Delver Evolution: Wasted Turns

One potential source of frustration during play is wasted turns. A wasted turn happen when the character’s actions have no noticeable effects.

A common source of wasted turns is failing action checks. While the chance of failure does add tension, repeatedly failing to contribute tends to be more frustrating than fun.

This becomes more of an issue at higher levels. In most versions of D&D the difference between an expert’s check modifiers and those of non-experts as character level increases. This means at higher levels, any check the non-expert stands a decent chance of passing, the expert automatically succeeds at. By the same token, anything that the expert may fail at becomes an automatic failure for non-experts. This puts the DM in awkward position of tailoring the difficulty to the expert and having everyone else sit on the sidelines or focusing on non-experts and letting experts succeed at every check.

Today I’d like to look at a few ways around this problem.

Spending Skill

One option is giving characters the ability to burn check modifiers on other effects. That means you can tailor the difficulty at non-experts and let experts spend their extra bonuses on perks and stunts.

This approach does keep the expert from feeling like their high skill is wasted. However, you will still see expert automatically succeeding on most checks, as they’ll rarely spend enough to lower their chance of success by much.

Partial Success

Another option is granting limited benefits at at check value that’s reachable by non-experts. Then you can set the target value for full benefits to something that still challenges experts.

This does address diverging modifiers as you can give benefits to both groups. It does take a little extra design work, though less that a more extensive system redesign would.

Limit Modifiers

Finally, we could keep the modifiers from diverging in the first place. This means putting a tighter cap on how far ahead a specialist can go. However, these limits can be beneficial as they free the specialist up to shift their resources to other areas of expertise.

Ability Score Example

Here’s an idea I’ve been toying with that combines partial successes with limited modifiers.

Let’s start by taking WotC linear scaling of ability score modifiers. Now let’s say instead of shifting the number a score of 10 maps to a modifier of 0, we just let the modifier be 1/3rd the score. In addition to being simpler math, it opens up an interesting trick.

Now let’s say attacks and opposed checks work something like this:

• Attack roll = d20 + base attack + attack score bonus
• If attack roll >= 11 + base defense, gain a partial success.
• If attack roll >= 11 + base defense + defense score bonus, gain a full success.

For example, let’s say a fireball is an Intelligence vs Dexterity attack. If the attack beats the target’s base defense it does a little damage. If it beats their Dexterity defense (1-6 points higher) it does extra damage.

If we keep base attack and defense roughly equal for most character, this give us:

• Worst Case (+1 vs +6): 55% chance of partial success, 25% chance of full success.
• Matched Case (+3 vs +3): 65% chance of partial success, 50% chance of full success.
• Best Case (+6 vs +1): 80% chance of partial success, 75% chance of full success.

That means even a character using their weakest ability vs their opponent best defense has a better than even chance of having at least some effect. More often, they’ll be looking at only a 1 in 3 or lower chance of having a wasted turn.

Mezzo Update: Balancing Challenges

So here’s a quick update for you folks on the upcoming play test document. I got over half way through the section on challenges this week, which is the third out of four main sections.

I was running into a little trouble there as I was debating on how quickly damage should accumulate. After juggling the number around I ended up working out three possible ways to win a challenge.

• You can complete a goal before the opposition can reach it first or otherwise stop you.
• You can take away your opponent’s ability to act against you.
• You can restrain your opponent or otherwise remove them from the conflict.

The last two approach are fairly similar in that both focus on eliminating foes. However, I’ve got one approach the focuses on reduced specific abilities while the other limits the targets overall effectiveness until they’re forced to drop out. Both have their uses.

I’ve done some number crunching and it looks like the expected time of a combat comes down to about 5 rounds. I’ll see how that works out it play. I suspect 1-2 rounds would have too much of rocket tag feel, though I did give characters an option to tap out early. That’s actually not a bad strategic choice if it looks like you’re losing anyway as it limits the momentum your opponents gain.

The current sticking point I’m working on balancing out the number of major actions per side. With the way the system works, it looks like getting an extra action is a huge tactical advantage. The same mechanics that give the underdog a chance at a solid hit mean two minimally skilled can actually do more damage in a round than a more skilled character if they get lucky. Granted, the odds on that are pretty small, but it can happen.

That leaves me with the question of whether I should enforce limits on the number of opponents that can be brought into a challenge. Limiting them does keep things more balanced. On the other hand, it makes it harder to handle things like multiple weaker adversaries. I can get around that with character templates, but I was going to hold off on those until a later round of play testing.

I do have mechanics to help overwhelmed character make a comeback. This might help with the imbalance of side having extra actions, but I’m not sure I want to rely on it too heavily.

Design Scratchpad: Updates and Powerhouse Foes

It’s been busy this week. Between the father in law visiting, crunch time at work, and starting D&D Encounters tonight, I’ve certainly had enough to keep me occupied.

On more design related news my copy of Universalis came in this week and I’ve been pouring though that. It does have strong support for expanding the game world and characters on the fly. However, while I expect that to be an element of Mezzo I’m planning on it having a stronger focus on the rising power of opposing faction leading to climactic conflict.

In fact, one of the points to show up in the forum this week was expanding on the frustration mechanic. As I mentioned in the last scratchpad, the frustration resource was originally meant to be a measure of difficulty and a possible mitigater for hard challenges. What I’m looking at now is letting it accumulate between challenge. This can create some interesting dynamics. First, the underdog faction become more dangerous and capable to setting up a reversal the more they fail. Second, when the underdog does finally win, they’ll be able to cash in for a big win from all that left over frustration.

On a related note, alternate names for frustration are welcome. So far I believe setback and determination have been suggested.

Now for the previously mentioned topic of over powered opponents. I’m thinking the players should be able to butt heads with things out of their league. It’s certainly in keeping with the fiction after all. However, such encounters should be low reward for the side player them and potentially high reward for the underdogs, especially if they can find a goal that circumvents the enemies strengths.

What may be a bigger concern is letting players take full control of these high-powered foes. What I may end of doing is say most character are limited to certain range of ability which can go up over multiple adventures. If you want to bring in something beyond the cap, you can do so. However, this powerhouse may have limitations on-screen time and become increasing vulnerable to control by other players the more powerful it is. I’m thinking normal rank character may be immune to manipulation via details, but over powered types are more “npc” like and more vulnerable to shared control.

Design Scratchpad: The Challenge of Challenge Ratings

On of the tricky issues I’ve been working with in Mezzo is figuring out how to set the difficulty level of a challenge.

In games like 3rd and 4th Edition D&D, this is handled by assigning each enemy a rating of how powerful it is and providing guidelines for the type and number of enemies based on these ratings. Earlier editions used similar ratings, but where looser with those guidelines as part of the game was identifying and avoiding undesirable encounters.

On problem these rating systems can have is they don’t always accurately reflect how difficult the enemy actually is in a given encounter. The difficulty is affected by many things including terrain elements, the condition of the party going into the encounter, and how the party’s abilities match up with the target’s strengths and weaknesses.

In mezzo, I’m experimenting with a different route. I’m thinking of trying to reflect difficulty rather than trying to predict it. That’s part of what the frustration an attempt counting is there for. Here’s roughly the flow I’m looking for:

If the party wins the rewards should scale with how much time and effort it took to overcome. Push for Victory attempts handle part of this as they let you accumulate successes over time. The frustration system complements this and helps reflect extra difficulty through blocked abilities or just bad rolls.

But what if the party loses. Couldn’t the opposition drop a dragon or other highly powered enemy and wipe the party out easily? As is, I think the system should be able to handle this. If the dragon crushes them quickly, they won’t build up enough award points to do much long-term harm. If they toy with them, the party will build up lots of frustration which can be used to mitigate the results of failure. Still, this is part of the game that’s going to be tricky to balance.

Next time I pull up the scratchpad I’ll look handling high power enemies in a game if shared character control.