How do y'all feel about the concept of rocket tag in 3.5?

[Zonugal]

Basket, I honestly feel your entire philosophy of D&D is surrounded with 'kill it before it kills you.'

But beyond that I tend to run games from 3-8 level where actual save or die spells are less prevalent. But you are certainly correct about the first initial levels being determined by a dodge of a blade or escaping a burning hands spell.

I just wouldn't refer to those as 'rockets.'

Even there things like grease and glitterdust can effectively end the enemies ability to fight back in a meaningful way. That is the gist of rocket tag, it isn't always about them dead now.

My conception of 'Rocket Tag' may just be more high powered as I was introduced to in it's form at the higher levels. Typically this was represented through high-level caster battles in which you literally had to go in the first round or there was no chance of your character living.

Lower level spells & effects? I guess I don't count roll those into the idea of 'Rocket Tag' for two reasons. The first being how situational they are in addition to the fact that they can be countered. The second simply being their lethalness. It may also simply be an issue with the coined termonology. For a spell like grease or glitterdust I would rather classify them as 'Grenade spells.'

[Basket Burner]

Yet, the low level effects are considered rockets, because once they land you're not going to be doing much else. Color Spray hits, you can literally take no actions. Glitterdust hits, you're blind for at least 3 rounds, which means the rest of the fight and all but helpless offensively and defensively. Most of them are AoEs, and at this level are going to have very high success rates. Getting the entire party in 1 or 2 shots is very likely.

[Endarire]

What is the point of the commonality of rocket tag in D&D 3.x, anyway?

[veekie]

Not intended to be sure, the designers didn't know what they were doing very well and their playtesting shows a distinct lack of rocket tag on the side of the PCs.

[Basket Burner]

D&D combat has always been fast and brutal. The design flaw is forgetting to make sure the players can all still keep up.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

DM usually gets surprise rounds. Players then are less inclined to 1 shot things ... because then said same combo is fair game on them. Gentleman's agreements are a necessity for fun, not a luxury.

[LordBlades]

DM usually gets surprise rounds. Players then are less inclined to 1 shot things ... because then said same combo is fair game on them. Gentleman's agreements are a necessity for fun, not a luxury.

I find that's very dependent on optimization. If you're using the classic heavy armor fighter in front clanking his way through the dungeon and bashing doors open, then yeah, not much chance of a surprise round. However, if you're running a decent scout, making smart use of divinations and scry&die tactics, you're probably going to get the drop on enemies at least as often as they get the drop on you.

The issue is that monster deaths are way less significant than PC deaths. Assuming that anyone going first can kill at least an opponent (not far fetched at all past a certain level of optimization), even if the PCs get surprised once in 5-6 encounters it means 2 PC deaths per level (assuming 13 encounters to level up).

That's why I fully agree that a gentleman's agreement along the lines of 'I won't instakill you if you don't instakill me' is preferable to knowing that sooner or later your PC will be getting one-shotted without getting any chance to react.

[Basket Burner]

DM usually gets surprise rounds. Players then are less inclined to 1 shot things ... because then said same combo is fair game on them. Gentleman's agreements are a necessity for fun, not a luxury.

That's exactly backwards. If the DM is typically having the enemies get surprise rounds, that means you have even less time to kill them before they kill you, so you need to be able to one round things even more.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

DM usually gets surprise rounds. Players then are less inclined to 1 shot things ... because then said same combo is fair game on them. Gentleman's agreements are a necessity for fun, not a luxury.

That's exactly backwards. If the DM is typically having the enemies get surprise rounds, that means you have even less time to kill them before they kill you, so you need to be able to one round things even more.

No... because if you do then those tactics are legal. Therefore the DM might use them on you.

So that's out. Now suppose you chose to be smart and not play in 1-shotting campaigns. The monsters getting the drop on you? You can survive it. You attrition them right back but start to play smart meaning on subsequent rounds you aren't as vulnerable as before while the enemies still are. Eventually you win but not after reducing your resources.

If your DM plays monsters as smart or smarter in tactics, that's a massive EL boost, making on-even CR'd creatures usually not winnable. Insert Kobold jokes here.

[Kethrian]

Allow me to throw my hat in with the "HP is not a Binary Defense" argument.  Binary is on/off, pass/fail, win/lose.  Against a given attack, there might not even be a possibility for a loss when talking about HP, and each hit against HP alters the outcome of subsequent attacks.  If you're throwing attacks at a guy that kill him if he fails a DC 20 saving throw, but he has save modifiers of +21, then you can't wear him down with attacks and alter how subsequent attacks will affect the target.  On the other hand, if you do 20 damage a hit with a sword, then even if your opponent has 50 hit points, the third attack will have different potential outcomes than the first two.

Exactly.  HP is not binary, it's ablative.  Sure, if you don't do enough to OHKO, you still knock off some of the defense, allowing future attacks to have a greater chance at penetrating.  Hence why 4th ed is padded sumo: the ablative defense is the ultimate defense there, as no matter how well you get past the binary defenses, you still must chip away at the ablative defense until you finally break through.

DM usually gets surprise rounds. Players then are less inclined to 1 shot things ... because then said same combo is fair game on them. Gentleman's agreements are a necessity for fun, not a luxury.

That's exactly backwards. If the DM is typically having the enemies get surprise rounds, that means you have even less time to kill them before they kill you, so you need to be able to one round things even more.

No... because if you do then those tactics are legal. Therefore the DM might use them on you.

So that's out. Now suppose you chose to be smart and not play in 1-shotting campaigns. The monsters getting the drop on you? You can survive it. You attrition them right back but start to play smart meaning on subsequent rounds you aren't as vulnerable as before while the enemies still are. Eventually you win but not after reducing your resources.

If your DM plays monsters as smart or smarter in tactics, that's a massive EL boost, making on-even CR'd creatures usually not winnable. Insert Kobold jokes here.

Also exactly.  If you throw save-or-die/lose/etc. stuff at every encounter because you think it's fine to overestimate your opposition constantly, then soon you'll find that your opponents will adapt and either immunize themselves against your typical tactics, or level equally big guns your way.  The DM doesn't mind you killing all the monsters, because he has an endless supply to replace them, but you only have your one party of PCs, and if they all die in one fight, you lose.

[SneeR]

Allow me to throw my hat in with the "HP is not a Binary Defense" argument.  Binary is on/off, pass/fail, win/lose.  Against a given attack, there might not even be a possibility for a loss when talking about HP, and each hit against HP alters the outcome of subsequent attacks.  If you're throwing attacks at a guy that kill him if he fails a DC 20 saving throw, but he has save modifiers of +21, then you can't wear him down with attacks and alter how subsequent attacks will affect the target.  On the other hand, if you do 20 damage a hit with a sword, then even if your opponent has 50 hit points, the third attack will have different potential outcomes than the first two.

After careful consideration, I have come to the decision that rocket tag could be reduced if more gradual defenses were implmented rather than binary. If you get rid of the ability to simply drop someone from the fight with an ability designed to do so after a Save (what were they thinking!?), instead forcing them to go through normal gradual defenses like hp, battles become managable for much longer. If you increase everyone's hp, then even high damage stops being a source of rocket tag!

[Basket Burner]

DM usually gets surprise rounds. Players then are less inclined to 1 shot things ... because then said same combo is fair game on them. Gentleman's agreements are a necessity for fun, not a luxury.

That's exactly backwards. If the DM is typically having the enemies get surprise rounds, that means you have even less time to kill them before they kill you, so you need to be able to one round things even more.

No... because if you do then those tactics are legal. Therefore the DM might use them on you.

So that's out. Now suppose you chose to be smart and not play in 1-shotting campaigns. The monsters getting the drop on you? You can survive it. You attrition them right back but start to play smart meaning on subsequent rounds you aren't as vulnerable as before while the enemies still are. Eventually you win but not after reducing your resources.

If your DM plays monsters as smart or smarter in tactics, that's a massive EL boost, making on-even CR'd creatures usually not winnable. Insert Kobold jokes here.

Facepalm. I hope you are joking, and did not honestly just claim that playing enemies intelligently constitutes some massive buff given that most of them are indeed intelligent.

Level appropriate enemies 1-2 round you. If enemies get a surprise round, that means round 1 is round 0. You have one round left. Make it count. And don't feed any BS about it being the DM's fault.

People complain about spells, but simple attacks do exactly the same thing. At least when it's enemy on PC. So even if the enemies are stupid casters or not casters at all, they're still going to be taking people out quickly.

The only problem is that PC non casters don't have rockets. They can't keep up without specific builds and optimizing. Claiming spells are the problem is exactly backwards, wrong, and that way lies 4th edition which we already have.

[Havok4]

Allow me to throw my hat in with the "HP is not a Binary Defense" argument.  Binary is on/off, pass/fail, win/lose.  Against a given attack, there might not even be a possibility for a loss when talking about HP, and each hit against HP alters the outcome of subsequent attacks.  If you're throwing attacks at a guy that kill him if he fails a DC 20 saving throw, but he has save modifiers of +21, then you can't wear him down with attacks and alter how subsequent attacks will affect the target.  On the other hand, if you do 20 damage a hit with a sword, then even if your opponent has 50 hit points, the third attack will have different potential outcomes than the first two.

After careful consideration, I have come to the decision that rocket tag could be reduced if more gradual defenses were implmented rather than binary. If you get rid of the ability to simply drop someone from the fight with an ability designed to do so after a Save (what were they thinking!?), instead forcing them to go through normal gradual defenses like hp, battles become managable for much longer. If you increase everyone's hp, then even high damage stops being a source of rocket tag!

As far as I can tell the biggest problem is that in game defenses do not scale nearly as well as offenses. The method you propose seems to go a long way towards resolving that issue as it would be possible to actually have good defenses matter. 

[lans]

.
People complain about spells, but simple attacks do exactly the same thing. At least when it's enemy on PC. So even if the enemies are stupid casters or not casters at all, they're still going to be taking people out quickly.

If you focus on non magical enemies you only have 2 defenses to worry about and can therefore get those out of range pretty damn quickly against level appropriate enemies. Incarnate 2, martial monk, invisible fist monk, con jacking, puglist fighter 2, binder 1, the 3 binding feats, all do it at low levels.

[Basket Burner]

Except that attack bonuses outstrip to hit bonuses, so getting your AC to the point where only a 20 hits is a whole lot harder and less likely than getting your saves to where only a 1 fails. It's unlikely you'd get that far, even with specific builds (none of which are the builds you mentioned).

[veekie]

Allow me to throw my hat in with the "HP is not a Binary Defense" argument.  Binary is on/off, pass/fail, win/lose.  Against a given attack, there might not even be a possibility for a loss when talking about HP, and each hit against HP alters the outcome of subsequent attacks.  If you're throwing attacks at a guy that kill him if he fails a DC 20 saving throw, but he has save modifiers of +21, then you can't wear him down with attacks and alter how subsequent attacks will affect the target.  On the other hand, if you do 20 damage a hit with a sword, then even if your opponent has 50 hit points, the third attack will have different potential outcomes than the first two.

After careful consideration, I have come to the decision that rocket tag could be reduced if more gradual defenses were implmented rather than binary. If you get rid of the ability to simply drop someone from the fight with an ability designed to do so after a Save (what were they thinking!?), instead forcing them to go through normal gradual defenses like hp, battles become managable for much longer. If you increase everyone's hp, then even high damage stops being a source of rocket tag!

As far as I can tell the biggest problem is that in game defenses do not scale nearly as well as offenses. The method you propose seems to go a long way towards resolving that issue as it would be possible to actually have good defenses matter. 

You also need mitigation. Straight deductibles wear away too fast unless they're growing at a ridiculous rate(see hp for example). Of course, DR is completely out of proportion with damage increases.

[littha]

If I were to rewrite the DR system I would make it fractional rather than a strait deduction.

Rather than DR 20 you could run DR (1/2) and just halve all incoming damage, this makes single super strong attacks (like uberchargers) weaker but characters using lots of weaker attacks stronger. Not necessarily better in that regard but it also means that no matter the optimisation level the DR is still going to be relevant.

It would also give you a greater range of DR for creatures at each level, a CR 5 creature could have any of the entire range of DR rather than just DR 5 or 10 as it is now.

[veekie]

^^
Makes for some oddities when you use low level tanky enemies against high, but the deal breaker is the math involved for different fractionatings.

[littha]

I would have thought everyone capable of basic division.

The tanky low level enemies are going to be tough but still wont have the HP to stand up to higher level characters.

[veekie]

Basic division is a problem when performed 4-8 times a round, over non-rounding numbers.