Just what the tin says and inspired by this:

Quote from: Eirikrautha;1143037I'm in a Slipstream campaign right now, and running a Deadlands campaign.  I think what you described is Savage World's greatest asset, and its greatest detriment.  A good RPG needs that occasional "against-the-odds" success to make the session memorable.  The "I needed a nat 20..." story gets told over and over, but the "I had a 90% chance to succeed... and I succeeded" stories don't.  So the exploding dice is something that works well for that.

The problem is that the way the game functions, combat becomes more and more dependent on acing.  Unless you run 2 - 3x the party size in mooks (which will burn bennies quickly just based on the mooks acing), most of the enemies will have a toughness so high that you have to wait for the damage die to explode to even have a chance to hurt them.  So, instead of D&D where you slowly whittle hp until the monster finally drops, you hit the monster over and over and do nothing, until the dice explode and the monster drops.  So the process is different, but the feeling ends up the same.  A wasted opportunity, IMHO...

So, how do you do it or how would you make a hybrid of both or what's your favorite mechanic?

13th Age adds "escalation dice" each round of combat specifically to keep combat from dragging on like that.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;114306713th Age adds "escalation dice" each round of combat specifically to keep combat from dragging on like that.

Don't own it, please expand?

I think your description of Savage Worlds sounds off...

Exploding dice ending fights can happen - but they shouldn't be the norm insofar as "defeating the bad guys".

I find fights in Savage Worlds end precisely as players engage intelligently as planned. Whether it's by ambush, or straight up duking it out. The idea that a pack of adventurers are going to just roll up on a dragon and hope exploding dice will whittle him down is (if this is a salient example) then you're probably going to die the death you deserve.

If you mean you're going up against someone that might be more skilled than you (higher Fighter stat) you offset that using Tricks, and called shots, and bypassing armor, and whatever it takes to Shake them then go for the kill. I find most combats in Savage Worlds are pretty fast. When they're not, it's usually a big tension builder.

I like having systems with baseline of what is "normal". As a GM I can scale fights accordingly.

FASERIP - Normal guy has 24 health.
D&D - Normal guy has ~8hp
Savage Worlds - Everyone has 3 Wounds barring Edges.
Interlock - Health track with barring BTM modifiers.

What I *want* is a deathspiral. I've grown to dislike D&D having maximum effectivness until 0 HP. Easily fixed of course, but RAW - I don't care for it. FASERIP is like this... but usually there are almost always Stuns and Slams that break that down depletion with interesting things.

Savage Worlds is very tactical, unless you're an unimaginative player. I find that it's abstractions lend to better "cinematic" combat than D&D, which works for me and lets me draw that out of my player. Who doesn't like their GM asking you to describe HOW you KICK ASS? Go crazy. Make your legend. If the dice-gods and your skills are with you - you'll get exactly what you want. Or not... in which case your failures will be commensurate to your attempt.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1143043Just what the tin says and inspired by this:



So, how do you do it or how would you make a hybrid of both or what's your favorite mechanic?

I suspect that there isn't a single solution to this problem because this is one of those places where the nature of the mechanic translates directly into the flow of the combat--and different groups have different expectations about that flow.  Even in the same person, you can have different expectations.  I like "whiff, whiff, whiff, ARGH!" in movies and books, but hate it in RPGs.  Others don't mind that flow at all, as long as they can get an "ARGH!" state that they can tolerate--whether death, serious injury, "out of the fight", or even some kind of mere setback.

I'm not positive, because testing results are inconclusive so far, but I think that I prefer a very mild but nonetheless there "death spiral" effect, where the players feels the dread of starting the death spiral.  Then I prefer to use that in a game where characters can somewhat compensate for each other, to try to avoid going very far down the spiral.  Clearly, that gets into a wider part of the design than merely the mechanics of hit and damage.  Which is the long way around to say that I don't think you can put an attack mechanic replacement onto something like D&D or GURPS or Runequest and satisfy me entirely on this question.

Quote from: tenbones;1143075I think your description of Savage Worlds sounds off...

Exploding dice ending fights can happen - but they shouldn't be the norm insofar as "defeating the bad guys".

I find fights in Savage Worlds end precisely as players engage intelligently as planned. Whether it's by ambush, or straight up duking it out. The idea that a pack of adventurers are going to just roll up on a dragon and hope exploding dice will whittle him down is (if this is a salient example) then you're probably going to die the death you deserve.

If you mean you're going up against someone that might be more skilled than you (higher Fighter stat) you offset that using Tricks, and called shots, and bypassing armor, and whatever it takes to Shake them then go for the kill. I find most combats in Savage Worlds are pretty fast. When they're not, it's usually a big tension builder.

I like having systems with baseline of what is "normal". As a GM I can scale fights accordingly.

FASERIP - Normal guy has 24 health.
D&D - Normal guy has ~8hp
Savage Worlds - Everyone has 3 Wounds barring Edges.
Interlock - Health track with barring BTM modifiers.

What I *want* is a deathspiral. I've grown to dislike D&D having maximum effectivness until 0 HP. Easily fixed of course, but RAW - I don't care for it. FASERIP is like this... but usually there are almost always Stuns and Slams that break that down depletion with interesting things.

Savage Worlds is very tactical, unless you're an unimaginative player. I find that it's abstractions lend to better "cinematic" combat than D&D, which works for me and lets me draw that out of my player. Who doesn't like their GM asking you to describe HOW you KICK ASS? Go crazy. Make your legend. If the dice-gods and your skills are with you - you'll get exactly what you want. Or not... in which case your failures will be commensurate to your attempt.

Care to expand on the SW mechanics or point me to a free pdf of such intro?

I have a Death/KO mechanic in my own system that requires characters (PCs & NPCs) to make a Survival Check every time certain factors come into play, including:

• Any hit once characters have accumulated damage equal to or higher their Critical Threshold (roughly equivalent to reaching 0 HP)
• Taking Massive Damage from a single attack
• Being hit by an attack scoring a Critical Success

Basically characters take numerical damage similar to HP systems, and they have a Critical Threshold (50 by default) that determines how much damage they can take before they are in "Critical Condition" (i.e. about to die). Death is not automatic, but rather it is determined by a Survival Check. Failing this check means that the character is comatose and dying, and a Critical Failure (10 lower than needed on a d20+Mod mechanic) means that the character dies instantly.

Survival checks are made whenever a character reaches their Critical Threshold, and every hit afterward. Other events that trigger a Survival Check include sustaining massive damage (25+) from a single attack, as well as being hit by an attack scoring a Critical Success (10+ higher than needed to hit).

This system could also potentially be implemented in games using HP, like D&D, where Critical Thresholds could be replaced by HP and reaching 0 HP = Critical Threshold. "Massive Damage" could vary depending on the damage ranges in the game (maybe 20+ in D&D?) and Critical Success = Critical Hit.

I like D&D and especially 5es combat system where everyone is more or less using the same combat rules and stats for PCs, NPCs and Monsters.

But for sheer simple speed and flow theres Tunnels & Trolls where you just roll all the dice for all the combatants on both sides, add up the successes and subtract that from the other side.

Quote from: tenbones;1143075I think your description of Savage Worlds sounds off...

Exploding dice ending fights can happen - but they shouldn't be the norm insofar as "defeating the bad guys".

I find fights in Savage Worlds end precisely as players engage intelligently as planned. Whether it's by ambush, or straight up duking it out. The idea that a pack of adventurers are going to just roll up on a dragon and hope exploding dice will whittle him down is (if this is a salient example) then you're probably going to die the death you deserve.

If you mean you're going up against someone that might be more skilled than you (higher Fighter stat) you offset that using Tricks, and called shots, and bypassing armor, and whatever it takes to Shake them then go for the kill. I find most combats in Savage Worlds are pretty fast. When they're not, it's usually a big tension builder.

I like having systems with baseline of what is "normal". As a GM I can scale fights accordingly.

FASERIP - Normal guy has 24 health.
D&D - Normal guy has ~8hp
Savage Worlds - Everyone has 3 Wounds barring Edges.
Interlock - Health track with barring BTM modifiers.

What I *want* is a deathspiral. I've grown to dislike D&D having maximum effectivness until 0 HP. Easily fixed of course, but RAW - I don't care for it. FASERIP is like this... but usually there are almost always Stuns and Slams that break that down depletion with interesting things.

Savage Worlds is very tactical, unless you're an unimaginative player. I find that it's abstractions lend to better "cinematic" combat than D&D, which works for me and lets me draw that out of my player. Who doesn't like their GM asking you to describe HOW you KICK ASS? Go crazy. Make your legend. If the dice-gods and your skills are with you - you'll get exactly what you want. Or not... in which case your failures will be commensurate to your attempt.

Ehhh, your experience in Savage Worlds is very different than mine.  The abstraction generally leads to a very repetitive combat, especially because of the -2 multi-action penalties.  While you can build a character for tests (and one of them in our Slipstream is built to distract), it doesn't really advance the combat.  And players at seasoned or less quickly learn that you don't want to try too much outside of your attack, because suddenly you are -4 to everything and you've wasted a round.  Add to that if you play the rules straight, all of the players have 3+ bennies to soak, and the WC enemies also have access to them, and every Joker gives the whole party another bennie (or the enemies if they draw it), and you suddenly have the "I hit, he soaks, next round" slog.

I think a similar thing has happened to the SWADE (which is what we play) as with some later versions of D&D, the mechanics have evolved to the point where there is an unintentional optimum of behavior.  I found that in 3e or Pathfinder, it is always better to attack than heal.  In those editions, the amount of healing at moderate level (say 5th - 9th), based on the rules, was usually less than the damage a monster could do in a round.  So your cleric would be better off doing damage to the monster (and shortening the time it can do damage) and waiting to pop up a downed character with healing than he would trying to mitigate damage as it was taken.  Without meaning to, the rules were structured such that one method of play was optimal when it came to defeating enemies with a minimum loss of party resources (including hp), and that method didn't vary much regardless of the monsters involved (I've found 5e has a similar problem).

I feel like SW has refined itself into the same corner.  While the use of tests can help reduce damage by shaking or distracting enemies, unless you are running one big monster against the party, most times you would be better off just whittling down the crowd than doing anything "creative."  And there's no strategy to bypassing armor... you either have a weapon that will or you don't.  Sure, you can called shot at -4 for a missing scale on a dragon or -6 at a seam in someone's armor (per the rules) to bypass armor values, but now you are waiting to ace the attack roll instead of waiting to ace the damage roll... no difference.

I'm sure your group may find SW to be a satisfying (and varied) experience.  Good GMing can make a bad system play well.  But that doesn't change the fact that the system is bad.  SW isn't a bad system, but it does have some of the same issues that D&D and other "HP" systems do when it comes to the flow of combat and damage, and I feel that's a missed opportunity.

My opinion on death spirals is that if your combats are lasting long enough for a death spiral to matter they're A) taking too long, and B) not terribly good at modeling combat outside of a boxing match (combatants deliberately nerfed by rules and padded gloves to extend the fight to where exhaustion can matter), mass combat (lose effectiveness as soldiers become casualties) and naval warfare equivalents (where impairing damage is often decisive in the outcomes).

I generally prefer D&D-style attritional combat, BUT the trick is you need the numbers to be properly tuned. 3e was often derided as "rocket tag" for the ability of certain spells to basically one-shot anything while 4E quickly picked up the moniker of "padded sumo" for its level 1 kobolds with 24 hp while a PCs longsword did about 1d8+4 at that level.

The general sweet spot that I've found from a lot of playtesting to get my own system numbers right is that those guys who make big money designing video games are right; mooks should go down in 1 hit (ex. goblins), tough guys/mini-bosses in 3 hits (ex. the orc badass with a spiked chain), regular bosses in about 6 hits (ex. an ogre; but ideally with a change-up after the third hit... ex. the ogre rages and starts doing more damage but gets easier to hit) and end bosses in about 12 hits (ex. a dragon; but again with 2-3 change-ups in the process of beating them).

By contrast, the sweet spot for players seems to be taking about four hits to drop, but with some mechanism for recovering hits at a cost... though with some finite limit to how many times a recovery can be done (video game example would be having to stop your attack to focus on grabbing the health item in one of four alcoves... D&D example is the cleric has to burn an action and spell slot to restore hit points).

Keep your numbers restrained to avoid bloat (ex. in my system, outside of three (of 15) classes who reach just over a hundred in the last two levels and boss/end boss monsters, nothing ever exceeds double-digit hit points) and attrition is fine. It's those 700 hit point dragons vs. 1d8+12 magic longswords (so about 42 hits) where it turns into a slog.

Chris,

That is in part what I meant by preferring a mild death spiral.  In particular, I want it mild enough that the spiral is really about spiraling during the adventure, but strong enough that it is felt during subsequent fights.  

As an example, I get some of what I want in D&D 5E by failing a death save causing a level of exhaustion.  Has no effect in a single combat--except that the players don't wan't to make death saves (i.e. removes the feeling that some players can get that getting down to zero hit points isn't dangerous because you've got 3 strikes before you are out).  Once a death save if failed, the character is still functional but definitely hampered.  The party can absorb a few of those, especially if spread out among the characters.  Let too many characters get into that state (or one or two deep into it), then they want to escape to a safe place to rest.

You could also think of it as a "party death spiral", similar to your mass combat example.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1143071Don't own it, please expand?

Each round of combat after the first adds a cumulative +1 bonus to the PCs' attack rolls, up to a maximum of +6 on the 7th round and beyond. Some other mechanics tie into this too.

Here's an article suggesting how to integrate it into the OSR: http://daimon-games.blogspot.com/2019/04/combat-bring-escalation-die-to-osr.html

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1143206Chris,

That is in part what I meant by preferring a mild death spiral.  In particular, I want it mild enough that the spiral is really about spiraling during the adventure, but strong enough that it is felt during subsequent fights.  

As an example, I get some of what I want in D&D 5E by failing a death save causing a level of exhaustion.  Has no effect in a single combat--except that the players don't wan't to make death saves (i.e. removes the feeling that some players can get that getting down to zero hit points isn't dangerous because you've got 3 strikes before you are out).  Once a death save if failed, the character is still functional but definitely hampered.  The party can absorb a few of those, especially if spread out among the characters.  Let too many characters get into that state (or one or two deep into it), then they want to escape to a safe place to rest.

You could also think of it as a "party death spiral", similar to your mass combat example.

Death spirals are tricky things.  There's a pretty good article by Mark Rosewater that most of you have probably seen that talks about game design in general (not just RPGs).  I agree with his point #4, a good game must have a "catch-up" mechanic for the players (more on that in a minute).  One of the things that people seem to love in games is uncertainty (otherwise, why would we use dice?).  A big problem with death spirals is that it minimizes the uncertainty.  If you take two reasonably equal opponents, the first serious damage done then means the rest of the encounter is a slow slide into defeat for the unlucky combatant who was hit first.  One thing a hp system does do well is provide the opportunity to shake off one instance of bad luck.  Sure, you took max damage/a crit from that last attack (unlucky), but the need for the mook to do that several more times gives you the chance to turn the tables in your favor.  And that brings me back to the need for a catch-up mechanic.  The other problem with a death spiral is that, as you slide down it, your chance of catching back up becomes more and more remote.  Heck, even remaining as viable as you were to begin with is difficult, much less turning the tables!  Nothing is more frustrating than knowing you are going to lose and not being able to do anything about it.  At that point, why continue playing?  So, despite the fact that I am not a huge fan of hp systems, they do work well in play because they offer a chance for a player to turn the combat in his favor, or let them catch-up.

Honestly, the only thing that makes combat-based (as opposed to the adventure-based spirals that you prefer, which can really just be viewed as a kind of resource management instead) workable is that the players usually have either a quantity or quality advantage.  Five adventurers versus an ogre means that, even if one or two players start down the spiral first, there are enough attacks that the ogre is very likely to start down the spiral before all of the players have lost viability.  Then, once again, it just becomes a matter of waiting to see who bottoms out first.  Some people may like this, but I certainly don't (and I'd argue in the abstract that it's not good game design)...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1143226Each round of combat after the first adds a cumulative +1 bonus to the PCs' attack rolls, up to a maximum of +6 on the 7th round and beyond. Some other mechanics tie into this too.

Here's an article suggesting how to integrate it into the OSR: http://daimon-games.blogspot.com/2019/04/combat-bring-escalation-die-to-osr.html

Thanks! Will read it this night!

Quote from: Eirikrautha;1143227Death spirals are tricky things.  There's a pretty good article by Mark Rosewater that most of you have probably seen that talks about game design in general (not just RPGs).  I agree with his point #4, a good game must have a "catch-up" mechanic for the players (more on that in a minute).  One of the things that people seem to love in games is uncertainty (otherwise, why would we use dice?).  A big problem with death spirals is that it minimizes the uncertainty.  If you take two reasonably equal opponents, the first serious damage done then means the rest of the encounter is a slow slide into defeat for the unlucky combatant who was hit first.  One thing a hp system does do well is provide the opportunity to shake off one instance of bad luck.  Sure, you took max damage/a crit from that last attack (unlucky), but the need for the mook to do that several more times gives you the chance to turn the tables in your favor.  And that brings me back to the need for a catch-up mechanic.  The other problem with a death spiral is that, as you slide down it, your chance of catching back up becomes more and more remote.  Heck, even remaining as viable as you were to begin with is difficult, much less turning the tables!  Nothing is more frustrating than knowing you are going to lose and not being able to do anything about it.  At that point, why continue playing?  So, despite the fact that I am not a huge fan of hp systems, they do work well in play because they offer a chance for a player to turn the combat in his favor, or let them catch-up.

Honestly, the only thing that makes combat-based (as opposed to the adventure-based spirals that you prefer, which can really just be viewed as a kind of resource management instead) workable is that the players usually have either a quantity or quality advantage.  Five adventurers versus an ogre means that, even if one or two players start down the spiral first, there are enough attacks that the ogre is very likely to start down the spiral before all of the players have lost viability.  Then, once again, it just becomes a matter of waiting to see who bottoms out first.  Some people may like this, but I certainly don't (and I'd argue in the abstract that it's not good game design)...

Thanks for the link!