Friday 30 March 2012

DEX feats and Combat Sequence

To explain my feats, I need to show you my combat sequence.

Click to enlarge
It's your standard neo-Holmesian Missile, Magic, Move, Melee with a few twists added. Making the phase 6 move a major action creates a "sticky" engagement zone where you have to give up an attack in order to withdraw, if there is no friend fighting the same enemy to cover your retreat. I like this; it's a much more elegant way to implement the "free attack on you" rule for disengaging that evolved into the nightmare of attacks of opportunity. After several sessions using this sequence it seems to work fairly smoothly.

And, the six feats that depend on Dexterity, although some of the requirements are quite easy to meet. All of them are roughly balanced in the manner I outlined last post, but considering the movement ones are hard to match against the attack ones. Which ones would you take? Do the attack feats need to be stronger? My players are approaching 3rd level and they need to know soon!

Next: Strength feats and maybe some others.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, Surefoot is *awesome*. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to balk at giving their players a get-out-of-fumbles-free card (at least when facing armed opponents), but I would have no such hesitation placing it in my game. It has a swashbuckling feel.

    I also like simplifying tactical combat down to those who are unengaged and those who are "stuck". It's a very easy image to grasp. And it does a better job mechanically of explaining what's going on than the "free attack on you" rule. I personally never had trouble with AoE in 3.5e, but it's rather too clunky to bring to old school combat.

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  2. If I were a melee fighter, I'd go for Whirlwind. If I were a rogue, I'd go for Lightfoot or Outflank. As a character focusing on ranged attacks, I'd go for Deadshot.

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  3. The Feats are interesting, but I am totally in love with the turn sequence. That is going in my game ASAP. The only issue I can see is if you want to have spells with different casting times, but I think you can account for that by having some magic be phase 2, some phase 3, and the slowest phase 5.

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  4. Hm, looks like nothing is completely outranking the others. And thanks for the good word on the combat sequence, I like it myself. I just have all spells go off at the same time but Brendan's idea is good if you want to add some complexity to magic duels.

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