Other thread died when I went to sleep. Let me do one more because I wasn't clear. I was looking to make my own system, and/or use an existing system. Let me try to make clearer my goals:
- I want a high powered system. I want the feel of D&D.
- I do not want rocket tag. That's my main complaint for D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder, esp high level combat, where the first person to go often wins.
- Consequentially, I think the 3.5 full attack needs to be split up so that people take single attacks in round robin order. Whether this is part of some round-based combat system or a count-up initiative system, or whatever, I'm still open.
- I still want save or die spells. If you nerf/ban all such spells, such as wall spells, illusions, death spells, summon monster spells, etc., you're left with D&D 4 ed, and fuck that. Thus, casting needs some special penalty. Perhaps a realistic threat of attacks of opportunity. Perhaps simply no casting while threatened. Perhaps damage taken in the last round or X seconds prevents casting. Optionally introduce a concentration check based on damage taken.
- I want casters vs fighters to be balanced like starcraft races are balanced. They're different, but no one feels like one is clearly better. Casters should be glass cannons; if you leave them unmolested in combat, they should have a distinct advantage. If you advance on casters with a pointy stick, then the caster should generally be at a distinct disadvantage.
- Thus, if a caster gets a save-or-die with a 50% hit rate, fighters should do about 50% of a target's hit points in that same amount of time. But ideally, the fighter's attacks should be split up, and the casters should have some sort of penalty, in order to avoid rocket tag.
AD&D 1st Ed. had the best mechanic for casting spells under pressure: if the caster took ANY action at all to defend themselves, they lost the spell. If they took damage, they lost the spell. It really balanced out the fighters vs wizards thing.
Barbarians of Lemuria.
- I plan on greatly reducing a wizard's spell slots. Perhaps something along the line of this:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?361239-True-Vancian-Caster-Wizard
Which is close to per-encounter powers, which is somewhat like 4 ed. I don't hate all of 4 ed. What I hate about 4 ed is how everything is reduced to damage, minor penalty, push, or pull.
- Part of me wants to make the extra power of wizards balanced by ensuring that they're fucked by an adjacent fighter. Options include one or more of the following: being in melee combat prevents casting, taking damage prevents casting, attacks of opportunity for casting, damage taken in the last round prevents casting.
- A count-up initiative system is attractive for its own reasons, but it's probably more complicated than a simple looping initiative order. However, I'm going to get at least some sort of mix when I make regular melee attacks go one by one in a round-robin order (or something like that), where fighters simply get more turns / chances to act compared to a caster, when at higher levels. In particular, with a count-up initiative system, relying solely on attacks of opportunity for casting, it seems hard to prevent the possible use of rules that a wizard could use a quick action to move a little distance out of reach of his enemy, and then cast a spell out of attack of opportunity range. Just like the 5 ft step problem of 3.5.
>>44102560
Dark Heresy/any 40krpg, feral world.
Done!
>>44102560
- I like the idea of making spells start and finish casting on separate turns. This gives a severe penalty, and a chance for other characters to attack and interrupt the spellcasting. However, I think that unless very carefully done, it won't work. Specifically, I am particularly concerned about indiscriminate area of effect spells, like a cone of fire from your hands, or a fireball spell. What happens when the wizard sees an opportune time to cast a fireball spell, but before he finishes casting, everyone moves out of the area of effect? One option is simply to make weapon attacks and spellcasting much more rapid than conventionally, less time for each action, which has the effect of the same ratio of weapon attacks to spells, but allow far less movement in the same amount of actions.
...
>>44102649
Thanks. I remember you from last night. I will look at it. From another comment I saw in the morning, I realized that I was describing myself very badly.
>>44102631
Sure. I'm definitely going in that direction. The question is in other details. I've been reading up on my AD&D 2 ed, but I haven't gotten to 1 ed yet. The question is: Do they use attacks of opportunity for casting in melee, or do they have non-instantaneous casting, and if so, did you see any problems regarding the use of spells like fireball, burning hands, etc.?
>>44102683
Specifically, the problem I see is if people notice that the caster is starting to cast a fireball spell, and they simply move out of fireball-formation. The caster is then stuck using a fireball spell on maybe one target, and in the worst case, no targets are available because his allies are now too close.
>>44102683
Spellcasting took time. Everyone would declare actions at the start of the turn, and the actions would resolve based on initiative order, and the length of the action. Powerful spells took a while to cast.
The system was a terrible mess. If you want non-instantaneous casting as a balancing mechanic, you need short turns, instead of the the two-actions-in-six-seconds method. GURPS' one-action-in-one second works for this, and most useful spells in take several seconds (aka several turns) to cast.
>>44103948
That sounds about right honestly. If the turn length in time is short enough, then (some) spells can be split across multiple turns without also running into the problems I described above of starting to cast fireball, but before you finish everyone has moved out of reach.
I also strongly favor an initiative system where people can declare their actions just before their turn as opposed to the top of the round.
(Of course, I also understand that I might have to / probably have to give up something on my list of demands.)
Thanks for your input.
>>44103948
>Spellcasting took time. Everyone would declare actions at the start of the turn, and the actions would resolve based on initiative order, and the length of the action. Powerful spells took a while to cast.
Also, that sounds more or less exactly the same as AD&D 2 ed.
>>44103948
How does GURPS handle melee attacks? One of the problems in 3.5 is that the number of attacks per round increases, whereas the power of a single spell increases. Under this approach, to prevent rocket-tag, it seems I need to split full round attacks into separate turns, meaning fighters get more turns than casters, and I also need to either:
- have instantaneous spellcasting, and penalize the cast time of the first spell per spellcaster in combat (to prevent rocket-tag),
- or have a single spellcasting split over multiple turns (to prevent rocket-tag).
