's Anti Save-Ends build earlier? He also has Mind Over Matter, in case the negatives stack up too high. Now, Dazed means that it'll take a couple rounds to happen; that's okay. (Probably.) Now, something like Stun, Pip stealing, or (Celestia forbid!) Domination would leave him utterly helpless; that would be unfair. Because he can't do anything about it. And so I'm going to try and avoid those, or at least make them "end of turn" instead of save ends.

I find this interesting since I'm one of the GMs who's more than willing to use pip damage.  I'd say the main thing is to give most of such moves to lieutenants or minions.  It allows you to give tells while the player can retaliate without needing to face down a sack of HP.

Oh; I didn't mean Pip stealing (Or Stun or even Domineer) was always bad. It's just bad in that particular scenario, because it leaves that build more or less helpless no matter what you do.

Yeah Pip damage is most likely the most hardest type of attack a GM can use and make that feel like it's not just a kick to the groin. Sure a GM might make it work... But it's hard to do. Cause any time I've seen pip loss from an monster it feels painful.

Agreed. Stun and Domineer are about the same; it can be done, but tread carefully.

How bad pip drain feels really depends on player mindset. It's a bigger issue for players with incredibly static battle plans than those with more flexible battle plans. It also really affects role. It's horrible if it hits a tank or someone else who's really interrupt/reaction focused but not so much for a damage dealer.

I wonder how battles could be varied by mixing negative effects with positive ones? Maybe pair Vulnerability with Resist to increase the penalty of taking damage. Or maybe Ongoing Damage with Temp HP for a delayed effect. Perhaps Stun with Resist/Regeneration for a Petrified type effect, or Pip loss for in exchange for a damage bonus.

I think... One thing that'd majorly improve combat... If people were given more ideas on what to do with their monsters... Both flavor-wise and mechanic wise to make it more interesting... Once I've had a fight aganst a few ninjas... Mechanically they were summoning more enemies into the battle... But flavor wise they were summoning "blood clones" that they took over when they got KOed... It was really neat. Other ideas I'd love to see used:

• single target options for hoards
  
• single turn groups or hoards
  
• Multi-Target Solos
  
• Special weak-points that need special conditions to be meat when hit... Like it can only be harmed by single target's only, ongoing damage, or something... (and maybe doing something else if the special target zone doesn't take damage... Hate whenever it seems a PCs combat turn did nothing to help advance combat in some way. Hate it more when PCs feel like they did no damage...)
  
• Special Resist that has it's own HP that if it tanks X amount of damage and/or special target A takes X damage... The Resist is removed temporarily or permanently... (really hate when PC damage get's tanked by resist... It's the worst feeling for a player to feel that they made the worst possible move... But oddly enough Auto-Blinding doesn't bother me that much. If the party has some ways to get around it of course...)
  
• MULTIPLE WIN/LOSE CONDITIONS! (Cause most of the time there is only one win and one lose: Win = All enemies HP hit 0, Lose = Whole Party hit KOed/Coma/Dead status at the same time...)
  

Here's me chiming in without having read the other responses, so please forgive duplicate statements.

As a DM, I've found that challenging combat is difficult to run. If all bases are covered by the party, its near impossible to have them lose, or even be truly threatened, with out some grade A DM manure. My last big fight I had them do was equivalent of them fighting two bosses at the same time. I scaled back the offensive output in the spirit of fairness, and they steamrolled both without issue. I think two of them got bloodied, and even the dying full party nuke attack which should have reduced most of the party to KOd was shut down by a simple misdirection. (I think I ruled it wrong, but it still illustrates the point). Basically, where there normally is a fine line between too hard and too easy, in this system, with a solid party, the fine line becomes a nigh visible tripwire.

From the perspective of player, my only concerns are that the Devs have spent too much of their time tearing down the parts of combat I found to be fun, and building up the other parts I don't like to use too often- e.g., a regular DPS build has been nuked from stupidly too much damage per turn all the way down to near worthless, whereas other builds (especially on board) have been jacked up to be too effective. It isn't fun knowing that you have to play a particular build in order to be truly worth anything in combat, especially since much of the reason for all the nerfing was to make all the builds equally useful. In one particular game, on board, one character can solo a boss, or a dozen enemies, BY HIMSELF, by exploiting the Jump movement rule and all the options for it, and I honestly just mess around the whole time because nothing I do would make a difference. Conjurations have TOO MANY supporting options, making a default no brains involved summoning strategy more viable than the cleverest of combo builds. It kinda sucks.

The player POV can only be solved by the Devs, like you said, but for the DM method, it really just requires that the DM be willing to kill his players. So many players disappear and drop out around here as it is, so many DMs are afraid to do too much and kill the ones that are still around. But if you just accept that the players should be killable and give the enemies that capability, then the combat will be decently challenging. You also have to just be plain unfair about it. Give the bad guys +pip minor attacks. Let them redirect attacks 2 or 3 times a turn. Make them immune to certain status effects. Making enemies equal to the players means putting them at a disadvantage, because PvP is impossible in this game. Make glass cannon hoards, too, those are rather effective. 15 or so minions with 3d10 damage moves. At least half of them will be gone before any of them have had a chance to go, most likely, and the rest can do significant damage before the battle is over.

That is one of the biggest problems of the system... It demands a hell lot on the GMs to do everything the Devs seemingly couldn't be arsed to take care of or even put guidelines/suggestions for a how-to.

Sadly there's no point in doing it now due to the upcoming system. I'm sure the new system will have a stronger foundation to allow balance...

Alternatively combat will always suck because of its Flow Chart System due to the lack of variance landscape causes in the board version. Oh well...

Wont be shocked if the new system still puts much of the taxing on the GM to make combat fun... Or to even need to figure out things to really do with the combat itself.

Another little idea I left out of that list I made: Combat pauses with shifts into RP/Skill Challenges of some type to do things to help brake up long fights that seem to be wearing on everyone... A minor change-up mid-fight like that could always help such long fights in my opinion, and at least make than hopefully more positively remembered then negatively recalled for being so dang long.

Bronymous wrote:As a DM, I've found that challenging combat is difficult to run. If all bases are covered by the party, its near impossible to have them lose, or even be truly threatened, with out some grade A DM manure.

I think one of the main problems is that the base team size is too big for most enemies scenarios.

Well I've been running enemies out of the "balanced" monster manual. If the math is right then they should provide a challenge for what they're balanced against, but they aren't. Two reskinned Solo v 6 monsters WITH added made up stuff that by math makes them OP, and a group of 5 going in with disadvantages and prior injuries barely blinked at them. So maybe that's one place to start, get some new math and update these monsters to be more effective.

If you mean SilentBelle and tygerburningbright's Monster Compendiums, those are estimations as opposed to hard calculations. May even be worth arguing they're partially outdated. And really, it's not just an aspect of being willing to kill players. You gotta figure out how to mess with them. Figure out play styles then figure out how to mess with them.

As far as pets, there's some rather uneven things about them.

Yeah... 100% this game demands you build the monsters for the player's builds. But best not to make then lock down those builds... Or they'll just feel you being a dick to them out of a hate for their combat build.

Well, I think that requires a bit of give and take on both sides. I'm pretty up front about doing it in my campaigns and the players seem accepting of it.

I've discovered a strategy: Murder the healer. REALLY helps on the DM side of combat.

Best way to beat the healer? Murder the Tank.

Best way to beat the tank? Murder the.... oh hang on.

All you need to do to threaten the tank (and most static attacking builds) is to damage pips. It's the role with the most need for them that has the least ability to build them by itself, especially if you use AOE or multiple attackers.

Yeah, I decided my next boss is going to have a move that lets him drain pips from on enemy to use to fuel an attack against another. Or just flat out dominate them.

Crystalite wrote:Sooooo, I have heard from a number of people that the encounters under this combat system tend to be either too easy (Especially with a full party) or too hard (Although unconsciousness is rare, and death is unheard of. )

Now, maybe the system is partially to blame; good monsters are much harder to build than player characters. But that's not the salient point here. I'm no developer and I'm going to leave the development to them.

I am wondering what you think players and game masters can do to hit that magic number of not too challenging without being too easy.

I do have an opinion; however, it is mostly untested, and so I'm going to listen to other opinions of more experienced people first.

The problem is that the system currently suffers from several fundamental problems. There is literally *no* number for monster damage that is appropriately challenging for players, even if the builds were all balanced. This is because we made a huge developmental mistake early on that went unnoticed until several months ago, when we were combing through the system on a fundamental level for the rework. The original system was designed mostly by feel and guestimation in regards to numbers, since it was originally designed for my personal game and I have no issue designing and balancing monsters at the drop of a hat to get exactly the results I want. This led to a lot of fundamental issues, because the foundation was thrown together in less than a week with the reliance on a DM that was also majoring in Game Design to oversee things. In short, my bad and we're fixing this for the rework.

The core issue is that monster damage needs to simultaneously be set to two different numbers.

1) Monster damage needs to roughly equal players' ability to heal on a round-by-round basis. If healing outstrips monster damage, people can infinitely heal and never die. If damage outstrips healing, healing becomes pretty much useless. Players can commonly heal about 10 life per standard action (rounded for convenience and obviously leaving out traits/items). So, monster damage should be about 10 damage per round before factoring the other stuff in.

2) Monster damage needs to be equal to player life divided by the number of rounds you want the fight to last (if you want the players to be in risk of going unconscious). Let's say you want the fight to last about 5 rounds. Monsters should deal about 6 damage to each player each round then (since players start with 30 life, not factoring in items or traits).

See the issue? Monster damage has to simultaneously be two separate numbers. It has to simultaneously be 10 damage (pre traits/items) and 6 damage (pre traits/items). It can't be both. Not only will different parties be of vastly different power levels, different tactics in a battle (how much healing is used or not used) throws things off completely. In order to make things work, you have to modulate encounters on a round-by-round basis like the AI director in Left 4 Dead, basing difficulty and damage upon how the players are currently doing.

Of these two numbers, setting monster damage equal to the 2nd point (about 6 damage) is the more sensible - so people don't have to constantly heal. However, this plus the "heal-as-if-at-0-when-below-0" rule makes players effectively unkillable by any 'fair' means. Also, we have a third problem. Players can heal a LOT of life at once relative to their starting life. This means that monsters wanting to leave an impact need to deal so much damage they're likely to one-shot players or come close, leading to the complaints that combat is "too hard" even though the players are still winning. It feels unfair, and unfun, even though they're still pulling off victories.

The rework is fixing all of this. The natural fix is to increase player starting life to the point where monster damage fits to healing and gives monsters more room for variable damage amounts. The new system currently has players starting at 100 life (and able to heal about 23 life for a standard action). You could apply a quick patch to the current system by making it so that players start with 50 life instead of 30. That will let you set damage at 10, which will make things easier on you.

I'd also recommend embracing the new Fatal Damage system. With Fatal Damage, if your players go down they feel the pain. Players can't fall below 0 life, and 0 life is unconscious (and they no longer lose energy from falling unconscious), but when they DO take damage or lose life that would reduce them to below 0 - they fall to 0 and take the excess in Fatal Damage. So if you're at 10 life and an enemy deals 23 damage to you, you fall to 0 life and now have 13 fatal damage. If you gain 10 life later, you will be up and fighting again at 10 life, but will still have 13 fatal damage. When your fatal damage reaches 50 (in this format, where you start with 50 life) - you die. Fatal Damage *cannot be healed* by any means other than an extended rest. Until you take an 8 hour rest, you keep that fatal damage from fight to fight. You can also deal fatal damage out of combat too, at the DM's discretion. Because of the "full heal after a 5 minute rest" rule, it can be hard to make traps feel intimidating if they don't threaten instant death. However, if a scything blade trap deals 5 fatal damage (bypassing normal damage entirely), that's something much nastier.

These fixes won't solve all of combat, some of the problems with it can't be as easily patched without whole new movesets (which is what we're working on for the new system) but they should go a long way to addressing the most fundamental issues being explored in this thread.

I... like it. That can't be right.

Honestly, that's probably the only change I'm going to like, but getting a better grasp on HP/damage counts is definitely an improvement.