Quote from: Christopher Brady;977860So, the question is, what do you do to make a combat scenario dynamic, instead of having players find the best bonus and keep using that?

Mixed groups of enemies. The orcs have wild boar pets and a shaman. They have goblin flunkies who throw darts into melee.

Magical terrain. It's fantasy so why are all the plants so well behaved? I run Gamma World - lots of nasty plants. What if the local forest beasties have allegiances with some plant monsters and your PC only think they surprised the fimir? And what about moving floors and walls and ceilings?

Monsters who attack in 3D. Ghosts who attack from under the ground. Flying beasts who swoop down, grab the gnome and keep going.

There are so many interesting things to do against the PCs so its natural they start thinking too.

Quote from: Spinachcat;978002Mixed groups of enemies. The orcs have wild boar pets and a shaman. They have goblin flunkies who throw darts into melee.



Monsters who attack in 3D. Ghosts who attack from under the ground. Flying beasts who swoop down, grab the gnome and keep going.

There are so many interesting things to do against the PCs so its natural they start thinking too.

Did all that. Mostly irritated players, many of whom are there to scam cheetos, roll some dice and mindlessly chop zombie-monsters to bits. THe Ghosting through the ground one... that one almost did as much damage to my player's trust in me as the Kobold Den they tried to invade.  And I stole that from another GM, so at least one of my players should have expected it, since she was there.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;977860So, the question is, what do you do to make a combat scenario dynamic, instead of having players find the best bonus and keep using that?

There are two ways. The first is to have combat mechanics that offer meaningful choices that extend beyond "find the best bonus". Classic D&D combat is an utter failure at this. Its combat system is the epitome of find the best bonus and hammer the foe with it. At the opposite pole is something like Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok in which a character's available options change from round to round based on which runes they pull from a bag. In FotN each rune is tied to one active and one passive ability as well one of three aspects (physical, mental, spiritual) and can be used to influence other runes in play. This alone provides players with constantly shifting meaningful mechanical choices with no static "best answer".

The second way to make a combat scenario dynamic is to utilize the environment, positioning and movement to full effect. Allow characters to engage and disengage, shift around an opponent while remaining engaged, use terrain for tactical advantage, etc. Don't make combat paired off duels in a white room. A combat that boils down to two combatants rolling dice at eachother until one falls down will eventually become stale.

Making use of the environment and dynamic movement can be done in any game and with or without map and tokens. I have done it completely ToM, but having some physical representation of the situation definitely makes it easier, even if it is just spare dice on a table top.

Maybe the question I should be asking is:  What game system are we talking about?

Quote from: JeremyR;977665I am more a fan of Predator 2. That is a camp classic.

Who knew there was a sequel! News to me.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;977661First up I encourage everyone to watch the original Predator, and this fan film, Predator: Dark Ages.

[video=youtube;YRD8jAk274I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRD8jAk274I[/youtube]

Both these films are a good example of what would be a good adventure design. Too often we see discussions of power levels of characters, and doing 4.32 points of damage a round on average vs a 32.6% chance of being held and... all this supposes that a fight happens by appointment in a featureless wasteland with two opponents who simply slog at each-other like ironclads pouring shot upon one another's armour until one of them sinks. This leads inevitably to players and DMs forgetting to use their imaginations, and instead just looking at the numbers on the sheet. Worse, it's boring.

Instead consider tactics, which involve setting up traps, dodging behind trees and around corridors, striking and running, or bringing overwhelming force to bear at one point, and using all the resources at your disposal to win - or at least win long enough to be able to get away with the treasure.

Most of us, including me, are not imaginative enough to come up with all this by ourselves. So use the dice, and steal freely from books and movies, and take what the dice offered and adjust it a bit. For example, one time the random dungeon map turned up a maze in one part. The labyrinth part had a few orcs or something, I can't remember what I'd rolled up - but shouldn't a labyrinth have a minotaur? And then I rolled up his treasure, and among this were a ring of protection and a ring of spider climb. Why not have NPCs and monsters use their own magical treasure, rather than just sitting on it like a particularly stupid Tolkienish dragon? So he wore these rings, and stalked the party like a predator. Climb the ceiling invisibly, drop on character at rear of party and drag him off, leave most of his body somewhere the party will find it.

Obviously you can tie all that into the local NPCs, whoever is giving the party their quest. Flesh them out as interesting - note, I didn't say "real", I said "interesting" - people, and their own wacky motivations and so on, as I described here.

In this way, a simple dungeon crawl becomes more interesting. In this way, fighting even a single monster becomes a great game session people talk about for years afterwards. In this way, "oh look, wandering monster, an ogre, yeah we fought him and killed him" becomes Beowulf.

I have nothing to add, aside from the fact that I am basking in the glory of your post. After so long reading some other threads I could mention, this whole post is just one long, wonderful breath of fresh air.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;977661Too often we see discussions of power levels of characters, and doing 4.32 points of damage a round on average vs a 32.6% chance of being held and...

I was thinking about this today while picking up my kids at camp and driving them to their mom's.  People where it seems the most important part of the game is the math (?)....  or maybe just having concrete numbers of the odds or something.  I don't know....  in my head I had this great response planned out and it just fizzled...  huzzah!

After watching a fairly blatant ripoff of Predator, I again watched this movie and thought of this thread. It's worth bumping, if only so people can watch the movie.

"Saracen - what do you know of this beast?"

It's also a wonderful demonstration of just why having high Strength gives you a bonus to hit and damage.

For an increasing number of players, game play is about figuring out a near-guaranteed success formula and then enjoying its execution. Anything that challenges that pattern is automatically not-fun.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1133774After watching a fairly blatant ripoff of Predator, I again watched this movie and thought of this thread. It's worth bumping, if only so people can watch the movie.

"Saracen - what do you know of this beast?"

It's also a wonderful demonstration of just why having high Strength gives you a bonus to hit and damage.

  And why magical weapons add to hit and dmg (the predator's blades essentially being magical relative to even high carbon steel)

Very timely for me!

I love Predator (1 and 2 both - but I have varying love/hate for the others). I've been watching the reality show Alone, and it made me think of Predator. Games need to have more "Build Traps/Snare" mechanics.

Part of the issue I believe is that, unless the GM gets creative and figures out some ingenious way to frame certain tactics mechanically to be 1) fun/engaging, and 2) actually beneficial rather than just "you waste one round to get a simple +2 bonus to attack or AC next round" and that's it, players will just default to "I roll to hit".

Staying your ground and making two unmodified attacks in the space of two rounds is usually better than wasting one round, where you might still get hit (without bonus to your AC) while moving into a different position, only to get a (probably) one time +2 bonus the next round. Which is what terrain usually gives you in old D&D rules. 5e would at least give you advantage (probably), but that still sounds like a lotta hoops and risks for what's probably gonna be a barely significant one time bonus.

At the very least I would give PCs using up a round for tactical movement a bonus to AC (or disadvantage to enemies), to make that sort of option more attractive. And I would justify it by saying that they're "moving defensively", or evasively or something.

I would also consider giving PCs (or enemies) attacks of opportunity in certain situations, if certain trigger events are met. For example, if a character moved to take cover behind a tree, then set themselves up defensively to wait for enemy melee attacks once there--only reaching out to attack if enemies try to engage--I would give the character one attack of opportunity against the first enemy to strike, since they're holed up behind cover and the enemy would have to breach their defenses to reach the character. This would be in addition to the tree serving as cover against missile attacks, or any bonuses for fighting defensively.

I suggest all RPGers try wargames. Terrain is utterly important to making combats more engaging and exciting, and forces both players and GMs to adapt their tactics.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134048I suggest all RPGers try wargames. Terrain is utterly important to making combats more engaging and exciting, and forces both players and GMs to adapt their tactics.

What would you recommend as a first pick, especially for OSR fans?

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1134050What would you recommend as a first pick, especially for OSR fans?

two hour games