Everyone complains about rocket tag gameplay but when combats last for 2 hours, I am going to start missing the ability to cast color spray as a 3rd level wizard in 3.5
>>98617423The longer I game, the more I think that the sweet spot is enemies taking 1-3 hits and PCs taking 2-6 hits to lay out. (assuming roughly equal numbers, if fewer enemies increase HP to stay with this ratio between sides)
>>98617423That's why you should move on to 4th or 5th where you can keep spamming at wills / cantrips indefinitely
>>98617423>he doesn't know about the 16HP dragon
>>98617423In my experience two things speed up combat:>GM realising that enemies should surrender/flee or that the PC's goal should be something other than dropping everyone to 0HP.>players actually learning the rules, so they can plan their moves while it's another player's turnI've played combats that lasted 6+ hours but it didn't feel like a slog because of these two things, but my playgroup didn't start this way, getting to this state took months.
>>98617423"Rocket tag" is a retarded term used by faggots.
Rocket tag gameplay is how TTRPGs are meant to be played. Combat in most games already takes fucking forever, and that's usually because players don't know wtf they are doing and/or can't do basic math.
>>98619105Indeed. The correct term is instagib.
>>98617423Yeah, those are definitely the only two possibilities.
>>98617450The way I run it, if a mook enemy takes a hit from a martial attack he's reduced to 1HP, or just instant death on a crit. I leave tracking HP for more notable enemies in the fight. It's a sort of halfway between Savage Worlds and 4e minions.
>>98617423>>98620916stop playing bad games.
>>98617423>>98620916If combat taking too long is a problem, it's because you're playing a system with bad combat and thus you aren't having fun.If the combat is fun, why would it matter that lasts 2 hours? You had 2 hours of fun with your friends anyway, whether it's combat or not. Do you have some sort of epic campaign ending planned that you are rushing towards?
>>98626508Combat is there to string together adventure
>>98630528au contraire, adventure is there to string together series of combats
>>98630616If I wanted that I would play a videogameIn saying that I recently did play a game that I felt was too frequently interrupting the combat with cutscenes
>>98621297Playing Traveller and Traveller derivative systems, where your health is your attributes and you can "tap out" and hit the deck at any moment. So NPCs often hit the deck when they go under 50%, because they didn't want to fight anyway, it's just the players being psychopaths. Works fine. When characters stand and fight that usually makes it a lot more tense, because the players know that if these guys won't literally roll over for them then the NPCs generally doesn't think they can lose. >Shoot NPC>Ow, mommy>He he we are bad-asses>Shoot NPC with same stats but he returns fire>THIS GUY'S PROBABLY A BOSS TYPE ENEMY, WE BETTER GET OUT OF HERE. INITIATE SMOKE COVER AND RETREAT IN STAGGERED FORMATION WE->>98617423Why isn't he wearing pants? He's wearing clothes everywhere else but his junk.
>>98617450That sounds like combat would go like 2-3 rounds, maybe 4 at the peak.There's barely any room for tactics in that.
>>98630779Most RPGs don't have any tactics in them anyway. Anything D&D based has the meaningful decision making at character generation only.
>>98630760It's a girl and girls are often depicted with bare arses.
>>98617501cantrips sucka level 6 fighter deals more damage unarmed than a wizard does with cantrips12 (6x2)vs11 (2D10)More accurate as well.
>>98635478The cantrip can hit at range, can have extra effects and more importantly, due to being a single chunk of damage, it's better when forcing concentration checks or getting past damage thresholds
>>98621079>Instagram on>set random ai's accuracy to 100%In fairness I learnt from my mistake. Unreal tournament was a great game.
>>98635554>>Instagram onNow I want to see Celebrity Death Match inside UT, livestreamed>>98617423It's the "predator vs prey" problem. Predator only needs to win a fight once to survive. Prey has to win every time. At "rocket tag" levels, when going first in a fight can end said fight, you need the players to either always go first or to have a perfect defense against the enemy's first play.Otherwise you're just feeding adventurers to the dungeon. Which is not a bad thing per se, but no longer the expected way of playing D&D past 3.5ish.
>>98621079Funny how language evolves, nowadays people think of gib not so much a short form of giblets but rather ebonics for give.
>>98639167>Predator only needs to win a fight once to surviveI'd expect that most predatory creatures need to feed more than once a lifetime.
>>98642232Ok, I'll talk slowly just for you, since you're the only person in the thread who didn't get it.In an analogy, we aren't saying that every aspect mentioned is literally true of both things being compared.An analogy is a rough, inexact comparison, meant to relate one thing we're familiar with to another thing, which is being described or explained.Language is ambiguous and impressionistic on purpose. It isn't precise, and shouldn't be. This is a strength. Humans aren't robots and don't communicate like robots. If autists are excluded from society as a result, that's just a bonus.So, in this analogy, the "predator" is a foe in a tabletop roleplaying game. And in a tabletop roleplaying game, that foe only needs to win once. Because, whether they win or lose, they will only appear in the universe once, and immediately stop mattering afterwards. Because the only purpose of foes in a tabletop roleplaying game is to momentarily challenge the players. Because games aren't real, and don't simulate reality.Let me know if you're still having trouble.
>>98642831Anon, this post >>98642232 is clearly a bot.They do not get analogies well.
I certainly hope so, for their sake.
Rocket tag is good if there is legit interplay to determine getting hit, but if your game is as light on actual game play as dnd you need sponges
>>98617423Has anybody come up with a sliding scale of rocket tag vs. padded sumo? That seems like it should be a thing.
>>98630760>Why isn't he wearing pants? He's wearing clothes everywhere else but his junk.It's a witch in a skirt you oblong motherfucker.
>>98635478>melee attacks from a melee focused dude do more damage than attacks you can do from a safe distanceNo shit retard
>>98651680Exalted 2E perfectly fits padded sumo. Everyone has perfect defense despite every hit at that point is a one hit touch death but good enough Dodge charms and you are golden.
>>98617423https://pretendo.games/2026/06/06/three-round-combat/This might be relevant.
>>98639167>Otherwise you're just feeding adventurers to the dungeon. Which is not a bad thing per se, but no longer the expected way of playing D&D past 3.5ish.that wasnt the level of play expected even in BXyou didnt run straight to the caves of chaos and get your party killed by traps instantlyyou got about half a dozen smaller mini-dungeons intended to get your characters up to level 3 before you while a character dying was a possibility, its not accurate that the goal was to simply make 50 characters and expend 40 of them to trapsyou were assumed to survive to the end with the same character you started with and starting small and only tackling challenges once it became possible to realistically prevail over it
>>98635526>The cantrip can hit at rangea wizard hits for 2D10, a fighter with a longbow hits for 1D8+dex twicehitting twice means they apply dex mod twice, which drastically increases damagean evoker wizard can add their int mod to cantrips, but archer fighters get a flat +2 to hit which is a scaling 10% bonus against high armor targetscantrip is just flat out trash as a damage dealing spell and wasting an action to be a worse archer is questionableits basically just there because wizards pulling out a light crossbow to save on spells looks stupid and its actually harmful as a noob trap to new playersthe issue with cantrips is internal balance within the wizard and not with other classes, since it gives a wizard a crappy auto-attack that doesnt come close to the damage of actual combat classesbut the auto-scaling damage makes level 1-2 spells even more pointless once you get your third cantrip damage dice
