Action system vs action points system - which would work best for PoE2?

[Silvaren]

It looks like PoE II uses action system which imitates RPG like Dungeons & Dragons but not in the same way.

 

In most RPG character acts in turn has 2-3 actions. Like minor action, move action and main action (attack, spell etc). You either use your main action to perform an attack or similar thing once per round and you can move before or after main action. You can sacrifice main action to use move action twice in that round. Some RPG allows character to perform some minor action (like in Star Wars Saga Edition you can spend minor action and move action for aiming before using main action for attack). And there are often free, instant actions which can be used once per turn.

 

There were cRPG using such rulesets. The best one to this date is Temple of Elemental Evil.

 

Even some real time with pause games like old Infinity Engine games, Neverwinter Nights series or newer like Pillars of Eternity use turn as timeframe to perform restricted number of actions. It was 6 sec turn in Infinity Engine games/NWN series and it's more fluid as single action/recovery time in Pillars of Eternity. It's quasi real time. It's like turn but each combatant act in their individual turn simultaneously. Immediate input from player works only for moving character, but any other action like attacking, using spells, abilities or items require certain amount of time before it starts (I'm not talking about time to performe action like casting time or so).

 

Action timeframes were used in XCOM remakes from Firaxis, in Shadowrun series from Harebrained Schemes and Torment: Tides of Numenera.

 

On the other hand, there is action points system from old XCOM series, classic Fallouts, Wastelands 2, Divinity Original Sin, Age of Decadence and more.

 

In PoE all attributes count as valuable but I don't fell that Dexterity is important right now. It would have greater impact in action points system. Here we have action system which doesn't reoslve action immediately. Casting time is artificial now. It would work with action points mechanics. Now it feels like some spells from D&D 3. Spells in D&D 3 could be casted once per turn. One action to cast and immediately effect. And some spells needed full round for cast. So wizard casted such spell but the end of the casting time was set to the beginning of the next caster's turn. Now it feels like almost every spell (except of instant self buffs) is like full round to cast.

 

Sorry for chaoitc post.

 

Maybe simple question:

Which system do you prefer? LImited number of action (like in new XCOM, Shadowrun, TToN, ToEE) or action points (Fallout, Wasteland, DOS, AoD)?

 

Edit:

I think that Dexterity should have greater impact on combat. I think the same about speed of every weapons or casting time. Initiative doesn't feel right and doesn't show differences between weapon types (you perform the same number of attacks with fast weapons). There is no tactical choice between full attack or single attack. You can always move the same distance...

 

Once again, sorry for chaoitc post.

Edited January 26, 2019 by Silvaren

[Wormerine]

I do agree that Initiative has some issues when it comes to being useful (outside of casters, were it is essencial). I am also quite confed by how it is calculated, as it tends to vary turn to turn.

I don't like classing action point system - too often it ends up leading to doing the same action over and over again. I do like the "one attack per turn" rule.  Unlike XCOM or Phoenix Point, positioning isn't that important in Deadfire, which means it's usually better to use your actions on attacks rather than movement. 

 

Overall, I do like the system, and there are abilities which could as "minor" which one can use for free - they are balanced by the resource cost. 

 

Maybe heavier equipment should limit movement range in addition to lower initiative? 

Ditching turn system in favour of continus turns allowing characters with higher initiative to act a bit more often might also work. 

[Crumbleton]

I posted this in another topic, but i think they need to add an extra action talent for the martial classes.  I think the problem people are having is dex went from a god stat to more situational which is okay in my book.  The could change dex it so that might is for melee damage, and dex is for ranged but I think it's to big of a change from the base game, but we'll see.  A big difference is if you are using CC abilities, like the rogues blind ETC you want to go earlier in the round so you remove your enemy for the entire round ( which is super strong)  It does make it less important for overall damage in most cases though.

 

I think the big thing to overcome is action speed is no longer the god stat of damage is going to be the biggest change for a lot of people, i think it's 100% alright to do.  I hate in the base game having to just find ways to reduce my action speed it makes everything a lot more limited IMO.

[the_dog_days]

Was dex a god stat? I've been dumping it for my characters and still leading my party in DPS for the game. Int and duration is the heads cratcher to me. If all you have are single target duration effects then you basically have three numbers to chose from: (for standard 10 second ability RTwP) 3 int = 1 turn, 10 int = 2 turns, 20 int =3.

[Crumbleton]

Was dex a god stat? I've been dumping it for my characters and still leading my party in DPS for the game. Int and duration is the heads cratcher to me. If all you have are single target duration effects then you basically have three numbers to chose from: (for standard 10 second ability RTwP) 3 int = 1 turn, 10 int = 2 turns, 20 int =3.

i'd say generally dex was pretty good for most characters in terms of damage output, i'd say a majority of people stacked Action speed reduction for Martial dps. (for the normal game)

 

Yeah in the turn based combat now INT is either useless or fricken amazing if you hit the break points.  Especially once you get some levels in your class and your PL increases / using empower.  I'm running a single target sniper build and just dumped dex / int so i'm really tanky get the surprise round from stealth and do pretty great single target damage.  

 

I feel if you're going straight per round damage, DEX isn't that great, but if you are going for CC /interrupts dex is still pretty good.

[protopersona]

Ditching turn system in favour of continus turns allowing characters with higher initiative to act a bit more often might also work. 

This. The current system calculates just fine, and actions already have a built in initiative adjustment. The problem is that hard turns creates an action economy balance where everyone is mostly getting the same amount of actions, just at different times.

 

To the OP, an action point system would be troublesome and time consuming to implement. Everything would need to be coded over to AP costs, where currently the game is rounding off action times to determine how much of a turn an action takes. The current implementation is rather slick from a coding perspective.

[Crumbleton]

Yeah the problem doing this is than initiative becomes super powerful, and then you have to decide how long a turn is in combat, and change the lengths and durations of everything as well, and then it has its own problems on top of that.

 

They could increase weapon damage across the board, creating deadlier combat, making initiative stronger but this would also lead to probably some unintended consequence, they did this for spell cast so I think doing it for weapons could be a possibilitythat would also reduce combat times which would be nice.

 

I think they need a way to let martials take multiple attack actions in a round like in 5e would be the way to go as it would still allow initiative to be powerful since you'd be able to do more damage sooner.

 

I think doing breakpoints for initiative is a bad idea, it will turn it back into the most powerful stat in the game.

 

I guess for me I think they need a way to give martial classes another attack (I think through a talent, maybe even 2 or 3 on higher tiers depending on class maybe too). This would still alow flexibility for builds.

 

I think the talent trees for classes is a good way to address the problems, I think guns amd crossbows need the reload property, and have Rangers gunning ability add an extra attack to firearms/crossbows, and make the two handed or dual wielding traits do the same but with the bonuses they have so 2h increases weapon damage and adds another attack for 2h nonfirearm weapons.

 

Idk I'm just taking my dnd experience and trying to figure how to work it into the existing system, this game mode is pretty close it just needs a few changes

[XauripMaster]

The current system has a few major problems that look to clash with the game's design philosophy.

 

The first is flexibility. Why can't I trade my attack for extra movement? Why can't I attack first and then move? Why can't I trade my movement for something else? In real time, drinking a potion has no recovery. In turn based, it takes my single action for the turn.

Why is flexibility important? Because strategy is based upon decisions, and more flexibility equals more decisions.

 

The second is flavor. In real time I can fire a gun and then pause reloading to cast a spell. If I use a bow or a wand, I have to wait for recovery. This made me prefer reloading weapons for my casters, but that means forgoing a shield. Or let's talk about fast weapons. Sure, using a stiletto means I can act sooner.... but that won't help me take out targets faster. On the contrary, while I attack "faster", I will do less damage with my one single attack for the turn. This leads me to a third point:

 

Initiative does a nice job of showing how some characters act faster than others, but that is only half of what action speed does in real time. What about doing more stuff because you do it faster?

 

A fourth point would be that action balance feels off. A wizard can cast half a spellbook worth of buffs as free actions. Meanwhile drinking a potion takes your sole action for the turn (while it had no recovery in real time); granted, I understand being able to chug health potions or toss bombs as a free action would be a bit broken.

You could add a "Swift action" per turn to solve the latter, but a better system exists: Action points! We can even apply the whole recovery mechanic to boot! Six action points per turn, each corresponding to roughly one second real time. Recovery can "eat" into the ap you get next turn.

 

Basically you take real time and make each actor involved in combat act separately instead of all at once.

[Xenavire]

I think they definitely need to look at free/swift/full actions, because combat does feel rather limited and too open at the same time, depending on what you have built your character as. If you have a bunch of free actions you can go ballistic (these should largely be swapped to swift actions, meaning you get one of them a turn while retaining an attack.) Potions and certain non-weapon thrown items could probably be swift actions too.

Just as importantly, the breakpoints and turn durations need to be looked at. I don't think there is any "persistent" effect that should last only a single round, so I feel that every effect should start as "X+1" rounds. Whether int modifies the X or the entire round amount would need to be looked at however. And as for int - I think that it should be a flat turn increase per Y amount of int, ideally. The AoE modification is perfectly fine as-is, but I think every 4 or 5 (balance needs to be careful here) points of int would add a round to an effect. I personally feel that 5 int would be perfectly acceptable (adding 2 rounds of an effect at 20 int is fairly potent). Certain effects might need an upper limit (the invisibility effects from the rogue skills, for example, are meant to be brief, and extending it by 4 turns (to a total of 6 if we used all of my suggested tweaks) is certainly not brief. In fact, thinking about it, they could balance each category of duration by a different int modifier (brief could take 6 int per additional round, medium could take 5 int per additional round, and long could be 4 int per additional round.) But I definitely felt like I was wasting my time running int builds when I was playing, so any changes to number of rounds or the scaling would be excellent.

[Zahuaisready]

About dexterity and action speed :

Without changing the initiative system, maybe it would be possible de create a kind of stamina gauge that take in consideration the values of attack speed established in base game (RTWP) for each action.

 

When the combat begins, the slider is on the center of the stamina bar :

- The pitch of the stamina increases with bonus (fast weapon, high dexterity, light armor, etc...). A full gauge of stamina results in an action gain.

- The pitch of the stamina decreases with malus (slow weapon, little dexterity, heavy armor, etc...). An empty gauge of stamina results in an action loss (ouch !)

 

It needs to be well balanced for sure in order that dexterity doesn't become overpowered.

 

It's just an idea but sorry if it's a little to simplistic ! (and sorry for my bad english^^)

 

[SChin]

Hey everyone!

 

Thank you for all the useful feedback and information about the actions and speeds of characters in Turn-Based Mode.  I put a report together for the team to consider along with a link to this thread as a reference for them.  Please continue to post your thoughts and feedback as you see fit since the team will be looking at it 

 

Thanks again!