Yeah, I like abstract combat because the distance is always "close enough" or "too far", and it can be fudged for dramatic purposes. (My long gestating MUD, which I stopped working on when my laptop got sick and haven't found the spark of inspiration to get back to, incorporates "near/far" as a mechanic so I could use some MMO/4E-style "controller" effects, as well as give squishy archers and wizards a chance.)
My excuse for arbitrary combat mechanics isn't that it's "realistic", but the opposite: it's arbitrary. If everybody knows the rules, you can figure out what you can do with them... you know if you're close enough to leap between your ally and the dragon, you know if you're close enough to charge down the enemy and smite them verily, you know if you're far enough away to scramble up the slope before you get run down.
The "realism" in all that... fantastic or not... has to be inferred by looking at everything that happens in everybody's turn, since logically "in reality" you're not all waiting for each person to go.
If you've got a DM who has a good grasp of the rules and is flexible and doesn't have an instinctive "no you can't do that" reaction to somebody presenting a question that seems to stretch them, D&D has mechanics that can be quite flexible. I mean, say the ogre is just a hair more than six squares away and you say, "Look, he's right there... who's to say I can't push myself a little harder and still hit him (instead of waiting for a whole cycle of turns to come around and then moving again?)"
The DM can say, "Look, it says 6 squares and so that's what you get."
Except:
The rules allow you to make a charge attack, which is a standard action (i.e., it uses up your attack for that turn) that lets you move your whole speed as part of the attack... meaning, you can move your six squares towards the foe, and if they're not in reach, you CHARGE. A DM who's not in the "no, no, no" mode would recogize that this is what you're saying your character is doing: digging deep down within themselves, pushing themselves as hard as they can, and bearing down on the enemy full-steam-ahead. The cost is that it's a basic attack, i.e., not one of your class-specific special attacks (unless you belong to a class that has moves that can be combined with a charge, like Barbarian), but it still lets you get your character into the fray.
Likewise if you're trying to get away from somebody... a good DM would remind you that you can use your standard action to take another move action, you can spend move actions running instead of walking (taking some substantial combat penalties, but if you're getting away from danger instead of going to it...) instead of just reiterating the basic rules.
None of that is to say that there's an extra movement rule covering every situation where the basic rules might become constraining, but that the rules do allow for some intricacy and a DM who's willing to be flexible and negotiate can often find that the rules don't even need to be "flexed" to accommodate what players are asking for.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2009-05-14 10:08 pm (UTC)My excuse for arbitrary combat mechanics isn't that it's "realistic", but the opposite: it's arbitrary. If everybody knows the rules, you can figure out what you can do with them... you know if you're close enough to leap between your ally and the dragon, you know if you're close enough to charge down the enemy and smite them verily, you know if you're far enough away to scramble up the slope before you get run down.
The "realism" in all that... fantastic or not... has to be inferred by looking at everything that happens in everybody's turn, since logically "in reality" you're not all waiting for each person to go.
If you've got a DM who has a good grasp of the rules and is flexible and doesn't have an instinctive "no you can't do that" reaction to somebody presenting a question that seems to stretch them, D&D has mechanics that can be quite flexible. I mean, say the ogre is just a hair more than six squares away and you say, "Look, he's right there... who's to say I can't push myself a little harder and still hit him (instead of waiting for a whole cycle of turns to come around and then moving again?)"
The DM can say, "Look, it says 6 squares and so that's what you get."
Except:
The rules allow you to make a charge attack, which is a standard action (i.e., it uses up your attack for that turn) that lets you move your whole speed as part of the attack... meaning, you can move your six squares towards the foe, and if they're not in reach, you CHARGE. A DM who's not in the "no, no, no" mode would recogize that this is what you're saying your character is doing: digging deep down within themselves, pushing themselves as hard as they can, and bearing down on the enemy full-steam-ahead. The cost is that it's a basic attack, i.e., not one of your class-specific special attacks (unless you belong to a class that has moves that can be combined with a charge, like Barbarian), but it still lets you get your character into the fray.
Likewise if you're trying to get away from somebody... a good DM would remind you that you can use your standard action to take another move action, you can spend move actions running instead of walking (taking some substantial combat penalties, but if you're getting away from danger instead of going to it...) instead of just reiterating the basic rules.
None of that is to say that there's an extra movement rule covering every situation where the basic rules might become constraining, but that the rules do allow for some intricacy and a DM who's willing to be flexible and negotiate can often find that the rules don't even need to be "flexed" to accommodate what players are asking for.