Battle change

Well I'm attempting to post in the seldom visited Mechanics section hopefully you guys use the "view last post" feature and see this.

Anyway, I know Dean and I have been discussing this new campaign a lot but I realized I don't think we have mentioned a lot of it to yoiuguys here on the forum. Me and dean have had the hpes that this campaign will be more roleplay central than in my campaign. To me this means a lot more of staying in character and trying to think of things through his eyes, which is why I think we spent so much time coming up with character ideas and personalities. One thing this made me think of that I wanted to try and that I think will be fun i9s that if we keep game based chatter in battles down to a minimum. The way we play now we talk as people like Jon to Matthew saying "hey don't cast fireball there I'm about to move there" To me I think it will be a lot more fun and a lot more in the spirit of roleplaying our characters if we don't talk about the battle during the battle. Of course there can still be talking to each other but it will have to be done as a character so if manticel yelled "tank im casting fireball" then that is something his character has to yell and therefore everyone on the team can hear it and the other team can hear it and plan accordingly. Not to say that we can't joke and talk and normal things in battle but we just can't plan strats inside the fight itself. This would make us have to plan tactics outside of combat (really i just want Kane to yell "battlle plan 1 in 5 seconds!!!" and then we all know we do something awesome, haha.

To me this will really create a whole new excitement to battles where you have no clue what your teammates are doing and in the end will actually enforce cooperation too because we will learn tactics and stuff and then in game we can yell stuff to each other like "ice storm coming, throw them in" I'm babbling and not getting my point across that well here but basically I want battle where we can't sit for 2 minutes and say "ok well on my next turn i'm going to use this ability and then after that you can do this, and that will set you up for this, oh and don't move there because i'm about to cast an AoE spell there.

What do you guys think? should wer do this for next time? test it out at least?

I always thought this would be cool too. It takes a player commitment though since everyone is aware you can just whisper and whatnot. But if everyone did it might let people be more in roleplay mode than just ok matt jon pat and troy controlling pieces on a board.

I'm certainly willing to give it a shot, but I have my doubts.

First, I think it's much easier to stay in character when you're having a conversation or social encounter than in a combat situation. In a fight there isn't an immediate give and take, so you have down time where other conversations occur and then it's natural for you to speak with your own voice. Trying to keep it just to saying whatever our characters are able to say in a given round seems like it would take out the banter between us as players, which can be a lot of fun (and is probably the most appropriate part of the game for any such banter).

More importantly, I think that it will be very difficult to work together as a party without communicating. Now that we've all seen the rules I think everyone can appreciate how important teamwork and tactical thinking are to the new rules set. Coming up with good combos and maneuvers is going to be really difficult, and chances are we will wind up getting in each others' way a lot of the time. To a certain extent that is "realistic," but it could also get really irritating.

So I'm cool to try. If we want a more roleplay intensive game, though, then I would suggest that the best place to focus on staying in character would be during social encounters rather than combat ones.

I was scared when Patrick wrote "more roleplay intensive" because that does entail more social stuff which I may or may not want to do. The way I had meant it was just relating to less metagaming, i.e. your characters could not stop a round to discuss what to do. But obviously I see both sides to where it would be harder on the players, I think really it would take more communication outside battle like in the forum or email or whatever maybe while something else is going on they aren't involved in.
I don't want to see the stupid banter go away like jokes and shit in chat because I think that is fun and lets us socialize but going back to patricks example; calling for a certain combo or
"play" to attack with. The other thing is it does give the players a little more hidden strategy and might keep monsters guessing (those that are smart enough), because for all we do as people we naturally do things. If I hear the players saying ok fireball there I am in a bind, if I move the monster it's like I am not being fair in a way but if I don't then I feel like I am cheating the monster or fight. If a smart npc heard the characters say to fireball his square he would probably get his ass moving.

The other thing I noticed was like we used to as players say things to other players like no don't do that do this, which is ok but at the same time makes the character be less controlled as if he were his own real person and instead is like controlled by everyone.
Again I don't think its like a huge deal because I didn't feel like it degraded play at all from our standpoint (not sure how it felt to Patrick as DM) but just something interesting we could try. If not I still liked the fun we had before so no harm no foul.

Wraith wrote:

I'm certainly willing to give it a shot, but I have my doubts.

In a fight there isn't an immediate give and take, so you have down time where other conversations occur and then it's natural for you to speak with your own voice. Trying to keep it just to saying whatever our characters are able to say in a given round seems like it would take out the banter between us as players, which can be a lot of fun (and is probably the most appropriate part of the game for any such banter).

This is where I think I miscommunicated my idea. I don't want to cut out us talking as friends and as real life people during battle I just didn't want it to be about the battle, and I am looking for more of a realistic battle scene where we can get in the way but after playing we will learn eachothers tactics and such I just want the battle planning to be done only in span a normal conversation would take within a battle so no 2 minute planning sessions in the middle of battle. That's not to say we can't plan tactics, jsut in battle it will be more cut down.

I actualy lke this idea, and I see the distinction that Patrick is drawing. HOWEVER, I honestly think there is almost no chance in hell that this will work with a brand new combat system. We are all just too unfamiliar with the inner workings of the new system, so I guarantee we are going to need to discuss tactics just to be able to get through the new ruleset, at least until we are more familiar with it.

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at least until we are more familiar with it.

I think Patrick meant this more as a wish list item like hey we should start thinking about this not jump into it day 1. Am I right on that Pat? This was just an idea we discussed last campaign and yeah granted the shift in systems undermines that for now but maybe later?

It might speed combat up for you as well as players. But I mean part of the fun is improvising and good suggestions so it has its negatives.

I am in on this suggestion mainly because my character wouldn't be very verbose in his tactics anyway and it is going to be hard to teach him. More roleplay is good that is why I made my character the way I did. I don't like characters that are all about the combat.