Kobold Quarterly had an article in it's third issue titled "Up the Action! Cinematic Combat" by Benjamin Hayward.
It had some feats and ideas on how to get away from just hacking and slashing mechanics.
Called shot rules from Ultimate Combat are a little wonky IMO. Not so much because they're over powered, if anything, some of them are under powered from a 'logical' stand point, but because of the kind of damage you have to do in order to get a single Debilitating Blow. That is, they basically follow the Massive Damage rules for it.
Half of a creatures hit points, minimum 50 damage. The effects are awesomely bad ass and definitely cinematic. It's just that if you're using Massive Damage rules, which I always do, they kind of interfere with one another.
That said, if you want to make it really cinematic, but in a totally gritty way, do what I did. Keep the requirement of doing half of a creature's hit points, but take out the minimum damage. This makes sense in that as the PCs are going up in level, doing called shots gets harder because creatures get so darn tough. It also promotes the cinematic aspect of as the creature gets more damaged, it's visibly getting more and more injured. While the pcs and creatures are low level, they're weak and vulnerable.
Of course, I run my as 'whats good for the goose is good for the gander' on the GM side, so certain creatures start doing called shots on them too. The folk I've used this with actually found they loved it, but YMMV.
Beyond that, set up some environmental things your PCs can use to make games more cinematic. Fighting on cliffs or rooftops? Position the NPCs/Mobs around the edge for the PCs to shove off. Fighting in a castle of dungeon with chandeliers? Let the PCs hack the rope to drop the chandelier on some mobs placed under it. Stuff like that really add some cinematic to the game, and makes it more than a 'I hit him' 'mob hits you', blah de blah.
Encourage your players to find certain things that would be cinematic as hell. Feats like Clustered Shots, the Deathless Tree, and the Dimensional Tree work wonders. The archer fires off a bunch of arrows in rapid succession, grouping them all in the dragon's chest; The fighter's surrounded by mobs and getting the mother lovin' kicked out of him, but he just keeps on goin'; (Using my Gunslinger/Horizon Walker for an example), the gunslinger whips out his Dragon Pistol, and teleports around the battle field, blasting creatures away with a hand cannon.
Things like that are certainly cinematic, especially if your players are big into the role play aspect of combat. Try and encourage them to banter in game in a manner similar to Legloas and Gimli, or any other number of characters I could name. Maybe be a lenient a bit and don't enforce too much of a speaking limit as the character's free action (certainly don't limit it to 6 words like a previous GM I've met). Probably one or two quick scentences, since you can actually say a lot in 6 seconds, even while active and fighting. Fiction characters definitely can, so why can't the PCs? They're trained fighters, who's to say they can't hold a conversation while stabbing an Orc in the eye and blocking a hammer from his buddy with a shield?
Hope these suggestions help ya buddy. Lemme know how it turns out, yeah?
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This may be just my opinion, but if you need mechanics to make combat cinematic then you're doing it wrong. It's like saying you can't tell if a movie is any good because there are no rules that define what makes a movie good. Total reliance on rules for everything is a bad thing.
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Are there any other rules that could make combat more cinematic/descriptive/generally interesting that I should look into?
Best thing I've found is to make things up on the go. When a player wants to do something cool you work with them and reward them for it. Probably not the most helpful or direct thing to say, but its worth mentioning. I've played with plenty of GMs who are totally by the books or even punish you for trying to do something that doesn't have an attached mechanic. I've been told stealing stunt mechanics from other games works too, though that's hit or miss and has been from biased sources. A lot of what I've seen involves investment, and to be honest when someone wants to do something like flip a table they don't want to have to take a feat to do it.
PF really doesn't fit with its 5ft steps, loads bonuses, to a fast paced game
Get rid of the battlemat, and anything that needs it, and you should fly
Are there any other rules that could make combat more cinematic/descriptive/generally interesting that I should look into?Best thing I've found is to make things up on the go. When a player wants to do something cool you work with them and reward them for it. Probably not the most helpful or direct thing to say, but its worth mentioning. I've played with plenty of GMs who are totally by the books or even punish you for trying to do something that doesn't have an attached mechanic. I've been told stealing stunt mechanics from other games works too, though that's hit or miss and has been from biased sources. A lot of what I've seen involves investment, and to be honest when someone wants to do something like flip a table they don't want to have to take a feat to do it.
Also, this too. So very much this. Try and get your players to do things outside the box, and adjudicate rules on the fly (like we did in the old days). Eventually your players will get a lot more comfortable with it, and start doing things like running on the wall, leaping off, and spearing the Ogre in the face. What's that take? An acrobatics check, probably DC 20 or so, and an attack roll with a +2 for what is effectively a charge. Might even get another +2 for higher ground.
Remember. The DM can always change stuff or rule things on the fly. There doesn't have to be a mechanic for every little thing in the game. Just throw out whatever DC number you feel appropriate for appropriate shenanigans, and since the game's meant to be fun, if it's something the player seems excited about and won't one-shot the entire encounter, make it something they can pass easily enough.
Could steal stuff like "Stunt Dice" from Exalted, and have them mate with Hero points and stuff. Player describes a really cool action? Give 'em a +1d8 to the d20 rolls involved. It encourages them to try stuff that might be a bit harder.
Kind of an enticing idea.
The key to making combat cinematic is to resolve all of this somehow. Go to a wounds vigor system, shorten the combat round so that an attack can be an attack, and probably go to an action point initiative system of some sort.
At that point you might as well be playing another game though, maybe one that's actually built to be more cinematic. Outside of actual mechanics, about as much as I usually see is the occasionally narrative describing of an attack or killing blow, but... the how much people around you enjoy it may vary pretty greatly.
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Are there any other rules that could make combat more cinematic/descriptive/generally interesting that I should look into?Best thing I've found is to make things up on the go. When a player wants to do something cool you work with them and reward them for it. Probably not the most helpful or direct thing to say, but its worth mentioning. I've played with plenty of GMs who are totally by the books or even punish you for trying to do something that doesn't have an attached mechanic. I've been told stealing stunt mechanics from other games works too, though that's hit or miss and has been from biased sources. A lot of what I've seen involves investment, and to be honest when someone wants to do something like flip a table they don't want to have to take a feat to do it.
In the 3.5e core books there was an example of a player wanting to jump up to grab a chandelier and swing over to double-kick an opponent in the face. That's pretty cinematic and can be done with just a little on-the-fly GMing - Acrobatics to reach the chandelier, modified grapple to grab it, and "two-handed" unarmed attack with a charge for the swinging kick. That's what's so great about tabletop games over computer RPGs. Not everything has to be spelled out in the rules, and there's tons of room for improvisation.
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Lotsa stuff
The problem is that we're using abstractions which always require interpretation and muddy up what would be going on "realistically". Abstraction and realism are a spectrum and the trouble is that you want a system that falls further on the realism side of things like GURPS (more or less). The trouble with more detailed and "realistic" combat systems is that A) they almost invariably require more number crunching, and B) they can slow things down even more since less can be done in a turn and you then have to go through more turns.
Personally, I find a slightly more abstracted system to be the more cinematic one since it keeps things flowing. "I charge and attack." as opposed to "I charge." *next turn* "I attack."
As for all your other nitpicks, they can be explained:
HP: Represents both the character's physical health as well as their psychological resiliency, morale, and stamina. Even if you block a blow, that block absorbs and requires some energy that will eventually exhaust you more than if that blow had missed entirely.
Now, given that fatigue, exhaustion, and non-lethal damage are all separate things in addition to hit points, this isn't a perfect, ends-all-questions explanation, but there's where I will point you back to "it's all an abstraction".
Attacks: As any kid who has taken karate or play-fought with sticks can tell you, swinging wildly will result in few hits and even fewer that actually mean something. As such, at lower levels (and so having less skill and experience), a fighter can only make a single strike that has a decent chance of actually hitting and doing anything. As they become more skilled, they can basically learn to chain together attacks to get in an extra well-aimed strike or two. For an inexperienced fighter, one good strike every six seconds is a respectable rate of attack, so there's really no problem there. Sure you could swing your sword back and forth a couple more times in the same time frame, but like a fresh boxer trying to throw a dozen jabs in three seconds, those extra strikes won't really do anything. But then you look at a more experienced boxer whose jabs actually do break bone. For a particularly stark contrast between experience level and attack frequency, look at Japanese kenjutsu/kendo. As a beginner, you do one strike. One strike. One strike. With more experience, it becomes one strike, and backstroke. Thrust, up-stroke. A little later, strike, backstroke, thrust. Thrust, up-stroke, down-stroke, thrust. And so on. But you don't start out as a beginner learning those multi-strike moves.
And then remember that technically, everyone's turns are happening simultaneously in a round. It's just that it isn't feasible to manage everyone making their moves simultaneously, and so things are abstracted to provide for a more manageable system. Short, bite-sized chunks of time, just long enough to do something meaningful, taken one at a time to help prevent conflicting actions and minimize the headache of parsing through exactly who does what when.
Of course, ultimately, it all comes down to taste. Whether you prefer a more finer grit to make sure you know exactly what is happening at every moment, or if you prefer something a little coarser that makes things easier to deal with and arbitrate at the expense of some detail.
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Three things:
1. I'm in agreement w/a lot of folks - make it up. Encourage your players to try weird stuff and when they do just wing it. Leaping charge; sure it's not RAW but it would look really cool!
2. Use some 3d terrain. I know its a pain in the rear to set up but imagine how much more into it your players and you will be when you can actually play in 3 dimensions with ledges, rocks, and carts for your guys to jump up on and off of.
3. Act it out. Combine 1 and 2. No, I'm not suggesting LARPing or pro wrestling. I'm saying grab your minis like you used to grab your GI Joes as a kid and mash it against your opponent and scream "I go like THIS!" If you can visually approximate a high-kick to the face without injuring yourself and others... do THAT too!
My players have accused me of being too wordy in exposition. However they've really gotten engaged in combat because, even when we play in a public space so long as I'm not overly disruptive I do this stuff. I jump in the air; pretend to swing axes while providing sound effects; cry out epithets in screechy goblin voices as one of their minis comes flying across the table. If you want theatrics, provide them.
Three things:
1. I'm in agreement w/a lot of folks - make it up. Encourage your players to try weird stuff and when they do just wing it. Leaping charge; sure it's not RAW but it would look really cool!
2. Use some 3d terrain. I know its a pain in the rear to set up but imagine how much more into it your players and you will be when you can actually play in 3 dimensions with ledges, rocks, and carts for your guys to jump up on and off of.
3. Act it out. Combine 1 and 2. No, I'm not suggesting LARPing or pro wrestling. I'm saying grab your minis like you used to grab your GI Joes as a kid and mash it against your opponent and scream "I go like THIS!" If you can visually approximate a high-kick to the face without injuring yourself and others... do THAT too!
My players have accused me of being too wordy in exposition. However they've really gotten engaged in combat because, even when we play in a public space so long as I'm not overly disruptive I do this stuff. I jump in the air; pretend to swing axes while providing sound effects; cry out epithets in screechy goblin voices as one of their minis comes flying across the table. If you want theatrics, provide them.
Dude, you sound like you'd be fun to game with. +1 to all that, and you get a cookie.
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Except that I just spent half my post describing how they are associated. If you still don't see it, I can't help you.
It's like you're looking at a cubist painting and saying it's not abstract because abstract would be impressionism. There's more than one way to abstract something, and varying degrees by which to abstract it.
Cinematic combat comes from the participation of all players at the table, which includes the game master and everyone with a character sheet. In this way, cinematic combat is no different from immersive role-play. I consider it the duty of game masters to lead the way in both of these realms, so I respect that you are looking to step it up. However, I can attest from personal experience that if no one else at the table chooses to step into their character's shoes, then you will be fighting a losing battle. Have a discussion with the people at your table about what you would like to encourage in your game.
Cinematic combat comes from the participation of all players at the table, which includes the game master and everyone with a character sheet. In this way, cinematic combat is no different from immersive role-play. I consider it the duty of game masters to lead the way in both of these realms, so I respect that you are looking to step it up. However, I can attest from personal experience that if no one else at the table chooses to step into their character's shoes, then you will be fighting a losing battle. Have a discussion with the people at your table about what you would like to encourage in your game.
Some games support cinematic combat better than others though, hence the chat upthread. Sometimes a game can even work against narrative.
I suppose my point was that mechanics alone won't do the trick. A table full of people describing actions even part of the time, instead of just rolling, will be more enjoyable.
Are there any other rules that could make combat more cinematic/descriptive/generally interesting that I should look into?
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I apologize if this is straying from the topic, but as a GM I tend to rise to my player's level of description. If the players are rather bland on their actions and say things like, "I charge and swing" or "I rapid shot" I will tally up the bad guy's hit points and run things quickly. Conversely, if the players are saying things like, "Mintarn lets loose a bellowing scream and smashes his axe down on top of the evil cleric" I will respond in kind with, "The cleric attempts to raise his shield in response, but your blow is too powerful, your axe blade manages to put a large gash in his armor and you think you see a red stain underneath"
When running a fight also remember that the environment is destructible as the players, so missed slashes and arrows don't just disappear. This is really important when running Huge and larger creatures. A fight against an Ancient Red Dragon becomes that much more memorable when the dragon's tail misses and causes the adjacent siege tower to crack in half, or the Flesh Golem chasing the party lands on the rickety Bridge the party is crossing, only to snap the ropes. These types of things can and probably should cause a few problems for the players, but not enough to make the encounter impossible. i.e. I ran an encounter with a gargantuan demon called and Ulkreth fighting a pair of Colossal Fiendish Centipedes. The Players were only 6th lvl, but were not the target of either monster. Instead they needed to make saves vs falling rocks from the massive boulders the Ulkreth sent flying, dodge trample attacks by the centipedes, and even plummet in a crevice created when the Centipede dug too close to the surface. They took marginal damage, fled an encounter, but had a blast scampering about like ants at the feet of dueling titans!
I think the main thing here is that your descriptions as a GM provide the cinema. In my game, I supply the color for the attacks, except if the players want to do it themselves. I'm pretty fortunate that I have a published author amongst my group, and he provides his own color, which has started to rub off on others. For those that don't want to provide their own color, I fill in the flavor. ie "Telerynn spins in his dance like fashion, scimitar flashing as he dives in at the goblin. The goblin attempts, in vain, to dodge out of the way as the scimitar opens a gash along its shoulder and chest. The reeling goblin doesn't see Telerynn's follow up slap, and you hear a distinct sizzling as his acid touch spell seals the goblin's fate with the smell of searing flesh." Would have been used to describe our Dervish Magus' attack with both a scimitar and acid touch attacks.
The point being that the "cinema" doesn't come from the mechanics of the game, it comes from the imagination of both the GM and the PCs.
thenovalord, you bring up a good point. It can be really hard to get players away from relying on the visual of the battlemat, but there's something about it that does bog things down, and sort of distance players somewhat more from their own characters (I've found this to be the case both when I am a player and a GM).
Yet, I'm torn on it the battlemat thing. Battlemats do help with keeping everyone on the same page as far as where they are in relationship to other things in the environment, and some people need a visual aid for this much more than others, and some times there is the issue of two people imagining different enough things from the same description that it can matter.
Maybe I'll have to just play test some of these different options out when I have the chance... every once in a while I have had the group just break into random combat scenarios that don't impact the main campaign to try things out.
That said, the rules on the fly thing for a lot of these, does sound like it would be the easiest approach.
Well, I've done the reverse for a few sessions. And it has upped the cinematic nature of the game. Instead of using a battlemat, I used 3d terrain from my wargaming collection (wyrd miniatures makes sets of assemblable prepainted terrain that has subtle 1inch squares on it). By bringing the terrain up off the battlematt I found it actually added to the cinematic nature of the game because both players and gms were using it. The key here is mobile enemies and party. The enemies were attacking from balconies and ledges, the monk was jumping across rooftops, and the full plate fighter, well he faceplanted off the side of a ledge (quite funny actually) when he tried to jump down.
In another scene, when a literal hoard of kobolds was charging the party, we ran to a nearby stone staircase to a bridge, that we used to hold off the hoard (with the fighter and ranger at the stairs and the alchemist and sorceror attacking from up top). The enemies swarmed the stair and tried climbing the walls, as the party desperately tried to hold off the horde. Again, chances are if we hadnt been using the 3d terrain A the stairs wouldnt have been there in the first place, they actually were not where the party was when they first saw the enemies, and B even if they were, if they were just a 2d image it might not have occured to the party to use them.
By making the terrain more visible and tangible, it added significantly to the cinematic feel because both players and gms interacted with it more. I find that when I have little table models, or bookshelves that we see a lot more instances of players knocking things over for cover, or jumping on top or under things. It just helps people come up with interesting ideas to have more tangible things in play. Its sort of the complete opposite of the no map/theater of the mind thing, and it does require additional prep work to set up these 3d maps (both assembling the pieces and putting them onto a board as a battlemat), but I like it quite a bit.
Also if you are looking for more severe conditions/results you might want to use the critical hit and critical fumble decks. They can provide some rather cinematic moments. They favor monsters over pcs (because monsters are meant to die most of the times, but negative effects for pcs linger) but if you are ok with a more gritty feel i'd go with those for some more cinematic moments in your combats.
On the battlemat question, perhaps middleground would be best. Set up the minis, but don't use a mat. That way you can have the freedom of description and ease-of-use of a gridless combat, but still easily visualize the scene and use spells/effects, handwaving who is affected as needed.
Using 3D terrain is a huge bonus :)
Honestly? In my experience one of the best things you can do to facilitate that is to get the players into describing their actions, or describe them yourself if they don't. "Your first roll hits, the second doesn't" Isn't as interesting as "You swing your sword low and draw it across his thigh, but as you move to strike high he drops to aknee, ducking under it before striking back aaaand..... *roll roll* drives his shortsword along your waist as he climbs back into a balanced stance"
Another thing? Pick up the crit and fumble decks from paizo. Personally, I ignore any damage modifications according to the cards, but the secondary effects stick, for the enemies and for the players. It adds sometimes very fun detail to combat, and how often does a combat finish without somebody, enemy or ally, getting a crit OR a fumble?
I also generally rule that if you do more than half the enemy's health in a single hit (minimum of 20) you are treated as having struck a debilitating blow as per the called shot rules, and I have the player roll for what area is struck, have the enemy roll a saving throw vs a DC of the original attack roll that hit them, and have the effect go into place.
The last piece of advice is that if your players come to you with a character idea in mind and it stretches the imagination a bit but isn't too bad? Make it work. I have a player in my game currently who is a throwing weapon specialist. How did I make it work? A mid level feat that basically says "Your throwing weapons are treated as having the returning property and return to you quick enough that you can make a full attack". This means he can invest in 1 weapon, just like the archer. An archer would do more damage than him, easily, but he is close enough and it's not broken, and he has fun. Another player is using a tower shield, he wants to bash with a tower shield, I told him it was fine if he got weapon focus (tower shield). He ended up picking up Equipment Trick, which I rule as generally allowing you to do silly things with your chosen item as opposed to requiring a specific feat chain for each set trick. He used his tower shield to slide across a grease spell and do a charge attack despite difficult terrain at a penalty to hit last session. It plays a little fast and loose with the rules, but my players aren't overpowered, they are appropriately challenged, the only difference is that I let them play things that appeal to them, as opposed to saying "Oooh, would love to let you play an alchemist with a spiked tower shield, but the rules aren't so fond of that. So...no." or "Ooooh, would love to let you take dervish dance and apply it to a weapon that isn't a scimitar, but the pathfinder doesn't like the idea of you effectively dex fighting with anything but a scimitar..."
In 5 years, when b@%!%#~+ting with your friends and remembering your "one time in a dungeon stories" are you going to remember the time when the tower shield alchemist used it as a snowboard to charge>crit the enemy wizard over a grease spell, or the time when the alchemist with the heavy shield (becuase the rules weren't a fan of tower shield usage) throw a few bombs at the wizard across the difficult terrain like he always does, but it was really a pretty solidly balanced encounter.