>Player: "I'm going to strike the goblin with my sword."
>DM: "ok beat AC 14."
Roll 17... roll damage...
>Player: "I come down sharply across his collarbone, doing 6 points of damage."
>DM: "Great."
Is this a good enough balance for Roll/Role play? What are some way to improve it. DND 5E inspired, but helpful advice from how other editions and systems handle it welcome.
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If you're just fighting goblins, who cares? No point dragging it out.
Just do what feels natural.
This is fine. Bosses or bigger enemies could deserve a bit extra.
No you need to write out a short story for every attack roll.
Honestly we don't even describe attacks, just kills, as describing every hit with the vague abstraction of hp anyway is a big waste of time.
'My spear's tip slides through his stomach, laceratingand his muscles and fleshy and scraping off his rib cage, he roars out in pain and coughs blood as he does so'
'cool but he's still actually fine and shoots you with his arrow'
That is how I do it. Slow, but players who like that stuff get involved.
I used to do that at the start, but now I don't bother. I just try to get combat over and done with as soon as possible so that we can get to the actually interesting parts.
>beat AC 14
DM should never say this. its metagaming.
Instead the DM would say "roll to attack", and then tell the player if they hit or not. If its late in the combat and the PCs have already faced a few of these types of enemies, the DM could tell them the AC, but he doesn't have to.
The player isn't usually going to describe themselves doing an attack, usually the DM will do the describing. players will roleplay, talking in their PCs voice (or just talking for their PC - doesn't have to be a fancy voice) and sometimes describe actions or things they want to do.
The DM in this situation could describe the attack or the way the goblin dies, or that the goblin tries to talk to the PC before the killing blow.
The balance usually comes down to the situation. Combat is not generally the time for roleplaying, while discussing a mission or lore with an NPC or other PCs isn't usually the time for combat - and the amount of dice rolled is usually less.
At my table, for both FFG Star Wars and D&D, the players describe their character actions, as it gives them license and doesn't just make them roll-players.
This actually interests me. I don't like combat either, but people somehow enjoy it. Any tips on how to make battles actually interesting? For me (and my party) it usually comes down to attack/defend and 1 or 2 special moves. Everything else seems pointless.
I find it odd that people call providing description for actions roleplaying. Surely roleplaying a character means 'maing decisions as they would', not just giving descriptions of what they do. Think about it OP, what did anyone learn about your character from that fluff, if the answer is 'nothing' then it's not roleplaying.
There are two sides to this, the first is making the situation interesting and the second is, in systems with detailed combat resolution, making the fight itself interesting. The first is addressed by making sure fighting always serves a purpose, the players should want to fight, not feel obligated to. Think about what the goal of both sides in the fight is and make sure that (1) they're mutually exclusive and (2) the players have a reason to care about their goal. The second part, making the fight itself interesting, requires a bit more practice but I find a good outline to use is:
>set up the encounter in a white room with a line of enemies versus a line of generic PCs (in D&D: tanky fighter, healy cleric, support wizard, and shooty rogue)
>think about the PCs optimal strategy
>re-arrange the situation either by terrain or enemy placement to negate that one tactic
essentially remove the obvious solution so that the players have to think about how to approach the problem.
>having a GM who put this little effort into the game
No thanks
My biggest raccomandation would be to avoid the concept of meatpoints HP.
When a player hits the BBEG at the start of the fight, I am much more likely to say
"Your sword barely hits him and you strike a glancing blow against the villain's arm"
if they hit or
"You thrust your sword forward and manage to hit just between the steel plates of the armor protecting the villain. Even if the cut is shallow, you can clearly see after backing up, the blood you drew with your attack"
When they crit.
It doesn't all need to be
"Oh, the goblin throws a javelin at you and hits for ten damage. You have a javelin sticking out of your ass now" when the PC that was hit had like 50 HP before he got hit.
>t. one entitled prick
Run your own game then :^)
I'm not an entitled prick, in your example one of the parties was putting effort into it and one of them clearly didn't give a fuck. I don't even like that faggy shit, doesn't mean I'd feel good about watching a GM not give a fuck when some other player tried to put some effort in.
>role playing
>noun
>noun: role playing; plural noun: role playings; noun: roleplaying; plural noun: roleplayings; noun: role play; plural noun: role plays; noun: roleplay; plural noun: roleplays
>1.
>the acting out of the part of a particular person or character, for example as a technique in training or psychotherapy.
>"specific guidelines need to followed for role playing to be effective"
>"I rolled an 18"
>"hit, roll damage"
>"9"
>"great"
This is boring and what a robot would sound like when they attempted portraying combat.
Also, whitebox combat is not interesting. The premis of your "advice" is terrible: what one should avoid is that both parties just want to go at it until one side is completely obliterated. Sure, you can add a nice hanging bridge that you have to cross and balance on to avoid falling in order to defeat the enemies, but that doesn't make it a whole lot more interesting, when all you are trying to do is kill the opposing team and viceversa.
Instead, have one side of the party try to steal the artifact from the party and fight a retreating battle where the players have to block off their escape route before the enemies can get away in order to retrieve the artifact. Now they have to think tactically and it will be something that will not just be like "you kill them all, good for you" or "TPK, roll new characters".
Given that they have a grid with minies and all set up, I doubt that the other side "didn't give a fuck"
The RP on the PC side is fine. The DM however sounds really boring.
I recommend this article. The way the article is written is questionable, but the information is great.
That's what constitutes giving a fuck to you?
I'm sorry to hear that my friend. Hope you have better luck in the future.
>your GM doesn't construct a hyper realistic v/r chamber complete with ambient noise and pain simulation
It's like you don't even want a good game
I know right? What a piece of shit GM :^)
Nice damage control, sorry your game is so bad
>This is boring
it's not boring AT ALL if the life of a character you care about is at stake
>Red dragon uses his breath weapon
>GM cranks the thermostat and shuts the windows
Song of Swords handles it by having the roll play be the role play.
>Player: "I try to use this technique to come down sharply on his collarbone, rolling this many dice"
Roleplay doesn't belong in combat. You switch to battle mode and then just choose which ability to use each round, like in Pokemon or Final Fantasy, until you're done.
Where did it all go so wrong?
Oh. 2002, the year you were born.
This desu. Sometimes you can describe important bits, but going out of your way to narrate every fucking strike or shot is autism.
I absolutely, completely agree.
>You should describe less!
>No, you should describe more?
Holy shit. Could it be possible that people enjoy playing games in different ways?
Of course not, that's crazy talk. One of these people is right and the other is wrong, and they need to scream at each other on the internet until an angel manifests and bestows the laurel crown of correctness on one of them.
Yes.
FUCK no
They won't be enjoyable in D&D.
>people cannot ever have reasons for liking one thing and not the other, and by God they can NOT discuss these with other people
It literally doesn't matter. You're autistic if you get hinged up on visible AC values.
If the players are paying attention, they will know pretty soon what they're rolling against anyway. Might as well be upfront about it to save some time. In online games I usually keep a visible enemy stat sheet so everyone knows right away what their actions did.
>"I'm going to strike the goblin with my sword."
Our group tends to describe *how* you're attacking. Maybe you... knock aside his sword [miming a lateral swing from right to left] and then thrust into his chest [miming a stab that follows directly from the swing that opened his guard]?
Follow-up strikes against the same opponent (either following up an earlier strike of yours, or counterattacking after he strikes at you) take into account the positioning resulting from the previous strike (with the GM applying bonuses for how appropriately the player does this). For instance:
GM: The hobgoblin makes an overhead strike with his sword~
Player: Step back out of the way!
GM: [clatter of dice] You're quicker than he is, and his downward blow catches only air! [mimes downward swing that goes far enough that it appears to leave him open]
Player: Awesome! While his sword is low, I'm gonna swing across at neck level [mimes "backhand" swing from left to right] and lop his head off with my axe. [clatter of dice] 17!
GM: Roll damage.
Player: 6.
GM: Your blade bites deeply into his shoulder and he staggers backwards, grievously wounded, but not quite dead.
Of course, we tend to do two rounds of battle between opponents locked together in melee so you get that sense of back-and-forth before moving on to others. We then wait until everybody else has had two turns to get back to them. And if that occasionally means that people take 2 turns before being affected by something somebody else does on their first turn, that's a small sacrifice (and it's not entirely unrealistic that folks don't all strike at exactly the same rate as each other).
>i don't like combat
have you tried to find a system either a combat system you enjoy or a combat system that is super fast and abstract, instead of just going on with what you have and suffering every time there is a fight?
I did. The rest of the group doesn't want it.
Out of curiosity, to you "I hate combat" m8s, do you use miniatures, or do you do theather of the mind stuff?
Whichever answer you give, you might want to give it a try the opposite way. Some people just imagine better with a grind, while some people feel bound by the grind and can't properly imagine
Try playing a crunch-light system where there aren't a lot of rules to get in the way of cinematics. And one where combat doesn't take forever (people don't have a million hit points that get whittled away only bit by bit, etc.). People complain about nonmagic types in many games just getting boring "standard" strikes, but I think that misses the point. Maybe you are just rolling a die vs. a target number every time you strike, but that's just the base mechanical component. You should be describing and miming your strikes, and sometimes even getting up and fully demonstrating what you do (with the GM and player possibly facing off and moving in stow motion through where the previous blow left their relative positioning and then with the player demonstrating what he will ideally do for his next blow, with the GM reacting, but generally letting the player take the lead and get to where he wants to get to, as this is what he *wants* to do, not how it will finally go down, necessarily--props like wiffle bats can be helpful in this, but they are by no means necessary). Then, and only then, does that boring roll vs. a target number take place, with the GM applying modifiers based on how advantageous he think the character's action is given the situation, and possibly also how colorful the player's description was (which may get him a +1 from time to time, or very rarely a +2 if the shit he says is fucking poetry).
You should image this like an action movie, and be jumping over boxes, screaming shit at your allies, and doing cool stunts and shit. Honestly, some of the best role-playing occurs during battle. And if combat is just a dry series of rolling dice with none of that, I can well understand why you're not into it.
depends on the party, friend
oh man
When I run games my rule is always mechanics first, description after. I have my players complete their turn, moving and attacking and doing whatever else they're going to do mechanically. Then once the mechanics are resolved and we know the outcome, I have them describe their turn. I do the same for NPCs, and sometimes I describe NPC reactions to the player's description.
Once people get used to it it doesn't add much time but does a lot to keep combat from getting dry and overly mechanical. Also, it really does help to use a system where combat isn't just 'I roll to hit' every single turn. Sure, you can make it less boring with roleplay, but you could make it even less boring by using a system that is mechanically interesting as well.
The good balance is the balance your players like, badwrongfun be damned.
If my group's fond of detail, I get detailed. If they prefer simple and to-the-point that's how I do it. If they like to describe their own attacks/spells, I let them and memorize their descriptions.
My advice though, is that unless your table is the beer-and-pretzels/skirmish wargame kind, you need a transition between every round of combat, to keep players on their toes.
>The goblin's just done dodging Player C's rapier assault. Player A, you're at the right angle and you've got an opening! What do you do?
This. I like to keep my HP relative. A 10HP javelin to a commoner hits right through the ribcage and kills instantly. A 10HP javelin to a 50HP PC is stopped halfway by the PC's leather armor and leaves a deep, nasty wound.
It leads to colorful, cinematic battles. I like war gaming, but when I want to war game, I play a war game, not a role-playing game. The user I'm responding to obviously isn't enjoying the way combat is being handled in his games, and the person he was responding to just tries to get combat over with, so this is something they could try that's (probably) different from what they are used to. But I'll bite: what's your issue with it?
Cant tell if serious
Serious.
Sheeeit
Im fat
Im not getting up from my comfy chair for anything.
The getting-out-of-your-chair-to-demonstrate-shit thing only happens occasionally, usually when positioning is tricky for some reason (like when it's easier to demonstrate than describe). But there ain't no comfy chairs at the table (not sure how that would even work), and if somebody is lazy enough that sitting like a bump on a log is valued more highly than participating, chances are they aren't going to be a very a good addition to the game anyway (not necessarily, but probably).
>there ain't no comfy chairs at the table
Dropped game faster than the speed of light
It depends on the system. With D&D you don't really roleplay every swing. More narrative games or games with more granularity will have much more in the line of roleplaying combat.
>DM should never say this. its metagaming.
No, it's just gaming. AC has an actual meaning in game - namely, how hard it is to hit the creature with an effective blow. A creature with an AC of 20 is harder to injure than one with an AC of 15, whether that's because it has more armor coverage, it's nimbler, it's protected by a magical force field, or otherwise. But all of those are things the characters can observe and make judgments based on.
Admittedly those judgments might not be entirely accurate, but that's why you roll to hit instead of taking 10.
>Dropped game faster than the speed of light
*Shrug* I guess you want a laid back sort of gig, but I like folks to be animated and on the edges of their seats. There's actually a running joke about me injuring myself demonstrating what enemies are doing. I got the last injury clawing my way over the table imitating a ravenous zombie try to get a player/character. In any case, it sounds like our play-styles are incompatible, so you dropping my game would probably be a good thing for the both of us.
DM should dictate the swing, not the player, because the player will sometimes see their description as more important than the roll. Hit points aren't physical damage so, depending on the goblin's hit points, the above description might be inappropriate.
Do you immediately tell players the weaknesses and immunities of every monster they encounter, too?
It doesn't really matter. If your fights hinge on hiding that information, then you're terrible at DMing.
am I the only person that combines attack and damage rolls? d20+2d6 or whatever... makes combat so much faster plus its easier to rp
I often times don't try to kill my enemies but to rape them makes combat much more interesting
>DM should dictate the swing, not the player
Yeah, we've always done it where the player says what he's trying to do and the GM describes what actually happens after the dice are rolled.
>Hit points aren't physical damage
It's better when they are, but that may not work with the way some games are put together.
>Player: "I come down sharply across his collarbone, doing 6 points of damage."
>DM: "Great. He rolls to counterattack,"
>Player: "No, I broke his collarbone! He can't move his arms!"
>DM: "Yeah, whatever, he stabs you for... 6."
>Player: "This is bullshit! Collarbone!"
>DM: "All right then, his shortsword removes your... [rolls]... wedding tackle, but you can still survive this horrific loss as you only lost 25% of your health"