So why DON'T people use their strongest attack first?

So why DON'T people use their strongest attack first?
Is there a medieval fantasy RPG where spells have a warmup mechanic?
What if on the first turn of combat you only have access to cantrips and grade 1 spells no matter what level you are, then on the second turn you can start to cast grade 2 spells, and so on. Is that too meta?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=k6qFJ09KY-A
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Usually to save effort and energy until they know that it's do or die- they don't want to burn a, say, Quivering Palm on a goblin flunky, or they won't have it when they need it.
Usually you want to maximize effectiveness, so that's also a factor in combat.

It's mostly a matter of saving energies and resources.
Sure, you could throw your ninth level spells at a group of kobolds, but what if immediately afterward a bunch of balors -or whichever other strong bugger- pop in?
Same applies even in fights where you aren't 100% sure that it might be the last thing you do in the day.
Hell, sometimes with some "JRPG" sort of jigs, you should expect some extra fight/boss/whatever the farther you go.

13th Age does via the escalation die.

because smart opponents tend to prepare countermeasures to your potential strongest attacks, and burning a couple middle of the road things first might let you suss out how well/in what way prepared an opponent is.

Also do you play poker with all your cards face up? Never lead with the best if you can avoid it.

>So why DON'T people use their strongest attack first?

You don't know how long the fight is. If you spazz out and unleash your Gomu Gomu No Hokuto No Ken Bankai you better hope you connect and they go down otherwise you just exhausted yourself and the other guy is about to hit you in the face.

these guys got it, but I'd like to add another thing:
In respect to villains at least (and some heroes i guess), to keep your real power a secret. If you're stronger than you look, people will underestimate you, come unprepared, etc, and you can catch them by surprise when the situation finally warrants a use of your super uber power.

>Posting an image from Cucktale.
Go away tumblr.

Exactly. It's pretty simple.

Blood Magic, it requires that your and/or the enemy's blood be shed before it can be activated. Only once you are on the verge of death can you utilize its full power.

You used cuck out of context, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I feel like this is from a doujin where one or both of these people will be horribly raped.

Fuck off /pol/.

You mean the wrong context. But yeah, /pol/ was given a containment board for a reason.

You could easily flip that though. If you go balls to the wall at the start of every fight, make people think you're more powerful than you really are (because who starts off with their best attack?) you might cow a number of people who would otherwise give you trouble.

>horribly raped.
No, sorry, you're completely wrong.

They enjoy every second.

Different guy, but seriously, the undertale fanbase is a group of faggots and you shouldn't encourage them.

He has every right to say "Fuck that shit," because, well, fuck that shit.

...

Every fanbase sucks get over it.

So what's the source? Google, the archive, tineye, iqdb, and saucenao all turned up nothing.

Tamagoro funi funi little bitch planet.

I like tamagoro better when he's drawing titty monsters, but the man is godlike either way.

Thanks user, off to fap.

hopefully by each other

This thread has nothing to do with undertale beyond a relevant op image. No one else was discussing it when the complaining started. People who get this bothered by a mere passing reference to a thing that people they disagree with like should just stay off the internet lest their delicate sensibilities get further triggered.

Godspeed.

TIEM TO GET TRIGGERED, MR. THAT GUY!
Non-human playable races, Jojo, D&D, fun, being nice to people

Party are fighting a shambling mound! No one elects to roll a nature check of some sort.

The Fighter and the Barbarian both hack and cleave, dealing out reasonable damage to the plant beast.

Scenario A: Sorcerer decides to really let loose and use his strongest attack first. He uses a Lightning Bolt and then elects to make it empowered scoring very good damage. It is revealed that the plant-beast thrives on electrical energy and he heals it back to full health and wasted a third level spell slot.

Scenario B: Sorcerer decides to play reserved and uses one of his cantrips. He uses shocking grasp, only to reveal that the plant-beast thrives on electrical energy and he heals it a tiny amount, and knows not to waste his lightning bolt on it next turn.

I'm sorry. Did OP posting a relevant image trigger you? There there, go back to /pol/, where you'll be safe from dissenting opinion and niggers.

Your real enemies might not be the easily-obliteratable fools before you. The real foes would love to know your repertoire before sending in the real kill-team. This is why using hired guns yourself is sometimes smart. Expendable and unknown in capabilities.

>So why DON'T people use their strongest attack first?
It's a villain thing.
Fucking gooddies!
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It only makes sense if there's a drawback to using your strongest attack. Something that drains a lot of energy or has a lot of risks attached to it. A single EXPLOSION could easily end an encounter but would leave you vulnerable to anything that follows. As such it's only a last ditch effort.

you mean Magic Points?

>I'd like to cast my best spell on this 20-foot hill giant who's kicking the party's ass, but what if we have to fight a 21-foot hill giant later?!

> Undertale
Thread saged and hidden. Back to tumblr with you.

I don't even play Undertale, but I can clearly tell that it's a good (or at the very least mediocre) game that's ruined by an incredibly shitty fanbase. For some reason tumblr latched on to it like a woman on a rich man's wallet.

Usually it's more akin to
>I better not use Hellray to kill these weak goblins because we just entered the forest and there's more dangerous things the deeper we go. I better just stick to Hellsparkle instead.

Something like what you posted never happens unless you have a shitty GM and you know it.

In my party because we want to buff ourselves/debuff the enemy first.

Then we drop hammer.

>bad guy is losing, powers up
>good guy starts losing, counter powers up and wins

Name that series.

>that image
youtube.com/watch?v=k6qFJ09KY-A

>the only straight white male is the character who is literally a spirit kept around by how hateful and violent "he" was
>despite the fact that "he" was intentionally left gender ambiguous in the game

What the fuck are you talking about?

>the only straight white male
He's white, but neither straight nor male.

Are we talking about the fucking flower / goat child here because it's a fucking goat flower.

Well in my setting, magic come at a cost and spells burn off souls, lifespans, luck, rare materials or effort*.

Perhaps, but when has "You're outclassed" ever stopped PCs?

>>I'd like to cast my best spell on this 20-foot hill giant who's kicking the party's ass, but what if we have to fight a 21-foot hill giant later?!
I know you're talking shit, but this legit runs through my head whenever I use my top-tier spells and consumable items.

The champ never uses his strongest attack first because it's no fun when the fight ends in one hit.

Sans only did it because you are a heartless world destroying monster who needed to be stopped. Firing magic laser cannons at a kobold is just mean bro

Because you want to test things first. See how the guy can defend.

It shouldnt.
If it did, they would never have become pcs.

Trying to get this thread back on track: Iron Heroes is a d20-based fantasy game by Mike Mearls, that came out at the tail-end of 3.5 with very little attention. The gist of it is that there are only "fighter" classes, and many of them have some sort of charging mechanic for powerful attacks (ranger's aim, berserker frenzy, stuff like that). It's not a great game, and the fiddly bits of the classes are a nuisance, but it had some interesting concepts (for a D&D clone).

Essentially it depends how much respect you have for the opponent.

If there's no respect, no attacks worth a damn are used.
With respect shots gonna hit the fan

every board is a containment board
have a you

As a GM, one of my players hordes bonuses obsessively, and another opens up on the first target with the heaviest-hitting spell possible.

Works out usually, considering the latter tends to get into stupid places and get smushed, while the former usually goes on the front and relies on Headbanging until they're about to die, giving the party a LOT more Tech than they should at present.

Very rarely is your strongest attack good enough to outright defeat an undamaged enemy. So you use lesser attacks to set up and ensure the finisher does its job.

In situations where you know you CAN open with that strongest attack and ensure you win the fight, obviously you do so (unless you know of other things that will happen after this fight that might be beeter use for said attack)

You want them to fight you not knowing how close they are to having their remaining health destroyed in one shot by your super move. Sort of like how in Magic, you keep that burn spell in your hand so when your opponent goes down to low life, preparing to stabilize, you can just whip it out and win the game instead.

It's a real thing that happens to people, so I'm not surprised fictional characters do it too.

...

Nothing is more fun then getting a few Shambling Mounds together to charge a castle during a lightning storm.

Mad Dummy.

people do all the time. it's actually the primary cause of the 5 minute workday phenomenon.

I hate the 5 minute workday concept and do everything I can to punish players who try it.

What retard uses his strongest attack first?

If anything you open with magic missle, catch them off guard when you cast disintegrate the next round, or finger of death.

Ok admittedly I just like magic missle

>What retard uses his strongest attack first?
One that doesn't have time to waste and knows that the opposition is much weaker than they are?

A lion uses its full strength, even when hunting rabbits. If you cannot deal with their strongest attack then you weren't worth fighting anyways.

Yeah, except lions are shit hunters who make their lionesses do all the hunting.

You do realize that Lionesses are still Lions, right?

>appealed to JRPG-loving weebs
>appealed to tumblr because of openly gay characters
>appealed to Homestuck's preexisting notoriously awful fanbase because it was made by a guy who worked on Homestuck (it even reuses some of Homestuck's soundtrack)
>appealed to furries because of some of the character designs
>also child friendly enough to be popular among the little shits who obsess over Pewdiepie and Five Nights at Freddy's
Undertale may have actually dethroned Sanic Hegdog for worst fanbase of all time.

You don't blow your strongest spell while the enemy still has a counterspell left in them.

Don't blow your strongest attack unless you're reasonably certain it will work- Against an unfamiliar opponent, you can't be sure until you've fought it for a while.

Nah, Sanic has a legacy that's hard to beat. And MLP is even worse than that.

It did pander to fucking everyone, though. Nostalgiafags, lorefags, edgelords, waifufags (though that could be folded under furfags in this case), "fan of the fandom" types, and worse. That said, it was one of the few decent PC releases in the second half of 2015.

Anything popular with the tumblr crowd at any point is always going to be remembered for having a shitty fanbase, for obvious reasons. Jojo's been a thing for decades but with the recent anime tumblr's latched onto it like a bloated leech, making it really difficult to discuss it without either attracting that crowd or that crowd's haters, and it's going to be that way for a long time. Still, it's not so bad there because there's 0 danger or suspicion of tumblr affecting the source or the creator in any real way, unlike Homestuck or Undertale.

It's just a fact of life that tumblr makes it really fucking hard to like things.

Lions don't usually hunt small prey. A lot of the things they hunt are not only faster and more durable but also able to fuck their shit up on a pinch, so they hunt in groups and give up very easily if something proves difficult

>that image
Christ, I'm as liberal as the pinko ghost of FDR, but when your classification system is more complicated than actually describing the thing with words, maybe you fucked up somewhere.

Like a dozen people have said, if your strongest attack is punching good and you can do it till your arm falls off, then you'll probably just use that a lot.

If your strongest attack is punching good once a day, you'll probably stick with something else until you absolutely need it.

Using your full strength against someone you could kill just as fast using 50% is inefficient in a very literal way

You do not want to be out of gas when you fight something actually dangerous, and you don't want the enemy to know your upper limits right away

>fun

Not really, because not only am I killing the fuck outta one guy but I'm also scaring the piss outta his buddies and anyone else who learns of my power.

I mean what, you think a dude is going to know that you're using all your power against someone? Fear is a powerful thing and in that moment, all you're thinking is "holy shit, he just summoned meteors and crushed Paul instantly, fucking run!"

>Homestuck
Hussie bullies tumblr to death, though.

>Anything popular with the tumblr crowd at any point is always going to be remembered for having a shitty fanbase
As usual, ecchi will save us.
>tfw I literally picked up Keijo because tumblr hates it

It's called the 15 min work day, user. You use your best attack in the first encounter, then go home until you've recharged. It's a very, very annoying habit which forces the GM to work around it because in a vacuum it's a very effective way to adventure while being kinda boring at the same time.

The anime of that was only so good because the manga itself is practically animated.

Fanbases don't ruin anything. The product is what it is. It's only 'ruined' if you're so insecure you're worried that people that like it aren't considered cool.

And as far as fanbases go, Undertale's is pretty good. There's a tonne of autists, but every popular thing has its share. I can't think of another fanbase that has created as much quality fan content. The remixes are godlike as are some of the animations and art.

Expenditures. Limits on spell slots, maneuvers, mana, blood points, what-have-you. Using the big flashy nuke might give you the best shot out of the gun, but it also means if they survive it, you're going into the rest of the fight without any aces in your hole. It can damage morale even if it would be the same degree of uphill battle otherwise.

Furthermore, it's rare for people to actually be strong enough to finish a fight in a single shot. However, if they wear an enemy down to, say, 1/3rd strength, they might be able to blow them down instantly from there, which is both more dramatic, cathartic, and generally satisfying all around.

>Gomu Gomu No Hokuto No Ken Bankai
I'm naming my next character's special attack this, thanks.

He's a fighter who thinks he has sorcerer/spellsword powers. He yells his fancy stuff, but it's really just a power attack.

>Non-human playable races
What about used-to-be-human playable races and homebrew?

>I can't think of another fanbase that has created as much quality fan content
Touhou, mate.

I don't think it's fair to bring up touhou, it's practically a religion now

It is. Don't dis it or risk jiha- I mean, kamikaze.

>>tfw I literally picked up Keijo because tumblr hates it
Looking into something that tumblr and the sjw crowd hates, while seemingly childish, has led me to some things that I really enjoy.

I think it is kind of rediculous that you know what tumblr and sjws dislike.
I mean, if you dont like them, why do you inflict them on yourself?

>And as far as fanbases go, Undertale's is pretty good.
If that was the case, you wouldn't have to be playing missionary for them and tryna convince everyone it's good right now

40K and Star Wars with their Black Library and EU, too.

Are you kidding? You have to do that with everything that has a fanbase.
Hell, Veeky Forums in general has such an awful reputation i have to convince people super hard to try tabletop.

Well, to be fair, tabletop gaming has the worst fanbase of all time.

Not really, as most things aren't famous for cringey garbage like

Nah, pretty much every topic on Veeky Forums is famed for being cringetastic.

>I mean, if you dont like them, why do you inflict them on yourself?
Because if you only listen to the people you agree with or like you're not giving yourself an accurate view of the world. Because decision making guided by and made in an echo chamber is always flawed. Because just because I loathe something that's being espoused, doesn't reduce the inherent dignity of the people espousing it; they believe it for a reason, and I want to understand.

If all you ever do is look for and listen to things that confirm what you already think or believe you know, you're dead. Growth happens best when you have something to push against. You can only really push against something that's real, alive and vibrant. You can't push very hard against a straw man, and as such you don't grow for shit.

In light of recent events, maybe chew on that a bit.

See, i outright dont care about things i dont like. This whole hate complex you have seems weirdly romantic, like you and them are moments from a hatefuck.
I care about issues that matter to me. Like nuclear reactors, and why we should have them in every home.

It never ceases to amaze me that people on a board where three of the most popular topics are DnD, warhammer and shitty card games actually feel they are in a position to complain about shitty fanbases.

I to wish safe miniaturized nuclear reactors were a thing user.

They just have a perfect line of fire for those rocks from their glass house.

Honestly, im willing to have some wiggle room around safe. And miniaturized. But yes, glow for all.

As a GM I can tell you I get nothing but satisfaction when a player burns there most powerful shit on a enemy that seems tough, but isn't even a the final threat. Makes it so there first instinct in the fight is to RUN not to stand and fight.

Well miniaturized in the sense that it can fit into a house, and safe in that it can be used without having to constantly worry your gonna nuke the neighborhood.