Thanks again to those who have shared their thoughts on Threshold thus far! I’ve gotten tons of great comments, but some recurring themes emerge:
- Movement needs more abstraction
- Ranged characters are getting hosed
When these two issues arose, I thought a lot about each and then came to a solution that I think solves both. at once. Movement needs more abstraction simply because having to count half measures across rounds slows the game and generally is a little inelegant. For instance, we can just say that slowed characters cannot move into a new zone and be done with it (thanks Ryven and Dave). We want to reduce counting as much possible.
Ranged characters get hosed by this system, because they get opportunity attacks every time an enemy is in their zone, so they either have to leave a zone to attack or get opp attacks every time they draw a bow — not fun.
Going with more movement abstraction can fix both problems. I think abstraction really requires more modes of movement. We need more manuevers. I want to keep the number of manuevers under a certain amount, but I think that we get worthwhile results by simpling have the following:
Ranged Manuevers: A character taking this action can make ranged attacks without making opportunity checks until the beginning of its next turn or until a creature makes a melee attack against it.
Without getting into the gory details of “engagement” (who is in contact with who) which, while it is a sound element, adds complexity for little gain, I think that making move actions your defacto action for where your character is going to be and also as an indication of posture makes good sense.
Any thoughts on that? What manuevers would you add?
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
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What about giving ranged characters the ability to negate the OA if that is their only action they take that round… i.e. make the choice between Hunter’s Quarry and an OA? Might give them their oomph back but at the same time represent the idea they need to be very careful what they’re doing and any extraneous actions cause their distraction to flare up.
Hi Hawke!
I’ve thought of corner-case solutions like that, but have purposefully left that element out, because the system was designed for elegance and ease of use. Threshold is more cinematic then tactical,so I have to make those tradeoffs with it.
Thanks for your comments, and I hope you try it out and offer more feedback.