Game Design (VII): Character conditions, patch notes

On my previous article, I dropped a ton of variant rules with very little in the way of comments or explanation (though the broad guidelines had been established before). Furthermore, it may be hard to make out what has really changed from anything but a very in-depth read. What follows is a list of changes, with some design comments along the way.

1. Miscellaneous changes

Total defense: Defense bonus increased from +2 to +4, is now typed (power).

This is intended mostly as a way to weaken attack-denying conditions. Losing a turn worth of attacks should be slightly less painful now, and stunning a character over several turns should be significantly harder. Note also how I gave the bonus a type - I want to really cut down on stacking bonuses.

Condition source: No functional changes. Introduced new keywords and definitions for clarity: ‘condition source’, ‘dominator’, ‘grabber’, ‘marker’, ‘swallower’.

I wanted to be able to reference the source of a condition in a clear way, for the definition of marked, dominated, and other conditions.

Multiple instances of a condition:

Two reasons for this change. On the one hand, I wanted to change how dominations, grabs, and especially marks work when applied by multiple characters on a single target. On the other, I intend to provide Elite and Solo monsters with built-in ways to remove conditions (which I’ll describe on a future article), yet allow PCs to counter this by applying several instances of a given effect.

• Defined ‘condition instance’. Now a character can be subject to multiple identical effects (previously, only the longest one applied). Each condition only applies once, but multiple instances are relevant for determining duration, and impact of effects that end conditions.
• Rules now support characters being dominated, marked or grabbed by multiple enemies.

Penalty types and stacking:

Typed bonuses work great for the game, and I see no reason why penalties shouldn’t follow the same principle. In this new framework, ‘untyped’ penalties should be reserved for self-inflicted penalties (e.g. power attack).

• Penalties now have a type: cover, concealment, power, or untyped. Penalty stacking is resolved like bonus stacking.
• Cover and Concealment modifiers now treated as typed penalties.

Opportunity attacks: Opportunity attacks can now be made against unseen enemies.

This is here to make the blinded condition a bit less harsh. Note that the -5 concealment penalty would apply to these opportunity attacks, and that a character could use stealth to become untargetable by them. This also weakens invisibility, which is fine by me.

2. Condition changes

Blinded:

Opportunity attacks were changed to make the condition weaker. The perception change is just to make the modifiers more reasonable.

• Perception penalty changed from -10 to -5
• Blinded characters can now make opportunity attacks

Dazed:

Dazing was previously way too effective, considering how common it was. Removing combat advantage here not only weakens the condition, but also goes a long way in making combat advantage less ubiquitous in the game. Dazed characters now also enjoy an extra minor action, which is particularly important for healing leaders and characters with sustained powers.

• No longer grants combat advantage
• Can now use a minor action on top of the single action per turn

Deafened

This was previously irrelevant, but also given almost for free in some powers. Combat advantage is an effect with an adequate power level, and the condition is scarce enough that this will not significantly hurt my goal of minimizing combat advantage overall. Again, perception modifiers were changed in order to work better.

• Now grants combat advantage
• Perception penalty changed

Dominated

The strongest condition in the game receives a vicious nerf that leaves it as... the strongest condition in the game. I wanted to prevent the easy exploits of dominated characters provoking opportunity attacks and violating marks, which I have played with for a long time - but that was only the beginning. I never liked how domination breaks the economy of actions, so I changed dominated actions to work like those of summoned creatures. Finally, I took away the combat advantage from the condition, and added a clause to break the condition upon receiving damage - so no more dominating a foe while beating down on it. Despite all these changes, if you want to stop someone cold, domination is still your best bet.

• No longer grants combat advantage
• Damage on dominated character now grants save vs. domination
• Dominator now needs to spend actions for the dominated character to attack or move
• Movement and attacks while dominated count as forced (don’t provoke, violate marks, etc.)
• Dominated characters can’t attack themselves

Exiled

A rare condition, I tried to make its use a bit clearer, and make it slightly weaker by allowing exiled characters to use actions to heal or defend themselves.

• New name (was “removed from play”)
• Clarified that character does not occupy space, returns to previous position when condition ends.
• Character can now take actions (previously couldn’t take any actions).

Grabbed

One of the rare conditions that actually got better, grabbing was rendered almost useless by forced movement under the previous rules. It should now be much more competitive with straight immobilization.

• Characters are now pulled adjacent to grabbers, when grabbed
• Forced movement now allows escape check rather than automatically breaking grabs.
• Escape check no longer grants free shift.
• Multiple grabs now possible.

Helpless: No changes

Immobilized: No changes

No direct changes, but the new rules for Total Defense impact this condition quite a bit.

Marked

Changed to better support multiple defenders in a party. A character can now be subject to several marks (and/or defender auras), without each defender stepping on each other’s toes. Also, defender auras will now work properly with any rule that references marks. The mark violation clarifications are intended to make multiattack powers interact with marks in a similar way to how areas and bursts work, and to prevent some cheesy exploits involving interrupts.

• Multiple marks now possible
• Defender Aura now treated as a mark
• Defined ‘mark violation’. Clarified many confusing or broken mark scenarios
  • A power with multiple attacks now only violates a mark if each individual attack violates it. This applies to multiple attacks made simultaneously as well as in sequence.
  • Target redirection effects no longer cause marks to be violated.
  • Marks inflicted while interrupting an attack are no longer considered to be violated by that attack.

Petrified: Petrification resistance changed to match new resistance rules - damage is now simply halved while petrified.

Prone

The status of Prone has changed quite a bit since the original rulebooks - originally a somewhat rare condition, it is now often present in at-will attacks, which does not really match its moderate power level. I made minor tweaks to the combat advantage and defensive bonuses, but the big change is a free square of movement upon standing up. This makes it much harder to lock melee characters out of attack range by knocking them prone.

• Standing up now allows 1 free square of movement.
• Combat advantage now granted to adjacent enemies, rather than on all melee attacks.
• Defense bonus is now cover bonus, applies against all attacks from non-adjacent enemies, rather than just ranged attacks.
• Attack penalty is now typed (power).

Restrained: Attack penalty is now typed (power).

Slowed: Now each square moved costs double (previously reduced speed to 2).

This one got a bit better in some scenarios, and worse in others. The fixed speed of 2 didn’t work well with a variety of movement-granting powers (e.g. “shift 3 squares”), so I went for a more general effect. Slowed characters can now move slightly farther than before when not running, but they lose the ability to shift 1 square. This means that slowed is no longer such a one-dimensional effect, since it becomes quite useful against characters already engaged in melee.

Stunned: Can now take a single action per turn (no attacks or movement) - previously couldn’t take any actions.

Though getting stunned is still not by any means a pleasant experience, it no longer just reads “skip a turn”, which is important in my opinion. Characters can use total defense (now an actually pretty decent option), but also use Second Wind, sustain powers, or use utilities, if any.

Swallowed: New condition

This effect was previously just present on a handful of monsters, but with inconsistent rulings that didn’t work as well as they could. This is well worth its own condition, in my opinion, which makes it easier to use it more liberally in monsters, and potentially make for some truly awesome PC power.

Unconscious:

Non-dying unconscious characters now wake up when damaged. The condition still provides potent action denial, but can no longer be used to enable a whole party to severely beat up on a foe, which was too strong and, in my opinion, didn’t have the right feel.

• Condition now ends when taking damage, if above 0 HP.
• Removed defense penalty

Weakened: Added new effect - healing on character halved

A bit of an experiment here, by adding a completely new dimension to the condition. Characters that don’t really care about damage, or that attack through others using leader powers can no longer completely ignore the condition. Also, I wanted some common mechanic to interact with character healing (now that monsters also get it), and this looked like a good place for it.

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Game Design (VI): Character conditions remade

Update (16/01/13): Added revision to opportunity attacks, tweaked effect of prone, added “cannot flank” to some conditions.

After the discussion on character conditions in my last article, I’m putting these ideas into practice and rewriting the condition framework from scratch. The condition names remain unchanged for the most part (I want, after all, to maintain backwards compatibility), and their effects should be quite familiar to players, though there are many subtle changes. Since this is, by far, the largest chunk of rules provided to date, I will show you the new rules right away, and provide additional commentary and an overview of changes (think of patch notes) in the following article.

I start by providing some general rule changes that affect how conditions are treated in the game. The list of conditions and their effects is at the end of the article.

Maneuver change: Total Defense

Change the text of the Total Defense maneuver to the following.

Total Defense. Standard Action. Effect: You gain a +4 power bonus to all defenses until end of your next turn.

Condition source

We define condition source as the entity (typically an enemy character) imposing a given condition on a character.

The effects of certain conditions are dependent on their condition source. In these cases, the source is referred by a condition-specific name for convenience - as an example, the source for the grabbed condition is called grabber. A list of source-dependent conditions, and the associated source names, is given below:

Condition - Source
Dominated - Dominator
Grabbed - Grabber
Marked- Marker
Swallowed - Swallower

Multiple instances of a condition

A character can be affected by multiple instances of a given condition. In this case, the character is treated as having a single instance of the condition: condition effects are not cumulative. However, players should keep track of each condition instance on their characters separately. The following rules apply for ending conditions in these scenarios:

• A character is affected by a condition until all instances of the condition have ended on him.
• Each condition instance ends when its duration expires.
• An effect that ends ‘a condition’ on the character (e.g. by allowing a saving throw) only ends a single instance, when multiples are present.
• An effect that ends a condition type on the character (such as slow, or stun) ends all instances of that condition.

It is possible to have multiple condition instances, each with a different condition source. For conditions that depend on their source, this means that some condition effects need to be evaluated against each source. The following rules apply:

• Dominated: A character dominated by multiple sources can be forced to move or attack by each dominator.
• Marked: A character marked by multiple sources does not violate any mark as long as his attack includes at least one marker.
• Grabbed:
  • A character grabbed by multiple sources that makes a Escape Check chooses one grabber, on a successful check, only condition instances associated with that grabber end.
  • If at any time, a grabbed character is no longer adjacent to one grabber but remains adjacent to other grabbers, only condition instances associated with the non-adjacent grabber end.

Penalty types and stacking

(Note: This topic will be further developed in a separate article. I include this here since some conditions now reference penalty types)

Like bonuses, penalties to rolls can have penalty types that determine how they stack with each other. The following rules apply:

• There are three penalty types: cover penalty, concealment penalty, and power penalty. In addition, a penalty can have no type, and be an untyped penalty.
• When two or more penalties of the same type would apply to a roll, defense, or stat, use only the highest one.
• Penalties of different types stack with each other.

The rules for cover and concealment have been changed to match the new penalty types. Instead of the original attack modifiers for cover and concealment, use the following:

• Concealment: -2 concealment penalty to attack roll
• Total Concealment: -5 concealment penalty to attack roll
• Cover: -2 cover penalty to attack roll
• Superior Cover: -5 cover penalty to attack roll

Opportunity Attacks

In the power description of Opportunity Attack, replace ‘an enemy you can see’ with ‘an enemy’.

List of Conditions

Blinded

• Grants Combat Advantage
• Cannot Flank
• Treats other characters or objects as having total concealment
  • -5 concealment penalty to attack rolls, perception
• No line of sight to anything

Dazed

• Cannot Flank
• Cannot use Opportunity or Immediate Actions
• Each turn, can use only:
  • One minor action, and
  • Either one standard action or one move action

Deafened

• Grants Combat Advantage
• -2 concealment penalty to perception
• Automatically fails perception checks and passive perception against characters or objects outside of line of sight.
• Not affected by effects requiring hearing

Dominated

• When damaged, can make saving throw against domination, condition ends on successful save
• Cannot take actions
• Cannot flank
• Dominator can spend a move action to make the dominated character move its speed. This counts as forced movement.
• Dominator can spend a standard action to make the dominated character use an at-will attack. This counts as a forced attack.

 

Sidebar: Forced attack

Certain powers or effects allow one character to force an enemy to make an attack. Such attacks are considered forced attacks, and use the following rules:

• If there are different attack powers that meet the requirement for the forced attack (e.g. basic attacks or at-will attacks), the character forcing the attack is aware of all available options and can choose any of them.
• For the chosen attack power, the character forcing the attack can make any relevant decision, including (but not limited to) targets, area of effect, forced movement caused by the attack.
• A character forced to make an attack cannot target himself with the forced attack.
• Forced attacks ignore the marked condition. A character making a forced attack counts as not marked, for the purposes of that attack.
• Forced attacks never trigger opportunity attacks.

Exiled (was “Removed from Game”)

• When exiled, a character disappears from its current position. When the condition ends, the character reappears on this position or, if not possible, in the closest ground square of his choice, unless the exiling effect states otherwise.
• Does not occupy a space.
• No line of sight to and from other creatures or objects unless the exiling effect states otherwise.
• No line of effect to and from other creatures or objects unless the exiling effect states otherwise.

Grabbed

• When grabbed, character is pulled adjacent to grabber
• Condition ends if at any time the character is not adjacent to grabber
• Can spend a move action to make an Escape Check (see sidebar). If successful, condition ends.
• Cannot move
• If forced movement would cause the character and the grabber to no longer be adjacent, character can make an Escape Check (see sidebar) as a free action. If successful, condition ends. If the check fails or is not taken, the forced movement is negated.

Sidebar: Escape Check

Characters can make Escape Checks to end conditions like Grabbed or Swallowed, usually by spending a move action.

Check: choose one of the following:

• Acrobatics vs Reflex of condition source
• Athletics vs Fortitude of condition source

 

Helpless

• Grants Combat Advantage
• Can be attacked with Coup de Grace

Immobilized

• Cannot move

Marked

• -2 mark penalty to attack rolls of attacks that violate mark (see sidebar)

Sidebar: Violating marks

An attack violates a mark if it targets one or more enemies and does not include the marker as a target. The following exceptions apply:

• If multiple attacks are made simultaneously as part of the same attack power, none of the attacks violate the mark as long as the marker is the target of at least one attack.
• If multiple attacks are made in sequence as part of the same attack power (e.g. primary and secondary attacks), once an attack is made that includes the marker as a target, none of the subsequent attacks violate the mark.
• If an attack initially includes the marker as a target and is later prevented from including the marker as a target by an effect controlled by an enemy (e.g. a power changing attack targets), this attack does not violate the mark.
• If a character is marked while making an attack (e.g. by an Interrupt power that marks), that attack does not violate the mark.

Note: Any power or effect that triggers when a marked character makes an attack that does not include the marking character as a target should be updated to trigger when a marked character makes an attack that violates the mark, and use the rules described above.

Sidebar: Defender Aura

The text on defender aura should be replaced with the following:

“Enemies in the aura are marked”

(Note that the new rules for stacking conditions mean that a mark no longer overrides other marks or defender auras, and a character can be simultaneously marked by multiple enemies).

Petrified

• Grants Combat Advantage
• Cannot take actions
• Cannot flank
• Gains Resist (all) [Note: New rules for resistances will be added in a future article. For the purposes of this condition, read this as “halve all damage taken”].

Prone

• Condition lasts indefinitely until character stands up
• When condition is applied, if the character is not on solid ground, he falls.
• Character can use a move action to stand up. This ends the condition, and lets the character move 1 square afterward.
• Grants Combat Advantage to adjacent enemies.
• Against attacks by non-adjacent enemies, gains Cover (-2 cover penalty to attack rolls) or, if already in Cover, gains Superior Cover (-5 cover penalty to attack rolls)
• -2 power penalty to attack rolls
• Can only move by crawling. Characters can crawl 1 square, or their crawl speed (if any).

Restrained

• Grants Combat Advantage
• Cannot move
• Ignores forced movement
• -2 power penalty to attack rolls

Slowed

• For each square moved, must spend an additional square of movement

Stunned

• Grants Combat Advantage
• Can only take one action per turn
• Cannot attack
• Cannot move
• Cannot flank
• Cannot use Opportunity or Immediate Actions

Swallowed

• When swallowed, a character disappears from its current position. When the condition ends, the character reappears in a square of his choice as close as possible to the swallower.
• Can spend a move action to make an Escape Check (see sidebar). If successful, condition ends.
• Does not occupy a space.
• Cannot be swallowed by a different swallower.
• Can only take one action per turn.
• Only has line of effect and line of sight to and from the swallower, and other characters and objects swallowed by it.
• The inside of the swallower, and swallowed characters and objects, are in total darkness unless otherwise specified. Swallowed characters can use any light source to illuminate the inside of the swallower and all characters and objects swallowed by it.
• When using a burst or blast power, the swallower and all characters and objects swallowed by it are included in the burst or blast.

Unconscious

• When a character falls unconscious, he is knocked prone.
• When damaged, if the character has 1 or more remaining hit points after receiving the damage, the condition ends.
• Grants Combat Advantage
• Can be attacked with Coup de Grace.
• Cannot take actions
• Cannot flank
• Cannot see.

Weakened

• Damage dealt is halved
• Healing received is halved

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Game Design (V): Character conditions

You are lying on the ground. You can’t move. You can’t see. You have been turned to stone. Character conditions add a lot of variety to the tactical gameplay of D&D 4E, providing a nice catalogue of ways for adventurers and monsters to get temporarily crippled while they try to kill each other. In a handful of keywords, the game codifies common and evoking combat effects, which can then be conveniently combined with other simple mechanics like bonuses, penalties, and forced movement to make up the thousands of powers and monsters in the game. Today I will discuss character conditions, why I think they are good for the game, and what is wrong with their current implementation.

The importance of Disruption

At it’s core, D&D combat is about adventurers and monsters hacking at one another to reduce their opponent’s hit points to zero. That could get boring very fast, so the game adds some additional elements like movement, resource management, and the subject of this article: character conditions.

If one goes over the list of conditions and their associated rules, an evident theme emerges: character disruption. First and foremost, conditions are about hindering certain actions from adventurers and monsters, or preventing them altogether:moving less, or not moving at all, getting weaker attacks, or being unable to react. The main purpose of these mechanics is to prevent characters from doing what they want - and, strange as it may sound, this makes battles all the more fun.

They say that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and this is particularly true in D&D 4E. No matter what you intended to do when the combat started, after a turn or two, chances are that an enemy attack left you unable to move within range to your target, or too weakened to use your big daily power at the right time, or incapable of blocking opponents from moving towards your fragile allies. You need to reevaluate the situation every turn, adapt, and prepare a new plan, which is likely also doomed to a short life. And it works both ways, so that both heroes and monsters are subject to this. When the system works, you get varied fights, great strategic depth, and tons of fun.

When the system doesn’t work

So far, so good. Unfortunately, there is a catch: though restricting player actions and forcing them to adapt can be a fun and interesting experience, it is certainly possible to go overboard and cripple characters to the point that they can’t really do anything of significance. And there lies the real problem: skipping turns is the opposite of fun. And under the current condition framework, making opponents skip turns (or virtually skip them) is often too easy and, to make things worse, extremely rewarding, from a strategic point of view.

It boils down to this: the strongest conditions (stunning and dominating) are way too powerful, to the point that you will be hard pressed to find a competitive alternative to a power with these conditions whenever it is available. As a result, these relatively rare game effects will turn up in way more games than you’d expect given their rate of appearance in powers. Also, it is not too hard to replicate the effect of a hard stun through a combination of conditions or penalties: some common, yet extremely efficient combos include daze+prone (to neutralize melee characters), or blind plus any attack penalty.

The solution, in my opinion, is to tone down the strongest conditions a bit, while limiting the impact of multiple milder conditions.

Other issues

Aside from the one big flaw that I find in the condition system, there are other lesser issues that, though not game-breaking, could do with some fixing. They are the following:

• Domination, apart from being inherently the most powerful thing you can do in the game, has very exploitable interactions with opportunity attacks and marks, as discussed in this article.
• The marked condition interacts oddly with its spiritual successor, the Defender Aura mechanic. Also, the game doesn’t handle well parties with multiple marking characters, nor marked characters making multi-target attacks that are not bursts or areas.
• I think that stacking penalties are bad for the game. Some very common attack penalties come from conditions.
• Gaining combat advantage is too easy for my taste, and this is in good part due to the many conditions that grant it. I’d like to cut down on that, too.
• The grabbed condition is trivial to neutralize through forced movement.
• The deafened condition is a joke. It should have some substantial effect, or be removed from the game altogether.

All this, and more, will be dealt with in my following article: Character Conditions Rewritten.

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