Pooled hit points and group victories

Would there be any merit in a grid-based tactical combat ruleset similar to D&D 4e or Strike! wherein:

1. Each "side" in the battle (the PCs and the monsters) pools together all of their hit points, which represent plot armor, avoidance ability, resolve, and stamina and absolutely nothing about physical health.

Any damage or healing affects a whole side's pooled hit points. When one side drops to 0, that represents the narrative moment wherein the tide dramatically turns. The combat is over, and the winning side gets to narrate their victory over the losing side. The players get to describe killing/knocking out/capturing the monsters, or the GM narrates the PCs getting killed/knocked out/captured.

The one exception is minion-type monsters and summons, who never contribute to the pooled hit points and simply fall on their own.

2. Just like in D&D 4e or Strike!, the vast majority of attack powers come with both damage and a non-damage "rider" effect. The latter is usually a debuff of some kind, and placing multiple debuffs on a single enemy has diminishing returns.

3. Just like in Strike!, flanking is incredibly effective for maximizing melee accuracy and damage, and cover is an immense defense against ranged attacks.

4. Just like in Strike!, there are very few differences in PC/monster defenses, defender-types (with marks) aside.

5. AoE is limited.

The intended result is a grid-based tactical combat ruleset wherein the optimal tactic is *not* just to focus fire. No player has to sit out a battle because enemies focused fire, and no battle gets progressively easier for the PCs just because they eliminate enemies. Minions aside, nobody can eliminate enemies.

Combatants must balance between ganging up on a flanked or defensively debuffed enemy, and spreading out their attacks to make the most of debuffs. It is still quite possible for an individual creature to be in big trouble as they find themselves, say, flanked and immobilized.

How would you improve this?

>grid-based tactical combat ruleset similar to D&D 4e
>in b4 4e fags say their game is not a mini game.

...I don't think anyone would say 4e isn't a tactical combat game. That was one of it's big selling points.

It'd work, but most people would find it hard to swallow. Just look at any of the numerous "HP IS NOT MEAT POINTS!" threads and the autistic shitfest that they result in, and this is yet another step more abstract than that.

It feels like a design shortcut DESU, which simplifies solving the issues you mention, but I think it's important to keep in mind that other solutions exist (they are just way harder).

It's an interesting idea sure,but I feel it works better for a super hero or modern style gane where combat is meant to be less lethal.

Killing off 3 orcs and letting the rest run off is half the fun. Oh, and I know you're gonna say the same could happen in your system and it certainly could, but what happens when the players create the ultimate strategy of boxing in one opponent and flanking them until they've defeated all the characters?

Personally, I just prefer HP as meat points and leave it at that.

>what happens when the players create the ultimate strategy of boxing in one opponent and flanking them until they've defeated all the characters?

They might do this with a defense-debuffed enemy, but the rest of their powers' riders will suffer diminishing returns.

If they are concentrating on one enemy and leaving the others unattended, then most of the enemy side is still available to apply their own powers with myriad effects, such as debuffs, forced movement, marks, and so on.

Under conventional individual hit points, in a four vs. four battle, being able to focus fire upon a single enemy and take them out in a single round already spells a death sentence upon that side anyway.

Its an interesting idea, and as far as I know that design space has no competition. But I expect it to be a hard sell, as most players are selfish. With the right tactically minded group it could work.

When you say 'no one can eliminate enemies', do you intend for each enemy to always be acting, or can they be placed out of action?
Tactically speaking, if the players cannot reduce the damage output of the enemy, there is no incentive to not always use theor most damaging attacks.

>When you say 'no one can eliminate enemies', do you intend for each enemy to always be acting
Short of minions, who can be eliminated from a battle outright, enemies cannot be truly eliminated from a battle. The closest one can get is temporary debuffs.

>Tactically speaking, if the players cannot reduce the damage output of the enemy, there is no incentive to not always use theor most damaging attacks.
There is less incentive to do so than under an individual hit point system. Under individual hit points, everyone brings out a high-damage nova in order to take out a key enemy in the first round.

>three characters: pure attack, pure Hp and pure defence
>Pure defence uses the shared meat pool and individual abilities to force enemies to only hit them and suffer diminishing returns as the pure attack character strips the other team's group HP

Or alternatively, it goes how communism goes
>everyone else is brining the HP, so ill be the man of the hour and bring only damage
>everyone else is brining the HP, so ill be the man of the hour and bring only damage
>everyone else is brining the HP, so ill be the man of the hour and bring only damage

>flanking is a bonus damage
>everyone ganks the one guy while out of range of the rest of the enemy team

>b-but ill have diminishing returns some how

>I wanna be the DPS
Isn't this basically everyone in every RPG ever.

If you run off and get ganked that's your fault.

Well, yeah, stacking stuns/movement effects/etc on one guy means diminishing returns, since he's already debuffed to hell.

it beats "lol I cast Sleep", I dunno why 3aboos keep beating the dead horse like this

I like everything about this idea, except the grid system.

It would work really well for a supers/kung-fu/RWBY-style anime fight, where you have several people with distinctive powers working around the battlefield. They use their debuffs/buffs and describe how it goes off narratively, with everyone getting a chance to shine and match off with whatever opponent suits that specific move, switching out for a very dynamic combat.

The problem with a grid in this situation is that it would always end up looking strange; characters won't have freedom of movement because AoO will always be a thing, and you will never be able to clear a path because nobody dies until the end of combat. It would end up being very static, with the PCs deciding to flank a certain enemy (the one who seems easiest to hit) and wailing on them, with the striker/controller-equivalent running diversions on most of the other enemies. There's lots of effects (like slowed, entangled, prone, etc.) that the PCs will spam on the majority of enemies, with things that directly reduce AC layered onto the guy they choose to focus damage on.

>The problem with a grid in this situation is that it would always end up looking strange; characters won't have freedom of movement because AoO will always be a thing, and you will never be able to clear a path because nobody dies until the end of combat. It would end up being very static, with the PCs deciding to flank a certain enemy (the one who seems easiest to hit) and wailing on them
Uh huh, I see you haven't played 4e with mobile characters.

I have, quite a bit. Those mobile characters are almost always strikers, because they can use their mobility to take out monster artillery, lurkers, and skirmishers, changing up the battle by removing the enemy's support structure (and some leaders/controllers have mobility powers to help keep them safe/within range for their buffs/debuffs). That cannot happen with the grid system, greatly reducing the value of mobility, because it will not grant anything of value. The brutes and soldiers will smash into the defenders and punch each other in the middle of the field, and at best you'll end up with a static chain of 'mobile' characters that each gain flanking on the other spreading out from the central combat.

Sounds like everything is working as intended to me. You shouldn't be able to yell "Nuh uh, I want to target THAT guy" all the time.

Except that people will be able to choose whoever they want to target all the time with this stupid system, because they can't get away. The low-AC target doesn't die, they stick around to be the gaping ulcer in the enemy's team. You want to smash the lurker? Go right ahead, he's going to hang out there. Knocking bitches prone or otherwise hampering their movement to the point that your strikers can just keep up with them is child's play.

The best you can hope for is two pile-ups - one of your defender facing their slow-moving brutes and soldiers in a convenient spot on the battlefield, forcing each other to try and bash through the brick wall of AC, the other as every monster lurker and striker surrounds your wizard and beats the shit out of him as your rogue and other allied strikers beat the shit out of those low-AC targets. The cleric can stand in the middle and keep tossing buffs at the wizard - because there's no point in targeting the cleric, because there's no way to remove him from play, the enemy will keep focusing on the easiest target to hit.

>The low-AC target

You seem to be missing the part in the opening post that states:

>4. Just like in Strike!, there are very few differences in PC/monster defenses, defender-types (with marks) aside.

very few =/= none.

In Strike!, the vast majority of PCs and monsters operate purely on baseline defenses, and it is only really dedicated defender-types who will have defensive capacities above the norm.