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I'd suggest waiting to see if it's actually an issue in play and what form it takes before worrying too much about the solution.
In theory, stuff like rocket tag is baked into the system. In practice, high-level combat can range from being over in moments to taking literally hours at the table.
And, even if combats are over in moments, it depends a lot on the players whether that's what they want. Some players want to show off in combat, but others are optimizing to spend as little time in combat as possible to get to the "good stuff."
So I'd say make sure you're actually getting rocket tag and it is hurting your players' enjoyment before reworking things to fix it.
Cheers!
Landon
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Single boss monsters
You might have been tricked into thinking Pathfinder is epic fantasy game about epic heroes fighting fantasy monsters. In fact, it's a game about managing limited resources, such as hitpoints and actions. Single boss monster have 20-25% actions of an average group, thus he invariably loses.
Instead of multiplying entities, consider designing encounters where the boss isn't a single CR+3 enemy, but CR to CR+2 one, with multiple minions.
Dot.
My only worry would be that players who like dealing a lot of damage, because it makes them feel awesome and that's their reason for playing the game, become sort of moot. Like, there's no point building that super good 500 dmg barbarian, because he can do nothing that a character with much lower damage output can't do.
I'm kinda worried about getting my players to high levels because of the rocket tag, so it's great someone's thinking of stuff like this. :D
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Your enemy is action economy.
Maybe HP Pools could solve that, but I would up it to 100 per pool as a compromise.
Also, although it's cheating, you could give the boss two initiative rolls and two turns per round. Call it a special NPC Boss template.
Or use minions. I love minions. Especially if they pose enough threat to not be able to ignore (high damage or debuff) yet low enough defenses (AC, Saves, HP) as to be easily dispatchable.
I use Fate Chips (Think Hero Points) in my game. My players start each session with one, and I start the session with none. They can bank them between Scenes but not between Acts (think of an AP as a 6-Act Play). When a PC uses one, he passes it to the DM. Mwuh-ha-HA!
Your enemy is action economy.
This.
Celanian, it's great that you're being creative, but the job is (way) less than half-done. Pick a save-or-die ability. Say... flesh-to-stone. Poof. Target failed its save. Now it's a statue.
Hit-point-pools can't help that. They can't help someone who gets Disarmed before they get to go.
Pretty much whoever goes first stands a good chance of earning a huge tactical advantage, even if that only comes from becoming entangled because a net was thrown on them, or sand thrown in their eyes.
Basically, you'd need to develop a (workable) system that allows a simultaneous action economy. Maybe something where all participants declare their actions, then they're all resolved at the same time, and any action that invalidates someone else's action simply gets delayed. Hugely awkward, but hey, that's why this isn't done already.
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It makes me think that having "stages" or "ablative HP barriers" might be a way to at least incorporate longer fights.
It's a shame that the rules can't reflect this, but I envision a fight with a dragon being about pushing him back or leading him around, movine the fight through various playing fields until he arrives at a spot where a creative last battle could take place.
And for the record, I'm not referencing that awful scene in the second Hobbit movie.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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@The OP:
You mention that certain total-incapacitation effects would simply be replaced by the effect of emptying an HPP. Thing is, now you've just caused a bunch of different angles of gameplay to be, effectively, just another form of damage. That means that players who wanted to be doing different things than each other are now doing the same thing. Different characters now play/feel the same as each other.
Options in a game aren't truly different unless they're experientially different. Somebody who swings an axe really hard, somebody who assaults your physiology with sickening gases, somebody who magically compels your mind to choose to hold still, and somebody who conjurs a prison of ice around your body; should in theory all be different characters. But if your mechanics cause every single one of those tactics to be the same "one d20 is rolled, 1HPP is depleted", then they're all the same experience with different paint jobs. You've now removed a huge chunk of what limited depth the game has.
I'm all for ending rocket tag, but reducing combat to "succeed on X number of d20 rolls over the course of at least X rounds" is not the way to do it.
Your enemy is action economy.
Maybe HP Pools could solve that, but I would up it to 100 per pool as a compromise.
Also, although it's cheating, you could give the boss two initiative rolls and two turns per round. Call it a special NPC Boss template.
Or use minions. I love minions. Especially if they pose enough threat to not be able to ignore (high damage or debuff) yet low enough defenses (AC, Saves, HP) as to be easily dispatchable.
I use Fate Chips (Think Hero Points) in my game. My players start each session with one, and I start the session with none. They can bank them between Scenes but not between Acts (think of an AP as a 6-Act Play). When a PC uses one, he passes it to the DM. Mwuh-ha-HA!
I feel like you guys are all forgetting why it is called Rocket TAG.
You're solutions would be great if it was just the party that can kill the monsters in one hit, but the monsters can hit back just as hard, and you're solutions are to buff them.
Great, your boss now has two initiatives, meaning kill him or he kills TWO players instead of one. He has 5 HPPs? Great, so if an entire party of 4 blows their load trying to kill him, he still gets one shot in before they take him down, meaning they are all but guaranteed to lose someone no matter how well they do.
At the level we're talking about here, a PC reduced to death-level negative HP will generally be back up and fighting by the next fight, if not during the current fight.
Rather than give extra HP pools to either side, consider that action economy thing one more time. A 10th level PC built strongly with a combat buddy in mind like an Animal Companion or Familiar likely has between 2-4 attacks in a full attack round. Your party could, conceivably have between 4 to 12 attack-type actions they could take in a given round.
Even if you've got a boss and some minions, more likely you'll have less things you can do than they can.
Add in the fact that beyond level 5 you begin running into monsters that can take out a single PC in one full attack round, if they get the chance, and then you see where the Rocket Tag syndrome comes from.
To me the solution isn't more HP pools on either side. It's matching up action economy and damage output.
A well built PC fighter at level 10 can kick out, say 100 damage in a round. A CR10 monster has likely 12D10+36 HP, for a total of 102HP. Your final fight then shouldn't be this one monster versus the party. It should be this monster x2 for an APL +2 fight.
Now while you have 2 different monsters, they don't have to be completely seperate.
Take a Marid and a Greater Water Elemental. Imagine an underground lake, out of which a marid rises engulfed inside of a Greater Water Elemental she's bound to her will. The 2 creatures attack as one: while the Marid unleashes a spell or 3 trident attacks potentially dealing a potential 84 damage the water elemental acts as her "armor" taking all the PCs damage and dealing 2 slams for 36 damage. Once the PCs take down the elemental in round one, they still have the Marid in round 2.
That's only 2 CR 9 monsters for a CR11 fight.
Try creative ways of combining monsters. Amalgam monsters, rider and mount, minion waves, symbiotes. My personal fave is an undead with some kind of mindless creature living inside it.
Also remember: fighting is more than trading blows. If the Marid in the example above lives to round 2 she has Plane Shift and Water Breathing. She also has a 23 Str. What if she ran away into another plane, then returned with a 100 block of ice? What if she tore a pillar down with a Sunder attack and started the cave collapsing? Look at the WHOLE monster and everything they're capable of before giving them more HP.
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If the PCs are too fragile, I could simply give them 2 HPP each starting at 12th level or so.
So the boss gets multiple HP pools, and the players get multiple HP pools.
...
I don't think the answer here is increasing HP. 4e tried that. The end result was interminable encounters (6 turns of a party beating on a hobgob boss, he hits them back for 8, they hit him the next turn for 22+, he hits them for 4, lathe, rinse, repeat.)
I think a better, albeit less popular solution, is decreasing damage output and making Armor Class meaningful.
Since 3.5 and its 'Magic the Gathering' ethos, PCs have become weird combo driven things. I'm not saying 1e or 2e was perfect on this, but in previous editions you had smaller hp pools (you topped out on HD at 9), and it was still relatively hard to hit things even as a high level unless you were a fighter because of how THAC0 and the multiple attack system worked (1/1, 3/2, 2/1) attacks!.
This limit on number of attacks, stilted damage situations, and even the notoriously goofy "you must have a plus /this big/ to hit this monster at all," stuff was built for this.
The hit points in 3e/3.5e/Pathfinder got increased (quite a bit) but not enough to account for the huge damage output increases.
A 14th level barbarian, or paladin can easily manage 200+ damage a round without even dropping too much into the 'shennigans' pile.
The answer isn't to give everyone final fantasy level hit point totals. The simplest answer is to have everyone stop doing triple digit damage and hitting so reliably.
If you want to increase AC, have the boss keep a low level minion around with Mage Armor, Protection from Good and Shield, then just say that your boss monster received the benefits of these three spells just before the PCs walked into the scene. Against any good PCs the monster is +10 to AC.
This same low level caster should be around for a couple levels, hitting the PCs with Ray of Enfeeblement or some other Str reducing magic. Jack up the DC on this attack; against a 14th level Barbarian you'll want a level 9 spellcaster which could potentially throw a Bestow Curse with a DC 20 save or something I think. -6 to Str isn't ginormous, but it's somehting.
Also this brings me back to the other point I made before: do other things besides attacking. Some monsters and builds can get really high CMBs. What if as the level 14 barbarian comes on one of the boss' minions focused every ounce of it's skill on sundering the barb's weapons? Meanwhile the boss is piling flaming carts in front of himself as a makeshift wall of fire.
I don't know; I guess I just feel like just adding in HP sort of just exacerbates the symptoms instead of addressing the source.
(That I currently take or am debating taking.)
• Reducing the critical hit stats of all weapons to 20/x2. Weapons would automatically confirm critical hits without the need for a conformation roll. Weapons with 18-20/x2, 19-20/x3, and 20/x4 damage instead get a +1 bonus to damage. Abilities which add to critical hit confirmation rolls instead add to critical hit damage. The Keen weapon property and Improved Critical feat still function normally, improving the critical hit range to 19-20/x2. (I'm debating on allowing them to stack to make a weapon deal critical hits on 18-20/x2. The intention here is to reduce the exponential growth rate of damage at mid to high levels from critical hits.
• Avoid point buy and superpowered stats - I use a standard array of 15, 14, 14, 13, 12, 10. This encourages more MAD characters which in general aren't damage power houses in addition to simply reducing the maximum strength or casting stat available to characters at first level. It also makes 4th level more interesting/exciting.
• Slowing the progression of Power Attack and Deadly Aim. Perhaps even having a BAB requirement of +5 and having them advance at BAB +10, BAB +15, and BAB +20.
Currently a 1st level barbarian grabs power attack and a greatsword, starts with an 18 strength, +2 racial, +4 from raging, and just destroys everything with 2d6+13 damage with a 19-20 crit range. With the above changes, a greatsword barbarian who starts with a 15 strength, +2 racial for 17, +4 raging will still hit for 2d6 + 7 damage at first level, which will kill most first level CR appropriate monsters in one hit, but by the time you're at second or third level, things may survive a round or two.
There will, of course, be a number of side effects to this. With direct martial damage reduced, evocation spells become more attractive, as do mechanics like sneak attack, precise strike, and studied strike. Both of these seem like positive things to me. By the time you're at mid levels, the above measures should push combats to last about 1 round longer than normal - hopefully.
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The best way to improve your monsters' lifespan is to use tactics that deny PC actions against said monsters. The two most common methods are terrain and higher priority tasks. If the PCs must spend their first turn breaking or bypassing a barrier, then their second turn saving some hostages from a fire, that's two more rounds your monsters get to act against the PCs. This is tried and true and I've seen it work well in many adventure paths, modules, scenarios, and homebrews.
EDIT: Also, I will generally increase monster HP and lower their damage. This has a net effect of lowering effective damage (as a percent of enemy HP) on both sides.
If your problem is action economy, maybe you just limit the number of actions that can be taken against a single character in a round. It makes sense that multiple "attacks" going at a single target would get in each others ways eventually. Consider a full round attack to be a single action to keep from nerfing the martials.
This could also be limited based on the size of the target, so:
Small: 3 max enemy actions received per round
Medium: 4
Large: 6
Huge: 8
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I didn't give any suggestion at all.
I believe the OP is well aware of the problem, and, to a certain extent aware that the problem can't be "ended" (despite the title) but mitigated at best, and is looking for constructive suggestions.
For example, Riuken is right on target. But, I think the OP is looking for structural as well as tactical suggestions.
My rule is that anything that would incapacitate the monster simply removes 1 HPP until the monster is down to its last HPP. It's in the first post of this thread.
My apologies. I was skimming during lunch.
It's an okay rule, but it does punish casters harshly... unless your rule is that a spell slot is not consumed unless the spell does what the spell says it does?
Another way to do it: all bosses automatically have the Endurance and Diehard feats for free. Basically this means that they keep fighting after they drop into negatives, losing 1 HP/round alongside any hits they take. This MIGHT give them time to either run away to heal or take one final "doomsday" action.
If your boss is intelligent, always have an out. I don't JUST mean Dimension Door, Simulacrum or Limited Wish. I mean "So... you've got me dead to rights. Bravo heroes. Unfortunately for you I've just sent off a Whispering Wind spell to band of goblin mercenaries. They are poised to lay waste to a random farmstead, kicking off a spree of destruction. Of course I could stop them, if you let me go. If you don't, well, what's a few dozen corpses? I won't tell if you don't..."
Of course PCs are never usually that forgiving. They kick in the door, roll initiative and start hacking. They never think that Rocket Tag could ever have any negative consequences. After all this is just a tabletop video game right? There's no roleplaying we need to consider is there?
*cut to the PCs chilling at the bar high-fiving each other for being such badasses*
GM: The door to the tavern creaks open and the room goes silent. The crowd parts ominously, admitting a young woman in tattered rags. She carries something in her arms, her eyes on it as she staggers toward you. There is a stench of blood and death following her. She stops, inches from your table. "This... is my daughter, Yala. She is... was... just four months old. She's gone... it's all gone..." her tear-streaked eyes meet yours. There is a seething hatred such that you've never seen in another's face. "... and its ALL your fault! You were supposed to be the heroes. You were supposed to SAVE us! Instead you let that tyrant unleash these... HORRORS on us! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE US?" She demands, drawing a dagger in unsteady hands. Roll initiative.
The PCs will easily defeat a N female human commoner 1 with a dagger. But how will they defeat the fact that, if they'd just stopped and listened to the boss monster's exposition they MIGHT have saved little Yala. They could've been heroes.
Now they're the villains.
After a few sessions of uprisings, riots, and other attempts on them as a result of their failure perhaps the players will learn. Maybe they'll embrace villainhood. Maybe they'll quit claiming you're an evil GM that was just out to get them all along. Whatever the case they'll probably not be thinking about Rocket Tag anymore...
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I thought I'd chime in here, but I think on the matter of being able to beef up certain encounters it can be fairly assessed that certain options can and should be taken off of the table.
If save or die effects either a) have a chance to expedite the encounter's conclusion or b) are removed for lack of efficacy, then I think those options are fairly balanced to the nature of the encounter.
I've been a player that has been in encounters that were meant to be exciting and prolonged (at least a little), only to have a save or die effect literally cut the battle down to the first action of the first round. I felt cheated, but maybe that is just me. I'm more than sure that the GM was disappointed as well. This was all in 3.0 mind you, but the logic remains sound.
Having what I would like to call an "ablative" boss fight can still recreate the same experience with a slightly different tactical approach.
Consider it to be a different form of encounter technology, such as solo monsters in 4th edition. It alters the structure of the encounter, but not necessarily the premise of the encounter.
If I set up a single dragon (or whatever) to fight the group, it could in theory be pulverized within a matter of rounds. If I set up an equal CR of younger dragons (for instance), the result may be the same, but the tactics would be different, and the end result could take longer, if for no other reason than that more players are on the field.
Why not encourage some sort of boss-lengthening formula, if for no other reason than to see what would happen? I'd be interested in seeing what such a playtest would discover. However, I don't imagine that it would be more likely to result in a TPK, or denying strategies. Adding additional enemies already does this sort of thing.
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Hp pools can be representative of some boss abilities or limbs. As exaqmple, a dragon boss can have 3 pools, for its head, claws and tail. They have diferent initiatives and actions.
When one of the pools if depleted, he loses the abilities asociated to it. Same agains the SoD effects, like having its tail petrified, or even the head, he can get his neck and mouth petrified and eyes petrified, but can still use his claws and tail (with blinded status).
Same for stun. The BBEG fails its save? now he got unable to move its claws, but still is dangerous with bite and tail.
Hp pools can be representative of some boss abilities or limbs. As exaqmple, a dragon boss can have 3 pools, for its head, claws and tail. They have diferent initiatives and actions.
When one of the pools if depleted, he loses the abilities asociated to it. Same agains the SoD effects, like having its tail petrified, or even the head, he can get his neck and mouth petrified and eyes petrified, but can still use his claws and tail (with blinded status).
Same for stun. The BBEG fails its save? now he got unable to move its claws, but still is dangerous with bite and tail.
I like this idea, but at the same time I can see the rules lawyer at my gaming table slamming a fist over it. Since this isn't how magic or combat works for every other monster, why does it happen with this one other than cinema?
4 10th level PCs go up agaisnt a CR 14 dragon. A petrification goes off, succeeds amazingly, but only petrifies it's wings. This allows the fighter to cut off its tail but then the dragon retaliates, unleashing a breath weapon that the wizard shockingly fails to defend against and she goes down. The cleric cranks up all his buffs and charges, doing enough damage to shatter one of the wings. The dragon is reeling but still somehow up. The rogue however, having been miraculously unseen through all of this and picks this moment to make a flying charge attack with SA that destroys the creature's head pool!
Huzzah! The wizard is saved by clerical healing, the PCs loot the treasure and the fair maiden is rescued!
A few weeks later the PCs meet 2 CR 8 dragons in a routine, hum-drum encounter (these creatures aren't bosses.) The wizard turns one fully to stone while the rogue and fighter get flying flank attacks and obliterate the second one. The cleric basically chills, waiting.
Now why did one big dragon only get partially affected by the spell while the other 2 SLIGHTLY smaller ones get fully affected?
If you're going to houserule things make sure there's a consistent rule and justification for it, that's all.
Another way to do it: all bosses automatically have the Endurance and Diehard feats for free. Basically this means that they keep fighting after they drop into negatives, losing 1 HP/round alongside any hits they take. This MIGHT give them time to either run away to heal or take one final "doomsday" action.
If your boss is intelligent, always have an out. I don't JUST mean Dimension Door, Simulacrum or Limited Wish. I mean "So... you've got me dead to rights. Bravo heroes. Unfortunately for you I've just sent off a Whispering Wind spell to band of goblin mercenaries. They are poised to lay waste to a random farmstead, kicking off a spree of destruction. Of course I could stop them, if you let me go. If you don't, well, what's a few dozen corpses? I won't tell if you don't..."
Of course PCs are never usually that forgiving. They kick in the door, roll initiative and start hacking. They never think that Rocket Tag could ever have any negative consequences. After all this is just a tabletop video game right? There's no roleplaying we need to consider is there?
*cut to the PCs chilling at the bar high-fiving each other for being such badasses*
GM: The door to the tavern creaks open and the room goes silent. The crowd parts ominously, admitting a young woman in tattered rags. She carries something in her arms, her eyes on it as she staggers toward you. There is a stench of blood and death following her. She stops, inches from your table. "This... is my daughter, Yala. She is... was... just four months old. She's gone... it's all gone..." her tear-streaked eyes meet yours. There is a seething hatred such that you've never seen in another's face. "... and its ALL your fault! You were supposed to be the heroes. You were supposed to SAVE us! Instead you let that tyrant unleash these... HORRORS on us! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE US?" She demands, drawing a dagger in unsteady hands. Roll initiative.
The PCs will easily defeat a N female human commoner 1 with a dagger. But how will they defeat the fact that, if...
One's alignment is derived entirely from their own actions. If the BBEG wants to murder a bunch of people, that's on him. Not killing him stop this one Goblin raid. Killing him stops all the Evil he will commit for the rest of his life. You have no reason to trust him anyway.
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You're right, of course. You and I, sitting across the web from another having a civil discourse can easily debate this gray area of the game and I agree on your point of alignment.
Try telling that to the peasant mother whose infant daughter was slain. Or the angry mob waiting outside with the rope. Or the baron whose land has just been burned and salted.
None of those folks, save a few adepts or other spellcaster types out of, say, a hundred people are going to bother reading your alignment with a spell or power. You have no reason to trust a villain, but you also have to know that since this isn't a video game EVERY action you take as a PC will have some kind of consequence in the world. If you DON'T kill the villain, he gets away. The goblin thing may have just been a ruse but at least the countryside is safe, for the moment. If you DO kill the villain and the goblin thing ends up being real, well...
My point is only that, in order to end rocket tag sometimes you have to target the players, not the PCs. If you give them somthing else to fight they use other skills, talents and abilities and the fight turns out very differently. It becomes more than "Beat initiative... charge/cast spell... roll damage... fight over" and instead it becomes "Stop the hammer from striking the anvil seven times to call down the demigod; destroy the creature's slime-armor before he can take damage; save the innocent town and wail on the villain another time."
Might be worth mentioning that, part of the reason combat in 3.x takes fewer rounds at higher levels is because each round takes longer at higher levels. By 'mitigating' this, you might end up creating boring drag-fest combats that last a long time even though the outcome has already been decided.
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Point of order.
We're getting off topic.
Additional point of order. Most baddies have the PCs sicced on them because they already did something significantly horrible enough for this.
Its like: Guy with goblin army rampages and burns farmsteads, threatens party that he sent off a whispering wind and they have to stop attacking him or...his goblins will burn farmsteads.
This is especially ridiculous because in these cases, usually the PCs have already left a red swath through the bad guy's forces just to get to the bad guy.
Also a CR 14 dragon versus four CR 10s is still out numbered. The way 3.5/Pathfinder full attacks work mean that tempo is always on the benefit of the guy who was charged instead of the chargee. This is a problem.
I've seen longer matches where fighters danced around each other, neither engaging because they didn't want to be the ones to eat the full attack for the benefit of hitting his opponent once.
I know I keep tooting this horn, but in 2e the 2/1 and 3/2 attack protocol meant that even a mid level (3/2) fighter could deliver two attacks after moving in or just one if he wanted to 'save' the two attacks.
You got less nova nonsense because you weren't capable of nova'ing.
The reason for rocket tag is that offense is really too good compared to defense in the current ruleset. When offense dominates, you get very short conflicts and wars, when defense dominates, you get the trench wars of WWI with neverending combat.
I would theorize one problem is that you really can't build your defensive abilities, i.e. hp, saves, AC, to the absurd levels you can build damage, save DCs, maneuvers, and so on. Even if you do, that leaves you wide open for any other sort of deviltry the enemy throws at you. Make a character with 57 AC, and you get hit by save-or-dies. Buff up your CMD and they blast you with area-of-effect spells. Attack has the initiative in this comparison.
Worse, even if you did add more defensive options, all you would be doing is extend the length of the battles. I believe many would feel this made things more boring, so it may not solve the things you think.