Hello! I want to give some background first before explaining why I thought of a possible alternate way to fight during encounters. I am going to be hosting a PbP (Play by Posts) campaign session soon and I'm preparing myself to avoid common stuff that leads to the PbP campaigns dying or be unreasonably drawn out too long on the first encounter. I have already found solutions to most of these no-nos except combat.
I posted this thread here in hopes of discussing an alternate way to handle D&D 5th Edition encounters to streamline it for PbP sessions. My idea was to try and replicate something similar to Darkest Dungeon, where party members are arranged in such a way which can prevent and allow certain actions and abilities from being used.
For example, say we have a fighter, rogue and wizard. If I were to arrange them in this position,
WIZARD, ROGUE, FIGHTER
Where the fighter is in the frontlines and the wizard is in the back, then they get certain bonuses and debuffs, including the previously mentioned enabling and disabling of certain actions. From the arrangement I made, the fighter will get a +3 to hit but can only attack the frontliner and the second before the frontliner of the enemy team. Since the rogue is in the center, he does not gain any bonuses or debuffs making his position the most passive but also limits him to being able to use melee only on the frontliner. The wizard won't be able to use any melee attacks but gets a +3 to his AC while remaining in the backrow. Spells allow him to target whoever in the enemy team.
I am fully aware that are a lot of potential rules, spells, feats and more that can make problems for this fighting system but I encourage you to share your honest thoughts and suggestions to improve, add and/or remove certain elements to make this system work, if you think it is worth it. I appreciate honesty, so you can be a critical and harsh when it comes to sharing your opinion.
So it looks like you are assuming both sides would just be a single column facing each other? This wouldn't really allow for much movement or strategy that result in. I think it's an interesting idea to confer bonuses based on positioning but I think in this form it's pretty limiting and makes combat much less dynamic.
It's intriguing. For a play-by-post setting, this sort of turns the mechanics into a Final Fantasy-style turn-based system, so all of the PCs could plan their moves and respond at the same time, which would really speed everything up for PbP.
That was a problem I had accounted for. My idea was to give players the choice to reposition themselves using a free action when it's their turn to give them a feeling of movement and strategy. What do you think?
It's intriguing. For a play-by-post setting, this sort of turns the mechanics into a Final Fantasy-style turn-based system, so all of the PCs could plan their moves and respond at the same time, which would really speed everything up for PbP.
That's a cool way to look at it. Players being able to plan out seems a bit meta but I think I'll allow it to make it faster for PbP. I appreciate your view on this.
I'm not really seeing how this would make PbP combat faster. How does it help?
From my experience playing PbP, players tend to ask stuff like how far the enemy is, where their character is currently standing etc.
In my opinion, by using the fighting mechanics that I suggested, it might streamline the game by removing those factors to allow players to focus on killing the monsters pitted against them while still allowing strategy to be diverse to prevent battles from becoming mindless and boring.
The thing is, if it's a free action for a PC to repositiion themselves, then wouldn't some characters always be in the back row to take advntage of the +3 AC bonus? So, in effect, there would be no one actually occupying the middle row.
Hm. I'm definitely skeptical. This seems like it's trying to get rid of everything involving movement and range. What about cover? What about difficult terrain? What about AOE effects? What about picking targets, if the players or enemies want to attack someone other than in the front, they can't go around?
IMO much better to just post a simple grid map with the location or the players, enemies, and any relevant obstacles or terrain features... then the players don't have to keep asking about locations, and you don't need to rework all the mechanics to do with range, cover, area effects, and movement.
IMO the bit that would speed up PbP is party initiative. Instead of assigning an initiative order to everyone individually, use the initiative rolls to just decide whether the "monsters" or "PCs" go first, and then just alternate groups from there. Within the party, players should post their move in whatever order they end up online. That avoids the situation where everyone rolls for initiative... and then has to wait for PC 1 to post, and that person might be online at an inconvenient time, and then they post their move, and then they wait for the DM because a monster is next, and then they have to wait for PC2... so even if everyone is online every day, initiative order might make it so only 1-2 people get to take their turn every day, if the timing doesn't work out. Party initiative makes it likely that you go through an entire round every day.
This works if the players are onboard with it, post whenever they're online, and aren't going to try to work the system by waiting for someone else to take their turn first.
Anyway, if you try your linear-positioning mechanic, I'd be curious to see how it goes, plz post an update if you try it, whether it works out well or not!
Hello! I want to give some background first before explaining why I thought of a possible alternate way to fight during encounters. I am going to be hosting a PbP (Play by Posts) campaign session soon and I'm preparing myself to avoid common stuff that leads to the PbP campaigns dying or be unreasonably drawn out too long on the first encounter. I have already found solutions to most of these no-nos except combat.
I posted this thread here in hopes of discussing an alternate way to handle D&D 5th Edition encounters to streamline it for PbP sessions. My idea was to try and replicate something similar to Darkest Dungeon, where party members are arranged in such a way which can prevent and allow certain actions and abilities from being used.
For example, say we have a fighter, rogue and wizard. If I were to arrange them in this position,
WIZARD, ROGUE, FIGHTER
Where the fighter is in the frontlines and the wizard is in the back, then they get certain bonuses and debuffs, including the previously mentioned enabling and disabling of certain actions. From the arrangement I made, the fighter will get a +3 to hit but can only attack the frontliner and the second before the frontliner of the enemy team. Since the rogue is in the center, he does not gain any bonuses or debuffs making his position the most passive but also limits him to being able to use melee only on the frontliner. The wizard won't be able to use any melee attacks but gets a +3 to his AC while remaining in the backrow. Spells allow him to target whoever in the enemy team.
I am fully aware that are a lot of potential rules, spells, feats and more that can make problems for this fighting system but I encourage you to share your honest thoughts and suggestions to improve, add and/or remove certain elements to make this system work, if you think it is worth it. I appreciate honesty, so you can be a critical and harsh when it comes to sharing your opinion.
So it looks like you are assuming both sides would just be a single column facing each other? This wouldn't really allow for much movement or strategy that result in. I think it's an interesting idea to confer bonuses based on positioning but I think in this form it's pretty limiting and makes combat much less dynamic.
It's intriguing. For a play-by-post setting, this sort of turns the mechanics into a Final Fantasy-style turn-based system, so all of the PCs could plan their moves and respond at the same time, which would really speed everything up for PbP.
That was a problem I had accounted for. My idea was to give players the choice to reposition themselves using a free action when it's their turn to give them a feeling of movement and strategy. What do you think?
That's a cool way to look at it. Players being able to plan out seems a bit meta but I think I'll allow it to make it faster for PbP. I appreciate your view on this.
I'm not really seeing how this would make PbP combat faster. How does it help?
From my experience playing PbP, players tend to ask stuff like how far the enemy is, where their character is currently standing etc.
In my opinion, by using the fighting mechanics that I suggested, it might streamline the game by removing those factors to allow players to focus on killing the monsters pitted against them while still allowing strategy to be diverse to prevent battles from becoming mindless and boring.
The thing is, if it's a free action for a PC to repositiion themselves, then wouldn't some characters always be in the back row to take advntage of the +3 AC bonus? So, in effect, there would be no one actually occupying the middle row.
Hm. I'm definitely skeptical. This seems like it's trying to get rid of everything involving movement and range. What about cover? What about difficult terrain? What about AOE effects? What about picking targets, if the players or enemies want to attack someone other than in the front, they can't go around?
IMO much better to just post a simple grid map with the location or the players, enemies, and any relevant obstacles or terrain features... then the players don't have to keep asking about locations, and you don't need to rework all the mechanics to do with range, cover, area effects, and movement.
IMO the bit that would speed up PbP is party initiative. Instead of assigning an initiative order to everyone individually, use the initiative rolls to just decide whether the "monsters" or "PCs" go first, and then just alternate groups from there. Within the party, players should post their move in whatever order they end up online. That avoids the situation where everyone rolls for initiative... and then has to wait for PC 1 to post, and that person might be online at an inconvenient time, and then they post their move, and then they wait for the DM because a monster is next, and then they have to wait for PC2... so even if everyone is online every day, initiative order might make it so only 1-2 people get to take their turn every day, if the timing doesn't work out. Party initiative makes it likely that you go through an entire round every day.
This works if the players are onboard with it, post whenever they're online, and aren't going to try to work the system by waiting for someone else to take their turn first.
Anyway, if you try your linear-positioning mechanic, I'd be curious to see how it goes, plz post an update if you try it, whether it works out well or not!