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Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
The highlight of today's session was the players deciding to burn down a forest (because one of the characters had gotten the Arson skill last session) which resulted in the group having to flee a burning forest. One of the players suggested we model this as a chase, and it actually ended very appropriately with the group fudging a Risk: they had just run to the edge of the forest only to realize that there was a huge chasm with a waterfall and undoubtedly sharp rocks at the bottom, and the group fudged their roll to try and jump over the chasm, falling into the rapids. We wrapped up the session with the players waking up in a cave inhabited by fishmen who were about to sacrifice them to their god, a prehistorical psychic lungfish (basically an aboleth).

So, I want to stat up the aboleth as a Titan, and I was thinking that instead of having it change forms during the combat it'd have a different array of attacks on each initiative count: on 7 it basically works as a Summoner, summoning fishmen and sacrificing them to deal massive damage, on 5 it uses lots of psychic-themed attacks like drawing people in, dazing them and (as an Encounter attack) dominating them, and finally on 3 it'd lash out with its tentacles, grabbing and crushing the PCs. Does this sound like a good combat encounter?

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Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Ratpick posted:

The highlight of today's session was the players deciding to burn down a forest (because one of the characters had gotten the Arson skill last session) which resulted in the group having to flee a burning forest. One of the players suggested we model this as a chase, and it actually ended very appropriately with the group fudging a Risk: they had just run to the edge of the forest only to realize that there was a huge chasm with a waterfall and undoubtedly sharp rocks at the bottom, and the group fudged their roll to try and jump over the chasm, falling into the rapids. We wrapped up the session with the players waking up in a cave inhabited by fishmen who were about to sacrifice them to their god, a prehistorical psychic lungfish (basically an aboleth).

So, I want to stat up the aboleth as a Titan, and I was thinking that instead of having it change forms during the combat it'd have a different array of attacks on each initiative count: on 7 it basically works as a Summoner, summoning fishmen and sacrificing them to deal massive damage, on 5 it uses lots of psychic-themed attacks like drawing people in, dazing them and (as an Encounter attack) dominating them, and finally on 3 it'd lash out with its tentacles, grabbing and crushing the PCs. Does this sound like a good combat encounter?

That sounds great! The way they got into the mess is awesome, and the combat sounds good, too. My one warning is that summoning can be tricky to balance. But try it out. Also - they'll probably win the combat, but you should have a plan for if they don't that doesn't end with them all getting eaten.

Maxwell Lord posted:

Just bought the Vehicle mini-expansion. Looks solid (and around the lines of thinking I had for my space opera 4e clone), but one question I have is, how do you handle the action economy for when multiple characters are in one vehicle? Like the typical Star Wars game, everyone piled in the Millennium Falcon or its equivalent.

Good question! Out of the book, the way to do it is with a dogfight, with the non-pilot characters providing shooting (see the rules about tailgunners) or helping rolls.

If you are willing to get more complicated, the Escort scenario can provide a framework for how to deal with the scenario where the Falcon is chasing one TIE while being chased by 2 more. If you're doing that kind of 3-on-1, the Falcon should be able to take more than on hit - maybe a non-pilot player can be rolling to repair the damage as you go.

If you want to use that "4 players in 1 ship" set-up in tactical combat, you're going to have to do some more serious hacking. I can envision a fight where you have one player playing the pilot, rolling to try dodge enemies to reduce damage or set up shots for the gunners. Two other players could be gunners (with different kinds of weapons?), and a fourth is doing repairs and punching buttons while sparks fly from the console, undoing damage and removing statuses. Make them essentially like a Titan, with enough stuff for each of them to do.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
To me the major challenges of that sort of thing are 1) making drat sure that working on the engines and sensors and such is every bit as fun as taking shots at the enemy, 2) how the encounter math changes when only some characters are actually contributing damage. If I've got 5 heroes on the ground I can use a standard monster for each of them, if there's only one PC ship I have to be a little more conservative.

For 4000 AD I've been inclined to just give every "module" that makes up a ship some weapons function, so everyone's still attacking like they do in ground combat while also doing other things. It means that the sky will be somewhat more filled with lasers than in much of the source material but that's a matter of aesthetic preference.

I've been looking at Strike! as good for a sentai game so basically all I have to figure out is how the final Megazord battles should work.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
I think I talked about a sentai game in the last thread briefly, but the best thing for a Megazord battle (RAW, at least) is the Team Conflict rules. They're basically made specifically for something like that, where every action dealing damage doesn't really make sense but the players each have tasks.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer

Countblanc posted:

I think I talked about a sentai game in the last thread briefly, but the best thing for a Megazord battle (RAW, at least) is the Team Conflict rules. They're basically made specifically for something like that, where every action dealing damage doesn't really make sense but the players each have tasks.

You may be right, by that point the "combat" is down to posing and preparation to unleash the final weapon rather than actually trying to wear down your opponent.

Scyther
Dec 29, 2010

If anyone has any stories from play of how you used the Team Conflict rules or the Chase rules, I'd really like to read them. I mean I understand pretty well how they mechanically work, I'm just interested to see how people have been using them in play.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
I actually haven't done a Team Conflict recently, but my groups use Chase rules pretty often. The two most recent examples are:

1) In a Monster Hunter game, the players were being chased around the flooded forest by the angry mate of a monster they just carved up. The stakes were basically "get away and be in top condition for the second half of the hunt (able to position wherever they want on the map and the chasing monster rattled their second prey), get caught and be flung around, landing in different parts of the area (basically meant I could place them where I wanted at the start of the next fight plus they missed a turn of initiative)". They ended up getting away.

2) The party was chasing a wind mage through a city. I don't really know the possible negative outcomes since we managed to successfully capture the guy rather quickly, but most of it was us using our various magic to gently caress up his path in some way (erecting walls, etc.).

Azran
Sep 3, 2012

And what should one do to be remembered?
There are no rules regarding diagonal movement, correct? I am not missing anything, right? Out of curiosity, any particular reason as for why it's like this?

Also I love your work :)

gnapo
Mar 8, 2014
I'm not quite sure how the feat Sprinter is supposed to work. What counts as an event I can react to? If i have ten squares left, can i do this ten times between my turns for one square each? Can i react to each movement sqare someone makes that wants to come close to me and attack me in melee? What if someone wants to charge me?

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Azran posted:

There are no rules regarding diagonal movement, correct? I am not missing anything, right? Out of curiosity, any particular reason as for why it's like this?

Also I love your work :)

Diagonal movement is treated the same as horizontal, which is to say you can move into any of the adjacent 8 spaces for 1 movement. I can't speak for Jim as to why he did it, but it does encourage more movement in fights (which is good since, like in 4e, characters are very sticky when they want to be) and I personally find it more intuitive.

Gharbad the Weak
Feb 23, 2008

This too good for you.

gnapo posted:

I'm not quite sure how the feat Sprinter is supposed to work. What counts as an event I can react to? If i have ten squares left, can i do this ten times between my turns for one square each? Can i react to each movement sqare someone makes that wants to come close to me and attack me in melee? What if someone wants to charge me?

Having used this feat with the author:

You can react to literally anything, BUT, they get to actually complete what they're doing.

If you have 10 squares left, yes, you could move one square 10 times.

HOWEVER, if someone decides to, say, MOVE, they get to use all the movement they plan to at that time before you can react. So, if someone breaks up a move, so that their turn is, say, "Move 2, attack, move 4", then you could only react after he has moved two, or after he attacks, or after he moves four.

Or, you know, move one square each time, go hog wild.

Side Fun Fact: There's nothing stopping you from taking opportunities on your own turn.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.

Scyther posted:

If anyone has any stories from play of how you used the Team Conflict rules or the Chase rules, I'd really like to read them. I mean I understand pretty well how they mechanically work, I'm just interested to see how people have been using them in play.

I haven't actually used Team Conflict rules (they're a bit too abstract for my tastes and I just really like tactical combat), but we've gotten a lot of use out of the Chase rules with my players. Mostly with their characters running away from things, like the cops.

One of my recent posts details us using the Chase rules to model the characters running away from a forest which was on fire (so, basically the forest fire was the Chaser and the players were the Runners). The rules are good fun and we pretty much use them without fail at least once a session. I do need to set up a Chase with the players as the Chasers for once. Today's session is going to feature a big bad steampunk villain called Count Professor, so in the tradition of pulp villains he's going to try to make a run for it at some point.

Man Dancer
Apr 22, 2008
I used Team Conflict in my game a few evenings back. At the end of the session before, one of the players' characters had been possessed by 20+ ghosts and was running off to something the ghosts considered important. Given the context, I guess I could have done either Chase or TC, but I opted for TC mostly because I wanted to try it out.

I had already decided to give the ghostly opposition Penetrating (On a Push, give your opponent -1D in the next round) and Increasing Power (Advance score increases by 1 at the end of each round), and I didn't give them time to do Preparatory actions. The players each had a player reference sheet with the TC rules and I had sleeved TC cards for them to paw through. Having those on hand made everything a lot smoother, since it meant the players had all their options right in front of them, and we could all easily reference what was being added to what, and what effects (like Penetrating) were persisting across rounds.

Ultimately, the players used combinations of Observe, deactivating traits, and even Take One for the Team to clinch their win. I was pretty firm about them not stretching their skills, but they were able to make some solid and thematic uses of their skills about 2/3 or the time and didn't have to rely on Basic Actions much. They ended with 2 strikes, so I gave them each an appropriate Minor Condition, and their Minor Concession was that the ghosts would hang around, and the party agreed to go to where the ghosts wanted after the party finished their immediate business. I also had some of the ghosts split off and possess (as in hop-on, not control) the character who used Take One for the Team as her personal Minor Concession.

Nobody, including me, remembered this rule on page 80: "You may spend an Action Point when you have a Related Skill (not the Skill you are using for your chosen action) to add 2 to either Advance or Defense before your team rolls. Only one Action Point can be spent in this way per team per round." If I have one quibble with this game, it is the sheer amount of goddamn things that generate or use Action Points. I even had that fan-made Action Point reference sheet in the middle of the table and nobody noticed the above rule until after everything was resolved

megane
Jun 20, 2008



gnapo posted:

I'm not quite sure how the feat Sprinter is supposed to work. What counts as an event I can react to? If i have ten squares left, can i do this ten times between my turns for one square each? Can i react to each movement sqare someone makes that wants to come close to me and attack me in melee? What if someone wants to charge me?

Yeah, but reactions occur after the thing you react to. So if someone charges you, they'll run up and swing at you, and then you can react by moving. And if you move away, you'll eat an Opportunity attack from them.

ImpactVector
Feb 24, 2007

HAHAHAHA FOOLS!!
I AM SO SMART!

Uh oh. What did he do now?

Nap Ghost
My group is currently shopping around for a new game and this piqued my interest. I was looking at the sample adventure and it looks neat, but does anyone have any tips for running it?

Specifically, I'd like to know how best to go about character selection/building.

Two of my players are vets, but one is mildly averse to crunch (FFG Star Wars is about the upper limit of her comfort zone) and the other two are new and have only played Dungeon World.

So ideally I'd like to come to the session with character sheets/power cards all done up ahead of time.

Should I have them select combinations before the session? Or is it easy enough to combine the two halves at the table? My main concern is that roles often seem to modify existing powers.

megane
Jun 20, 2008



ImpactVector posted:

My group is currently shopping around for a new game and this piqued my interest. I was looking at the sample adventure and it looks neat, but does anyone have any tips for running it?

Specifically, I'd like to know how best to go about character selection/building.

Two of my players are vets, but one is mildly averse to crunch (FFG Star Wars is about the upper limit of her comfort zone) and the other two are new and have only played Dungeon World.

So ideally I'd like to come to the session with character sheets/power cards all done up ahead of time.

Should I have them select combinations before the session? Or is it easy enough to combine the two halves at the table? My main concern is that roles often seem to modify existing powers.

I'd say it's easy to combine them on the fly with the exception of the Blaster (which drastically changes how many powers work) and possibly the Summoner (where you have to consider how Role stuff interacts with all your various minions). Not coincidentally, those are also the most complex ones, and the hardest to understand at first glance. So maybe just bring all the other ones and introduce those later on.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
Yeah most roles don't really modify powers (barring Blaster which sorta does but not really) so much as add to them. Looking at the various Role Boosts at level 1:

Defender: Your powers all gain "on a 3 to a 6, heal 1"
Striker: Your powers all gain "on a 2 to a 5, deal 1 damage. On a 6, deal 2 damage"
Leader: Your powers all gain "on a 5 or a 6, regain the use of Tactics"
Controller: Your powers all gain "on a 3 to a 6, either Slow or slide the target 3 squares"
Blaster: You powers all gain "make the exact same attack against some other nearby targets, or on a 3 or 4 deal 2 damage to a target in range and on a 5 or 6 deal 2 damage or the attack's effect to a target in range."

I guess they technically do modify powers but only in an additive way and they never make powers do less or change the abilities on a power.

As for the rest of your question, building characters is super easy but there's definitely some choices that are simpler to both build and play than others (though short of things like Summoner/Blaster it's hard to make something too difficult in practice). You can really just combine the two halves at the table, and this will also let them talk through stuff as they're making their choices which serves the dual purpose of helping the party decide what to play together and also getting everyone hyped up since it's cool to talk about dream combos. Especially if you're starting people at level 1, there just aren't that many choices that need made.

If you're still worried about players getting in over their heads, here's my personal take on which classes/roles are the most and least complicated to play. This is going to change a bit depending on party composition, class features, and feat choices, but yeah. Also keep in mind that this is complex for Strike, which is still going to be simpler than most 4e classes since Strike is so streamlined.

Complex Classes:
Summoner
Buddies
Bombardier

Average Classes:
Necromancer
Warlord [note: whenever I see someone use Warlord they inevitably forget their Support Tokens, so if someone goes this route just make sure they remember]
Magician
Shapechanger

Easy Classes:
Duelist
Martial Artist
Archer

Roles (most to least complex):
Blaster
Controller
Leader
Defender
Striker

So making a Martial Artist/Striker is going to result in a very simple and effective character, whereas a Buddies/Controller is going to take some more attention to get the same value. Again though this is my own personal opinions, you could easily argue that like, Magician is Easy if you make them a Blood Adept and Duelist is Average because of their Focus mechanic.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
Here's a question for all you Discworld fans: what Class/Role combo would best represent a tribe of Feegles? Obviously they'd have the Gang feat from the Boss kit. I'm thinking Brawler Rogue with either Striker or Blaster.

-Fish-
Oct 10, 2005

Glub glub.
Glub glub.

I'd agree with Brawler Rogue/Blaster

ZeeToo
Feb 20, 2008

I'm a kitty!
Feegles, well-known for their habit of swarming up their foes' legs to bite them in the junk?

Shapechanger (single, Kraken), Striker.

Take Huge and Long Reach feats to represent how many Feegles there are and how much they might run ahead of the group.

Jade Mage
Jan 4, 2013

This is Canada. It snows nine months of the year, and hails the other three.

Edit: Did not read posts, whoops

Jade Mage fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Mar 25, 2016

ImpactVector
Feb 24, 2007

HAHAHAHA FOOLS!!
I AM SO SMART!

Uh oh. What did he do now?

Nap Ghost

Countblanc posted:

Yeah most roles don't really modify powers (barring Blaster which sorta does but not really) so much as add to them. Looking at the various Role Boosts at level 1:

Defender: Your powers all gain "on a 3 to a 6, heal 1"
Striker: Your powers all gain "on a 2 to a 5, deal 1 damage. On a 6, deal 2 damage"
Leader: Your powers all gain "on a 5 or a 6, regain the use of Tactics"
Controller: Your powers all gain "on a 3 to a 6, either Slow or slide the target 3 squares"
Blaster: You powers all gain "make the exact same attack against some other nearby targets, or on a 3 or 4 deal 2 damage to a target in range and on a 5 or 6 deal 2 damage or the attack's effect to a target in range."

I guess they technically do modify powers but only in an additive way and they never make powers do less or change the abilities on a power.
This is good info. Thanks for the clarification.

It's honestly looking like this might not be a fit for that group. I was originally going to use Gamma World as a test for the newbies' crunch tolerance, but was considering this since the two vets have both played GW before. Maybe I'm off base, but it looks like this has a lot more moving parts than GW.

I might try breaking it out at one of my other groups though. It's definitely a cool looking system.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.

ZeeToo posted:

Feegles, well-known for their habit of swarming up their foes' legs to bite them in the junk?

Shapechanger (single, Kraken), Striker.

Take Huge and Long Reach feats to represent how many Feegles there are and how much they might run ahead of the group.

This is a great idea, but this is for a level 1 one-shot I'm planning for a convention so it's a bit too feat-intensive. Having said that, the Gang feat from the Boss kit would alleviate that problem with just Shapechanger/Striker.

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


Question: how does the Bombardier's Misfire! trait interact with the "mines" placed using Delayed Fuse? Is the misfired power automatically centered on the mine? Is it centered on the bombardier regardless of where the mine was placed?

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
I'm fairly certain it's centered on the bombardier as you haven't actually laid mines or even designated where they'll go yet (that's the Effect of your ability, after all). Making your bombardier attack simply means you picked a target to perform an attack roll against.

5-Headed Snake God
Jun 12, 2008

Do you see how he's a cat?


Countblanc posted:

I'm fairly certain it's centered on the bombardier as you haven't actually laid mines or even designated where they'll go yet (that's the Effect of your ability, after all). Making your bombardier attack simply means you picked a target to perform an attack roll against.

D'oh, you're right. I misread the power. :doh:

ObMeiste
Oct 7, 2003

The Boss doesn't like you. Get out now or you'll have some real trouble.
So I've just started getting into running Strike! after playing a ton of D&D4e for a while now and I'm interested in converting a lot of material I've been using into 4e for strike.
It seems like it's simple enough for most part, but is there are any pitfalls, pro-tips or actual guides for the process? I'm still new to the system altogether so I mighr be missing the full extent of some possible changes I'm doing in the process.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

ObMeiste posted:

So I've just started getting into running Strike! after playing a ton of D&D4e for a while now and I'm interested in converting a lot of material I've been using into 4e for strike.
It seems like it's simple enough for most part, but is there are any pitfalls, pro-tips or actual guides for the process? I'm still new to the system altogether so I mighr be missing the full extent of some possible changes I'm doing in the process.

Overall I think straight conversion is required less often than you'd think, since the math is so flat in Strike!. Really, look at what the monsters do (forced movement, mobility, et cetera) and find something similar. The main thing I'd say you need to be careful with is monsters that get more than one turn in Strike!, when converting 4e effects that happen when the monster takes a turn. It could be accidentally overbrutal for Team Monster or the players.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
One important difference between Strike! and 4e is that 4e actually had a lot of monster powers with one attack for damage and a separate attack (if the first one hit) for the effect. That won't work as-written in Strike!, and you should adjust monsters as such.

So, if a monster had a bite attack that deals damage and has a separate attack for ongoing damage, simply make the ongoing damage the effect of the attack in Strike!.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
I've been finding that I can ramp up the suggested difficult of encounters quiet a bit without it becoming a problem. Last session I ran a combat of a six regular monster on four player encounter where the monsters had a substantial home field advantage and another with a solo Champion that was invincible to the damage of any attack that didn't have Advantage. I was a bit worried about it going in, but my players were able to take both out pretty reasonably.

CaPensiPraxis
Feb 7, 2013

When in france...
It's worth noting that the players in your game are fairly more powerful than regular pcs under houserules.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

CaPensiPraxis posted:

It's worth noting that the players in your game are fairly more powerful than regular pcs under houserules.

Only mildly. You have more options, but not dramatically more power. To be clear, all the players are dual-classed, but could only take one class with a passive ability like Archer style or Duelist Focus.

e: Their encounter powers share slots at each level too, so no additional encounter powers per battle.

fool of sound fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Mar 30, 2016

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

Just picked up a copy of this so I can make a character for Zeetoo's Fire Emblem game.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.

CaPensiPraxis posted:

It's worth noting that the players in your game are fairly more powerful than regular pcs under houserules.

In my experience even regular PCs run by the RAW can be really powerful. I'm actually having a lot of trouble imposing any kind of a challenge on my players because their group just works so well together. I'm also afraid of throwing any Goons/Stooges into the battle because the group's Blitzer Archer Striker with Fast Archer and that one feat that gives a lot of movement (on top of the extra movement from Mobility Boost) can usually reliably kill an entire battlefield's worth of Stooges in a single turn with some lucky rolls.

Granted, in my case I'm also bad at tactics, but I'm working on rectifying this. Next session (to be the last for now because one of my friends wants to try his hand at running Strike! for a change) I'm going to be throwing lots of civilians onto the battlefield with the special rule that each civilian killed by the PCs gives their team a Strike. Using the rules for interposing cover the enemies (some of whom are shapeshifters who can hide provided there's a crowd of civilians around them) can use the civilians as cover, and the battle will have a general Miss Trigger where a miss against an enemy who had cover from a civilian results in that civilian being hit and dying instead. I'm going to make my players work really hard for that Advantage, since they're so good at getting it either through flanking or the Warlord and Necromancer giving it around with their at-wills.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
Having played Strike to the higher levels (party's level 9 now) I'm not really loving how monster damage increases as level goes up. Player-character hitpoints stay the same, but they gain a couple of new powers that negate attacks, which presumably is supposed to make up for the monster damage escalation.

What this means is that players take a couple of hits to go down, but once you're hitting a player-character's hitpoints, they're going down in a couple of hits. I've had situations where a player-character has gone down in a single attack. It's not a huge deal since there are lots of ways for a player to get back up (1 in 3 chance on death rolls, leader healing, rallying) but it still feels a bit lovely for the player to be on full health and down in the dirt at the end of the action.

It might be better if monster damage stayed static throughout the game, but the DM was advised to use larger "encounter budgets" (EG: At level 1 you use one normal monster per PC, at level 10 you use two) as the party levels up.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
You're using the easily reskinnable sample monsters, right? Yeah, they hit like a ton of bricks at higher levels, but you could pretty easily trade the traits that give them extra damage for more variety in their abilities and maybe giving them better effects on their attacks. It'd require going into the monster creation rules a bit more in-depth though.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
Apologies for the double post, but I feel this deserves a separate post: having nothing better to do, I've been messing around with AnyDice making functions and other stuff like that to figure out, once and for all, who is the best at dealing damage in Strike!

For the sake of this analysis I decided to, at first, focus on four classes. All are Strikers, all are level 1, and I have not taken into consideration any feats. I also picked four characters whose abilities are easy to quantify purely in terms of damage. The analysis does not take into account stuff like a Duelist with Find an Opening being able to spend focus to deal more damage, the Archer having attacks that might deal damage as part of their effect, and so on. The characters are:
Duelist - Their special trick towards dealing damage, in this case, is being able to treat 2's as 5's when attacking the target of their duel. I'm making the assumption here that this effect is applied before Advantage and Disadvantage are taken into account, so a Duelist who rolls a 2 and 3 with Advantage would count it as a 5 and with Disadvantage would count it as a 3, because any other reading of the rules would result in some cases where Advantage would end up hurting the Duelist and Disadvantage being potentially useful to the Duelist.
Archer - I'm assuming either a Sniper or a Blitzer here, their trick being able to increase the result of the roll by one if the attack is a hit. For the sake of this analysis the only real effect of this on the probabilities is increasing the chance of getting a critical hit by some.
Rogue - The new class, I'm assuming a Backstabber Rogue here: deals a whopping 4 points of extra damage on a 6, meaning that a critical hit from them will deal a total of 10 damage.
Martial Artist - At first I was willing to leave it at the first three, but then I started wondering about the potential damage output of a Martial Artist using Scorpion Style to deal ongoing damage. The information from this part of the analysis can easily be applied to Necromancers using Deadly Poison (with the caveat that when they first hit an enemy in combat it'll deal one less damage) as well as Shapechangers using Form of the Viper.

First, though, we must establish a baseline: a Striker of whatever class making a Basic Attack with no dice-manipulating tricks or special effects:
Strikers deal an average of 2.67 damage on an attack, with Advantage being pretty much exactly worth +1 damage and Disadvantage conversely being worth -1 damage on average.

To compare this to the Duelist, thanks to their dice-manipulating trick of being able to turn twos into fives when attacking the target of their duel will be dealing an average of 3 points of damage per attack. Advantage doesn't swing their average damage as much as for the general Striker, changing it by +0.83, but the converse is true of Disadvantage, which accounts for only a -0.83 loss of average damage for the Duelist.

Next up we have the Archer. The increased chance of getting a 6 (due to the ability to increase the result of your roll when you hit) adds a pretty significant boost to damage, resulting in an average damage of 3.17. Advantage further bumps this into 4.17 (because you're getting more of those sixes!) while Disadvantage drops it to 1.92 (more than the baseline Striker, but not by much).

The Rogue, not surprisingly, excels at raw damage, and due to their significant damage boost when rolling a 6 they have an average damage output of 3.33. Advantage further bumps this to 4.89, but Disadvantage drops the Rogue's damage significantly, all the way down to 1.78 (almost baseline Striker levels!).

Finally, there's the Martial Artist using Scorpion Style, and here things get really interesting: taking the total damage output for a single attack in Scorpion Style, with a result of 4 or more meaning at least one instance of ongoing damage and with the possibility of more, the Martial Artist actually comes on top in the calculations, dealing an average of 3.67 damage on an attack, 5.17 with Advantage and dropping down to 2.17 with Disadvantage.

Here's some frigging analysis on that:

Based purely on the numbers it'd be easy to declare ongoing damage the best way of dealing damage, and there's some truth to that: adding ongoing damage to an attack is pretty much a +1 boost to the damage on a result of 4 or better with an extra chance of the damage happening over and over again, provided the enemy doesn't have a trait which allows for saving against effects at the start of their turn.

However, the one flaw in this is that ongoing damage doesn't stack with itself, and multiple instances of ongoing damage from the same source are not cumulative. On any turn when the enemy is still suffering from the ongoing damage the Martial Artist will pretty much be dealing damage as an average Striker. In addition to this, the point of damage is to get the enemy to go down, and if an enemy would go down due to ongoing damage they still get one last action before dying at the beginning of their turn.

Beyond the fact that ongoing damage is a really good way of increasing average damage output there's a few things we can learn: firstly, while the Duelist lags behind the other classes in terms of pure damage, it is also not hurt quite as much by Disadvantage as the other classes. The Rogue is definitely the one class that relies the most on Advantage for its damage output.

Some thoughts:

While typing this up I realized a couple of other classes that pretty much have a reliable way to add extra damage to their attacks: the Bombardier has Kaboom (1 damage to any enemy starting their turn in the zone, pretty much a sure-fire way of adding +1 damage to an attack) and Toxic Bomb (dealing 2 ongoing damage to anyone starting their turn in the zone [making it the at-will with the biggest ongoing damage output], but allows a saving throw against the effect), while the Buddies has Team Attack, which when used against an enemy within the Buddy's reach, adds +1 damage to that enemy. I'd like to write those up at some point as well.

Anyway, I hope that was of some use to someone at least. My next project is writing up all the dirty Defender tricks I've come up with which pretty much guarantee you a chance at punishing your enemy on your turn.

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Gort posted:

Having played Strike to the higher levels (party's level 9 now) I'm not really loving how monster damage increases as level goes up. Player-character hitpoints stay the same, but they gain a couple of new powers that negate attacks, which presumably is supposed to make up for the monster damage escalation.

What this means is that players take a couple of hits to go down, but once you're hitting a player-character's hitpoints, they're going down in a couple of hits. I've had situations where a player-character has gone down in a single attack. It's not a huge deal since there are lots of ways for a player to get back up (1 in 3 chance on death rolls, leader healing, rallying) but it still feels a bit lovely for the player to be on full health and down in the dirt at the end of the action.

It might be better if monster damage stayed static throughout the game, but the DM was advised to use larger "encounter budgets" (EG: At level 1 you use one normal monster per PC, at level 10 you use two) as the party levels up.

I was concerned about having a trend like 4e where increasing player power meant using more monsters, which meant longer encounters. Instead I opted for exactly what you said - higher level monsters get more dangerous, and combats stay fast. It is absolutely a trade-off, and if you don't mind adding a bit more time to the encounters, adding monsters instead of increasing their damage is a perfectly good way to balance things. I was just very conscious that "combat takes too long" was a complaint I had to avoid if I wanted to sell people on the game.



Ratpick, nice analysis there. Very cool. What assumption did you make for ongoing damage? How much did you assume ongoing 1 was worth?

When I do analysis on the math, I always use the assumption that damage is discounted by a third each round. So 1 point of damage in round 2 is worth 2/3 points of damage in round 1, and 1 point of damage in round 3 is worth 4/9 points in round 1. That value is basically arbitrary, though - I know that there should be a discount, but how much exactly is basically just a guess. I always like to see what assumptions and results other people get when they run the numbers on the same things I did.

Edit: oops, phone posting and I had a sentence in the wrong spot.

Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Apr 1, 2016

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Ratpick posted:

Cool analysis

Don't forget that the Poisoner Rogue's ongoing damage does stack with itself. Anecdotally I would be surprised if it topped the Backstabber, but it's a thing.

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Scyther
Dec 29, 2010

Anyone have thoughts on using titans or champions against only three PCs, while maintaining a reasonably fair challenge and not making combat drag?

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