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| If your players aren't engaged, there can be... consequences. |
That's
something we're trying to do with Aeronauts; we want the DM's job to be
made easier when running and designing the game, so we want to be able
to give the DM the tools to create encounters that will be engaging for
all members of the party. Likewise, we have a goal of trying to support
any kind of party the players want to make. Dungeons and Dragons has
this assumed constraint where you'll probably have an evenly distributed
group. Someone will be the muscle (like a fighter), someone will be the
healer (like a cleric), and someone will be the caster (like a wizard).
Anyone else who enters the party can be whatever they want, as long as
those three roles are fulfilled already. I think a DM might have to work
a little harder on their encounter design to support a party of a
fighter, a barbarian, a monk, and a rouge, or four specialist wizards.
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| It's a situation that really requires a unique campaign setup. |
We
at Electric Purple Studios have been thinking a lot about encounter
design lately. Ideally, we want each player to have something to do in
combat (players get bored very quickly otherwise) and to be threatened
by something (otherwise the encounter feels very easy for that player, a
problem I've had with wizards in D&D in the past). We've had some
success in our designs, but I think we can do better. The question is,
what makes a good encounter? I thought I'd analyze an existing system to
find out, and it occurred to me that although the monster / XP system
in Dungeons and Dragons is complex and ill-balanced, the classes
themselves tend not to be. And so, I begin a multi-part series:
examining the abilities and behavior of the basic, default classes in
Dungeons and Dragons. Today: The Fighter.
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| Always fun to go back to basics. |
Let's
start at level 1. The level 1 fighter is nice and simple. He gets one
move action and one standard action. The move action can be used to do a
lot of things in theory, but in practice it's only ever used to move. A
monster might do something that gives the fighter something else to do
with the move action, but those are exclusively reactive actions rather
than player choices, and more often than not are just a tax on the
player (for example, being tripped and then having to stand up). The
standard action can be used to attack or (if you're feeling daring) to
make a SPECIAL attack, such as (shudder) disarm, or (shudder shudder)
grapple. In theory, the special attacks would allow fighters a greater
degree of freedom in choosing how to approach different enemies, but in
practice, the subsystem is messy and punishes players for trying to use
it unless they have specialized their character into using one of those
particular attacks.
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| Some DMs prefer to avoid those rules. |
So,
ignoring special attacks for the moment, the level one fighter can move
and attack, and that's really it. Nice and simple, but not very deep.
Now thematically, the fighter rushes headlong into battle and either
slays the enemy or holds the line long enough for his buddies to do
something nasty. However, if this was all the fighter was, then the
monsters would really have no incentive to hit the fighter until they
had moved past him to devour his less-armored wizard buddy. _His actions
don't allow him to do anything to stop the monsters apart from killing
them_. And yet, a majority of first-level wizards remain uneaten. The
players don't always engage in claustrophobic five-foot-wide hallways
where the monsters physically can't move around the fighter, so how can
this be? The answer is in a much maligned system in Dungeons and
Dragons: the Attack of Opportunity.
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| Oh, come on. It's not that bad. Stop hiding under the bed. |
The
Attack of Opportunity is a system that makes melee combat 'sticky'. If
you're unfamiliar, the rule is a perhaps-overly-complicated way of
saying that once you're in melee combat with someone, you must first
move away from them before you can move around them, or else they get to
make a free attack against you. This means that a fighter now covers
more area than just his single square to prevent enemies from moving,
and encourages him to continue to re-position himself relative to his
opponent to ensure that he always stands between the hungry monster and
the tender, succulent wizard. Helping that idea is another subsystem the
game uses: the five-foot step. Even if you don't want to use a whole
action to move anywhere in a turn, or moving would otherwise trigger
attacks of opportunity, you can always move one square (five feet; hence
the name, see? clever). This means the monster can fully direct its
attention to the fighter engaging it, but also edge its way closer to
the rest of the group where it can be more effective, and the fighter
can prevent that movement as long as possible. So, these two systems
(which are true for everyone, by the way) combine to ensure that combat
stays mobile and that even players whose action space is severely
limited are encouraged to watch the board and move tactically to make
the most of the systems.
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| Keep your eye on the ball. Or, monster. Whatever. |
So,
what does it all mean? Well, the fighter is more complex than he
appears at first glance. In terms of how we've been thinking for
Aeronauts, his job in combat is not just 'hit the monster', but 'prevent
that monster from getting to my friends'. The source of the damage he
takes is then any monster who wants to damage his friends - he takes
that damage onto himself, but likely reduces it due to having higher
defense. He controls the battlefield, but he has to keep in mind the
basic rules of the game more than his class features to do so. It's
possible, though difficult, to engage more than one monster at a time
with the AOO rules, so he'll be less effective against a larger number
of smaller creatures or against fast creatures, and more effective
against fewer large creatures or against fewer slow creatures. Since he
shifts the focus of attacks from his teammates to himself, he also puts
himself in more danger the tougher the individual monster is. Also,
since he's just taking advantage of the core rules in order to fulfill
his class role, it means that other classes can be as effective in the
"fighter" role without having to list the same "fighter" feature over
and over again in each class. Whether this is bad because it makes the
fighter a non-unique character class or whether this is good because it
allows basically anyone to step into that role when it's needed is an
exercise left to the reader.
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| Although some classes definitely go too far in the other direction of complexity. |
What
does this mean more generally? Well, it means that if someone wants to
play a sort of defensive role and protect their allies while dealing
damage, there needs to be some way to force the enemies to shift focus
to that player and away from other players. This is a little harder if most of the battlefield has ranged attacks, and it less necessary if characters are more even in terms of their survivability. Characters with equal health and similar defenses don't need to protect each other as much as a heavily-armored, tough fighter needs to protect his sickly wizard buddy. Speaking of, the next post will be all about that stick-thin master of eldritch and arcane magic. Stay tuned.
-Olivaw Out
