daniel j davis

4e Combat Reform: Violence != Combat

Daniel — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:56:29 +0000

Until an actual fight against fit opposition breaks out, don’t use the combat system.

Instead, if you’re doing violence to someone, just make an appropriate attack roll against the appropriate defense, modified per circumstances as appropriate.

On a hit, things go your way.

On a miss, things get out of control. Like this:

You accidentally hurt/kill someone (e.g., I only meant to knock him out!)

They get away

They sound the alarm

They hit the deck/dig in/dive for cover

They attack you

RAW 4e (and #e as well) is pretty much not going to let you do the “knock the guard out” thing. Unless all your guards are minions. That’s a possibility.

Because, lookit: if this were a movie, or any kind of media really, it would be possible to one shot snipe that big huge hobgoblin across the way. But, RAW, it’s not possible. (Unless maybe, maybe, you critted on two dailies, but why would you be doing that against a sentry?)

So above is how you fix it.

4e Combat Reform: Concretize the Abstract

Daniel — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:55:39 +0000

When a character suffers damage and (after the damage is applied) is not bloodied, say how that character (choose one most appropriate to the fiction):

Stumbles back

Gets shoved down

Drops his weapon

Drops his guard

Exposes a weakness in his armor

Screams out in pain

Backs off, breathing heavily

Has something he carries break/shatter/fall off

Loses track of something/someone

Gets grappled/trapped/cornered

When a character suffers damage and (after the damage is applied) is bloodied, say how that character (choose one most appropriate to the fiction):

Has something happen off the unbloodied list

Retreats post haste

Screams out in pain

Crumples to his knees

Clutches his wound

Eyes you like an animal (or, if an animal, a human)

Has blood:

Trickle down

Stain clothes

Get in eyes

Flow down hair

Spurt like a geyser

Seep like molasses

Spurt like water from a garden hose with you thumb stuck in the end

Has bits fall off

Cries for mercy

Cries for mommy

Crawls away from/toward source of pain

Thousand yard stare

Yammer/stammer/gibber

Suicidal rage mode: activate

When a character suffers damage and (after the damage is applied) is at or below 0 hp, say how that character (choose one most appropriate to the fiction):

Suffers a grievous wound

Gets knocked unconscious

Passes out from blood loss

Dies immediately and horrifically on the spot

Does whatever the player says he does

Surrenders and offers the PCs something he thinks will save him

Retreats post haste

Starts to die, not quickly

Confesses to you

(I have no idea why WordPress is making my bullet points not align correctly.)

Anyway, this is intended to tie the mechanics more securely to the fiction. Some but not necessarily all of these selections could be accompanied by a +2/-2 circumstantial penalty to make them stick. Like, “he staggers back; he can’t take an opportunity attack against you.” Or “you bang his shield so hard, he can’t hold it in place; he’s got -2 AC if anyone attacks him right now.”

These choices also cover morale. Many of the bloodied choices imply giving up or otherwise becoming a non-present threat.

These should apply to PCs and NPCs alike, although, to maintain a heroic feel, you should use the softer bloodied and 0 hp options.

4e Combat Reform: Spotlight Initiative

Daniel — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:29:36 +0000

When you begin an encounter, do not roll initiative.

Instead, describe the scene: say what the characters see the monsters doing:

Charging

Cooking supper

Cooking humans for supper

Taking cover

Readying the big bad thing

Booking it

Displaying destruction-demanding depravity

Advancing in ranks

Setting up sniper fire to cover the dudes just rushing in

Ask the players what their characters do. Don’t worry about order. You will see a natural sequence emerge. If there is a question of order, roll off initiative between the relevant parties to settle it.

Resolve the actions. If they just want to move, okay. If they want to shoot, okay. If they want to wade into melee, okay. Handle each situation one at a time. It’s okay if it’s a little chaotic. Embrace interruptions: “Oh, before he does that, I want to do this.” Great.

When a PC succeeds at what he’s doing (hitting with an attack, moving, taking full defense, whatever), that’s it: move on to spotlight the next player.

When PC fails at what he’s doing (missing with an attack, generally), hold the spotlight on that character a while longer.
Something went wrong. Think what it was (losing footing, being overwhelmed by numbers, sipping on ichor, clanging into the chitin at the wrong angle). Whatever it was, it presents an opportunity for the monsters to nail him.

Say what went wrong, and let that leads you into saying how it let the monsters mess with him.

Think: earlier, before you asked the players what they were doing, when you said what the monsters were doing, were any of those monsters threatening the PC that just missed? (I mean threatening conceptually, not just being in melee range.)

If not, think: does it makes sense for a monster to now threaten that PC? If so, say how. If not, lucky for him.

If so, follow through on that threat: the arrow being aimed at him gets fired; the swords being raised at him give him a shave. Roll the relevant attacks versus him now. If he was surrounded by three minions, and the shaman was in back tossing lightning bolts to him like candy at a parade, make attack rolls for all four now.

Move on to the next player.

When you’ve spotlighted every player like this, the round ends. It’s now the next round.

Repeat.

This is intended to make misses feel less like whiffs and more like “Oh snap I’m done for now.”

It’s also intended to keep you from having to track initiative.

It’s also intended to keep the fictional action less predictable.

4e Combat Reform: Never Do Nothing

Daniel — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:58:55 +0000

When you miss with an attack, you still do damage: roll its damage expression.

When you hit with an attack, you do its full damage expression, no need to roll damage.

When you crit an unbloodied enemy, do your attack’s full damage expression. If this does not bloody him, bloody him now.

When you crit a bloodied enemy, do your attack’s full damage expression. If this does not take the enemy to 0 hp or below, immediately take him to 0 hp.

D&D combats (not just 4e) are possibly infinitely long. Say we have a PC fighter and a goblin. They both have, say, a 50% chance to hit. Every round, it’s possible that both miss. The sun could burn out before that goblin buys it.

In practice, it means that combats take longer than they should because, on likely a third of turns, nothing happens. Whiff. If you spent any time selecting powers, that time was wasted. That’s what these rules address. (And, if you want to be more severe, have crits mean insta-zero-hp period, skipping the bloodied step. Whether you apply this to the PCs or not depends on the aesthetic you’re wanting to evoke.)

And we should understand, in fiction, these changes don’t mean that the fighter cuts the goblin’s head off every time he hits. Hit points are abstract. One “attack” takes six seconds. Losing hp doesn’t even represent taking a hit. (I’d even have an informal understanding where “bloodied” means bloodied—for the first time. Before then, everybody’s dodging, blocking, getting flesh wounds and bruises. Then someone gets bloodied, and things get real.) It represents being pressured and wearied always and only sometimes suffering actual violence.

Revised: hp loss represents assault (usually with a deadly & magic weapon) and only sometimes battery.

All that to say: here, I think this will produce more engaging play.

Philosophy class

Daniel — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:36:00 +0000

It’s 4th period: philosophy class for those who can bear it. That’s not many. Twelve, exactly: a smattering of wild-eyed freshmen, shell-shocked sophomores, juniors who know they’re on to something, and seniors who know better. Jael loves it; Ishmael refuses to even hear her talk about it. Sterne’s got something chalked on the board. It’s today’s prompt:

The world is fire.
The world is water.
The world is an illusion.
The world is will and representation.
The world is empty space and sub-sub-sub particles of who knows what.
Brilliant and presumably sane people have believed and do believe all these things.

The kids are glassy-eyed. The freshmen are already reconsidering their elective.

So much nonsense

Daniel — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:59:09 +0000

So on the way home from work today, I heard this story on NPR. It’s part of a series where people talk about three books on a particular subject. The subject was “impostors.” So you got told what the book was and that it was about an imposter.

That’s when the contributor started saying some nonsense:

The [figure of the] imposter shows that, especially in America, identity is up for grabs.

That sentence means nothing. It’s not true. It’s not really even analyzable as true. Sure, we can go like “Identity is up for grabs: yes/no?” But everything in that sentence is so vague, you can hardly get started. You’d have to go “What exactly do you mean by identity; what exactly do you mean by up for grabs; and how could someone’s being located on a particular plot of land (i.e., in America) have anything to do with what you just said?”

And that’s tiresome. So people don’t do it. You nod your head: “Mmhmm. Interesting. Tell us more. You are speaking with a high level of abstraction; so obviously you must (a) be intelligent and (b) have something intelligent to say.”

No. People write like this when they don’t know what they’re talking about. This is the case here.

Takeaway 1: Don’t do this.

Takeaway 2: Know what you’re talking about.

Takeaway 3: Write something intelligible.

Takeaway 4: Be smart. Don’t try to make yourself seem smart.

Miriam Tolstoy has Judah Cohen Desktop Wallpaper

Daniel — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:58:55 +0000

Really, she does. She’s just minimized all her windows, and there it is. It’s from last year, when they were quasi-dating. (Not actually dating, but they both knew they liked each other, and everyone else knew they liked each other, and it would have been considered bad form for either to display symptoms of like for anyone else.) It was during the homecoming pep rally. You can see Ishmael in the background in his crimson and white Judges uniform, number 7, chest-bumping the late Ben Herbert. Jael’s taking the picture; so you can’t see her, of course; but Miriam and Judah are center-frame, smiling and side-hugging, which is to say Christian, non-dating hugging, “just friends, Mom, promise” hugging.

Gandalf is a Calvinist

Daniel — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:39:46 +0000

Apparently.

“I do really wish to destroy it!” cried Frodo. “Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?”

“Such questions cannot be answered,” said Gandalf. “You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others did not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.”

(Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter II: “The Shadow of the Past”)

Ideas for Church Reform: Eat Together

Daniel — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 03:21:33 +0000

Jude talks about “love feasts.” I Corinthians 11 talks about where folks were getting stuffed and drunk. Of course, like a ton of other things, the Corinthians were doing it wrong, but Paul nevertheless called it “the Lord’s supper.” And what were they getting wrong? They were being selfish and overdoing it. It wasn’t the thing itself that was wrong; it was their particular practicing of it. Here’s a long quote:

20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.
21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
33 So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another-
34 if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home-so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

Does it sound to you like communion was eating a bit of cracker and a shot of grape juice? And the point wasn’t that the Corinthians had the wrong idea entirely. It wasn’t like Paul said “Hey, you guys should really just be sitting in pews and eating a cracker and throwing back 1.5oz of Welch’s finest.”

Instead, he was saying they were being selfish and really just bad folks. It’s a potluck meal. Everyone’s bringing stuff, but some folks are too poor to bring a whole lot, and some folks are bringing, like, 2 KFC family meals. And they’re eating all of it. The point of the meal, of the Lord’s Supper, is to have communion with each other and thereby with Christ. If you’re ravenous before you meet with the church, you should pre-game: eat you some Lucky Charms in the a.m. so that you don’t just destroy the whole platter of fried chicken.

Know another thing that’s great about eating together? You talk. Sure, not everything you talk about is going to be “spiritual.” Football may be discussed. But you’re getting to know each other. You’re learning about who these other people are that Christ redeemed. You’re learning how to pray for them, where they’re weak, how you can help them, and how they can help you. I know that’s the kind of thing I need to know more of. And how are you going to get that if you don’t talk to people? And what’s more conducive to that than a shared meal? (And, on the negative side, what’s more visible for church discipline purposes than saying “No, you can’t eat with us”?)

Now, there are deeper and more significant insights into what the above text means for our observation of the Lord’s Supper. I personally think it means we should abandon the ritualistic grape juice and cracker thing. But that’s for another time. The main point here is that we need to eat together more, in big groups and small. And that’s because we need to know each other more.

New theme

Daniel — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:12:27 +0000

Just installed a new theme. Maybe I can finally be happy with this one for a significant period of time. I tell you what, I’m theme-fickle.