Rocket Tag Through the Levels

[Tiltowait]

BFC can increase the length of the combat, agreed, there are some BFC spells that are rocket-tag, but those spells usually aren't effective in EVERY combat under the sun.  And yes, you should let your characters use thier abilities, but I don't think you should have them defeat every combat instantly, all the time.  Vs sleep or colorspray you can have your monsters spread out, or just put in more mobs and increase the challeng rating.  If your party is effectively working together and using thier abilities well then they should be facing tougher encounters, that will by default, last longer. 

Low level encounters take place in close quarters because that is how low level combat works. That in turn means Color Spray is very effective. Sleep, not so much. Regardless at the levels where 1st level offensive spells are the biggest thing Color Spray destroys almost everything. So does any other viable attack.

The biggest thing you are overlooking though is what the enemies are doing. If there are more enemies, that means they can kill you faster. That means by definition combat cannot be longer, as you will either kill them even faster or be killed by them even faster.

2 Orcs will kill any member of your party if given one round of actions. This is a normal fight.
4 will kill any 2 members of your party.
8 will one round your entire team.

I guess you got hung up on examples, The thing I was trying to get across is that d&d doesn't Have to be rocket tag with a competent DM.  If you want a particular battle to test the PC's to the limits of thier abilities then a competent DM will use whatever method he needs to do that.   If the DM is making an encounter more difficult for a story reason, he's not really cheating.  I agree, Cheating specifically to destroy a player (in a petty way) is the hallmark of a terrible DM, but furthering the story is not "petty" cheating.    If a particular fight in the story calls for reinforcements, or tougher creatures, it just makes sense to add those in(and the DM's not cheating to do so).  Your acting like the DM MUST be bound by the rules,  sure, a DM should try to stick to the rules as much as he can, but shouldn't be too afraid to add or subtract when its important to the story.  -If you want a game where the rules are the rules and story is irrelevant, go play warhammer. 

Absolutely everything you have described so far has either been something that doesn't make things less prone to rocket tag, is the very definition of rocket tag, or makes things more prone to rocket tag. You keep using the word competent to describe the DM, and then go on to say that it's just fine to not know the rules and to sacrifice them for fluff. That word does not mean what you think it means. I'd go so far as to say you give the very strong impression you have no idea what you are doing. There's nothing wrong with that, everyone had to learn the rules at some point but when you blow off your lack of knowledge of the game with a series of foolish and often contradictory statements no one will take your arguments seriously, because they're simply not credible.

You've gotten hung up on examples, I don't advocate having the party fight tailored battles ALL the time, Nor do I think you should tailor a battle against EVERY player all the time.  I think what you should do is give the players fights where sometimes some of them are hindered and fights where some of them can shine.  A  Caster would be hindered significantly in a fight with golems, whereas a fighter may be less effective against flyer etc etc.

Grease. Glitterdust. Can we please get back to saving the world now?

A competent DM will provide a fight that is suspenseful, and important when the story calls for it to be important, that's what your missing.   its not that the fight is longer, harder, or whatever, its that the story of the fight is fulfilled.  I generally would not kill a player in the midst of a combat(incapacitate sure, but rarely kill), even if they did take a rocket to the face, unless they did something incredibly stupid that warrants said death.   I can agree some spells at high level can be rocket tag, but the early level spells aren't usually Kill instantly spells, so you can deal with them as a DM. 

You keep using that word. I've already used that joke, but you are doing a terrible job convincing me or anyone else that you could actually pull that off. Which means that you're sacrificing substance in the form of the rules in exchange for haphazard, poorly considered judgments. You completely overlook that the longer the opposition lives the more chances they have to take someone down with them after all.

FOR EXAMPLE(Try not to get hung up on it): the BBEG casts colorspray on the party, knocking 3/4 of them out with a lucky strike and noone saves.  The last one standing could have something up his sleeve to save the day especially if he's a creative character.  Assuming the last one standing doesn't do anything to save the party, and he's in trouble as well I don't just say the party is dead.  Maybe as DM I'll just say the BBEG imprisoned/enslaved them, and took all thier items, or maybe I'll say the party has a religious experience and they are resurrected by some friendly god, or maybe I'll say a helpful NPC or 4 arrive just in the nick of time to save the day, ETC ETC ETC(the possibilities are truly endless). The Above can apply to your monsters just as easily as it can apply to your PC's, and I don't think its playing "DM vs the players" to use such story hooks in this manner.  In short I'm not saying rocket tag doesn't exist, I'm saying that its effects aren't as important if you have a DM that knows what he's doing.

One person must defeat the BBEG by themselves in one round. Sounds rather rocket tagish to me. If not, the entire party is completely screwed over and/or their accomplishments are made meaningless. All of these things are the calling cards of bad DMs.

[Unbeliever]

Query:  what does recovery do to rocket tag? 

Here's what I'm thinking.  First, I feel that this thread, which I admit I have not followed very closely, seems to mean 2 things by rocket tag.  (1) Truckloads of damage that murderify the target.  (2) Effects that make the target unable to act, or reduce its actions to such a level of ineffectiveness that they don't matter.

In the past, I've thought of rocket tag as designating (1).  Don't get me wrong, I see why (2) has snuck in there:  if you leave your opponent helpless and at your mercy, then you can just walk up and murderify them at your leisure. 

However, condition removal, healing, etc., what I will generally call "recovery," drives a wedge between those two.  If the target can somehow remove the stunned, dazed, solid fogged, whatever, then things are really different.

This is important b/c I've always thought of the chief issue that rocket tag raised at the table was that it was very hard to do anything about.  It's just blam!, you're dead.  To the extent that I'm right on that, then this whole BFC = rocket tag isn't quite right, at least once you put condition removal on the table.  And, condition removal is a lot easier to come by than other protections vs. rocket tag:  it's a lot easier to cast Panacea than it is to get rerolls on saves or things like Abrupt Jaunt to foil the uberpouncer. 

P.S.:  I also don't think it's right to equate the general combatism that it's better to kill your enemies than to let them wail at you with rocket tag.  Rocket tag, I think, seems to refer to something pretty specific, the fact that you're wiped out and there's not much you can do about it.  No maneuvering, clever tactics, etc. can spare you from the mighty holocaust of destruction coming your way.

[InnaBinder]

Here's what I'm thinking.  First, I feel that this thread, which I admit I have not followed very closely, seems to mean 2 things by rocket tag.  (1) Truckloads of damage that murderify the target.  (2) Effects that make the target unable to act, or reduce its actions to such a level of ineffectiveness that they don't matter.

While others may parse "Rocket Tag" more finely than I do, what I mean when I use the term is "Team A renders Team B's actions obsolete or meaningless before Team B is able to make them."  If Team A has enabled a solid lockdown via Brambles or Solid Fog or Color Spray, or has evaded the combat before it began by gaining a Fly speed to get away from the Grimlocks, Rocket Tag is in play.

[Tiltowait]

Query:  what does recovery do to rocket tag? 

Here's what I'm thinking.  First, I feel that this thread, which I admit I have not followed very closely, seems to mean 2 things by rocket tag.  (1) Truckloads of damage that murderify the target.  (2) Effects that make the target unable to act, or reduce its actions to such a level of ineffectiveness that they don't matter.

In the past, I've thought of rocket tag as designating (1).  Don't get me wrong, I see why (2) has snuck in there:  if you leave your opponent helpless and at your mercy, then you can just walk up and murderify them at your leisure. 

Rocket tag simply designates that combat is moving quickly. Whether the threats are physical, magical, or both doesn't matter. Whoever strikes first is at a large advantage as one or two rounds of strikes are enough to completely decide things.

Recovery does nothing to affect the process. If the first action is a charge that kills someone instantly, that is rocket tag. If the next two player actions are Revivify and Heal... it's still rocket tag. And because they got killed by a Pouncing charge that means you had to burn two actions on recovery instead of on offense of your own. That means that the enemy has even more of an advantage.

It should go without saying that since death is reversible but reversing it still leaves you at a disadvantage that having to use actions to negate other, less severe conditions still leaves you at a disadvantage.

[Unbeliever]

^ I just feel like this means that all combat = rocket tag.  And, I don't mean "all combat among optimized people." I just mean fighting.  Especially once you get to say 7th level or so where save or suck effects become common.  Charm Person = rocket tag.  Web = rocket tag.  Grapple = rocket tag. 

If the concept is that widespread, to the point where that is just what combat means, then I don't know how useful it is.  Perhaps the only thing it designates is that there are things in D&D that can shut down the opponent in a single round.  But, in that way it is no different than ... any RPG I can think of. 

I also don't know how "quickly" that means combat is going if people can bounce back from these things.  Then it's more like a slugfest framed with various conditions (including death) being traded.  I think someone'd be hard-pressed to call that rocket tag. 

I've usually thought that White Wolf (both old and new) tended towards rocket tag.  Now I've never tried to come up with a systematic definition of it before, but my gut was always that (a) there were numerous effects that could take you out of the fight in a single shot, (b) there was little you could do to recover from such effects, no equivalent of healing or condition removal, and (c) there is almost nothing you can do to harden your defenses against such effects.

D&D 3.5 differs with regards to (b) and (c):  condition removal is ubiquitous and there are many things you can do to shore up your saving throws, grant immunities, and so on. 

[Tiltowait]

^ I just feel like this means that all combat = rocket tag.  And, I don't mean "all combat among optimized people." I just mean fighting.  Especially once you get to say 7th level or so where save or suck effects become common.  Charm Person = rocket tag.  Web = rocket tag.  Grapple = rocket tag. 

That is exactly the point. All combat in D&D moves quickly, therefore all combat in D&D is rocket tag and anyone claiming otherwise is wrong.

Other systems might not have such fast paced combat but D&D does.

I also don't know how "quickly" that means combat is going if people can bounce back from these things.  Then it's more like a slugfest framed with various conditions (including death) being traded.  I think someone'd be hard-pressed to call that rocket tag. 

You can bounce back, but it puts you at a bigger disadvantage. Let's go back to the Revivify example. To come back from that you need 2 people's actions and some other resources. The person that died likely also lost an action. To come back from that you lost 2-3 actions, but it only cost one of theirs. That's still rocket tag as you either fight down a man or use the greater part of a full round in order to reverse the effect of a single action.

Glitterdust blinding lasts at least 3 rounds, which means with things moving as fast as they are it's lasting the entire length of the combat.

The only quick way of getting out of Black Tentacles/Solid Fog etc is to Teleport, and this usually costs a Standard action as the areas of the spells usually rule out the faster, but shorter ranged methods. One of your actions for one of theirs, but as long as the effect got at least two people the user is still coming out ahead.

That's still rocket tag. Arguing that you can prevent those effects from working on you in the first place would be a better argument but then it's a matter of finding the right rockets to fire. That's still rocket tag, as despite what some think fast paced combat does not rule out the possibility of tactical considerations, if anything it exemplifies them.

D&D 3.5 differs with regards to (b) and (c):  condition removal is ubiquitous and there are many things you can do to shore up your saving throws, grant immunities, and so on.

There is exactly one group I've seen in which D&D did not play out like rocket tag. In it everyone had optimized stats, particularly saves and immunities. At level 10 the lowest AC in the party was 42, and the lowest save was the Cleric's Reflex save at 21. A typical opponent had at least a 75% chance to resist any attack that could be resisted (attack missed, ray missed, save successful...) and needed only a few successful moves to take someone out (but those moves were unlikely to succeed).

In that game combat took longer than two rounds and it didn't feel like the entire party was about to be destroyed at any time.

The problem with that is that even on an optimization board it's rare for the entire group to be optimizers and to play on that level. It also requires a somewhat specific party to pull off, because if someone isn't playing a DMM Cleric your stats will not be nearly high enough to succeed. If you are playing a weaker class you won't be able to get your numbers high enough to succeed even with the DMM there. You have to play the kill them before they move game as you can't afford to let your opponents act any more than you absolutely have to. Most importantly the DM has to be on board with it. Many would take one look at such a character and condemn it as overpowered in their inexperience. Yet, that is the degree of power you need if you want fights to last longer than a round or two and by definition over is a synonym of too much, not just right.

[Unbeliever]

^ I just feel like this means that all combat = rocket tag.  And, I don't mean "all combat among optimized people." I just mean fighting.  Especially once you get to say 7th level or so where save or suck effects become common.  Charm Person = rocket tag.  Web = rocket tag.  Grapple = rocket tag. 

That is exactly the point. All combat in D&D moves quickly, therefore all combat in D&D is rocket tag and anyone claiming otherwise is wrong.

This is a bold assertion (and the tone is kind of dickish, but I'll chock that up to it being the internet).  But, here's the counterargument.  Name a SINGLE game, any one, any RPG that does not fall into your extremely broad definition of rocket tag.  B/c, as far as I can tell, you define "rocket tag" as "doing something that hampers, disables, or otherwise discomfits the enemy."  Where we come from, we call that "fighting" or "conflict" or "combat." 

If a term is of that general application then I submit you're probably misusing it.  Or, it's been emptied of any real meaning.  Suffice to say that I think most people would think the term rocket tag is more specific than that. 

And, at this point, we're not even talking about fast-paced combat.  You could conceivably be trading these sorts of actions, where each side trades negative effects and mitigating abilities, for quite a long time.  Take the Glitterdust and Black Tentacles examples.  They have the potential of shutting someone down.  And, especially with Glitterdust maybe, you can then kill them at your leisure.  But, suppose the enemy has lots of ways of getting out of it, e.g., Freedom of Movement or Teleport.  Or, in the case of Glitterdust abilities to remove or cope with blindness (e.g., lots of area effects). 

Then what happens?  What you've done is you've traded an action to try and disable them, and they will usually take an action of some sort, often but not always a standard action, to counter, respond, or mitigate it.  Now, it's the case that can be useful, as Tiltowait notes if you grab a bunch of enemies with it then you're out ahead in the action game.  Although, in such instances, you're usually way behind on it anyway b/c there tend to be a lot of enemies. 

And, especially when D&D is a game built around limited resources.  There's a lot of resource attrition.  So, yeah, depending on the situation, you might not even be that fucked if you spend 2 actions to their 1 to recover.  This depends a lot on the encounter and so on.  My 14th level warblade doesn't worry much about the 50 1st level orcs surrounding him, even though they've clearly one the action economy game. 

Point of Clarification:  I am emphatically not claiming that rocket tag does not exist.  Nor am I not claiming that it is common, perhaps ubiquitous in D&D.  All I am trying to point out in these posts is that I think it's been defined too broadly.  And, in a way that does not really track what we want to put our fingers on with the term.  I sketched a definition that I thought was more apt in my previous post.

Comment about Character Construction:  I find it much easier to build parties that are hardened against rocket tag than Tiltowait claims.  At some point I need to put the build stubs of the parties in games that I play in my sig or something as I find myself referring to them a lot.  Our parties have our strengths and our weaknesses, but it's the case that some "rockets" don't work against some characters, and that we tend to have ways of recovering from others.  The wizards avoid the will-based rockets, for instance, 90% of the time, but they are vulnerable to the straight damage ones.  Stuff like that.

It is among my biggest complaints about D&D that building such parties and characters requires a fair amount of op-fu.  You need to make sure your saves, at least the ones you want to be good at, are high enough, buy some of the right gear, make sure someone can take up condition removal duty, and so on.  All that is not well-articulated in the game books, and requires a lot of attention both in party construction and at the gaming table. 

[Endarire]

I've encountered plenty of Wizards who failed their Will saves.  Clerics and Druids are harder to afflict with Will saves due to their casting stat being WIS.

[Tiltowait]

This is a bold assertion (and the tone is kind of dickish, but I'll chock that up to it being the internet).  But, here's the counterargument.  Name a SINGLE game, any one, any RPG that does not fall into your extremely broad definition of rocket tag.  B/c, as far as I can tell, you define "rocket tag" as "doing something that hampers, disables, or otherwise discomfits the enemy."  Where we come from, we call that "fighting" or "conflict" or "combat." 

In most games the normal fights take a round or two and the boss fights take longer. Not really rocket tag. In D&D all combats are short out of necessity due to the high volume of offense. That is rocket tag.

There are some of course where the bosses die in 10 seconds or less as well. But it is rare to find a game in which normal enemies are intended to live and fight for three or more rounds.

If a term is of that general application then I submit you're probably misusing it.  Or, it's been emptied of any real meaning.  Suffice to say that I think most people would think the term rocket tag is more specific than that. 

The meaning of rocket tag is that you are playing tag with rocket launchers. Getting hit by one tends to be fatal, which means the best thing to do is to hit them first and to not be hit. Many games fit that definition, but it is not as broad as you think.

And, at this point, we're not even talking about fast-paced combat.  You could conceivably be trading these sorts of actions, where each side trades negative effects and mitigating abilities, for quite a long time.  Take the Glitterdust and Black Tentacles examples.  They have the potential of shutting someone down.  And, especially with Glitterdust maybe, you can then kill them at your leisure.  But, suppose the enemy has lots of ways of getting out of it, e.g., Freedom of Movement or Teleport.  Or, in the case of Glitterdust abilities to remove or cope with blindness (e.g., lots of area effects). 

Except that most of the time it isn't an even trade off. You use one action and they use two or three. You are still winning. That assumes they even can do anything, which is not always the case.

Then what happens?  What you've done is you've traded an action to try and disable them, and they will usually take an action of some sort, often but not always a standard action, to counter, respond, or mitigate it.  Now, it's the case that can be useful, as Tiltowait notes if you grab a bunch of enemies with it then you're out ahead in the action game.  Although, in such instances, you're usually way behind on it anyway b/c there tend to be a lot of enemies. 

Barring Outsiders and their Greater Teleport at will vs area effects it costs them more to respond to you than it did for you to launch that attack. In such a case you use different spells.

Point of Clarification:  I am emphatically not claiming that rocket tag does not exist.  Nor am I not claiming that it is common, perhaps ubiquitous in D&D.  All I am trying to point out in these posts is that I think it's been defined too broadly.  And, in a way that does not really track what we want to put our fingers on with the term.  I sketched a definition that I thought was more apt in my previous post.

Comment about Character Construction:  I find it much easier to build parties that are hardened against rocket tag than Tiltowait claims.  At some point I need to put the build stubs of the parties in games that I play in my sig or something as I find myself referring to them a lot.  Our parties have our strengths and our weaknesses, but it's the case that some "rockets" don't work against some characters, and that we tend to have ways of recovering from others.  The wizards avoid the will-based rockets, for instance, 90% of the time, but they are vulnerable to the straight damage ones.  Stuff like that.

In that case your problem isn't that the definition of rocket tag is too broad, it's that your definition of protecting against it is too broad. By your own admission there's nothing stopping someone from just running up and killing the wizard. No flight, no invisibility, no Abrupt Jaunt, no miss chances, no mirror images, no tanking tricks that don't fall into any of the previous categories, just do a basic and logical thing and smash him. If all your opponent has to do is select the obvious attack and win, you're about as hardened against rocket tag as a Monk is a viable class.

It is among my biggest complaints about D&D that building such parties and characters requires a fair amount of op-fu.  You need to make sure your saves, at least the ones you want to be good at, are high enough, buy some of the right gear, make sure someone can take up condition removal duty, and so on.  All that is not well-articulated in the game books, and requires a lot of attention both in party construction and at the gaming table.

All of them are the ones you want to be good at and failing that at least get Fort and Will, since you can ignore 95% of meaningful Reflex saves if you have FoM anyways.

The thing is though to be hardened against it you have to be highly resistant to any attack, or at least all of the common ones. Not just the ones you won't be hit with anyways.

A 10th level Wizard with no save below 22, 8 images at all times and an AC in the high 30s with FoM and Immediate action teleports is hardened against rocket tag. Enemies can go first against him, and he will be reasonably assured of surviving their attacks. Enemies can not all die in the first round and he won't be screwed.

[veekie]

The critical factors here:
-The border between able and disabled is practically nonexistent. I'm defining disabled here as being reduced to a state where you can no longer influence the fight, including the ability to end said state by your own actions. At no point can you take evasive or recovery actions while you are unable to take aggressive ones.
-You cannot temporarily push yourself above said threshold with an ablative buffer for the most part. Theres immunity, resistance to being affected(also binary, they make you statistically more immune in essence) or being open to the effect, very few things to building a buff that is removed by attacks.
-Action economy. Its a really simple factor here. Practically everything offensive is additive cumulative(unless it wipes you in one, the damage from a weak attack adds up just like a strong one), whereas defenses are rarely subtractive(e.g. DR), but rather incremental immunity. Given these factors, capacity for punishment would then need to scale rapidly, or massed weaker foes become entirely ineffective(due to effective immunity from resistance numbers). As its a game, you want actions to succeed in general, this gives an interesting problem.

So, essentially, what can be done to reduce rocket tag:
-Actions, in general, succeed more than fail. This takes the onus off any given action succeeding, as you know many of them will. Partial or critical success is especially useful when dealing with inter-level gaps.
Which results in:
-Actions must alter the outcome in a tangible, but limited fashion. Penalties on your opponent, restricted actions, increased vulnerability to a subsequent attacks, etc.
Which in turn requires:
-Detrimental outcomes need to be cumulative, but capacity for punishment must either remain static along with expected punishment per round(not true in D&D, where health grows at the same rate its always done, but additional attacks or multipliers on additional attacks causes a greater rate of growth when stacked with advancements in individual attacks) or the ability to mitigate punishment must grow with damage.

So put that together and you have a more anti-rocket chassis.