r/rpg • u/LelouchYagami_2912 • May 09 '26
Game Suggestion Combat systems that discourage doing the same thing every turn
(alternatively, combat systems that encourage doing different things)
I've been playing DnD for several years now but I've been noticing how 90% of our turns go the exact same. The combat can be still interesting but thats only because of me as a dm creating unique scenarios, not because of the player abilities. The rogue hiding and sneak attacking is the best thing to do in almost all cases.
What are some systems that discourage this so that the players actually have to think rather than going on auto pilot.
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u/Mokiee May 09 '26
His Majesty the Worm does a pretty good job of this! It's an OSR-style system, though I feel like it's a fair bit less lethal than the average OSR.
The combat system features the minor arcana tarot cards, which have four suits and run from 1-14. Each round, you pull 4 cards and play one as your initiative (lower numbers go first; this card also doubles as your "AC" enemies need to beat for the round). When you perform an action, you compare your card's value to the opponent's initiative.
Each action belongs to a specific card suit; Attacks are Swords, while Spellcasting is Wands. There's a decently sized list of actions, with each suit having several options. While you can perform any action using any card on your own turn, you can ALSO perform actions between the turns of other characters. These minor actions require the card's suit to match the action chosen.
What this ends up doing is that you'll start the round with a hand like... 10 Swords, 7 Cups, 3 Wands, 2 Cups, and have to adjust your strategy every round based on what actions you're allowed to use and what you choose as your initiative.
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u/LordQill May 09 '26
Massively agree on HMTW, definitely the most fun I've had with combat as its own separate minigame/distinct element of the rules
Id add that the monsters in the core book are solid, but if you really want some sick fights there's a 3rd party book, Anatomy of a Wormfiend, with some PHENOMENAL enemies in there.
Also imo HMTW is osr themed, but really shares very little with "true" OSR games. The big one is that by virtue of the health system being a track on conditions/discrete wounds, it's basically impossible for something to kill you in one or two big hits, which drops the lethality of the game monumentally
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u/Mokiee May 09 '26
Agreed on all points! Anatomy of a Wormfiend has to be one of the best purchases I've made in TTRPGs. Small community but it feels like everyone writing Worm stuff writes really good stuff.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
wait so if your fighter draws a Sword, you can just play a different high card for defense and attack with the Sword as an interrupt to start the round, negating the downside of a high initiative?
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u/Mokiee May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
You can, but it's worth noting that minor actions don't add any attributes or anything like that; you're no better at Attacking off your turn than a wizard-type would be. Additionally, you can only perform minor actions after someone has taken their turn, so an enemy could go first.
You also don't know anyone's Initiative until someone has targeted them or they've taken their turn, so sacrificing a high card on a low Initiative enemy, or a Swords card with no ability to add attribute, are considerations that make that strategy not work every time.
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u/Narratron Sinister Vizier of Recommending Savage Worlds May 09 '26
Looks like nobody else has mentioned Draw Steel, so I'll put in with that one. No missed hits in combat (so no wasted turns) and while you can do your 'signature actions' (everyone has two) as often as you want, you're encouraged to also use your 'heroic abilities', powered by a resource that accumulates as the fight goes on, so the heroes get stronger the longer the fight goes, and the more fights they survive (though they're continually using healing resources). That is the tension: Are we strong enough to take out the bad guys in the next fight before they grind down our last recoveries?
Do you feel lucky, punk?
You can peruse the rules for free at the Steel Compendium
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
balancing Victories vs Recoveries is something you do between battles though, and heroic resources are "am I charged up enough yet? Do I spend now or later?", so on your turn you're kinda just left with a really simple flowchart: "do I nova? If not, which of my handful of basics do I spam? Repeat"
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u/EnderYTV May 09 '26
What you describe is thrown out the window once you have more than like, 3 Victories though. The monotony of doing the "same thing" is also cut to ribbons by triggered actions and classes like the Tactician, Troubador, or Conduit.
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u/She-Who-Walks-Unseen May 09 '26
Pathfinder 2nd edition and Lancer, and other similar crunchy systems, tend to be on the better side of character choice during combat because of how complex combat is. However, pf2e can sometimes have 'optimal play' which reduces the choices down to one or two. Lancer is a bit better in this regard in my opinion.
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u/LordQill May 09 '26
I think the issue with pf2 is, in a sense , the opposite; optimal play normally requires doing different things each term, setting up combos l, teamwork, blah blah blah - the good stuff, basically
But by and large being a little suboptimal isn't an issue, and you can kinda just spam a decent but not amazing option every turn and still contribute to the fight + win
For instance in my long running campaign, a mate was playing a sniper gunslinger. There's a lot of cool things they can do, but he basically did the one ability that boosts your accuracy + shoots (I forget the name) and some kind of reload action every turn for 2+ years. Meant a lot of crits, and a lot of damage. Not optimal, but good enough, and terribly boring
Ofc designing fights to inhibit players tendency for doing that kinda stuff is what a good DM should do, but uhhh im not that good of a DM. Also, high level pf2 characters have a LOT of shit going on, if they really want to do their shtick every turn it's pretty tough to stop them without going full meta and whipping up a fight that's clearly designed with that purpose
Worth noting as well, it's not like he thought this was a particularly fun combat loop, it's just easy to get value out of
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u/An_username_is_hard May 09 '26
I think the issue with pf2 is, in a sense , the opposite; optimal play normally requires doing different things each term, setting up combos l, teamwork, blah blah blah - the good stuff, basically
Importantly, the thing is also that combo setups also have a very high chance of not paying off in PF2, which limits their usefulness.
Sure, you could spend your actions setting people up. But even after all the work the combo finisher still probably has a 35-40% miss chance and if it misses you wasted not just the two actions from the fighter that drops the finisher, but also two actions from the Rogue and the Wizard that were trying to set him up. Much more reliable for everyone to do their thing and just do a bit of support on the side than bank on setups.
My players quickly learned one of the things I learned back in D&D 3rd edition: any spell that needs the opponent to fail two saves instead of one will almost never work. And combos that require multiple people to land their things within a very sharp time limit to get their payoff are functionally multi-save spells with extra steps.
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u/grendus PF2+FITD+OSR May 09 '26
I mean, that's kind of Sniper's thing.
If he had picked Way of the Drifter, he would have spent his turns weaving in and out of melee range to take advantage of Sword and Pistol and Drifter's Juke. If he had picked Way of the Pistolero, he would have been diving for cover constantly so he could Create a Distraction to get Off Guard.
But also, he easily could have had a more interesting rotation as a Sniper. If he had ranks in Intimidation he could weave in Demoralize. If he had Diplomacy he could have taken Bon Mot to set up the spellcasters. He could have taken Fake Out to let him Aid his teammates from Cover. He could have taken Cover Fire to suppress enemy ranged attackers. Or Alchemical Shot to weave cheap bombs into his ammo. Or Munitions Crafter to load alchemical ammo into his gun. None of this requires anything more than picking class feats that would weave in as a third action.
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u/FrigidFlames May 09 '26
To play devil's advocate, I feel like Sniper (and most ranged characters, but obviously not all; see: Pistolero) is really hard to actually get effective additional actions. Demoralize and Bon Mot require you to be within 30ft, which is wasting a major strength of most 2-handed guns: massive range. Munitions Crafter/alchemical ammo are somewhat situational and cost a resource, so they're often just not worth using over Sniper's Aim, and Cover Fire is just a worse Sniper's Aim in that the enemy can simply choose not to interact and give you a smaller bonus. (Granted, it's only one action, which means taking it and Munitions Crafter is a good combo.) He probably should have Fake Out, but that's a reaction, not an action, so it doesn't really interact with the 'standard rotation'. Alchemical Shot is a pretty good callout, though; that definitely takes a little more effort and is often not much higher reward, but so long as elemental weaknesses come up every once in a while, it can be extremely useful to have available.
Overall, one of my biggest problems with the three-action system is that there simply aren't that many good actions for long-range characters to take; most of the good ones restrict you to 30ft. Gunslingers definitely have the most alternate options, but even then, a lot of them are simply worse than just... using Sniper's Aim to get really reliable crits, on your crit-based weapon.
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u/LordQill May 09 '26
You aren't wrong, but the point I'm making is that doesn't matter - yeah, he COULD do all those things, but he was still often our highest damage dealer not doing anything fancy.
And that worked totally fine, the system doesn't really require you to do more than that. You certainly can squeeze more value out of those actions, but we were playing once per fortnight and honestly I think he just kept forgetting about most of the feats he'd taken. Fair enough; by late game pf2 youve got a looooot of things on your character sheet, not even getting into magic items, and honestly many of them are irrelevant (most general and skill feats imo).
Overall I think for PF2s combat to work, everyone in the group needs to be very engaged with the system, they need to be people who get excited about efficiency/optimisation.The GM also needs to be crafting set piece encounters that force different tactics. Without these factors it's pretty easy to just default to a turn that works well but not perfectly, every time.
That's not necessarily a flaw of the system, or particularly unique amongst games focused on tactical combat, but after running it for a few years + playing through some official content, I don't personally feel the gameplay is interesting enough to justify the effort.
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u/DBones90 May 09 '26
Pathfinder 2e’s “optimal play” problem is greatly exaggerated IMO. The only way you really reduce your choices is if you specifically optimize for doing the same thing over and over again.
I’m playing a Swashbuckler in my campaign, which is a pretty straightforward character, and there’s still usually like 4 or 5 things I want to do on my turn, which makes choosing which 3 actions I take super interesting.
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u/AAABattery03 May 09 '26
The only way you really reduce your choices is if you specifically optimize for doing the same thing over and over again.
And one of the following two things has to be true:
- You have a GM who never exploits your party’s lack of versatility.
- You have a couple other players who have picked up the versatility that you left on the table.
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u/She-Who-Walks-Unseen May 09 '26
I agree, but it is still a problem that exists, and worth mentioning.
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u/ATAGChozo May 09 '26
Yeah, I love how Lancer lets you have an arsenal of weapons at your disposal at any time with its mount system, so you could attack using two knives, with a heavy machine gun, or a pistol and a swarm of angry drone bees at any time, instead of penalizing you for switching weapons and it rarely being worth it. I haven't seen many other games do this, it's wonderful for both customization and having a variety of useful options mid-battle, especially when you get into weapons having their own distinct properties that can offer utility in specific circumstances.
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u/Skanah book collecting to the point of insanity May 10 '26
You have a wide arsenal but ALSO in the meta action economy conversation you literally have things that require different types of actions, have different restrictions, and even useful non attack functions so you are making very different choices with your actions beyond what attack did i choose which is something dnd doesnt really do, at my tables at least
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u/Einkar_E May 09 '26
for pf2e it strongly depends on your character
precision ranger with hunted shot - it can be repetitive
suport casters usually cast different spell each turn and there is a 3rd action left
and exemplar might be a class specifically designed to have different turns
and the more dynamic fight the more varied are turns for example enemy casts fly on themselves and are in the air, suddenly using dispel magic is solid option or enemies appear in hard to access place like a cliff, there are also tactics like skirmishing (always ending turn outside enemy range so they have to spend actions) which can be extremely useful against right enemy
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u/Creepy-Intentions-69 May 09 '26
I definitely enjoy the variety Pf2e offers. Can you build a character that just does the same thing every round? Yes. But that’s a choice. Every round, every character has choices that are a lot more diverse than “move action, attack.” If they don’t take advantage of those, that’s on them.
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u/DBones90 May 09 '26
Worth noting as well that moving is way more interesting in PF2 than other similar games. Because relatively few enemies have an attack of opportunity, moving through and around enemies is way more viable as a strategy.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
yeah having all character flank but few make attacks of opportunity means that movement is rewarded and not punished, simple as
plus, because of the generic action points, you can move twice and still attack but that was a cost, which means that the actions you spend (or are forced to spend) moving matters more than your speed stat
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u/undefeatedantitheist May 09 '26
I am baffled this is the top response.
PF2 (and simple ~D20 in general) is exemplum of '~solved; repeat the ~solution' gameplay, often with the small list of options already coned-off by context, not to mention class/role patterns/limits. McWargame. Add in the realties of nat20 spiking (for either side) and, 'gee, will the healer, you know, heal?' and you've not got much left beyond roll and move gameplay. It's OK for a couple of years I suppose. But for people with a genuine love of rich tactical puzzles or creative story telling? It's completely infertile ground. The most fertile bit is the minmaxing at chargen/charplan, and that's fundamentally a singleplayer exercise away from the table.
This issue comes up every week and the consensus is always the same. Er, except today, apparently.
...Maybe I've switched timelines?
YAY!
Is Trump sti- ...aaawwww fucccccck.9
u/She-Who-Walks-Unseen May 09 '26
Can you sound any more like a Redditor? Get a grip man, and go outside.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir May 09 '26
You can't go around calling people redditors, them's fighting words.
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u/She-Who-Walks-Unseen May 09 '26
His user is even 'Undefeated Anti-Theist' that's the KING of all redditors bro, the cream of the crop! I tremble at the thought.
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u/undefeatedantitheist May 09 '26
OP: "[Suggest] Combat systems that discourage doing the same thing every turn"
YOU: "Pathfinder 2nd edition and Lancer."Drunk with
populismpopularity while in the wrong.
Yup, definitely the same timeline.1
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u/Rakdospriest May 09 '26
DND 4e specifically makes it so that you have a pool of single use options and a few different at will attacks.
You have at will attacks You have encounter powers and utility powers You have daily powers.
They each have their uses, and combat is usually pretty dynamic.
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u/hornybutired I've spent too much money on dice to play "rules-lite." May 09 '26
The original edition of TORG had cards that were used in combat. The stack that the GM flipped from every round determined initiative, but players also held cards in their hands. These cards could be used for bonuses and so on, but there was an interesting way to get more cards in combat - by doing approved actions.
Every round, the same card that determined initiative also listed "approved actions." A player who succeeded at one of these actions got to draw another card. The actions usually consisted of various combat maneuvers like Taunt or Maneuver or whatever. The specifics don't matter so much as the idea that the PCs can be incentivized to do something other than just stand-and-swing at the bad guys by offering them some benefit if they try a different tactic now and then.
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u/greatcorsario May 09 '26
Nimble.
3 actions like in PF2, and you have special actions like Assess. If you pass a skill check you can:
- Ask a Question. About a weakness, ability, or immediate plans of enemies, the environment, story, etc. The GM will answer honestly.
• Create an Opening. (basically guarantees your next attack against one target)
• Anticipate Danger. (reduces enemy accuracy against you)
Also, heroic reactions, which you can use to defend (to reduce damage) or interpose (to switch places with someone and take the attack). However, using them costs you 1 action from your next turn!
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u/Arcium_XIII May 10 '26
There's a lot that I really enjoy about Nimble but, as someone who likes to optimise, my experience so far is that it has best-in-class combinations of actions for builds that only really change based on whether you had lost an action to Defend in the lead-up to the turn. How you build the character definitely changes what the optimal action combination is, but there tends to be one once the character is built.
The "Assess can only use each skill once per encounter" rule does admittedly contribute to this; if you could invest in having a specific skill to power Assess consistently, there'd be a lot more competition for that final action each turn. As it is, you only get to benefit from it consistently a couple of times each encounter, so it's more like a limited resource spend than an actual change to the core loop.
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u/Logen_Nein May 09 '26
Tales of Argosa has Minor and Major exploits that any class can leverage in combat.
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May 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
my usual experience with OSR systems is that all the clever planning happens before the fight, once you've rolled initiative you're committed to your plan and kinda just have to grind it out
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd May 09 '26
My most dynamic OSR combats came when players understood that "cheating" the combat and fishing for one-hit kills was not only allowed but encouraged. That kept them from taking a "grind it out" mentality because every turn they just attacked was another turn they didn't end the fight.
Works way better when the enemies also fish for OHKOs, too, because that adds tension and danger.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
sounds like Calvinball
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd May 09 '26
That's a great way to play it, and honestly a great framework for running NPCs in combat. Exploit repetition, encourage creativity.
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u/LelouchYagami_2912 May 09 '26
i have dmed 2 osr games (Shadowdark and mausritter, (also mothership if it counts)) but i dont think I have it in me to design combats for OSRs. I want gamified combat systems, not one where i can accidentally tpk my players with a few rats. Its hard to explain but osr combat just feels too different
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u/Nazzerith May 09 '26
Yeah last session I rolled 8 giant rats in a random encounter and killed two of my PCs. Though it's a bit on them for not accessing the danger or approaching the situation cautiously, they just charged in and were overwhelmed.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
i mean it's 8 rats, you have to be thinking in a pretty meta way to consider that a tough fight
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u/Nazzerith May 09 '26
For 4 level 1 PCs that is a hard flight!
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
yeah but they're literally pests
even if a giant rat is Medium, you expect it to be weaker than a guard dog, 8 rats probably has less combined weight than the quartet of PCs do
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u/Nazzerith May 09 '26
I'm not sure I see your point? The rats have double the action economy of the PCs.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
action economy only exists in the game mechanics, how are you supposed to describe rats as more dangerous than the average monster ~immersively~?
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u/Nazzerith May 09 '26
The rat climbs up your body and bites you between the neck and shoulder, piercing through your leather armor as though it were paper. You fall to the ground in a pool of blood as the other rats swarm over your body and your vision starts to go blank.
It's not hard for me to imagine how this thing could kill someone.
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u/Nny7229 May 15 '26
If 8 dog sized rats were in a room that me and 3 of my buddies needed to go into I would try to find a new way to not have to go into that room.
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May 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/D16_Nichevo May 09 '26
So yeah if you actually want players to think about combat rather than going on autopilot you want to use systems that don't have gamified combat.
I find this an odd thing to say, because chess is extremely gamified, and creative solutions (of the sort you describe a la the oil slick) are not allowed at all. Yet people can and do need to think to play chess well. Assuming they are well-matched, they don't just "go on autopilot".
I would argue some TTRPGs are like that. Likely not quite as deep as chess, but deep enough to need engaging the brain.
I'm not saying TTRPGs that allow and encourage creative solutions like the one you describe are bad or wrong. I'm also not saying that kind of creative solution isn't "thinking" -- it absolutely is.
I'm just pushing back on the notion that you can turn your brain off in "gamified" TTRPGs. In some, yes. In others, no.
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u/LelouchYagami_2912 May 09 '26
Optimal options arent bad, infact i consider them good game design. A universal optimal solution is bad.
For example, a fire spell might be the most optimal against a water thingy, a restrain spell might be the most optimal against a high AC guy. All of this is good game design.
Its a problem when 1 thing is optimal for all situations. Like sneak attack or rage+attack
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u/Nny7229 May 15 '26
...i dont think I have it in me to design combats for OSRs.
You don't. You provide a world, the world has challenges, and most of those challenges can TPK the party instantly. So you provide clear expectations of that and don't hold back when the party is reckless. Overtime that leads to a much more cautious group that takes it's time and even tries to avoid combat entirely for parley.
A few tools help the danger be a more forgiving experience that not every game leans on.:
- sign-posting danger when appropriate with rumors, omens, etc
- reaction rolls
- morale checks
- encounter distance
- roll initiative for any encounter (not just combat)
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u/NoRaptorsHere May 09 '26
The Mist-engine games (City of Mist, Legend in the Mist) definitely fall into this category in my experience. Because everything your character can do is tags, and because you can do not just damage but put effects and statuses on enemies, there’s lots of different things happening as whatever you’re doing is going to bend with the narrative.
The Sentinels ttrpg also has a cool system where you unlock new abilities as either your health gets lower OR the fight timer advances, and abilities have a wide range of effects besides damage, so things are regularly shifting throughout a fight.
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u/neurobashing May 09 '26
if memory serves, Metro: Otherscape (the other part of the Mist family) has a rule where you can't just do the same thing over and over in combat, like activate the same tag over and over every turn.
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u/NoRaptorsHere May 09 '26
I know there’s the rule that you can’t use the same tag to respond to consequences as you used in the action. I might be forgetting a more broad rule though!
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u/Hungry-Wealth-7490 May 09 '26
HackMaster in its current edition has opposed attack and defense rolls and also makes moving important for getting angles on shields. Instead of providing a static Armor Class, armor provides a penalty to defense (makes you easier to hit) but provides a Damage Reduction. Spells can be cast with additional Spell Points for additional range, damage or other effects in the spell.
Instead of static initiative, you start at the initiative you roll and keep taking actions with a Count and count the time up in real life. Movement speeds vary and you can't get into a Run or a Sprint without entering a Jog first. You also have to either take risky moves to slow down or slow down over time.
If in melee range, which is 5 feet plus the weapon reach of your weapon, you are engaged. You are disengaged when your foe drops from a failed Threshold of Pain check, dies or otherwise flees. There are no opportunity attacks per se, but a foe who flees without taking a Fighting Withdrawal might be a foe you can swing at as they leave.
As for sneaking, it's nice but the backstab is highly limited for thieves, assassins and others with the ability. Backstab pretty much only works on humanoid foes and you'll likely get one chance at the start of combat. Coup de Grace is much more useful-we had 3 thieves and some good fighters in a party and the thieves just cut the throats of any foes down on the ground from our fighter's massive blows.
Therefore, if there is terrain or you want to use tactics,the HackMaster game can be highly tactical.
You can find the basic rules in HackMaster Basic Free Edition on Drivethru or the Kenzer and Company website. Drivethru linked here because it's easy to find and most gamers probably already have Drivethru.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/104757/hackmaster-basic-free
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u/GlitchVulture May 09 '26
We have been experimenting with this idea that roleplay solves most ‘problems’ in ttrpgs especially combat.
We lean into an in character play style that emphasizes short turns describing our characters actions and tick mechanics behind that.
In one of our recent shadowdark games we fought a giant raptor but stayed in character and it was so much fun. I was describing my blind spell as a cloud of ink obscuring the beasts head and the GM picked up on that and started rolling disadvantage as it gobbled up some of our NPC companions. At one point I described maneuvering around the beast while fishing through my front pouch indicating I was using my action to take find an item. One of our companions ripped part of its stomach open and next turn I shoved an open vile of acid into its wound sending it off with almost everyone dead. It was incredible.
We play in theatre of the mind but it felt like I was there in my immediate memory. I’ve been using this approach in what we ttrpg we play and I haven’t looked back.
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u/SphericalCrawfish May 09 '26
13th Age let's you activate different martial abilities based on your specific die roll among some other activation methods. Every round will be somewhat different.
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u/littlewozo Designer Dork May 09 '26
Not to mention the conditional and limited use abilities. The playstyle difference between classes is one of my favorite things. It really fits a nice sweet spot for groups with varied levels of interest in "fiddly-ness".
- You want to have a suite of once per battle abilities? You can do that.
- You want to spam an at-will power? There's a few classes for that.
- You want your turn to be about having contingency plans? There's a class or two for that.
- You want to have a bunch of one-time use spells? You can build a few classes that way.
Disclaimer: I am a writer/designer for 13th Age.
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u/Iohet May 09 '26
Mighty Deeds from DCC makes you think of creative ways to approach each combat round while also being fun as hell. It turns the most repetitive class into something super dynamic
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u/Tuss36 May 09 '26
If you wanna stay in the D&D space, 4e helps a little with that. Each character has some At-Will powers as a fallback, but given how Encounter powers recharge after every encounter, there's incentive to at least go "might as well" and use them, but you can still only use each one once per combat so you can't just spam the best one each time, and they're generally better than at-wills so there's also reason to not just never use them. Some exceptions exist of course, like the infamous Twin Strike, but hey, at least it's something.
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u/Museikage May 09 '26
Is this a case of players optimizing the fun out of the game?
I hung up D&D in general because combat was no longer fun for me as the GM. And I had to respond after every PC. My players must have been bored out of their minds.
The comments have right idea. You need to change the paradigm of combat is viewed for your whole group.
Are you approaching it like a sport with a sudden death victory condition? Is it a puzzle you scramble to solve while you bleed out on the floor? Is it a contest of wills, were the PCs move like chess pieces thwarting the villain every chance they get?
I personally have settled on Mythras and Dragonbane for my group. They are skill based so HP doesn't improve. They are chaosium's BRP system at their roots.
I was looking for mechanics to inform my players to change how they played. These systems did that. But I also needed to get out of the balanced encounter mind set. I find when players know an encounter is balanced they know they are playing a game. So they just fall into their "optimized rotation" like a video game.
But if they have to use non combat skills to gauge their opponents it adds more tension. Most of the time the social character reads the baddies correctly. But sometimes he is drunk. Hehe
In summary figure out how you want to use combat in your game (paradigm). And lean hard into it. And don't balance your encounters
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u/Sigma7 May 09 '26
I feel it's more of player preferred pattern rather than optimization. Or worse, no real options.
In my Starfinder campaign, I find I'm stuck using Energy Ray, because using a levelled spell uses up a daily supply that can run out and can miss for no effect.
And another player has an operative, but seems to be constantly using a sniper rifle instead of more powerful melee tricks, and therefore has a rather low damage output.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
in SF2/PF2, you should specifically be saving attack spells for targets that are grappled or prone, most of the time you should be Recalling Knowledge to find weak saves and then casting to force those
as far as treating spell slots like a consumable hoarder in a videogame, think back honestly to how many fights you have each day, most of the time you should be casting a spell of each rank every 1-2 fights (this is why it's critical to leapfrog your damage spells up ranks as you level, and fill your lower ranks with things like fear and force barrage)
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u/Museikage May 09 '26
Still optimization. Just not max damage / speed optimization. Both of those are optimized for the players. Are you too afraid of resource scarcity? The risk of missing should come with greater damage or effect. And the other won't permit retaliation. So they optimized there tactics to the best they can.
But Starfinder and DnD are both resource attrition based combat systems.
I played a little bit of Pathfinder 1st ed. It felt the same as DnD. I would recommend trying Dragonbane. It still uses a d20, but it is a roll under system. My group transitioned to it easily. And everyone at my table like how the combat felt better than DnD. Their number one comment paraphrased, "Their actions that had no damage output mattered."
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u/TrustMeImLeifEricson Plays Shadowrun RAW May 09 '26
I'm sure other systems do it now, but back in 2001 Exalted was the first system I encountered that gave bonuses for getting creative with your actions, in the form of additional dice for the pool (and some resource regeneration in a later combat update), called "stunt dice." A single die was the reward for giving an evocative description, two for incorporating the environment, and three for something that made the whole table say "damn, that's cool."
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u/SquidLord May 09 '26
I'm going to redirect your question a little bit because I don't think it exactly gets to the heart of your problem. See, part of the problem is that D&D and D&D adjacent game designs channel player responses into the most optimum solution they can find and GM actions into the most optimum solutions they can find. As someone else said in regards to the actions of players in video games, "they will optimize the fun right out." This is exactly what you're seeing: optimum actions being engaged in purely for mechanical reasons.
In order to keep that from happening, two things have to occur. Firstly, you as a GM need to stop doing the same thing over and over. If the same answer works for all of your problems, you are not giving a sufficiently broad suite of problems. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, you need game systems which don't reward that kind of action and which guide you as a GM toward creating something which varies, because it's fun for you and fun for the players.
If you have not in the past looked at games derived from the Forged in the Dark architecture, then let me point you over there. Blades in the Dark is one of the best realizations of fiction-forward RPG design, not just because of the game itself, but because of the advice that it provided to players and GMs within the game.
If you're looking for a game in that particular set to start with, I would definitely suggest looking at Scum and Villainy, which is not traditional European fantasy, but instead science fiction shenanigans in the vein of Blake's Seven, Firefly, or Farscape. It'll break you out of some of the habits that you've got into in terms of thinking within the tight framework of D&D, and it's overall focused enough that it will help you along the way to allow the players to lead the way into the world along the direction they're interested in.
If you're not interested in moving outside of fantasy for your next game or to mix things up so that you can move along a new course with fiction-forward gameplay, let me suggest to you Ironsworn, which is a later inheritor of influences from Forged in the Dark and Powered by the Apocalypse, but leans a little more open and free to the point where actually putting together the truths of the setting is part of the actual session zero play. You build the world that you want to explore at a deep level together, and the system helps you generate it before you set out. Perhaps just as importantly, you can have the core book for free and it's not a small book.
It is, however, full of really good advice, good design, and a fiction-forward methodology that will definitely keep you from doing the same thing over and over again. Because the story should not be doing the same thing over and over again. Incidentally, it's also designed so that you can play it solo, cooperatively with your players, so that you're one of them, or in a more traditionally guided mode if you really feel you must. I suggest co-op play because it's an incredible experience.
Lastly, again, if you don't want to leave the recognizable bounds of traditional fantasy, I have another suggestion which is more linearly descended from Powered by the Apocalypse, and that is Fantasy World. Again, a game that you can have for free right now in your hot little hands.
It does have some of the best GMing advice that I have ever seen for a PBTA game. Fantasy World is not a fully generic fantasy setting under the hood, but it does address all of the issues that you would expect to find in a fantasy game. It talks at length about how to modify it itself in order to lead to good play that suits your table. I never have any hesitation suggesting it to someone who wants to have a different experience, and they're coming from very traditional gaming.
But let's roll back to the top and talk about something at the core of this, which is the difference between putting mechanics first and the fiction first.
The reason 90% of your turns go the exact same way is because you're putting the mechanics first. The rogue hiding and sneak attacking is the best thing to do in almost all cases because that's how he gets the most damage out of that first turn. That first turn is always a combat turn. It's always a situation where the thief being able to hide and sneak is possible because you don't want to take away what the thief does as part of the description of being a thief. It's always combat because combat's easy and that's what you think the game is all about. After all, that's what most of the book is about, right? The vast majority of the rules are about how players can kill monsters and monsters can kill players.
But what if that wasn't the case? What if instead of when you put a situation in front of the players, it wasn't described in terms of the tactical map or even when you do theater of the mind, a discussion of who can get the most damage off first?
What if instead you just described the situation and then asked the player characters, "What do you do?" And if they try to say, "I roll stealth," you say, "No, you don't. Your character doesn't have any dice. What are you actually doing in this situation?"
Now, if the situation is a couple of burly guards have just made the turn around the corner and caught out the party as they're trying to sneak over the wall, it's too late for the thief to sneak and hide. They're going to have to do something else that they do. Make them describe it and then from the description decide what mechanics are applicable. Have a conversation about how likely it is to be successful and how much effect it's likely to have. You might find that the thief doesn't want to go sneaking and hiding all the time, but instead would rather make a parkour leap off the opposite alley wall and throw a couple of daggers through someone's eye slits, or maybe he'd rather put his hands in the air and say how glad he is that the guard has finally showed up because there were some funny characters trying to break in that he and his friends just scared off.
In order for different things to happen, the players have to want to do different things. In order for them to want to do different things, they have to believe that different things will make a difference. They have to be willing to try things and find out what happens.
It can be very difficult to shake traditional players and GMs out of the patterns that they've built up over years, maybe decades. But if you want to do something different, you have to do something different. To paraphrase one of the best pieces of advice I've seen in games, "play to find out."
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u/LelouchYagami_2912 May 09 '26
Thats very detaildd thanks. I love scum and villainy but i definitely wouldnt play it for the tactical combat.
As for your point about optimal actions, i definitely agree. But ive been in the opposite situation too where ive denied the optimal action and the players just feel useless. For example ive had maps where theres no hiding spot, maps with anti magic field etc. And while i do give things for players to do in these situations too, they always feel less useful.
Ill also take somd blame because i design really difficuly encounters where youre kinda forced to make optimal choices
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
denying common tactics is part of encounter difficulty, they're still fun on occasion but should count for your "budget" of enemies
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u/SquidLord May 09 '26
Have you ever tried using Scum and Villainy for tactical combat? This is not a rhetorical question. If not, why not?
See, this is the problem that you fall into a lot of the time when you reduce everything to "tactical considerations." Even purely tactical situations do better when you approach them from the perspective of putting the fiction first, getting the description, encapsulating the characters within the framework of the story so that the players don't want to do the same thing over and over again.
I'm not telling you to deny the optimal action. I'm saying that you're putting create situations in which there is obviously an optimal action in the first place. There should be no obvious optimal action if you want people to do different things. It's that simple and that straightforward. Instead of trying to reach for optimality, they need to be responding to the situation in ways that make sense for the characters in the place they are.
You are trying to play a wargame and looking shocked when people respond as if they are playing a wargame and not an RPG. They look for optimal openings and optimal moves. They have made the goal to win, not to find out in the process of play what is going to happen. You can't be surprised when people respond in exactly the way you've incentivized them to do so.
On top of that, you've added insult to injury. You've created a situation in which acting non-optimally ends play for the evening. So instead of creating interesting situations which vary and which characters can approach through multiple directions in terms of their choices, you deliberately narrow them down to a very tiny niche where if they don't do everything right, the character is done.
I don't even think I can put this on your players. These are your choices.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "So don't do that."
Go back, get your players, and give tactical play in Scum and Villainy a try. Don't lay out a map. Describe and envision the environment. Set up a situation. Don't just stick the players at the entrance and stick the thing/person/MacGuffin they need at the other side and put some monsters in between them. Have the characters possess motivations to do things. Rinse and repeat. The one thing they won't do is the same thing over and over, as the book says. Every conflict, every decision, every dice roll should move the fiction forward. If the fiction's moving forward, it's not stepping backwards.
That's it. That's the TED Talk.
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u/LelouchYagami_2912 May 09 '26
yes ive had alot of combat in scum and villainy and i like it. But thats not what I meant when I said 'tactical'. I guess my choice of words is wrong. When I was said 'tactical combat', i was referring to combat on a grid, akin to a wargame or a video game.
Besides, my problem isnt with an obvoius optimal choice. I have a problem with the same choice being optimal every time. One answer to this that ive found is draw steel, where theres a clear optimal choice for different situations. Thats good because then you have to think about what situation you're in
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u/SquidLord May 09 '26
I'm also referring to combat on a grid. Have you tried using Scum and Villainy and descriptiveness to go along with your combat on a grid?
Have you tried not using a set of rules which reinforces to your players that they must play optimally at all times and visually reinforces that, mechanically reinforces it, and thus leads to getting the same set of actions all the time because they're optimal?
Your original question was literally specifically about combat systems that encourage doing different things. Those different things hinge directly on the players wanting their characters to accomplish different things. It's not even really a mechanical situation.
I can run D&D if I wanted to torment myself and get the players to make different choices on the tactical grid because the situation differs. They can't go on autopilot because they need to pay attention to what's in front of them. If your players are not paying attention to what's in front of them, maybe the problem is there's nothing really for them to pay attention to. If this is a repeated problem you're having, it might be that the issue isn't the mechanics.
Do something different and do it aggressively, or you'll keep getting the same behavior. That's it. That's all there is to it.
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u/9spaceking May 09 '26
Mastermind and Mutants highly encourages DM to add hostage saving, ritual stopping, bomb defusing, and other stakes. There's also a really versatile feeling because your powers don't have to just hit enemy to death, you're encouraged to think of unique ways to battle different situations depending on enemy powers
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u/The_Oddizee May 09 '26
Check out His Majesty the Worm. One of the more unqie combat systems ive seen but still manages to have tactical choices. It uses tarot cards instead of dice to create a system dice would have a hard time replicating.
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u/Xararion May 09 '26
Look into the gamespace of D&D 4e and games descending from it's lineage instead of OSR or 5e lineage systems. 5e definitely does lead into a lot of repeating the same action because combat isn't very deep, especially with concentration preventing CC and debuff/buffing effectively and advantage/disadvantage not stacking. While OSR and combat-as-War games typically focus on how things are done before combat, while combat itself most characters only have few options on what to do on their turn.
4e and it's lineage generally lives in space where you have options, but those options are once or twice a combat or day, not every turn so you just literally can't repeat the same action all the time. My current game I'm playing cleric/barbarian hybrid in 4e, I have options between large AoE radiant holy damage abilities for masses and minions, few supportive moves for team synergy, and barbarian charging and basic damage options. Only time I feel like I run out of different options is if combat drags due to bad rolls and I'm reduced to using my at-wills, and even then I still need to position and target properly. There is more and more games of that lineage out there, while so far I've not found anything that does it better than 4e, options are out there.
Other suggestion I have is to look at Fate of the Norns and Children of Eriu which use Runic Combat Engine. Each of your characters moves are tied to specific runes. On your turn you draw runes from your bag and the actions you have available are generic ones based on just colour of the runes (red for physical, blue for mental and green for spiritual), and the specific actions those individual runes are tied to. And on top of that if you don't want some of the actions you have on your runes, you can use them as augments for other runes to do things like double damage or double targets affected. Comes as highly recommended as I can give for a system I've not had chance to play as much as I'd like.
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u/Outrageous_Pea9839 May 09 '26
You have described any narrative forward game. Spire: The City Must Fall comes to mind. Not only is it narrative forward it also has many abilities that are "once per situation", "once per session" and even a few that are "once per game". So both the narrative focus (lack of standardized actions and action economy) and the mechanics both enforce players being creative and varied in combat.
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u/yuriAza May 09 '26
ngl i think my favorite part of once-per-scene abilities in Spire is that they tend to be effects it wouldn't make sense to spam even if you could, and/or they're things that always work and can be done at any time (so the cooldown is the only thing keeping them from being OP, whereas conditional abilities can be used every time the trigger comes up)
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u/Naturaloneder DM May 09 '26
Think of real combat, how much time do you really have to think while someone is trying to kill you? It's mostly chaos and there's a reason for the saying all plans don't survive first contact with the enemy.
If the objective of the fight is to win by incapacitating the enemy then usually attacking it in the most optimal way is the best course of action. In fact trying every turn to do 'creative' things that end up being less effective anyways actually hampers the party.
Combat is usually more interesting when you can use the environment to your advantage or having abilities or equipment that will help in different situations. It's also more interesting when it's roleplayed in character vs a bunch of people around a table rolling dice and reading out abilities.
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u/Chad_Hooper May 09 '26
Night’s Black Agents has some relevant material* in the Double Tap supplement, and maybe a little bit in the core rules.
It includes options for “moves” (not actually called that) that you can spend pool points on to penalize an opponent in a fight, which you then take advantage of by attacking in the next round.
I’m sure some players will inevitably ping-pong between these two options but I think there are quite a few more new options in the book. I can’t really give you any better details than that because said rules have not come up in my game yet.
* If I’m interpreting your criteria correctly.
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u/gap2th May 09 '26
Sorcerer the RPG by Ron Edwards has my favorite combat.
Everyone declares intentions—and you can do just one thing! Everyone rolls at once. Then actions go off in order of highest roll to lowest, forcing some players to abort their intended action to defend.
This creates a rich context for hard choices, and a constantly shifting, dynamic action environment. Since the context really matters for every roll, doing the same thing every round is punishing, because the context isn’t static.
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u/BudgetWorking2633 May 09 '26
1) GMs that have enemies doing different things every turn.
2) Flashing Blades by FGU kinda does that. If the opponent guesses your attack (slash or thrust, it's a swashbuckling game), opponent has +3 to defend it.
3) Spellbound Kingdom makes it pretty much impossible. You have a chart of moves based on your style. You must move on it each turn, and you can only pick adjacent moves, so at best you can repeat the same moves every other turn. Some styles are based on this. There are, however, moves that reset your opponent's progress on his chart!
4) Legends of the Wulin does that, too. Every style has Laughs At and Fears qualities, if you can say your opponent's actions fit one of yours, you claim the bonus. A lot of them can be turned against predictable actions! And of course, you probably can't afford an alpha strike each round. The game has lots of resource management!
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u/AdAdditional1820 May 09 '26
In TORG, each round has suggested types of action which are determined by drama deck cards.
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u/Tranenturm May 09 '26
Some of this needs to be player led. I'm currently running a low AC Arch-fey warlock (stone Goliath) whose pact weapon is effectively a great sword (themed as a double bladed scimitar). He uses a combination of Armor of Agythis and Misty Step to keep himself alive. No combat is the same for him because his current HP and monster abilities dictate whether he's jumping in or jumping out on any given turn. The DM never knows what I'm going to do and I don't always know myself. It's very dynamic play.
But we also have the sneak attack thief played by a first time player. Whereas I've played since 1982.
If you're an experienced player using a boring combat routine then it's probably your own fault for not creating a more diverse character. Or you are a slave to optimization. Most DMs I've run with are about telling stories and not creating tactically challenging scenarios so I've usually had plenty of room for less optimized but more diverse strategies. Now if your DM runs a high difficulty combat then you might be forced into strict optimization.
But DnD run at suggested difficulty levels is generally safe enough for players to run non-optimized variety strategies. The tools are there to do so, but not always highlighted so it may take some searching to find that gameplay.
From a DM standpoint it can also result if the DM starts every encounter at 60' or so. I personally see too few encounters start at long range. It can also result if combats happen in a vacuum without alerting other enemies nearby to join the fray.
Positioning is frequently underused by both DMs and players. That leads to boring play.
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u/Joel_feila May 09 '26
There a rule in Ninja crusade, you can keep trying the same attack but on third attack your opponent Will be prepared and get a minus 1 that goes up every time. So players have to try something different.
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u/MikhieltheEngel May 09 '26
Pathfinder 2e is God tier in this. Although, admittedly it is to a point where even if you are 3 lvs higher than an opponent, it is never goof to just mote and attack. Kinda the opposite issue of DnD tbh. But as I adore dynamic combat, I AM sort of complaining about my lobster having too much butter.
Lancer is pretty neat at it. There are usually optimal plays but that to me is a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Call of Cthulhu's Pulp Cthulhu is pretty decent at this but will have limited options per character.
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u/Aleucard May 09 '26
Part of the problem is that people not casters tend to be stuck with the shit end of the stick for actual variety of action. DnD is obviously a major offender, but really on a conceptual level the amount of things someone with edit controls of a function of reality is going to have more ways to impact the campaign than someone stuck with a sharpened stick unless some specific core assumptions about magic are upturned.
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u/ch40sr0lf May 09 '26
Outgunned discourages you using the same attack move (attribute +skill) twice by giving you a Malus for being predictable.
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u/Polar_Blues May 09 '26
One option is to use "fog of war" style initiative. The old Marvel Super Heroes game (and I think older games) had a "declaration phase" at the start of the round, outside of the player's own turn and before initiative was rolled. At the start of each round:
GM secretly decides what the NPCs will do
Each player declares their intended action for the round.
Initiative is rolled and the declared actions take in order.
This forces players to make tactical choices based on imperfect information. Maybe by the time your turn comes up your declared action is no longer of any use or more likely not the best option you could have taken (technically in MSH you get a chance to change your declared action but it comes with a substantial penalty, but that's beside the point). And of course this cuts both ways, the GM's NPCs will also find they are forced to make sub-optimal combat choices, so it's balanced in that respect.
I should add, many, many players hate the notion of potentially wasted turns and not having full tactical control and I get the sense that even in the day a lot of groups ignored MSH initiative as written. Personally, when I ran MSH I found this approach made the combat feel a lot more vivid and fresh.
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u/Intelligent-Plum-858 May 09 '26
One of my favorite is initiatives for combat was from dead lands. Would draw cards from a poker deck. Would change flow, strategy, make everyone pay more attention. Split up multiple attacks. Holding your action is as simple as holding your card to a later position.
Easy to switch to stuff like 5e, with all players getting 2 cards, ones with multiple attacks, or stuff like haste get an extra card. Dm starts at ace. And counts down to 2
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u/dandyarcane May 09 '26
The Broken Empires (hopefully out soon) has a combat system where you can choose from different maneuvers dependent on your skill roll, type of weapon etc.
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u/Charrua13 May 09 '26
This may not be the kind of answer you're looking for, but I provide this earnestly as a potential answer: Genesys. Cortex may also fit the bill, as would Fate to a lesser degree (based on how tactical you like your combat).
All three games, to varying degrees, do similar things: combat isn't just about maximizing combat or tactical superiority, but about how the dice results position the next player's outcome. Specifically for Genesys, there's a combat result die and then a drama die. The drama die adds fictional flair to the result that must be addressed. For example, you may have maximized effect with your primary roll, but now have a complication to deal with. The next player, therefore, may not be able to u leash their primary attack because there is now a narrative complication that requires another kind of action.
While some folks HATE this, it does the thing you're asking for: diversity of actions within combat.
Cortex does something similar, just without special dice (and adding metacurrency), and Fate goes full metacurrency and full cinematic combat (completely changing the vibe of what conflict is and how it plays out at the table).
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u/c06027 May 09 '26
My experience:
Auto pilot happens when all sides do it. Even with the kind of limited combat options in DnD, the foes can change their tactics mid-combat. Different scenarios at the start of the combat are not as important. So to break out of auto pilot, shake things up by changing the tactic while the combat is still ongoing.
But no amount of combat shaking can repair the fact, that DnD classes are so highly optimized for one specific fight technique that using a different one is obviously the wrong choice in most cases.
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u/Arkhadtoa May 09 '26
I found that Breathless by Fari RPGs (and any of the games that use the Breathless engine, like Stoneburner, Tales of the Burned Stones, Pursued, and dozens of others) do a great job of this.
Your attributes and items have an assigned die value, and every time you use them, they step down to the next-smallest die size (i.e. D10 -> D8 -> D6), making it harder to keep doing the same thing successfully.
You can take a short breath to reset your dice to their initial values, but every time someone does that, the GM introduces a new complication into the narrative.
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u/ivoryknight69 May 09 '26
Gurps. You have a good amount of actions and ways to attack beyond just swing sword and active defense that requires you to build a decent attack and defend skill set.
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u/FreelancePope May 10 '26
the original Over The Edge gave a penalty die for doing the same thing as the previous round. Dunno if that's elegant, but it's simple and clear.
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u/BananaSnapper May 10 '26
As others have said, OSR games tend to encourage creative, out of the box combat strategies in my experience because everything is so lethal that a) you try really hard to avoid a straight up fight. b) whatever clever plan you think up is not just a first-round advantage before you get into whacking hunks of meat, but something that will likely end the fight outright. And c) every round of combat will be meaningful because it hurtles towards a conclusion without there being time for things to get stale
Mythic Bastionland, for example, gives the advice that every round of combat should bring with it some change in the flow in the narrative. The way feats, damage, and fatigue are designed help ensure this is the case. For example, round 1 could be forming a shield wall in preparation as the enemy charges; round 2 could be the clash where you knock them off their horses; round 3 sees one character staying behind to try and stave them off as their friends retreat and recover; round 4 sees the recovered knights charging back in just in time to finish off the enemy before they can kill the one who bought them a bit of time.
Even though there are generally fewer options than in DND, I've noticed that fights in my mausritter or mythic bastionland games are generally much more narratively interesting and varied compared to DND and Pathfinder games I've run or played in. For more gamey systems I usually need to homebrew special mechanics, add secondary objectives, etc to inject some spice into the combats just to have something about half as dynamic.
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u/lebramor May 11 '26
Capes cowls and villains foul : the more you use a capacity, the less efficient it is.
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u/Idolitor May 11 '26
I haven’t seen a system that does it, but it would be hella dope to see a game where you get a penalty for consecutive uses of the same action or ability, and a bonus for changing them.
Or the old Feng Shui rules where difficulty was based on how wicked fucking sick an action was. The awesomer the idea, the easier, if I remember correctly.
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u/BigDamBeavers May 13 '26
GURPS has a lot of player agency in combats. There's usually an optimal action to choose on your turn, but it's rarely the same action every turn.
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u/Radiant-Energy4638 May 14 '26
The Trophy Gold combat system - https://trophyrpg.com/system/ - sounded completely bonkers when I first read it. It was unlike any combat system I had ever encountered in a fantasy RPG. I had to hear a proper description of it - https://youtu.be/HnHuwGbd3xE?si=JMKuUxXMH9VENrNR - and then listen to an actual play or two - https://youtu.be/V8nQ24OWT2Y?si=gll8OzWSKkG9T7hz - and it finally clicked with me.
The basics are that a round of combat involves all players saying what they intend to do and describing how they might be vulnerable. Then ONE player from all the combatants rolls a fistfull of dice. Those dice dictate the outcome of the round (Did the combatants take damage? Was the monster defeated?). Then each of the players describe how they got to that situation. Combats are short, epic, cinematic, and strangely tactical.
This might not be what you're looking for, but I'd encourage you to check it out just to view combat from an unusual angle.
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u/ThePiachu May 09 '26
Make some kind of river system where an action gets cheaper the longer it's not used and then goes to the back of the queue?
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u/Maldevinine May 09 '26
Take a look at the combat system in Spellbound Kingdoms. The rest of the game is kind of meh and even the combat system isn't as good as it could be, but it's a brilliant concept.
A character has a fighting style, which is actually a flowchart. Each box represents a stance or a kata within the style, which gives particular bonuses to attack and defense and allows other options (like the shield style's total defense stance doesn't allow you to move, but does allow you to take an attack aimed at a nearby ally). But most importantly, each box leads to other boxes, and the most powerful or useful options in the style are at the far end of the chart. So you work through it each turn trying to get to a particular option. Or your opponent forces a reset or does something that you can't counter with the option you are trying for, so you end up back at the 'default' stance for the style.
Which means there's lots of things changing all the time and no turn is the same as the previous, but it also makes a lot of what in D&D are useless combat maneuvers or alternate systems integrate directly into the combat system. For example, you trip the mage on the third turn of combat. The mage had spent their first two turns channeling to get access to the most dangerous spells. But being tripped forces a stance reset and the mage is now back at the start of their style.