One player does not want to participate in fights

I have a player who is good and upstanding. They are helpful out-of-game, and they roleplay well enough in-game.

There is just one problem. They have lost all interest in the way I run my combats: brutal, difficult affairs that demand in-depth tactics, grid-based positioning, and good usage of powers. This is a light- and fluffy-themed campaign, so death is hardly ever on the table, but my fights are nevertheless hard (albeit still weighted in favor of the PCs), my enemies are almost always intelligent and tactically optimal, and I never go easy on the party or cut them some slack.

While the other players are... *mostly* fine with this, it has become clear from my talks with the one player in question that our differences are irreconcilable. I am not going to get them to like my combats without drastically revamping them in a way that would be distasteful to me. They no longer wish to participate in any combats, even under a dead-simple build.

Simultaneously, they do not want their character to be a non-presence in combat, because it would be lame in the fiction for their character to suddenly stop fighting or become incapable of fighting. It would also be contrived to regularly have the PC conveniently square off against a designated enemy in a segregated duel. Also, I have a very tough time designing interesting fights for only three PCs, due to my encounter design style.

The player would prefer that I control their PC in combat, or have another player do so. However, I think that this would unduly increase my workload, two of the players lack the confidence to control two PCs, and the remaining player thinks it would be cumbersome as well. In other words, it would be a hassle for anyone involved.

How can I resolve this issue?

Make your combat better. It sounds boring.

Not being a tremendous faggot would be a start. Also learn to actually design encounters. You are apparently shit in it.

>Brutal, difficult affairs
>light and fluffy
Which is it user? If it really is both, that sounds boring. An all out slug fest with no real danger? I wouldn't want to do that. Sounds like grinding on an old school rpg vidya

What areas would you suggest could use improvement?

The game is light and fluffy. The combat is brutal and difficult, but even then, the consequences for losing are still light and fluffy.

>What areas would you suggest could use improvement?
What areas do they have a problem with?

The themantic differences between combat and non-combat are likely turning the player off, there's no point in making combat an intricate spreadsheet affair if after combat everything is light and fluffy, even if they lose. Keeping theme and tone consistent is good for player engagement and the flow of a game, it sounds like you are playing a relatively rules light and simple game outside combat, but when init gets rolled you start hammering down everything concretely, counter to the non-encounter tone of the game.

>The combat is brutal and difficult, but even then, the consequences for losing are still light and fluffy.
If you present a difficult task with only a minor penalty for failing, then it's optimal to not bother. It's basic economics, Colette.

From what I understand, the overall paradigm of combat: in-depth tactics, grid-based positioning, good usage of powers, and a rather high difficulty (albeit one still weighted towards the PCs).

Like said, there's way too much a disparity between the overall tone and the combat. If I'm playing a light and fluffy game, I don't want every combat to be a brutal slog through vietnam.

I do not see how the tone is incongruous at all. The players are all familiar with various Japanese game series that mix light and fluffy tones with rather unforgiving difficulty levels.

The consequences are light and fluffy in tone. That does not mean the consequences and penalties are minor; it could still very well jeopardize a mission, if not cause an outright mission failure.

That's not a good answer. It's all fluffy and nebulous without actually saying anything. Give us a concrete example encounter and what the problem was with it.

Well, using your pic as an example. Touhou is hard while also being light and fluffy, but it isn't exactly demanding of intense tactical planning like what you're describing your games as. The spellcards hardly last a minute and there's not that many to blast through. But what you're describing sounds like every battle is a long and arduous affair.

Okay, what do you mean by "light and fluffy"?
Are the mechanics light outside of combat?
Is the tone happy go lucky, like a magical girl show?
You need to be more specific on what is "light and fluffy".

If the mechanics are vague aside from combat, that can cause a very big shock to players as gameplay influences tone and flow of RPGs very significantly. A player may not care about encounters being difficult, their issue may arise in the mechanical disparity and complexity between combat and non-combat.

The party is trying to catch a thief. (The thief is not actually a thief by trade, but rather a thief by circumstance.)
The party lays a trap for the thief.
The party springs the trap on the thief, although it is not too effective due to poor rolls and due to the thief being savvy against surprises of all kinds.
The party does battle with the thief and their summoned allies, in order to subdue and capture the thief. If the party loses the fight, or lets the thief escape, the party fails in their mission overall, though they still have a few clues to salvage.

In this case, the party won, although it was somewhat close.

>it isn't exactly demanding of intense tactical planning
It does, however, require skill.

>But what you're describing sounds like every battle is a long and arduous affair.
No more so than regular RPG combats involving grids and turns.

>Are the mechanics light outside of combat?
I would call it rules-medium.

>Is the tone happy go lucky, like a magical girl show?
I would not call it happy go lucky or saccharine, but there is plenty of anime madness, such as virtually everyone being a cute anime girl/boy of some stripe, kemonomimi everywhere, "power of friendship" logic prevailing, and so on.

I was thinking more about the number of enemies, their relative strength, to the characters, the kinds of dirty tricks they use and their mode of arriving to the conflict.

Also that sounds like an ok encounter, what was their problem?

>I was thinking more about the number of enemies
I generally aim for a number of enemies roughly equal to the party size, sometimes with one extra.

>their relative strength, to the characters
I usually set enemy strength such that the PCs stand a 75-80% chance of victory.

>the kinds of dirty tricks they use
Just as PCs get to assess enemies and figure out which to focus fire on, so too do enemies get to assess the PCs and figure out which to focus fire on.

>their mode of arriving to the conflict
Enemies usually call or summon backup. They get to "deploy," the PCs get to deploy themselves generously, and the battle begins.

>I generally aim for a number of enemies roughly equal to the party size, sometimes with one extra.
That (and every other design technique) gets stale really quick. Try diversifying the way you set up the encounters.

>I usually set enemy strength such that the PCs stand a 75-80% chance of victory.
That does not sound like what you said about the combat being hard. Also if the game features safety nets (which seem like the case) then you should feature fights in which the only option is to think outside the box. (You should set this up properly, if you just spring it on them, they will hate you for it.)

>Just as PCs get to assess enemies and figure out which to focus fire on, so too do enemies get to assess the PCs and figure out which to focus fire on.
If that's the first thing that comes to your mind when I ask for dirty tricks, I have to say that your imagination and creativity in enemy design seems to be lacking. Try giving the enemies interesting abilities and reduce their number/scores.

>Enemies usually call or summon backup. They get to "deploy," the PCs get to deploy themselves generously, and the battle begins.
Another thing that gets boring if done a lot. I can only hope you didn't do it that way in the example above.

Also you still didn't give me an answer to what was the problem with the aforementioned encounter. It would be nice if you could give more info about it like the exact number of enemies, their abilities, stats compared to the players and possibly the gridmap you used for it.

>Try diversifying the way you set up the encounters.
I generally dislike running smaller amounts of enemies; even with extra actions, having less pieces to move around is stale to me in its own way. Conversely, having a dozen or so enemies around is a pain to manage even with minion/mook mechanics.

>That does not sound like what you said about the combat being hard.
How is this?

>Also if the game features safety nets (which seem like the case) then you should feature fights in which the only option is to think outside the box.
There are already such things as alternate victory/loss conditions.

>I have to say that your imagination and creativity in enemy design seems to be lacking. Try giving the enemies interesting abilities and reduce their number/scores.
All enemies already have different suites of passive abilities, a set of two or three at-will attacks with nondamaging rider effects, and one or two limited-use powers also with nondamaging rider effects. I do not see the problem.

>Another thing that gets boring if done a lot. I can only hope you didn't do it that way in the example above.
I play in another game with a different GM under the same system. In that game, the GM gives us free rein to reposition ourselves *extremely* generously at the start of combat. We have found it to be extremely cancerous and fight-winning.

>Also you still didn't give me an answer to what was the problem with the aforementioned encounter.
Apparently, after talking to the player even further, it is not so much about encounter design as it is about how my combat encounters feel disconnected from the narrative and the world. I am trying to press the player for more information, but I cannot parse what they are actually saying, because it is couched more in vague feelings than anything concrete.

what system is OP using

Of yoy nust came here to endlessly defend your vauge style of running combat this thread will go precisely nowhere.

it seems to me like your running every adversary as a hyper competent knowitall incapable of fucking up.

thats a huge mistake.

youve already seen one of your players is bored out of his mind by this, heres why.

stats and strategy have no soul. and with all your talk of missions and parameters and sub objectives it seems like the biggest problem you have is portraying these TOO mechanicslly.

try putting a little humanity into your encounters. for example, why the hell is someone forced by circumstances at all competent as a thief? not everyone is sherlock holmes or professor Moriarety.

explore greater variation.

offer simple combats that entail more nebulous challenges.

in short mix it up because its gotten stale. combat isnt a player vs. gm exercise. combat is a tool to provide dramatic tension. if every encounter is a diabolical nightmare players stop caring.

This reminds me of this one time a DM decided to make what she called an "Interesting" boss fight. Two bosses.

One had a ridiculous armor and ridiculous health, but did almost no damage, instead just repositioning enemies and general disrupting.

The other did shitloads of damage but was glassy as hell.

It was boring as fuck. Just because a concept sounds cool in your head, it doesn't mean it's fun for your players.

I think you might just be a shit DM.

>I generally dislike running smaller amounts of enemies; even with extra actions, having less pieces to move around is stale to me in its own way. Conversely, having a dozen or so enemies around is a pain to manage even with minion/mook mechanics.
Suck it up. It's not just about your entertainment.

The combat is either hard, or the characters have 75-80% chance of winning. Combat difficulty is directly related with the chances of the party clearing it. You are either leaving something out you one of those statements is a lie.

>All enemies already have different suites of passive abilities, a set of two or three at-will attacks with nondamaging rider effects, and one or two limited-use powers also with nondamaging rider effects. I do not see the problem.
But are they interesting? "Deal X damage and move the target X squares" is not very interesting. Teleporting next to a target stabbing it, then teleporting back is better, being able to attack from any square, that has water on it is even better (assuming a few puddles and ample cover).
Also consider giving them 1-2 utility powers each. If they are always damage+rider it gets old.

>In that game, the GM gives us free rein to reposition ourselves *extremely* generously at the start of combat.
I'm not talking about that. (Although if the players have done well in for example tracking the thief and setting up the trap, you should allow that.) I'm talking about weather or not the monsters always start on the table. Some of my favourite fights are which start off with a few enemies, but more keep coming as the fight goes on and the players have to focus on the summoner. Also weather or not the enemies start close to each other, are arranged for optimal tactical effect, or are at completely different parts of the map, seemingly without rhyme or reason. As always variety is the spice of life.
cont.

>Apparently, after talking to the player even further, it is not so much about encounter design as it is about how my combat encounters feel disconnected from the narrative and the world.
That's more a failure of the system than anything, but can be mitigated by giving the players a few ways of using the combat powers out of combat, and making the combat parts a lot harder/easier depending on the preparations the players take.

Also what says.

I think @OP meant that enemies generally have 75-80% of the strength of a PC, not 25-20%.

A D&D 4e retroclone.

>Suck it up. It's not just about your entertainment.
If you think experimenting with enemy numbers will be fruitful, then I will do so.

>The combat is either hard, or the characters have 75-80% chance of winning.
I consider a 75-80% chance of victory to be a hard combat. That is a huge percentage of a chance for the party to lose.

>But are they interesting?
I like to think that they have been interesting enough. I have had enemies with powers that let them teleport to people and grab them, dealing ongoing damage while the grab was sustained. I have had terrain involving teleporters in a room full of sources of cover.

>Also consider giving them 1-2 utility powers each.
This, likewise. I have had enemies with powers that let them block off characters' approach, for example. I do not think enemy design is the problem here.

>I'm talking about weather or not the monsters always start on the table.
Most of the time, although they sometimes start far off.

Do you keep encounter notes?

Hey, touhoufag, we've had this exact same thread before, with similar responses.
You run your combats the way you, the gamemaster, want to run combats.
You do not do what is considered proper to most, ie for the npcs to act in the fashion that is logical for their knowledge, capacity and inclination.
While it is a matter of choice, do realize what you have done is turned every npc into your personal avatar. By replacing an npc's thought processes with your personal ones, you have turned them all into DMPCs, agents of your own will rather than the will of the setting. That is how GMs can metagame poorly, and is frowned upon as much as players who metagame, replacing the will and inclinations of their character with their own.
I'd hate to see you run Shadowrun, where the incredible resources of the major corps is in your hands. You sound like you would abuse it horribly and not understand how you are actually playing the game wrong.

holy shit, is THAT what's been going on?

I empathize with the player. After roughly ten years roleplaying, with experience in countless systems, I've yet to play a single one that made the combat fun.

Enemy statistics, yes. Encounter notes, no.

Then what do you consider fun, user?
What I find fun is matching wits, will and wherewithal against others. It is not the mechanics that make combat fun, but the scene as it is played out, the competition against others, the threat of failure (not death) and the exultation of success.
Granted, some people just don't like violent conflicts at all, I game with 2 people like that. For them, it's merely a means to an end, and not something to be enjoyed along with the story and characters. I have some pity that they do not enjoy the entire game.

>You do not do what is considered proper to most, ie for the npcs to act in the fashion that is logical for their knowledge, capacity and inclination.

This is because the kind of setting and campaign I run involves enemies who are almost always tactically intelligent.

I have an encounter lined up with tactically myopic enemies, represented by a specific trait that limits whom they prioritize attacking, but that trait earns them "enemy building points" in exchange. This is actually from the game's rules.

>I consider a 75-80% chance of victory to be a hard combat. That is a huge percentage of a chance for the party to lose.
It is obviously harder in grid-based tactics-heavy games but I usually make it so that if they do nothing but take the enemy head-on, the players have a 50-50 chance of winning or losing. This is the "baseline" encounter, and this can get harder or easier depending on tactics, preparation, etc. Boss battles are obviously harder, with around one in every ten games featuring an enemy who I feel is too strong for them to defeat. At least this is what I use for Dark Heresy, which is our main game. They have pulled through around 30 sessions so far, and "died" 2-3 times. each (there was no TPK).
When we play other games this gets screwed a bit, for example in the Ars Magica game, where the players have a lot more options, I feature "unwinnable" encounters every second or third session. As a result the payers have become experts in circumventing fights they can't win.

>I like to think that they have been interesting enough.
Even so, you should always strive to outdo yourself with every significant encounter.

>I have had enemies with powers that let them block off characters' approach, for example.
I have found that powers that make the characters waste their turn (by either removing their agency or making them waste their turn moving) make fights not fun for players. In my experience they tend to like having a choice (ex.: move through the dangerous terrain and attack, but take an attack yourself, or waste your turn going around).

>This is because the kind of setting and campaign I run involves enemies who are almost always tactically intelligent.
Then your combats are actually myopically the same across the board.
If the only action taken is the "best" action, then you can reliably predict what action is going to be taken in any given situation, distilling an individual's actions to less than 4 moves, and countering or mitigating them.
You do realize that there is a massive difference between fighting smart and winning, because winning means you are ready to extend yourself for advantage. Your combats will not actually be exciting or surprising outside of "Enemy X has Move Y I haven't seen before", and that is boring as fuck.
What setting are you running where every foe is a veteran combatant? Where there are no rookies, no neophytes or humdrum warriors to pad out the ranks? That since everyone is exceptional, no one is exceptional and your battle scenarios lose lustre?

>I have found that powers that make the characters waste their turn
This specific power immobilized the characters, but still let them launch ranged attacks, in a system wherein everyone has viable, scaling ranged attacks.

>You do realize that there is a massive difference between fighting smart and winning
You can do both.

>What setting are you running where every foe is a veteran combatant?
One with a very high in-universe power level, thereby making it such that the great majority of the enemies who can threaten the PCs are those with a good deal of power and experience.

>One with a very high in-universe power level, thereby making it such that the great majority of the enemies who can threaten the PCs are those with a good deal of power and experience.
which means that the players are tired of constantly having to fight high-power enemies
You have three options:
>suck it up and bring more weaker, less tactical enemies
>change your combat system to a simpler one
>get new players

That seems to be a major design flaw in a grid-based system, effectively meaning that positioning matters less and making movement-based powers a lot less fun.
Also what says. If you include an "encounter budget" then of course the battles are going to feel samey and bland. And where are the proud enemies, who just walk away, if the party doesn't measure up? Where are the cowardly ones, that flee the second they are able? Where are simply incompetent ones, who try their best and use their limited resources to their full effect, but it just isn't enough? Where are the egoist ones, that let the party heal up mid-battle, the crazy-prepared ones, that shut down the party before the fight really begins and start negotiating from the superior position (ok, that's not really a fight, but a fun encounter)?

Touhoufag, you're a highly efficient optimizer. From reading your posts over time, I don't know if you've ever realized that other people don't consider their fun to be related directly to their amount of optimization. I suspect you have a player who basically either doesn't see the stuff to do, or considers the amount of work he'd have to put in be a significant loss on the amount of fun returned.

I suspect you won't be able to reconcile those differences.

Doing both all the time is the boring I'm talking about, especially since you need to fudge things to do it.
The winning move is not always the smart move, like throwing Red/Red Masterstroke in Riddle of Steel, trusting to good dice to end the fight in a single blow and parrying the followup, versus Yellow/Red where your lack of commitment can get you struck down.
As for your setting, is it a tactical one where the pcs are constantly facing skilled military tac teams? Is the risk/reward there, or are they fighting powerful foes over even banal circumstances? SR handles this well. If you want to throw down with a corp, you are gonna have your hands full, but dealing with gangers means large numbers of weaker foes.
He is a legit autist, and has admitted as such, it is the basis of many of his issues when it comes to gaming. I had a similar player, and had to boot him after a time because he repeatedly defied my edicts as GM

The reactive immobilization effect was a limited-use, single-target, once-per-encounter power across two enemies. I do not see the issue.

>And where are the proud enemies, who just walk away, if the party doesn't measure up? Where are the cowardly ones, that flee the second they are able?
HP in this system is plot armor and morale, totally disconnected from physical durability. Players can define how they take out enemies: killing enemies (it does not do much in this setting most of the time), knocking them out, forcing them to surrender or flee, and so on. That is why for enemies, I treat "you make them flee" as simply one of the potential ways to take out an enemy.

>Where are simply incompetent ones, who try their best and use their limited resources to their full effect, but it just isn't enough? Where are the egoist ones, that let the party heal up mid-battle, the crazy-prepared ones, that shut down the party before the fight really begins and start negotiating from the superior position (ok, that's not really a fight, but a fun encounter)?
Those are the ones with special traits that dictate their behavior, as I mention in , but those traits give them "enemy building points" in exchange.

I am aware of this, hence my last line.

I agree with your last line.
Sometimes, you just can't come to terms, and the best thing you can do is wish well and part amicably.
I've left games where I knew I wasn't going to agree with the GM, and rather than make a scene, simply bow out gracefully.

>tactically myopic enemies, represented by a specific trait that limits whom they prioritize attacking, but that trait earns them "enemy building points" in exchange. This is actually from the game's rules.
What clusterfuck of a system are you even using?

>Those are the ones with special traits that dictate their behavior, as I mention in , but those traits give them "enemy building points" in exchange.
okay, not make these types of enemies
but DON'T give them extra points

No, I mean giving everybody a useful, scaling ranged attack does. I honestly think you would be better off with a gridless system.

>HP in this system is plot armor and morale, totally disconnected from physical durability.
So you are saying, you incorporated all things that can be used to bypass HP, and included them in HP? That is a tremendously unfun mechanic is one of the things destroying the enjoyment of your games.
>Those are the ones with special traits that dictate their behavior, as I mention in , but those traits give them "enemy building points" in exchange.
And as I have said in having "points" to build your encounters from is a bad idea, because not only should the difficulty change according to story considerations (ex.: a high point in the story needs to be a more difficult fight), but according to the type of enemy faced and the things that happened so far in the game. Taking a predetermined amount of points and building an encounter from them kills any way to change the fight difficulty by smart play, which is one of the problems your player was complaining about.

Why do you need to give the enemies specific traits that make them act a certain way? Why not just imagine what that creature would be doing and how it would react?

See the spoiler in

from your descriptions, the player in question does not,want to tactically challenge themselves when they have a baseline 75+% chance of victory. And it sounds like the rest of the party is beginning to agree with this player.

Not everyone finds repeating the same tactical challenges every week enjoyable. I advise asking the players what they want to see in combat scenarios, perhaps along with a questionaire, and implementing their suggestions.

>No, I mean giving everybody a useful, scaling ranged attack does.

It is a useful, scaling ranged attack, but it is very no-frills and basic. It does not come with rider effects, and it seldom synergizes with class abilities.

>So you are saying, you incorporated all things that can be used to bypass HP, and included them in HP?
If HP is a mix of plot armor and morale, then I do not see why the "morale" part should be ignored. If they have HP left, they have morale left to stay in the fight.

>not only should the difficulty change according to story considerations (ex.: a high point in the story needs to be a more difficult fight)
If there must be a more difficult battle, then I will increase the point budget.

>but according to the type of enemy faced and the things that happened so far in the game
If an enemy is supposed to be a weaker enemy, then I will make a weaker enemy. They will take up less points in the budget.

What is the problem here?

Two hours ago, I had gathered the group together for a discussion on the matter. Talks rapidly degenerated due to a series of gross misunderstandings, and it had concluded with two people storming out of the channel, something that had never occurred previously.

I am unsure of how "just talk to them" is supposed to be a panacea when, more often than not when I am involved, it simply leads to discussions rapidly breaking down.

>It is a useful, scaling ranged attack, but it is very no-frills and basic. It does not come with rider effects, and it seldom synergizes with class abilities.

A Normal person will call this boring. Especially if being forced to rely on this instead of things with frills, rider effects, and things that their class actually does.

>If there must be a more difficult battle, then I will increase the point budget.

This part on it's own isn't bad, but
>If an enemy is supposed to be a weaker enemy, then I will make a weaker enemy. They will take up less points in the budget.

misses the point entirely. This is basically "You have a party that can't match you optimization-wise". You're going to have to scale this down, not just make a weaker enemy within a budget. To compare 4e's experience budget, you're buying the monsters, but how they are used is a major difference. See the examples of things like fire beetles and those raptor things that could TPK if DM's decided to use them 100% optimally. If your enemies are run as tactial geniuses and your players are not, your game is over because players will leave to find enjoyment elsewhere.

the problem is your players are bored.

A purely mechanical solution that does not deviate from existing practices will not solve your issue.

I like roleplaying, worldbuilding, and creating a shared narrative; and 99% of the time combat just slows all that to a snail pace.

>Talks rapidly degenerated due to a series of gross misunderstandings, and it had concluded with two people storming out of the channel, something that had never occurred previously.
user, could you post the logs?

>It is a useful, scaling ranged attack, but it is very no-frills and basic. It does not come with rider effects, and it seldom synergizes with class abilities.
It still negates at least half of the tactical considerations the players need to take, making the game less tactics-heavy.

If you just make the budget larger or smaller whenever you like, then what's the point in having it in the first place?
I mean if one of the enemies loses access to a vital power, because of the players' unexpected actions do you bring it back, to full power by rounding out to the full budget again? Because if you do, you are making the game less fun by having out-of-combat actions matter less, and if you don't, then there was no point in having it.

*whistles idly*

>A Normal person will call this boring. Especially if being forced to rely on this instead of things with frills, rider effects, and things that their class actually does.

I think that being forced to fall back on this as a result of a limited-use enemy power is fair game.

>This is basically "You have a party that can't match you optimization-wise".
That is why I use low budgets: to compensate for the tactics I use. They still face a 75-80% victory rate, for hard yet not insurmountable battles.

I hardly have the permission to do so.

>It still negates at least half of the tactical considerations the players need to take, making the game less tactics-heavy.
I would not say so, because the ranged basic attack is indeed *very* basic, and its range is rather limited for melee-focused characters.

>If you just make the budget larger or smaller whenever you like, then what's the point in having it in the first place?
I use a budget as a baseline for most encounters, and then lower the budget for weaker encounters and raise it for higher encounters. The budget helps me gauge how difficult a battle with be.

>I mean if one of the enemies loses access to a vital power, because of the players' unexpected actions do you bring it back
If a PC can deny access to powers, then that is part of the PC's ability set. That should not affect the budget.

>I hardly have the permission to do so.
just censor the names

>mfw I accidentally wrote "censor the banes"

Strike!, I think.

Silly user. You know he's just gonna come up with another way to skirt around this, because he knows full well that he'd reveal his own incompetence by doing so, or because the logs in question don't actually exist.

>I would not say so, because the ranged basic attack is indeed *very* basic, and its range is rather limited for melee-focused characters.
It's either very limited and basic or useful. You are contradicting yourself again.
>I would not say so, because the ranged basic attack is indeed *very* basic, and its range is rather limited for melee-focused characters.
Honestly you should be just eyeballing it. It makes it more fun on both ends. An unexpectedly hard/easy battle shakes up both the players and the GM like nothing else.
>If a PC can deny access to powers, then that is part of the PC's ability set. That should not affect the budget.
You are thinking too mechanically. I mean if they steal the enemy's magic wand/destroy the source of most their power without engaging them, leaving the enemy in a weakened state when they fight him.

>A D&D 4e retroclone.

Huh, didn't know they had those already. I'm kinda curious what game it is specifically so I can look it up and such, or is it homebrew?

That would still be a breach of privacy, and it would also be confusing due to various references to in-game incidents as well as other games.

>It's either very limited and basic or useful. You are contradicting yourself again.

It can be both very limited, and basic and useful. This is not a contradiction.

>Honestly you should be just eyeballing it. It makes it more fun on both ends. An unexpectedly hard/easy battle shakes up both the players and the GM like nothing else.
I would prefer to be able to gauge the difficulty of battles under such a metric. So far, the budgets have proven useful in that regard.

>You are thinking too mechanically. I mean if they steal the enemy's magic wand/destroy the source of most their power without engaging them, leaving the enemy in a weakened state when they fight him.
Presumably, the characters would have had to spend time and effort doing so. I would treat the enemy as being weaker, and adjust the budget to be lower. The budget is there to help me gauge how difficult a fight will be.

He seems like the kind of GM who doesn't actually "imagine" anything that isn't already in numbers and tables for him.

>It can be both very limited, and basic and useful.
It is either too limited to be useful or generally useful, in which case it's not very limited. This is basic logic.
>I would prefer to be able to gauge the difficulty of battles under such a metric. So far, the budgets have proven useful in that regard.
Another example of your preferences diminishing everyone else's fun.
>The budget is there to help me gauge how difficult a fight will be.
I can't help but feel like you should be able to do it without a budget.

>So far, the budgets have proven useful in that regard
Useful to your bookkeeping, but not useful to your players actually enjoying themselves. You've been given lots of good advice and you seem completely unwilling to bend on much of anything.

>It is either too limited to be useful or generally useful, in which case it's not very limited. This is basic logic.

Allow me to explain how I see it.

Some characters are dedicated melee specialists. They perform very well in melee, and can usually place themselves in melee with ease.

However, sometimes, they might be forced to resort to ranged attacks. Under such circumstances, they can resort to ranged basic attacks. Such attacks are somewhat worse than the melee attacks they would normally use, but the ranged basic attacks are not *that* much worse, and they automatically scale.

Does that make sense?

>Another example of your preferences diminishing everyone else's fun.
I do not particularly understand how being able to gauge encounter difficulties is a bad thing.

>You've been given lots of good advice and you seem completely unwilling to bend on much of anything.
Much of the advice is also invalid because of various circumstances or because *I already use the advice*, or because they rely on faulty assumptions of the system I am using.

Whatever I do not particularly respond to via quote, I take into account. It is not as though I am ignoring all advice here.

>However, sometimes, they might be forced to resort to ranged attacks. Under such circumstances, they can resort to ranged basic attacks. Such attacks are somewhat worse than the melee attacks they would normally use, but the ranged basic attacks are not *that* much worse, and they automatically scale.
Which cheapens the abilities, that affect movement, force the character to be in a disadvantage to attack in melee, or give disadvantage to attacks not targeting specific enemies.
>I do not particularly understand how being able to gauge encounter difficulties is a bad thing.
As I've said in it adds uncertainty to the battle. It forces the players to be on edge.

Also it's getting late here, so I'll stop posting. Have a good night (or whatever time it is where you are) and I hope you'll improve as a GM.

>Which cheapens the abilities, that affect movement, force the character to be in a disadvantage to attack in melee, or give disadvantage to attacks not targeting specific enemies.
Those abilities debuff the character, but not devastatingly so. That allows such abilities to be handed out more freely.

>It forces the players to be on edge.
How does *not* using encounter budgets force the *players* to be on edge?

Also, the player in question being on edge is precisely part of the problem.

Someone else has proposed the following solution to my woes related to understanding and catering to a group of players:

>I think you should have your players talk amongst themselves about what kind of game they want to play. They should reach some kind of compromise that all of them can be happy with. Once they have agreed on what kind of game they want to play, THEN they should explain to you.

>Trying to listen to all three of them voicing different opinions is just confusing you and making things harder.

>And it's impossible to satisfy them all of they don't agree on anything

>Once they have told you what kind of game that they collectively want to play, you can work with them and decide what you need to do from there.

>You may need to compromise on some points that take you out of your comfort zone, but it's also important that you are having fun too.

>Wouldn't it make it easier to understand their expectations if they all settled down and discussed it amongst themselves before presenting their wishes to you?

Is this good advice?

kill yourself pedshit garbage, you should participate in a fight with a rope and lose

> brutal, difficult affairs that demand in-depth tactics, grid-based positioning, and good usage of powers. This is a light- and fluffy-themed campaign, so death is hardly ever on the table, but my fights are nevertheless hard (albeit still weighted in favor of the PCs), my enemies are almost always intelligent and tactically optimal

This does sound jarringly incongruous. I'm all for challenging battles but I want to feel like there's something serious at stake, or else why are we spending so much game time on it?

I'll save the touhoufag the trouble: it's Strike! and I suppose I'm now a shill.

How's your group going, are the two players still not talking after cooling off for a bit?

There is, in fact, something serious at stake, but it is presented under a light and fluffy tone, much like how children's series are awfully blithe about what stopping someone from destroying the planet *really* means.

One of them has calmed down, but the other has permanently left the game.

This is not the first time I have had someone depart from one of my games. While I am reasonably skilled at running one-on-one games, my attempts at GMing group games over the years have been met with disaster after disaster after disaster. Catering to the needs of multiple persons is far above my metaphorical pay grade.

cbf to read entire thread but I'm willing to throw my two cents in:
1. terrain - try to make the terrain interesting, not just in special effects, but in general "interactive" bits - courtains to be pulled on enemies heads, loose pebbles , cliffs, chokepoints, battlements, etc.
2. don't make the sole goal of combat to kill the opponents. Make them fight somebody who they need alive but who doesnt want to get captured alive. make them NOT want to fight something or somebody. Make the combat a failure state they want to avoid, but give them a way to go around it.
3. lower the powerlevel, so that players and characters WANT to resort to dirty tricks in point 1
4. 4e clone sounds like an awful choice for the campaign's theme. Try something lighter, mabe even a retroclone to make players think in terms of "what would you do" rather than "what are my character's applicable powers". Alternatively try something like Savage Worlds, combat is swingy, but sometimes retarded actions actually yield great results. Once two of us exploded an abandoned air control tower that was surrounded by zergs, while jumping out of the window to catch a rope ladder lowered from a spaceship, just to have our escortee caught by one of zergs, so i dived from the ladder to catch him and pull him up while another PC dragged me by the rope. In the course of the whole visit to the planet concluding with this we entered formal combat for maybe 3 turns, which leads me to:
5. git gud. Enter and exit combat with a better flow, have characters join in and run, or sometimes exchange a few swings and leg it. Don't make the combat binary like in JRPG, in that, you're either out of combat, or in combat until it ends.

This, we've basically had a dozen archived threads about it.

Why does he think the exact same problem would have changed with just time?

1. I have mentioned the terrain I have used here 2. I have mentioned alternate win/loss conditions here 3. I do not see how this is relevant. I am fully capable of coming up with interesting terrain regardless of the power level.

4. I strongly doubt I would ever be satisfied running a loosey-goosey combat scheme. It would bore to an extreme degree, such that I would hardly ever be willing to run combat. I am a great fan of mechanically-grounded combat ala D&D 4e and Legends of the Wulin.

Why not try a better designed game like Cypher System and see how the player likes it?

I have played the Cypher System and stumbled across its host of flaws; I have posted about those flaws in past threads on this board. Besides; its brand of combat is hardly engaging to me.

Two of the other players had accompanied me into this very foray into Cypher and were likewise unimpressed.

As a matter of fact, being quickly disillusioned with Cypher was what prompted me to search for a new system, and then discover Strike!

Oh right, you need every player to be mechanically identical for the combat to be good. I forgot about the weird 4e thing. No wonder you'd see any diverse design as flawed.

It makes it way easier for the GM to balance combat perfectly.

1 & 2 fair enough
3 & 4 there's terrain and there's terrain. My last session's gadget of the game was a large piece of rag. Need to tread on broken glass? Throw a piece of rag on it. Need to remove a piece of broken window? Cover it in a rag and break off so it's muffled. Need to see what's on the ground but don't want your flashlight to be seen everywhere around? Cover the thing in a rag and shine underneath. Need to transport a lot of looted clothing? Throw it on a rag and carry with a buddy. Lower powerlevels force thinking outside of the box instead of trying to apply just relevant character powers.
4 it doesn't need to bee loosey-goosey, just leave some wiggle room outside of the rules. Seems like your players don't have the same hardon for combat rules, and I remember reading a LOT about 4e (and I assume by extension its clone) has this disparity between in-combat and out-of-combat gameplay.

I find that retroclones strike the perfect balance for me - there's a definite to-hit roll, but how the player describes his actions might grant him a bonus. Outside of it, there's just movement speeds, generally every character is very little in the way of numbers. Tactics come from ideas on how to approach the battle and not from there being certain optimal strategy in every fight. Oh, yeah I almost forgot - not giving a fuck about encounters being particularly balanced is kinda great. It's not something you can do out of the blue, but if you estabilish it early enough, your players will learn that not every battle can be won and to actually run sometimes. But I digress.

Why not have a system and setting where the opponents are not always assumed to be highly competent, and that encourages non-symmetrical combat? Dark Heresy and Torchbearer are both good examples, where the ideal battle is won before the first shot is fired.

From what I can see, the players are bored of "Here is the room where the fight is. Now kill each other.".

Like the example you gave when ambushing a thief. Usually setting a trap entails just winning that fight, but instead the thief calmly summoned enough monsters to match up with the players and the fight proceeded as normal.

>but instead the thief calmly summoned enough monsters to match up with the players and the fight proceeded as normal

It's called a boring railroad, Dave.

So... everything about the way you run combat.

Maybe because 40k is shit you autist?

Then make it a new setting or something. It's not like DH is hard to port.

>Mix of solid and energy weapons
>High tech alongside low tech (including low tech weapons with high tech upgrades)
>Careers that generally match up (Assassin, soldier, mechanic, cop, etc)
>Magic that gives reality a migraine

Making a setting that meets those is EZPZ. The influence rolls to get weapons works pretty much anywhere too.

Welcome to Veeky Forums. Now get out.

Grid-based tactical combat is my single favorite type of combat in an RPG, and the players knew what they were signing up for when I opted to run a game with an emphasis on grid-based tactical combat.

Because I am a great fan of grid-based tactical combat. "Combat as sport," in other words.

>Like the example you gave when ambushing a thief. Usually setting a trap entails just winning that fight, but instead the thief calmly summoned enough monsters to match up with the players and the fight proceeded as normal.

The thief in question was an extremely powerful positive energy elemental (or rather, a vivacious creature). This creature was incorporeal, invisible, and capable of animating nearby objects into warriors.

The characters investigated, researched ways to strip the positive energy elemental of its incorporeality and invisibility, set magical blasting traps to weaken it, and attempted to ambush the elemental.

The party was partially successful: while they were unable to surprise the positive energy elemental, and while it was able to bypass the blasting traps, the party did manage to strip it of invisibility and incorporeality. The positive energy elemental animated nearby objects to serve as its minions, and the battle was on, to subdue the elemental while preventing it from escaping.

What was wrong with such a setup?

>What was wrong with such a setup?

Can you really not tell? Now that you've given me proper context, it seems pretty clear.

Let me ask, was the elemental itself (not its minions) much stronger than the average enemy the party faced? Were the warriors similiar in power to, say, a group of orcs that players had fought a few sessions ago?

The scenario you're describing is sounding like the players gearing up for a boss fight, laying a trap to give them an advantage.
And then once the trap goes off, it turns into just another boring tactical slugfest with a voracious being of pure energy and its animated minions.

Liking "combat as sport" is fine, and running most of your game like that is fine too. But your players clearly put a lot of effort into making a "Combat as war" scenario.

But if you vary the way you play the game, it wouldn't be perfect anymore.

Here's an alternate take on that scenario.

>the traps go off, rendering the elemental corporeal
>the elemental panics, flooding the room with energy
>The entire room becomes animated
>Books fly off shelves, jars shatter and become glittering hurricanes of glass
>floorboards rip themselves out of the ground
>All the players will take DoT, unless a character uses attacks to ward off the objects (probably 1 attack per protected player)
>The elemental is much more powerful than he was in your original setup, to account for being the only enemy

There. Same fundamental start, but it's an encounter that is wildly different from your usual 5v5s and the players will be unlikely to forget it.

Can't balance the action economy. Unless we change the enemy to be able to take 5 actions a turn, that could work. What if it was all the same elemental but he split up and was in 5 different places?

Have him able to take 3 actions, because, you know, he's an elemental of pure energy.

The DoT to every character in the room and the fact that you can't lower the number of actions by killling one off is plenty.

This was actually the first combat encounter of the... latest iteration of the campaign. The campaign has been troubled for a long time, typical of my attempts at running group games.

In that sense, the elemental was the very first enemy that this group of PCs had faced. They had confronted the elemental in a large chamber full of teleporters, cover sources, differing elevations (which were also cover sources), and clouds of obscuring particles.

>Liking "combat as sport" is fine, and running most of your game like that is fine too. But your players clearly put a lot of effort into making a "Combat as war" scenario.

It was not their idea. I was the one who emphasized, in-game, that it would be a good idea to come to the fight with as many advantages as possible.

your problem is touhou is fuckin gay