Boring Combat 1: Genesis of Tedium

One of my regrets from the past year, indeed the whole past of this blog, is trying to design rules systems that meet a theoretical need rather than a need that arises in actual play. The biggest offender last year was when I decided that "hey, in theory, combat at high levels can get quite boring with all those numbers of hit points needing a long time to whittle down." In proposing a solution I unwittingly duplicated an idea from 13th Age, which was then in closed playtesting - to increase hit and damage numbers sequentially through a combat, tracking it with a die.

The thing is, I now don't think such a system is necessary at all. 13th Age is welcome to the escalation die, and may it bring much excitement. But to explain my change of heart I'm going to have to recount the history of boredom in RPG combat. If you want the short version: 1) boredom is not just from high level combat; 2) to fix boredom, use what's already there in the game or piecemeal systems that mean something real.

Our story begins not with the combats of tabletop RPGs, but with the first crude attempts to simulate them, the first so-called computer RPGs like Wizardry and Temple of Apshai. I say "so-called" because there was very little role-playing or sense of wonder about these pursuits. You were running a single-minded band of dungeoneers with no other goal than to map blocky dungeons, stay alive, amass loot and gain levels. Of course, this was not too far off from what the majority of adolescent D&D fans cooked up for themselves around the dining room table.

Then...

Combat in a game like Wizardry or Bard's Tale laid down a procedure that with few changes is still followed today in the computer RPG genre, especially the more rules-light, anime-influenced "JRPG" games. You have a lineup of characters; maybe a back rank. When monsters appear they also form into ranks. The figures in turn have a bash at each other, or cast spells, use items and so forth.

And now.

There is no maneuver except to flee en masse; no Tarantino moments with fumbles or crits; the environment is assumed to be a standard Dungeon Delvers' Guild 10' square to which you are magically confined. Under these circumstances, the main source of excitement comes from the situation in which your characters are facing death in one or two rounds, either from the feebleness of their own hit points or the power of the enemy attack.

The problem with this is that, under standard D&D rules, hit points grow with levels much quicker than damage does. A first level party facing three orcs have to whittle down only 3 HD but each of those does 1d8 of damage, for example. When the party, now sixth level, faces three hill giants, the enemy's HP have gone up by a factor of 8 but damage only by a factor of 2. While first-level characters are only an unlucky blow or pair of blows away from death, higher-level characters don't see combat damage as that kind of immediate threat - it takes multiple rounds or multiple fights to be worn down to the life-or-death point.

You see the tunnel vision? "Combat is a mathematical contest between hit points, armor class and damage. To solve any problem with boring combat we must tweak the mathematical parameters."

Away with that! Combat in an RPG is a tactical simulation. "Grinding" is for machines. Live figures will be running, jumping, diving, bashing, swinging ... And if we see the enemy as mechanical combat, then the answer to boring situations at all levels is to animate it. That way, you don't need to constantly threaten the players with death to get them excited and involved in the fight.

I'll show you what I mean next post, which is about boring combat at low levels.

High-level D&D Combat: General Escalation

From the comments and my own thinking it seems that the new solutions to the grind of high-level combat break into two categories: escalation of the numbers involved, and giving higher-level characters additional abilities and feats that help make combat faster and more interesting.

In both these classes, a solution should have the following features:

1. If optional, should give some self-evident advantage to the players using it, without mathy thinky gamey time. This rules out things like "you may optionally double your damage if you accept double damage against you," because using that optimally will require you to think in terms of who is likely to do how much damage and have how many hit points.

2. Should balance out the excitement between early and later rounds - either by shortening the number of "early" rounds to get to the crucial rounds (early-combat escalation) or by escalating the later rounds so they get more crucial (late-combat escalation).

3. Should deliver a different feel to the long-lasting high level combats, as compared to the short and deadly low level ones.

Let's consider escalation rules. This was actually on my mind because of the recent discussion of fatigue on A Paladin in Citadel. While most fatigue rules make people less competent as they get tired, that is realistic, boring, and drags out combat even longer rather than speeding and spicing it up.

Here, I'm leaning toward late-combat escalation, because it's a rule you can apply at all levels of play. If that fight against orcs grinds on,  then I guess things get more deadly too ... but it's rare to see that level of combat last for more than six real rounds of action.

Introducing ... the escalation die.

It comes out when the first Escalation Event occurs, set to 1, and goes up by one for each subsequent Escalation Event. What is that, you ask? Just something that happens when one of two numbers is rolled on a d20 in skirmish combat for whatever reason - hit roll, saving throw, ability check.

If you don't have critical hits or fumbles, those two numbers can be 1 or 20. Otherwise, may I suggest lucky 7 and unlucky 13.

The effect is quite simple: the number currently showing on the die is added to all "to hit" rolls and damage rolls while combat is ongoing. The maximum value of the die is the level of the highest level PC in the fight.

For each round of break in the combat with no attempts to hit on either side, reduce the die by one.

Obviously, this shouldn't be used in mass missile fire, so only the PCs and their immediate foes are affected (that is, those fighting them).

Although I've yet to test this system on high-level characters, the good thing about it is that it lets the players get some fair idea of the capabilities of their foes, then tells them exactly how dangerous combat is getting as it goes along.

Next up ... feats.