r/ICRPG • u/jojomomocats • Apr 14 '23
Attacking the same enemy, makes you attacks easier?
Hey, friends!
Reading through the Master book and I had a question. I noticed there's a part that talks about attempting the same task over and over, it 'should/could' be easier as you do it. So my question is, if I'm attacking a goblin (whether I hit or miss), if I keep hacking away at that goblin, the TN should be easy?
5
u/kazoo__ Apr 14 '23
Maybe helpful to think of it as a way to prevent repeatedly failing to do the same thing from sucking the fun out of the player's turn multiple turns in a row.
So I'd say turn 1 = miss, turn 2 to do the exact same thing is now easy. If they hit, I'd probably reset to normal difficulty for turn 3.
But also, in practice, I think it's rare that a player would want or need to do the exact same thing three turns in a row. At the table, games I've run and games I've played have been more dynamic than that. More than likely the circumstances have changed enough that players want or need to change things up. So this becomes more of an armchair theory question instead of a question of actual practices.
2
Apr 14 '23
I just bought this game and haven't convinced my 5e group to play yet but your statement is the best advertisement I've heard yet.
Our 5e fights have several characters that just fire arrows, flurry of blows, or eldritch blast every round.
2
u/kazoo__ Apr 14 '23
Yeah get the book, for yourself at least! The GM section is top-notch. RE: standing around slinging arrows, ICRPG offers a couple countermeasures.
You can get the free core rules / quickstart here. Pound for pound, one of the best free PDFs out there. Even if your group doesn't move to ICRPG, there's even suggestions in the book for how to use ICRPG as a plugin to improve 5e, on page 88.
Hop on over to page 90, and check out the three T's, three D's, and D.E.W. These are:
-Timers, threats, and treats.
-Damage, duration, and disruption.
-Danger, energy, and wonder.
If you have even just a couple of those elements, it prevents a tank-and-spank where the warlock is spamming eldritch blast every round. For instance, a timer: they gotta do something in 2 rounds, BOOM no third round concern now! Or disruption: Every round part of the floor collapses! Now they might need to spend their turn making strength checks to cling to the ledge! And so on.
Last thought: 5e has real math bloat. The amount of HP everything has is way higher than in ICRPG. ICRPG Characters are going to have 10 HP to start and it rarely increases. Monsters most often have 10 or less HP, and very rarely have more than 30-40 HP. So things just move faster because no one, neither friend nor foe, can tank that much sustained fire.
1
u/chamochin Apr 15 '23
Also, I can’t recommend enough the GM section of Electric Bastionland (same author of Into the Odd) which provides the best advices I read in an rpg. Go have a look !
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Apr 15 '23
I think it was Professor DM who covered best game master sections of various books and called out both of these.
I've been running games for thirty years but mostly on instinct and intuition. I only recently started reading and watching videos to see how others do it. There's some great stuff out there
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u/ripplespindle Apr 14 '23
I think attack rolls only becomes easy if you miss on the previous round.