I've been playing 3.5 / Pathfinder for a while, and I'm starting to see some of the flaws of the combat system. I'm wondering what systems out there that you all know, and where I might start thinking about making my own system. (I have lots of time on my hands.)
I want the D&D vibe. I want a combat system amenable to figurine combat. I do not want D&D 4e. The hard part of doing this seems to be balancing around the following soft requirements:
- casters should be able to cast spells in most combats
- casters should not automatically be better than fighters
- I would like part of the balancing so that casters find it difficult to very difficult to cast when there is an adjacent fighter with a pointy stick
- casters should eventually gain "save or die" spells; for the sake of argument with a 50% success rate, and which means that a fighter should be in the neighborhood of having expected average damage of 50% of the target's hit points at the same level
- choosing a system where casters choose to start casting a particular spell, then other characters get turn(s) with possible movement, then the caster finishes casting, means that spells like a close range cone of fire, or a fireball spell, become much harder to use, because the people on the battlefield might be in an entirely different configuration from when the caster starts casting fireball to when the caster finishes casting fireball, and thus I'm leaning towards instant-cast for most combat spells
Pic marginally related.
>>44086363
I think I would prefer a largely sequential combat order, simulation-like, instead of a system like AD&D 2 ed where everyone declares actions at the top of the round and the DM sorts out wtf happens.
I'm open to count-up initiative systems, but that sometimes raises their own problems.
In order to make casters have difficulty casting with adjacent fighters with pointy sticks, my options seem to be limited to the following:
- attacks of opportunity, and damage forces a concentration check, or auto-interrupts a casting,
- non-instantaneous casting, aka casting over several turns, in order to allow the fighter a chance to make an attack on their normal turn in order to interrupt the casting (but undesirable for reasons stated above),
- disallow casting when there's a fighter with a pointy stick in your face
- damage take in the last round / in the last X seconds forces a concentration check, or auto-interrupts a casting,
- be vicious and say that casters are not allowed to cast when they're adjacent to fighters with pointy sticks
>>44086363
>>44086424
Are "classes" going to be a thing, or are you doing away with that?
>>44086486
I don't know. I need to solve some of these issues first. I'm torn on classes. Classes make things a lot easier on the designer. I like the GURPS concept of pointbuy for the entirety of the character, but that comes with its own flaws from my limited experience.
>>44086500
Well, first and foremost, consider not using vancian magic.
Vancian magic contains many pitfalls that you may just not want to deal with
>>44086540
I definitely plan to swap up the 3.x / Pathfinder casting system for wizards, sorcerers, and similar. Ever since I read this, I've been really liking the idea:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?361239-True-Vancian-Caster-Wizard
In particular, I realize that at mid and high level, a lot of the stupid overpoweredness of wizards comes from the stupendous number of spell slots that they have. If you drop that down to a more reasonable number, like the above link, then I think some problems go away.
I also like the idea of the above link, because it allows wizards to be versatile again - and without requiring a wizard leave open a spell slot or two in order to fill it later in the day.
>>44086363
You might want to have a look at Legend (Rule of Cool) and Fantasy Craft.
I don't know of any system that would fulfill your last requirement though.
>>44086941
Yeah, it seems impossible to fulfill as far as I can tell. I've been going round and round in circles on the issue.
Oh, some other things. Some of the particular failings of 3.5 are:
- Full attacks with no movement. A "normal" fighter never wants to charge an enemy, because that gives the enemy their full round attack. It leads to a metagame of pounce being OP and everyone taking free movement items.
Further, full attacks scale in power much faster than player's hit points, which means that combats start to become more random, and the only roll that matters is the initiative roll.
This is further compounded by "save or die" spells. Initiative is the only roll that matters.
I think the fixes here are to split up the full attacks into separate "turns", so that people take turns making single attacks, and a higher level fighter might get 3 turns for melee attacks in the same amount of "time" that a caster gets to cast 1 "save or die" spell.
>>44086941
One question - have you ever played in one of those systems? I have not. Do they have spells like cone of fire, fireball, etc., where the positioning of enemies and allies makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of a spell? If a caster needs to declare that they're starting to cast fireball and give enemies time to react, they might spread out, which makes the fireball spell so much less effective. I fear that wizards simply won't prepare spells like fireball, cone of fire, etc., if they happen to be shitty in that kind of system for that reason. What's been your experience?
>>44086993
>>44087015
Unfortunately, my knowledge of FC is limited to theory, and I've only played a single session of Legend.
What I do know is that both are complete reimaginings of 3.5. Fantasy Craft has several ways to adjust the absolute and relative power of certain classes and archetypes even during the game and Legend only has two traditional caster classes or rather spellcasting tracks, with all tracks balanced to be roughly equal in utility and power. Without the power disparity, I don't think you'll need to fix casters anymore.
Legend is pretty big on differently shaped area effects, not only for spellcasting; no idea about FC.
>>44086363
>50% to save or die
>50% of target's up each round
Jesus Christ I didn't realize people are in love with rocket tag. This sounds god awful.
It's been attempted a thousand times, OP.
The best system in my opinion that captured this is Barbarians of Lemuria.
