How does one make fights mechanically interesting besides "beat shit up"...

How does one make fights mechanically interesting besides "beat shit up"? Have any of you included inspiration from MMOs for mechanics? If so, how did it go?

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Play some 4e or Strike!

Enjoy your awesome grid-based tactics.

Strike! is what you're probably looking for. The class archetypes all support each other nicely.

Have a timed goal to do something aside from beating up the enemies, with the enemies serving as obstacles.

Have lots of terrain effects that make positioning more interesting and important.

Have the enemies have a timed objective that the players have to stop them from accomplishing.

Set up a convoluted situation where the first side to die wins, and watch the hilarity.

One of the enemies is a spy, the players know this, but don't know which, and the spy can't risk outing themself unless they're sure the players will will, and they don't want to kill him.

Have a fight in a massive crowd of bystanders.

A god of chaos is bored and decides to show up, and randomly chooses one type of attack this turn that heals instead of deals damage, or vice versa.

A god of law is very concerned about what's happening and shows up, smiting anyone who hits below the belt or uses anything that even RHYMES with "pocket sand".

Two words: Conveyor Belts.

And I'm out of ideas. Hope this helped.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

Fragged Empire has a very good tactical combat system

>Put the fights in interesting backdrops
>Allow players to use strategies that aren't just Max Damage Per Round
>Play a system that allows for and supports such strategies

>Strike!

>terrain that matters
>situational abilities
>enemies not run by 90s vidya ai

>MMO inspired mechanics that are supposedly more interesting than "beat shit up"

I could literally create a system about a dystopian world where all conflicts are resolved by watching paint dry, and it would be infinitely more interesting than the most robust and cutting edge MMO mechanics ever devised.

4e.

Make interesting terrain and settings for combat and have the monsters use them. Templates and customized stuff to suit them for roles and synergy with each other and the battlefield.

You need a PHD to adjust monsters in 3.5 and I don't know 5e enough to say if this can be done but the lack of grid doesn't help make fights interesting.

Also, monster terrain effects. I had a giant bug "boss" monster that burrowed underground, leaving difficult terrain patches to isolate people for its spawn.

Or a battle on a field of floating platforms with an ogre in the middle and a geomancer in the back who could move the platforms around.

Monster as terrain is also something you can do in 4e. Shadow of the Colossus shit.

>"beat up shit" is better than encounters with mechanics
please tell me more about how you can design encounters with that great philosophy. I'm sure your players have tons of fun with combat situations.

What's wrong with Strike?

What the fuck IS Strike?

this

Also try using lethal attacks only when necessary.
knock out opponents then hog tie them and leave them for the cops.

A game only Veeky Forums shills.

The editing.

It's been mentioned a bunch, but making the location itself a part of the fight in ways PCs can meaningfully interact with is probably the best thing. Just giving a chandelier to drop on someone can make something memorable

Another option is to give a location itself a power. Something like "in this dungeon all spells happen one turn after being cast, but maximized" or "every creature in this location can jump 5 times as far due to lower gravity" can change a lot

>i dislike this thing
>therefore this thing is the worst shit in entire universe and second coming of Hitler

What "MMO inspired mechanics" are you even talking about anyway? I think most bigger MMO fights revolve around wearing decent equipment, knowing your role, knowing your rotation and staying out of the danger zones. That mostly seems like it's either fine or outright doesn't apply to most RPGs, but isn't really bad

Tanking.

Any game with tanking is an MMO.

I wouldn't give them credit for that. certain details of it are pretty much MMO bullshit, but the big guy standing in between the wizard and the monster doesn't come from MMOs

If anything, mine are a bit dark souls inspired, though I already did them before even playing DkS. After playing I just improved and expanded on them.

But anyway enemies that have multiple moves, many of them avoidable if players realize the foreshadowing or keep correct battle formation.

Tanking never existed in real life.

Pike and shot did.

YOU KEEP BRINGING IT UP

I FUCKING KNOW IT IS YOU

goblinpunch.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/boss-mechanics-from-world-of-warcraft.html

They work pretty well.

Colette worked on it.
That automatically means it's an autistic piece of shit.

RPGs aren't real life.
And really, the "big guy holds the line, wizard plinks shit from behind him" tactic isn't rocket science.

Yes, because heavy infantry tactics were never a thing.

Is that a bad thing?

Yes.
Colette is autism Midas: everything he touches turns into pure autism. And since there is no technology yet to murder people over the internet, the best we can do is avoid the contaminated areas.

Gaius Marius disagrees.

Honestly, with the culture of system building my groups have I've seen a LOT of different approaches to stuff, and the #1 thing I've seen that makes fights interesting is to not merely make standard attacks less effective than like, spending 2 turns running uphill to roll a boulder onto someone, but to literally remove them from the game entirely. Such that even the most simple characters must make choices every turn.

A friend of mine had one where the fundamental attack types were Hack, Slash, Thrust, or Smash, and you *had* to choose which one you were doing. A weapon would generally make you eligible for 1 to 3 of them at any given time. You could gain some abilities that boosted the effectiveness of one of these attack types over the others, but the fundamental bonuses you gained for each one were huge enough to still be relevant late game. Led to shit like the party's greathammer wielder needing to use the pommel of his hammer to actually hit a speedy fucker that got in melee with him at one point.

There was in fact a network of four SUB-attack types for each of the four core types (2 of which would always be shared with another core attack type) which were XP cheap but still needed to be purchased.

Anyway, I find the important part for combats is to make fundamental choices as to what action to perform occur every turn (Which in turn requires you to always have 2 roughly equally viable approaches you could take every turn) but mechanical choices within those actions as rare as possible (the system I was talking about didn't do rolled damage for instance, but not rolling to hit would be another option).

Sounds like RuneQuest or GURPS except shit.

Make it based off real life combat and involve parrying, riposting and feinting. Every attack can provoke a riposte at varying levels of difficultly and every attack could be a feint. It's require secret actions (writing down intentions and revealing them at every stage) and lots of rolling and time spent, but it would be more interesting

Use Riddle of Steel.

Problem solved.

>I want the dark souls audience

>I want combat based off reality
You realise Dark Souls didn't invent these concepts right?

If you are talking about D&D my experience it that the basis is already there
the combat maneuvers like charge, bull rush and disarm can be fun to use the problem is that (at lest on 3e) you have to spend way to many Feats. So my solution is break some of the requirements for those Feats

I wouldn't listen to anyone who liked Guided Fate Paradox for any advice.

But it did, are you trying to imply that it wasn't the most original thing ever created?

Has anyone not retarded ever claimed that?

>but it would be more interesting
Trying to make realistic combat through narration is the most boring thing you could think off because in an RPG resolving every fight would take an eternity.

Probably not?
Although there are people that aren't completely retarded that claim its setting is one of the most unique things ever, so maybe.

Probably best to not dwell on these things.

Riddle of Steel is fun to play. Not great as a story driven RPG though.

I still think the whole mechanical aspect of it's storytelling aspect was really interesting though.

Building virtues for your character and then getting to apply the mechanical bonuses when they come up was a nice way to encourage players to actually act like their characters would in certain situations.

For guys not as good as roleplaying, it rewards them for trying to do so, and for guys who are good at it, it actually lets them take center stage when their shit comes up and get to look cool.

Here's an idea
Cinematic bullshit time.

On occasion, decide that one of the players has a Cinematic Bullshit Time. CBT is completely optional. Basically, you interrupt the fight with
>Paladin guy, the minotaur chief swings at you with his oversized mace! The swing is horizontal, do you
a. jump over
b. slide under
c. tank that shit and stab at the wrist
>he slides under since that seemed like the safest bet, rolls and succeeds but the Bullman rushes to stomp you before you have a chance to stand!
>roll and stab
>tank, hold It, push him down

This kind of thing. Should he succeed two, three rolls that would make the CBT, make the enemy drop the weapon, suffer some kinda debuff, whatever. Even a MASSIVE DAMAGE or a killing blow is fine.
Should he fail, let him eat shit.
Just let the players feel (sometimes) rewarded for having points in particular attributes or skills.

Sounds interesting.

Location, location, location.

Really, a good option is to take some cues from Nechronica. In fact I'd say just run the system and when it all sort of clicks, you'll see that its combat system is really very nicely put together. But it's a system most understandably wouldn't want to play, so here's a reason why Nechronica is great which is easy enough to steal: reactions. Everyone has access to reactions. Lots of different reactions. Fucking with damage, fucking with attack rolls, counterattacking or retreating before a blow lands. These are some of the most common reactions and pretty much everyone will be able to perform some of them. And this raises questions: when do I want to use this ability? Is this when I get the most use out of it? Does the enemy have a reaction which could negate it?

The timing and use of your various reactions in Nechronica can be a minigame all to itself. You know you can hinder this guy's attack roll by 2, but you also know that he can support it by 1 and that's all he'd need to hit again. Now you could call on Frank's character to hinder it an additional 1, but is this 2 for 1 trade worth it? Wait, no, that other enemy is close enough that he could also support the roll by 1. But then Lisa pipes up that she still has her ability that moves your character just far enough that you wouldn't be in range of the attack, causing it to fizzle, and that sounds good so she uses that. And that's when one of the reactions the enemy hasn't shown off yet to negate some movement gets used, and the plan fails.

To put it in Tl;Dr form, having meaningful actions off of your turn is fun. Alongside making combat more engaging it leads to tactical combat where you can decide how much of your resources you care to pour into one attack or other action. With enemies having them as well, you get the satisfaction of piecing together what their abilities are and thus when your counters are most effective as well as which are most effective.

Is there a similar setting not by From Software? Legitimately curious.

Ever heard of GURPS? Ever heard of.. trolling?

I would also hardly call darks souls realistic or good

Nope, wasn't me this time.

Strike! is an indie RPG that has very simple narrativist core rules with "optional" modules to build on top of them (you know, like 5e advertised). "Optional" is in quotes because the core system is probably the worst out of all the rulesets found in the book, and the "optional" tactical combat module is really the best reason to play the whole thing.

The tactical combat module is a very streamlined system that tries to capture what the creator felt was good about 4e combat (positioning, encounter based resource management, emergent interactions between special abilities, class balance and variety), while removing the bad (numbers bloat, many tiny, situational modifiers to keep in mind).

While it doesn't succeed 100%, I think it's a really good result for what is basically a couple guy's first shot at a pet project.

Also, because of its modular nature, it is quite easy to just grab the tactical combat module, and put it in just about any game you like. I've been planning of shoving it into a game of FAE as an experiment.

Colette did work on it (and is quick to point that out every single time the discussion comes up) but I have never really seen a less autistic game than Strike!. It literally does not give a fuck about simulating anything, and constantly reminds the reader to break, tweak and homebrew rules in creative ways, as long as everyone is having fun.

If you mean you're trying to design a combat system from the ground up, consider a rock-paper-scissors mechanic, a stance change in addition to actions per turn, so the GM and players must guess what the other side will do next.
But if one of the options is "offense up defense down", then your attack rolling mechanic must involve simultaneous counter-attacks. Otherwise, in my experience, players will always take the maximum offense option unless it's unavailable or they clearly can't win.

>"Optional" is in quotes because the core system is probably the worst out of all the rulesets found in the book
I agree wholeheartedly. The "core rules" are an overly swingy travesty weighted towards highly punishing costs and twists.

>is quick to point that out every single time the discussion comes up
I do not make any money off Strike!, and I had the least input out of everyone listed under "Development" in the credits due to having made contact with the author very, very late.

Have you tried playing 4e?

unique enemy mechanics

Come up with some sort o gimmick for every fight.

You're on a ship in a storm, being invaded by sea zombies. The ship sways every two rounds, roll balance to stay stable.

Your enemies are hiding in their improvised fort, come up with a way to dismantle their defences or risk taking it head on.

The hobgoblins have been performing their rituals in this temple, if you kill them inside, it counts towards their sacrifice count and triggers their summoning rituals.
Better keep it nonlethal or draw they away somehow.

And so on. In each fight, there is potential to throw in something special and puzzle-like for the players to solve.

This.

Worth noting as well that the first point is basically a specific case of the second. Essentially, the way to make fights more interesting is to have different options that you really need to weigh the merits of, with no clear "best" answer. Terrain inherently creates such a situation, because it makes positioning one of those factors that needs to be weighed. If there are significant situational bonuses to be gained depending on your position, and getting at high-priority targets is complicated by intervening terrain, that makes your movement something to really think about.

I really like Fantasy Craft's adjacency mechanics for this reason. Rather than opportunity attacks to discourage movement when near an enemy as D&D does, FC straight up locks down your movement whenever you're adjacent to an enemy. This makes opposing forces themselves a significant terrain obstacle, for all intents and purposes, and adds tremendous value to things like reach and repositioning effects that let you avoid or break adjacency locks.

Though on the other hand FC kind of falls short of making terrain matter as much as it otherwise could by making PCs quite durable after the first couple levels. Jockeying for every advantage you can muster (particularly defensive advantages like cover and inaccessible positions, which terrain is especially suited to offer) is somewhat disincentivized when you can pretty easily afford to sit there and absorb whatever the enemy throws at you.

I think that's an interesting mechanic, but how do you justify it?

Like, literally the easiest thing in a fight is to run away from someone, it's one of the reasons why organized fights (be it boxing or fencing or whatever) go inside rings so you can't just run away the whole time.

It's already somewhat weird that opportunity attacks happen all willy-nilly, but outright not even having the option to move in exchange for a hit is kinda jarring.

You can run away, if you have a clear path, it's just your movement around or past enemies that's restricted. The rule is that if you end up adjacent to an enemy, your movement stops and you can't take any movement other than 5-ft steps or Tumble unless the first 10 ft of your path doesn't pass adjacent to an enemy. So for instance, if you're going one-on-one with an enemy, you can run away no problem, but you can't go past him to get at the caster he's guarding unless you back off and take a wide looping path. If you're flanked by an opponent on each side, you're stuck; any square you can move into is still adjacent to at least one of them, so they can stop you any way you go.

And the lock only applies if the adjacent enemy is able to attack you and not flat-footed, so you can use not only movement-based effects, but also things like feinting and tripping to escape a lock. And FC makes those kinds of actions quite accessible, not like 3.x where you need to build your whole character around it to pull it off.

Thanks for the answer; doesn't seem like a bad system to build around.

I'd play your game over any MMO out there.
Any single one.

Tanking works in MMOs because threat is a measurable game mechanic that the tanking player has to manipulate in real time, meaning they get to participate in an active fashion.

Tanking in a P&P game can essentially be boiled down to "stand there". It's a job that could be replaced with a wall. It's boring.

Not to mention that outside of specific abilities, the GM can outright ignore your character with little consequence.

Which is exactly why games that at least try to have the role filled hand out such abilities.

You should check Log Horizon rpg.

The aggro mechanic works so well It's kind of amazing

Too bad the rest of it is pretty bad.

It's like two guys maybe. Presumably the makers.
Can't blame them; it's a lot of work to put into something.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that, like me, most people just read what the core mechanic is like and went "Lol nope"

It reallys is.

BUT, there's always something new to learn!

>Interesting
>MMO-inspired

Right, I'm just disappointed is all.
There I hear Mamare is into TTRPGs, so I think the game is going to turn out alright. Then he has to go and use SRS.
Cryin' shame for all the wasted potential.

>i'll take basic fucking tactics for 500, alex
>this ancient tactic used an infantry force to occupy opposing infantry while a cavalry force flanked around and struck them from behind

>what is hammer and anvil? also user is gay

>that's correct

Nigger, did you ever play Anarchy Online? That was a fucking amazing dystopian mmo, and combat was like watching paint dry. Don't fucking assume watching paint dry is so bad, when it is actually very nice.

You suckered me in with FFT you crafty bastard!

>How does one make fights mechanically interesting besides "beat shit up"?

Controller classes, making victory pivot on securing tactical advantages, giving the monsters some glass cannons, terrain features like cliffs and lava and bridges.

Giving them goals other than "Kill everything". Even the simple systems can be interesting if you can't afford to kill the person trying to kill you.

Game changers like: invisibility, flying, damage immunity, mind control or any other sort of leveraging agents against their side.

Simple shit like the rock, paper, scissors circle of death. I find this the milktoast of game design, but it's a staple everyone understands. And sometimes you want to sell to people who don't want to play chess. Some people actually prefer checkers.

But most all of this depends on having a game system that allows it or is built around it. How to do it WITHIN a game system really depends on the system.

>Have any of you included inspiration from MMOs for mechanics? If so, how did it go?

Fuck no. Why would I do that?

Hell, D&D 4th ed tried to do that. They made everyone about the same power-wise with a STRONG focus on balance that ended up making the classes bland. They gave everyone "win" buttons with a cooldown timer. And they avoided big game-changers that could be abused for tactical advantage like the plague.

For as much shit as I give it, 4th ed did do a decent job of giving monsters interesting tactical choices.

So like... videogame cutscences?

No, Quick Time Events.

>They gave everyone "win" buttons with a cooldown timer.
Could you be more wrong, like as an experiment?

> Giving them goals other than "Kill Everything"

I'm actually doing that in a campaign I'm currently running. The party has to help defend a fort from a horde of undead, and the major goal of the encounter isn't 'kill 'em all', it's 'save the wounded soldiers currently caught outside the gates'. All of a sudden, those encumbrance rules are gonna bite you in the ass.

I think that we need to return to basics.
Fighterman at the front, keeping foes occupied with himself. Whoever gets to turn away first, gets hit bad. His physical ability is a handy thing to have! Has a variety of weapons.
Magicman is on the back and is an equivalent to a sack of grenades. Super effective but limited and explode when poked. He's also the brain of the whole party. Has a variety of spells.
Thiefman barely ever contributes to the fight but that's not the point. You don't bring your swiss army nife to an actual fight, after all!
Has a variety of tools.

Basics. No dedicated healerman. Items only.
Exotic race-class that's a class hybrid optional.
Basic map. Basic formations. Do that and even a dumb "but a pair of kobolds appear from behind" make the PCs gasp.

Fuck me, I really like the idea behind the old DnD, nostalgiagoggles or not. Sure, the options were limited, but at least It made the players think and plan around those limitations and the non humans felt exotic and rare
I swear, these days people just want to play Skyrim Dragonborns. Differently flavored, original and varied personalities who gameplaywise always look the same. Universal and bland. They meet up and go for murderhobo sprees, doing seemengly different, but ultimately the same goddamn shit

I'll just fucking stop now

Terrain, Weather, Time, and Place can make all the difference in a difficult battle.

It's dark out, how do your players overcome this? Does the darkness hide enemies or ballista? There's plenty of neat stuff that can be done.

Alternatively I try taking a page from fire emble's directives now and then. Defend this place for X turns, Make sure nobody enters the village, Destroy all of X before all of Y, Seize a castle or throne. Vary up your objectives, give your players a different reason for fighting off hordes rather than enemies just being punching bags.