Re: Good initiative mechanics?

On Mar 27, 7:37=A0pm, gleichman <fox1_...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Mar 27, 4:33=A0pm, DougL <lampert.d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > This problem was visible recently when 6 PCs took on 2 NPCs as both
> > sides did nothing but "concentrate all fire on a single target till it
> > goes down". It's not a mook scaling problem, its an inherent problem
> > with any ablative defense vs. a sane attacker. And it shows up worst
> > in relatively even fights where taking down one foe is a significant
> > drop in the OpFor effectiveness.
>
> I'm very much with DougL on this point. I consider the concentration
> of fire to be a far worse problem than mooks and scaling of opponents.
> Generally knocking mooks down in a system where they are mook is easy
> compared to avoiding non-genre and tactically uninterestig
> concentration of fire
>
> In general, I think game design should deal with the hard questions
> first and then move on to the easy ones.
>
> Sometimes other decisions like the core resolution mechanic gets in
> the way of managing this by making both factors difficult. In this
> case, D6 Star Wars and Class Deadlands share that difficultly due to
> the highly significant effect of a single level advantage in skill
> (let alone a couple of levels).

There is a tie in with Mook scaling. When all is said and done making
mooks work (able to hurt in mass or by attrition but no real chance of
winning by a single lucky shot one on one) is a big part of the reason
for including ablative defenses (abstract HP, forcefields that can be
knocked down, limited dodge actions, limited "action points",
whatever...).

But once you've included such ablative defenses it's very hard to
discourage such unfun concentration of fire. Especially if fights are
with ranged weapons where it's fairly hard to come up with a rational
for concentration being difficult.

My best current idea is to come up with a better defined "fighting
defensively" which gives a modest penalty to attacks and bonus to
defense and simply state that anyone who takes a non-area "damaging
hit" instantly switches to fighting defensively. But this only works
if fighting defensively is expensive enough that it is normally a
clearly bad idea (otherwise there's a good chance everyone will
already be fighting defensively). And this starts to look death-spiral
like in effect unless you have a very slow pace of decision since a
hit forces your opponent to take damage AND reduces her chances of
hitting you back.

I've also considered some way to assist another on defense (giving
them part of your ablative defense) but there are conceptual problems
with implementation that I don't like.

DougL