TTRPGs & D&D

[JakeEkiss]

I wasn't paying attention when this came up before, but really no missing? Just hit every time?

Otherwise, it reminds me that my favorite innovation in 4th ed. was the little unique abilities different monsters can use to demonstrate that they're different. Like an extra shift move or making your underling take damage instead of you because you used them as a shield.

That is correct. You do not roll to hit, you roll to see how much stamina (health essentially) you cleave off somebody.

But then, the enemies don't miss either.

There's more to it than that, modifiers and defenses and such, but the practical result is there are virtually no null results in play. So far what that has done is made combat more like a race. You and the baddies ALWAYS make progress. Even if you can't roll above a 2 all night. There aren't, so far, any wasted turns where someone rolls and is like "I miss" and then they don't get to do anything for 20 minutes.

This is a whole-soled design philosophy and so far it works. Instead of being like D&D and being a resource attrition system, Draw Steel is a resource accrual system. The longer fights go the more heroic resources you (and the baddies) get. This means, unlike D&D where folks tend to hold back their good stuff and go nova on the first thing that seems to be a boss, in Draw Steel your shit gets cooler the longer the fight goes. We haven't seen yet the full effects of this in my game, but I've looked ahead at some abilities and... yeah, it'll get fun.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Anyway someone polymorphed the paladin’s pegasus into a dragon

Classic.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

Ran my first session of Draw Steel today with some folks from the day job.

How was that?

Never missing is awesome so far.

Yep. Another staple of my pet system, 13th Age. Your character may hit for six damage on a miss, but 5D6 on a hit. It makes you feel like you're doing something even when you're missing.

So is side initiative. Easier to keep in your head with no markers.

I don't believe you.

(they found the god’s body, and the highly exploitable resource of his blood, in a previous campaign)

This is such a great idea. *yoink*

There aren't, so far, any wasted turns where someone rolls and is like "I miss" and then they don't get to do anything for 20 minutes.

As we progress through my table's DCC campaign, this is my biggest issue. Two weeks ago, I hit twice in combat. The second time, I had to burn one of my ability scores to increase my dice roll. It was something like four hours of combat, and I rolled under a 10 at nearly every opportunity. It was painful. At least with the more heroic game systems, a seven is enough to hit most enemies.

This is a whole-soled design philosophy and so far it works. Instead of being like D&D and being a resource attrition system, Draw Steel is a resource accrual system. The longer fights go the more heroic resources you (and the baddies) get. This means, unlike D&D where folks tend to hold back their good stuff and go nova on the first thing that seems to be a boss, in Draw Steel your shit gets cooler the longer the fight goes. We haven't seen yet the full effects of this in my game, but I've looked ahead at some abilities and... yeah, it'll get fun.

This is the coolest thing about it. 13th Age does a similar thing, where you add an "escalation dice" to your rolls based on what round of combat you're in. Third round of combat? Add three to your roll to hit and your damage. Draw Steel's is the "Yes, and..." of that design philosophy.

 

[altcunningham]

Not missing but the knock back sounds enticing. Are there other ways to make the arena feel like a 3D narrative space?

 

[JakeEkiss]

How was that?

Not bad at all. I've played with one of them before briefly and the other two I felt out for a while before making an offer. Granted, I am exceedingly picky about who I run for. And when possible I avoid throwing random friends together. Forming a long-running ttrpg group is like forming a band. Gotta have a good mix.

I don't believe you.

For me it was SO much easier. And once I got them onto the notion that the whole idea is for them to strategize about how they could play off eachother, I think it lead to better turn-to-turn engagement for the group than your average 5e session. Nobody tuned out while everyone else was moving. Everyone was pretty locked in.

As we progress through my table's DCC campaign, this is my biggest issue. Two weeks ago, I hit twice in combat. The second time, I had to burn one of my ability scores to increase my dice roll. It was something like four hours of combat, and I rolled under a 10 at nearly every opportunity. It was painful. At least with the more heroic game systems, a seven is enough to hit most enemies.

Yeah. One reason I wanted to try this system is my "home" group has one player who seems to have streaks of bad combat nights and another player who always feels like she can't do anything (this is not actually true, but it's sort of the narrative she's made in her head). I'm hoping this will solve both their problems.

This is the coolest thing about it. 13th Age does a similar thing, where you add an "escalation dice" to your rolls based on what round of combat you're in. Third round of combat? Add three to your roll to hit and your damage. Draw Steel's is the "Yes, and..." of that design philosophy.

Yep. I'm really looking forward to later combat and how wacky it'll get.

Not missing but the knock back sounds enticing. Are there other ways to make the arena feel like a 3D narrative space?

It's built very aggressively as a system to work on a grid, but so far ranges and areas of effect seem pretty straightforward. I'm not sure it'll feel any more 3D due to the rules, but I can already tell there's going to be a lot more movement on the map than I'm used to in 5e.

As for making it 3D, that's a problem I'm looking to solve by eventually moving the group to playing using Talespire as our map solution. It's a 3D VTT and having that element made my 5e games MUCH more dynamic especially in boss battles. I can only imagine how extra it'll be in a system with the movement it looks like this one has.

 

[Fletch]

You do not roll to hit, you roll to see how much stamina (health essentially) you cleave off somebody.

I'm going to take your word for it. No risk of missing doesn't sound very fun, but I obviously have never seen it in play.

I've always believed the risk of failure (or death) made the success (or survival) more exciting.

I do like the idea of getting access to abilities as the fight goes on, though. It feels kind of obvious in hindsight, but it just feels climactic. Like, little droog fights: over so quick you never need your Iron Dervish blade tornado. Fighting the Ooze King, though? Blade tornado is a battle cap.

 

[JakeEkiss]

I'm going to take your word for it. No risk of missing doesn't sound very fun, but I obviously have never seen it in play.

I've always believed the risk of failure (or death) made the success (or survival) more exciting.

I do like the idea of getting access to abilities as the fight goes on, though. It feels kind of obvious in hindsight, but it just feels climactic. Like, little droog fights: over so quick you never need your Iron Dervish blade tornado. Fighting the Ooze King, though? Blade tornado is a battle cap.

So, the thing is you're probably thinking of it as "it's D&D but I never miss", and yes, if that's what it was you're right. It's not that though. The whole system is built around it.

In combat you get tiered results. Roll 2 D10 and add your relevant bonuses. Tier 1 result (the worst) is 11 or lower. Tier 2 is 12-16. Tier 3 (the best result) is 17 and up. On your character sheet these results correspond to different effects on your attacks. The lower the result, the less your attack does (IIRC this is not always just damage, it can also apply to rider effects like knockback or conditions). Since this is also true of baddies, and there are many ways in game to nudge your or other creatures rolls up or down with triggered actions, positioning, and other tactical things, a bad roll still matters. It'll be the difference in turning that goblin into a red smear on your turn, or it being alive for it's turn where it also cannot miss. And when it doesn't miss it might get a tier 3 result and totally wreck your shit.

Outside of combat, or in combat but using a skill test, the lowest result is typically "you fail at this thing". It's only attacks that never miss. You can still fuck up climbing the side of a tower and become street pizza.

Additionally, there is a villain resource I get as the DM (Malice) to boost up the baddies, and just like player resources it accrues over time and is just as wild. So if I want to punish you severely for a bad roll where you fail to put down one of the baddies, I can absolutely do that.

It is a different way of thinking about combat than a lot of other games, absolutely, but if you're imagining a system where PCs cannot die or fail, that is not this system. So far what I've seen is it plays into one of the games advertised points which is tactical combat. Since everyone is making progress all the time, it's a lot more about how you deploy your stuff for greatest effect, because both sides get to deploy cooler and cooler shit as the fight goes on. If the heroes let me roll through multiple rounds building up Malice, it'll be pretty nasty when I finally drop it.

 

[Fletch]

Do these tiers include narratives like "he dodged and weaved and no swordsman was able to touch him"? Or is all that dodging and weaving assumed to be the stamina drain you mentioned?

 

[JakeEkiss]

Do these tiers include narratives like "he dodged and weaved and no swordsman was able to touch him"? Or is all that dodging and weaving assumed to be the stamina drain you mentioned?

It's all in the stamina drain. This is why they called it stamina and not health. At halfway down your stamina track you are "winded", the in world narrative is that you're being worn down either by small wounds accumulating or simply through fatigue until you run totally out and either collapse from exertion or because you got an ax to the head one too many times.

I've always believed the risk of failure (or death) made the success (or survival) more exciting.

As an example here, the goblin assassin, they have a signature ability that, as I said, let's them just pull a Predator and dissapear in front of you. Now they're hidden and you can't target them until you search and beat them in a skill challenge (and they are sneaky fuckers, good luck). When they attack you they're getting a +2 bonus because, well, you didn't see them coming and it gives them an Edge (this game's version of advantage). But hey, whenever they have an Edge? They get bonus damage.

So in this adventure's first encounter, if you have a full compliment of players (5) you'd face 2 of these dudes along with 8 goblin warriors (who have their own signature abilities). Imagine 2 of these guys cloaking, moving into flanking positions, and then decloaking on a single target. Remember, they can't miss, and they will get bonus damage.

This is a level 1 pissant baddy. Imagine that in D&D at level 1.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Oh, should say, flanking ALSO gives you an Edge, so the goblin assassins decloaking to ruin your day get a +4 to their roll before adding their normal +2 stat bonus. The lowest they can roll is 8, meaning they will almost certainly all get at least Tier 2 results. Could easily get a Tier 3.

The game's advertised tagline is Tactical, Cinematic, Heroic, Fantasy. This is the tactical part. If I as Director want to ruin someone, I've got all the tools.

 

[Damien]

Ran my first session of Draw Steel today with some folks from the day job. First impressions as a Director in that system:

1. In terms of ground-floor complexity, it feels comparable to the 5e learning curve. If you want something rules light, it isn't that.
   
   
2. Given that, it feels immediately more fun than 5e. We got to the first encounter today and in the starter adventure characters 'unlock' parts of their sheets in each encounter to make learning things easier. Even at 1/3 of a first level character sheet, the players were doing cool stuff. Knockback is a seemingly common feature in this game and I can already see how fun that's going to be.
   
   
3. Never missing is awesome so far.
   
   
4. So is side initiative. Easier to keep in your head with no markers.
   
   
5. We haven't done a lot with skills yet, or other types of roll, but I can already see how the tiered results table will become second-nature shorthand. It won't take long at all for that to lodge deep into my brain.
   
   
6. Obviously I've only run two types of enemy so far (goblin warrior and goblin assassin) but at level 1 a goblin assassin has a hide action they can take even if you're looking right at them and that seems like it should be busted as fuck but turns out it's just really cool.

Anyway the group is meeting again Sunday to play again before we're all off vacation. Will report back after that one as it'll be our first encounter with minions.

This sounds like a lot of fun. MOST of what I've heard about Draw Steel so far has me thinking it's a better game than D&D for doing the things D&D is supposedly designed for. Never missing is probably one of my favorite TTRPG design decisions since dumping THAC0. Looking forward to hearing how Sesh-2 goes.

Anyway someone polymorphed the paladin’s pegasus into a dragon so this happened:

Fuckin' yeeeeeah. That's awesome.

There aren't, so far, any wasted turns where someone rolls and is like "I miss" and then they don't get to do anything for 20 minutes.

And that is why I'm so excited about this one change. THE least fun part about any TTRPG is sitting around knowing you basically missed your entire turn. I'm also a huge fan of resource accrual as a concept. D&D really only offers you the choice of blowing your load early and hoping your DM is planning a long rest after this fight, or saving up all your good stuff 'just in case' and then barely ever actually using it.

For me it was SO much easier. And once I got them onto the notion that the whole idea is for them to strategize about how they could play off eachother, I think it lead to better turn-to-turn engagement for the group than your average 5e session. Nobody tuned out while everyone else was moving. Everyone was pretty locked in.

A big problem I have with the D&D combat system is -precisely- that narratively the intent is for you to be a badass group, but -mechanically- you have very limited options for working as a team in combat. I can do this on my turn.... but it makes more sense to do it after you do your thing, but that means I can't even do my thing until my NEXT turn and then maybe the enemy won't be there or will be dead and then I wasted my turn NOT doing the thing... okay nevermind, I hit it.

The game's advertised tagline is Tactical, Cinematic, Heroic, Fantasy. This is the tactical part. If I as Director want to ruin someone, I've got all the tools.

I can't imagine letting a typical '90s DM run a game like this, to be honest. Back then there was still a lot of that 'it's the DM versus the Players' and loads of DMs were proud of a TPK. This game seems like it (narratively) rewards a GM that has restraint and isn't specifically out to kill the players.

 

[JakeEkiss]

A big problem I have with the D&D combat system is -precisely- that narratively the intent is for you to be a badass group, but -mechanically- you have very limited options for working as a team in combat. I can do this on my turn.... but it makes more sense to do it after you do your thing, but that means I can't even do my thing until my NEXT turn and then maybe the enemy won't be there or will be dead and then I wasted my turn NOT doing the thing... okay nevermind, I hit it.

Oh, and it took my players a second to realize this, you get to choose the order every round. So just because you did combo attack A on round 1, that doesn't lock you out of combo B on round 2. I like it a LOT for that.

I can't imagine letting a typical '90s DM run a game like this, to be honest. Back then there was still a lot of that 'it's the DM versus the Players' and loads of DMs were proud of a TPK. This game seems like it (narratively) rewards a GM that has restraint and isn't specifically out to kill the players.

I think the speedbump here is players have just as many tools in their kit, but also...

Matt used to be the lead writer for Turtlerock games working on Evolve, and then the studio went on to do Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood. And I think this had an effect on both the design and language of this game. The DM here is called the "director" and I don't think it's coincidence that this overlaps with the AI "director" in Left 4 Dead. Your role is to modulate play so it's always a roller-coaster, but you are on the player's side.

Malice, your villain resource, let's you do WILD shit. I didn't even use it in the first encounter because I'm still learning the system and I basically forgot. But it let's you do stuff like "every goblin adjacent to a hero can deal one damage", or you can focus it all on a single goblin attack and give it tons of bonus damage. I can give all my goblins +2 to movement, which dovetails with the goblin warrior's signature attack which is itself a charge. So Goblin warriors can move their full speed (6), then add 2 more because I spent Malice, then CHARGE their full speed again as part of their attack. Oh, and after all that? The goblin would still have their maneuver action, meaning they can then do a shove to knock the player back (or, if they saved any movement, shove and then retreat without eating an opportunity attack).

A level 1 baddy.

I didn't even realize all the tactical ways I could fuck up the players in the first encounter because we were all learning.

 

[Damien]

Oh, and it took my players a second to realize this, you get to choose the order every round. So just because you did combo attack A on round 1, that doesn't lock you out of combo B on round 2. I like it a LOT for that.

I remember when he first mentioned in one of his videos that you can choose Initiative order for your group every turn and I was like 'yup, that is what I want to do and it's what things like 'Ready Action' probably were meant to help with but just... don't do properly.'

Matt used to be the lead writer for Turtlerock games working on Evolve, and then the studio went on to do Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood. And I think this had an effect on both the design and language of this game. The DM here is called the "director" and I don't think it's coincidence that this overlaps with the AI "director" in Left 4 Dead. Your role is to modulate play so it's always a roller-coaster, but you are on the player's side.

I've been watching Matt's content for a really long time and sometimes it can be hard to get a read on him because he gives amazing advice -FOR D&D-, but he also likes a lot of games that are very non-D&D-like. So it was hard to figure where he'd go with his own game system when given the opportunity. I'm glad he really settled into his core D&D advice of 'you're all here to have fun together.'

Malice, your villain resource, let's you do WILD shit. I didn't even use it in the first encounter because I'm still learning the system and I basically forgot. But it let's you do stuff like "every goblin adjacent to a hero can deal one damage", or you can focus it all on a single goblin attack and give it tons of bonus damage. I can give all my goblins +2 to movement, which dovetails with the goblin warrior's signature attack which is itself a charge. So Goblin warriors can move their full speed (6), then add 2 more because I spent Malice, then CHARGE their full speed again as part of their attack. Oh, and after all that? The goblin would still have their maneuver action, meaning they can then do a shove to knock the player back (or, if they saved any movement, shove and then retreat without eating an opportunity attack).

My biggest complaint about this is just the concern that it could get to be way too much very quickly. I've been playing D&D since I was a kid and I -still- sometimes forget all the stuff my character can do. Especially at later levels.

 

[Fletch]

the goblin assassin, they have a signature ability that, as I said, let's them just pull a Predator and dissapear in front of you.

Okay, I'm almost on board.

Is the assumption that these abilities only work if they make sense to work? Like, you're in a shadowy and cluttered cellar, goblins disappear behind some junk. But in broad daylight on the empty sanded floor of the city arena, they're not just turning invisible?

 

[JakeEkiss]

Is the assumption that these abilities only work if they make sense to work? Like, you're in a shadowy and cluttered cellar, goblins disappear behind some junk. But in broad daylight on the empty sanded floor of the city arena, they're not just turning invisible?

Normally to hide in combat you can't be observed by other creatures and you need either cover or concealment to take the hide maneuver. Goblin Assassins are special, they have a feature that allows them to hide even if they are observed, so it still requires cover and concealment, but it doesn't matter if you're looking at them, they simply slip away from you ("slip away" is the title of the ability).

To find a hidden creature, you can search for them on your turn, allowing you to make a contested roll against any hidden creature within 10 squares of you. If you beat them in the challenge you can then point them out to any ally within 10 squares of you. So if you spot them they're basically spotted by everyone, but so long as a goblin assassin has anything to use to hide behind, they can always hide at the end of an attack and force you to have to search for them before retaliating. It also means they can hide and then attack from hiding to get their bonuses.